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about their habits, and we have their house
staked out for us by a force of nature. All we
have to do now is
"Honey, I, uh, I have a bad feeling about that
part."
His grin flickered.
"Maybe you'll think this is hard to buy, with that
Porsche sitting there in that garage and all that
money blooming all over the place . . . but I
think maybe why I buy it is that Porsche, just
sitting there. . . . Wally, honey, I don't think
they're coming back here. I think something
happened, something spooked them, some other
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Robinson, Spider - The Mind 3 - Lifehouse
con blew up in their faces, probably. Jude's
house got torched last night, and according to
Robo-neighbor they left here on foot a few hours
later. I think they're on the run."
"We have competition," Wally said, in his
testosterone voice.
"But maybe we're a jump ahead of them," she
said quickly. "That . . . life-form back there
would have mentioned anybody else asking
about Carla, so we have information nobody else
does."
"Sure about why Motormouth doesn't like her
other neighbor Mrs. Wong."
"Think, Wally. She said they left in the middle
of the night dressed for a day of hiking. ... I
remember distinctly the way she made five
syllables out of 'L.L. Be-ean-uh' . . . and she said
they were carrying an ice chest and a backpack
and an overnight bag. Carla's a Canadian, from
Vancouver, she knows you can't get cabs on the
street here. They're running for the country
somewhere, on foot."
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"Terrific," he said. "That narrows it down to
three hundred and sixty possible degrees. Maybe
they dug themselves a bunker over in the
Endowment Lands excuse me, Pacific Spirit
Park."
"It means wherever they run to, it won't be far.
And not where anybody else would expect a con-
man to run to, not downtown or the 'burbs or
another city altogether."
He nodded. "Yeah. That's good."
"Everybody else will be watching the airport and
the bus station and the highways and the
Tsawwassen Terminal . . . and meanwhile they'll
take the bus or Skytrain or the Seabus or ... I
don't know, the Horseshoe Bay Ferry."
"But we still don't know which, or how far."
"No, but look on the bright side. Country
grapevine works even better than city
grapevine if you're listening to it."
His fickle grin returned. "Wherever there's a
Nowheresville . . . there's a fan with a modem.
Those two will stick out more there to us. Oh,
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Robinson, Spider - The Mind 3 - Lifehouse
I like it, darling. Let's go get their pictures
scanned in and cropped, and put them no, get
Steve to put them out on the Net. You're right.
Maybe our luck is finally starring to turn."
He should really have known better than to
make a U-turn on Point Grey Road at night. On
that long straight pipeline they were visible for a
kilometer in either direction, and the cops' end-
of-shift was approaching, leaving them with
tickets to unload.
Fortunately, Canadian cops do not search
stopped vehicles or their passengers'
purses without a good reason. The pair got
back home with nothing worse than a ticket that
would put points on Wally's license . . . and one
set of slightly damp underwear. His, if you must
know.
Chapter 9
Peeking Ahead
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Rain was just beginning to fall as they arrived.
Ignoring it, and being ignored in return, they
landed in front of their home in Pacific Spirit
Park, entered the house, and became visible
again.
She found that she was both exhilarated and
exhausted. (These terms relative to her normal
emotional state: any human observer would have
thought her serene.) The simple intellectual
knowledge that one has become mortal, can die,
changes a thing like flying. The sensation was
oddly invigorating, as if in pathetic
compensation for its cost.
He did not notice, nor did she hold it against
him. He was too worried for her to empathize
with her fully right now; she would have to do
something about that when she had time. And
they were both too busy.
"I'll make coffee," she said. Human domestic
customs, adopted for cover and practiced for
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