“Thank you, ma’am. You’re fun, too. Over and out.”
As I returned the Talkabout to my utility belt and stepped out of the gazebo, clouds claimed the moon once more.
Before I could continue on the kids’ trail, I heard voices. When I looked back, a few people were exiting the house, onto the patio. I could see them because they were backlighted, but I didn’t think they would see me in the dark of the moon. Three other people appeared around the north end of the house, and more voices arose to the south.
Somebody had been sent to the third floor to see why the Kens hadn’t answered the gong. The two were found dead with their sweaters pulled over their heads; and now there would be hell to pay, perhaps literally.
Thirty-six
NO ONE SHOUTED “GET HIM” OR ANYTHING SIMILAR, which seemed to indicate that they had not yet seen me.
The woods were a long way off, nothing but open yard between here and there. The moon would soon emerge once more. Although I wore dark clothes, they would see me when the lunar lamp returned, and I didn’t want to lead them in the direction that Boo and the kids had gone.
Between the gazebo and the stable, isolated trees stood here and there, as well as a few shrubs. I drew a Glock and headed that way, as more voices enlivened the night.
They would have guns. They would have knives. God alone knew what else they might have. My swift execution, however, was not what they intended. If they took me alive, I would end up on that steel stage, either here or at another of their secure locations. They would peel me alive, head to foot, until I spilled every secret that I possessed, which would probably occur even as they were laying out their skinning instruments and sharing with one another fond memories of previous flayings they had conducted together.
I felt like Frodo in Mordor, but without good Samwise to fight alongside me, alone and with no idea where I’d put the damn ring. When Gollum showed up, he would bite off my finger anyway, ring or not, just for the hell of it. If you’ve never read The Lord of the Rings, my apologies for alluding to it at such length.
Huddled under the first tree along my planned route, I scoped the way ahead and couldn’t detect any cultists in my path. When I looked back the way I’d come, past the gazebo, I saw three people with flashlights, the beams sweeping the ground ahead of them as they hurried toward their church. The search had begun in earnest.
Before the clouds stopped conspiring with me and the moon became a traitor, I ran in a crouch to a tall pine and sheltered against its trunk long enough to scan the night. I almost bolted for the next bit of cover, but three men appeared, hurrying up the gentle slope from the house, carving away the darkness with their flashlights. I pulled back, putting the pine between us a moment before one of the beams painted the curve of the trunk where I had just been standing.
Because I didn’t have a ghost dog to lead me, I didn’t want to make my way through the woods to the road where Mrs. Fischer waited. Psychic magnetism would reliably pull me to her, and there were most likely deer trails that I could follow rather than blunder noisily through the brush, but I would have to use my flashlight, which was out of the question.
I intended to leave via the long driveway by which I’d entered earlier. A crew of cultists would already have taken up position there, guarding the exit. To leave by that route, I would have to be reckless, and I would have to kill everyone I encountered before any of them might go out to the end of the private lane and discover the limo parked along the state route. No doubt Mrs. Fischer was expert with a handgun, smoothed out and fully blue, but she couldn’t hold off an army while she loaded the kids in the superstretch.
As the three men continued toward the stable, I saw more flashlights past that building, probing along the tree line. They would soon find the sleeping Dobermans.
The night was a box of dynamite. The fuse had been lit.
Ever since fleeing the house, I’d operated under the assumption that they knew who they were looking for; but that wasn’t necessarily true. Rob Burkett, Jinx, and the two Kens were too dead to describe me to anyone. The senoculus knew my face, which was exactly like its face with a more reasonable number of eyes, but just because that demon and all of these devil-worshippers were on the same team didn’t mean that they were constantly text messaging one another.
Anyway, in the dark, probing here and there with a light, I might be just another bad guy looking for the intruding bigot who had violated the sanctity of our religious service. Pistol in my right hand, flashlight in my left, I walked boldly away from the pine tree, toward the parking area, beyond which lay the driveway that led out to the state route.