by Rex Burns
A metal strut, bracing a telephone pole, caught the low morning sun with an orange glow. I was aiming for that when the growl of an approaching car finally registered. I saw it over my shoulder, the high silhouette of a large pickup that, when it spotted me, began to accelerate.
Stumbling and numb, I plunged across the roadside ditch for the trees as the vehicle scratched to a halt in the loose dirt. Glancing back, I saw the youth from the Temple fling himself out of the truck and shout something into a radio handset. Then he sprinted through the weeds and loose gravel of the ditch. I sucked in air and goaded my legs into a sprint.
I pictured my route in my mind, trying not to make angles and turns that my pursuer could use to cut across and gain on me. But the legs chasing me were well-rested, and as I panted through a flicker of lodgepole pines I saw the pickup truck move down the road to keep pace with the man who ran after me. Still, the road was my only guide, my only chance to find help for Dori. Somewhere up ahead was the highway and surely by now I had come the three miles from the access road.
Behind me I could hear running boots. Through a dry and burning throat my breath rasped. If I couldn’t outrun the man … maybe I should turn and fight while I had some strength left. … Stirring beneath blind weariness and the numb thud of my legs, I felt the spread of rage. An old, almost forgotten rage that I thought I’d left in the sticky, stinking mud of Viet Nam: it was the red rage of killing.
Lurching around an outcropping of boulders, I pulled back against the cool rock and waited. The running boots rounded the mossy shoulder: a blur of open-mouthed face and an arm cocked with a radio near the gasping lips. From my knees, I swung both fists into the man’s unguarded stomach and felt the deep, sweet joy of crippling my enemy. The youth said, “Oooop” and doubled over my arms, grappling to catch me and protect himself at the same time. I brought the blade of my hand down hard against the man’s nape and stamped my heel on the fallen radio. As the youth struggled to his knees and reached for anything he could grab, I stumbled away into the woods again.
My legs moved much slower now. Not only the fight but the halt had broken the mindless lift and thrust of muscles. If the man behind me was on his feet again, it wouldn’t be long before he would catch up. But the truck didn’t follow along the dirt road. It stayed waiting for guidance from the radio. I stumbled over the road’s berm and ran tottering on the easier hardpack of gravel and clay, trying to reclaim my rhythm and that blessed distance between thought and flesh. Then an engine sound grew in front of me and turned into the loom of another vehicle. A blur of shape and chrome and a windshield glinted harshly in the full morning sun. I knew that my running was over. I couldn’t run another step. But I could still fight. What little was left I could use to fight with and if I was lucky I would take one of the bastards with me. But the running was ended. There was nothing left to run with.
I aimed myself at the stopped vehicle, eyes fighting the reflected glare to see the man I wanted to kill. My voice grunted with a last effort to make this lunge a fatal one.
The car door opened and a figure stepped out. A glint of silver flashed on his pale blue shirt. “Whoa, now—hold it, now! You wouldn’t be Mr. Jack Steele, would you? You need help?”
“I’m going to fly her home as soon as she’s able to travel.” Henry stood by the cold cheeriness of an illuminated soft-drink machine. Its muffled vibration was a faint hum in the late night silence of the hospital corridor. “The doctor says she wouldn’t have lasted much longer. He said they had to give her three units of blood.”
Freshly shaved and showered, I tried not to step too heavily on blistered feet as I sipped my fourth ginger ale. After a while, water had felt too heavy on my stomach, but I was still suffering dehydration—a combination of long hours sweating, no liquids, and Colorado’s low humidity. But that and the blisters were the only damage. The doctor had checked me for a concussion as well as exhaustion and mentioned something about my being a remarkably fit man.
“Dori wants to testify,” I said. “She’ll have a lot to go through.” More, I thought, than either she or her father realized yet. For with testimony came confession and the acceptance of her responsibility. But the long run through the forest had proved she was a strong girl and a determined one. I felt she would do what she had to. And the admiral, when I called to tell him the outcome, felt that way, too. Dori had seen—and shared—evil. But it was an evil of human creation, not of Satan or any other devil or god. Dori knew now that to blame something other than man for the evil of the Vengleys was to excuse them and to deny the rest of us the privilege and duty of combating that evil.
Henry rubbed at the puffy flesh under his eyes and stifled a yawn. His flight had arrived in the late afternoon and now it was long after sundown. Dori was still in intensive care, but the nurse said they would soon be moving her to a room. “Jenny and the admiral send their gratitude, Steele. I forgot to tell you earlier. I—ah—I want to thank you, too.”
“How’s Margaret doing?”
“Well, she needs help. We all know that. But she told me she wants to try AA.” Henry lifted his can of soda pop in a mock toast. “We’ll both be going. It’s a start, at least.”
It was a good start. The Vengleys and their crew were in custody. The Denver district attorney had raided the Temple earlier that afternoon and found enough still undestroyed evidence to bring charges against Pettes. Detective Shaughnessy said that the San Diego police were drawing up charges and extradition papers, as well. He also thought Vengley senior was working on a deal to turn state’s evidence on his son’s involvement in the Aguirre murder.
“Thanks for looking after me,” I told Shaughnessy.
“I just asked the Denver PD and the Boulder sheriff to keep an eye out for you. I told them you might be in trouble. They’re the ones that did all the work.”
“Still, I owe you a beer.”
“I’ll collect when you get home.”
Home. The word sounded good, and I caught myself no longer thinking about the costs of the past but of the promise of the future. The red-eye would leave in less than two hours—that gave just enough time to make the drive to Stapleton Airport and turn in the rental. To call Karen and Chuck. To tell Megan that I would, indeed, make our dinner date Friday. Then I could sleep on the flight home.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
copyright © 1991 by Tom Sehler
cover design by Michel Vrana
This edition published in 2012 by Head of Zeus
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 9781784083298
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