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Another tight turn ahead. He barely made it.

He saw her overshoot into a small side street diagonal to the road. She’d have to back up to get turned around.

Max hit the gas, for the first time feeling joy. He felt exhilarated. Free.

No place to turn around, but he kept looking. Glancing in the rearview mirror. Only darkness behind him in the road, and lights from the houses on either side. She seemed to be gone. It gave him a breather, a small relief.

But he didn’t trust it. She was like a nightmare. She would be back.

He peered into the rearview mirror, into the side mirrors, and saw he’d been wrong—she was still there. He saw a streetlight’s reflection slide over a big vehicle, white light bouncing off it. She must be going sixty miles an hour.

And then he saw flames.

They licked up between the slats of the monster Silverado’s grille.

He could almost hear the water hiss as spray from the puddles hit.

Reflections scrolled off the windshield. She was almost to him now, her face like a Halloween mask, the rictus of her teeth and the crazy glint in her eyes. And now, in the wavering orange reflection of the flames, he could see the kid’s corpse as it lolled in the shoulder harness, arms jiggling, head flopping. Madness.

More curves coming up. It was terrifying, this bat out of hell on his tail, screeching around corners, moving up, bumper pushing into the old Chrysler LeBaron, but Max knew what the flames meant, and he permitted himself a tight smile.

He mostly worked on motorcycles, but he was a pretty good car mechanic too.

“I can wait you out, bitch,” he muttered at the rearview mirror as he avoided another group of pedestrians.

Then they really were out of town. The road straightened out a little, and she was speeding up on him again. Her grille on fire, her face likewise alight with obsession and hatred and
need
.

The LeBaron’s tires reeled the road in. The burning truck remained on his bumper. Max muttered, “Now, now,
now
!”

But nothing happened; the truck remained pinned to his tail.

It had to blow sometime.

Didn’t it?

Had to.

But the damn thing kept coming.

He drove through a series of serpentine curves, knowing he could make them, even though the rain had started up again and made the road slick.

The land dropped precipitously to his left. If he went over, he’d be dead. The LeBaron’s tires screeched as he braked slightly going into the corners, hit the accelerator coming out, the truck right
on
him. Up ahead he saw a hairpin turn. Mine tailings loomed up across the broken riverbed on the left. Weedy trees whipping by like snakes.
Too fast!
The gorge was less steep on the left, but he guessed it was at least a one hundred feet down.

Then he heard it.

A terrible grinding noise, the loud bang-bang-bang in rapid succession, like a washing machine full of rocks.

She’d thrown a rod.

The engine block had cracked, and now everything was going to hell—including the steering and the brakes. He watched with deep satisfaction as the truck missed the curve and hit the guardrail, launching out over the canyon below, the fire still streaking behind it like a
Starsky & Hutch
rerun.

Chapter Thirty-Six

M
AX TURNED AROUND
and drove back to a scenic pullout. Cut the engine and rolled in. Just sat there, shaking with adrenaline and fear. And satisfaction.

He could hear a muted whump—fire. The bright light flared in his side mirror.

But the fire went out almost as quickly as it had started—doused by the rain.

Not long after that, the rain lessened to a soft patter, then stopped altogether. Typical of thunderstorm cells in the desert.

A few wisps of gray smoke floated into the sky.

Max turned the car around, drove back, and parked above the wreck.

The truck lay far down the steep embankment, partially hidden behind a big juniper bush. Nothing moved.

She had to be dead.

No way she could live through that.

He got out of the car and sat on the guardrail—the part that was still intact. Weedy trees and a snarl of bushes along the roadside and running down the slope concealed much of the land on his side. He just sat and stared at the wreck, watching for movement. But he saw nothing. An hour, watching. Two hours. Nobody on the road, nobody coming by.

He stared at the portion of the burned-out hulk he could see. Stared a hole through it.

Waited some more.

He had to be sure.

W
HEN
M
AX FINALLY
returned to his car, he wondered if the cops were looking for him. He’d sped through town, the truck glued to his tailpipe, nearly running down pedestrians—it was possible someone would be able to identify a 1987 Chrysler LeBaron. (Unlikely, since the car was old and obscure and it had been dark and pouring rain, but you never knew.) Max had not heard any sirens. He’d been out in the open for at least two hours, looking down at a truck lying in the gorge. The wreck was a long way from town, and there were plenty of twists and turns to hide it from view.

Max figured if he kept to the back streets of Jerome—if he kept to the speed limit—no one would notice.

He was right.

He glanced at his watch and was surprised to see that it was only eight o’clock at night. There were only a few people and cars on the streets. But Max didn’t see one cop car. He took the back streets. Here he’d left a litter trail of the hijacked and the dead, and yet nothing in this town had changed.

Hard to believe.

He drove back to the Desert Oasis Healing Center and piloted the LeBaron across the flattened section of chain-link fence, careful to stay out of the gully.

Why tell them he was coming?

Lucky for him, the guardhouse a half mile up the road was empty. No rent-a-cop was going to sit out there on a night like this.

T
HERE WERE PLENTY
of expensive cars in the lot. The richest of the rich. The fucked-uppest of the fucked-up. Max reached the glass front doors to the main wing and walked in. Nobody in the foyer—a long glass tunnel between the front entrance with its cactus garden and the pool and cabanas on the other side. A massive, generic chandelier, the kind you’d find at Marriotts everywhere, cast a dim orange light. He walked in the direction of Gordon’s office. His footsteps echoed on the Saltillo tile.

Everyone locked up for the night.

He got to the door to Gord’s office. What now? Knock?

No.

He aimed a kick under the doorknob, and to his surprise, the door flew open.

No one there.

The anticlimax almost buried him. He’d been planning so long for the confrontation, now he felt lost.

“Sir?”

He spun around. It was Gordon’s assistant, Drew.

“Good to see you, uh, Max,” the assistant said. “You look like you could use freshening up. Would you like to go to your room?”

“So you can lock me in?”

“That wasn’t my intention, sir. I thought you might want a hot shower and some fresh clothes.”

Max pictured the clothes. The trademark white drawstring yoga pants and blousy white pirate shirt. Add Birkenstocks, and you could join an ashram.

“Your leg, sir. You’re bleeding. I could call the nurse.”

“Just, let’s…” He felt a little dizzy. “I want to talk to Gordon. You get me? He’s gonna want to hear what I have to say.”

“Of course, sir.”

And Max was ushered through the right wing to his room.

Right back where he’d started. He thought about fighting, but you couldn’t fight all the time. He was tired, wounded. The adrenaline that had fueled him was beginning to dissipate.

He still believed that Gordon needed him more than he needed Gordon. He was still Max Conroy, the star of the
V.A.M.Pyre
series. The golden goose, for want of a better term. He truly believed they needed him more than he needed
them
.

And so he took a shower. A nurse practitioner dressed his wound and gave him antibiotics. He felt better. When she was gone, he looked out at his reflection, mirrored against the lighted pool. Trying to nail down what he would say to Gordon, but unable to hold onto his thoughts.

A light knock.

“Come in.”

It was Shower Cap.

Max thought: I’m hallucinating again.

Shower Cap put his finger to his lips and crept into the room, his movements exaggerated and low, like Groucho Marx. It helped that he wore a doctor’s white smock and a doctor’s head mirror instead of the shower cap.

Am I hallucinating again?

Max closed the door behind them.

Shower Cap drew the curtains closed.

“I’m glad you’re back,” he said.

“It’s like I never left.” Max was beginning to remember now. How could he have forgotten Shower Cap? Only Shower Cap’s real name was Darren. Darren Fitch-Wender.

Shower Cap was the mascot here. Max knew that Gordon’s silent partner in the DO was Darren’s father, Thaddeus B. Fitch-Wender.

Yes,
that
Thaddeus B. Fitch-Wender.

How could he have
forgotten
?

Max had holes in his memory, but how could he have forgotten Darren?

Darren was in his midforties and had lived here for at least fifteen years—since shortly after the place was built. Darren was a drummer in a semifamous heavy metal band twenty years ago. He’d done a lot of drugs, and eventually they’d taken their toll. Max had heard the story of Darren’s life from Serena, his masseuse, after Darren had popped in one day and sat cross-legged on the table opposite. He’d worn only a sari and his shower cap.

Max stared at Darren, who was checking the bathroom for intruders. He crabbed around, checking the windows and doors, then looked at Max and put his finger to his lips. “Checking for bugs,” he whispered.

Max assumed there were bugs. Whether or not this nutcase could find them, he didn’t know.

“What’s going on?” Max asked.

“I brought your script back. Remember?”

Max didn’t remember.

He didn’t remember much at all.

“I thought you’d want it, now that you’re back.”

“What script?”

“
The
script. Shhhh! The walls have ears.”

“How’d you find out I was here?”

“Everybody knows you’re here. The Maxter is
back
!” he hooted.

Suddenly Max knew why he always saw Shower Cap in a boat. “Man in the Boat,” he said.

Darren turned around. “Shhhhhhhhh!”

“Sorry,” Max whispered. “That was the name of your hit record:
Man in the Boat
. Wasn’t it?”

Darren nodded. “I did the drums!” He started with a flurry of hands, and Max remembered that too. Shower Cap—Darren—was always playing drums in the air.

Darren’s band, Phonetic, had had the one mildly dirty hit, “Man in the Boat,” which had inspired Max’s hallucination. Max associated Darren with a boat because of the song. Max said, “What script?”

“
Your
script, of course. It has your name on it. I found it one time when I was waiting for my dad in the office. It’s a secret.”

Finally, someone crazier than he was.

“Should I check your pulse and respiration?” Darren asked.

“I don’t think that’s necessary. But I could use your help.”

“I’m all ears.”

Max whispered, “Where’s Gordon?”

“Gordon’s waiting.”

“Waiting?”

“He said something about cooling your heels.”

“You heard him say that?”

“I used my stethoscope.”

OK.

“On the door.”

Max wondered how much he could rely on any information he got from Darren. But he guessed that Darren had overheard Gordon talking about cooling his heels. That sounded like Gordon. It sounded like a trick Gordon would pull. Gordon loved to play psychological games. So this was why the wait.

Let Max stew.

Max had built himself up for this confrontation. He was ready to roll. But now here he was,
cooling his heels
, waiting for Gordon to make his grand entrance.