“What you doing in these woods?”
“Walking, that’s all. Hiking.”
He stopped abruptly, staring hard at her, his mouth twisted into a grimace that gave him a troll-like aspect. Kerry stopped, too. She felt the urge to turn and hurry away from him, but not because she was afraid. Nervous and embarrassed, yes, but not afraid-not yet.
“Why the hell’d you have to show up here, now?”
“I don’t understand what you mean, Mr. Balfour. I-”
“What? What’d you say?”
“I said-”
He yelled, “Screwing everything up, goddamn you!” and dropped the toolbox and lunged at her.
The sudden attack caught her completely off guard; she had no time to run or try to defend herself. He caught hold of her, threw her sideways into the pickup’s rear gate, jamming her elbow, wrenching her back, ripping loose a cry of pain and surging terror. He crowded in against her, spewing sour breath into her face. She tried to claw him, tried to scream, but by then, his body was wedged against hers and his thick hands were tight around her throat.
Squeezing, squeezing, until his face, the trees, the daylight all faded to black.
5
It was a quarter after four when I got back to the cabin. The locked front door surprised me a little because it meant Kerry wasn’t there. I let myself in, and on the kitchen table I found a note: Out for my walk. Back soon. So she must have gone later than she’d indicated she would. Probably spent most of the day lazing around, maybe had herself a nice long nap.
In any case, she’d been away for a while because the cabin was muggy with all the windows closed. I opened four of them to let in the light afternoon breeze, provide some cross ventilation. Then I got a bottle of Sierra Nevada out of the rattling old refrigerator and took it onto the deck.
Cooling some now, with the breeze and the down-sliding sun. Hot day in the valley. Much of the terrain I’d explored had been open and unshaded, and I’d worked up a pretty good sweat. Tired myself out, too. I could feel the stiffness in my legs and back from all the tramping over uneven ground. I must’ve walked four or five miles, a lot more distance than I was used to.
But I’d found a couple of likely fishing spots, neither of them on the map I’d bought in the sporting goods store in Six Pines-one along a clear, shallow, fast-moving stream, the other a tree-shaded, moss-banked pool. Plenty of trout moving in and out of that pool; you couldn’t quite see them, except as faint shadows gliding among darker shadows beneath the surface, but they were there all right. I’d figured a Blue Quill or Thorax Dun would work well in the stream, and a Gray Hackle just right for the pool. Wrong on all three counts. Or maybe the fish just weren’t biting today. I hadn’t even had a decent nibble.
Tomorrow morning early, I thought, if I could haul my creaky old carcass out of bed in the cold light of dawn, I’d go out again. Today was the first time I’d been trout fishing in years, ever since that harrowing time at Deep Mountain Lake high up in the Sierras near Quincy. Thought I’d lost my zest for the sport, but today’s outing was proof that I hadn’t; I had just needed some time away from it, was all. If we did end up buying this place, I’d probably indulge in quite a bit of catch and release in the future. As much as I’d once enjoyed fresh trout pan-fried in butter, I’d reached the point in my life where I could no longer willingly take a life of any kind.
I’d have one more try at talking Kerry into coming with me tomorrow. She wouldn’t have to put a line out herself, just be there to keep me company and share the experience. Convince her to try it once, and she’d be as hooked as one of the rainbows or browns I planned to catch.
I finished my beer, went inside for another. Moved my chair to the far side of the deck, put my feet up on the rail, and sat there sipping and taking in the view. The beer and the day’s exercise made me drowsy; I nodded off for a while, until an ear-buzzing mosquito jerked me out of it. The low angle of the sun told me it must be close to six o’clock. A glance at my watch confirmed it.
And still no Kerry. She must have left just before I got back, I thought. Then I thought no, she had to’ve been out for at least a half hour by then or it wouldn’t have been so stuffy inside.
Some walk. But how far could she have gone? Quite a ways if she’d taken the secondary road below; it meandered along the hillside for a considerable distance in both directions before dropping down to the main valley road. But she’d said something this morning about a walk in the woods. Which woods? There was timber all around the property, all along Ridge Hill Road.
Possible she’d gotten herself lost, but that wasn’t likely. There were other houses tucked in among most of the nearby forestland, except for the section that ran along the ridge above and down the other side, and she wouldn’t have gone up that far. Kerry was not a risk-taker for one thing, and for another, she had a built-in compass that operated even in unfamiliar surroundings.
Some kind of accident? Tripped, fell, hurt herself badly enough so that she couldn’t make it back? That possibility was what worried me the most. Accidents could happen to anybody at any time, no matter how careful you were.
I let another fifteen minutes go by, my nerves jumping, the fear of some sort of accident jabbing at my mind. And when she still didn’t show, I went looking for her.
The woods at the rear first. There was a gate in the fence back there… through it seemed the most likely way for her to have gone. On the other side was what looked like a deer trail, and I followed that to where it split in two. Damn! I went a little ways along each fork, looking for some sign of recent passage and not finding any. She could have gone in either direction-the timber ran all along the rear of the property and down on both sides. If she’d come in here at all.
I took the left fork first, followed it until it petered out against a deadfall. You could get around it, but not without making a detour through fern groves on either side. None of the ferns appeared to have been trampled.
Back to the other fork and along its winding course. Broken twigs, scuffed-through needles… somebody had been this way recently. Kerry? It could also have been a deer; in one place, I came on a little pile of black pellet droppings. I was not enough of a woodsman to make the distinction.
The trail led me out of the trees, across a shallow streambed and a rock-strewn brown meadow. No sign of Kerry. No sign that she’d ever been here. What was discernible of the path ended at the far end of the clearing, beyond which was a moderately steep incline through trees and underbrush. I thought about climbing up there, but I didn’t do it. The muscles in my legs were already tight-drawn from the exertion.
I couldn’t keep searching blind like this. The dusky light was deepening, which made the footing even more uncertain; in my tired and edgy state, I was liable to be the one to suffer a harmful fall. My watch told me I’d been chasing around in these woods for nearly an hour. Kerry might have returned to the cabin by now, be there waiting and wondering where I’d gone. If she had, I’d feel like a fool for all this frantic activity-a relieved fool.
I made my way back through the trees, and even with my eyes cast downward, I stumbled a couple of times over hidden obstacles. Once I thought I’d managed to get myself lost, then located the trail again and finally emerged at the gate in the boundary fence. I half ran around to the front of the cabin.
The door was still locked.
Kerry wasn’t there.
Now I really was scared. I hurried down to the graveled parking area, drove to Ridge Hill Road. The shortest route to the main valley road was to the north; I turned in that direction. No Kerry. There was a good-sized public park on the west side of the valley road intersection, a campground a short distance away on the east side; I made looping passes through both. No Kerry. Back along Ridge Hill in the opposite direction. No Kerry. Another secondary road branched upward to the left; the signpost there gave its name as Skyview Drive and warned that there was No Outlet. I swung up there. No Kerry.
Ahead was another intersection, this one on the left. When I neared it, I saw that the branch was unpaved and heavily rutted-an old logging road probably, that angled up through the woods. I sleeved sweat off my face as I slowed to make the turn. Follow the logging road as far as it goes, I thought, and if I still didn’t find her, go back to
