aren’t even stopping there.”
Charlotte and Emily groaned with disappointment.
Paige said, “We might visit them later, in a few days. We’ll see.
Right now we’re going to the cabin.”
“Yeah!” Emily said, and
“All right!” Charlotte said.
Marty heard them smack their hands together in a high-five.
The cabin, which his mom and dad had owned since Marty was a boy, was
nestled in the mountains a few miles outside of Mammoth Lakes, between
the town and the lakes themselves, not far from the even smaller
settlement of Lake Mary. It was a charming place, on which his father
had done extensive work over the years, sheltered by hundred-foot pines
and firs. To the girls, who had been raised in the suburban maze of
Orange County, the cabin was as special as any enchanted cottage in a
fairy tale.
Marty needed a few days to think before making any decisions about what
to do next. He wanted to study the news and see how the story about him
continued to be played, in the media’s handling of it, he might be able
to assess the power if not the identity of his true enemies, who
certainly were not limited to the eerie and deranged look-alike who had
invaded their home.
They could not stay at his parents’ house. It was too accessible to
reporters if the story continued to snowball. It was accessible, as
well, to the unknown conspirators behind the look-alike, who had seen to
it that a small news item about an assault had gotten major media
coverage, painting him as a man of doubtful stability.
Besides, he didn’t want to put his mom and dad at risk by taking shelter
with them. In fact, when he managed to get a call through, he was going
to insist they immediately pack up their motorhome and get out of
Mammoth Lakes for a few weeks, a month, maybe longer.
While they were traveling, changing campgrounds every night or two, no
one could try to get at him through them.
Since the attempted contact at the bank in Mission Viejo, Marty had been
subjected to no more of The Other’s probes. He was hopeful that the
haste and decisiveness with which they’d fled north had bought them
safety. Even clairvoyance or telepathy–or whatever the hell it
was–must have its limits. Otherwise, they were not merely up against a
fantastic mental power but flat-out magic, while Marty could be driven,
by experience, to credit the possibility of psychic ability, he simply
could not believe in magic. Having put hundreds of miles between
themselves and The Other, they were most likely beyond the range of his
questing sixth sense. The mountains, which periodically interfered with
the operation of the cellular telephone, might further insulate them
from telepathic detection.
Perhaps it would have been safer to stay away from Mammoth Lakes and
hide out in a town to which he had no connections.
However, he opted for the cabin because even those who might target his
parents’ house as a possible refuge for him would not be aware of the
mountain retreat and would be unlikely to learn of it casually.
Besides, two of his former high school buddies had been Mammoth County
deputy sheriffs for a decade, and the cabin was close to the town in
which he had been raised and where he was still well known. As a
hometown boy who had never been a hell-raiser in his youth, he could
expect to be taken seriously by the authorities and given greater
protection if The Other did try to contact him again.
n a strange place, however, he would be an outsider and regarded with
more suspicion even than Detective Cyrus Lowbock had exhibited.
Around Mammoth Lakes, if worse came to worst, he would not feel so
isolated and alienated as he was certain to be virtually anywhere else.
“Might be bad weather ahead,” Paige said.
The sky was largely blue to the east, but masses of dark clouds were
surging across the peaks and through the passes of the Sierra Nevadas to
the west.
“Better stop at a service station in Bishop,” Marty said, “find out if
the Highway Patrol’s requiring chains to go up into Mammoth.”