Gale Force Page 0,34

clearance. Those dozens told more dozens, who told their friends, who posted it in the Wardens chat room. . . ."

"So it's a dead end."

Yeah, and we might be the ones dead at the end of it. Wasn't sure I liked that symbolism.

I was on the verge of logging off the computer, but a word caught my eye on the Warden chat board. I frowned and scrolled back up, looking for it, and finally saw, in the message thread of people offering congratulations on the upcoming wedding, a single entry. You had to be registered for the Warden chat board, of course, and authenticated, but somehow, this particular entry had no name or IP address associated with it. What it said was, simply, It'll never happen.

I shivered. The Sentinels were at work.

"Bathroom," David announced, and I closed up the laptop and was unhooked before he'd screeched the Mustang to a stop in front of the gas pump of the BP station. I barely noticed the convenience store, except that as I frantically scanned the interior walls, the bored clerk took pity on me and pointed toward the rear of the store. Clearly, he knew the look.

I found the bathroom; it was unlocked and relatively clean, and all that mattered was the sweet, sweet relief. When I finished, I went to the sink and washed, studying my face in the mirror. I looked okay - a little thinner than usual, more angular, but not as haggard as I'd feared. Stress looked good on me; it always had. Lucky me. As a beauty treatment, though, it sucked.

Hmmm. Maybe some cold cream. And Ding Dongs.

I was gathering up sweet, snack-treat goodness and heading for the register when I felt . . . something. Not exactly trouble, but . . . something. It was subtle, but I'd definitely felt something shift, and not on a natural real-world level.

I put the food down on the counter, smiled meaninglessly, and wandered back toward the cold-drink case to give myself time to think. Time to track what was happening. The clerk must have thought I was giving the Pepsi-Coke debate serious consideration. I glanced over my shoulder and saw that David was gassing up the Mustang, eyes scanning the horizon but without any sign of worry or alarm.

So maybe this sudden foreboding was just my imagination working overtime. Maybe I was tired, on edge, and still recovering from my near miss.

A big semitruck eased into the parking lot. It was a tight fit; the place wasn't exactly a truck stop, and I wondered what he was doing. Maybe he needed a bathroom, too, or Ding Dongs. Everybody needed Ding Dongs, right? But no driver emerged from the shiny red cab; it just sat, shimmering in the overhead lights, idling.

I felt a chill. I grabbed a drink at random from the case and went back to the counter, threw money at the clerk, and continued to stare at the truck without blinking or looking away. Something. Something wrong.

David didn't seem alert to anything at all. He replaced the gas cap and stood next to the car, leaning on it, waiting for me to reappear.

"Your change," the clerk said, and pressed coins into my hand. I shoved it into my pocket without looking, grabbed the sack he handed over, and hurried outside. There was a cool breeze blowing in from the ocean. Couldn't see the shore from here, but the sound of the surf was a distant, low murmur.

I stopped, staring at the red truck, which continued to idle where it sat. Nothing intimidating about it, other than its size. But then again . . .

"Let's go," I said, and climbed into the passenger seat. David raised his eyebrows at my tone, which was fairly tense for somebody who'd achieved the desperately needed pit stop, but he got in the car and started it up. We pulled out onto the road in a smooth growl of acceleration, the tires biting and cornering perfectly.

Behind us, the semitruck lurched into gear and followed.

"Crap," I whispered, and turned in my seat to look behind us. "That truck - "

David glanced in the rearview mirror. "What about it?"

"Don't you think there's anything strange about it?"

"I think you're tired," he said. "And you're worried. Let me worry about keeping us safe."

"But - " I stopped myself, somehow, and managed a nod. "Okay. Just . . . keep an eye on it, would you?"

"Sure." He sounded indulgent and amused.

"David, I'm not kidding."

He gave me a