The telephone began to ring at three thirty-nine on Tuesday morning. a cold fist squeezed Didi's heart. She stood up from her chair, where she'd been sitting under a lamp reading a book on advanced pottery techniques, and she went to the phone. She picked it up on the third ring. "Helloi"

"We made it," Mary Terror said.

They'd probably left New York the morning before and had been driving all day and night, Didi figured. Mary was wasting no time in getting nearer to Jack. "Edward's with youi"

"Yeah. He's right here."

"Where are youi"

"a pay phone at a Shell station on -" Mary paused, and Didi heard Edward say "Huron Parkway" in the background. The sound of a baby crying came through the receiver. Mary said, "Rub behind his left ear, he likes that," instructions to Edward. Then she spoke into the phone again. "Huron Parkway."

Didi began to give Mary directions to her cottage. She could hear the nervousness in her voice, and she tried to speak slowly but it didn't help. "You all righti" Mary interrupted suddenly. She knows, Didi thought. But of course that couldn't be. "You woke me up," Didi said. "I had a bad dream."

The baby continued to cry, and Mary snapped, "Here, damn it! Give him to me and you take the phone!" When Edward was on the line, sounding exhausted, Didi repeated the directions. "Okay," he said through a yawn. "Turn right at the second lighti"

"No. Right at the third light. Then right again at the second light and the road will veer to the left."

"Got it. I think. You ever try to drive a van with a kid screaming in your eari and every time I tried to push it up past sixty-five Mary jumped my case. Jesus, I'm beat!"

"You can rest here," Didi told him.

"Let's go, let's go!" Mary said in the background. The child had stopped crying.

"Stone house on the right," Edward said. "See you soon."

"See you," Didi replied, and she hung up.

The silence shrieked.

Didi had given them the long route. They would be here in fifteen to twenty minutes if Edward didn't get them lost in his stuporous condition. Didi's hand hung over the telephone. The seconds were ticking past. The snake of loyalty had lifted its head from the ashes, and hissed a warning at her. This was the point of decision, and beyond it there was no turning back.

She sensed the ghosts gathering behind her. Sharpening their teeth on their wristbones, eager to gnaw into her skull. She had given her word. In a world of deceits, wasn't that the only true thing lefti

Didi picked up the phone. She dialed the number she'd already looked up in the Yellow Pages, and she asked the clerk for Room 119.

Two rings. Then Laura's voice, instantly alert: "I'm ready."

Laura was still wearing her jeans and cable-knit sweater, and she'd slept for a few periods of about fifteen minutes each before the imagined sound of the phone had jarred her awake. She listened to what Didi had to tell her, then she hung up and went to the closet. From the top shelf she took the.32 Charter arms automatic Doug had bought. She pushed a clip of seven bullets into its magazine and smacked it shut with her palm. It hurt her hand. She worked the safety back and forth, getting a feel for the loaded weapon. The gun was still oily-smelling, still evil in appearance; but now she needed its weight and power, and whether she had to use it or not, it was a worthy talisman. She slid it down into her purse. Then she put on her overcoat and buttoned it up against the cold. Nausea suddenly pulsed in her stomach. She rushed into the bathroom and waited, but nothing came up. Her face was hot, sparkles of sweat on her cheeks. Now would not be the time to faint. When she was reasonably certain she was neither going to throw up or pass out, she went back to the closet and put an additional clip of bullets into her purse, adding to the talisman's strength.

She was, as Stephen Stills had told the crowd at Woodstock, scared shitless.

Laura left her room, her purse over her shoulder. The chill air hit her, a welcoming blow. She walked to Mark's room, and she balled up her fist to knock on the door.

She stood there, fist balled up, and she thought of Rose Treggs and the two children. The wind moved around her; in it she imagined she heard the noise of chimes, calling Mark home. She had paid him his three thousand dollars. He had brought her to Bedelia Morse. Their agreement had been kept, and she would not take Mark any further into what lay ahead. She lowered her fist and opened it.

The world needed more writers who didn't give a damn about best seller lists, and who wrote with their heart's blood.

Laura silently wished him well. and then she turned away from Mark's door and walked to her car.

She drove away from the Days Inn and turned in the direction of Didi's house, her hands clenched hard on the wheel and the mice of fear scuttling in her belly.

Four miles west of ann arbor, Didi sat in her chair in the front room, the lamp's light glinting on the gray hairs amid the red. She was waiting for whom fate would bring first to her door. Her mind was resting, the Rubik's Cube finished. She had chosen her road, and the snake was dead.

She saw headlights through the trees.

Didi stood up on weightless legs. Her pulse had begun to knock, like Death's fist on a bolted door. The headlights came up the driveway, and behind their white cones was a battered olive-green van. It stopped near the front door with a little shriek of worn brakes. Didi felt her teeth digging into her lower lip. She went outside in her faded denims and her comfortable gray sweater with brown leather patches on the elbows. It was her working outfit; her jeans were blotched with paint, and flecks of clay clung to her sweater. She watched Mary get out of the van's passenger side, carrying the baby in a bassinet. Edward, a weary man, pulled himself from behind the wheel. "Found it!" Edward said. "I didn't do so badly, huhi"

"Come in," Didi offered, and she stepped back to let them enter. as Mary passed her, Didi smelled her unwashed, animalish odor. Edward staggered in, stripped off his down parka, and flopped onto the couch. "Man!" he said, his falsely blue eyes dazed. "My ass is dead!"

"I'll make some coffee," Didi said, and she walked back to the reassembled kitchen, where newspaper was taped up over the door's missing pane.

"Gotta change Drummer," Mary told her. She put the baby on the floor and lifted out the Magnum pistol from her shoulder bag, then retrieved a Handi Wipe and a Pampers diaper. The baby was restless, arms and legs in motion, face squalling up for a cry but no cry forthcoming.

"Cute little rug rat, isn't hei" Edward leaned back on the couch, kicked his shiny loafers off, and put his feet up. "I can say that now that he's not yelling in my ear."

"He's a good baby. Mama's good baby, yes he is."

Edward watched Mary change Drummer's diaper as Didi poured water into the Mr. Coffee machine. It was clear to him that Mary was nuts about the baby. When she'd called him yesterday morning at seven o'clock and told him they were driving to ann arbor, he'd said she had a screw loose. He wasn't planning on driving to Michigan in the company of a woman who had an FBI target painted on her back, no matter if she was a sister or not. But then she'd told him about Jack Gardiner, and that had put a new slant on his thinking. If it was true that Jack was in California, and Didi could lead them to him, his book on the Storm Front could have no better selling point than an interview with Lord Jack himself. Of course, he didn't know how Jack would feel about it, but Mary seemed to think it was a good idea. She'd said she was wrong in jumping him about the book, that she'd let her first emotions get away from her. It would be good, she'd told him, to let the world know that the Storm Front still lived on. Edward was thinking more of People magazine coverage than making a political statement, but Mary had even promised to help him talk Jack into an interview. If Didi was right, and if Jack was in California. Two big ifs. But it was worth taking a few sick days off at Sea King to find out.

Mary took the soiled diaper into the kitchen, searching for a garbage can, and there she found Didi staring out a window toward the road. "What're you looking ati"

Didi kept herself from jumping by sheer willpower. "Nothing," she said. "I'm waiting for the coffee." She'd seen a car go slowly past and out of sight.

"Forget the coffee. I want to know about Jack." Mary stood beside Didi and glanced out the window. Nothing but dark. Still, Didi was nervous. It was in her voice, and Didi wasn't making eye contact. Mary's radar went up. "Show me," she said.

Didi left the coffee to brew, and she got the photo album from the bedroom. When she returned to the front room, Mary was sitting in a chair with the baby in her arms and Edward was still stretched out on the couch. The shoulder bag was beside Mary, the compact Magnum on top of the melange of formula, Pampers, Handi Wipes, and baby toys. "Here it is." Didi showed the article and picture to Mary, and Edward struggled up from the couch to take a look.

"Right there." Didi touched the image of the man's face.

Mary studied the picture. "That's not Jack," Edward decided after a minute or two. "That guy's nose is too big."

"People's noses get larger as they age," Didi told him.

Edward looked again. He shook his head, partly disappointed and partly relieved that he didn't have to travel any farther with Mary Terror. "No. It's not Jack."

Didi turned the plastic-covered pages backward. Like a time machine, the dates on the articles regressed. She stopped at a photograph of a young, arrogantly smiling Jack Gardiner, resplendent in hippie robes and with long blond hair cascading around his shoulders. The article's headline said Storm Front Leader Tops FBI Wanted List and the date was July 7,1972. "Then," Didi said, and she paged forward to the Sierra Club story, "and now. Can't you see the resemblancei"

Edward flipped ahead to the newer picture, then back to the old one again. Mary simply sat holding the baby, her eyes dark and unfathomable. "Okay, so he looks a little like Jack," Edward said. "Maybe. It's hard to tell." He looked closer. "No, I don't think so."

"Hold Drummer." Mary offered him to Edward, and Edward took the baby with a trace of a scowl. Then Mary held the photo album and began to turn back and forth between the two photographs. She stopped at an article on another page. "Shit," she said softly. "The son of a bitch lived."

"Whati" Didi peered over her shoulder.

"The son-of-a-bitch pig I shot outside the house that night." Mary tapped the plastic sheet over the newspaper story, which had the headline FBI agent Survives attack. There was a picture of a man on a stretcher, an oxygen mask to his face, being loaded into an ambulance. "Remember him, Edwardi"

Edward looked. "Oh, yeah. I thought you'd wasted him."

"So did I. a throat shot usually does it."

Didi felt frost in her veins. "a... throat shoti"

"Right. I hit him twice. Once in the face, once in the throat. I would've blown his fucking brains out, but I didn't have another bullet. Edward, it says his name was Earl Van Diver. Thirty-four years old, from Bridgewater, New Jersey. a wife and a daughter." She laughed quietly, a terrible laugh. "Get this: his daughter's name is Mary."

Didi was reading the story, too. She'd forgotten about clipping this from the Philadelphia newspaper several days after the Shootout in Linden. She had saved everything she could find about the Storm Front: her own book of memories, like a roadchart through Hades. Earl Van Diver. Off the critical list, the story said. Severe facial and larynx damage.

Oh my God, Didi thought.

"I remember him," Mary said. "I bet he remembers me, too." She turned ahead to the Sierra Club newsletter's article and picture. She'd thought this would be easy, that she would recognize Jack at once, but this photo showed only a portion of a blond man's face. She read the men's names in the story: Dean Walker, Nick Hudley, Keith Cavanaugh. None of those held any significance for her, no magic weavings. Her heart had become leaden. Drummer started to give a mewling cry, and the sound made her head ache. "I can't tell," she said.

Didi took the album from her. Where were Laura and Marki They should've been here by now! Her stomach was a solid knot of tension. "Come see what I've made," she offered. "Then tell me what you think."

In the workshop, with the overhead bulbs on, Mary circled the clay head that still sat on the pottery wheel. Didi laid the photo album down beside it, opened to the picture. The baby's crying had gotten louder, and Edward was doing his best to shush him. Mary stopped, staring at the face of Lord Jack.

"I made it from the picture," Didi said. a nervous quaver had crept into her voice again. "It looks like Jack. Older, I know. But I think it's him."

The lead had cracked and fallen away from Mary's heart. It had become a bird, flying toward the sun. It was Jack. Older, yes. But still handsome, still regal. She lifted the plastic sheet up from the photo album and took out the article and picture. Could it bei after all these yearsi Could it really be that Lord Jack was in Freestone, California, and this photographer had caught a slice of his facei She wanted to believe it in the most desperate way.

The baby's crying was strident, a demand for attention. Edward rocked him, but he wouldn't stop. Didi's nerves were about to shred. "Give him to me," she said, and Edward did. She rocked him, too, as Mary kept looking from the picture to the clay face again. The baby, bundled up in a downy white blanket, was warm in her arms, and she smelled the aromas of formula and pink baby flesh. "Shhhh," she said. "Shhhh." His blue eyes blinked up at her. "That's a good boy. David's a good ba -"

It was gone. Could not be recaptured. Gone through the air, and into Mary Terror's ears.

Though the workshop was chilly, Didi felt pinpricks of sweat rise on the back of her neck. Mary circled the clay head once more as she folded the newsletter's article into a little square. She put it into a pocket of her brown corduroys. When she looked up at Didi again, Mary was smiling thinly but her eyes were as dangerous as gun barrels. "My baby's name is Drummer. You knew that. Why did you call him Davidi"

There was nothing to be said. Mary came toward her with a smile like a razor. "Didii Give Drummer back to me, please."

Standing outside the workshop's door, Laura heard Mary Terror step on a shard of clay that cracked beneath her shoe. Her heartbeat was thunderous, her face tight with fear. In her right hand was the Charter arms automatic, its safety off. It was now or never, she thought. God help me. She stepped into the corridor of light that spilled from the doorway, and she aimed the gun at the hulking woman who had stolen her child. " No," she heard herself rasp in a stranger's voice.

Mary saw her. It took maybe four seconds for the face to register. Mary's mind worked like a rat caught in a closing trap. She had left her shoulder bag and the Magnum in the house. Her Colt was up under the driver's seat in the van. But she still had two weapons.

Mary reached out with one arm, hooked Bedelia Morse's throat, and jerked her around between herself and Laura's pistol. Then she clamped her other hand firmly over the baby's mouth and nose, cutting off his air. The baby began struggling to breathe.

"Finger off the trigger," Mary commanded. "Point the gun down."

P/S: Copyright -->www_novelfreereadonline_Com

***