IT SEEMED that the storm was beginning to move away, toward the Cific coast, across the next range of mountains. There was a noticeable gap between the flashes of chem lightning and the roiling sound of the thunder, and the rain was easing, as the cold blue norther veered easterly.
Everything was still quiet as Ryan reached the shelter of the overhanging cabin roof, pausing and sniffing, wishing he carried a kerchief. He reached out and checked the big sec lock on the door with his left hand, finding, to his relief, that it was still securely fastened.
If he couldn’t get in, then Ryan was comforted by the thought that nobody else would. Even if they had a key, he could tell from the pressure that there were heavy bolts inside, at the top and the bottom of the door.
It had to be well past the ten minutes since he left the main building. By now Krysty would have roused J.B. and Mildred, and they would all be dressed and coming out to look for him.
Ryan started to turn away when there was a dazzling flash of lightning that brought the door and the area on both sides of it into stark relief.
He noticed something very peculiar. The one side was a narrow strip of timbering, the rough ends of the logs overlapping each other. On the other side the strip was wider, almost the width of the door. And the timbers ended in a straight, clean edge. If it hadn’t been for the incredibly bright lightning, he would never have noticed it.
Ryan waited, totally still and silent, until the next jagged flash burst around him. He peered closely at the odd architectural feature in that moment and saw something else that he would never otherwise have noticed. The planking held the faint but unmistakable mark of a damp hand print, as though someone had recently pushed at the wood.
Ryan waited again for a few seconds, using the next chem lightning flash to place his own hand precisely in the center of the mark, seeing how much smaller it was than his own spread fingers, and pushing very gently.
It was a cunningly concealed door, matching up to the real, locked and bolted portal, and it swung inward as though greased and counterbalanced.
Ryan felt the short hairs prickling at his nape, thinking again about the excellent supper that he’d just puked up, and the tangle of raw heads and bloodied bones hidden out in the forest. His son and friends were in mortal peril.
Finger tight on the trigger, he stepped inside the cabin.
He had no chance, no warning. Mrs. Fairchild had been waiting in the blackness and she screamed out her hatred, jumping at him, swinging at the side of his skull with a heavy hatchet that glittered in the flare of the next lightning strike.
Chapter Seventeen
No chance, no warning, only razored combat reflexes that had kept Ryan Cawdor alive through long years of hardship and danger.
He was already deeply suspicious of the dark entrance to the log cabin. The open door and the rain-smeared hand print had warned him of imminent potential danger. So, when it came grinning and howling out of the blackness, Ryan was ready for it. As ready as anyone could be.
He lifted the powerful pistol and used it to parry the murderous attack with the ax, blocking the singing edge in a shower of sparks, feeling the lethal impact. The force knocked him three paces backward, staggering off balance. “Shit-suckin’ bastard…” The voice was high and hoarse, sounding like it could slice through armored sec glass at fifty yards. The woman’s breath, rancid in his face, was like the unwashed floor of a charnel house, and she wielded the whirling crescent of steel with a hideous skill, so fast and so furious that it gave Ryan no chance to do anything but defend, unable to bring the SIG-Sauer into use.
Mrs. Fairchild was in a state of murderous frenzy, forcing him back through the false doorway, off the porch, out into the easing rain, the water dancing off the blade of the hatchet, pattering into his face.