David Wiltse - Into The Fire

Pegeen had never seen Becker excited and she realized he had become a different person. Although he always gave the impression of contained strength, he now seemed as if the strength were breaking its bonds and were within seconds of bursting forth. Through no physical change that she could detect, he now seemed to be coiled and ready to strike.

He spread the charts on the hood of the car at the edge of the field where the revival tent now stood, erected and ready for miracles. He cast a nervous eye at the sky, where the sun was slipping quickly below the trees, then jabbed his finger at a mark on Browne's chart.

"Here, it's got to be here," he said. His finger pointed to a cave called Devil's Den that looked on the map like an old-fashioned handweight, two ball-shaped caverns connected by a long tunnel.

"Why?"

"It's the closest. He could have had her there in twenty minutes. The others are at least forty-five-minute drives from where he took her.

That one is almost an hour away." His finger danced over the map. Becker was as familiar with its surface as if the marks were dots of Braille and he was blind.

He swept the map off the hood and replaced it with a sheaf of smaller charts, thumbing quickly through them until he found the one he wanted.

"He was waiting for her, right? Maybe he'd even made an arrangement to meet her. The Reverend said she ran right into his car. Maybe that's how he gets them; maybe they go willing at first. I don't know. The point is, he didn't just swoop down and grab her on impulse. He didn't snatch her and run for cover as an afterthought.

He had time to plan it, so he would be heading here."

The new chart was much smaller in scale and showed the entrance to the cave in relation to the surrounding area. Browne had gone to considerable pains to locate the entrance accurately, which meant that it must be difficult to reach and hard to locate without the map. Becker glanced at the sky once more, angrily, as if the sun were to blame for setting. Pegeen felt as if he were trying to will the sun back up into the sky.

"Son of a bitch," he said. "It will be dark by the time we get there.

We'll have to wait till morning."

"We have flashlights," Pegeen said.

"Look at the terrain. We'd have to be lucky to find it in the dark, and if we go tromping around flashing lights, and he's in any position to see us, he can slip out undetected. If we go now we're inviting him to get away."

"I was thinking about the woman," Pegeen said. "Can she make it through another night?"

Becker looked at her blankly for a moment. "She'll have to make it for another eight hours."

"If we get there tonight, it might save her life."

"If we fuck it up and he gets away, he's going to take a lot more lives, and he'll be a lot more careful next time.

"This woman, this Aural McKesson, is the only life I'm thinking about now. She's the one in danger. God knows what he's doing to her."

Becker swept up his maps and returned to the car.

"We'll find out soon enough what he's doing to her," he said.

"Soon enough for who? How do we know it's going to be soon enough for her?"

Becker tossed the maps into the backseat and grabbed Pegeen's elbow, yanking her around to face him. The muscles in his jaw clenched and unclenched and his eyes were raging.

"Do you think I don't want him right now?"

He gripped her arm until she nodded agreement.

"Yes," she said. "I know you do."

"We'll wait," he said, releasing her.

Pegeen put her hands on the steering wheel, borrowin time against her agitation. It was the first time she had been afraid of him. Not that she thought he would harm her. But she realized that he was going to harm someone.

"All the stories about me are true," he had said. they just don't go far enough." Having looked into his blazing eyes, she began to believe him.

"Where to?" she asked, starting the car.

"Find us a motel," he said.

"Shall I call Nashville for more agents?"

"What for?"

"For help."

"You need help, Haddad? What do you need help with, me?"

"No, with Swann, of course."

"How many men do you plan to send down into that cave? We don't know if there's room for us, yet."

"In case."

"In case of what?"

"In case he's not there, in case he went to one of the other caves, in case he didn't go there at all."

"He's in there," Becker said.

"How do you know that?"

Becker did not bother to respond.

"He's not just yours," she said.

Becker glared at her.

"He isn't?"

"I'm thinking about the woman," she said. She could feel his eyes on her, but she kept her own gaze fixed on the road. Looking directly at him made her more uncomfortable than ever. She was glad it was getting dark so she could avoid his eyes more easily; it seemed to her they had taken on a feral character, as if something wild were hidden within the man and had decided to come out of hiding at last.

"Good. Do that. I'm thinking about him."

"He's not our only concern," she said. They had reached the edge of one of the little towns that dotted the Tennessee-Virginia region.

"He's mine," Becker said. "She's yours. That about covers it, doesn't it? We've got them both taken care of"

"I think I should call Nashville," she insisted.

"No," he said flatly.

After a pause she asked, "Is that an order?"

"Pull in there," he said, pointing at a motel sign that had just come on in the gathering gloom.

When they got out of the car and he put his hand on her arm, it was all Pegeen could do to manage not to push it angrily away.

"Haddad," he said, his voice now soft and calming, "I know what you want. In most cases you'd be right.

But we don't need help. And they don't want to send it.

Not now, not when we've found him."

She looked at him, puzzled.

"Come on, you get it," he said. "That's why they sent me. II He walked into the motel office, leaving Pegeen to interpret his remark.

The only translation she could come up with made her shiver.

She was aware of a presence in the darkness outside her door as she stood in front of the mirror. Pegeen had showered as soon as they checked into the motel, trying to let the hot water wash off the feeling of apprehension that clung to her. Things were not right, the whole inexorable flow of events had shifted in its course and was now heading in a direction she knew was wrong, but she felt powerless to deflect it.

Becker was suddenly a different man and she realized that he was guiding the flow, he was sitting astride the events now, like a man riding an avalanche, looking to all appearances as if he were controlling it.

Perhaps he had been all along and she had been so busy looking at him that she had not noticed the ground moving underneath her feet. At one point she had thought this was a Bureau investigation, a search for a felony suspect being assisted somewhat eccentrically by Becker, true, but by her as well, plus the power of the FBI, the speed of computers, the cooperation of countless police, and as with all searches, it took its own course according to leads and clues and circumstance. Now she thought it had been a one-man activity all along, and not a search but a stalk. She had not been assisting, she had been manipulated, just as the whole massive grid of Bureau procedures had been used to provide Becker with what he wanted. Had she been wrong about everything else, too? she wondered. Those qualities of his that had so fascinated her, his strange moodiness, the sense of great vulnerability that hid beneath the facade of strength like a little boy in a suit of armor, the languid, restrained sexuality that seemed to course from his eyes, his hands. Was she mistaken about all of it? One of the things that had so appealed to her was the impression that everything about Becker was under a tight but temporary control like a coiled spring held in check by a hair trigger that would release explosively if she could just find the right spot to touch. She could unleash all that power and passion, she had thought. Stupidly. Stupidly. Now she feared that he was about to blow up in her face.