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‘I used to be a teacher of very young children, on the reservation. I know all of the Modoc legends.'

‘Believe me, you make just as much sense as any of those doctors at the clinic. But what I'm thinking is that …
Me
, I'm not Modoc, am I? It wasn't Kumush who created me, and therefore I doubt if Skell would have bothered about me when I died. So the only conclusion that I come to is that I'm not dead, after all. I'll bet that
you're
not dead, either, Samuel! I mean, let's get real! Two dead guys sitting around drinking beer and eating Doritos?'

‘I don't know,' said Samuel. ‘You go for it, if you think that you'll make it. I'll give you some gas and I'll show you how to get to the interstate without having to go back through Trinity.'

‘I can't pay you for the gas, Samuel. I only have credit cards, and I'm not even sure they're good for anything.'

‘Don't worry about that. If you make it, then come back and pay me in cash. If you don't make it, then take it as a parting gift.'

‘And what if I
do
come back – which I'm pretty damn sure that I will. What about you?'

Samuel sucked the last quarter-inch of his cigarette and then crushed it out in a Modoc pottery ashtray. ‘Can't answer that, Michael. I've been here a long time now, breathing in the fresh air and mending snowshoes and shooting things. Sometimes what you've got is as good as it's ever going to get.'

‘I thought Nann was the one with a saying for everything.'

Samuel gave a philosophical shrug. ‘Come on,' he said, ‘let's get you that gas.'

S
amuel came out of his ramshackle shed carrying two five-gallon jerrycans, and topped up the Jeep's tank. It was beginning to grow dark now, although the summit of Mount Shasta was still reflecting the orange light of a sun that had dropped below the horizon. The temperature was falling fast.

When he had emptied the two jerrycans, Samuel came back from his shed with a two-gallon red plastic gas container. ‘You'd best take this, too, just in case you run out again and you can't find a gas station to take your credit card.'

‘Thanks, Samuel. I won't forget this.'

Michael went back into the cabin to collect Natasha. ‘You are sure that I cannot fix you something to eat before you go?' asked Nann.

‘We're fine, I think,' said Michael. ‘How about you, Tasha? I'm just looking forward to stopping at some crappy roadside diner on the interstate and ordering a cheeseburger.'

Samuel took Michael out on to the veranda, laid his hand on his shoulder and pointed east. ‘Keep on driving about three miles, until you reach a fork. Take the right-hand fork and then about six or seven miles further along you'll come to a T-junction. If you take a left there, you'll be heading almost due south. After about twenty miles or so you'll hit a little place called Lookout, and just past Lookout you'll be joining I-Five. The good old Cascade Wonderland Highway, which I haven't seen in more years than I care to remember.'

Michael gripped Samuel's hand between both of his. ‘I really do appreciate this, Samuel. You've been a godsend.'

‘Well – you know what I'm hoping, don't you?' said Samuel. ‘I'm hoping you're going to come back and pay me for that gas.'

‘You'd better believe it.'

Michael helped Natasha up into her seat, and then climbed behind the wheel. As he backed down their driveway, he gave Samuel and Nann a blast on the horn, and a wave. He had met them less than two hours ago: he didn't know why he felt so emotional at saying goodbye.

Natasha said, ‘Here goes nothing.'

‘We're going to make it,' Michael assured her. ‘I just have this feeling that everything's going to work out. Think of it. We could be in San Francisco by midnight.'

They drove in silence until they reached the fork, and Michael turned right. The road sloped quite sharply downhill, between pines that crowded so close that their branches brushed and scraped and rattled against the sides of the Jeep, as if even the trees were trying to stop them.

After about fifteen minutes, however, they reached the T-junction.

‘Left here,' said Michael. ‘Then straight on till we get to Lookout, and the Wonderland Highway.'

‘We could still turn back,' said Natasha.

‘No,' said Michael.

‘What happens if you die while you're driving?'

‘I'm not going to die, Tasha. I didn't die the first time and I'm not going to die a second time, either.'

‘Oh God, please let that be true.'

‘Sweetheart, sometimes you just have to have faith in yourself. Listen to me – I'm starting to sound like Nann now. Before you know it I'll be saying “follow your dream”.'

He made an acute left-hand turn and headed south. This road was wider and better-paved, and almost completely straight. The trees on either side of the road began to thin out, too, although there was no sign of civilization yet. No roadside shacks, no signposts, no lights up ahead of them, although they did see an airplane at a very high altitude, flashing its lonely way across a plum-colored sky.

‘How are you feeling?' asked Natasha, after they had driven over five miles away from Mount Shasta.

‘I feel
fine
,' Michael told her. ‘I feel perfectly myself. No breathlessness. No temperature. No heart palpitations.'

It was then that he saw the first lights twinkling up ahead of them.

‘There!' he said. ‘That must be Lookout! We've almost made it, sweetheart. We're almost there!'

Only two or three minutes later, he looked to his right, and less than a mile away, in the darkness, he could see the red-and-white lights of traffic streaming up and down the interstate.

‘They were lying, those bastards! Those unscrupulous, conniving bastards! “If you leave Trinity, you'll die.” Oh, for sure! “And if you unscrew your navel, your ass is going to fall off.”'

He felt an extraordinary surge of freedom. It was only now that they were heading back to the outside world that he realized how restricted he had been while he was in Trinity, and how much Catherine Connor and Doctor Hamid had played on his fears and his weaknesses to keep him there.

He pressed his foot down on the gas, and the Jeep's engine surged. The lights of Lookout began to spread out wider and sparkle brighter as they sped toward them.

So I'm dead, am I?
he thought, triumphantly.
I have never, ever, felt so alive!

‘Michael,' said Natasha.

‘We're almost there, Tasha! And I never felt better! Dead? What a goddamned joke!'

‘Michael,' Natasha repeated, and this time she tugged at his sleeve. ‘Michael, stop.'

‘We're nearly there! We're nearly in Lookout!'

‘Michael, stop. Please.'

‘What's the matter? If you need to go to the bathroom, we'll be there in two minutes! There's bound to be a bar or something.'

‘
Michael!
' said Natasha, in a whispery shriek. ‘
Stop the Jeep now!
Look at me!
'

Michael glanced at her quickly. At first sight, there didn't seem to be anything wrong with her. She was very pale, and the wide-eyed way she was staring at him was more than a little unnerving. But then he looked at her again, and he saw that there was a dark curved line down the left side of her face. Not only that, she had red-and-white fireflies crawling backward and forward across her hairline.

At first Michael couldn't understand what he was looking at. But then he realized that the dark curved line was the door-frame behind her, and the red-and-white fireflies were the lights of traffic on the interstate. He could see through her. She was half-transparent, and with each passing second the dark curved line grew clearer, and the fireflies glittered more brightly.

He stepped on the brakes and the Jeep slid with a sharp crunch of shingle into the side of the road.

‘Oh, Jesus,' he said.

Tasha held up both hands, and turned them this way and that. They were half-transparent too, as if they were nothing more than clear plastic gloves with pink fingernails painted on them. She pulled down one sleeve of her sweater, and her arm was the same, all the way up to the elbow. He could see
inside
her sleeve.

Her hair was still clearly visible and so was the outline of her face – her eyes, her nose, and her lips. He could even see the tears that were glistening on her cheeks. But he could also see right through her neck, to the Chaps label inside the back of her orange cable-knit sweater.

It was then that it struck him, so hard that he physically felt as if he had been hit by a speeding truck –
bang
. It wasn't him who was dead – or if he was, they hadn't driven far enough away from Mount Shasta for him to die for a second time. It was Natasha. After he had brought her back from his first escape attempt, she hadn't made a miraculous recovery at all. She had died, but somehow the clinic had revived her.

What had Catherine said to him? ‘
It happens every day in medicine. We have to make critical choices about how to treat people, and sometimes it's hard to know if we're going to do them more harm than good. In Natasha Kerwin's case, you took the decision out of our hands.
'

They had been trying to make up their minds whether they ought to take her off life-support or not – ‘pull the plug on her', as Doctor Hamid had put it. But by abducting her like that, he had effectively killed her, and solved the problem for them.

‘
You took the decision out of our hands
.'

He put his arms out to her and held her as close as he could. She still felt solid, inside of her coat, and when he buried his fingers in her hair he could still feel the weight of her head. But she was colder than ever, and she was shuddering, and she didn't seem to be able to speak any more.

Michael closed his eyes for a moment, just to feel her close to him. No wonder the clinic hadn't sent their security guards after him, or called the police. They had known all along that this would happen, a certain distance away from Mount Shasta, and they knew what he would have to do.

He made sure that Natasha was as comfortable as possible, and then he shifted the Jeep into gear and U-turned back the way they had come. As he drove, his eyes filled up with tears, and sometimes the road ahead of him seemed to jiggle and dance in his headlights.

He didn't look at Natasha again until he turned in through the clinic gates. He didn't recognize the security guard on duty, an African-American with a shiny shaven head, but the guard waved them through without stopping them and demanding to see their identity cards. He must have been told to expect them.

Michael pulled up outside the front steps. Natasha appeared to be sleeping, with her head against her left shoulder, so that he had to lift her hair to see her face clearly. With a mixture of relief and sadness, he saw that she looked completely flush-centered. She was still very cold, but no longer transparent.

He shook her gently. ‘Tasha.'

She stirred, and opened her eyes. Without saying anything she sat up straight and looked around.

‘We're back,' she said.

He nodded. ‘I'm sorry,' he told her. ‘If only I'd known.'

She held up her hands and looked at them. ‘I can't believe it. I feel like I dreamed it.'

‘I wish you had.'

‘It's me who's dead, isn't it?' she said.

‘I have no idea. I don't understand any of this. How are you feeling?'

‘Tired. Very tired. But I'm all right otherwise.' She looked at him and touched his lips with her fingertips and tried to smile. ‘It isn't your fault, Michael. I should have guessed it was me, and not you. In fact I think I did.'

‘So why did they tell you that it was me?'

‘I don't know, Michael. But Doctor Hamid did say that he would have something important to explain to me, at my next appointment.'

‘He didn't give you any inkling what it was?'

Natasha shook her head.

‘All right,' said Michael. ‘I guess we'd better go in and see him now, if he's there. I want him to take a look at you, and make sure that you're OK. And then I think he owes us an explanation, don't you?'

Natasha clung on to his sleeve. ‘No, Michael.
Please
. I don't want to hear it.'

At that moment, the front doors of the clinic opened up and Doctor Hamid came out, on his own, in a gray three-piece suit. He stood there for a moment, with his hands resting on his hips, looking down at them.

‘Talk of the devil,' said Michael.

Doctor Hamid started coming down the steps. As they both watched him, Natasha said, ‘I knew there was something wrong with me. I
knew
it.'

‘Well, you were very, very cold. In bed last night, you were freezing.'

‘I'll tell you how cold I was. I breathed on the bathroom mirror and there was condensation on it. But I did believe them when they told me that
you
were dead. I thought maybe it was both of us.'

Doctor Hamid came up to the Jeep and stood beside it with a serious expression on his face. Serious, but more regretful than angry. He made no attempt to knock on the window or to shout out to them. He just stood there, waiting.

Eventually Michael opened his door and climbed out.

‘Welcome back,' said Doctor Hamid.

Michael looked around. ‘No cops?' he asked.

‘No reason to call the police, Michael. Nobody was hurt.'

‘Are you kidding me? I must have run over at least half-a-dozen people. I'm surprised there were no fatalities.'

‘You shouldn't have tried to get away like that, Michael. We are trying to take care of you here. We are trying to take care of
all
of these people in Trinity. Acting with defiance only makes matters worse.'