The Night Window. Dean Koontz

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СКАЧАТЬ of an artist’s charcoal on white paper, robbed of detail by the waning light and waxing weather. The river ran through some but not all of the ranch’s woodlands. If he got lucky and found it among these nearest trees, he could make his way along its banks to the interstate without fear of becoming disoriented and lost in the blizzard. If nothing else, the woods seemed to offer cover.

      Tom didn’t bother to check the wristwatch they had allowed him to keep. It didn’t matter whether fifty-five or fifty-six minutes of the promised two-hour lead remained. He surely did not have that much time. Not really.

      Hollister was a murderer. Murder was not merely a crime but also a lie, for it made a claim that some lives had no value. If the billionaire could deny the fundamental truth of the profound meaning of every life, he was a liar’s liar, a font of falsehood. He might already be on the hunt.

      With fresh powder pluming from his boots, the rotten drifts of other days and tangled masses of frozen grass crunching underfoot, Tom crossed the meadow, leaving a trail that would not quickly be filled in his wake. Erratic wind not only drove the falling flakes but also fashioned them into pale shapes, phantoms in graveclothes, that hastened across the plain in the weak and dimming light. The land seemed haunted. The world had become so strange that he would not have been surprised if a figure more solid than the apparitions of snow had suddenly loomed before him, a naked beauty with her ruined face concealed by a shimmering mask of scarlet silk.

       2

      The Counting Sheep Motel in its slow disintegration. The hive hum and swarm buzz of traffic, the amplified serpent hiss as a bus air-braked for passengers waiting on a bench, in the distance the hard tat-tat-tat-tat-tat of what might be either a jackhammer or an automatic weapon. Bright orange sun, ink spill of purple shadows seeping eastward.

      In the front passenger seat of Jane’s Explorer Sport, warming the moment with his smile, Vikram Rangnekar said, “Hello, Jane.”

      Jane stood at the open window in the driver’s door, pistol drawn, muzzle pointed at the pavement. “What is this?”

      “I’ve missed you.”

      “Been busy.”

      “I lie awake at night worrying about you.”

      “I’m okay.”

      “You look okay. You look fabulous.”

      “So … what is this?” she asked again.

      “The disguise is optimal cool. It’s good.”

      “Maybe not good enough.”

      “May I say, you’re prettier without it.”

      “Looking hot isn’t my main objective these days.”

      “I have no gun. I mean you no harm.”

      “Puts you in a damn small minority.”

      “If you don’t shoot me, I can be of great help to you.”

      “You’re FBI.”

      “Not an agent. Never was. Just a computer buccaneer who used to work for the FBI. I resigned two weeks ago.”

      Vikram was a white-hat hacker of great talent. Occasionally the Department of Justice had poached him from the Bureau and put him to work on what would have been criminal black-hat projects if they had not been conducted under the auspices of the nation’s primary law-enforcement agency. He’d had an innocent crush on her even when Nick had been alive, though he knew that she was—and always would be—a one-man woman, and he’d liked to impress her with his mastery at the keyboard. As an agent, before going rogue, Jane had always operated by the book, never resorting to illegal methods. But she had wanted to know what the corrupt inner circle at Justice might be doing, and she had encouraged Vikram to show off. He had developed back doors—“my wicked little babies”—to the computer systems of major telecom companies, alarm-company central stations, and others, and he had instructed Jane in their use. Once she had gone rogue, the ability to ghost through those systems without being detected had more than once gotten her out of a tight corner.

      “If I weren’t your friend,” he said, “there would be like a hundred agents here, a SWAT team, helicopters, dogs, bomb robots. But it’s just me.”

      “Not only the government wants to wring my neck.”

      “Yeah, there’s some freaky group calling themselves Techno Arcadians, but I don’t know what they’re all about.”

      Surprised by his knowledge, even as limited as it was, she surveyed her surroundings. Nothing amiss. She looked at Vikram again. “How do you know about the Arcadians? They don’t advertise.”

      “Get in. Take us for a drive. I’ll explain.”

      “Who were those people at the library?”

      “Family. A brother. An uncle. Cousins. You look wonderful.”

      “Where are my suitcases?”

      “In the back. Take us for a drive. I’ll explain.”

      “I don’t want to kill you, Vikram.”

      “Good. I don’t want to be killed.”

      “So don’t make it necessary.”

      She holstered the pistol and climbed behind the wheel of the Explorer and pulled the driver’s door shut.

       3

      For three days, Charles Douglas Weatherwax waits in a luxurious suite in the Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills, anticipating his next assignment. He is a tall, strong, graceful man with a face of such clean, stylized lines that it looks like an Art Deco work worthy of being the hood ornament on a high-end automobile in the days when cars had hood ornaments and didn’t all look alike. He follows a high-protein low-carb diet, takes eighty vitamin pills a day, every twelve hours drinks a health product called Clean Green, and never fails to apply a number-fifty sunscreen after shaving. Each day before dinner, he sets out from his hotel on a long walk, which in part takes him through the park across the street.

      During these strolls, as at all other times, he is looking for something that will justify his existence. There are people, sad cases, who never find their purpose in life. Charlie is not one of them. He has long known the meaning of his life, and he finds his mission deeply fulfilling.

      During his first tour of the park, on Wednesday afternoon, he encounters a blind man sitting on a bench, in the shade of a trio of palm trees. The guy is fiftysomething. Shaved head. Neatly trimmed salt-and-pepper beard. An MP3 player rests on the bench beside him. Without an earpiece, he listens to Jeremy Irons read T. S. Eliot’s “Burnt Norton,” the first of the poet’s Four Quartets.

      The listener’s blindness is suggested by dark glasses worn in the shade, implied by a white cane propped at the side of the bench, and confirmed by a beautiful German shepherd lying at its master’s feet. The grip of the leash lies untended on the bench, testament to the seeing-eye СКАЧАТЬ