Two weeks earlier, Jane had paid cash for the Ford in Nogales, Arizona, which was directly across the international border from Nogales, Mexico. The car had been stolen in the United States, given new engine-block numbers and more horsepower in Mexico, and returned to the States for sale. The dealer’s showrooms were a series of barns on a former horse ranch; he never advertised his inventory, never issued a receipt or paid taxes. Upon request, he provided Canadian license plates and a guaranteed-legitimate registration card from the Department of Motor Vehicles for the province of British Columbia.
When dawn came, she was still in Arizona, racing westward on Interstate 8. The night paled. As the sun slowly cleared the horizon in her wake, the high feathery cirrus clouds ahead of her pinked before darkening to coralline, and the sky waxed through shades of increasingly intense blue.
Sometimes on long drives, she wanted music. Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Mozart, Chopin, Liszt. This morning she preferred silence. In her current mood, even the best of music would sound discordant.
Forty miles past sunrise, she crossed the state line into southernmost California. During the following hour, the high white fleecy clouds lowered and congested and grayed into woolpack. After another hour, the sky had grown darker, swollen, malign.
Near the western periphery of the Cleveland National Forest, she exited the interstate at the town of Alpine, where General Gordon Lambert had lived with his wife. The previous evening, Jane had consulted one of her old but useful Thomas Guides, a spiral-bound book of maps. She was sure she knew how to find the house.
In addition to other modifications made to the Ford Escape in Mexico, the entire GPS had been removed, including the transponder that allowed its position to be tracked continuously by satellite and other means. There was no point in being off the grid if the vehicle you drove was Wi-Fied to it with every turn of the wheels.
Although rain was as natural as sunshine, although Nature functioned without intentions, Jane saw malice in the coming storm. Lately, her love of the natural world had at times been tested by a perception, perhaps irrational but deeply felt, that Nature was colluding with humanity in enterprises wicked and destructive.
5
* * *
FOURTEEN THOUSAND SOULS lived in Alpine, a percentage of them sure to believe in fate. Fewer than three hundred were from the Viejas Band of Kumeyaay Indians, who operated the Viejas Casino. Jane had no interest in games of chance. Minute by minute, life was a continuous rolling of the dice, and that was as much gambling as she could handle.
Graced with pines and live oaks, the central business district was frontier-town quaint. Certain buildings actually dated to the Old West, but others of more recent construction aped that style with varying degrees of success. The number of antiques stores, galleries, gift shops, and restaurants suggested year-round tourism that predated the casino.
San Diego, the eighth largest city in the country, was less than thirty miles and eighteen hundred feet of elevation away. Wherever at least a million people lived in close proximity to one another, a significant portion needed, on any given day, to flee the hive for a place of less busy buzzing.
The white-clapboard black-shuttered Lambert residence stood on the farther outskirts of Alpine, on approximately half an acre of land, the front yard picket-fenced, the porch furnished with wicker chairs. The flag was at full mast on a pole at the northeast corner of the house, the red-and-white fly billowing gently in the breeze, the fifty-star canton pulled taut in full display against the curdled, brooding sky.
The twenty-five-mile-per-hour speed limit allowed Jane to cruise past slowly without appearing to be canvassing the place. She saw nothing out of the ordinary. But if they suspected that she might come here because of the bond she shared with Gwyneth Lambert, they would be circumspect almost to the point of invisibility.
She passed four other houses before the street came to a dead end. There, she turned and parked the Escape on the shoulder of the lane, facing back the way she had come.
These homes stood on the brow of a hill with a view of El Capitan Lake. Jane followed a dirt path down through an open woods and then along a treeless slope green with maiden grass that would be as gold as wheat by midsummer. At the shore, she walked south, surveying the lake, which looked both placid and disarranged because the rumpled-laundry clouds were reflected in the serene mirrored surface. She gave equal attention to the houses on her left, gazing up as if admiring each.
Fences indicated that the properties occupied only the scalped-flat lots at the top of the hill. The white pickets at the front of the Lambert house were repeated all the way around.
She walked behind two more residences before returning to the Lambert place and climbing the slope. The back gate featured a simple gravity latch.
Closing the gate behind her, she considered the windows, from which the draperies had been drawn aside and the blinds raised to admit as much of the day’s dreary light as possible. She could see no one gazing out at the lake—or on the watch for her.
Committed now, she followed the pickets around the side of the house. As the clouds lowered and the flag rustled in a breeze that smelled faintly of either the rain to come or the waters of the lake, she climbed the porch steps and rang the bell.
A moment later, a slim, attractive, fiftyish woman opened the door. She wore jeans, a sweater, and a knee-length apron decorated with needlepoint strawberries.
“Mrs. Lambert?” Jane asked.
“Yes?”
“We have a bond that I hope I can call upon.”
Gwyneth Lambert raised a half smile and her eyebrows.
Jane said, “We both married Marines.”
“That’s a bond, all right. How can I help you?”
“We’re also both widows. And I believe we have the same people to blame for that.”
6
* * *
THE KITCHEN SMELLED OF ORANGES. Gwyn Lambert was baking mandarin-chocolate muffins in such quantity and with such industry that it was impossible not to suppose that she was busying herself as a defense against the sharper edges of her grief.
On the counters were nine plates, each holding half a dozen fully cooled muffins already covered in plastic wrap, destined for her neighbors and friends. A tenth plate of still-warm treats stood on the dinette table, and another batch was rising to perfection in the oven.
Gwyn was one of those impressive kitchen masters who produced culinary wonders with no apparent aftermath. No dirty mixing bowls or dishes in the sink. No flour dusting the counters. No crumbs or other debris on the floor.
Having declined a muffin, Jane accepted a mug of strong black coffee. She and her hostess sat across the table from each other, fragrant steam rising languidly off the rich brew.
“Did you say your Nick was a lieutenant colonel?” Gywn asked.
Jane had used her real name. The bond between her and Gwyn required this visit be kept secret. Under these circumstances, if she couldn’t trust a Marine wife, she couldn’t trust anyone.
“Full colonel,” Jane corrected. “He wore the silver eagle.”
“At only thirty-two? A boy with that kind of pep in his step would’ve gotten stars in time.”
Gwyn’s husband, Gordon, had been a lieutenant general, three stars, one rank below the highest officers in the corps.
Jane said, “Nick was awarded the Navy Cross and a DDS plus an entire chest full of other stuff.” The Navy Cross was one step below the Medal of Honor. Innately modest, Nick had never spoken of his medals and commendations, but sometimes Jane felt the need to brag about him, to confirm that he had existed and that his existence had made the world a better place. “I lost him four months ago. We were married six years.”
“Honey,” said Gwyn, “you must have been a true child bride.”
“Far from it. Twenty-one. The wedding was the week after I graduated Quantico and made the Bureau.”