“Goddamn it.”
“It’s all right.”
“No, it’s not.” She eased off the accelerator only long enough to glance both ways, then swung onto the road with a whine of skidding tires, and floored it.
Nora buckled her safety harness. “Come on, do you want the cops to stop you?”
Shaking her head, she let up on the gas pedal. The lights of town appeared as she rounded a bend. She passed the closed service station. On the next block, she slowed almost to a stop as a Volkswagon backed into her lane from a parking space in front of a tavern. Then she had to stop for the town’s blinking red traffic signal. The intersection was clear. She gunned through it.
“Keep an eye out for the Mustang,” Nora said. “I’ll take the right, you take the left.”
Few cars were parked along this end of the street. Just ahead, the curb in front of Beast House’s long fence was vacant. So was the shoulder across the road. Passing Beach Lane, however, the corner of her eye picked up a bright beam.
“Hold it,” Nora said.
She hit the brake. As the car jerked to a stop, she looked past Nora at the single approaching light. “That can’t be them,” she said.
“Maybe they lost a headlight.”
She waited. The steering wheel was slick under her hands. She rubbed them dry on her skirt. The wool made whispery sounds against her stockings. Then she heard the sputtery grumble of an engine. Twisting around, she peered out the backseat window.
A motorcycle came scooting up the lane, followed by a plume of exhaust and dust swirling red in its taillight. Hunched over its bars was a hatless Captain Frank, his white hair and beard streaming in the wind. The cycle tipped away as it made a quick turn behind the Omni and sped north.
“Look at that sucker go,” Nora muttered.
Tyler stepped on the gas. She drove slowly past Beast House, staring at the grounds behind its fence, at its dark front porch, its windows. It looked bleak and deserted. She could hardly imagine anyone actually entering such a place at night.
Abe and Jack could be in there right now, she thought. Sneaking through pitch-black rooms and corridors, knowing they’re late and trying to hurry…
Or maybe lying torn and dead, two more victims of…
No!
They’re okay. They’re all right. They’re fine. They have guns. They’re trained soldiers. Marines. Leathernecks.
Beast House fell out of sight as she followed the road’s curve up the wooded hillside, but her mind stayed inside the house. She spread open curtains and stared at maimed bodies, wondering which were wax, which flesh, which Abe.
“There it is!” Nora blurted.
Tyler’s eyes fixed on the Mustang. It was parked off the road just ahead. Its lights were out. She gazed through its rear window as she swung behind it. Nobody seemed to be inside.
“Shit,” Nora said. She reached over and patted Tyler’s leg. “Just sit back and try to relax. They’ll be along any minute.”
Tyler killed the headlights and shut off the engine.
“I’ve got an idea,” Nora told her. She opened the glove compartment and pulled out the Automobile Club guidebook. “This’ll help pass the time. Turn on the overhead light.”
Tyler twisted the headlight knob. The ceiling light came on. Nora flipped through the pages. “Let’s see, now. Shasta. Here we go, Shasta Lake. It’s here! The Pine Cone Lodge. My God, it’s got five diamonds! The place must really be something, huh? Expensive, though. One person, fifty-five to sixty bucks a night. Two people, one bed, sixty-five bucks. Forty-five units. Twelve miles north of Redding, off Interstate-5. One and a half miles south of Bridge Bay Road turnoff. Overlooking Lake Shasta. Open all year. Spacious, beautifully decorated rooms with shower/baths, cable TV, fireplaces. Heated pool, whirlpools, free boats and motors. Fishing, water-skiing. It doesn’t exactly sound like a dump.”
Tyler shook her head.
“You think you’ll stay on there?”
“If he asks me to,” she muttered. “Damn it, where
“Look, it probably took them ten or fifteen minutes just getting to the house from here.”
“Let’s go over.”
“To the house? Are you nuts?”
“You can wait here if you want.”
“Christ, girl!”
Tyler turned off the light and opened her door. Before she could shut it, she saw Nora crawling across the bucket seats. She waited beside the car until her friend climbed out, then hurried across the road.
“We’re hardly dressed to go traipsing through the woods.”
“I don’t care.”
“You’ll get runs in your stockings.”
Tyler stepped down the steep bank of a ditch, her sandals sliding on the dewy undergrowth, tendrils clutching at her ankles.
Nora skidded, landed on her rump, and picked herself up. “Shit. Have you flipped or something?”
Without a word, Tyler leaned into the opposite slope and started to climb.
“If you’ve got it into your head to go inside the house, forget it. For starters, we’d never make it over the fence.”
Reaching the top of the embankment, Tyler clasped Nora’s hand and pulled her up. She stepped through dark spaces between the trees.
“Besides, we haven’t got guns. They’ve got guns. Not that I’d go in there if we did have…” Nora’s voice faltered.
From down on the road to their left and far ahead came the quick, slapping sounds of feet racing over the pavement. Tyler’s heart lurched. She stared through the pines at the moon-spotted road.
“It’s them,” Nora whispered.
As hard as she listened, Tyler only heard one set of footfalls. Fighting an urge to cry out, she darted back to the edge of the ditch. Poised above the drop-off, she gazed down the road and saw a single runner dashing up the center line. She groaned as she recognized Jack’s blocky figure.
“Oh Jesus,” Nora muttered.
Tyler threw herself down the embankment, stumbled through the growth at its bottom, scurried up the other side and lunged onto the road.
“Jack!”
The man kept running closer with short, choppy steps. He flapped an arm at her. “Get in your car,” he called.
“Where’s Abe?”
“At the house. He’s all right. I’ve gotta meet him in front.”
“What happened?” Tyler asked.
“Later.” He hunched over the Mustang’s door, shoved a key into its lock, opened it and climbed in.
“He said Abe’s all right,” Nora gasped, coming up behind her. “Told you…there was nothing to worry about.”
“Something happened,” Tyler said. Her near panic, she realized, had subsided into frustration.
They stood by the road while Jack swung the Mustang into a U-turn. As it shot off down the slope, Tyler raced to her car. “Get in back,” she ordered. Jerking open her door, she flicked up the lock button for Nora.
The instant her friend was inside, she spun the steering wheel. The Omni made a tight circle, its headbeams sweeping the edge of the woods.
“Douse the lights,” Nora said.
She killed them, remembering that Jack had kept the Mustang dark as he sped down the slope.
