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inch of the way. He’d hesitated, feeling all of a sudden weak as a kitten, shaky in the legs, the Louisville Slugger no longer the avenging jawbone of Samson’s ox but a thousand-pound weight riding over him and bearing down.
    Thank god for Carole.
    Howard was stronger than some soft businessman who owned an eighty-condo, eighty-four-room ski resort had any right to be. He’d damn near botched it.
    And then where would they be?
    In jail.
    If there was one thing Howard had plenty of it was lawyers.
    He slipped on the new pair of running shoes he’d bought a week ago for exactly this very occasion, for this morning, and laced them up. The old ones were ashes in the furnace along with the baseball bat and the rest of yesterday’s clothes, both his own and Carole’s. His first order of business today would be to clean that out thoroughly, bag the ashes and deposit them in Little River.
    But then after that they had the whole long day ahead of them.
    And another. And another.
    He really hadn’t been kidding about the movie.
    They needed something to get their minds off things. Carole was in no shape to go visit somebody and neither was he to tell the truth, and this was no good place to just sit around all day. Sooner or later they were going to get on each other’s nerves, they’d have trouble standing each other’s company. Their exclusive company. A drive through the countryside was out of the question for the same reason.
    No. They should just hit a movie. Sit in the dark for a couple of hours and let somebody else’s daydreams or even their nightmares wash on over them. Have dinner at some restaurant and then come home to bed.
    Sleep maybe.
    And wait.
    He hoped that when this was over they’d have a sex life again. They didn’t now. They’d barely touched since Thursday. It was a first for them. And it was perverse, really, because they needed to be closer than ever now. And along with simply having her—having her his and around him all the time, to look at and be with and touch and to be honest, having her lifestyle too and the freedom, cash and time to do whatever the hell they wanted to do together—he counted on the sex. He needed the sex.
    It was part of what had got him here.
    He knew that now. He hadn’t at the time.
    He wondered if he resented her for that. That hold on him.
    It was disconcerting. Like being a kid again who couldn’t handle the raging hormones. No one else had ever brought that out in him to such a degree or sustained it for so long. Not like Carole.
    He walked past her sitting in the kitchen in front of the empty cup of coffee right where he’d left her and went down the stairs to the basement.
    To bag what was left of Saturday.
    He would deal with Carole later. He’d find some way to deal with her. Coach her, reassure her. He had to.
    First things first.

CHAPTER FOUR
    It was a slow night and Wayne noticed them the minute they walked in the restaurant.
    From then on it was hard to pay attention to his customers. So it was just as well there were only a few of them.
    He felt almost as excited as he had back on the mountain. He was watching two people who had killed somebody go about their business as though nothing had happened, sitting not twenty-five feet away from him in their little alcove and ordering from the same menu as everybody else in there, as the old couple behind them and the family of four and the three yuppie banker types across the room.
    Phenomenal!
    It was just before nine when they arrived and Lacy, the new girl, was waiting their table, looking cute and trim in her regulation Trapp-family Alpine skirt, puff-sleeved blouse and suspenders. They ordered two drinks each—Bloody Marys for her and Dewars rocks for him. He thought that the woman looked a little haggard, a little strained, but she was dressed very nicely in a red silk blouse and dark-colored skirt, black or navy, with dangly silver earrings and silver bracelets on her wrists. Her hair was dark and