the second step of the stool.
With a brittle splintering of plastic, the panel lifted an inch, jagged edges squeaking against each another. Then it bent backward at its fourth side, creaking, resisting her? resisting? until she cried out wordlessly in frustration and, finding new strength, pushed even harder. Abruptly the fourth side cracked all the way through, with a
She pushed the panel out through the ceiling. It rattled across the roof and dropped to the driveway.
Through the hole above her head, Chyna saw clouds suddenly slide away from the moon. Cold light bathed her upturned face, and in the bottomless sky was the clean white fire of stars.
Chyna backed the motor home off the driveway and alongside the front of the house, parallel to the porch and as close to it as she could get. She let the big vehicle roll slowly, anxious not to tear up the thick grass, because under it the ground might be muddy even half a day after the rain had stopped. She didn't dare bog down.
When she was in position, she put the vehicle in park and set the emergency brake. She left the engine running.
In the short hall at the back of the motor home, the stepstool had fallen over. She put it upright, climbed the two steps, and stood with her head in the night air, above the open frame of the broken-out skylight.
She wished the stool had a third step. She needed to muscle herself out of the hallway, and she was at a less advantageous angle than she would have liked.
She placed her hands flat on the roof on opposite sides of the twenty-inch-wide rectangular opening and struggled to lever her body out of the motor home. She strained so hard that she could feel the tendons flaring between her neck and shoulders, her pulse pounding like doomsday drums in her temples and carotid arteries, every muscle in her arms and across her back quivering with the effort.
Pain and exhaustion seemed certain to thwart her. But then she thought of Ariel in the living-room armchair: rocking back and forth, hugging herself, a faraway look in her eyes, her lips parted in what might have been a silent scream. That image of the girl empowered Chyna, put her in touch with hitherto unknown resources. Her shaking arms slowly straightened, pulling her body out of the hallway, and inch by inch she kicked her feet as if she were a swimmer ascending from the depths. At last her elbows locked with her arms at full extension, and she heaved forward, out through the skylight, onto the roof.
On the way, her sweater caught on small fragments of plastic that bristled from the skylight frame. A few jagged points pierced the knit material and stung her belly, but she broke loose of them.
She crawled forward, rolled onto her back, hiked her sweater, and felt her stomach to see how badly she had been cut. Blood wept from a couple of shallow punctures, but she wasn't hurt seriously.
From far off in the night came the howls of at least two injured dogs. Their pathetic cries were so filled with fear, vulnerability, misery, and loneliness that Chyna could hardly bear to listen.
She eased to the edge of the roof and looked down at the yard to the east of the house.
The uninjured Doberman trotted around the front of the motor home and spotted her at once. It stood directly under her, gazing up, teeth bared. It seemed unfazed by the suffering of its three comrades.
Chyna moved away from the edge and got to her feet. The metal surface was somewhat slippery with dew, and she was thankful for the rubber tread on her Rockports. If she lost her footing and fell off into the yard, with no weapons and no protective clothing, the one remaining Doberman would overwhelm her and tear out her throat in ten seconds flat.
The motor home was only a few inches below the edge of the porch roof. She had parked so close that the distance between the vehicle and the house was less than a foot.
She stepped up and across that gap, onto the sloped roof of the porch. The asphalt shingles had a sandy texture and weren't nearly as treacherous as the top of the motor home.
The slope wasn't steep either, and she climbed easily to the front wall of the house. The recent rain had liberated a tarry scent from the numerous coats of creosote with which the logs had been treated over the years.
The double-hung window of Vess's second-story bedroom was open three inches, as she had left it before departing the house. She slipped her aching hands through the opening and, groaning, shoved up on the bottom panel. In this wet weather, the wood had swollen, but although it stuck a couple of times, she got it all the way open.
She climbed through the window into Vess's bedroom, where she had left a lamp burning.
In the upstairs hall, she glanced at the open door across from the bedroom. The dark study lay beyond, and she was still troubled by the feeling that there was something in it that she had missed, something vital she should know about Edgler Vess.
But she had no time for additional detective work. She hurried downstairs to the living room.
Ariel was huddled in the armchair where she had been left. She was still hugging herself and rocking, lost.
According to the mantel clock, the time was four minutes past eleven. 'You stay right there,' Chyna instructed. 'Just a minute more, honey.'
She went through the kitchen to the laundry room, in search of a broom. She found both a broom and a sponge mop. The mop had the longer handle of the two, so she took it instead of the broom.
As she entered the living room again, she heard a familiar and dreaded sound.
She glanced at the nearest window and saw the uninjured Doberman clawing the glass. Its pointy ears were pricked, but they flattened against its skull when Chyna made eye contact with the creature. The Doberman issued the now-familiar needful keening that caused the fine hairs to stiffen on the nape of Chyna's neck.
Turning away from the dog, Chyna started toward Ariel-and then had her attention drawn to the other living- room window. A Doberman stood with its forepaws at the base of that pane too.
This had to be the first one she had encountered when she'd gone out of the house, the same animal that she had sprayed in the muzzle. It had recovered quickly and had bitten her foot when she'd been pinned on the ground by the third dog.
She was sure that she'd blinded the second dog, which had shot at her like a mortar round from out of the darkness, and the third as well. Until now she had assumed that her second chance at this animal had also resulted in a disabling eye shot.
She'd been wrong.
At the time, of course, she herself had been all but blinded by her fogged visor-and frantic, because the third dog had been holding her down and chewing through the padding at her throat, licking at her chin. All she had known was that this animal had shrieked when she'd squirted it and that it had stopped biting her foot.
The stream of ammonia must have splashed the dog's muzzle the second time, just as it had during their first encounter.
'Lucky bastard,' she whispered.
The twice-injured Doberman didn't scratch at the window glass. It just watched her. Intently. Ears standing straight up. Missing nothing.
Or perhaps it wasn't the same dog at all. Perhaps there were five of them. Or six.
At the other window:
Crouching in front of Ariel, Chyna said, 'Honey, we're ready to go.'
The girl rocked.
Chyna took hold of one of Ariel's hands. This time, she didn't have to pry the fingers out of a marble-hard fist, and at her urging, the girl got up from the chair.
Carrying the sponge mop in one hand, leading the girl with the other, Chyna crossed the living room, past the two big front windows. She moved slowly and didn't look directly at the Dobermans, because she was afraid that either haste or another moment of confrontational eye contact might spur them to smash through the glass.
She and Ariel stepped through a doorless opening to the stairs.
Behind them, one of the dogs began to bark.
Chyna didn't like that. Didn't like that at all. None of them had barked before. Their disciplined stealth had been chilling-but now the barking was worse than their silence.
