David Morrell - The Protector

Jamie finally spoke. "That's the longest I've ever heard you talk about your past. In fact, it's one of the few times you've ever talked about your past."

"Prescott pretended to be a victim and turned out to be a bully. Because of him, now I'm afraid of bullies. I won't let him get away with it."

Driving through Wyoming, neither of them commented when they passed an exit that would have taken them north to the Teton Range, to Jackson Hole and their home.

After four days, Interstate 80 brought them to San Francisco. They followed the Pacific Coast Highway south to Carmel and spent the night in a motel. But Cavanaugh had trouble sleeping, too preoccupied with what needed to be done.

"Where do you want to look first?" Jamie asked the next morning over a ham and cheese omelette in the motel's diner.

Cavanaugh had only coffee. "How can you eat so much and stay so thin?"

"I've got a high metabolism. Besides, when I'm worried, I need to eat."

"We're safe for the moment."

"That's not what I mean." They were at a corner table, their backs to a wall. The nearest tables were empty. A television droned behind the counter. Even so, she lowered her voice. "You're not being hunted any longer. This isn't following orders in combat. This isn't self-defense. It isn't protecting a client. You're the hunter now. If you get what you want, I'm worried about how it'll change you."

"Prescott raised a similar issue."

Jamie looked puzzled.

"After I rescued him from the warehouse, we nearly got trapped at a shopping mall. The team chasing us left a car outside. I managed to sneak up on it and shout to its driver to run away. The driver was too startled to move. I had to shoot through the car's roof before he got his legs to work. Later, Prescott asked me why I hadn't just killed the man."

"And what did you answer?"

"That the man hadn't given me a reason, that I was a protector, not a…"

Jamie didn't need to say anything further to make her point.

"I wonder if Prescott's counting on that," Cavanaugh said bitterly. "He can't be sure I died in the fire at Karen's house. I wonder if the son of a bitch is betting that my personality's essentially defensive, that I won't come after him for betraying me and my friends."

Jamie stayed silent.

"He'll have changed his appearance," Cavanaugh said. "He'll probably wear glasses now. He's had enough time to grow a mustache or a beard. He might even have had some plastic surgery. His heaviness will be hard to disguise, though."

Troubled, Jamie started eating her omelette again.

Cavanaugh glanced at the television behind the counter. A commercial for a weight-losing product showed before and after photographs of a formerly bulky man who was now amazingly thin. He turned toward Jamie. "When I first met Prescott, he had shelves of the most carbohydrate-heavy, calorie-rich foods imaginable. Macaroni and cheese. Lasagna. Ravioli. Potato chips. Candy bars. Chocolates. Classic Coke."

"That would put the pounds on all right."

"Suppose he went on a crash diet."

Jamie looked up.

"It's been almost three weeks since I last saw him," Cavanaugh said. "If he starves himself, if he drinks tons of water to flush his system…"

"A man as determined as Prescott…" Jamie nodded. "It wouldn't be healthy, but I bet he could lose a pound or two a day."

"Jesus," Cavanaugh said, "at that rate, he'd soon be unrecognizable."

"But even with that beard you're trying to grow to disguise your appearance, you'll be very recognizable," Jamie said. "Prescott could blend with a crowd and see you coming."

"Not you, though," Cavanaugh said.

"What do you mean?"

"He doesn't know you're with me. He could look straight at you and not be aware you're hunting him."

"Hunting him is what you're doing," Jamie said.

Ocean Avenue was the only Carmel street that went directly from the highway down to the water. Steep and several blocks long, it was separated by a median of shrubs and sheltering trees. Quaint shops and relaxed-looking tourists flanked it.

While Jamie drove, Cavanaugh scanned the people on the sidewalk, wondering if he'd get lucky and see Prescott.

It didn't happen.

At the bottom of the hill, they came to waves pounding a picture-postcard mile-long crescent-shaped beach of amazingly white sand. Sections of bedrock protruded. Cypresses spread fernlike branches. Two surfers in wet suits rode the whitecaps. Dogs frolicked through the waves while their owners strolled behind them. Gulls soared.

But Cavanaugh's attention was focused on the people along the beach, none of whom reminded him of Prescott.

Jamie steered left and followed a scenic road along the water. Rustic homes were enclosed by trees, some of which were Monterey pines, their guidebook said, while others showed the distinctive twisted trunks of wind-contorted live oaks.

Jamie pointed toward an outcrop on the right. "There's the house from A Summer Place."

It still reminded Cavanaugh of the prow of a ship, but the constant crashing of waves had not been kind to it. "Looks deserted," he said, giving it only a moment's notice before continuing to concentrate on people walking along the beach or the side of the road.

Prescott wasn't any of them.

They stopped on a quiet, narrow, tree-lined street that hadn't existed when Robinson Jeffers and Una had settled in Carmel.

After walking up a brick driveway, they opened a wooden gate and entered a compound.

Cavanaugh had read so much about the place, about the gaunt-cheeked, lanky Irishman's epic struggle to build it, that he'd expected something on that epic scale. Instead, he was surprised by how intimate it felt. Colorful flowers and shrubs reminded him of an English rural garden. On the left was the forty-foot-high stone structure that Jeffers had called Hawk Tower, with its chimney, staircase, battlement, and turrets. To the right was the low stone house with its gently sloped shingled roof and stone chimney.

A brick walkway led to a door, where an elderly gentleman explained that he worked for the foundation that maintained the property. "Would you care for a tour?" he asked.

"Very much."

"Have you been in an accident?" the white-haired man asked sympathetically, noticing Cavanaugh's face.

"A fall. I'm taking some time off from work, recuperating."

"Carmel is a fine place to do that."

Inside, the rooms that Jeffers had painstakingly built were small and yet somehow spacious. From the weight of the structure, the air felt compressed. A slight chill came off the paneled walls. In the living room, Cavanaugh studied the stone fireplace on the right and the piano in the far corner. Windows provided a view of the ocean.

The guide took them through the guest room, kitchen, and bathroom on the main floor and the two attic bedrooms, one of which Jeffers had used for writing.

"Robin, as we liked to call him, built the house on a small scale," the elderly man explained, "to withstand ocean storms. He and Una had twin sons, and you can imagine how much they all loved one another for them to be able to live happily in such cramped and isolated circumstances. They deliberately didn't have electricity installed until 1949, after they'd lived here thirty years."

Cavanaugh felt a curious tightening in his throat.

"Notice the poetry that Robin etched into this beam," the guide said. "They're not his words, however. They're from one of his favorite works: Spenser's Faerie Queene."

Sleepe after toyle, port after stormie seas, Ease after warre, death after life does greatly please.

Now Cavanaugh felt hollow.

"If you'll follow me to Hawk Tower," the elderly man said.