well. If you’re smart, you’ll call that number, use those passwords, and get on with your life — instead of getting on with your death.”
As Darius joined them, he said, “What’s up, Harris?”
The redhead returned the slip of paper to her coat pocket.
Harris said, “But that’s just it. How can I ever get on with my life after what’s happened to me?”
“You can,” she said, “though you won’t be Harris Descoteaux anymore.”
She smiled and nodded at Darius, and she walked away.
Harris watched her go, overcome by that here-we-are-in-the-magic-kingdom-of-Oz feeling again.
Long ago those acres had been beautiful. As a boy with another name, Spencer had been especially fond of the ranch in wintertime, swaddled in white. By day, it was a bright empire of snow forts, tunnels, and sled runs that had been tamped down with great care and patience. On clear nights, the Rocky Mountain sky was deeper than eternity, deeper even than the mind could imagine, and starlight sparkled in the icicles.
Returning after his own eternity in exile, he found nothing that was pleasing to the eye. Each slope and curve of land, each building, each tree was the same as it had been in that distant age, but for the fact that the pines and maples and birches were taller than before. Changeless though it might be, the ranch now impressed him as the ugliest place that he had ever seen, even when flattered by its winter dress. They were harsh acres, and the stark geometry of those fields and hills was designed, at every turn, to offend the eye, like the architecture of Hell. The trees were only ordinary specimens, but they looked to him as though they were malformed and gnarled by disease, nurtured on horrors that had leached into the soil and into their roots from the nearby catacombs. The buildings — stables, house, barn — were all graceless hulks, looming and haunted, the windows as black and menacing as open graves.
Spencer parked at the house. His heart was pounding. His mouth was so dry and his throat was so tight that he could hardly swallow. The door of the pickup opened with the resistance of a massive portal on a bank vault.
Ellie remained in the truck, with the computer on her lap. If trouble came, she was on-line and ready for whatever strange purpose she had prepared. Through the microwave transceiver, she had linked to a satellite and from there into a computer system that she hadn’t identified to Spencer and that could be anywhere on the surface of the earth. Information might be power, as she had said, but Spencer couldn’t imagine how information would shield them from bullets, if the agency was nearby and lying in wait for them.
As though he were a deep-sea diver, encased in a cumbersome pressure suit and steel helmet, burdened by an incalculable tonnage of water, he walked to the front steps, crossed the porch, and stood at the door. He rang the bell.
He heard the chimes inside, the same five notes that had marked a visitor’s arrival when he’d lived there as a boy, and even as they rang out, he had to struggle against an urge to turn and run. He was a grown man, and the hobgoblins that terrorized children should have had no power over him. Irrationally, however, he was afraid that the chimes would be answered by his mother, dead but walking, as naked as she’d been found in that ditch, all her wounds revealed.
He found the willpower to censor the mental image of the corpse. He rang the bell again.
The night was so hushed that he felt as though he would be able to hear the earthworms deep in the ground, below the frost line, if only he could clear his mind and listen for their telltale writhing.
When no one responded to the bell the second time, Spencer retrieved the spare key from the hiding place atop the door head. The Dresmunds had been instructed to leave it there, in the event that it was ever needed by the owner. The deadbolt locks of the house and barn were keyed the same. With that freezing bit of brass half sticking to his fingers, he hurried back to the black pickup.
The driveway forked. One lane led past the front of the barn and the other behind it. He took the second route.
“I should go inside the same way I went that night,” he told Ellie. “By the back door. Re-create the moment.”
They parked where the van with the rainbow mural had stood in a long-ago darkness. That vehicle had been his father’s. He’d seen it for the first time that night because it had always been garaged off the property and registered under a false name. It was the hunting wagon in which Steven Ackblom had traveled to various distant places to stalk and capture the women and the girls who were destined to become permanent residents of his catacombs. For the most part, he’d driven it onto the property only when his wife and son had been away, visiting her parents or at horse shows — though also on rare occasions when his darker desires became stronger than his caution.
Ellie wanted to stay in the pickup truck, leave the engine running, and keep the computer on her lap, with her fingers poised over the keys, ready to respond to any provocation.
Spencer couldn’t imagine anything that she could possibly do, while actually under attack, to force a call- back of the agency thugs. But she was dead serious, and he knew her well enough to trust that her plan, however peculiar, was not frivolous.
“They’re not here,” he told her. “No one’s waiting for us. If they were here, they’d have been all over us by now.”
“I don’t know….”
“To remember what happened in those missing minutes, I’m going to have to go down…into that place. Rocky isn’t company enough. I don’t have the courage to go alone, and I’m not ashamed to say so.”
Ellie nodded. “You shouldn’t be. If I were you, I’d never have been able to come this far. I’d have driven by, never looked back.” She surveyed the moon-dappled fields and hills behind the barn.
“No one,” he said.
“All right.” Her fingers tapped across the laptop keyboard, and she pulled back from whatever computer she had invaded. The display screen went dark. “Let’s go.”
Spencer doused the headlights. He switched off the engine.
He took the pistol. Ellie had the Micro Uzi.
When they got out of the truck, Rocky insisted on scrambling out with them. He was shaking, saturated by his master’s mood, afraid to go with them but equally afraid to stay behind.
Shivering more violently than the dog. Spencer peered into the sky. It was as clear and star-spattered as it had been on that July night. This time, however, the cataracts of moonlight revealed neither an owl nor an angel.
In the dark gallery, where Roy had spoken of many things and the artist had listened with increasing interest and gratifying respect, the grumble of the approaching truck brought a temporary halt to the sharing of intimacies.
To avoid the risk of being seen, they took one step back from the window. They still had a view of the driveway.
Instead of stopping in front of the barn, the pickup continued around to the back of the building.
“I brought you here,” Roy said, “because I have to know how your son’s involved with this woman. He’s a wild card. We can’t figure him. There’s a feeling of organization about his involvement. That disturbs us. For some time, we’ve suspected there may be a loosely woven organization out to undo our work or, failing that, cause us as many headaches as it can. He might be involved with such a group. If it exists. Maybe they’re assisting the woman. Anyway, considering Spencer’s…I’m sorry. Considering
“He’s a strong-willed boy,” Steven acknowledged.
“But if
“You might be right,” Steven said. “Quite perceptive.”
“And this also gives me a chance to help right a wrong.”
“What wrong would that be?”
“Well, of course, it’s wrong for a son to betray his father.”
“Ah. And in addition to being able to avenge that betrayal, may I have the woman?” Steven asked.
