While they were traveling, changing campgrounds every night or two, no

  one could try to get at him through them.

  Since the attempted contact at the bank in Mission Viejo, Marty had been

  subjected to no more of The Other's probes. He was hopeful that the

  haste and decisiveness with which they'd fled north had bought them

  safety. Even clairvoyance or telepathy--or whatever the hell it

  was--must have its limits. Otherwise, they were not merely up against a

  fantastic mental power but flat-out magic, while Marty could be driven,

  by experience, to credit the possibility of psychic ability, he simply

  could not believe in magic. Having put hundreds of miles between

  themselves and The Other, they were most likely beyond the range of his

  questing sixth sense. The mountains, which periodically interfered with

  the operation of the cellular telephone, might further insulate them

  from telepathic detection.

  Perhaps it would have been safer to stay away from Mammoth Lakes and

  hide out in a town to which he had no connections.

  However, he opted for the cabin because even those who might target his

  parents' house as a possible refuge for him would not be aware of the

  mountain retreat and would be unlikely to learn of it casually.

  Besides, two of his former high school buddies had been Mammoth County

  deputy sheriffs for a decade, and the cabin was close to the town in

  which he had been raised and where he was still well known. As a

  hometown boy who had never been a hell-raiser in his youth, he could

  expect to be taken seriously by the authorities and given greater

  protection if The Other did try to contact him again.

  n a strange place, however, he would be an outsider and regarded with

  more suspicion even than Detective Cyrus Lowbock had exhibited.

  Around Mammoth Lakes, if worse came to worst, he would not feel so

  isolated and alienated as he was certain to be virtually anywhere else.

  "Might be bad weather ahead," Paige said.

  The sky was largely blue to the east, but masses of dark clouds were

  surging across the peaks and through the passes of the Sierra Nevadas to

  the west.

  "Better stop at a service station in Bishop," Marty said, "find out if

  the Highway Patrol's requiring chains to go up into Mammoth."

  Maybe he should have welcomed a heavy snowfall. It would further

  isolate the cabin and make them less accessible to whatever enemies were

  hunting them. But he felt only uneasiness at the prospect of a storm.

  If luck was not with them, the moment might come when they needed to get

  out of Mammoth Lakes in a hurry. Roads * drifted shut by a blizzard

  could cause a delay long enough to be the death of them.

  Charlotte and Emily wanted to play Look Who's the Monkey Now, a word

  game Marty had invented a couple of years ago to entertain them on long

  car trips. They had already played twice since leaving Mission Viejo.

  Paige declined to join them, pleading the need to focus her attention on

  driving, and Marty ended up being the monkey more frequently than usual

  because he was distracted by worry.

  The higher reaches of the Sierras disappeared in mist. The clouds

  blackened steadily, as if the fires of the hidden sun were burning to

  extinction and leaving only charry ruin in the heavens.

  The motel owners referred to their establishment as a lodge. The

  buildings were embraced by the boughs of hundred-foot Douglas firs,

  smaller pines, and tamaracks. The design was studiedly rustic.

  The rooms couldn't compare with those at the Ritz-Carlton, of course,

  and the interior designer's attempt to call to mind Bavaria with

  knotty-pine paneling and chunky wood-frame furniture was jejune, but

  Drew Oslett found the accommodations pleasant nonetheless. A sizable

  stone fireplace, in which logs and starter material already had been

  arranged, was especially appealing, within minutes of their arrival, a

  fire was blazing.

  Alec Spicer telephoned the surveillance team stationed in a van across

  the street from the Stillwater house. In language every bit as cryptic

  as some of Clocker's statements, he informed them that Alfie's handlers

  were now in town and could be reached at the motel.

  "Nothing new," Spicer said when he hung up the phone. "Jim and Alice

  Stillwater aren't home yet. The son and his family haven't shown up,

  either, and there's no sign of our boy, of course."

  Spicer turned on every light in the room and opened the drapes because

  he was still wearing his sunglasses, though he had taken off his leather

  flight jacket. Oslett suspected that Alec Spicer didn't remove his

  shades to have sex--and perhaps not even when he went to bed at night.

  The three of them settled into swiveling barrel chairs around a

  herringbone-pine dinette table off the compact kitchenette. The nearby

  mullioned window offered a view of the wooded slope behind the motel.

  From a black leather briefcase, Spicer produced several items Oslett and

  Clocker would need to stage the murders of the Stillwater family in the

  fashion that the home office desired.

  "Two coils of braided wire," he said, putting a pair of plastic wrapped

  spools on the table. "Bind the daughters' wrists and ankles with it.

  Not loosely. Tight enough to hurt. That's how it was in the Maryland

  case."

  "All right," Oslett said.

  "Don't cut the wire," Spicer instructed. "After binding the wrists, run

  the same strand to the ankles. One spool for each girl. That's also

  like Maryland."

  The next article produced from the briefcase was a pistol.

  "It's a SIG nine-millimeter," Spicer said. "Designed by the Swiss maker

  but actually manufactured by Suer in Germany. A very good piece."

  Accepting the SIG, Oslett said, "This is what we do the wife and kids

  with?"

  Spicer nodded. "Then Stillwater himself."

  Oslett familiarized himself with the gun while Spicer withdrew a box of

  9mm ammunition from the briefcase. "Is this the same weapon the father

  used in Maryland?"

  "Exactly," Spicer said. "Records will show it was bought by Martin

  Stillwater three weeks ago at the same gun shop where he's purchased

  other weapons. There's a clerk who's been paid to remem her selling it

  to him."

  "Very nice."

  "The box this gun came in and the sales receipt have already been

  planted in the back of one of the desk drawers in Stillwater's home

  office, down in the house in Mission Viejo."

  Smiling, filled with genuine admiration, beginning to believe they were

  going to salvage the Network, Oslett said, "Superb attention to detail."

  "Always," Spicer said.

  The Machiavellian complexity of the plan delighted Oslett the way Wile

  E. Coyote's elaborate schemes in Road Runner cartoons had thrilled him

  as a child--except that, in this case, the coyotes were the inevitable

  winners. He glanced at Karl Clocker, expecting him to be likewise

  enthralled.

  The Trekker was cleaning under his fingernails with the blade of a

  penknife. His expression was somber. From every indication, his mind

  was
at least four parsecs and two dimensions from Mammoth Lakes,

  California.

  From the briefcase, Spicer produced a Ziploc plastic bag that contained

  a folded sheet of paper. "This is a suicide note. Forged.

  But so well done, any graphologist would be convinced it was written in

  Stillwater's own hand."

  "What's it say?" Oslett asked.

  Quoting from memory, Spicer said,"

  "There's a worm. Burrowing inside.

  All of us contaminated. Enslaved. Parasites within.

  Can't live this way. Can't live."

  "That's from the Maryland case?" Oslett asked.

  "Word for word."

  "The guy was creepy."

  "Won't argue with you on that."

  "We leave it by the body?"

  "Yeah. Handle it only with gloves. And press Stillwater's fingers all

  over it after you've killed him. The paper's got a hard, smooth finish.

  Should take prints well."

  Spicer reached into the briefcase once more and withdrew an other Ziploc

  bag containing a black pen.

  "Pentel Rolling Writer," Spicer said. "Taken from a box of them in a

  drawer of Stillwater's desk."

  "This is what the suicide note was written with?"

  "Yeah. Leave it somewhere in the vicinity of his body, with the cap

  off" Smiling, Oslett reviewed the array of items on the table. "This is

  really going to be fun."

  While they waited for an alert from the surveillance team that was

  staking out the elder Stillwater's house, Oslett risked a walk to a ski

  shop in a cluster of stores and restaurants across the street from the

  motel. The air seemed to have grown more bitter in the short time they

  had been in the room, and the sky looked bruised.

  The merchandise in the shop was first-rate. He was quickly able to

  outfit himself in well-made thermal underwear imported from Sweden and a

  black Hard Corps Gore-Tex/Thermolite storm suit. The suit had a

  reflective silver lining, foldaway hood, anatomically shaped knees,

  ballistic nylon scuff guards, insulated snowcuffs with rubber ired

  strippers, and enough pockets to satisfy a magician. Over this he wore

  a purple U.S. Freestyle Team vest with Thermoloft insulation, reflective

  lining, elasticized gussets, and reinforced shoulders.

  He bought gloves too--Italian leather and nylon, almost as flexible as a

  second skin. He considered buying high-quality goggles but decided to

  settle for a good pair of sunglasses, since he wasn't actually intending

  to hit the slopes. His awesome ski boots looked like something a robot

  Terminator would wear to kick his way through concrete block walls.

  He felt incredibly tough.

  As it was necessary to try on every item of clothing, he used the

  opportunity to change out of the clothes in which he'd entered the shop.

  The clerk obligingly folded the garments into a shopping bag, which

  Oslett carried with him when he set out on the return walk to the motel

  in his new gear.

  By the minute, he was more optimistic about their prospects.

  Nothing lifted the spirits like a shopping spree.

  When he returned to the room, though he had been gone half an hour,

  there had been no news.

  Spicer was sitting in an armchair, still wearing sunglasses, watching a

  talk show. A heavyset black woman with big hair was interviewing four

  male cross-dressers who had attempted to enlist, as women, in the United

  States Marine Corps, and had been rejected, though they seemed to

  believe the President intended to intervene on their behalf.

  Clocker, of course, was sitting at the table by the window, in the fall

  of silvery pre-storm light, reading Hucklebery Kirk and the Oozing

  Whores of Alpha Centauri, or whatever the damn book was called. His

  only concession to the Sierra weather had been to change from a

  harlequin-pattern sweater-vest into a fully sleeved cashmere sweater in

  a stomach-curdling shade of orange.

  Oslett carried the black briefcase into one of the two bedrooms that

  flanked the living room. He emptied the contents on one of the

  queen-size beds, sat cross-legged on the mattress, took off his new

  sunglasses, and examined the clever props that would ensure Martin

  Stillwater's postmortem conviction of multiple murder and suicide.

  He had a number of problems to work out, including how to kill all these

  people with the least amount of noise. He wasn't concerned about the

  gunfire, which could be muffled one way or another. It was the

  screaming that worried him. Depending on where the hit went down, there

  might be neighbors. If alerted, neighbors would call the police.

  After a couple of minutes, he put on his sunglasses and went out to the

  living room. He interrupted Spicer's television viewing, "We waste

  them, then what police agency's going to be dealing with it?"

  "If it happens here," Spicer said, "probably the Mammoth County

  Sheriff's Department."

  "Do we have a friend there?"

  "Not now, but I'm sure we could have."

  "Coroner?"

  "Out here in the boondocks--probably just a local mortician."

  "No special forensic skills?"

  Spicer said, "He'll know a bullet hole from an asshole, but that's about

  it."

  "So if we terminated the wife and Stillwater first, nobody's going to be

  sophisticated enough to detect the order of homicides?"

  "Big-city forensic lab would have a hard time doing that if the

  difference was, say, less than an hour."

  Oslett said, "What I'm thinking is . . . if we try to deal with the

  kids first, we'll have a problem with Stillwater and his wife."

  "How so?"

  "Either Clocker or I can cover the parents while the other one takes the

  kids into a different room. But stripping the girls, wiring their hands

  and ankles--it'll take ten, fifteen minutes to do right, like in

  Maryland. Even with one of us covering Stillwater and his wife with a

  gun, they aren't going to sit still for that. They'll both rush me or

  Clocker, whoever's guarding them, and together they might get the upper

  hand."

  "I doubt it," Spicer said.

  "How can you be sure?"

  "People are gutless these days."

  "Stillwater fought off Alfie."

  "True," Spicer admitted.

  "When she was sixteen, the wife found her father and mother dead. The

  old man killed the mother, then himself--" Spicer smiled. "Nice tie-in

  with our scenario."

  Oslett hadn't thought about that. "Good point. Might also explain why

  Stillwater couldn't write the novel based on the case in Maryland.

  Anyway, three months later she petitioned the court to free her from her

  guardian and declare her a legal adult."

  "Tough bitch."

  "The court agreed. It granted her petition."

  "So blow away the parents first," Spicer advised, shifting in the

  armchair as if his butt had begun to go numb.

  "That's what we'll do," Oslett agreed.

  Spicer said, "This is fucking crazy."

  For a moment Oslett thought Spicer was commenting on their plans for the

  Stillwaters. But he was referring to the television program, to which

  his attention drifted again.
r />   On the talk show, the host with big hair had ushered off the

  cross-dressers and introduced a new group of guests. There were four

  angry-looking women seated on the stage. All of them were wearing

  strange hats.

  As Oslett left the room, he saw Clocker out of the corner of his eye.

  The Trekker was still at the table by the window, riveted by the book,

  but Oslett refused to let the big man spoil his mood.

  In the bedroom he sat on the bed again, amidst his toys, took off his

  sunglasses, and happily enacted and re-enacted the homicides in his

  mind, planning for every contingency.

  Outside, the wind picked up. It sounded like wolves.

  He stops at a service station to ask directions to the address he

  remembers from the Rolodex card. The young attendant is able to help

  him.

  By 2,10 he enters the neighborhood in which he was evidently raised.

  The lots are large with numerous winter-bare birches and a wide variety

  of evergreens.

  His mom and dad's house is in the middle of the block. It's a modest,