she did not underestimate him.
Her assessment of him immediately proved accurate when suddenly he cursed, his voice arising no more than a few feet from her, around the corner to the left, where he had been standing without so much as a revealing inhalation. But then, in an apparent fit of uncontrolled anger, he threw down something that hit the wood floor with a hard clatter, tumbled, and came to rest in front of the termination point of the passage in which Micky sheltered, only inches from her feet: Leilani’s leg brace.
If he followed the steel contraption, they would be at once face-to-face, and her survival would hinge on her ability to thrust the shard of glass into one of his eyes in the instant of his surprise. Miss, cut only his cheek or his brow, and he would take advantage of her shackled hands to finish her with brutal dispatch.
Micky held her breath. Waited. Shifted her body without moving her feet, turning to face the intersection more directly, glass at the ready.
She wore a cheap and classic Timex. No digital components. Old-fashioned watchworks in the case. She swore she could hear the tick-tick-tick of gear teeth biting time between them. She’d never heard them before, but she detected them now, so acutely heightened were her senses.
Nothing followed the clatter of the tossed leg brace. No sound of Maddoc approaching or departing. Just the expectant silence of a coiled snake, sans rattle.
Loud, her rampant heart stampeded. Her body resonated just as hard ground would vibrate with the thunder of a herd of drumming hooves.
Yet somehow she heard through the tumult of her heart, filtered it, and filtered out also the regiments of rain tramping across the roof, so she could still perceive the silence that otherwise ruled, and would perceive any sound that, however faintly, disturbed it.
Wait here another minute? Two minutes? Can’t wait forever. When you stand still too long, they find you. Ghosts, living and not, must be elusive, in constant drift.
She leaned forward, exposing as little as possible, just the side of her head, one wary eye.
Maddoc had moved on. The next passageway, to the left and right, was deserted.
The brace meant Leilani had been brought here. And she must not be dead yet, because Maddoc wouldn’t have removed the brace from her corpse, only from the living girl with the cold intention of further incapacitating her.
A tough choice here. Leave the brace or try to take it? Getting Leilani out alive would be easier if the girl had two legs to stand on. But the contraption might make noise when Micky tried to gather it off the floor. Besides, with her hands tied, she couldn’t easily carry the brace and also effectively wield the shard of glass as a weapon.
Micky stooped and gripped the appliance anyway, because Leilani would be not only faster and more surefooted with the brace, but also less afraid. She lifted it slowly, carefully. A faint clink and a tick. She held the brace against her body, cushioning it to prevent further noise, and rose to her feet.
Because Maddoc was rain-soaked, Micky could see which way he had gone and where he’d come from. The bare wood floor, its finish long worn away, left no water standing on the surface, but sopped up each of the man’s wet steps, resulting in dark footprints.
She was sure that he must have left the girl in the space with the television, where he had bound Micky herself earlier. Indeed, the trail led to that very place, but Leilani wasn’t there.
Bottles, bottles everywhere, and not one genie in them, nor any message meant to be tossed overboard at sea. They contained only the dried residue of soft drinks and beer, which in spite of its age lent a nose-wrinkling scent to the enclosed back porch.
Stabbed but not disabled, Noah had hurried around the house with Cass and found the porch door unlocked. Guns drawn, they entered.
The three-mile drive from Nun’s Lake had not provided sufficient time for Noah to get a grip on the complete background of the twins. Although he knew that they were ex-showgirls fascinated with UFOs, he remained more mystified than not by their game attitude and by their armaments.
He hadn’t seen either of them fire a weapon, but from the wholly professional way they handled guns, Noah felt as comfortable having Cass for a partner as he’d ever felt about any cop with whom he had partnered during his years in uniform.
The floor of the porch groaned under the weight of a bottle collection that would, redeemed at a nickel apiece, purchase a fine automobile for the owners to put up on blocks in the front yard. When Noah led the way through a narrow walk space, the bottles made fairy music.
The door between the porch and the kitchen was double-locked. One lock could easily be loided with a credit card, but the other was a deadbolt that would not succumb to a slip of plastic.
They had to assume that Maddoc had either heard them drive up, in spite of the wind and rain and thunder, or that he had seen them arrive. Stealth might matter inside, but it didn’t matter when they were getting in.
The bottles encroaching on both sides didn’t allow him a full range of motion, but he kicked the door hard. The shock of the impact expressed itself all the way into the wound in his shoulder, but he kicked again, and then a third time. Half eaten away by dry rot, the jamb crumbled around the lock, and the door flew inward.
Three blows shook the house, and Preston knew at once that his hope of having more than the briefest pleasure with the Hand had in this instant evaporated.
The Slut Queen wouldn’t have made that noise. She was in the farmhouse, seeking an exit, but striving not to draw attention to herself. In the unlikely event that she’d already found a route through the maze, she wouldn’t have needed to hammer her way out of the house.
Preston hadn’t heard sirens, and no one had yelled police. Yet he didn’t delude himself that a burglar would, by chance, have chosen precisely this point in time to force entry. Someone had come to stop him.
He abandoned his search for the Slut Queen hardly before it had begun, and turned back on his trail, eager to get to the armchair in which he’d left the Hand. He might still have time to choke the ugly little bitch to death, although such intimate contact would make his stomach churn, and then use the maze to slip away. He couldn’t allow her to fall under the protection of others, after all, because if at last she was able to convince anyone to listen to her, she would be the only witness against him.
Polly wants Curtis to remain in Noah’s rental car, but galactic royalty will always have its way.
Curtis wants Old Yeller to remain in the car, and he easily wins the issue that Polly lost, because sister- become is a good, good dog.
The grassless yard has turned to mud that sucks at their shoes. They splash through deep puddles as lightning strikes a pine tree in a nearby field, about a hundred feet away, causing a banner of flame to flutter briefly through the boughs before the downpour quenches the fire, and thunder loud enough to announce the Apocalypse shakes the day. It’s all so wonderful.
On the front porch, when she tries the door and finds it locked, Polly draws the pistol from her purse and tells Curtis to stand back.
“It’d be cool to blow down the door,” the boy says, “but my way is easier, and Mother always says the simplest strategy is usually the best.”
He places both hands lightly on the door, wills it to open, and down on the micro level, where it matters, the brass molecules of the deadbolt suddenly prefer to be there rather than here, to be in the lock’s disengaged position.
“Can I learn that?” Polly asks.
“Nope,” he says, pushing the door inward.
“Got to be a spaceboy like you, huh?”
“Every species has its talents,” he says, allowing her to enter first, with her gun drawn, because in fact she edges him aside and gives him no choice.
Mummies line the downstairs hall. Indian mummies, embalmed in standing positions and clothed in their ceremonial best.
At the back of the big house, Noah or Cass is kicking down the door, and seconds later, they appear at the far end of the hallway, gaping in amazement at the mummies.
Polly signals them to check out the rooms on their end, and to Curtis, she says, “This way, sweetie.”
