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I mean, I could do it myself during the week.”
    â€œActually, I could use the exercise.” She stood up. “Glass of wine?”
    â€œHalf one. I’m going back to work.”
    â€œLike that’s stopping me.” She poured the glasses and brought them back. “I’ll tell the boss that I had to have a drink because I just found out I’m in the middle of a Hitchcock movie where my boyfriend the writer is going to lure me out into the woods and dismember me.”
    â€œI’ll be gentle and clean up afterwards. But that’s a Stephen King movie, not Hitchcock.”
    â€œIt’s Stephen King if the script possesses him and makes him act it out. It’s Hitchcock if he’s just fucking crazy.” We clinked glasses.
    â€œEarly Saturday, then? You could spend Friday night here.”
    â€œOh, goodie. I’ve never slept with an axe murderer.” She faked a three-syllable orgasm. “I’ll put my bike in the car and bring it over after work. Movie and dinner?”
    â€œGood. I’ll see where the Trail comes closest. Maybe Ames. We can use my van.”
    â€œHow do we handle that? I mean, it won’t come when you whistle.”
    â€œJust pedal a half day or so and stop at a motel. Take the same route in reverse on Sunday, drive home.”
    â€œOkay. If it’s the Bates Motel, though, I’m not going in.”
    â€œSee? You do know horror movies.”
    â€œJust Hitchcock.” She shuddered, or pretended to. “Could we talk about the weather, like normal people?”
    â€œHow ’bout them Hawkeyes?”

CHAPTER FOUR
    There was no actual road or driveway to Hunter’s lair. He had planted scrub pines across the original dirt road years before, and there was no trace of it anymore. You had to weave through trees to get there, and he meticulously alternated among a dozen different entrance points, so there was nothing like a path leading over the rise to the double-wide trailer that squatted hidden among a stand of ancient live oaks.
    He maneuvered the van carefully through a mile of forest, mindful not to leave any broken saplings or flattened bushes. He parked the van under a lean-to of camouflage netting adjacent to the trailer, which was covered with the same stuff, made of immortal plastic.
    He got out finishing the last of six Big Macs that came from the place in Macon where he usually bought lunch when he ate out. He carried three pizzas up the groaning stairs, for later. He always bought them at the same Pizza Hut, down the block from the McDonald’s. He was known as a local character at fast-food joints more than fifty miles from where he actually lived and worked.
    The double-wide had only two rooms, one of which was a large meat locker. The other room had a kitchen with a large professional range and oversized reinforced bed, chairs, shower, and toilet, with a long stainless steel worktable. A rolltop desk painted black sat at one end of the room, under a framed Star Trek poster and diagrams of male and female anatomy. All the other walls were solid with cheap metal bookcases crammed with science fiction paperbacks. All the books’ spines were lined up exactly. All the metal surfaces glistened and the bed was made up with hospital precision. The tile floor was spotless and gleamed with wax.
    He set the pizzas on the stove and emptied a tray of ice cubes into a large ceramic mug. He filled it partway with Coke from a plastic gallon container. Then he snapped the top off a half-gallon bottle of Old Crow bourbon and topped off the mug. He turned on a small TV mounted over the range and stirred the drink methodically.
    Five minutes till six. He wouldn’t be on the news yet, but he always checked. He sipped at the bourbon and Coke and ate half of one of the pizzas while he watched the inconsequential goings-on that consumed normal people’s time—weather and war and human interest. He did have a