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The sound stopped abruptly when the dog turned away froo area

Brian beca slowly from the hush into which he had not until now realized that it had fallen

He closed the tailgate and went around to the front passenger door Amy had expressed the desire to drive

In the car, on the open road, they would have privacy Secrets could more easily be shared

On the interstate, bound for the storied city, she was silent for a while but then said, "When I was eighteen, I land He probably intended to kill me from the day that I accepted his proposal"

Chapter 54

The previous evening, when he had shot Gunny Schloss, Billy had killed his third person since dawn, having also assisted in two other homicides When he should have been full of one out of the day and all the frolic out of hi the dog’s stare on the back of his head even after he turned the corner, he decided the probleht be that he had killed those people solely for business reasons He hadn’t wasted any of them just for a lark, simply as an expression of his conviction that life was a parade of foolsto no purpose

Shumpeter had not been a business associate, but he had not been killed as an act of less violence, either Billy blew him away for his Cadillac and to use his house as a furnace in which to obliterateevidence

To his chagrin, Billy realized that he had lost his way He had gotten so consumed by business that he’d strayed froiven him such a happy and successful life He had beco, organ dealing, and other enterprises that he had succumbed to the idea that what he didhe did to earn al, he could not see one lick of difference between hi soacy!

He was eeois, seduced by the illusion of purpose and acco away fro, he had told himself that the tonic most certain to ier selected on a whiless and dark-comic nature of life

He had been correct Aood advice more than half a day later

With the Learjet, he could leapfrog over McCarthy and Redwing, and be waiting at the interception point long before they arrived He had ti lot, Billy opened the weapons case He snapped the thirty-three-round azine into the 9-mm Glock 18 and screwed on the sound suppressor

Then he cruised

During the next half hour, he encountered nu elderly woirl in a wheelchair A beautiful young wo bued JUST SAY NO TO DRUGS and ABSTINENCE ALWAYS WORKS

When he failed to work up the energy to pull the trigger on a youngtwo infants in a tande alot, he unscrewed the silencer froazine, and returned everything to the molded-foam niches in the suitcase

He had never been so scared in his life

When he coer than a few days, perhaps a month He would live the entire time as Tyrone Slothrop, and would reread all the classics that had liberated hieneration of alienated, bitter, ironic, angry, nihilistic writers with a coiants who had co hi, he could have unwittingly been starving his mind

He returned to the airport, where the Lear waited

At Billy’s request, the steith the British accent prepared Chivas Regal over cracked ice

Lunch, served high above the earth, was a chopped salad with breast of capon and quail’s eggs

Billy sipped Scotch, ate, and brooded He did not pick up any lance at thehis scent through the open SUVHe did not weep Not a single tear Histo worry about A bu toward the city where so many people had claimed to have left their hearts, A;, she won a scholarship from a major university Because it was partial, she had to support herself

For two years in high school, she had worked part-tiood tips

When she went away to university, she landed a job in an upscale steakhouse There she ular custoht years her senior

He was char and intense, but when he asked her out, she did not initially accept the invitation He proved to be indefatigable

Aht she knehat she wanted: a first-rate education, including a doctorate, a career as a professor, a quiet academic life with many friends, and an opportunity to enrich the lives of students as the sisters of Misericordiæ had enriched hers

Michael Cogland not only persisted until he swept her out of her waitressing shoes, but he also swept her into a world of wealth that she found irresistibly seductive

Later she would realize that being abandoned at the age of tith only the clothes she wore, having lost the Harkinsons and the solidbeen raised in an orphanage, she had grown up with a thirst for security that had not been quenched by all the love that the sisters had rained on her She had gotten along for eighteen years without ht that poverty-and the coainst an unhealthy desire forfor security and, with subtlety and cunning, had presented her with a vision of a cozy future that she could not resist

Because she was a irl, he treated her with respect, too, and delayed a physical relationship until they were ed two months after they met, and were married in four She dropped out of university and into a life of leisure

He wanted a fanant But there would be a nanny, h Michael was a rich reatest wealth was held in trust By the terrandfather’s will, those funds would pass to him only on two conditions: Before his thirtieth birthday, he irl acceptable to his parents, and he randfather, if not also his parents, had seen in him, even when he’d been a boy, a tendency toward bad attitudes and ill-considered actions As the Coglands had been a scandal-free fa sense of coood wife and children to settle a ave birth to a daughter when she was nineteen, and for a while all seeun Michael came into his inheritance-and still she didn’t know that she had been the vehicle by which he obtained it

Gradually, she began to see in hiht she married The better she knew hienuine, the more it appeared to be a tool for manipulation His warm manner wore thin, and a colder oatish streak, and he jumped the fence to more than a few other women Twice she found evidence, but in most cases she knew the truth not from facts but froinning of their third year

By the tiun to stayoceanfront property on which a handsohtkeeper’s house The lighthouse itself, while owned by the Coglands, had long been autoineers who flew to the site in a helicopter

Michael was content to remain in the city He visited as seldoe, but his desire for her faded so that even during his visits, he often slept in his own room He seemed to view her with a contempt that she had not earned and could not understand

She remained married to him solely for the sake of their one child, whom Amy loved desperately and whom she wanted to raise in the stable faeneration after generation In truth, she told herself that she reed in self-delusion