"Rett, you're going wrong, the other road is the way to the house!" Kara said suddenly.
They had just passed a crossroads. Birrel braked the car, and with dismay realized that he had not the faintest notion where "the house" was. Yet that was something that, as Rett, he obviously should know.
He said, "I'm sorry, it's been so many weeks. You had better call out the turns for me."
Neither Kara nor Holmer seemed to find it surprising that he should not clearly remember. But as he drove on, with the girl warning him of each turn on these far-back-in country roads, Birrel wondered how long he could maintain this impossible imposture. He had never been supposed to maintain it for long, the plan had been that Connor and his agents would be following quick and close, but that plan had been irretrievably ruined and he had to ram ahead alone and do what he could, find out what he could.
He was driving down a dark, bumpy road between untilled fields when he became aware that now Holmer and the girl were both peering more intently ahead. Birrel made out the dark loom of an unlighted farmhouse.
Was this "the house"? He dared not ask them that—as Rett, he might have forgotten the network of roads but he certainly wouldn't have forgotten this. But if he turned in, and it was the wrong place.
Birrel thought of a stratagem. As they approached the dark house, he slowed down as though to turn in. If they protested, he could explain that he only wanted to stop and listen again.
But they didn't protest, it must be the place. Birrel turned the car right into the rutted drive, with the headlights striking past an old lilac bush to the front of a ramshackle barn.
"Cut off the lights," said Holmer, worriedly. Birrel did so, his hand shaking a little. He couldn't gamble like this forever without slipping.