The Big Dark Sky (50)
“I wish it was,” Kenny said, for he felt somewhat responsible for this disaster.
“It’s the dirtbag who called us cockroaches.”
“When you went online with my backup computer, he must have gotten your ID.”
“And minutes later he somehow sets my house on fire? What kind of wacked-out genius is the bastard?”
“Evil,” Kenny said. “He’s an evil genius.”
“Get us out of here.”
“But your house is burning down.”
“I’m not a masochist. I don’t have to watch. As far as this evil-genius lunatic is concerned, if you’re his enemy, then so am I. Let’s get out of here before he causes a 747 to crash on top of us.”
“He can’t do that. Nobody can.”
“Just get us out of here.”
The breeze shifted, and the palisades of smoke rising from the house abruptly collapsed as the house itself had begun to collapse, gray clouds avalanching into the street.
As Kenny hung a U-turn and drove away, he began to realize that he had not yet grasped the fullness of the threat they faced. He was also beginning to comprehend that a one-night stand was never just a one-night stand, that there was always the possibility that a knot had been tied that bound two lives together inextricably. Call it fate or synchronicity.
40
In one of the rocking chairs on the front porch, drinking cold tea out of a bottle, Joanna Chase listened to the susurration of the willows and watched thousands of bright tongues of sunlight lapping the breeze-rippled water of Lake Sapphire. Her mother had been buried in a cemetery in Buckleton, the nearest town; but to Joanna, the lake would forever be a grave in which the sweet future that might have been was interred in its bottom silt.
The previous night, in Santa Fe, she had suffered a dream of her mother’s corpse animated by some malevolent power as it came out of the lake, a dream similar to those that she’d endured a few times in her childhood, mostly during the two weeks between her mother’s and her father’s deaths. Her dad had assured her there was nothing evil in those waters, that Emelia’s drowning had been accidental. Now, having heard Wyatt Rider’s story of the mysterious presence in the boathouse, she regarded the lake with renewed suspicion. Her dreams of having a strange fellowship with the animals on the ranch had, by the evidence of the elk, proved to be based on a forgotten truth; therefore, perhaps within the depths of the lake, something lived that had taken her mother’s life, another forgotten truth.
She felt unsteady, disoriented, as if the very foundations of the world were shifting under her. With Auntie Kat, she had found stability as a child. In the eleven years since she’d graduated from college, her life had been one of familiar patterns and routines, with much of her time spent in pleasant solitude, writing novels. The loveliest thing about fictional worlds was that she controlled them as if she were a Greek goddess, her office chair no less a seat of power than a high throne on Olympus; if a character or story line took a sudden turn that surprised her, she soon adapted and explored the new direction with enthusiasm, because the consequences were limited to her imagination, and the real world remained unaltered.
Now reality seemed to be in flux, the currents of change so strong that she expected the porch floor to roll under her chair like the deck of a ship on troubled seas.
As Joanna screwed the cap on the half-finished bottle of tea and set the refreshment aside, Wyatt Rider came out of the house, having used the landline to make a few phone calls. They had spent an hour sharing experiences of self-starting vehicles and organized fireflies, of possessed televisions, of pleas for help and threats of violence from disembodied voices. Joanna found him to be nimble-minded, with no tendency to superstition, analytical, and intent on dissecting this mystery with the sharp instrument of reason.
Wyatt said, “Vance Potter, the current ranch manager, knows Hector Alvarez, who managed Rustling Willows for your parents.”
“Knows him or knew him?”
“Annalisa Alvarez died years ago, but Hector and their son are still alive.”
A chill shivered up Joanna’s spine, and she rose with it, leaving the bentwood chair rocking in her wake. “Jimmy Alvarez?”
Wyatt nodded. “Jimmy Two Eyes. They live only a few miles from here. You want to drive, or should I?”
41
As Kenny Deetle drove away from the burning house, his phone rang, but he didn’t answer it because he suspected that the caller would be the black-hat hacker bastard who mimicked him. Maybe five seconds after the call went to voice mail, Leigh Ann’s phone rang, and Kenny said, “Don’t answer it.” She said, “I’ve no intention of answering it.” As that call went to voice mail, the SUV’s computer self-connected with SiriusXM radio, ’60s on 6, where Barry McGuire was singing “Eve of Destruction.” Leigh Ann said, “This isn’t good,” which wasn’t a criticism of either the song or the singer, but merely an expression of concern that this situation might be spiraling out of their control.
The radio volume rose, and as Leigh Ann attempted to turn it down, her concern was borne out because Barry McGuire got louder, so loud that Kenny felt his tympanic membranes fluttering as if moths were beating their wings against the walls of his ear canals. Leigh Ann pressed the button to shut off the radio, but that didn’t work, either. They abruptly accelerated. The brake pedal went soft under Kenny’s foot. Of its own accord, the vehicle turned sharply to the right. The steering wheel locked. Kenny said, “Shit,” Leigh Ann said, “Shit,” and Kenny said it again as the Nautilus jumped the curb. A tire blew. The SUV wanted to roll, but didn’t. The engine roaring, McGuire bellowing, the vehicle’s computerized systems under the control of some cyberwizard, they plowed through a hedge, tore across a freshly mown lawn, and angled toward a stately two-story Victorian residence festooned with ornate millwork. The front steps were limestone, and the racing Nautilus rocked onto a limestone porch. The front door and the sidelights collapsed in a crack-bang of oak and a shattering of stained glass. The air bags deployed, pressing Kenny and Leigh Ann back in their seats, briefly robbing them of the ability to inhale, before abruptly deflating when the SUV jolted to a sudden stop.