The first gunshot echoes down the valley behind me as the glow of Crested Butte appears like a mirage in the distance. All my instincts say, turn around, go back, and help Stone. But the old soldier's tone of his last order keeps me going. Over rock. Through snowdrifts. Past a black mirror of a lake. Through thickets, thorns. Plodding forward into the relentless wind, ever forward, until at last I am sliding down a white slope toward a geometric heaven of lights and warmth.

When I reach the level of the buildings, I circle to my right in a broad arc that takes me around to the south entrance of town. Muted television dialogue drifts on the air, and the occasional sound of a car motor rumbles from between the buildings.

Crested Butte looks less like a cowboy town than a nineteenth century New England village plopped down in the mountains. The buildings along Elk Avenue have Victorian facades, and flowers line every street and window box. The windows are mostly dark, but as I move along the street, a shopkeeper backs out of a doorway, gives me a furtive glance, then locks his door and hurries to a truck parked across the street.

Twenty yards farther on, a yellow funnel of light appears down a side street to my left, illuminating a wooden bell painted silver. I turn down the alley and crunch through the snow as fast as my tingling feet will carry me.

The Silver Bell has old-fashioned swinging doors. It's a rustic place that caters to locals, not a "ski bar" fluffed up for the tourist trade. There are three people sitting at the bar and two loners at the tables. All look like serious drinkers. Behind the bar stands a giant of a man with a gray-flecked black beard.

He has to be Tiny McSwain.

As soon as he sees me, he moves around the bar as though to throw me out. Before he can, I hold up my hands and croak:

"If you're Tiny McSwain, Dwight Stone sent me."

He stops, his eyes narrowed. "Who are you?"

"Better for you if you don't know. Stone told me you'd help me."

"Somebody heard shots up near the mesa," he says suspiciously. "Was that Dwight?"

"It was the people trying to kill him. Him and me both."

"I'll call the sheriff. Where's Dwight?"

"He's back by the creek. He told me not to call anybody. He said everything would be over by the time anybody could get to him, and if not, they'd get killed for nothing."

"Those his words?"

"Near enough."

Tiny nods. "Then we don't call anybody."

"There are at least two men up there, probably more."

"Stone's a tough old boy. What did he tell you to do?"

"He said tell you to take me to an airport."

"Which airport?"

"Denver. And he said do it quick."

Tiny motions for a T-shirt-clad woman at a table to get behind the bar, then takes a set of keys from his pocket. "Let's go, friend."

"Hey," calls the woman. "Where are you going, if anybody asks?"

"If anybody asks, me and this guy went back up the Slate to help Dwight." Tiny McSwain looks at his customers, who are staring indifferently at me. "Nobody else says different."

Blank nods from the drinkers.

"My Bronco's parked out back," he says. "Let's go."

CHAPTER 36

I am standing at the Continental Airlines gate in Baton Rouge, searching the crowds of travelers for Daniel Kelly as fear slowly devours me from the inside. A week ago I stood a few yards from here, entranced by the sight of Livy Marston. Now I stand shaking from adrenaline and lack of sleep, wondering whether Dwight Stone survived the night, and whether I will live to defend myself at my slander trial, which is scheduled to begin in less than twenty-four hours.

Kelly should have been here hours ago, but I've seen no sight of him. A dozen businessmen who could be FBI agents have passed me, stared at me, even bumped into me, but none has tried to stop me. So far, anyway. If Kelly doesn't show in the next five minutes, I'm going to try to reach Natchez on my own.

Last night Tiny McSwain drove me all the way to Denver and dropped me at an airport motel. I paid cash and checked in under a false name, then lay in the chilly darkness, unable to sleep. Twice I lifted the phone to call the Colorado state police and send them up the mesa after Stone. I had visions of him lying wounded beside the Slate River, his attackers dead, him dying but savable if he reached a surgeon in time. But Stone's orders came back to me, and each time I set the phone down.

Instead I called Sam Jacobs in Natchez, being fairly sure that his phone would not be tapped. The geologist promised to visit Caitlin Masters first thing in the morning and, through her, instruct Kelly to be at the Baton Rouge airport by ten a.m. and to meet every plane arriving from Dallas after that time. I know Jacobs well enough to know he followed through.

But Kelly isn't here.

When I did finally close my eyes last night, I saw nightmarish images of Leo Marston raping Livy as a child, forcing her into a conspiracy of silence, raising her in a schizophrenic world of material bounty and spiritual agony, somehow maintaining such a hold on her that she still allowed him sexual access at the age of eighteen. When I pondered the nature of that hold, I felt the dread and horror I felt the first time I saw Roman Polanski's Chinatown.

The dread came when Faye Dunaway told Jack Nicholson that the young woman she had been hiding was her daughter and her sister. The horror arrived with the next line when Jack, reaching for a thread of sanity, asked about her father: "He raped you?" and Dunaway looked up and slowly shook her head. All sanity spun away with this terrible confession. I remember something similar from reading Anais Nin in college, that Nin had seduced her father several times; but Nin had been profligate in her sexual adventures, and besides, she was French. The idea of Livy Marston voluntarily having sex with her father simply would not set in my mind as reality.

"Continental Airlines passenger Penn Cage, please pick up the nearest white courtesy phone."

It takes a moment for my name to sink in, but when it does, my fear escalates to alarm. The caller could be Kelly or Caitlin, but it could also be someone who means me great harm.

"Continental Airlines passenger Penn Cage, please pick up the nearest white courtesy phone."

There's a white phone across the concourse from me, near a bank of pay phones, but I can't make myself walk over to it. What if Portman's people are waiting to snatch whoever walks up to answer that call? On the other hand, what choice do I have? The caller could be Daniel Kelly.

"This is Penn," I say, picking up the phone.

"It's Kelly."

"Jesus, are you in the airport?"

"Yes, but we can't meet. Listen to me, Penn, we only have a few seconds."

Kelly's use of my first name rather than the facetious "boss" brings my inner self to attention. "What is it?"

"Portman's men are in the airport right now. You're going to have to get home on your own. I'm going to divert these guys, but you have to move fast."

"I'm listening."

"My Taurus is parked in sight of the terminal, in the short-term lot, space A-27. The keys are under the mat, and there's a cell phone under the seat. You got that?"

"A-27."

"Right. Next: downstairs, near the baggage carousels, there's an Infiniti Q45 on display. I left a gun sitting on the left inside lip of the rear bumper."

"Jesus-"

"Listen. You get that gun, get to the car, and haul your ass back to Natchez."

"What are you going to do?"

"Buy you some time. But you've got another problem. I haven't been straight with you. Nobody at the company has. They've reported every move you've made to Portman."

My chest goes hollow. "How do you know that?"