Chase: Roman

cars were slotted against walls of shrubbery, the moonlight glinting on the bumpers and windows. If he had not known the purpose of this retreat, he would have thought all the vehicles were abandoned. But his knowledge and the trace of mist on the inside of the windows gave everyone away. Now and again a shadow moved inside one of the cars, exaggerated and twisted out of proportion by the steamed glass. That and an occasional rustle of leaves as the wind swept down from the top of the ridge were the only things that moved.
        Because of this somewhat breathless quality to the scene, and because he viewed it dispassionately, withdrawn from its purpose, he noticed the other bit of movement immediately. Something dropped from a low point on the rock wall to the left and scurried across the blacktop toward the darkness beneath a huge weeping willow tree a hundred feet in front of Chase's car. Though it was bent and moved with the frantic grace of a frightened animal, it had very clearly been a man.
        In Vietnam he had developed what almost amounted to a sixth sense, a perception of imminent danger that was uncanny. That alarm was clanging now.
        The one thing that did not belong in a lovers’ lane at night was a man alone, on foot. The car was a mobile bed, such a part of the seduction, an extension of the seducer, that there was no modern Casanova successful without one.
        It was possible, of course, that the man was engaging in some bird-dogging, spotting parkers for his own amusement and their surprise. Chase had been the victim of that game enough times in his high school years to remember it well. However, it was a pastime usually associated with the mannerless or ugly or immature, those kids who hadn't the opportunity to be inside the cars where the real action was. It was not, so far as Chase knew, something adults found pleasure in. And this man, easily six foot, had the bearing of an adult, none of the awkwardness of youth. And, too, bird-dogging was a sport most often played in groups as protection against a beating from one of the surprised lovers. This, Chase was suddenly sure, was something else altogether.
        The man came out from beneath the willow, still doubled over and running. He stopped against the edge of a bramble row and looked along it at a three-year-old Chevrolet parked at the end, near the safety railing.
        Not sure what was happening or what he should do about it, Chase turned in his seat and worked the cover off the ceiling light in the car. He unscrewed the tiny bulb and dropped it in a pocket of his jacket. When he turned front again, he saw that the man was at the same place, watching the Chevrolet, leaning into the brambles as if unaware of them.
        A girl laughed, the sound of her voice clear in the night air. Some of the lovers must have found it too warm for closed windows.
        The man by the brambles moved again, closing in on the Chevrolet.
        Quietly, because the man was no more than a hundred and fifty feet from him, Chase opened the door and got out of the Mustang. He let the door stand open, for he was sure the sound of its closing would alert the intruder. He went around the car and started across the grass, which had recently been mown and was slightly damp and slippery underfoot.
        Ahead, a light came on in the Chevrolet, diffused by the steamed windows. Someone shouted, and a young girl screamed. She screamed again.
        Chase had been walking, and now he ran as the sounds of a fight burgeoned ahead. When he came up on the Chevrolet, he saw the door on the driver's side was open and the intruder was halfway into the front seat, flailing away at something. Shadows bobbled up and down, dipped and pitched against the frosted glass.
        ‘Hold it there!’ Chase shouted, almost directly behind the man now.
        The stranger reared back, and as he rose from the car Chase saw the knife. The man held it in his right hand, raised as if to plunge it forward into something. His hand and the weapon were covered in blood.
        Chase stepped forward the last few feet, slammed the man against the window post. He slipped his arm around and brought it up beneath the man's neck, drew his head back and forced him out onto the grass.
        The girl was still screaming.
        The stranger swung his arm down and back, trying to catch Chase's thigh with the point of the blade. He was an amateur. Chase twisted,