Free Shadowfires by Dean Koontz

man, but somehow
that knowledge had had no impact until now. Suddenly he sensed what
it meant to be worth tens of millions of dollars. Leben's wealth pressed on Ben, like a very real weight.
    Until he was nineteen, Ben Shadway had never given much thought to
money. His parents were neither rich enough to be preoccupied with
investments nor poor enough to worry about paying next month's bills, nor had they much ambition, so wealth-or lack of it-had not been a topic of conversation in the Shadway household. However, by the time Ben completed two years of military service, his primary interest was money: making it, investing it, accumulating ever-larger piles.
    He did not love money for its own sake. He did not even care all
that much for the finer things that money could buy; imported sports
cars, pleasure boats, Rolex watches, and two-thousand-dollar suits
held no great appeal for him. He was happier with his meticulously
restored 1956 Thunderbird than Rachael was with her new Mercedes, and
he bought his suits off the rack at Harris & Frank. Some men
loved money for the power it gave them, but Ben was no more
interested in exercising power over others than he was in learning
Swahili.
    To him, money was primarily a time machine that would eventually
allow him to do a lot of traveling back through the years to a more
appealing age-the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, which held so much
interest for him. Thus far, he had worked long hours with a few days
off. But he intended to build the company into one of the top real-
estate powerhouses in Orange County within the next five years, then
sell out and take a capital gain large enough to support him
comfortably for most-if not the rest-of his life. Thereafter, he
could devote himself almost entirely to swing music, old movies, the
hard-boiled detective fiction he loved, and his miniature trains.
    Although the Great Depression extended through more than a third
of the period to which Ben was attracted, it seemed to him like a far
better time than the present. During the twenties, thirties, and
forties, there had been no terrorists, no end-of-the-world atomic
threat, no street crime to speak of, no frustrating fifty-five-mile-
per-hour speed limit, no polyester or lite beer. Television, the
moron box that is the curse of modern life, was not a major social
force by the end of the forties. Currently, the world seemed a
cesspool of easy sex, pornography, illiterate fiction, witless and
graceless music. The second, third, and fourth decades of the century
were so fresh and innocent by comparison with the present that Ben's nostalgia sometimes deepened into a melancholy longing, into a profound desire to have been born before his own time.
    Now, as the respectful crickets offered trilling songs to the
otherwise peaceful silence of the Leben estate, as a warm wind
scented with star jasmine blew across the sea-facing hills and
through the long veranda, Ben could almost believe that he had, in
fact, been transported back in time to a more genteel, less hectic
age. Only the architecture spoiled the halcyon illusion.
    And Rachael's pistol.
    That spoiled things, too.
    She was an extraordinarily easygoing woman, quick to laugh and
slow to anger, too self-confident to be easily frightened. Only a
very real and very serious threat could compel her to arm herself.
    Before getting out of the car, she had withdrawn the gun from her
purse and had clicked off the safeties. She warned Ben to be alert
and cautious, though she refused to say exactly what it was that he
should be alert to and cautious of. Her dread was almost palpable,
yet she declined to share her worry and thus relieve her mind; she
jealously guarded her secret as she had done all evening.
    He suppressed his impatience with her-not because he had the
forbearance of a saint but simply because he had no choice but to let
her proceed with her revelations at her own pace.
    At the door of the house, she