make it possible to be that quiet or to stay hidden so well and so long.
If it was Eric, we’d have spotted him. Besides, if it’d been Eric, and
if he’s as deranged as you think he might be, then he’d have tried to
jump us somewhere along the way.”
“Animals,” she said doubtfully.
“Animals.”
With her back against the granite teeth, she looked at the woods through
which they had come, studying every pocket of darkness and every
peculiar shape.
Animals. Not a single, purposeful stalker. Just the sounds of several
animals whose paths they had crossed.
Animals.
Then why did she still feel as if something were back there in the
woods, watching her, hungering for her?
“Animals,” Benny said. Satisfied with that explanation, he turned from
the woods, got up from a squat to a crouch, and peered over the
lichen-speckled granite formation, examining the rear of Eric’s mountain
retreat.
Rachael was not convinced that the only source of danger was the cabin,
so she rose, leaned one hip and shoulder against the rock, and took a
position that allowed her to shift her attention back and forth from the
rustic building in front of them to the forest behind.
At the rear of the mountain house, which stood on a wide shelf of land
between slopes, a forty-foot-wide area had been cleared to serve as a
backyard, and the summer sun fell across the greater part of it. Rye
grass had been planted but had grown only in patches, for the soil was
stony. Besides, Eric apparently had not installed a sprinkler system,
which meant even the patchy grass would be green only for a short while
between the melting of the winter snow and the parching summer. Having
died a couple of weeks ago, in fact, the grass was now mown to a short,
brown, prickly stubble. But flower bedsevidently irrigated by a
passive-drip system-ringed the wide stained-wood porch that extended the
length of the house, a profusion of yellow, orange, fire-red, wine-red,
pink, white, and blue blossoms trembled and swayed and dipped in the
gusty breeze-zinnias, geraniums, daisies, baby chrysanthemums, and more.
The cabin was of notched-log-and-mortar construction, but it was not a
cheap, unsophisticated structure. The workmanship looked first-rate,
Eric must have spent a bundle on the place. It stood upon an elevated
foundation of invisibly mortared stones, and it boasted large
casement-style French windows, two of which were partway open to
facilitate ventilation. A black slate roof discouraged dry-wood moths
and the playful squirrels attracted to shake-shingle roofs, and there
was even a satellite dish up there to assure good TV reception.
The back door was open even wider than the two casement windows, and,
taken with the bright bebbing flowers, that should have given the place
a welcoming look. Instead, to Rachael, the open door resembled the
gaping lid of a trap, flung wide to disarm the sniffing prey that sought
the scented bait.
Of course, they would go in anyway. That was why they had come here, to
go in, to find Eric. But she didn’t have to like it.
After studying the cabin, Benny whispered, “Can’t sneak up on the place,
there’s no cover. Next-best thing is a fast approach, straight in at a
run, and hunker down along the porch railing.”
“Okay.”
“Probably the smartest thing is for you to wait here, let me go first,
and see if maybe he’s got a gun and starts taking potshots at me. If
there’s no gunfire, you can come after me.
“Stay here alone?”
“I’ll never be far away.”
“Even ten feet is too far.”
“And we’ll be separated only for a minute.”
“That’s exactly sixty times longer than I could stand being alone here,”
she said, looking back into the woods, where every deep pool of shadow
and every unidentifiable form appeared to have crept closer while her
attention was diverted. “No way, Jose. We, go together.”
“I figured you’d say that.”
A tempest of warm wind whirled across the yard, stirring up dust,
whipping the flowers, and lashing far enough into the perimeter of the
forest to buffet, Rachael’s face.
Benny edged to the end of the granite formation, the shotgun held in