Dean Koontz - The Darkest Evening Of The Year

Until the bequest was successfully defended in court, however, only Amy’s kids could enjoy this sunny meadow and the oak shade. Fred and Ethel bounded now through the tall grass, chasing each other, tempted this way and that by rabbit scent, squirrel scent.

Nickie remained at her master’s side.

Amy had departed from the blacktop and had driven the Expedition overland, parking on the hilltop, while the Land Rover had pulled to the shoulder of the highway.

Evidently not tempted by the wild scents or by the prospect of play, Nickie remained focused on the vehicle far below.

Although Amy had brought Renata’s binoculars, she didn’t bother to use them. The driver remained in the Rover, and at this distance, even with the powerful field glasses, she would not be able to see his face.

She wondered if Linnea Papadakis had put her under surveillance.

Although an injunction prevented Golden Heart from developing this land until Linnea’s challenge to her aunt’s last will and testament had been adjudicated, Amy was not enjoined from visiting the property. She couldn’t imagine what Linnea hoped to gain by having her watched.

Low in her throat, Nickie growled.

When he had finished searching every corner of Redwing’s house, Vernon Lesley stood in her kitchen and placed a cell-phone call to Bobby Onions.

“You still on her?”

“I’d like to be on her,” said Onions.

“Don’t be tiresome.”

“She’s out in this field.”

“What field?”

Onions had a state-of-the-art satellite navigation system that displayed the precise latitude and longitude of his Land Rover, in degrees and minutes, on the vehicle’s computer screen. He read these coordinates to Vern.

“For all I know,” Vern said wearily, “that could be someplace in Cambodia.”

“It couldn’t possibly be in Cambodia. You don’t know jack about latitude and longitude. How do you expect to do your job, you don’t know the essentials?”

“I don’t need to know latitude and longitude to be a gumshoe.”

“Gumshoe,” Onions said disdainfully. “So do you still call the refrigerator an icebox? It’s a new century, Vern. These days, we’re in a paramilitary profession.”

“Private investigation isn’t a paramilitary profession.”

“The world gets more dangerous by the week. People need private detectives, private bodyguards, private security, private police, and we’re all those things. Police are paramilitary.”

“We’re not police,” Vern said.

“You’ve got your philosophy of the profession, and I’ve got mine,” said Bobby Onions. “The point is, I’m still on her, and I know the precise cartographic coordinates. If I had to call down a missile strike on her, she’d be toast.”

“Missile strike? She’s one woman.”

“Osama bin Laden is one man. They ever got precise coordinates on him, they’d call down a missile strike.”

“You’re just a private dick. You don’t have any authority to order a missile strike.”

“I’m only saying if I did, then I could because I’ve got the precise coordinates.”

Silently vowing to find another gumshoe for any future team jobs, Vern said, “Good for you.”

“Anyway, she’s on this hilltop, out in the sun, not in the tree shadows, nice silhouette against the sky. Easiest thing in the world to pick her off with a SIG 550 Sniper.”

Vern winced. “Tell me you’re not watching her through the scope of a rifle.”

“I’m not. Of course I’m not. I’m just saying.”

“Do you have a SIG 550 Sniper?” Vern asked.

“Minimum basic ordnance, Vern. Never know when you’ll need it.”

“Where is your rifle right now, Bobby?”

“Relax. It’s wrapped in a blanket in the back of the Rover.”

“We’re not hit men, Bobby.”

“I know we’re not. I know, Vern. I know better than you what we are. Relax.”

“Anyway, nobody wants her dead.”

“There isn’t nobody that somebody doesn’t want dead, Vern. Bet a hundred people wouldn’t mind you dead.”

“How many you think wouldn’t mind you dead, Bobby?”

“Probably a thousand,” Bobby Onions said with what sounded like a note of pride.

“All you were supposed to do was watch her while I searched her house, and warn me if she started to come home.”

“That’s all I’ve done, Vern. She’s up there on the hill with her dogs, silhouetted against the sky.”

Vern said, “I’m done here. I’m leaving as soon as I hang up. So you don’t need to watch her anymore.”

“I don’t mind watching her. I’m on the clock for you anyway until after the meeting with the wallet.”

“Wallet? What wallet?”

“That’s what I call the client. I call a client the wallet.”

“I call him the client.”

“Doesn’t surprise me, Vern. What do you call the subject of a surveillance, like this woman?”

“I call her the subject,” said Vern, “the mark, the bird.”

“That’s all so old,” Bobby said disdainfully. “These days, the mark is called the monkey.”

“Why?” Vern wondered.

“Because it’s not the Jurassic Period anymore, Vern.”

“You’re twenty-four. I’m only thirty-nine.”

“Fifteen years, Vern. These days, that’s an Ice Age. Times change fast. You still want to meet at two-thirty before we go see the wallet?”

“Yeah. Two-thirty.”

“Same rally you said before?”

“Rally?”

“Rallying point, Vern, meeting place. Get it?”

“Yeah. Same rally as before. Two-thirty. Hey, Bobby.”

“Yeah?”

“If some guy’s an asshole, what do people call him these days?”

“Far as I know, that’s what they call him.”

“I guess asshole is a kind of timeless word. See you at two-thirty.”

Vern terminated the call and looked around the cheerful yellow-and-white kitchen. He wished he didn’t have to leave. Amy Cogland, alias Amy Redwing, had a sweet life here.

After locking the bungalow behind him, Vern walked back to his rustbucket Chevy, carrying the white trash bag of items that he had confiscated during the search. He felt old and dumpy, and melancholy.

As he drove away from Redwing’s neighborhood, he thought about Von Longwood and the flying sports car in Second Life, and his mood began to improve.

Ahalf dozen sea gulls drop out of the sky, shriek to perches on the higher branches of the Montezuma pine, fall silent in the same instant, seem simultaneously to detect a danger, and as one burst into flight, with a violent drumming of wings.

Either disturbed by the gulls or coming loose by coincidence, a ten-inch pine cone rattles down through the branches and lands on the blanket beside Moongirl.

She does not react to the sudden shrill cries of the gulls or to the thunder of their wings, or to the fall of the heavy cone. With the manicurist’s brush, she smoothly spreads purple polish across a toenail.

After a while, she says, “I hate the gulls.”

“We’ll go to the desert soon,” Harrow promises.

“Someplace very hot.”

“ Palm Desert or Rancho Mirage.”

“No waves breaking.”

“No gulls,” he says.

“Just hot silent sun.”

“And moonlit sand at night,” he says.

“I hope the sky is white.”

“You mean the desert sky.”

“Sometimes it’s almost white.”

“That’s more like August,” he says.

“Bone-white around the sun. I’ve seen it.”

“At high altitudes like Santa Fe.”

“Bone-white.”

“If you want it, then it will be.”

“We’ll go from fire to fire.”