Firestarter (54 page)

Charlie,
he thought admiringly,
I love you. I really do
.

“What's she got going for today?” Rainbird asked.

“Nothing much,” Louis said eagerly. He was, in fact, nearly babbling. “Just going out at quarter of one to curry that horse she rides. We're getting another test out of her tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow, huh?”

“Yep.” Louis didn't give a tin shit about the tests one way or the other, but he thought it would please Rainbird, and maybe Rainbird would leave.

He seemed to be pleased. His grin reappeared.

“She's going out to the stables at quarter of one, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“Who's taking her? Since I'm on my way to San Diego?”

Louis uttered a highpitched, almost female giggle to show that this piece of wit was appreciated.

“Your buddy there. Don Jules.”

“He's no buddy of mine.”

“No, course he isn't,” Louis agreed quickly. “He … he thought the orders were a little funny, but since they came right from Cap—”

“Funny? What did he think was funny about them?”

“Well, just to take her out and leave her there. Cap said the stable boys would keep an eye on her. But they don't know from nothing. Don seemed to think it would be taking a helluva—”

“Yeah, but he doesn't get paid to think. Does he, fatty?” He slapped Louis on the shoulder, hard. It made a sound like a minor thunderclap.

“No, course he doesn't,” Louis came back smartly. He was sweating now.

“See you later,” Rainbird said, and went to the door again.

“Leaving?” Louis was unable to disguise his relief.

Rainbird paused with his hand on the doorknob and looked back. “What do you mean?” he said. “I was never here.”

“No sir, never here,” Louis agreed hastily.

Rainbird nodded and slipped out. He closed the door behind him. Louis stared at the closed door for several seconds and then uttered a great and gusty sigh of relief. His armpits were humid and his white shirt was stuck to his back. A few moments later he picked up his fallen Twinkie, brushed it off, and began to eat it again. The girl was still sitting quietly, not doing anything. How Rainbird—
Rainbird
of all people—had got her to like him was a mystery to Louis Tranter.

At quarter to one, an eternity after Charlie had awakened, there was a brief buzz at her door, and Don Jules came in, wearing a baseball warmup jacket and old cord pants. He looked at her coldly and without much interest.

“Cmon,” he said.

Charlie went with him.

That day was cool and beautiful. At twelve-thirty Rainbird strolled slowly across the still-green lawn to the low, L-shaped stable with its dark-red paint—the color of drying blood—and its brisk white piping. Overhead, great fair-weather clouds marched slowly across the sky. A breeze tugged at his shirt.

If dying was required, this was a fine day for it.

Inside the stable, he located the head groom's office and went in. He showed his ID with its A-rating stamp.

“Yes, sir?” Drabble said.

“Clear this place,” Rainbird said. “Everyone out. Five minutes.”

The groom did not argue or bumble, and if he paled a bit, his tan covered it. “The horses too?”

“Just the people. Out the back.”

Rainbird had changed into fatigues—what they had sometimes called gook-shooters in Nam. The pants pockets were large, deep, and flapped. From one of these he now took a large handgun. The head groom looked at it with wise, unsurprised eyes. Rainbird held it loosely, pointed at the floor.

“Is there going to be trouble, sir?”

“There may be,” Rainbird said quietly. “I don't really know. Go on, now, old man.”

“I hope no harm will come to the horses,” Drabble said.

Rainbird smiled then. He thought,
So will she
. He had seen her eyes when she was with the horses. And this place, with its bays of loose hay and its lofts of baled hay, with its dry wood all about, was a tinderbox with
NO SMOKING
signs posted everywhere.

It was a thin edge.

But, as the years had drawn on and he had become more and more careless of his life, he had walked thinner ones.

He walked back to the big double doors and looked out. No sign of anyone just yet. He turned away and began to walk between the stall doors, smelling the sweet, pungent, nostalgic aroma of horse.

He made sure all of the stalls were latched and locked.

He went back to the double doors again. Now someone was coming. Two figures. They were still on the far side of
the duckpond, five minutes' walk away. Not Cap and Andy McGee. It was Don Jules and Charlie.

Come to me, Charlie,
he thought tenderly.
Come to me now
.

He glanced around at the shadowed upper lofts for a moment and then went to the ladder—simple wooden rungs nailed to a support beam—and began to climb with lithe ease.

Three minutes later, Charlie and Don Jules stepped into the shadowed, empty coolness of the stable. They stood just inside the doors for a moment as their eyes adjusted to the dimness. The .357 Mag in Rainbird's hand had been modified to hold a silencer of Rainbird's own construction; it crouched over the muzzle like a strange black spider. It was not, as a matter of fact, a very silent silencer: it is nearly impossible to completely quiet a big handgun. When—if—he pulled the trigger, it would utter a husky bark the first time, a low report the second time, and then it would be mostly useless. Rainbird hoped not to have to use the gun at all, but now he brought it down with both hands and leveled it so that the silencer covered a small circle on Don Jules's chest.

Jules was looking around carefully.

“You can go now,” Charlie said.

“Hey!” Jules said, raising his voice and paying no attention to Charlie. Rainbird knew Jules. A book man. Follow each order to the letter and nobody could put you in hack. Keep your ass covered at all times. “Hey, groom! Somebody! I got the kid here!”

“You can go now,” Charlie said again, and once more Jules ignored her.

“Come on,” he said, clamping a hand over Charlie's wrist. “We got to find somebody.”

A bit regretfully, Rainbird prepared to shoot Don Jules. It could be worse; at least Jules would die by the book, and with his ass covered.

“I
said
you could go now,” Charlie said, and suddenly Jules let go of her wrist. He didn't just let go; he pulled his hand away, the way you do when you've grabbed hold of something hot.

Rainbird watched this interesting development closely.

Jules had turned and was looking at Charlie. He was rubbing his wrist, but Rainbird was unable to see if there was a mark there or not.

“You get out of here,” Charlie said softly.

Jules reached under his coat and Rainbird once more prepared to shoot him. He wouldn't do it until the gun was clear of Jules's jacket and his intention to march her back to the house was obvious.

But the gun was only partway out when he dropped it to the barnboard floor with a cry. He took two steps backward, away from the girl, his eyes wide.

Charlie made a half turn away, as if Jules no longer interested her. There was a faucet protruding from the wall halfway up the long side of the L, and beneath it was a bucket half full of water.

Steam began to rise lazily from the bucket.

Rainbird didn't think Jules noticed that; his eyes were riveted on Charlie.

“Get out of here, you bastard,” she said, “or I'll burn you up. I'll fry you.”

John Rainbird raised Charlie a silent cheer.

Jules stood looking at her, indecisive. At this moment, with his head down and slightly cocked, his eyes moving restlessly from side to side, he looked ratlike and dangerous. Rainbird was ready to back her play if she had to make one, but he hoped Jules would be sensible. The power had a way of getting out of control.

“Get out right now,” Charlie said. “Go back where you came from. I'll be watching to see that you do.
Move! Get out of here!
”

The shrill anger in her voice decided him.

“Take it easy,” he said. “Okay. But you got nowhere to go, girl. You got nothing but a hard way to go.”

As he spoke he was easing past her, then backing toward the door.

“I'll be watching,” Charlie said grimly. “Don't you even turn around, you … you turd.”

Jules went out. He said something else, but Rainbird didn't catch it.

“Just
go!
” Charlie cried.

She stood in the double doorway, back to Rainbird, in a shower of drowsy afternoon sunlight, a small silhouette. Again his love for her came over him. This was the place of their appointment, then.

“Charlie,” he called down softly.

She stiffened and took a single step backward. She didn't turn around, but he could feel the sudden recognition and
fury flooding through her, although it was visible only in the slow way that her shoulders came up.

“Charlie,” he called again. “Hey, Charlie.”

“You!” she whispered. He barely caught it. Somewhere below him, a horse nickered softly.

“It's me,” he agreed. “Charlie, it's been me all along.”

Now she did turn and swept the long side of the stable with her eyes. Rainbird saw her do this, but she didn't see him; he was behind a stack of bales, well out of sight in the shadowy second loft.

“Where are you?” she rasped. “You tricked me! It was you! My daddy says it was you that time at Granther's!” Her hand had gone unconsciously to her throat, where he had laid in the dart.
“Where are you?”

Ah, Charlie, wouldn't you like to know?

A horse whinnied; no quiet sound of contentment this, but one of sudden sharp fear. The cry was taken up by another horse. There was a heavy double thud as one of the thoroughbreds kicked at the latched door of his stall.

“Where are you?”
she screamed again, and Rainbird felt the temperature suddenly begin to rise. Directly below him, one of the horses—Necromancer, perhaps—whinnied loudly, and it sounded like a woman screaming.

The door buzzer made its curt, rasping cry, and Cap Hollister stepped into Andy's apartment below the north plantation house. He was not the man he had been a year before. That man had been elderly but tough and hale and shrewd; that man had possessed a face you might expect to see crouching over the edge of a duck blind in November and holding a shotgun with easy authority. This man walked in a kind of distracted shamble. His hair, a strong iron gray a year ago, was now nearly white and baby-fine. His mouth twitched infirmly. But the greatest change was in his eyes, which seemed puzzled and somehow childlike; this expression would occasionally be broken by a shooting sideways glance that was suspicious and fearful and almost cringing. His hands hung loosely by his sides and the fingers twitched aimlessly. The echo had become a ricochet that was now
bouncing around his brain with crazy, whistling, deadly velocity.

Andy McGee stood to meet him. He was dressed exactly as he had been on that day when he and Charlie had fled up Third Avenue in New York with the Shop sedan trailing behind them. The cord jacket was torn at the seam of the left shoulder now, and the brown twill pants were faded and seat-shiny.

The wait had been good for him. He felt that he had been able to make his peace with all of this. Not understanding, no. He felt he would never have that, even if he and Charlie somehow managed to beat the fantastic odds and get away and go on living. He could find no fatal flaw in his own character on which to blame this royal ballsup, no sin of the father that needed to be expiated upon his daughter. It wasn't wrong to need two hundred dollars or to participate in a controlled experiment, any more than it was wrong to want to be free.
If I could get clear,
he thought
, I'd tell them this: teach your children, teach your babies, teach them well, they say they know what they are doing, and sometimes they do, but mostly they lie
.

But it was what it was,
n'est-ce pas?
One way or another they would at least have a run for their money. But that brought him no feeling of forgiveness or understanding for the people who had done this. In finding peace with himself, he had banked the fires of his hate for the faceless bureaucretins who had done this in the name of national security or whatever it was. Only they weren't faceless now: one of them stood before him, smiling and twitching and vacant. Andy felt no sympathy for Cap's state at all.

You brought it on yourself, chum.

“Hello, Andy,” Cap said. “All ready?”

“Yes,” Andy said. “Carry one of my bags, would you?”

Cap's vacuity was broken by one of those falsely shrewd glances. “Have you checked them?” he barked. “Checked them for snakes?”

Andy pushed—not hard. He wanted to save as much as he could for an emergency. “Pick it up,” he said, gesturing at one of the two suitcases.

Cap walked over and picked it up. Andy grabbed the other one.

“Where's your car?”

“It's right outside,” Cap said. “It's been brought around.”

“Will anyone check on us?” What he meant was
Will anyone try to stop us?

“Why would they?” Cap asked, honestly surprised. “I'm in charge.”

Andy had to be satisfied with that. “We're going out,” he said, “and we're going to put these bags in the trunk—”

“Trunk's okay,” Cap broke in. “I checked it this morning.”

“—and then we're going to drive around to the stable and get my daughter. Any questions?”

“No,” Cap said.

“Fine. Let's go.”

They left the apartment and walked to the elevator. A few people moved up and down the hall on their own errands. They glanced cautiously at Cap and then looked away. The elevator took them up to the ballroom and Cap led the way down a long front hall.