Yet… she was still afraid of him.
She remembered glancing up at him as he followed her from the top of the arroyo wall, remembered staring down at him later when she had been on top and he had been climbing after her, remembered the way he had looked when she had last seen him engaged in battle with the nest of rattlers. In all those memories there was something about him that… well… something that seemed almost mythic, that transcended nature, that seemed powerfully supernatural, undying and unstoppable.
She shuddered with a sudden chill that spread outward from the marrow of her bones.
A moment later, topping a rise in the highway, she saw that she was nearing the end of the current leg of her journey. In a broad dark valley directly ahead and below, Las Vegas glimmered like a miraculous vision in the rain. So many millions of lights shone in every hue that the city looked bigger than New York, though it was actually one-twentieth the size. Even from this distance, at least fifteen miles, she could make out the Strip with all its dazzling resort hotels and the downtown casino center that some called Glitter Gulch, for those areas blazed with by far the greatest concentrations of lights, all of which seemed to blink, pulse, and twinkle.
Less than twenty minutes later, she came out of the vast empty reaches of the bleak Mojave onto Las Vegas Boulevard South, where the neon shimmered across the rain-mirrored road in waves of purple, pink, red, green, and gold. Pulling up to the front doors of the Bally's Grand, she almost wept with relief when she saw the bellmen, valet-parking attendants, and a few hotel guests standing under the porte cochere. For hours on the interstate, the passing cars had seemed untenanted in the storm-obscured night, so it was wonderful to see people again, even if they were all strangers.
At first, Rachael hesitated to leave the Mercedes with a valet-parking attendant because the precious Wildcard file was in a garbage bag on the floor behind the driver's seat. But she decided that no one was likely to steal a garbage bag, especially not one full of creased and crumpled papers. Besides, it would be safer with the valet than parked in the public lot. She left the car in his care and took a claim check for it.
She had mostly recovered from the twist she'd given her ankle when running from Eric. The claw punctures in her calf throbbed and burned, although those wounds felt better, too. She entered the hotel with only a slight limp.
For a moment, she was almost thrown into shock by the contrast between the stormy night behind her and the excitement of the casino. It was a glittery world of crystal chandeliers, velvet, brocade, plush carpets, marble, polished brass, and green felt, where the sound of wind and rain could not be heard above the roar of voices exhorting Lady Luck, the ringing of slot machines, and the raucous music of a pop-rock band in the lounge.
Gradually Rachael became uncomfortably aware that her appearance made her an object of curiosity in these surroundings. Of course, not everyone — not even a majority of the clientele — dressed elegantly for a night of drinking, nightclub shows, and gambling. Women in cocktail dresses and men in fine suits were common, but others were dressed more casually: some in polyester leisure suits, some in jeans and sports shirts. However, none of them wore a torn and soiled blouse (as she did), and none of them wore jeans that looked as if they might have just been through a rodeo contest (as she did), and none of them boasted filthy sneakers with blackened laces and one sole half torn off from scrambling up and down arroyo walls (as she did), and none of them was dirty-faced and stringy-haired (as she was). She had to assume that, even in the escapist world of Vegas, people watched some TV news and might recognize her as the infamous traitor and fugitive wanted throughout the Southwest. The last thing she needed was to call attention to herself. Fortunately, gamblers are a single-minded group, more intent upon their wagering than upon the need to breathe, and few of them even glanced up from their games to look at her; none looked twice.
She hurried around the perimeter of the casino to the public telephones, which were in an alcove where the casino noise faded to a soft roar. She called information for Whitney Gavis's number. He answered on the first ring. Rather breathlessly she said, “I'm sorry, you don't know me, my name's Rachael—”
“Ben's Rachael?” he interrupted.
“Yes,” she said, surprised.
“I know you, know all about you.” He had a voice amazingly like Benny's: calm and measured and reassuring. “And I just heard the news an hour ago, that ridiculous damn story about defense secrets. What a crock. Anybody who knows Benny wouldn't believe it for a second. I don't know what's going on, but I figured you guys would be coming my way if you needed to go to ground for a while.”
“He's not with me, but he sent me to you,” Rachael explained.
“Say no more. Just tell me where you are.”
“The Grand.”
“It's eight o'clock. I'll be there by eight-ten. Don't go wandering around. They have so much surveillance in those casinos you're bound to be on a monitor somewhere if you go onto the floor, and maybe one of the security men on duty will have seen the evening news. Get my drift?”
“Can I go to the rest room? I'm a mess. I could use a quick washup.”
“Sure. Just don't go onto the casino floor. And be back by the phones in ten minutes, 'cause that's where I'll meet you. There're no security cameras by the phones. Sit tight, kid.”
“Wait!”
“What is it?” he asked.
“What do you look like? How will I recognize you?”
He said, “Don't worry, kid. I'll recognize you. Benny's shown me your picture so often that every detail of your gorgeous face is burned into my cerebral cortex. Remember, sit tight!”
The line went dead, and she hung up.
Jerry Peake was not sure he wanted to be a legend anymore. He was not even sure he wanted to be a DSA agent, legendary or otherwise. Too much had been happening too fast. He was unable to assimilate it properly. He felt as if he were trying to walk through one of those big rolling barrels that were sometimes used as the entrance to a carnival funhouse, except they were spinning this barrel about five times faster than even the most sadistic carny operator would dare, and it also seemed to be an endless tube from which he would never emerge. He wondered if he would ever get his feet under him and know stability again.
Anson Sharp's call had roused Peake from a sleep so deep that it almost required a headstone. Even a quick cold shower had not entirely awakened him. A ride through rain-washed streets to the Palm Springs airport, with siren wailing and emergency beacon flashing, had seemed like part of a bad dream. At the airfield, at 8:10, a light transport twin turbo-prop arrived from the Marine Corps Training Center at nearby Twentynine Palms, provided as an interservice courtesy to the Defense Security Agency on an emergency basis, little more than half an hour after Sharp had requested it. They boarded and immediately took off into the storm. The daredevil-steep ascent of the hotshot military pilot, combined with the howling wind and driving rain, finally blew away the lingering traces of sleep. Peake was wide awake, gripping the arms of his seat so hard that his white knuckles looked as if they would split through his skin.