“I was thinking that you could stay with me.” She had been looking over her shoulder at the passing cars; now she turned to the front and floored the accelerator. The car reared back on its springs and, with a screech of rubber, roared into the break between cars. There was nothing silent about the motor now and Leland could feel the automatic transmission struggling under the sudden, immense strain. Then, almost as suddenly as it had begun, the acceleration eased and the transmission thumped into high, and the cruised apparently peaceably in the traffic flow at a speed of fifty miles per hour. “There’s plenty of extra room at my house,” she said. “I’ll only have to pay a hotel bill.”

“I’ve invited my wife to come down for the weekend,” he said. “That is, of course, if I’m still here myself. It wasn’t going to be on your time, but—”

“Suppose we say that you’ll be my guest until Friday or when you’re done with the case, whichever comes first.” Her voice lowered. “I won’t pay an unnecessary bill.”

He was curious about when she had decided to do this, but she was so tense that asking would only start an argument. “All right. Remember what I said about getting an honest count. When I think we have all we’re going to get, I’ll tell you. I won’t hang around.”

“Then you don’t have much to tell me now,” she said.

“I didn’t say that.” He moved on the seat and took out his cigarettes. She was driving smoothly, staying in the right-hand lane. He could not remember the traffic ever having been so heavy. She seemed to know what she was doing. This car weighed five thousand pounds, more than a light truck, and it did not intimidate her. He might have expected this compulsory arrangement of staying at her home. When he had learned that she had left Manitou he had not called Karen again to tell her—it had seemed childish, and Karen really had been more upset over the prospect of coming to Port Smith herself—but now he wished he had called. They would be talking tonight on the telephone and it did not promise to be easy. For them, talking long-distance was always bad. The line of cars slowed. Norma looked over her shoulder quickly—here it came again, that neck-wrenching acceleration—and she moved the car into the center lane.

He wanted to begin with the souvenir book. She stopped him. She knew that five kills made an ace and what he had done; how could he write in the note he had enclosed that he respected her husband’s record of two planes destroyed and two probables? “You tried to make me think he did something special. I don’t understand that.”