The Influence(113)

Ross didn’t like the way he said that. Not just the words but the tone made him uneasy, and he worried that he might be pushing his nephew back down the wrong path, like a person giving an alcoholic his first drink after a long stretch of sobriety. But he needed Kevin, and this was the only solution he could come up with that seemed like it might have even a slight chance to succeed.

“I’m heading out tomorrow morning. Do you think you can be ready by six? You don’t have a job or anything you have to go to?”

“No, dude, I’m cool. But isn’t six a little early?”

“I’m hoping it’s not a little late.”

Kevin nodded. “Okay. I’m in. You gonna pick me up here?”

“Sure.”

Kevin thought for a moment. “I may need to grab a few things up if we’re gonna do this.”

“Do you need me to take you there?”

“No, it’s all right. I have a couple of other…errands to run.” He smiled mysteriously, and Ross had the feeling he didn’t want to know what those “errands” were. “I’ll meet you here in the morning.”

“Do you need anything from me?” Ross asked. “Matches or anything?”

Kevin laughed. “Don’t worry, dude. I have it all covered.”

This might very well be the stupidest thing he’d ever done, Ross thought as he drove out of his nephew’s bad neighborhood toward a nicer area of the Valley where he could find a decent place to stay for the night. But at least he was doing something, and that alone made him feel better. Who was it who said all it took for evil to triumph was for good people to do nothing? He was out of that cycle now, he was acting, and if it turned out that he wasn’t part of the solution, at least he wasn’t part of the problem.

At the motel, Ross tried for the millionth time to call Jill’s cell phone, receiving only the familiar busy signal. He tried their house, then called her parents, but no one answered in San Diego, and Jill’s mother refused to talk to him and hung up.

Ross then called McDaniels, unsure if he would answer, unsure if he would still be in town—

unsure if he would still be alive

—but the handyman answered the phone on the first ring, almost as though he had been waiting for the call. Ross breathed an inward sight of relief. He explained to McDaniels that he and his nephew Kevin were coming to Magdalena in the morning and that Kevin was an expert in fire and arson. “We’re going to burn that thing up until it’s nothing but ashes, and then we’ll scatter those ashes to the wind. There won’t be a molecule left of it to harm a fly.”

The other man didn’t sound convinced. “Cameron’s ranch is guarded. There’s no way you’ll be able to get to it. And don’t you think the angel’ll know that you’re comin’ and what you plan to do? If it don’t know already?”

“I’m trusting my nephew,” Ross said. “Besides, I made it out there before. Jorge even opened the doors and showed it to us. I think…I think maybe it counts on being able to influence or control whoever comes near it, to kind of override the people it comes in contact with.”

“Well, how you gonna make sure that don’t happen?”

“Hatred,” Ross said. “That’ll keep me going.”

“Well, there’s plenty a that to go around.”

Ross didn’t respond. McDaniels’ questions had him worried. He hated to admit it, but almost none of the handyman’s qualms had occurred to him, and he wondered what else he might be missing. He was going off half-cocked here, not thinking things through, which was totally out of character. He was a planner, a details guy, an almost obsessively logical thinker. He wasn’t someone who just had an idea and, on the spur of the moment, acted on it.

Maybe the monster did know he was coming.

And was playing with him.

“Is your friend still there?” Ross asked. “The sharpshooter?”

“Far as I know.”

“We may need him. You think he’d be willing to help us out?”

McDaniels thought for a moment. “I don’t know, to be honest. We were gonna try and shoot it. But when we got there and saw it, all of us pussied out. Can’t say that won’t happen again.”

“Do you think you can get him to try?”

“I’ll give it a shot.” He let out a surprised chuckle. “A shot. That’s kind of a joke, ain’t it?”

“Yeah,” Ross said.

By his calculations, driving the maximum speed limit on the highway, ignoring the speed limit once he got on the road to Magdalena, he and Kevin should be there about nine or nine-thirty, ten at the very latest. He and McDaniels made arrangements to meet at the bar downtown, assuming it was safe, and by the side of the road at the edge of town if it was not; the determination to be made by the handyman, who promised to try and convince his friend Hec to come along.