"How could you let them-" She stopped, and bit her lip.

"How could I let them transfer me here? I didn't have much choice, Wy. Barton was pretty clear; it was take the posting in Newenham or take a hike." He wiped a hand across his face and it came away wet, mostly from the rain. "I didn't have much left but the job, Wy. I took the transfer. I'll get back as often as I can."

Her voice was a ghost of sound. "I'm sorry, Liam. I'm so sorry."

"So am I."

"Do you ever sometimes wonder…"

He looked at her. "If she won't come back because she knew about us?"

It had been like that from the start, the instantaneous communication, the link between them, one beginning a sentence only to have the other finish it. "Yes," she whispered.

"She didn't know," he said strongly, willing himself to believe it. "She didn't know; she never knew. We were always careful. No one knew."

A stifled sob made him turn. A tear slid down her cheek. "It's the worst thing I've ever done in my life," she whispered. "Sleeping with you when I knew you were married."

He couldn't answer, because he knew she was right. And besides, it was the worst thing he'd ever done, too. He thought of Jenny, laughing, loving Jenny with the light brown hair. She had deserved better.

"I have to go," she said. "It's so late, there's -I have to-" She couldn't or wouldn't finish the thought.

Again, he caught the pickup's door before it could close. "You have to come down tomorrow, and make out a statement."

She stared at him, uncomprehending. "What?"

"You were Bob DeCreft's pilot, Wy. He was your spotter. You would have all the opportunity in the world to sabotage your own plane. Shit, you're probably my prime suspect."

Her voice distant, she said, "You think I killed him, then?"

He wanted to slap the stony expression right off her face. "No," he said through his teeth, "no, I don't think you killed him. I don't think you've got it in you to kill anyone. But I still have to find out who did, and you're an eyewitness to some of his last moments alive."

Her face relaxed. "All right. I'll come down in the morning."

"You don't have to fly?" he said, in belated concern.

"I don't know. I won't know until I check the schedule, see what Fish and Game has decided." She reached again for the ignition.

"We're not done, Wy," he warned her.

She stared out the windshield, delicate profile silhouetted against the merciless rays of the halogen light. "I know," she said finally.

It was enough for now. He closed her door. She turned the keys, the engine rolled over, and she drove away.

Liam, light-headed with a mixture of emotions he could neither separate nor quantify, was in the Blazer with his hand on the shift when he realized he had no place to sleep. Oh well, it wouldn't be the first time he'd slept in an office chair. Of course, first he'd have to find the post again before the sun came up.

Sighing, he started the Blazer and put it into gear. As he started along the tarmac, tires hissing through the returning rain, a figure detached itself from the shadow of the terminal and moved down the runway toward the small plane tiedowns. Liam let up on the gas, watching. It was a hulking figure, ogre-like in shape and size, but that could have been the magnifying effect of the dim light. It was moving stealthily, ducking from shadow to shadow, working its way steadily forward.

Liam gave the Blazer enough gas to keep moving, drove around the terminal out of sight and sound of the figure, parked, and hotfooted it to the other side. The figure had vanished into the gloom. Liam walked forward, threading his way between parked planes, ears pricked, eyes roving from side to side. The planes all looked alike to him so he tried not to look at them, tried instead to register what was out of place in his peripheral vision.

He heard a sound like the ripping of fabric. He stopped, the better to hear it. It stopped, too. He waited. There it was again, and he walked toward it. It stopped again, and he stopped again. Footsteps then; careful, quiet footsteps, soles slapping gently against pavement, then crunching against gravel, then pavement again, then a repeat of the ripping sound.

It was coming from very near to where Wy's Cub was parked. Liam moved forward to crouch behind a plane on wheel-floats. He peered around the rudder.

He recognized the little red and white plane as 78 Zulu, but now it looked like the wing closest to him had been through a Cuisinart. Their fabric coverings had been shredded, so that the Dacron hung in thin, ragged strips, exposing the steel tubes beneath. On the far side, a large figure worked at the second wing with what looked like a crowbar, shredding it as well.

As an act of malicious, wanton waste it was enough to take Liam's breath away. It brought him involuntarily to his feet, his head smartly smacking into his hiding place's fuselage with a clang that reverberated down his spine and for a hundred feet in every direction.

All sounds from the Cub stopped.

His scalp had caught some sharp edge. Warm fluid seeped down the side of his face and into his left eye. "Ouch!" He clapped one hand to his head and the other to his holster. "Dammit! Hey! State trooper! Knock that shit off right now!"

The big figure, caught with his crowbar raised over his head, froze in place. And I picked tonight to forget the goddamn flashlight, Liam thought as he stepped unsteadily into the open. "Just hold it right there, mister. Just-shit! Halt, goddammit!"

The figure, moving with alarming speed for something of its bulk, had turned to run. Liam ran after him. "State trooper, I say again; stop or I will shoot!" Which would have been a neat trick with his gun still holstered. Liam unsnapped the cover as he ran, the rain in his face, running into wingtips, tripping over tie-down lines and tie-downs and just generally blundering around like a drunken elephant.

He thudded full tilt around the tail of a plane so yellow it nearly glowed in the dark and caught the merest glimpse of a tall dark monster looming up on his left before the sky fell on him with a thump that caved in the left side of his face. He had a brief flash of jumbled images that included the monster stooping over him, an upraised arm, the claw end of a crowbar; and then things got really weird-the beat of wings, feathered this time, sharp talons and a razor beak, a challenging, inhuman scream answered by a very human shriek of pain, as the menacing hulk looming over Liam was enveloped in darkness.

The rain woke him, a few minutes or a few hours later, beating against his face, soaking his clothes, and forming puddles around his body. He opened his eyes, and found himself staring up at the underside of the yellow plane's right wing. A wind had come up and was driving the rain sideways, causing it to tippety-tap against the aluminum side of the plane.

So far as he could tell, he was alone in the airplane parking lot.

Or not. There was a kind of scraping sound overhead that he first mistook for more rain, but a movement caught his eye and he looked up again, squinting against the rain, to see the head of a raven peering over the side of the wing, its black head gleaming wetly. It looked irritated. It sounded it, too, when it croaked at Liam.

Liam blinked back. The raven gave a sour-sounding caw and launched itself into the air. A second later, it had vanished, black shape into rainy night.

Head wounds were tricky things, he knew. They bled worse than any other injury, and anyone suffering a head injury was entitled to a hallucination or two.

It was either that or he'd wound up in the middle of a science fiction remake of The Maltese Falcon.

The thought surprised him into a laugh, which made his head ache but also propelled him to his feet. He had to lean up against the plane until the wave of dizziness had passed.