1
On a cool October morning some three months later, Tim Jamieson strolled down the driveway
from what was known as Catawba Hill Farm to South Carolina State Road 12-A. The walk
took awhile; the driveway was almost half a mile long. Any longer, he liked to joke to Wendy,
and they could have named it South Carolina State Road 12-B. He was wearing faded jeans,
dirty Georgia Giant workshoes, and a sweatshirt so big it came down to his upper thighs. It was
a present from Luke, ordered on the Internet. Written across the front were two words in gold:
THE AVESTER. Tim had never met Avery Dixon, but he was glad to wear the shirt. His face
was deeply tanned. Catawba hadn’t been a real farm for ten years, but there was still an acre of
garden behind the barn, and this was harvest season.
He reached the mailbox, opened it, started to paw out the usual junk (nobody got real mail
these days, it seemed), then froze. His stomach, which had been fine on the walk down here,
seemed to contract. A car was coming, slowing down and pulling over. There was nothing
special about it, just a Chevy Malibu smudged with reddish dust and with the usual budget of
bugs smashed into the grill. It wasn’t a neighbor, he knew all their cars, but it could have been a
salesman, or somebody lost and needing directions. Only it wasn’t. Tim didn’t know who the
man behind the wheel was, only that he, Tim, had been waiting for him. Now here he was.
Tim closed the mailbox and put one hand behind him, as if to give his belt a tug. His belt
was in place and so was the gun, a Glock which had once been the property of a redheaded
sheriff’s deputy named Taggart Faraday.
The man turned off the engine and got out. He was dressed in jeans much newer than Tim’s
—they still had the store creases—and a white shirt buttoned to the neck. His face was both
handsome and nondescript, a contradiction that might have seemed impossible until you saw a
guy like this. His eyes were blue, his hair that Nordic shade of blond that looks almost white.
He looked, in fact, much as the late Julia Sigsby had imagined him. He wished Tim a good
morning, and Tim returned the greeting with his hand still behind his back.
“You’re Tim Jamieson.” The visitor held out his hand.
Tim looked at it, but didn’t shake it. “I am. And who might you be?”
The blond man smiled. “Let’s say I’m William Smith. That’s the name on my driver’s
license.”
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