Zero Option

52

Carson was sitting outside, which seemed to help his headache, when he decided he needed something to eat Stafford had promised that die cops would leave him alone.

Maybe there was one of those fancy mountain-lodge restaurants nearby.

For a moment he pictured a large wood paneled dining room with white tablecloths, quiet, polite waiters, and a good wine list. He even went in and checked his cash and saw that he had plenty of money. Then he saw his reflection in the bathroom mirror through the open doorway. His face looked puffy, and there were pronounced pouches under his eyes. His hair was damp and matted. Yeah, right, let’s go to a fancy restaurant. His stomach brought him further back to reality with another wave of nausea.

Getting a little spaced-out here, he thought. You don’t need to eat. You need a drink. That’s it. A brandy. A slug of whiskey. Something to keep me going, stiffen my spine. That hillbilly cabin manager, he’ll have some whiskey. All these mountain guys are serious boozers. He’ll have a jug up in that office. Just have to go up there. He looked out the window at the sloping gravel driveway, which seemed to tilt a little as he stared at it. Don’t remember it being that steep. Just have to walk up there. Yeah, right.

He sat down heavily on the edge of the bed, wanting desperately to lie down and sleep for a while. No way, he thought immediately. You lie down now and you won’t get up. He forced himself to get back off the bed, carefully, doing it in stages so as not to provoke the pain monster sitting on his back. He had tried to change the bandage, but by then it had been stuck hi place, and he was afraid of opening up a scab and starting more damned bleeding. There were shooting pains in his upper arms now, and he was suddenly very thirsty. He remembered that the manager had bottled water for sale to the hikers. That’s what you need.

Not whiskey. You need water.

He went out to the truck and looked up the hill. It hurt to crane his neck even a little. Damn driveway definitely looks steeper than it did before. Loose gravel, too. Can’t afford to fall. So take the truck, dumb shit. He pulled himself into the truck, closed the door, started it, and drove it up to the office cabin, the engine complaining in first gear.

Just to be safe, he parked it below the crest of the driveway entrance, just out of sight of the road. He was opening the truck door and turning carefully in his seat to get out when he heard a ‘powerful vehicle coming up the mountain road to his left. He stopped to listen. Make that a couple of vehicles, he thought.

Some instinct made him hesitate. He pulled his door closed to extinguish the cabin light, then pulled the ball cap down over his face a little.

He leaned sideways in the driver’s seat, not wanting to touch the seat with his back. Then he waited, fighting his hot lungs a little bit for breath. A minute later he saw two large green Suburbans come whipping by the driveway.

Green. He recognized that color, even in the twilight. That was Army fucking green. His heart started to beat faster. Unmistakable. Army fucking green. Just like his pickup truck, complete with white serial numbers and two whip antennas on the back. Front vehicle with three, maybe four people in it; the back vehicle had more riders and a bunch of gear. The Suburbans roared past the driveway and disappeared around a curve up the road. Toward Graniteville.

Carson exhaled and pushed the cap back on his head. That fucking Stafford! ‘I’ve got the deal. There’s an FBI team coming up with the paper. I expect them by eight o’clock.’ Lies. All lies. He called the damned Army instead, just like he did before.

Those were Special Forces on their way to set something nasty up in that courthouse square. Gun him down the moment he stepped. out of his truck, with the connivance of some damned ruthless Georgia sheriff. He swore even harder when he realized he was trembling. Then he realized he was wrong: They wouldn’t just shoot him down. They had to have the cylinder first, so they’d capture him and take him out into the woods and rip his fingernails out or something until he told them where it was. Right.

That had to be tlje game.

He looked at his watch. He squinted in the low light until he remembered there was a light button on it. It was almost six-thirty. By the so-called plan, he had less than two hours, during which time the cops supposedly had been told not to mess with him. Time enough to do something, but what? He closed his eyes, trying hard to make his brain work. His overheated, feverish brain. Can’t think, that’s my problem.

This is bad shit here, but I have to do something. Can’t just let them take me down like a dog. And I want that bastard Stafford.

He reached into the glove compartment and.found the bottle of Advil. He swallowed three of the sugarcoated pills, then really wanted that bottled water. Stafford, he thought feverishly. Lying through his teeth.

Graniteville is a trap.

Graniteville. Graniteville. Why did he remember that name? He squeezed his eyes shut and thought hard. Fragmentary images swam across his brain.

Graniteville.

Why was Stafford in Graniteville?

And then it hit him. The black-haired woman at the airport. That child with those borescope eyes. His fainting in the baggage-claim area. A real chill swept over him, because he knew what was coming next. “No, no,” he murmured as he tried to open his eyes, but it was as if they were glued shut, and he was back in the dream, in that vast river. With all those people. All those lost souls Sweeping down toward the falls.

That’s how Stafford had known. Somehow the girl had seen it. Those piercing eyes, the dream, his passing out in the airport. It was the girl. She’d told her mother or whoever that woman was, and the woman had told Stafford. That’s why Stafford had gone to Graniteville, and that’s why he was in Graniteville now instead of in Atlanta: Stafford was just the messenger. The girl was the witness!

If that was true, then his plan to implicate Stafford wouldn’t.work, not as long as she was alive. Well, hell, he thought, she’s just down the damned road. That Willow Grove Home. How hard could this be? But first he had to get a drink of water. Any damned water. Then he needed a map. There had to be more than one road into Granite ville besides this one.