“He'll show up in the next five minutes,” Sharp said.
I hope not, Peake thought.
“We'll waste the bastard, all right,” Sharp said.
Not me, Peake thought.
“He'll be expecting us to keep cruising the road, back and forth, looking for him. He won't expect us to anticipate him and be lying in wait here. He'll walk right into us.”
God, I hope not, Peake thought. I hope he heads south instead of north. Or maybe goes over the top of the mountain and down the other side and never comes near this road. Or God, please, how about just letting him cross this road and go down to the lake and walk across the water and off onto the other shore?
Peake said, “Looks to me as if he's got more firepower than we do. I mean, I saw a shotgun. That's something to think about.”
“He won't use it on us,” Sharp said.
“Why not?”
“Because he's a prissy-assed moralist, that's why. A sensitive type. Worries about his goddamn soul too much. His type can justify killing only in the middle of a war — and only a war he believes in — or in some other situation where he has absolutely no other choice but to kill in order to save himself.”
“Yeah, well, but if we start shooting at him, he won't have any choice except to shoot back. Right?”
“You just don't understand him. In a situation like this — which isn't a damn war — if there's any place to run, if he's not backed into a tight corner, then he'll always choose to run instead of fighting. It's the morally superior choice, you see, and he likes to think of himself as a morally superior guy. Out here in these woods, he's got plenty of places to run. So if we shoot and hit him, it's over. But if we miss, he won't shoot back — not that pussy-faced hypocrite — he'll run, and we'll have another chance to track him down and take another whack at him, and he'll keep giving us chances until, sooner or later, he either shakes loose of us for good or we blow him away. Just for God's sake don't ever back him into a corner; always leave him an out. When he's running, we have a chance of shooting him in the back, which is the wisest thing we could do, because the guy was in Marine Recon, and he was good, better than most, the best — I have to give him that much — the best. And he seems to've stayed in condition. So if he had to do it, he could take your head off with his bare hands.”
Peake was unable to decide which of these new revelations was most appalling: that, to settle a grudge of Sharp's, they were going to kill not only an innocent man but a man with an unusually complex and faithfully observed moral code; or that they were going to shoot him in the back if they had the chance; or that their target would put his own life at extreme risk rather than casually waste them, though they were prepared to casually waste him; or that, if given no other choice, the guy had the ability to utterly destroy them without working up a sweat. Peake had last been to bed yesterday afternoon, almost twenty-two hours ago, and he badly needed sleep, but his grainy eyes were open wide and his mind was alert as he contemplated the wealth of bad news that he had just received.
Sharp leaned forward suddenly, as if he'd spotted Shadway coming up from the south, but it must have been nothing, for he leaned back in his seat again and let out his pent-up breath.
He's as scared as he is angry, Peake thought.
Peake steeled himself to ask a question that would most likely anger or at least irritate Sharp. “You know him, sir?”
“Yeah,” Sharp said sourly, unwilling to elaborate.
“From where?”
“Another place.”
“When?”
“Way back,” Sharp said in a tone of voice that made it clear there were to be no more questions.
From the beginning of this investigation yesterday evening, Peake had been surprised that someone as high as the deputy director would plunge right into the fieldwork, shoulder to shoulder with junior agents, instead of coordinating things from an office. This was an important case. But Peake had been involved in other important cases, and he had never seen any of the agency's titled officers actually getting their hands dirty. Now he understood: Sharp had chosen to wade into the muddy center of this one because he had discovered that his old enemy, Shadway, was involved, and because only in the field would he have an opportunity to kill Shadway and stage the shooting to look legitimate.
“Way back,” Sharp said, more to himself this time than to Jerry Peake. “Way back.”
The roomy interior of the Mercedes-Benz trunk was warm because it was heated by the sun. But Eric Leben, curled on his side in the darkness, felt another and greater warmth: the peculiar and almost pleasant fire that burned in his blood, flesh, and bones, a fire that seemed to be melting him down into… something other than a man.
The inner and outer heat, the darkness, the motion of the car, and the hypnotic humming of the tires had lulled him into a trancelike state. For a time he had forgotten who he was, where he was, and why he had put himself in this place. Thoughts eddied lazily through his mind, like opalescent films of oil drifting, rippling, intertwining, and forming slow-motion whirlpools on the surface of a lake. At times his thoughts were light and pleasant: the sweet body curves and skin textures of Rachael, Sarah, and other women with whom he had made love; the favorite teddy bear he had slept with as a child; fragments of movies he had seen; lines of favorite songs. But sometimes the mental images grew dark and frightening: Uncle Barry grinning and beckoning; an unknown dead woman in a dumpster; another woman nailed to a wall — naked, dead, staring; the hooded figure of Death looming out of shadows; a deformed face in a mirror; strange and monstrous hands somehow attached to his own wrists…
Once, the car stopped, and the cessation of movement caused him to float up from the trance. He quickly reoriented himself, and that icy reptilian rage flooded back into him. He eagerly flexed and unflexed his strong, elongated, sharp-nailed hands in anticipation of choking the life out of Rachael — she who had denied him, she who had rejected him, she who had sent him into the path of death. He almost burst out of the trunk, then heard a man's voice, hesitated. Judging by the bits of inane conversation he was able to overhear, and because of the noise of a gas-pump nozzle being inserted into the fuel tank, Eric realized that Rachael had stopped at a service station, where there were sure to be a few — and perhaps a lot of — people. He had to wait for a better opportunity.
Earlier, back at the cabin, when he had opened the trunk, he had immediately noted that the rear wall was a solid metal panel, making it impossible for him to simply kick the car's rear seat off its pins and clamber through into the passenger compartment. Furthermore, the latch mechanism was unreachable from within the trunk because of a metal cover plate fastened in place by several Phillips-head screws. Fortunately, Rachael and Shadway had been so busy gathering up the copy of the Wildcard file that Eric had been able to snatch a Phillips screwdriver off the tool rack, remove the latch plate, climb into the trunk, and close the lid. Even in the dark, he could find the bared latch, slip the blade of the screwdriver into the mechanism, and pop it open with no difficulty.
If he heard no voices the next time they stopped, he could be out of the trunk in a couple of seconds, fast enough to get his hands on her before she realized what was happening.
At the service station, as he waited silently and patiently within the trunk, he brought his hands to his face and thought he detected additional changes from those he had seen and felt at the cabin. Likewise, when he explored his neck, shoulders, and most of his body, he did not seem to be formed quite as he should have been.