door big enough to admit cargo-laden trucks, it was closed, but beside
it, a man-size door stood wide open.
Previously bold, Orson became hesitant as he approached this entrance.
The room past the threshold was even darker than the serviceway around
us, which itself was illuminated only by starlight. The dog seemed not
entirely to trust his nose to detect a threat in the warehouse, as if
the scents on which he relied were filtered beyond detection by the very
thickness of the murk inside the place.
Keeping my back to the wall, I sidled along the building to the doorway.
I stopped just short of the jamb, with my pistol raised and the muzzle
pointed at the sky.
I listened, holding my breath, nearly as silent as the dead except for
the faint gurgle of my stomach, which continued to work on a
pre-midnight snack of jack cheese, onion bread, and jalapeno peppers.
If anyone waited to ambush me just inside the entrance, he must actually
have been dead, because he was even quieter than I was.
Whether he was dead or not, his breath was no doubt sweeter than mine.
Though Orson was as difficult to see as a flow of ink across wet black
silk, I watched as he stopped short of the entrance. After a hesitation
that struck me as being full of puzzlement, he turned away from the door
and ventured a few steps across the serviceway toward the next building.
He, too, was silent no tick of claws on paving, no panting, not even any
digestive noises as though he were only the ghost of a dog. He peered
intently back the way we’d come, his eyes dimly revealed by a reflection
of star shine, the faint white points of his bared teeth were like the
unsettling phosphorescent grin of an apparition.
I didn’t feel that his hesitancy was caused by fear of what lay ahead of
us. Instead, he no longer seemed to be certain where the trail led.
I consulted my wristwatch. Each faintly blinking second marked not only
the passage of time but the fading of Jimmy Wing’s life force.
Almost certainly not taken for ransom, he had been seized to satisfy
dark needs, perhaps including savageries that didn’t bear consideration.
I waited, struggling to suppress my vivid imagination, but when Orson
finally turned again to the open door of the warehouse without
indicating any greater confidence that our quarry was inside, I decided
to act. Fortune favors the bold. Of course, so does Death.
With my left hand, I reached for the flashlight tucked against the small
of my back. Crouching, I entered the doorway, crossed the threshold, and
scuttled quickly to the left. Even as I switched on the flash, I rolled
it across the floor, a simple and perhaps foolish ruse to draw gunfire
away from me.
No gunfire erupted, and when the flashlight rolled to a stop, the
stillness in the warehouse was as deep as the silence of a dead planet
with no atmosphere. Somewhat to my surprise, when I tried to breathe, I
could.
I retrieved the flashlight. Most of the warehouse was given over to a
single room of such length that the beam didn’t penetrate from one end
to the other, it even failed to reach halfway across the much narrower
width of the building to illuminate either side wall.
As I scythe away the shadows, they regrew immediately after the beam
passed, lusher and blacker than ever. At least no looming adversary was
revealed.
Looking more doubtful than suspicious, Orson padded into the light and,
after a hesitation, seemed to dismiss the warehouse with a sneeze.
He headed toward the door.
A muffled clang broke the silence elsewhere in the building. The cold
acoustics caused the sound to resonate along the walls of this cavernous
chamber, lingering until the initial hard metallic quality softened into
an eerie, whispery ringing like the voices of summer insects.
I switched off the flashlight.
In the blinding dark, I felt Orson return to my side, his flank brushing
against my leg.
I wanted to move.
I didn’t know where to move.
Jimmy must be near and still alive, because the kidnapper hadn’t yet