'In the dark.'
'With a lake between us and her?'
'Guide me to Candice's room and that telescope.'
Meredyth took a deep breath and nodded. 'Follow me.'
'Douse the light first, will you?'
'Yeah, good idea.' Meredyth's mind again filled with the image of Jeff and Tommy lying dead on her front lawn. This followed by the image of the dead in the Brody basement. This followed by the awful image of the worm-covered gardener at the bottom of the waterlogged rowboat.
She led Lucas back into the house through the rear door, both carrying their war clubs. He followed her inside, up the stairs, and to Candice's pitch-black room. Meredyth switched on the flash, but he grabbed it, covering it with his hand and shutting it off. 'No lights! It'll tip Lauralie off to our plans!'
'Sorry…I knew that.' The little light that guided him to the telescope came in the form of stars reflecting off its metal veneer where it poked through the open window. Balancing the table leg in his crotch, Lucas settled in at a chair before the telescope, realizing that he was in the exact position that Lauralie Blodgett had been in for most of the day. Had she planned this too? For them to be here in the dead girl's room eyeballing Meredyth's cabin on Lake Madera through the very telescope Lauralie had used?
How devious is this sick mind we 've locked horns with, he wondered, in this life-and-death competition?
From the condition of the Brody family bodies downstairs, he guessed the murders here had taken place as early as nine A.M., possibly earlier. He imagined that somewhere hidden in the surrounding woods they might find Arthur Belkvin's BMW, but stumbling about in the dark in search of the car would likely prove as futile as an attempt to walk out of here or around the enormous lake to Mrs. Famsworth's for a phone. The nearest contact opportunity remained the one he now stared at across the lake, his radio car, if she had not destroyed it.
He searched the grounds for any sign of Lauralie, imagining that by now she had shed the gardener's clothes for something out of Meredyth's closet. Behind him, he sensed Meredyth's growing trepidation.
'What do you see? Anyone on the water? Any movement up at the house?'
'No…nothing. She could be anywhere, like you said.'
'Damn it, Lucas. What're we going to do?'
'The horses. If we could get to the horses, we could ride out of here.'
'No, it's too risky.'
'It'd be a piece of cake. We could upend the rowboat. It's still down by the pier, and we float quietly over to the boathouse. From there, we take that back path to the sta-bles.'
'Don't you see, Lucas? She's planned it this way, every step of the way. She knows we'll go for the horses, because she's cut off every other alternative means of escape or communication with the outside.'
'All right, say she is lying in wait at the stables. We at least know to expect it, and so we're tuned in.'
'And she's tuned in at two hundred yards from the house with that damned gun of Jeff's. You don't stand a chance.'
Frustrated, he swore and stood up, pushing the chair over and making her start and back up. When she did so, her back hit something solid in the dark-Lauralie Blodgett, her mind screamed even as she called out the name! And the dark figure swayed and returned to hit Meredyth a second blow, and she slipped and fell, her bare feet skidding as if still wet. On hands and knees, she was stung by an unmistakable odor of blood, bile, and decaying flesh as it filled her nostrils. She screamed again as Lucas pushed himself between her and the shadow in the darkness-the thing attacking her. He grunted with the power behind the blow he dealt Lauralie-defending Meredyth with the table leg, slamming it into the dark terror.
Meredyth, from the floor, flashed the beam on the assailant, hoping to help Lucas, expecting to blind Lauralie Blodgett, but instead, the light illuminated the dripping half-torso of Mira Lourdes. her legs and lower abdomen dangling in the blackness, each heel lashed to Candice Brody's white ceiling fan.
'Christ, my heart!' shouted Lucas.
'It's our final ration of fun with the Antichrist and her twisted miracles,' Meredyth bitterly said. 'Behold the beast cometh. Damn that ugly bitch child of evil wherever she is.'
Lucas slipped now on the dank gruel below the half- corpse, and he instantly grabbed Meredyth up in his powerful arms, giving up any effort to regain his feet so he could lift her at the same time from the wet floor soiling their clothes.
'I'm going after her, Mere. You stay here, and I will track her in the night, comer her, and bring her pain and ours to an end.'
'No, you can't leave me here alone, and you can't go after her alone, Lucas, no!'
'I can move faster and stealthier alone. Mere. Having you to worry about is more apt to get me killed, trust me. You remain here. I can revert to the old ways and blend in with the night. I can get close enough to break her neck before she sees me coming.'
'She's got a high-powered rifle with a scope. I can at least help create a diversion.'
'Doing so could get you killed.'
'No, don't you see? She gets me in her scope, she won't pull the trigger. She wants me to survive and suffer your loss.'
He took a deep breath and then began peeling off his clothing down to his black BVDs. 'Try to keep up,' he told her, taking his table leg with him.
Even as she kept pace down the stairs, Meredyth peeled off her own clothes, beginning with her soiled pants, down to her Navy blue bra and panties. She'd not forgotten her war club, which thudded down the carpeted stairs with her. 'Lake's going to be cold,' she said, shivering at the thought.
'Cold is a state of mind. Hold on to that thought and you'll be all right.'
Lucas turned on the flashlight and placed it on the chopping block so it would flash to the ceiling. It decoyed their whereabouts, as it would be seen clearly in the window in Lauralie's telescopic lens. They exited out the back, and belly-crawled to the water's edge down from the pier among the reeds where the. capsized boat had hung up. There they inched into the water and took hold of the waiting, upturned boat. They began to make their way across the lake, back toward Meredyth's home.
Once on the other side, they were masked by the boat- house, where they tied the roaming overturned boat to a mooring. They went into the boathouse by swimming under. Once inside, they caught a moment's rest. Meredyth was trembling and exhausted. He found a blanket and wrapped her in it. 'My squaw,' he said, smiling. Then, holding his table leg high, he asked, 'Where is your war club?'
'At the bottom of the lake by now. I couldn't hold onto it and the boat any longer.'
'I want you to remain here until I get back with the horses,' he ordered her. 'No arguments.'
'Just because I dropped my…my war club?'
'Come on. Mere, we both know your ethics alone prevent you from drawing blood. And like I said, I can move faster and safer on my own.'
'Lucas, it's too dangerous. She's up there in one of those windows just waiting for one glimpse of you and-'
He put his finger to her lips. 'It's not so easy hitting a moving target, especially a painted Cherokee with a war club.'
'Tell that to Jeff and Tommy.'
'Jeff and Tommy were forced to run ahead of her down a slope, their backs to the bitch. She won't know when I'm coming. She won't see me coming. When and if she fires, she'll miss. If you hear multiple shots, you'll know she missed. Just have faith and wait here for me, understood?'
'No, Lucas! No!'
But he'd already dived into the blue fluid floor, swimming underwater to the outside, going for the boggy, swampy area on the north side of the structure. 'Damnit, Lucas!' she whispered, then dropped the blanket and dove in after him.
CHAPTER 20
