Primal Threat - Earl Emerson [6]
“Doesn’t say anything about cyclists, does it?” Zak said.
“Typically,” Stephens said, “they post a twenty-four-hour guard. But I don’t see him.” A steel gate had been swung across the road, and alongside the gate on a level piece of ground sat a black Ford Bronco coated in dust so thick, the windshield looked opaque.
“I don’t see a guard,” Muldaur whispered.
“I don’t see a guard,” Zak repeated as he dismounted and lifted his bike over the gate.
One by one the others followed. “I don’t see a guard,” said Morse, his voice softer than the others.
“Do you see a guard?” asked Giancarlo.
“Obviously…well, I mean, he’s probably asleep in the Bronco, wouldn’t you imagine?” Stephens asked, spoiling the joke for everyone.
As they rode up the steep hill and pedaled out of sight, they kept waiting for somebody to call them back, but all they heard was the soft crunch of tires in the dirt and the strong, hot wind blowing intermittent tornadoes of dust the height of theater curtains in front of them. The late-afternoon sun pounded their backs, and the heat flowing from the woods seemed almost too humid to inhale.
“It’s going to be great,” Muldaur said, speaking to no one in particular. “The whole area’s closed off, so we won’t have to worry about cars.”
Less than ten minutes later, after they’d gotten off the steepest part of the road and onto a rolling section, Zak sprinted from the rear to the front of the group. “Car back,” said Zak. “Car back.”
“It’s probably the guard,” said Muldaur. “Maybe we should duck into the woods.”
“I’m not hiding,” said Giancarlo. “If he wants to throw us out, let him have at it.”
They’d passed two gravel pits, a section of younger trees interspersed with hundreds of tall foxgloves gone to seed, and now were riding through a mature section of Douglas fir. If they were quick about it, they could conceal themselves in the woods alongside the road, and if they hiked far enough into the trees, they would avoid both the afternoon sun and the dust that coated everything within thirty yards of the road.
“The speed these guys are traveling,” Zak said, “they’re going to bury us in dust.”
“There’s more than one?” Morse asked, gasping for breath.
“At least two. Maybe three. Hear them?”
Traveling close to sixty and towing a gigantic plume of dust, the first vehicle, a white Land Rover, passed them on a section of small rolling hills. The fine-grained silt was light enough that even their bicycle tires were kicking it up, and when Zak looked down at his legs, his socks were tan with it. As the Land Rover overtook them, the air became saturated with a brown haze. Zak took a huge gulp of clean air and tried to hold his breath. In the miasma that was being created, the following vehicles had no way of knowing they were passing five bicyclists. It would be a miracle if one or more of them wasn’t run down, crushed, or annihilated without the drivers even knowing they’d hit anything. One or more of them would be hit and dragged for a quarter mile. Any second. There was no escape. To Zak’s mind, the actions of the first driver were criminal, the most reckless and infuriating driving he had encountered in a long time.
What saved their lives was Muldaur shouting “This way” as he bounced off the road, across a shallow ditch, over a log, and into the woods. All four riders followed in the nick of time as more vehicles roared past, four in all.
4
August
William Potter III’s entire life was blessed with luck, starting from the moment twenty years earlier when he’d dropped into the arms of the most expensive obstetrician in the state, and continuing as he rolled out of his playpen into the lap of a trust fund his grandfather set up for him and his sister, a fund that meant neither of them would ever work a day in their lives if they didn’t want to. Scooter, as he was affectionately known to friends and family, had decided a long time ago that only suckers worked for money. Sissie had taken