She moved stealthily room to room, her weapon and flashlight held as a team, jerking around door frames and leveling the gun.
She climbed the stairs to the tightly confined second floor and continued her search. She entered a very small bedroom, the floor dotted with mouse pellets and dust balls. A mass grave of dead flies was collected at the bottom of the window frame from which one of the panes of glass was missing, the wood around it moldy.
She stepped up to this window and looked out on the Quonset hut below, hearing a loud hum coming from the building. At first she couldn't place it. His car returning? she wondered, panicked by the thought. As the moonlight intensified, a shadow raced from one end of the Quonset hut to the other, as if someone had yanked away a huge cover, and she identified the source of the sound as a vent stack plugged into the corrugated roof. A furnace.
Why heat a Quonset hut-even a kennel, if that's what it was?
They hadn't had frost in six weeks.
She hurried down the stairs, wondering whether to check the cellar before the Quonset hut. She had to! She descended slowly, her pulse thumping in her ears. It smelled like Dixon's autopsy room down here, and it terrified her. Light from the flashlight played off the stone walls. The storm doors to the outside were open, letting in the night. She reached the bottom of the stairs, gun poised, and turned right. Nudged open a door. Stepped inside.
The light revealed a plastic room, a shiny gray. It found the overhead surgical light and lowered onto the bloodstained operating table.
She was sure then what the furnace was for. She went off at a sprint. Up the cellar stairs, out into the cool night air. She fell to her knees and vomited. She stood and ran harder. The Quonset hut seemed to fade away from her. Her vision dimmed. Hyperventilating. Her feet sloshed through the wet grass.
She reached the door to the shed, the dogs barking frantically, and found an enormous padlock containing it. She stepped back, aimed her weapon, and shot four consecutive rounds. Two hit the lock but did nothing to open it, boring holes through the metal to no effect. Two others penetrated the galvanized metal, lost to the inside of the shed.
When she heard a rhythmic banging, obscured by the barking, she caught herself immediately and stopped firing. What had she been thinking? 'Sharon?' she shouted, paying no consideration to the possibility of someone-a guard, Tegg-being nearby.
Daphne reared back and kicked the door repeatedly. It didn't budge. She grabbed hold of the lock. It was hot. One shot had struck it cleanly, damaging the casing, but the lock itself remained intact.
She circled the building, beating on the walls with the butt of her gun. Three quarters of the way down one wall, a return signal echoed back. Tears streaming from her eyes, Daphne shouted to the wall, 'I'm coming in!' She came completely around the building: no other doors.
Deciding the structure's only door was far enough away from Sharon's location inside, Daphne elected to use the gun one more time. She placed the barrel's opening directly in contact with the brass lock, stretched her arm straight out, averted her eyes, leaned fully away, and squeezed the trigger. The dogs were barking so loudly that the discharge sounded more like a hand clap.
A piece of shrapnel sliced into her lower leg, barely noticed as she inspected her target. An oversized bullet hole was bored through the center of the lock, which otherwise remained intact. She slammed it against the door repeatedly, frustrated and angry.
She checked her leg. It was a pea-sized wound, the metal lodged inside. It was bleeding, through not badly. With each passing second, the pain intensified.
She knew then that she had to find another way inside. That lock wasn't coming off. She hurried to Pamela's vehicle and climbed inside. No key! She pounded her fist on the dashboard in frustration. She spotted an old tractor, grass growing up around it, but even from thirty yards away it was apparent that it hadn't run in years.
She came out of the car. Limping, she circled the building again. There had to be another way inside.
When the furnace kicked off, she looked up and realized there was.
Tegg knew the exact location where his cellular came back into range, a small rise in the road just prior to Maud Lake. He pulled over, leaving the Trooper running, and dialed Wong Kei's cellular number, which was now routed through the Vancouver telephone system. Wong Kei answered coldly, 'Speak.' Tegg said, 'This is me.' He looked down at the hand trembling in his lap and wondered if it really belonged to him, if anything was really as it seemed.
Felix had massacred Pamela, one of the few persons he had seen as a part of his future-his budding young protege. Had turned her into a bloody pulp. She was now inside the first pen, contained in two black garbage bags. Pamela. Witnessing the slaughter, attempting to stop it, had drained him. 'Our plans are moved forward,' Tegg advised. 'What? Impossible!' the man protested. 'Tomorrow morning. Tomorrow morning!'
'Tonight.
Now,' Tegg declared. 'I'll call from the airport. Expect me around,' he checked his watch, 'midnight, maybe a little after. You'll have to move quickly: It will be two hours and counting by the time I reach you. We will have used up half our time.' 'Impossible!' the tight voice complained. 'Make it happen. I'm on my way.' He pushed: END. He stared at the button's simple message.
He could find ice in Snoqualmie Falls. He would chain and lock the main gate, use the old fire trail at the back of the property as his escape route. If he got into a panic about time, he could put the harvest off until later; sedate Sharon, hide her in the back seat under a blanket. in the far back of the Trooper he carried everything necessary for field surgery.
Why not? Head north-enter Canada through the logging trails, do the harvest somewhere out there. Get the money from Wong Kei-he needed that money now more than ever. Stick with the plan.
The old saying was right: There was more than one way to skin a cat.
A human, too, if it came to that.
With the gun returned to its holster and the flashlight protruding awkwardly from her pocket, Daphne used a planter box stood on end as a ladder and scaled the Quonset hut's wall to the roof. The constant howling of the dogs served to remind her what awaited her inside. Optimism fueled her: Sharon was alive!
When she reached the lower lip of the curved roof, she hooked one leg up and over the edge and slid herself carefully onto it. It was cold and wet, and her clothes were immediately soaked through.
Her cheek pressed to the galvanized roof, her fingers groping for purchase, she inched her way up to the ridge, where she pulled herself up to a straddle. With her hands now free, she trained the flashlight onto the vent stack and inspected it, finding her first bit of encouragement: It was surrounded by a poor patchwork of rubber, sheet metal and caulk, all applied haphazardly.
Through the hole, the barking grew louder.
She stuffed the light under her knee, leaned down and pulled on the stack. It popped loose almost effortlessly. She tore at the materials, bending the stack to one side, prying open a hole large enough to stuff herself into. She poked her head into the hole and gasped with the smell, coming up immediately for air. She aimed the flashlight inside, locating the steel frame of the propane furnace suspended from the ceiling. The furnace itself was about the size of a dishwasher. Beneath it she saw the cyclone-wire cage of a dog kennel, the dog's red eyes trained up at her. The furnace's superstructure offered her a platform for her descent.
She lowered herself inside. Her gun snagged on one of the furnace's angle-iron struts and threw her off balance. The gun ejected from the holster and disappeared into the dark, banging somewhere below her. Instinctively, she reached out to try to catch it, but hit the hot face of the furnace instead and burned herself. She let go and fell, crashing onto the top of the dog cage.
Directly below her the dog leapt up, snapping viciously at her through the wire. She moved and heard the flashlight rolling away from her. She pounced for it, but only managed to knock it off the cage. When it hit the cement floor it flickered off and then back on as it bounced and rolled.
There, across the room, the light found a woman, stark naked. A bandaged eye. Another bandage on her side. Leather straps around her head holding a gag in her mouth, a heavy collar around her neck. Sharon was up on her knees, her one good eye staring hopefully at Daphne, an I.V. running from a bag overhead. A large bloodstain was smeared in front of the cage. 'Sharon?' Daphne called out in horror. Could it be?
Sharon Shaffer cried with joy.
Daphne saw the other dog then; he was not in a cage but loose in the aisle. And he was coming right at her, teeth bared.
