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  He stopped.

  There were two of them just ahead. There was also a vehicle of the jeep variety. One of the men was moving slowly round the vehicle, the other, smaller and younger, leaned against the door panel. They had rifles and wore uniforms.

  Dansk calculated the distance to the vehicle: 50 yards, maybe less. He lowered himself to the ground and watched. To see without being seen. Invisibility was a kick. The cop leaning against the door sighed quietly. He didn’t know somebody was out among the trees watching him.

  Dansk moved closer.

  The older guy stopped beside the younger and whispered something Dansk couldn’t catch. The young cop shook his head.

  Dansk got a little closer still.

  The moment.

  Showtime.

  He removed the Coke bottle from his right pocket. The stench of gas was strong, but there was no breeze to carry it in the direction of the cops. The night was like a deflated lung. He hunkered down behind a bush and took out the cheap cigarette lighter he’d bought.

  He adjusted the little lever to low before he applied his thumb to the lighter. He pressed down, got a tiny eye of flame from the plastic cylinder – and now this had to be quick. Lighter-flame to tissue, just a touch, then he stood up and tossed the bottle through the air and heard the musculature in his arm ripple. He watched the bottle rise and fall in a lit arc, spinning and turning as it fell, then exploding against the windshield of the vehicle, and instantly the air was luminous with flame and the younger cop, seared by an outburst of fire, screamed. The older guy had dropped to the ground, his flesh pierced with spears and shards of glass, and he was moaning about his eyes, how he couldn’t see a fucking thing, and the young cop just kept screaming, rolling over and over in an attempt to douse the fire that melted his clothes to his skin.

  Polyester shirt and pants, Dansk thought. Man-made fibre. Never trust it. He lit and threw the second bottle. It struck the jeep, which exploded. The force of the blast made Dansk step back into the trees. The jeep combusted in blue and yellow flags of fire and the air was bitter with the smell of rubber and gasoline.

  A thing of great beauty, this conflagration. Your own private war zone. Dry pines began to crackle, flame created sudden bridges through space, the forest was lit and the darkness dissolved. Birds shaken out of branches were turned gold and red by reflected fire, transmuted from ordinary bluejays and ravens into creatures with exotic plumage. The night burned and burned and burned.

  And Dansk was already moving again, and thinking.

  Of the cabin. Of Amanda.

  72

  Barefoot, she hurried out to the porch, where Gannon stood with his shotgun against his side, the barrel directed downwards. She’d heard somebody scream and then the explosions rocked the night and she’d seen unidentifiable debris rise and fall through the air. Now she stared at the fire half a mile away and watched it spread like an apocalyptic false dawn. Then Rhees was standing just behind her in the doorway, breathing hard and leaning against the frame for support. The heart of the fire was the place where the two cops had been parked.

  Rhees said, ‘The Bronco’s parked out back. We could try to drive out of here.’

  Gannon shook his head. ‘Too damn risky. The path’s blocked by fire, there’s a good chance we’d fry, and there’s no way to drive out except that path. You couldn’t get a vehicle through the trees. Too dense.’

  Amanda resisted panic. Be calm in the face of adversity. Dansk and his thugs had pierced the thin defences she’d arranged, which meant they’d got past the deputy Clarence Griffin at the bridge, then blown up the cop vehicle. They’d created this light show, all these special effects, and now they were moving somewhere in the shadows between the flames towards the cabin. As for Griffin and the two cops – this was an area she didn’t want to enter.

  Gannon said, ‘One stroke of luck is there’s no wind. The way the fire’s spreading I’d say we have maybe thirty minutes or more before it reaches this far.’

  Amanda looked towards the pines that edged the path. They were burning, dry sticks in a bonfire. The scent of smoking wood drifted through the air, sweet, narcotic. But there was a secondary smell, a noxious undercurrent of plastic smouldering, oil on fire.

  Amanda said, ‘So either we sit here and barbecue or we get the hell out. Turning to hamburger doesn’t attract me, and if we can’t drive, we hoof it out of here and head away from the fire in the direction of the river.’ She turned to Rhees. ‘There’s not a multitude of choices, John. You think you can make it?’

  ‘Like you say, no choice.’

  Gannon seemed suddenly decisive. ‘OK, let’s do it. Let’s go for it.’

  ‘Once we’re about a mile clear of the cabin there’s a dry creek surrounded by scrub, which might give us some cover for a time,’ Amanda said.

  ‘I know the place,’ Rhees said.

  In another lifetime they’d made love in that arroyo, she recalled, spontaneous and urgent in spite of the grit and the pestering flies.

  She remembered she was barefoot. She stepped into the cabin to fetch her shoes. The reach of firelight hadn’t penetrated the rooms, so she flipped a switch, saw the shoes near the fireplace and slipped her feet into them.

  He was standing by the open window on the other side of the room. His face was smoke-stained, his jacket was smeared with soil and pine needles, and there was blood on the back of the hand that held the gun. He was about 6 feet away and reeked of gasoline.

  ‘Say nothing, Amanda,’ he whispered.

  She registered the open window, the bits and pieces of forest that clung to Dansk, who resembled some creature long dormant, emerging from an underground cavern, half human, half some other kind of being. He stepped towards her, caught her and turned her around, and she felt the pressure of his body against her spine, the gun and his breath upon the back of her neck.

  ‘The door,’ he said.

  He forced her outside to the porch.

  Rhees leaned against the rail, and Gannon stared at the flames like a man trying to gauge the rate the fire was spreading. She thought of giving a cry of warning, an elbow smacked into Dansk’s ribcage, into his heart, a sudden turn and a rake of his face with her fingernails, trying to grapple the gun away from him. Then she felt Dansk’s mouth against her neck, his lips, teeth. A kiss.

  Rhees turned his face and said, ‘Jesus.’

  Gannon looked round then, but it was too late for him, the shotgun he held was pointed downwards and he didn’t have time to bring it up into a firing position, and even if he’d had days to figure out a move he couldn’t have fired because Amanda was a shield protecting Anthony Dansk. Dansk levelled the pistol, his hand an inch or so above Amanda’s shoulder. She tried to lean into him, collide just enough to force him into an erratic shot, but he was too quick, he’d already fired the gun and the sound was like a land-mine in her ears. She felt sick in her stomach and sour saliva came flooding into her mouth. She thought she heard Dansk say, ‘Not very smart, Amanda,’ and then she was conscious of how Gannon was thrown back against the rail and the shotgun fell out of his hands. The rail yielded and Gannon dropped out of sight through wood that had snapped with the impact of his body.

  Rhees, dragging his useless leg, took one halting step forwards, as if he were considering an act of bravery. She told him to stay where he was in a voice that was thick and half audible to herself.

  Dansk laughed. ‘Listen to the lady, Rhees.’

  Rhees said, ‘Let her go.’

  Dansk laughed again. It was a quiet laugh, restrained. ‘Let her go?’

  Amanda stared at Rhees. His face was illuminated by flame, his expression was numbed. And all the time there was the deafening roar in her head of the gun firing and the pine trees crackling.

  ‘You thought you’d be nice and safe here,’ Dansk said. ‘A flash for you. Nowhere’s safe. It’s that kind of world.’ He surveyed the fire a moment. ‘It’s time we got out of here.’

  ‘Where?’ she
asked.

  ‘To a place where all your curiosity ends.’ He looked at Rhees. ‘It’s a rough walk for you, I guess. Maybe you’d prefer to stay? Or maybe you’re just as curious as your lady here.’ He pointed the Ruger at Rhees.

  Rhees said, ‘I go where she goes.’

  ‘Figures.’ Dansk released Amanda and gestured with his head towards the forest. ‘We’ll go round the flames back to the bridge.’

  ‘And then what?’ she asked.

  Dansk seemed not to hear her question. He said, ‘Pity about the trees. You take something out of nature, it disturbs the balance of things. I don’t like that.’ There was a look of mild regret on his face. ‘Now walk. Just walk. I’m right behind you.’

  73

  They moved between trees, along the edges of flame, past the burning jeep. She saw no sign of the cops and hoped they’d somehow managed to survive, but she knew this was a dim prospect.

  The going was rough on Rhees. Amanda had to take his weight against her body, an effort that confined her thoughts to the immediacy of things around her: the sound of Rhees’s breathing, the architecture of fire. She had no sense of a future. It was a matter of walking out of the forest, and wherever they went next was up to Dansk. This place he had in mind. Where all your curiosity ends.

  Rhees said, ‘I need a moment.’

  Dansk prodded Rhees in the back with his gun. ‘You don’t have a moment. Keep moving.’

  Amanda looked back and saw sparks float above the core of flame and up into the night. Sooner or later the cabin would be destroyed. Sooner or later she and Rhees would go the same way. No escape route came to mind. Dansk had the gun and the gun was the future.

  ‘Over the bridge, cross the road,’ Dansk said. ‘Hurry. Move, move, move.’

  The bridge was made out of wooden struts, decaying under a layer of moss. Amanda felt the structure sway when she and Rhees stepped onto it. Beyond the bridge, Dansk herded them to the right where his car was concealed under shrubbery. Behind, the fire roared with the noise of a small sun exploding.

  ‘You’re the designated driver, Amanda,’ Dansk said. ‘I’ll just keep Rhees company in the back. I think that’s the best arrangement.’

  Amanda helped Rhees into the rear seat, then she sat behind the wheel. Dansk got inside, handed her the keys and said, ‘Go back to the main highway, I’ll give you directions along the way.’

  She backed the car out from the shrubbery. When she reached the intersection of the highway, Dansk told her to turn left. She glanced at Rhees in the mirror.

  Dansk leaned forwards. ‘Keep your eyes on the road at all times, lady.’

  ‘I was checking on John,’ she said.

  ‘John’s fine. John’s just hunky-dory back here. Right, John?’

  Rhees said in a flat way, ‘Sure, fine.’

  ‘See? Don’t worry about John.’

  She stared ahead into the dark. Moths and bugs loomed up in the headlights and perished against the windshield. Mucus stains, broken wings trapped and flapping under wipers, a glass cemetery of dead insects. The road filled her vision, the white line bisected her head. Concentrate, figure a way out of this if you can: crash the car, swerve off the road, slam the brakes, anything you like. It didn’t matter, because she had no doubt Dansk would shoot Rhees if she deviated by as much as a yard.

  Dansk said to Rhees, ‘This is nice, the three of us together like this. Cosy. I feel like I’m with old friends. We met before, John.’

  ‘Did we?’

  ‘In a French restaurant. We pissed side by side and talked about the merits of towels against forced-air hand-dryers. We discussed germs.’

  ‘It escapes me,’ Rhees said.

  A French restaurant, Amanda thought. Was there any place Dansk hadn’t followed her? His fingerprints were all over her life.

  Dansk reached forward and touched her neck with the barrel of the handgun. She felt the metal against her skin and she remembered Dansk’s distasteful kiss and moved her head just slightly. Dansk laughed and said, ‘We’re all happy. We’re happy travellers. Right, John?’

  Rhees said, ‘I’m happy.’

  ‘This is what I like. The only thing missing here is a picnic basket stuffed with goodies. A little roast chicken, a couple of cold brewskies to wash things down.’ Dansk made another little move with the gun, some pretend fumbling, letting the weapon slip through his hands to his lap. ‘Whoops. Gotta be careful. Don’t want this to go off, do we?’

  ‘Don’t point that at Rhees,’ she said. Dansk having fun with his gun, she thought. Dansk tightening the screws.

  Dansk said, ‘You hear that, John? Lady’s worried in case I just happen to make a fatal slip. Zip. One bullet into the brainbox and goodbye Rhees. This concern’s touching. I’m moved. I’m hearing the voice of love.’

  She said, ‘You don’t know shit about love, Dansk.’

  ‘Do I hear the expert’s voice?’

  ‘Death’s what you know,’ she said. ‘All you know.’

  Dansk made a mock sound of disapproval which sounded like choo-choo-choo. ‘You’re no slouch in that department yourself, sweetheart. Check the destruction in your own wake before you pass judgement on me. You’re like some kind of fucking Typhoid Mary spreading a deadly plague. Instance, Bernadette Vialli. Instance, Willie Drumm.’

  She said nothing, but kept her eyes on the road, as if all she wanted in the world was to get away from Dansk’s voice. He was shifting blame. He was sprinkling fertilizer in the hope guilt would bloom in her.

  ‘You want more, Amanda? Three dead guys in the woods, right? Who invited them in the first place? And the cop on the porch? Even poor Rhees here – he’d be in a damn sight better condition if it hadn’t been for you. You drag death and pain behind you like luggage on a trolley, and the only thing I ever asked of you was to stay out of the way. Simple, but you didn’t listen. Dumb, dumb, dumb.’

  ‘I didn’t kill those people, Dansk,’ she said. Three men dead in the woods – people who’d come to protect her – and Thomas Gannon lying beneath the broken porch rail.

  ‘You didn’t pull any triggers, right. You just put certain people into lethal situations. I wasn’t the one who did that.’

  ‘You can’t blame me for their deaths,’ she said.

  She was flooded with anger, but she couldn’t tell if it was directed entirely at Dansk or whether some of it was channelled back in on herself. She recalled those moments when she’d thought of pulling out of the situation, when she might have chilled her mind and stilled all her impulses. But the tide had long ago gone out on those possibilities and the beach was a vast empty strand.

  The road in front of her was empty.

  ‘Where are we going anyway?’ Rhees asked.

  ‘A place. A couple of hours away.’

  ‘What kind of place, Dansk?’

  Dansk didn’t answer.

  A fire-engine, blue lights flashing and spinning, came out of nowhere and zoomed past the car in the opposite direction, and then there was a State police car, sirens going.

  Amanda thought, Stop. We need your assistance. It’s not only the forest that’s burning. But the fire-engine and the State police car were already gone, and the road in the mirror was as black as the future.

  74

  Pasquale said, ‘These digital numbers give you the location of Dansk’s car and how far away it is and the speed. Right now it’s three point two miles north of here and travelling at sixty-four m.p.h.’

  McTell glanced down at the box. The numbers kept flickering. Pasquale said, ‘You don’t want to get too close to him.’

  McTell nodded and said, ‘That fire. Holy shit.’

  ‘You figure he had something to do with it?’

  McTell shrugged. He remembered being parked between trees just off the main highway and then whoom, all hell. ‘All I know is what we saw. The whole place went up in flames and then the car’s driving away and the woman’s behind the wheel with the crippled boyfriend in the back.’
>
  Pasquale said, ‘I never figured he had the balls to go in and snatch the woman.’

  ‘Balls,’ McTell said, with some scorn.

  Pasquale said, ‘You think the woman and her boyfriend are a problem?’

  ‘Nope,’ said McTell.

  Pasquale regarded the red numbers on the little black box. ‘You know, Eddie, I think I’m over my doubts.’

  ‘Sure you are. I told you they’d go away.’

  ‘Dansk rescued me, OK. He gave me some purpose. But the way I’m beginning to see it, I paid that back with interest. I wonder what he thought when we didn’t answer the phones.’

  ‘Who gives a shit?’ McTell glanced down at the black box. ‘What’s the numbers now?’

  Pasquale examined the meter in his hand. The numbers went crazy suddenly. According to the digital register, Dansk’s car was now 97 miles away due west. Impossible. Pasquale tapped the box.

  ‘You got a problem with that?’ McTell asked.

  ‘It’s acting funny.’

  ‘Funny?’

  Pasquale gave the box a shake. The red numbers changed again. 5.8 m N 67 m.p.h. ‘No, it’s OK now. Maybe there was some kinda interference.’

  ‘A quirk,’ McTell said.

  ‘Yeah, a quirk.’

  ‘Made in America, man. It’s reliable.’

  Pasquale said, ‘Here’s what I’m wondering. Why didn’t he finish his business in the forest?’

  McTell was silent, watching the dark highway. The trees had thinned, then vanished, and the landscape was desert again.

  He snapped thumb and forefinger together in a click of realization. ‘Forget that electronic box you got. I know where our boy Anthony’s headed.’

  75

  The land stretched barren and flat all the way to the horizon where dawn was a few pale streaks. Dansk imagined this place in winter, a numbing wind howling over wasteland, the frozen bones of tumbleweed blowing across the narrow icy highway. Around here the season was basically always the same: dead.