And then a deafening pop and a sizzle as a blinding bolt of lightning wide as a man arced into the base of a huge ponderosa pine on the far side of the ravine. There was no pause between the flash and the thunder. The ambulance, the bridge, the entire ravine shook with the deafening crash.
Emilio slowed as he blinked away the purple after-image of the flash. Through the blur he saw flames licking at the blackened trunk of the pine. The whole tree was swaying wildly in the wind...seemed to be moving his way.
He blinked again and cried out in terror as he saw the huge pine toppling toward him. He floored the accelerator, swerving the ambulance ahead on the bridge. The right rear fender screeched against the metal side rail. Emilio bared his clenched teeth and let loose a long, low howl as he kept the pedal welded to the floor. Had to move, had to get this huge, filthy puerco going and keep it going, couldn’t go back, couldn’t even look back, straight ahead was the only way, even if it looked like he was driving into the face of certain death, his only hope was to get off this bridge and onto the solid ground straight ahead on the far side of the ravine. Because this bridge was a goner.
Branches slashed, crashed, smashed against the roof and windshield, spiderwebbing the glass in half a dozen places. It held though, and Emilio kept accelerating. He heard the flashers and sirens tear off the roof as he slipped the ambulance under the falling trunk with only inches to spare. But he wasn’t home yet. He heard and felt the huge pine’s impact directly behind him. The ambulance lurched sideways as the planked surface of the span canted right and tilted upward ahead of him. He fought to keep control, keep moving, keep accelerating, because he knew without looking that the bridge was going down behind him. The wet tires spun and slipped on the rapidly increasing incline and Emilio filled the cabin with an open-throated scream of mortal fear and defiant rage.
Emilio Sanchez refused to die here, smashed on the rocks a hundred feet below. His destiny was not to meet his end as a storm victim, a mere statistic.
The tires caught again, the ambulance lunged forward, its big V-8 Cadillac engine roaring, pushing the vehicle up the tilting incline and onto the glistening asphalt and solid ground.
He slammed on the brakes and sagged against the steering wheel, panting. When he’d caught his breath, he held his hands before his face and watched them shake like a palsied old man’s. Then he stepped out into the wind and rain and looked back.
The bridge was down. The giant pine had broken its back, crashing through the center of its span and dragging the rest of it to the floor of the ravine.
Emilio began to laugh. He’d stolen an ambulance and now he couldn’t use it. No one could use it. And no one would be leaving Paraiso, not Emilio, not the Senador, and certainly not Charlie.
Prisoners in Paradise.
His laughter died away as he remembered the fourth occupant of Paraiso. That ancient body. He’d have to do something about that. It was evidence against him. He had to find a way to dispose of it. Permanently.
‡
“Turn here.”
Dan sat behind the wheel of their rented Taurus and stared at the electric security gate that stood open before them. Through the wind-whipped downpour he made out identical red-and-white signs on the each of the stone gateposts:
PRIVATE PROPERTY
NO TRESPASSING
VIOLATORS WILL BE
PROSECUTED
“Are you sure?” Dan said. “This is a private road.”
“Turn here,” the voice from the rear repeated.
Dan glanced at Kesev in the front passenger seat.
The bearded man nodded agreement that they should proceed through the gate.
“Yes. The feeling is strong. The Mother is near.”
Dan then turned to look at Carrie where she sat in the back seat, staring up the private road.
She wore one of Dan’s faded plaid flannel shirts over his oldest pair of jeans, and a pair of dirty white sneakers they’d found in the housekeeper’s closet. She looked like a refugee from a grunge band.
Once again Brad’s AmEx card had come in handy for the tickets and the rental car agency. They’d driven south from San Francisco, following Carrie’s directions as she took them deeper and deeper into increasingly severe weather. Now they were on the coast of Monterey County.
Dan faced front and did as he was told.
He was on autopilot now. His head throbbed continually, but it had been aching so long now he barely noticed. The post-concussion dizziness and nausea were what plagued him physically. Emotionally and intellectually...he was numb.
With no sleep for thirty-six hours, with the woman he loved murdered but sitting in the back seat giving him directions toward the corporal remains of the Virgin Mary, what else was there to do but shut down his emotions, turn off his rational faculties, and become some sort of servomechanism?
Go through the motions, follow instructions to get to where you’re going, do, do, do, but don’t think, don’t question, and for God’s sake, don’t feel.
Because mixed with the guilty joy of having Carrie back was the horrific realization that she wasn’t really back...not really back at all. And Dan knew if he unlocked his emotions he’d go mad, leap from the car, and run screaming through the trees.
So he kept everything under lock and key, turned the car onto the narrow asphalt path, and kept his eyes on the road.
Water sluiced down the incline toward the Taurus but the front-wheel drive kept them moving steadily. Pine needles, pine cones, leaves, and fallen branches littered the roadway. Dan drove over them, letting them snap and thud against the underbelly of the car. He didn’t care. Didn’t care if they punctured the oil pan or the gas tank. All he wanted was to get where he was going. Somewhere ahead was the Virgin, and with her maybe the man who shot Carrie.
And then what will I do?
Whatever he did or didn’t do, Dan sensed that he was on his way toward a rendezvous with destiny...or something very much like it. Whatever it was that lay ahead, he wanted to confront it and have done with it. Things had to change. Something had to give.
Because he couldn’t go on like this much longer.
The trees thinned as they came to the top of a rise. It looked open ahead. And then Dan saw why: A deep ravine lay before them.
“Keep going?”
“Straight ahead,” Carrie said.
Kesev pointed. “I see a bridge.”
Dan gunned the engine. The car accelerated.
‡
“And so, Senador,” Emilio said, spreading his hands expressively, “I’m afraid we are stuck here.”
Arthur Crenshaw nodded slowly, amazed at his own serenity. Here he was, trapped in a house that was little more than a giant bay window set in a cliff overhanging the ocean, looking down the barrel at the most powerful Pacific storm on record. He’d watched the front steamroll in, the lightning-slashed clouds sweep past, blotting out the rest of the world as the storm launched its assault on the coast—his coast. And every time he’d thought he’d seen the peak of the storm, it grew worse. The ocean below churned and frothed like an enormous Jacuzzi; thirty-foot waves lashed at the rocks, hurling foam a hundred feet in the air; wind and rain battered the huge windows, warping and rattling the glass. And yet he was not afraid.
Something—who else could it be but Satan—had destroyed every place of worship in the world. Saint Patrick’s in New York, every synagogue in Brooklyn, the National Cathedral in DC, all the small-town Baptist churches in the rural South, the Mormon Cathedrals in Bethesda and throughout Utah. And yet he was not afraid.
That amazed him.
Perhaps he was too drained to be afraid. Or perhaps all his fear was centered on Charlie.
His son was worse.
Arthur didn’t need a CD-4 count to know that. Instead of falling, Charlie’s fever had risen through the night. He was now in a coma.