Jett turned over her racing thoughts, trying to find something important. She hadn't locked the front door. But who was she kidding? If it passed through wire, a door would be no problem. She could dial 911, but then what would she say? A cheese-faced dude in creepy clothes was breaking into the house?
She could hide. But where? The house was old and rambling, but it didn't have any hidden passageways or bookcases disguising secret rooms. She could hide in the linen closet, but that would be the first place he would look.
The attic. When they'd moved in, Gordon had asked her to put some of her summer clothes away. She and Mom had sorted them, stuck a few stinky mothballs in the boxes, and tucked them into the dusty space above the linen closet. Jett hadn't gone into the attic, just set the boxes around the edges of the access hole. But she'd gotten the vauge impression of a large, cluttered space, with old fur niture and stacks of boxes. If the man went up there and found her, she'd be trapped, but she was trapped now, unless she made a run for the back door. The man moved like an arthritic puppet, but that didn't mean he couldn't make his boots drum if necessary.
She hurried down the hall to the closet, the energetic pop music providing an incongruous soundtrack. She climbed the shelves and tugged the string that led to the access, and a little folded ladder appeared as the small door swung open. Jett straightened the lad der and scrambled up, closing the ladder behind her as she went. The access door slammed shut with a creak of springs. The attic was dark, with the only light leaking from ventilation slats at each gabled end of the house.
Jett's heart thudded in her chest, and the marijuana made her aware of the blood pulsing through her body. She paused and listened, wondering if the man had reached the front door yet, and if he was going to enter. All she could hear was the muffled backbeat of the music. She crept deeper into the attic, ducking under the ceil ing joists until she came to a cluster of furniture. There she found a pine box that was nearly the size of a coffin, but was obviously a shipping crate of some kind. She lifted the lid, then scooted it to the side, taking care not to make scraping sounds. Any noise she made would likely be audible to the man if he was on the second floor.
When the gap in the lid was wide enough, she felt through the opening to see if the box was empty. Her hand brushed against coarse cloth. There appeared to be room inside, so she climbed in, then slid the lid back into place, hoping the stirred dust didn't make her sneeze. In the blackness of the crate, she could hear the rasping of her breath. It sounded as if she had emphysema, but that must have been an acoustic trick of the confined space. She closed her mouth, forcing stale air through her nose. Still the rasping continued. In her bedroom, the CD ended, and the house was quiet. She wondered if the man's boots would make footsteps, or if he somehow floated over the floor in the same way he drifted through the fence.
Despite her fear, she was still buzzed, and her brain raced fran tically. Pot sometimes gave her anxiety, and she thought this would be a real bad time to get claustrophobic. She was wondering how long she would have to hide before the man would give up. He did n't look like the giving-up kind.
Something wriggled beside her, in the pile of clothes. It was probably just the cloth settling from her moving it. Probably. Certainly it wasn't rats.
It wriggled again.
She held her breath, but the rasping went on. A hand touched her arm, or what felt like a hand, though the surface was abrasive. Like a scratchy piece of wool. Her heart jumped against her rib cage and she kicked the lid off.
Jett scrambled out of the crate as the hand grabbed at her leg. She kicked backward in the darkness, and the rasping changed pitch into a low chuckle. A chest of drawers with a mirror was be side her, reflecting the scant light. In the mirror, she saw a shape rising out of the crate. She screamed and ran for the access door, banging her shoulder hard against one of the joists. When she reached the access, she climbed onto it, and the door swung open under her weight, pitching her into the closet. Sparks of pain shot up from her ankle, but she rose to her feet and opened the closet door, fully expecting to come face-to-face with the man in the black hat. But he couldn't be as scary as that chuckling creature in the attic.
The hallway was clear, and Jett made a run for it, hobbling on her gimpy leg.
'Jett?'
Mom was downstairs. Jett ran to the head of the stairs. Mom stood below her, a paper grocery bag in her hand.
'What's going on?' Mom asked.
'Nothing, I was just...'
'Your face is pale. Are you running a fever?'
'Did you know you left the front door open?'
'Come on down and help me make dinner. I got a new recipe to try.'
Jett descended the stairs, using the banister to keep the weight off her injured ankle. She checked rooms as she passed wondering if the man in the black hat was going to get two people for the price of one. But he wasn't in the house. Assuming he'd even existed in me first place.
Chapter Twenty-one
Sue Norwood had spent the morning doing inventory. Winter was not a big merchandise deal in Solom, and the kayak rentals all but died as the weather got colder. She normally took December off, though she'd thought about starting up a cross-country skiing racket and see if she could get the Floridians to bite. Trouble was, most of them took off at the first frost. Besides, the end of the year was a time to start lining up tax deductions.
Today she'd only had three customers: a scruffy college kid who purchased a North Face sleeping bag, a housewife who popped in for a two-dollar tube of Wounded Warrior all-purpose healing salve, and a big-boobed blonde with a flat tire on her ten-speed. Sue noted that the Everharts hadn't turned in their rental bikes dur ing the night.
She was patching a split seam in a kayak with fiberglass and epoxy when the bell over the door rang. She figured it was the Everharts, limping in sore and tired. 'Hello?' she called from her work area in the corner of the shop.
'Miss Norwood?'
'Odus? Come on back, I've got a mess on my hands.'
Odus Hampton wasn't really a regular, though he occasionally bought some fishing hooks or monofilament line. She sometimes hired him for heavy work if big shipments came in, and he was happy to work for store credit. He had taught her a lot about the river, and she'd taken him out in a canoe a few times so he could show her the currents, falls, and rough patches. She had offered to hire him as a river guide, but he wasn't interested in steady work, though he'd filled in a few times when Sue was under the weather. She trusted his outdoor experience, partly because he camped out for most of the summer, even though he did it on the cheap, with out a Coleman lantern, mosquito netting, or a pair of steel-toed Herman Survivor boots.
'Busted a boat?' Odus said. 'You ain't been crazy enough to take that out on the river? The water's probably forty degrees.'
'I'm getting it ready for spring. This is the only time I have to catch up. Did you go fishing today?'
Odus shook his head his full beard brushing the tops of his overalls. 'The fish won't be biting.'
'I thought they always bit for you.' The fumes from the epoxy were giving her a headache.
'Not when the water's tainted.'
'What's wrong with the water? Did it get contaminated?' The Blackburn River had been designated a national scenic river, and President Clinton had even given a speech there. No factories or major commercial farms lay along its banks, and the headwaters sluiced down from largely undeveloped mountains. If Sue had sus pected problems with water quality, she'd have screamed for Greenpeace, the Southern Environmental Defense League, the local branch of the Democrat Party, such as it was, and the North Carolina Department of Environment and Natural Resources. Clean water was money, just like scenic beauty was money. A lot of moun tain communities
