knapsack onto my back once more, and, with Dear Dana Worth at my side, stride toward the gate. This time my route is more direct, but the shadowy headstones here look like the headstones everyplace else. Dana practically skips along. She seems almost giddy at the thought that we are leaving this place, and I am rather pleased myself. I cradle the box in my arms, still worried about whether somebody else is in here with us.
As we hike, I listen. Was that a footstep? The sloughing of metal over stone? I fall back and listen harder. Nothing but silence now. We reach the second crossroads, turn right onto the direct path toward the gate. Dana’s stride quickens. She is tough, the terror of the law school, but I know this sojourn among the remains of the dead has spooked her. She will be relieved to escape.
So will I.
I allow her to walk on ahead. I slow down. Cock my head to the side.
“Okay, Misha, what is it this time?” Dana’s voice is impatient as she circles back in my direction. She folds her arms and clucks her tongue. No matter what evidence might have brought us to this point, the only conspiracies she really cares about are those perpetrated by the faculty appointments committee. Yet I note the hysterical edge to her voice; my erstwhile buddy is as frightened as I am.
“Hush,” I murmur, listening.
“Misha, I really think we should-”
“Dana, will you please shut up?”
In the harsh white gleam of my flashlight, Dear Dana’s face is twisted in anger and hurt, the face of a little girl. She has already declared our comradeship, her furious expression signals, by coming here in the first place. She does not have to accept my verbal abuse too.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper.
“You know, Msha,” she hisses, “there are times when I don’t know what I see in you.”
“I understand. But hush anyway.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m trying to listen.”
To my relief, Dana cooperates this time. She steps away, standing off to the side of the path, shaking her head at my foolishness, but she does it quietly. She puts a hand on the side of a mausoleum, pressing as though expecting to find a hidden doorway, then pulls it back, her fingers having touched something she would rather not name. She wraps her arms around herself, puffs out air. Her bluster, I know, hides a disquiet as great as mine.
I walk a few steps down the path in the direction from which we came.
Nothing.
“I’m going to turn off my light for a minute,” I tell her, and do it. “Point yours the other way.”
Dana, her expression now uneasy, nods her head. I wait until the beam from Dana’s lantern swings out of my line of sight. Then I move farther down the path and glare into the graying darkness. Nothing.
Something.
A small metallic click. Repeated, but not regularly enough to represent some broken valve on a truck idling outside the walls. It is made by a human being. A human being carrying something that clanks and jangles. But trying to be quiet about it.
Silence falls again, but I am not fooled. It was a click. A human click. Maybe more than one click. Maybe more than one human. And not far away.
Still clutching the box, I pull Dana close.
“Why, Misha,” she says, “I didn’t know you cared.” But she says it in irritation, for Dana, as I believe I have mentioned, does not like to be touched.
I lean toward her ear and whisper, “Somebody else is in here.”
Dear Dana shudders and pulls away from me. “That’s ridiculous. Number one, I think we would have heard him. Number two, nobody else is as crazy as you-”
“Dana-”
“Number three, please don’t grab me like that. Ever. Okay?”
“I’m sorry, but I was trying to-”
“Misha, look. We’re friends and all. But, number one, grabbing me like that is disrespectful of my space. Number two, it’s such an aggressive, male-”
This time Dana has to end her list inconclusively, because we both hear, very close behind us, the crunch of what can only be a human being crossing gravel, followed by a soft exclamation as said human stumbles.
Finally spooked, we take off, no longer trying to be quiet. We reach the front gate in less than a minute.
It is closed.
“Give it a shove,” I suggest to Dana.
She pushes, pushes harder, then turns to me and shakes her head.
“What is it?”
“Look.” Her voice trembles as she points. The padlock and chain are firmly in place. Now I know what was clanking in the darkness.
We are trapped in the cemetery.
“Okay,” I mutter, thinking fast. Maybe Samuel simply forgot, then came back and put the chain on as usual. Maybe. On the other hand, he has done nothing else for the past quarter-century but open this gate in the morning and lock it at night. From force of habit alone, he would surely have chained it up. Somebody picked the lock and opened the gate to see if anybody else came in. Anybody who was helping me, for instance. Then the same somebody chained it again.
Dana, always prepared, reaches toward her belt. “I’ll use my phone.”
“To call whom?”
She frowns. “I don’t know. The police or somebody. You have a better idea?”
Recalling my previous encounter with the police, I shake my head. “We can get out the other way.”
“What other way?”
I find a grin somewhere, then turn to look toward the rear of the cemetery again. I do not want to plunge back into that awful darkness, easy prey for whoever or whatever lurks in the shadows of the dead, but we have no choice. “It’s a long story, Dana. Believe me, there is another way out. A drainage tunnel in the south wall. Seriously. I’ll show you.” I take a couple of steps down the path. “Come with me.”
She does not answer.
I turn back. “Dana? It’ll be fine, I promise.”
She is a couple of paces behind me, her wide-eyed gaze in the other direction, toward the gate. I follow her line of sight.
“Misha,” she gasps, then drops her shovel on the ground and raises her hands slowly. Looking past her, I shut up at once.
He must have been hiding behind one of the mausoleums, I realize, for he appeared as though by magic. I congratulate myself on this deduction to avoid crying out. For the man who is standing just off the path, easily picked out in the glare of my flashlight, has obviously been waiting at the gate for us to return. He is a tough-looking man, blocky and loose-limbed, a wall of flesh barring our path. A scraggly beard encircles his wrathful face. His eyes are hard. A coldly efficient gun clutched lightly in his right hand is pointing in our direction. The air seems suddenly slushy and cold, an impediment through which I must swim to move any part of my body. Dana has already put her hands up, just like a character in a movie, and I decide to do the same, especially because the man holding the gun motions with the barrel, making it plain what he wants us to do. Moving slowly, to show that I am no threat, I put the flashlight on the ground. I straighten again. He gives me another signal with the gun. Reluctantly, I put the strongbox down too.
“Very good,” says the bearded man in a terrifyingly familiar voice. His hair is a bright, fiery red.
“No,” I breathe. “It isn’t possible.”
But it is.
Because my attention is naturally on the blue-black gun with its bulbous silencer, it has taken a few seconds for my terrified brain to register a simple, stunning fact: the man blocking our path is no stranger. Behind the reddish-brown hair and reddish-brown beard is the ruddy, self-satisfied face of Colin Scott.
