Slowly the Sea Beast sank below the surface.

The speedometer on the Eldorado was approaching sixty when Burton topped the last hill before the cattle guard. He had to get to the airport and use the open ticket in his briefcase to join his money in the Caymans before anyone could figure out where he had gone. He’d planned for this all along, knowing he might have to make a run for it at some point, but what he hadn’t planned was that there would be two Suburbans and a Mercedes parked just over the top of the hill.

Before he could stop himself, he hit the brakes and wrenched the wheel to the left. The tires dug into the pasture and sent the Eldorado up on two wheels, then over. There was none of the slowing of time or compression of events that often happens in accidents. He saw light and dark, felt his body being beaten around the Caddy, and then the crash of smashing metal and breaking glass. Then there was a pause.

He lay on the ceiling of the overturned Eldorado, peppered with pieces of safety glass, trying to feel if any of his limbs were broken. He seemed okay, he could feel his feet, and it didn’t hurt when he breathed. But he smelled gas. It was enough to remind him to move.

He grabbed the briefcase with his escape kit and slithered out the broken back window to find the Eldorado half-perched, half-smashed over the front of a white Suburban. He climbed to his feet and ran to the truck. It was locked. Sheridan, you prick, you would lock your truck, he thought. He didn’t notice the people handcuffed inside the K-9 cage in the back.

The Mercedes was his last chance. He ran around it and yanked opened the driver’s side door. The keys were in the ignition. He climbed in and took a deep breath. He had to calm down now. No more mistakes, he told himself. He started the Mercedes and was turning to back it down the hill when the dog hit him.

Thirty-two

“That was a good guitar,” Catfish said. He had his arms around Estelle, who had pressed her face to his chest when the monster attacked Winston Krauss.

“I didn’t realize,” Estelle said. “I didn’t think it would do that.”

Catfish stroked her hair. “That was a good car too. That car never broke.”

Estelle pushed Catfish away and looked in his eyes. “You knew, didn’t you?”

“What I knew is that boy wanted to get up close to a sea monster and that’s what he got. Case you didn’t notice, he was happy when it happened.”

“What now?”

“I think we ought to get you home, girl. You got some paintings gonna come out of this.”

“Home? Are you coming with me?”

“I ain’t got no car to go anywhere. I guess I am.”

“You’re going to stay? You’re not afraid of losing the Blues and getting content?”

Catfish grinned, and there was that gold tooth with the eighth note cut in it, glistening in the morning sunshine. “Dragon done ate my car, my guitar, my amp—girl, I got me enough Blues to last a good long time. I’m thinkin I’ll write me some new songs while you makin your paintings.”

“I’d like that,” Estelle said. “I’d like to paint the Blues.”

“Long as you don’t go cuttin your ear off like old Vincent. A man finds a one-eared woman stone unattractive.”

Estelle pulled him tight. “I’ll do my best.”

“Course, there was a woman I knowed down Memphis way, name of Sally, had only one leg. Called her One Leg Sally…”

“I don’t want to hear it.”

“What you wanna hear?”

“I want to hear the door closing behind us, the fire crackling in the stove, and the teakettle just coming to a whistle while my lovin man picks out ‘Walkin’ Man’s Blues’ on a National steel guitar.”

“You easy,” Catfish said.

“I thought you liked that,” she said, and she took his spidery hand in hers and led him up over the bluff to find a ride home.

Theo had never felt quite so overwhelmed in his entire life. He sensed that the excitement and the danger of it all was over, but he still felt as if a beast every bit as intimidating as the one that had just sunk into the sea was looming over him. He didn’t know if he had a job, or for that matter a home, since his cabin had been part of his pay. He didn’t even have his bong collection and victory garden to crawl into. He was confused and horrified by what had just happened, but not relieved that it was over. He stood there, not ten feet from where Molly Michon was standing in the surf, and he had no idea what the rest of his life had to offer him.

“Hey,” he called. “You okay?”

He watched her nod without turning around. The waves were breaking in front of her and foam and sea-weed was splashing up over her thighs, yet she stood there solid, staring out to sea.

“You going to be okay?”

Without turning, she said, “I haven’t been okay for years. Ask anybody.”

“Matter of opinion. I think you’re okay.”

Now she looked over her shoulder at him, her hair in a tangle from the wind, tear tracks down her face. “Really?”

“I’m a huge fan.”

“You had never heard of my movies until you came to my trailer, had you?”

“Nope. I’m a huge fan, though.”

She turned and walked out of the surf toward him, and a smile was breaking there on her face. A smile with too much history to it, but a smile nonetheless.

“The narrator says you did good,” she said.

“The narrator?” Theo found himself smiling too, as close to crying as he had come since his father had died, but smiling nonetheless.

“Yeah, it’s this voice I hear when I don’t take my meds for a while. He’s kind of a prick, but he’s got a better sense of judgment than I do.”

She was right there in front of him now—looking up at him, a hand on her hip, a challenge in that movie-star smile—looking more like Kendra the Warrior Babe than she ever had in the posters, the five-inch-long scar standing glorious over her left breast, seawater and grime streaking her body, a look in her eyes that comes from watching your future get nuked—repeatedly. She took his breath away.

“Do you think the three of us could go out to dinner sometime?”

“I’m on the rebound, you know?”

His heart sank. “I understand.”

She walked around him and started up the bluff. He followed her, understanding for the first time how the pilgrims had felt following the Sea Beast to the cave.

“I didn’t say no,” Molly said. “I just thought you ought to know. The narrator is warning me not to talk about my ex over dinner.”

His heart soared. “I think a lot of people are going to be talking about your ex.”

“You’re not intimidated?”

“Of course. But not by him.”

“The narrator says it’s a bad idea. Says the two of us put together might make one good loser.”

“Wow, he is a prick.”

“I’ll get some meds from Dr. Val and he’ll go away.”

“You’re sure that’s good idea?”

“Yeah,” she said, turning back to him again before climbing up to where the pilgrims waited. “I’d like to be alone with you.”

What the man in the driver’s seat didn’t seem to understand was that as far as this Mercedes was concerned, Skinner was the alpha male. The man smelled of fear and anger and aggression, as well as gunpowder and sweat, and Skinner didn’t like him from the moment he got into the car: Skinner’s new mobile territory. So Skinner had to show him, and he did so in the traditional way, by clamping his jaws over the Challenger’s throat and waiting for him to take a submissive posture. The man had struggled and even hit Skinner, but hadn’t said bad-dog, bad-dog, so Skinner just growled and tightened his jaws until he tasted blood and the man was still.

Skinner was still waiting for the Challenger to submit when the Tall Guy opened the car door.