“Damn!” he shouted, as he pounded the steering wheel. “Damn, damn, damn!”

Now he’d have to ditch this car and steal another one. A big pain in the ass all the way around.

He thought of Everett learning about this misadventure, and shouted, “Fuck me!”

He saw an old man in the car next to him looking on in disapproval. He was about to flip him the bird, then started admiring the old dude’s wheels. Not bad, he decided, and discreetly followed him home.

Blue Jay, California

Monday, May 19, 6:21 P.M.

Gabriel Taggert was alone and sober when he saw the newscast.

He would have preferred to be neither.

At no time since he had first arrived at this cabin had he felt more compelled to seek the comfort that could be found in a bottle or a pill or-for him, the most sweetly beckoning of them all-a line of white powder.

Even more alluring, though, was the thought of contact with either of the only two people who had ever really given a damn about him: his sister Meghan or Kit Logan.

He fought all these temptations.

Throughout the vast majority of his twenty-three years, Gabe Taggert had been a herd animal. Never leading it, never bringing up the rear, always finding a comfortable place in the middle.

After things had gone so horribly wrong up north, his ability to blend anonymously into the middle of the herd had allowed him to hide for a time in several cities. That ability probably prevented him from being arrested on federal felony charges. Charges, he was well aware, that could lead to the death penalty.

So for several months, he stayed in cities. But this time, unlike every other time he had been in trouble, he felt vulnerable in the herd. He could not simply become an easygoing joker, a party boy looking for a little fun. The raves he went to-looking for oblivion, for instant friends-only intensified his awareness of harsh realities, his new mistrust, his sense of isolation. He could lie easily enough about who he was, and he might find a place to crash for a few nights, and he might even find someone to pretend to laugh with, but his nerves were raw, and the press of humanity in the cities had grated against the ends of those nerves.

One night last January, a pretty girl with beautiful red hair had invited him to come home with her. He could appreciate her looks, knew in some part of his mind that she was exactly the sort of woman who appealed to him. He hadn’t been able to get it up.

This had happened to him before, when he had been drunk, or loaded on downers. Nothing took the edge off a night of snorting cocaine like booze or tranquilizers, and more than once his sexual drive had been blunted in the process. But that night, he was neither drunk nor loaded. No excuses. Only a sense of separateness. Of being too contaminated by his own sins to touch her.

Later, sitting in a bar, looking down into an empty glass, he had thought of how kind she had been about it, and how that had almost made it worse. He had left her and started drinking.

He wondered about Kit-who had killed-and if that killing bothered him. But even as he thought this, he knew their cases weren’t the same. Although Gabe hadn’t done any actual killing, in many ways, he felt that his hands had more blood on them than Kit’s. Even the police knew that Kit had acted out of desperation-he had never been arrested for killing his stepfather.

Gabe wondered if he had finally put himself beyond Kit’s forgiveness. He thought he might have placed himself beyond his own.

He wasn’t sure he could withstand escape much longer-he could manage to stay free, but why should he? He thought of Meghan and wondered what it would do to her if he chose one of the two options ultimately open to him-surrender or suicide.

As he leaned against the table in the bar, he felt the press of a pair of keys against his chest, keys he wore on a chain around his neck. One fitted the door to Meghan’s guest house. The other, he had never used.

Kit had given him that one, and the chain, almost five years ago. Kit had taken him to the large, relatively isolated cabin in the forest, a place then owned by his grandmother. He had invited Gabe to come to the cabin anytime he’d like, on two conditions. The first was that he not tell anyone else of its existence.

“My grandmother,” Kit said, “doesn’t come up here. She lets me use this place because she knows that sometimes I need…privacy.” In a wry voice he had added, “I’m so used to being in a fine and private place.”

Gabe hadn’t caught the allusion at the time.

The second condition for receiving the key was that whenever he made use of the cabin, he must not bring anyone with him.

“If I can’t tell anyone about it, I’m not likely to bring anyone,” Gabe had said impatiently.

“What I’m saying is, that’s why you should come here. You need to get away from other people. You need to learn how to be alone. One of the reasons you get in trouble is because you don’t know where others end and you begin.”

Gabe hadn’t liked hearing that, but he took the key, telling himself that Kit could go fuck himself, and that he’d plan a big fucking party up here, and tell everyone about the place, and to hell with all of that privacy shit.

But he never did any of those things, and he never took the key from around his neck. He had called Kit from time to time, usually to ask for money. They would catch up on each other’s news but didn’t speak of Kit’s offer to use the cabin or the key. In times of trouble, Gabe found himself fingering the chain.

Later, he added Meghan’s key to it. When women asked him to take the chain off, he’d smile and say he was a latchkey child and needed to be able to get back home again.

So on that January night in the bar, he had paid his tab and hitched rides until he reached Lake Arrowhead, and then, with nothing more than a light coat to protect him from the evening’s bitter cold, made his way to Blue Jay and then on to the cabin, a walk of several miles. He struggled through the snow on the front walk and fumbled with numb hands to use the key for the first time, smiling to himself at the thought that he hoped Kit had tested the damned thing before giving it to him.

The door opened easily. He flipped a switch. Lights came on. The place was dusty, but there was wood for a fire and dry clothing in the closet that fit him a little snugly but would do.

That was five months ago.

He thought Kit had probably forgotten by now that he had ever offered the use of the place. Gabe decided that he’d take advantage of this refuge until he figured out what to do next, or until Kit showed up and demanded that he leave.

The water had been turned off and drained from the pipes to keep them from breaking, but he found-to his surprise-a note addressed to him on yellowing paper, telling him how to turn the water supply on and off again, along with other information that would be helpful to him.

Gabe smiled to himself-he should have realized that Kit, always a move ahead of anyone else on the board, would have been prepared for any possibility, even that Gabe might return here one day.

Reading down the list, he discovered there were cupboards full of canned goods and other staples, including coffee. The second to the last line of the note was, “Try this sober, if you can. But if you can’t, you’re still welcome to stay as long as you need to.” The last one was, “So glad you made it here.”

He had looked outside just then and saw a deer standing in the moonlight. It stayed still for a long time, then moved off. He heard a soft creaking sound that unnerved him, until he remembered his earlier visit here, when Kit had taught him to listen to the snow.

“You wouldn’t think it makes noise,” he had said, “but it only looks quiet and still. It’s changing all the time.”