The light played over her. “You okay? You look like you might be sick.”
She nodded her head. “I think I might.” She tightened her grip around the iron hinge pin. Its point, sharp and hard, pricked against her thigh. “Would you help me to the washroom?”
“Sure,” he said. He was close enough so she could smell him, gasoline and sweat and the strong, cheap detergent his clothes were washed in. He opened his arms to lift her, and she sprang forward, her thighs, her back, her arms all working together, and she drove the iron spike into his gut.
For a moment, they stood like lovers, his arms half embracing her, his face inches from hers, staring into each others eyes. Then, afraid she had only lightly wounded him, she shoved against his chest. He let out a noise like a chainsaw caught in a tree bole and fell to the floor.
The flashlight bounced off the uneven wooden boards at an angle and smashed against the metal footing of an ancient pulping machine. Instantly, the unrelenting darkness swallowed them.
“You… stabbed me.” Randy’s voice held more amazement than pain.
Millie was shaking so hard she could barely move. She backed away from the voice below her. She tried to think of something to say to him, something to justify what she had done, but in the end, her justification was that she was free to leave, whether he or his wife or Shaun Reid wanted her to or not. She backed away another step.
Randy groaned. “Holy crap.” He breathed shallowly, as if the movement of his lungs was painful. “Hurts.”
“I’ll call for help as soon as I’m away.” She skirted around him as best she could, bumping into crates and feeling her way past tarp covered machines.
“Lisa,” he moaned.
She moved toward the front of the building by touch and memory, fixing the location where she last saw Randy’s light when he had found the wine bottles. She caught a whiff of something, something that smelled like mildewed cloth and crankcase oil, and remembered Randy’s description of the case of wine. She must be getting close. “Don’t worry,” she called to the man in the darkness behind her. “We’re both going to get out of here alive.”
Russ was watching Clare make her way back to the table when his phone rang. “Excuse me,” he said to his dinner companions. “I have to take this.”
“You didn’t even check the number,” Linda said in an undertone. “Can’t they do without you for a couple of hours?”
He opened his mouth to explain that with two major investigations and a missing person, he shouldn’t even be at the party, but he bit off the words. What was the use? “I’m sorry,” he said, then retreated to the entryway and opened his phone.
“Van Alstyne here,” he said.
“Hey, Chief, it’s Eric, up to Haudenosaunee.”
“Eric. How’s it going? Find anything?” Russ watched as Clare arrived at the table. Instead of sitting down, she bent over and said something to Parteger. The view was so good he almost missed McCrea’s next sentence.
“We found a few more of those Planetary Liberation Army pamphlets.”
“Any correspondence? Anything that might be a threat to van der Hoeven?” Hugh rose from his seat and stepped back, gesturing for Clare to precede him. They began maneuvering between the tables, headed toward the entryway.
“No. It’s all pretty generic stuff. But,” Eric stressed, “we found something very interesting in the cellar. They were stacked up, nice and clean, but there were a dozen bleach jugs, the same number of empty detergent boxes, fifteen dry gas cans, and-get this-a half of a box of sawdust.
The ingredients for homemade napalm. “Holy shit,” Russ said. Clare and Hugh walked past him. “Hang on,” he said to Eric. He clamped a hand over the phone. “Are you leaving?”
Clare shook her head. “Hugh’s helping me get the wine out of my car. We’ll be right back.”
“I want to ask you about your conversation with the housekeeper this morning.”
Her eyes brightened with curiosity. “Okay.”
Russ turned back to his phone. “Eric? Good work. I’m going to call Harlene and have her alert the state police and the Feebs that we have a possible terror weapon on the loose. I’m going to give out the number at Haudenosaunee. Stay within earshot of the phone, in case anyone needs to ask you questions.”
He hung up and speed-dialed Harlene. Dammit, he didn’t want to wait until Clare and Parteger got back. Besides, Clare shouldn’t be lugging wooden crates around dressed like that. Didn’t that pansy-shirted Brit have any sense at all?
“Dispatch.”
He strode across the lobby toward the front doors. “Harlene, it’s Russ.”
“Hey, Chief. What can I do you for?”
“Listen carefully. I need you to notify the state police threat response team and the district FBI office that we may have a terrorist weapon situation.”
Harlene, thirty-plus-year veteran of the dispatch board, didn’t turn a hair. “They’re going to want to know what type.”
He pushed open one of the elaborate glass-and-pine doors. The lights around the portico were so bright they nearly drowned out the moon. “Eric’s found evidence suggesting home-brewed napalm. Direct any questions to him up at Haudenosaunee. You got the number there?”
“Yep.”
“We don’t know the amount, but it looks as if it could be several dozen gallons. This may be associated with Millie van der Hoeven’s disappearance. The stuff may be in the hands of a militant ecoterrorist group, the Planetary Liberation Army. You got that?”
“Got it.”
He walked down the curving drive toward the guest parking. “Oh, and get Kevin on the radio. Tell him to break the stakeout. I want him to have another talk with Lisa Schoof. We need to know everything about anything she might have seen and heard while at Haudenosaunee.”
“Will do.”
He spotted Clare’s little red car beneath one of the sleek light poles dotting the lot. He broke into a trot. “Keep me informed,” he told Harlene. “Anything at all, I want to know. Chief out.” He beeped off without waiting for her reply.
Clare was overseeing Parteger, who was stuffed halfway into the rear seat of her Shelby. One crate sat on the asphalt near her feet-or where her feet would be if he could see them. Her upper body was wrapped in a fur that looked like something Mamie Eisenhower might have worn.
“What is that?” Russ asked.
She plucked at the thing. “A beaver jacket. It belonged to my grandmother. I don’t have many occasions to wear it, but it’s terrifically warm.” Her voice was apologetic; whether for the existence of the fur or for not bringing it out more often, he couldn’t tell.
Parteger wiggled out of the backseat without the remaining wine. “Oh, look,” he said. “The police. What a surprise.”
Russ ignored him. “When you were talking, did either Lisa Schoof or Eugene ever say anything to you about Millie transporting anything on or off the property?”
“No,” she said. “What’s up?”
“Eric McCrea’s been doing the search of the house at Haudenosaunee. He’s found dozens of empty bleach bottles, detergent boxes, and gas cans. Plus sawdust.”
She sucked in her breath. “Oh, that’s not good.”
“What?” Parteger said. “What is it?”
“You combine them to make an accelerant,” Clare said, still looking at Russ. “All you need is a triggering mechanism and boom, instant inferno.”
Parteger looked at Russ skeptically. “And you think someone at this… Haudenosaunee has been playing junior
