Chapter 17

Diamond hard, glittering stars shone in the immense blue-black void of the winter sky. On the snowy hillside below, among the pines, the woman ran, clasping the bundle to her.

She seemed weightless--an angel perhaps--for as she ran, she left no mark on the freshly fallen snow. It was as if she had never passed over the earth.

The low moan of the wind rose in pitch and tone, and swirls of snow scudded across the frozen ground. The wind tugged at the woman's hair, and sent her auburn curls spilling down her back.

Don't do it, he thought. We can still mend the past.

A sob escaped the woman's lips. The hillside became steeper, more unforgiving. Gauzy clouds slid across the moon, and a hard, dry snow began to fall. The woman reached the creek that thundered through the valley.

Don't, he thought again. That water must be freezing. . .the wind is so cold. . .the current rushes so. . .

The woman stooped down and placed the bundle in the water. It bobbed there for a moment, hesitating, and then it sped away on the current, plunging into the darkness that lay further down the valley.

With a serpentine hiss and a belch of steam, the overturned car surfaced in the stream, like a submarine coming up for air. The bundle bumped against its side once, twice, and then it was swept into the open driver's side window. The car sank back into the water.

The woman on the bank screamed a silent scream, and frozen tears clung to the sides of her cheeks, made ruddy from the cold. Then, from the rush of the chilling torrent, sprang the form of a man, a man as pale and icy as the wilderness around him. The unearthly blue of his eyes shone in the dim starlight, and he moved, lithe as a panther. He grabbed the woman about the ankles, and pulled her down into the gurgling stream. All was soon quiet.

No, he thought in horror. No!

Simon Waterbury bolted awake in his room at the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale, Arizona, gasping for breath. The heart monitor beside his bed beat feverishly for a few seconds, and then resumed its steady, rhythmic pulse.

It was just a dream, he thought. Only a dream. He settled back into the mammoth hospital bed. On the far side of the room, Vesper stirred on the plump and flowery sofa. She had fallen asleep, and the latest issue of Vanity Fair lay spread on her flat stomach.

"Simon?" she asked sleepily, her voice husky and raw, "Darling, is everything all right?"

"Yes, fine," he answered quietly. Then, he sighed a long, long sigh. "Just another bad dream."

"You poor darling," Vesper said as she slid off the couch and approached his bedside. "Do you want me to call the nurse? Perhaps she can give you another one of those delightful little pills to help you sleep." Vesper's voice sounded weary, dull, thin. She hadn't seemed herself in weeks.

"I'm fine, Ms. Shillington." Simon cleared his throat. His eyes drifted shut. "Vesper, it's New Year's Eve. Why don't you go back to your hotel or out to a club?"

"In this city?" she asked bitterly, the familiar knife-edge of sarcasm returning to her voice.

Simon chuckled quietly. "Well, at least go get some sleep. .. or seduce one of the young doctors on duty."

"No, darling," she said, laying her cool palm on his forehead. "No, I'll stay here with you."

"Vesper, when I get out of here, you're taking your vacation. I'm so sorry to have ruined your holiday. The company can run itself for a month. You deserve a break and you need your rest."

"Thank you, darling," she said dully. "Now get some sleep. I'm going to get some of that awful concoction they call coffee around here." She left his bedside and headed for the door.

"Vesper, " Simon said, "thank you."

She left him.

Lying alone in his hospital bed, two fat tears slid out of Simon Waterbury's eyes.

*****

Will took another sip of wine and cleared his throat.

"Meow," he said tentatively. Then, a little louder: "Meow!" And then, full voice: "Meee-ooooooow!"

All over the house, like a bunch of cuckoo clocks in perfect synchronization, all the little dogs began to bark. The formerly quiet night was rent with piercing, yelping barks.

Will laughed. He laughed so hard that his arm, in its leaden cast, began to throb painfully.

"Shit," he muttered, as he plopped down on the couch in Mr. and Mrs. Dial's formal living room. . .the only room in the house that didn't have one, two, or three Maltese dogs in it. Because of his allergies, it was the only room Will could stand to be in.

Laura had always thought that her mother was a trifle eccentric. She had, as Laura explained, always had fascinations and fads. When Laura was in junior high, her mother had gone through a sewing craze. She had sewn everything. . .from her family's clothes to table cloths to Christmas tree skirts to boat covers. Later, Mrs. Dial had passed into a candy making phase, where she poured literally thousands of dollars into rare and flavorful chocolates, chocolate sculpting tools, and molds for every occasion.

Then, nine years ago, when Laura left for college, Mrs. Dial had suffered some sort of acute empty nest syndrome, and she had begun breeding dogs. But she didn't really breed them, however; she collected them. First there were five. Then there were fifteen. Now there were forty-seven.

In the house.

Will had explained it to Laura as "prairie madness," a sad reaction to boredom and isolation that women (albeit mostly women in the nineteenth century) had to the harsh and unforgiving life on the Midwestern prairie.

As he stared out the bay window behind the couch, he could almost understand Mrs. Dial's malaise. Not a tree or a house broke the broad sweep of land that stretched away to the horizon, seeming to glow in the pale moonlight.

Better watch out, Gilbert. You could be suffering from prairie madness soon.

He was worried. Mostly, he was worried about Laura. After their car accident on Thanksgiving night, they had had a brief hospital stay in Edwardsville, Illinois--Will for his broken arm and a dangerously scratched eye, and Laura for a nasty concussion and some bruised ribs--and then they had been spirited away to Ma and Pa Dial's house in western Iowa.

The car was totaled. Most of their belongings were lost or ruined. They were wasting precious time. And Laura was losing it.

After having nearly spent a decade running away from prairie life, she was back in Iowa, with no immediate and foreseeable means of escape. . .which was just where her mother wanted her.

For the past month, Laura had spent her days writing letters, attempting to fundraise, trying desperately to devise some means of egress from the plains. She had studied Sooner than Never for hours at a time, and had told Will, in private, that she was almost certain that their next destination should be Beaver Creek, Colorado, the town with the highest elevation in the continental US. Will had broken into chorus after chorus of "Top of the World" when she revealed it to him.

They knew where they had to go, but they couldn't get there. Will's arm was still mending, ceaseless blizzards were ravaging the prairie, and they had no means of transportation. On numerous occasions, Will had suggested "borrowing" her parents' car and escaping in the dead of night like common thieves, but Laura was afraid that her mother would report them to police, and not bail them out if they were caught.

Meanwhile, in New York, Rachel East and some of their other friends had started up a "Will and Laura Fan Club," and slowly, donations were starting to trickle in to help them buy a new car. Their mid-December interview with Barbara Walters, complete with yipping dogs in the background, was also drumming up interest in them. They would be able to leave. . .eventually. Will just hoped it was before Laura killed her mother, or forty-seven little dogs.

Tonight, Mrs. Dial had dragged her daughter to a New Year's Eve potluck at their church. There would be hotdish, prayers, and a delicious glass of sparkling grape juice at midnight. Will had gotten out of it by graciously volunteering to stay home and dog-sit. Mrs. Dial had been somewhat relieved; several of her neighbors had slyly commented that Will seemed a trifle "light in his loafers."

He looked across the room at the mirror hanging above the upright piano. His eye patch gave him a vaguely piratical look. "Aaaargh," he said softly, taking another sip of wine.

"To 1998," he said, raising his glass to the empty room, "what a nasty bitch you were." That suddenly seemed much too gloom and doom for the occasion. He took a big gulp of wine and then raised his glass again:

"To the mysterious stranger who pulled us from the fiery wreck of our car and used a cell phone to call an ambulance, whoever you are."

*****

Faye, Christine, and Holly crowded around their television set in Evanston, watching the thousands of revelers who had joined Dick Clark in Times Square. Christine raised her glass.

"Ladies, to prosperity, possibilities, and pleasures in 1999."

"To 1999," Faye and Holly echoed.

"And," said Holly, giving Faye's arm a little squeeze, "to our fearless roomie who is safe and sound, who managed to sleep through the robbing and ransacking of our beloved home, thus keeping herself out of harm's way."

Faye sheepishly smiled, opened her mouth as if to speak, then closed it again.

"Freak," said Christine, giving her a playful smack on the head. "Only you could sleep through the highest drama of the past year."

*****

Vesper stood puffing a scented pink cigarette on a concrete patio behind the Mayo Clinic. The desert hills rose up around her, covered with scrub and cacti. To her, the place looked like the surface of the moon.

She was numb, dog-tired, and overwhelmingly depressed. She had an indistinct but constant sense that her life was falling away, one piece at a time, and that Simon Waterbury was responsible for it. What was he up to? What did he know? Did he trust her? Was he trying to drive her over the edge? A month ago, she had been certain that he had found her out, that he knew everything and intended to destroy her. But since his heart attack, he had seemed so kind, so gentle. . .almost fatherly.

It was just about as much as she could bear. She pulled a wee bottle of Jose Cuervo from the pocket of her hot pink designer jogging suit and downed it swiftly. She fished in her pocket for another and was sad to see that it was empty.

Her pinkish lower lip pouted outward, like a child. She wanted a drink terribly. She stamped her foot in irritation, and thought she was going to cry.

Pull yourself together, she hissed inwardly. This is no time to be wallowing in booze and self-pity. She wiped her eyes stoically, took a deep breath, and threw her empty bottles into the brush.

"No more liquor, no more pills," she said to the desert moon. "In 1999, Vesper Shillington will be out for will be out for blood. Blood! And woe to those who try and stop her!"

Some desert animal scuttled about in the brush. A Gila monster, perhaps. Vesper shrieked, spun on her heel, and ran pell-mell back into the Clinic.

She hated Arizona.

*****

Will woke from his comfy, Zinfandel induced slumber on the couch, and glanced at the clock. Eleven thirty.

Damn, he thought. Had he missed the New Year in Times Square? Did they show the tape on delay here, so that the people in this part of the world could feel like they were part of the action? What time zone was he in?

Terribly discombobulated by his little nap, he crossed to the television and flicked it on, hoping to catch a glimpse of his adoptive home on CNN. A giddy, blondish reporter smiled at the camera.

". . . and the reports have just come in saying that Al and Mary Lou Heiligman, retirees from Banning, California, have found the next clue in the Simon Waterbury/ Sooner Than Never treasure hunt in a small town in the Colorado Rockies. At this hour, details are still sketchy as to exactly what they have found. This is the first development in the nationwide contest since a Thanksgiving Day discovery at the Clark Street bridge in downtown Chicago. Would-be treasure hunters only have 365 days left to find the treasure, as millionaire mogul Simon Waterbury will call off the search at midnight on December 31, 1999. More news coming up soon."

Will's jaw gaped. Then, he shouted.

"1999, you're off to a pretty shitty start!"

His resounding curse was echoed by the yowls of countless little dogs.

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