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Still, he thought with false cheer, thatwould be that er Vic had to wait the angrier he would get And like the Incredible Hulk, the ot the harder he hit

A few cars passed hihts he tensed…but the tow-​truck did not return and after a while Mike didn’t even bother to stop when he heard an engine or the whine of tires on the blacktop

Mike had given up on his futile atte that had happened to hiht anyway How can you not think about so to kill you? Or about a deer that had done the things that big white one had done? So, instead of denial he decided to apply logic to theto think about other than the pain in his ribs or Vic’s i fury Mike was se, and he knew the rudi hills he tried to apply what he’d learned from Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot, from Spenser and Elvis Cole He remembered Holmes’s axiom that once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however unlikely, must be the truth The problem was that he had two inexplicable mysteries to unravel, and in neither case could he si white deer made no sense at all He twisted that into all sorts of shapes in his mind and it just stayed as weird and i deer had jumped out of the woods by the site of the car wreck and when Mike had tried to edge past it the deer had simply chased him off There was no other way to look at that The deer had frickin’ growled at hi of that, Sherlock, he thought Mike lived in Pine Deep He’d seen a zillion deer, fro bucks, seen them by ones and twos and seen them by the dozen, but never had he seen a pure white one, and never had he heard of one chasing anyone It was always the other way around Sure, he’d heard stories of a buck or doe chasing off a dog that was sniffing after a fawn…but this was co a person off From the scene of a car wreck What the hell did that mean? His inner Sherlock Holmes was at a loss for words

Then there was the tow-​truck That didn’t seem to make much sense either After all, the driver of the tow-​truck had tried to run hione out of his way to do so Try as he ht, Mike just could not see it any other way, but that was ridiculous Why would someone do that? Not even Vic had ever tried to kill him and Vic really hated him

Suddenly an icy hand closed around Mike’s heart and he stopped pedaling for a moment He leaned over onto one foot, motionless by the side of the road, and stared into the darkness as he reviehat he’d just thought Vic really hated hih But how much did he hate him? Vic was a mechanic and he worked for Shanahan’s Auto Shanahan probably owned a tow-​truck Mike sed a lump the size of a fist and turned back the way he’d co at the stretch of road until it vanished into shadows behind him

Had that been Vic in the tow-​truck?

The late Septe his sweat to ice Eliminate the impossible and whatever remains must be the truth

Could that have been Vic?

"Jesus Christ…" he said, and the wind snatched at his words, pulling the teeth Terror welled up in hiht that Vic ht want him dead, or the fact that the concept didn’t really shock him He turned to face the road ahead Ho Still, if Vic was the driver of that tow-​truck, would that beating turn into soreasy slush

Mike licked his lips and got back on his bike, started to pedal slowly up the hill His heart was ha now and the sweat on his face turned to ice The bike wobbled as the first wave of the shakes shuddered through hitime friend--seemed suddenly full of invisible threat He looked at the rustling waves of corn that flanked the road for as far as the eye could see and had the sudden and irrational fear that they atching him The stalks swayed hypnotically in the breath of the stor flashed overhead its white fire danced on the razor-​edged leaves of each swaying stalk He was surrounded by an army of shadowy creatures ars puained speed up the hill

He was nearing Shandy’s Curve, one of many hairpin turns on A-32, and he slowed because there was no light to see the road and he didn’t want to go sailing off the side down onto the rocks Shandy’s Curve was the one place Mike hated to pass, especially when there was traffic, because the thick brush on either side of the curve hid the glow of oncoends about ghosts haunting the site of fatal car crashes were true, then the area around the curve was populated by enough specters to fill a graveyard Mike’s own father had died there, though Mike did not know that John Sweeney had been co home late fro place He and his battered old Malibu had gone sailing off the edge and had fallen forty feet down into the gully between the Maplewhites’ cornfield and the lower thirty of the Andersens’ garlic farm All Mike knew of his father was that he had died in a car crash