When She Was Bad Part 24

He glanced around, dopey and confused by the pain; she followed his eyes and saw the wooden-handled pistol lying in the road only a few yards away, its blue-steel barrel glinting in the moonlight. She darted over to it, s.n.a.t.c.hed it up, brought it back to Pender. "The safety," he said. "Right there...on red...dead red. Two hands for...beginners. Aim for his chest. When he gets closer. Then squeeze...the trigger and...hold on."

The gun felt surprisingly comfortable in Lily's hands, considering she'd never held one before. But Lilith had, she reminded herself. With this same hand.

Maxwell was twenty yards away, hunched under the weight of the canvas knapsack and dragging his right leg; the black object in his hand was probably his gun. Fifteen yards.

"Any...time," whispered Pender.

Ten yards-and he saw them. But instead of raising his pistol, he stuffed it into his waistband, then staggered forward with both hands out in front of him like the return of the Prodigal Son. "Lily!" he said in a high, piping voice. "Lily, you're okay! I was so scared he'd done something to you."

"Lyssy?"

"Shoot him," said Pender, slumping sideways, feeling the darkness stealing over him again. "For G.o.d's sake, shoot him now!"

10.

Lily tucked Pender's gun into her waistband and ran to meet Lyssy; their hardware clanked together as they embraced. "I beat him," piped the voice Lily thought she'd never hear again. "I was in cocon, and I stopped him from hurting you, and we had like a mind war, and-" In a tone of astonished wonder: "I won!" Then, as if he'd just noticed the slumping figure propped up against the side of the cliff: "Holy cow, isn't that the guy I tied up last night? What happened to him?"

"I think he's having a heart attack-we have to get him some help."

"Are you kidding? What we have to do is get out of here before-What? You're looking at me all funny."

"I'm not going with you, Lyssy."

"But I thought...you and me, I thought...."

Lily put her hand on his cheek. She felt as if she were the older and more experienced of the two, and was enjoying, on a barely conscious level, the drama and adolescent romanticism of the moment. "I'm glad we had...before," she said. "But even if I thought we had a chance of getting away, how could I ever go to sleep at night, knowing that when I wake up, you might have turned into that...that monster?"

"But I can handle Max now."

"That's what you said before."

"Okay, what about the woman Lilith killed in Oregon?"

"Me and Lilith, we'll just have to cross that bridge when we come to it-us and a s.h.i.tload of expensive lawyers."

"But this morning you said-"

"This morning was a million years ago." Lily drew back from him. "I'm sorry, Lyssy, I don't have time to stand here arguing with you. I'm going to go back up to the ridge and get the mule. I'd really appreciate it if you'd stick around to help me get him"-she jerked her head in Pender's direction-"loaded onto it, but if you want to book it on out of here, I'll understand, no hard feelings."

"I'm here for as long as you need me," he replied, tears welling, lower lip quivering.

Pender opened his eyes, turned his head, saw Maxwell sitting next to him, leaning back against the cliff wall. "G.o.d d.a.m.n!" said Pender. "I told her to...shoot you."

"Shoot me? Lily loves me-why should she shoot me?" The other man turned his head toward Pender. "How're you feeling?"

Pender ignored the question. "Where is she?"

"She went to get the mule." Then, earnestly: "Don't worry, it's not a real mule. It's more like a wagon with an engine-they just call it that."

Pender felt the tyrannosaur tightening its jaws again. Maxwell's face swam in and out of focus. Pender heard his pulse pounding jaggedly in his ears. When that stops, he thought, I'm dead. Then, over the ragged drumbeat, as Pender's head slumped forward onto his chest, knocking his baseball cap onto his lap, he heard a faint, hopeful-sounding pocketapocketapocketa.

"Here she comes," called Maxwell, picking up the cap, examining it as though he were trying to decide how it would look on him. Then he lifted the now-unconscious Pender's head by the chin, put the cap back on him, and spun it around backward. "Whazzzzup?" he said, grinning, his eyebrows peaking devilishly.

Lily drove the mule past Pender, backed up until the tailgate was only a few feet from him, shifted into neutral, tugged the hand brake upright until it locked, then hopped down. "How is he?"

"Hanging in there. He's in a lot of pain, though."

"Thanks for sticking around. Here, help me get him into the back." Lily squatted next to Pender and draped his left arm around her shoulders. Lyssy-or at any rate, the man she a.s.sumed was Lyssy-took Pender's other arm. Lily counted, "One, two, three, lift!" and they hauled him up onto his feet, the one-legged man grunting as he rose with all his weight on his real leg, his artificial leg stretched out in front of him like a Cossack dancer.

Together they walked Pender over to the mule, Weekend at Bernie's style, gently toppled him forward onto the platform, then lifted his legs up after him.

"Thanks," said Lily.

"For what?"

"For staying-for helping."

"Well, actually, I've been kind of thinking it over, and I decided you were right. I can't take the chance on Max killing who knows how many more people, just to buy myself a few more days-' specially if you're not coming with me."

"Are you going to turn yourself in?"

"Unh-hunh," he said, climbing into the back of the mule and snapping the plastic webbing into place. "And I'm also going to tell them that I killed Patty, so you don't have to worry about that anymore." He crawled up to the front of the flatbed, facing rearward, and cushioned the semiconscious Pender's big head on his lap.

"And I'll tell everybody how you stayed behind to help me save Uncle Pen, instead of trying to get away," Lily rea.s.sured him, as she climbed up to the driver's seat.

Yeah, that'll help, he thought as she released the hand brake. They'll probably give me an extra Jell-O with my last meal.

11.

Irene figured the return hike would be a piece of cake. Didn't she jog the rec trail from Lovers Point to Fisherman's Wharf and back, a round-trip of four miles, three times a week? Well, okay, once or twice a week-still, she wasn't expecting any problems.

Then her flashlight gave out. But the moon was well up by now, the earlier, impenetrable blackness under the trees replaced by a shimmering latticework shadow. After the creek had curved southward to rejoin the road, she could see the rushing water shining silver through the slender riparian willows. She tried her cell phone again-no bars, no signal-then jogged on, the soles of her Chuck Taylors pat, pat, patting the ground, the endorphins kicking in, the dirt road stretching on before her, pale tan in the moonlight. But endorphins sometimes make treacherous allies-she didn't feel the blisters on the pad of her right foot (at the base of the piggy that had none and the piggy that went wee-wee-wee all the way home) until it was too late.

And now she was paying the price. Wincing at every step, hobbling, then limping as the blisters broke and the steady pat pat pat turned into pat squish pat squish. She tried varying her gait-walking on her heel, half-skipping, half-hopping to minimize the pain. She ran through a series of visualizations-what color is the pain? What shape? If it were a container, how much water would it hold?

But nothing seemed to be working, so to distract her mind, Irene fell back on her old standby: composing haiku. Three lines of five, then seven, then five syllables. And against all odds, she even managed to come up with a keeper: Pain is sharp and red / And my shoe is full of blood / Stupid old blister!

But to her credit, she never seriously thought about stopping, not even to bathe her blisters in the creek...which seemed to be running closer to the road than she had remembered...and come to think of it, the road, which should have been curving and climbing, was instead running flat...and straight...and narrowing...until it was only a rocky footpath running by the side of the creek.

And looming dead ahead, Irene saw when she raised her eyes, was the graceful, towering, monumentally enormous concrete arch of the bridge the Barracuda had rattled over only a few hours earlier. Under its shadow, where the creek widened before merging into the Pacific, the damp, dauntless fog known as the marine layer had begun to drift in from the ocean, swallowing up the rocky beach where Lyman DeVries used to fly-cast.

Irene trained her flashlight straight ahead, under the bridge, then shined it back the way she had come, and realized that the road she'd meant to follow had curved off to the left and begun the long climb to the highway several hundred yards back. She sighed and began retracing her steps.

The mule jounced downhill, picking up speed. With the wheel clenched tightly in both hands, Lily carefully chose the line for the upcoming curve, then stood hard on the brake pedal; the mule skidded down the harrowing switchback, sending dirt and pebbles tumbling down the slope.

"You okay back there?" she called, when they'd rounded the curve.

"No problem."

"Good-'cause here comes another one!"

And another, and another, until the mule had shot the last of the downhill rapids, and they'd rejoined the comparatively unexciting, if rough and rutted, road out to the highway. With only one forward gear, Lily kept the gas pedal to the sheet-metal flooring, maintaining a steady eight to ten miles per hour. "Hey, Lyss?"

"Still here."

"I think you're doing the right thing. And I promise, wherever they send you, I'll come visit as often as they'll let me."

"Don't forget the cake with the file in it." He twisted around to face front, leaning his arm over the railing. "You sure this thing doesn't go any faster?"

Lily chanced a curious backward glance. "Don't sweat it-really. Even on foot, Dr. Irene is bound to have made it out by now-the cops'll probably get here before we even reach the highway."

"Oh, right," he said. "For a second there, I forgot I was giving myself up."

Using a springy willow branch as a makeshift walking stick, Irene had just finished retracing her steps, and had begun the long trudge up the hill to the gate when she heard the distant chugging of the mule. She turned and saw the headlight emerging from the trees. At first she couldn't tell which of the three was behind the wheel. Didn't matter-even if she could have run, there was no place to hide on the gra.s.sy hillside.

"Dr. Irene, Dr. Irene!" Lily had spotted her and was half-standing behind the wheel, waving. Irene limped back down the hill, leaning on her stick, and met the mule at the bottom of the slope. Lily shifted into neutral, drew the creaking hand brake. "Uncle Pen had a heart attack," she called. "And Lyssy's back-he's been helping me."

Irene threw down the willow branch and hurried around to the back of the mule. Oh, Pen, she thought. He lay supine, his windbreaker unzipped to the waist, his head pillowed on a wadded-up sweatshirt, and his face a shiny, unhealthy blue in the moonlight.

"Hi, Dr. Cogan," Maxwell said brightly, clambering down from the flatbed, which was scarcely wide enough for two. "I took real good care of him on the way down, honest."

It was Lyssy's voice-but then, Lyssy's voice had come out of Max's mouth before, Irene reminded herself as she swapped places with him, climbing up onto the railed-in platform and kneeling beside Pender. Best not to make a.s.sumptions, she thought, pressing two fingers against the side of Pender's throat-cross that bridge when you come to it.

The constant, uneven vibration of the engine rumbling under the boards prevented Irene from getting a pulse, but she could see Pender's chest rising and falling in shuddering increments. She took out her flashlight, trained the beam up and down his body, then around it, looking for blood or bullet holes, finding only a sc.r.a.ped elbow and a skinned knee. "Can you hear me, Pen?"

His eyelids fluttered, but did not open. She pulled them up one at a time, shined her flashlight into them, watched the pupils contract. Equal and reactive, she thought, the phrase coming back to her through the mists of time-except for a little first aid, Irene hadn't treated anybody for a physical illness since her residency, almost twenty years ago. She slipped her hand into Pender's big meathook, told him to squeeze. His fingers tightened around hers-it was an excellent sign, if Irene remembered correctly, an indication that oxygen was still getting to his brain.

"How is he? Is he going to be all right?" asked Lily, turning around in the driver's seat; Lyssy had climbed in beside her.

"He will be if we get him to a hospital soon," said Irene. She took her cell phone out of her pocket, snapped it open-still no dial tone. "Drive us up to the top of the hill-it'll probably work there."

"Okay-hang on, everybody!" Lily turned back, patted the dashboard. "Just a little farther, amigo," she said, talking to the mule, thinking about Fano. At least it was almost over, she told herself, depressing the clutch and reaching for the gearshift. Almost over, and thanks to her, no one else had gotten killed.

Then a claw-like hand clamped over hers; once again she felt the cold steel of a gun barrel pressing against the side of her head. "Change of plans," announced a dry-as-dust, unbearably intimate voice, and for Lily the words almost over took on a terrible new meaning.

12.

"I'll take that." Max's left hand shot out, s.n.a.t.c.hed Pender's gun from Lily's waist, and slipped it into his own waistband. It was a glorious moment for him-until a few minutes ago, when Lily had spotted Dr. Cogan trudging up the hillside, he'd been convinced the cops were already on their way, and that even if he managed to avoid being shot down, he'd have to settle for a hasty closing of accounts and a quick getaway.

But now he had all the time in the world, he realized. Not since he'd taken his revenge on the deputy sheriff who'd arrested him in Monterey three years ago-the late deputy and her late lover-had Max had two women so completely under his thumb. Oh, the games they could play back at the cabin! And this time he wouldn't have to worry about someone hearing their screams.

Nor would he have to share them with the other alters. There were no others anymore, except for Kinch, who was helpless without a knife in his hand, and Lyssy, whose earlier attempt at a palace coup had ultimately proved a failure. True, he had managed to distract Max long enough for the girl to get away-but that had been due largely to the element of surprise. As soon as Max had realized what was going on-that the shouting in his head emanated from Lyssy in co-con-he was able to ignore it, treat it as so much white noise.

Even so, it was with a crushing and unfamiliar sense of failure that after trying unsuccessfully to get the mule started up again, he'd left the ridge alone, on foot, his shoulders hunched against the sky, expecting with every step to hear the whap-whap-whap of the police choppers and find himself bathed in the glare of their searchlights.

Limping down the dirt track, scrambling down the switchbacks on his a.s.s, Max had come closer to despair than he cared to remember. He'd even begun thinking about putting an end to the farce, and had gone so far as to draw the gun from his waistband, when he'd spotted Pender and the girl by the side of the road.

And when he discovered that it was Pender's heart attack that had saved him, Max, who was a big fan of irony (like many psychopaths, it was what he had in place of a sense of humor), was almost giddy with delight. Once again the Creator had demonstrated his utter disinterest in the battle between good and evil.

Tough s.h.i.t for them, thought Max, tender s.h.i.t for me. Then he'd learned that Dr. Cogan had gone off alone to contact the police and was herself on foot, and a situation that had seemed at first hopeless, then barely survivable, had turned rosy as a wh.o.r.e's cheek: all Max had to do was pretend to be Lyssy, and hang on for the ride.

From that point on, things couldn't have gone more smoothly if he'd planned them out months in advance. "What we're going to do now," he said over the chugging of the engine, tracing the curve of Lily's ear with the end of the gun barrel, "as long as we have a little more time to spare than I thought we had, we're all going back to the cabin to get to know each other a little better." He glanced over his shoulder. "How's that sound to you, Dr. Cogan?"

"Whatever you say, Max," Irene said evenly, her hand stealing into the front pocket of her jeans. She felt almost relieved, now that he'd unmasked himself. No more uncertainty, no more paralysis by a.n.a.lysis. All complexities, moral or otherwise, pared down to the stark geometric simplicity of the spatial relationship between a cylinder and an arc, between the muzzle of Max's gun and the side of Lily's head.

Lily too experienced a moment of frozen clarity, during which she was, briefly, neither Lily, nor Lilith, nor Lily pretending to be Lilith, but only herself, all tangled up with conflicting emotions, feeling heartsick over losing Lyssy again, foolish for allowing herself to be tricked, righteously angry at having been betrayed, afraid for all the obvious reasons, and at the same time determined to think of something, to do something.

But for Lily too the possibilities began and ended with the gun muzzle pressing against the side of her head. So when Max turned back to her after his brief exchange with Dr. Irene, and said, "You heard her-get this thing turned around and let's get going," it seemed pure common sense to refuse him at least that much.

"Not until you point that thing someplace else," she told him.

It must have made sense to Max, too; it was the last thing that ever would. He tilted the barrel upward, pointing toward the sky. "You satisfied now? Okay, let's get-"

Crack! Crack! Crack! Crack! Jagged muzzle flashes lit the night. Lily threw herself backward as Max toppled sideways off the bench. Irene, who'd fired the .38 from a seated position, holding it in both hands in emulation of Pender, now scrambled to her feet, aiming the gun straight downward at Max, who lay head-down, crumpled into the narrow, V-shaped s.p.a.ce between the dashboard and the front seat with his neck twisted at a grotesque angle, his cheek jammed against the floorboard, and his artificial leg sticking out sideways.

And yet he lived. Shot three times at close range, his neck broken in the fall (or to be precise, the sideways landing on his head), Max stared hungrily toward the pistol, lying only a few inches away from his left hand, and was still trying to will the hand into motion when a red haze washed over his vision.

Standing over him, holding the revolver in both hands and pointing it straight down at Maxwell, Irene glanced to her left and saw Lily lying on her back a few feet from the mule. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I just got the wind knocked out of me," the girl replied, sitting up gingerly. "Is he...dead?"

"Not yet," said Irene grimly. "Get his guns."

Lily rose, brushing dirt and damply clinging spears of gra.s.s from her jeans, walked over to the mule, picked up the black pistol, then boldly plucked Pender's wooden-handled Colt from the waistband of Max's jeans. It was impossible to be afraid of him any longer-with his neck bent and his leg sticking out like that, he looked to her like a broken doll some spiteful little girl had tossed into the trash.

She cut the mule's engine. "Give me your cell phone," she told Irene. "I'll go get help."

Irene hadn't realized how badly the constant chugging and shuddering had been getting on her nerves until it was gone and relative quiet had descended over the hillside. "Tell them we have two critically injured people that need to be evacuated by helicopter," she said. "You can tell them one of them is Ulysses Maxwell, but try not to say too much else until we know how things stand with you, legally speaking, if you get my drift."

She tossed the phone down to Lily, who caught it deftly. "I'll be right back," she said. "Take good care of Uncle Pen."