“Just a minute.” Adrenaline surging, he was squinting out at the perimeter of the area, checking for any movement. Also checking the little fires, many of which now seemed to be dying out in the damp treated lumber almost as quickly as they were ignited.

“Why?” There was a desperation in Kyle’s question that made Gurney respond.

“I don’t know. Same purpose as the flat tire, maybe? He wants me out there? He seems to be in a hurry.”

“Jesus! You mean he was just … just out there himself … planting a bomb?”

“Maybe earlier, while I was at the Winklers’, before you got back from Syracuse.”

“Jesus. A bomb? With a timer?”

“More likely a cell phone detonator. More controllable, more precise.”

“So … what now?”

“Where are the keys to your motorcycle?”

“In the ignition. Why?”

“Follow me.”

Crawling, he led Kyle across the floor and out of the room—now flickeringly illuminated through the glass doors by the burning lumber strewn outside—down the back hallway into the dark den. He felt his way around the furniture to the north window, lifted the blinds, opened it, and, with the Beretta still in his hand, eased himself carefully out onto the ground.

Kyle did the same.

Fifty feet ahead of them, between the house and the high pasture, there was a small hardwood thicket, just barely visible at the outer edge of the faint light cast by the fire, where Gurney sometimes parked his rider mower. He pointed at the black bulk of a giant oak. “Directly behind that tree there are two boulders, with some space between them. Slip into that space and stay there until I call you.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to neutralize the problem.”

“What?”

“No time to explain. Just do as I say. Please.” He pointed again, more urgently. “Over there. Behind the tree. Between the boulders. We’re running out of time. Now!”

Kyle hurried toward the thicket and disappeared out of the wavering firelight into the darkness. Then Gurney made his way around to the corner of the house where the BSA was parked. He was fairly sure that in that position it would be out of sight from the top of Barrow Hill. He hoped Kyle was right about the key. If it wasn’t in the ignition … But it was.

He slipped the Beretta back in his ankle holster and straddled the bike. It had been more than twenty-five years since he’d been on a similar motorcycle—the old Triumph 650 he rode in his college days. He quickly familiarized himself with the positions of brakes, clutch, shift lever. Looking down at the gas tank, the handlebars, the chrome headlight, the front fender, the front tire—it all began to come back to him. Even the physical sensation, the recollection of balance and momentum—it was all there, as though it had been preserved in some airtight container of memory, alive and undiminished.