Adams had tipped his hand and Adams never tipped his hand unless he wanted one to see. Unless he had an ace tucked neatly up his sleeve.
He wanted me to know, Sutton told himself. He wanted me to know, but he couldn't tell me. He couldn't tell me he had me down on tape and film, that he was the one who had rigged up the room.
But he could let me know by making just one slip, a carefully calculated slip, like the one on Anderson. He knew that I would catch and he thinks he can jitter me.
The headlights caught, momentarily, the gray-black massive lines of a house that huddled on a hillside and then there was another curve. A night bird, black and ghostly, fluttered across the road and the shadow of its flight danced down the cone of light.
Adams was the one, said Sutton, talking to himself. He was the one who was waiting for me. He knew, somehow, that I was coming, and he was all primed and cocked. He had me tagged and ticketed before I hit the ground and he gave me a going over before I knew what was going on.
And undoubtedly he found a whole lot more than he bargained for.
Sutton chuckled dryly. And the chuckle was a scream that came slanting down the hill slope in a blaze of streaming fire…a stream of fire that ended in the marsh, that died down momentarily, then licked out in blue and red.
Brakes hissed and tires screeched on the pavement as Sutton slued the car around to bring it to a stop. Even before the machine came to a halt, he was out of the door and running down the slope toward the strange, black craft that nickered in the swamp.
Water sloshed around his ankles and knife-edged grass slashed at his legs. The puddles gleamed black and oily in the light from the flaming craft. The frogs still kept up their peeping at the far edge of the marsh.
Something flopped and struggled in a pool of muddy, flame-stained water just a few feet from the burning ship and Sutton, plunging forward, saw it was a man.