there from the ship until close to three, and even going the long way around Parker could make it by two- thirty.
They were silent most of the way up, but as they neared the dirt road that led in to the cottages Parker said to Sternberg, in the back seat, “Lou, here’s the gun I took off that guard.”
“You’ve still got your other one? Fine.”
“My idea is,” Parker said, “Dan and me go in on foot, see what’s what. You and the car stay out by the turnoff, watch for Mike and Noelle.”
“Okay. If I hear anything
“
“You do what seems best.”
“Right.”
The landmark for the turnoff at night was the Agway just to the north of it. They kept lights on up there, in the yard and inside the main store building. Everything else for a few miles around was in darkness at this hour, so when they saw those white and red lights, they knew where they were.
There was no traffic at all; they hadn’t seen another car in motion in ten minutes. Parker switched down from headlights to running lights as he made the turn, then switched the lights off entirely before he stopped, with the Hyundai maybe four car lengths in from the blacktop, squarely in the middle of the dirt road. All three got out, and Sternberg, holding the guard’s gun loosely at his side, said, “I’ll sit against a tree over here.”
Wycza said, “Let’s hope Mike don’t take the turn too fast.”
Sternberg said, “Parker, now he’s worried about Hanzen’s car.You sure this guy’s one of us?”
“Promise you won’t tell,” Wycza said, and he and Parker walked on down the road.
There was enough moonlight and starlight to make the paler swath of the road stand out from the darker woods all around it. They walked side by side, guns in their hands, Parker near the left edge of the road, Wycza near the right. After a while, their night vision improved, and they could see a little ways into the woods on both sides. Except for the quiet crunch of their shoes on the dirt, there was no sound. And though the air was cool, there was no breeze.
Light up ahead. They moved more slowly, and saw the lights still on in their cottage. In the cleared space in front stood the three motorcycles, near Wycza’s Lexus and Parker’s Subaru. There was no sound, no movement.
Wycza reached across and tapped Parker’s arm, then pointed. The lit-up cottage was second from the left. Between the two cottages on the right a pickup truck was parked. It was a convention here.
There was no way to move to the left past the cottages, which is what Parker had wanted to do. But if you went that way you’d be picked up in the light-spill, so he moved to the right instead and followed Wycza around the edge of the clearing to the farthest right-hand cottage and around it into the deeper darkness there.
In that darkness they paused for a whispered discussion. Wycza said, “Who’s the truck?”
“Wild card.”
“There’s somebody somewhere. Down at the landing?”
“If they still think we’re coming from there. I’ll look.”
“I’ll see what’s in the cottage.”
“Fine,” Parker said, and went first, around the riverside end of the first cottage and straight out to the drop-off, then left to the wooden stairs down to the river, which were just beyond the range of illumination from the house.
The sound here was river against shore, river against support posts; faint whispers of wavelets, not much louder than Parker and Wycza had been, a minute ago.
Parker went silently down the uneven steps. There was no comfortable place for somebody to sit and wait on the steep slope to either side, and there was nobody on the dock. The river reflected moonlight and made a heavy steady sweeping movement from right to left.
Parker went back up the stairs, and at the top he stood and waited and listened. At first he heard and saw nothing, but then he caught the movement as the outside door to the screened porch of their cottage pushed inward, the screen of the door reflecting light differently as it moved. He looked lower, and could just make out Wycza crawling through the doorway, flat on his belly. The screen door eased shut.
Parker moved to his left, to get to the rear of the last cottage, where they’d split up, so he could follow Wycza’s route. He turned at that cottage, moved along its screened-in porch, and beyond it saw to his left the pickup, parked facing this way, as though the driver hadn’t considered the possibility he might want to leave in a hurry.
As Parker crossed the open space to the next cottage, there were two sudden shots. He dove to the ground, pressed against the stone foundation of the cottage, and lay prone, Python held in both hands on the ground in front of him.
The shots had come from out ahead, probably their cottage. And the two shots had been different, the first one lighter, more of a clap, the second one heavier, a full-throated bark. The kind of sound this Python might make, or Wycza’s 27.
Parker waited for some sort of follow-up, but nothing else happened, so he snaked forward along the ground, pulling himself on with his elbows, arms crossed in front of his jaw, Python pointed at the screened porch beside him.
At the corner, he was where the light began. He looked across at the yellow windows, and waited. After a minute, he heard movement, walking; somebody who wasn’t trying to conceal himself. Then the front door opened and slammed shut, and a few seconds later Wycza appeared around the corner down there, 27 in his hand but casually, pointed downward. He looked this way and that, but not warily, along the ground, like somebody who’s lost a cufflink. He stopped to look at the window to the bedroom off the kitchen, fingering the screen there. Then he
