Castle Rock (21 page)

She had gone to Santa Fe, asked Joe to keep watch over Danny. Joe was absolutely dependable. She would bet her life on Joe. That was why, really, Will's phone call reporting Danny missing had been so shocking. Although no one could have expected Joe to foresee a kidnapping . . .

Serena stood very still, scarcely breathing.

What was it Joe had told Millie? He told her that Danny would be all right, that the Kachinas would care for Danny. Joe was sure of Danny's safety.

Oh my God, Serena thought, of course, it made every kind of sense. Why hadn't she seen it before? She should have known. Joe always did his job.

Joe must have come up to Danny's room last night to check on him and found the dead cat. Or perhaps Mr. Richard wasn't dead yet, perhaps he was sleeping heavily, his breath drawn thickly through an open mouth, obviously drugged. It wouldn't take Joe long to spot the milk and the almost empty capsule of pills and to realize that Danny was in deadly danger.

A sleeping boy. A dead cat. A dark house. Somewhere near, a killer who stepped quietly in the night. Joe's first responsibility was to protect Danny. What would happen if he raised an alarm? He didn't have the authority to call the police. That would have to be done by Will or Julie or Peter.

Obviously, Joe hadn't believed he could prevail so he must have taken Danny somewhere to hide him and intended to meet her on her return the next morning and tell her what had happened.

But she hadn't come to her room, hadn't found the message.

When had the Kachina been destroyed? How long ago? Oh God, how long ago?

Serena whirled around, hurried to her closet. She changed into Levis, a flannel shirt, boots, and her poncho. She was dropping it over her head when she heard a low knock on her door.

Quickly, she turned off the light then stepped back into an alcove. She had no time to talk to anyone.

The door handle turned, the door edged open.

“Serena?”

Her heart ached. She loved the sound of his voice.

“Serena.” Jed spoke louder.

She stood frozen in the dark. Could she trust him? She knew the answer. No. He was too mysterious, his appearance on the ranch too fortuitous. How could she trust a man who would look at her as he did then make love to Julie?

“Damn,” he said angrily. The door slammed shut.

Serena waited a long five minutes. She couldn't afford to run into Jed. Still, she felt a frantic impulse to hurry.

When she opened her door to dark and quiet, she slipped down the stairs, listening as she went. First she would find the deputy. He could get in touch with the Sheriff. She had an idea where Joe might be waiting for her. Castle Rock wasn't the only place on the ranch with caves. She and Will and Julie had played in a favorite cave for years. It was in a sandstone cliff just beneath the biggest cottonwood tree on the ranch.

Serena paused at the foot of the steps. The hacienda lay quiet as a tomb. She shivered. Everyone had withdrawn this stormy night. She walked quietly down the hall. The only light came through the windows from the huge uneven flashes of sheet lightning and the only sound was the fury of the storm.

She looked in all the downstairs rooms but found no one. She saw a crack of light beneath the kitchen door. She felt a rush of relief. The deputy must be having a snack. She pushed through the swinging door and started to call out, but the kitchen was empty.

Serena paused in the doorway. Someone must be about, but she didn't want to call out. The bright empty room frightened her. Where could the deputy be?

She didn't have time to hunt for him. Quickly, she crossed to the telephone. She would call the sheriff. She picked up the receiver. There was no sound at all on the line.

It could be the storm, of course. This kind of storm often whipped the lines until they broke. Sometimes they lost service for several days. Of course, it could be the storm.

But where was the deputy and why did the hacienda have this awful waiting silence about it?

Serena quickly replaced the receiver and looked fearfully around the bright kitchen. There was something terrifying in the absolute stillness within and the rumble and roar outside.

The deputy gone. The phone dead. The dark rooms beyond the brightly lit kitchen.

Serena fled from the kitchen. She hesitated in the dark foyer. She felt alone and frightened.

Will.

She could trust Will. If there was no one else in the world left for her to trust, she could trust him. With a tremendous sense of relief, she ran back up the stairs and down the dark hallway to his room. She turned the knob, stepped inside, again into darkness.

“Will,” she whispered, “Will, I need . . .”

She turned on the light. The bed lay untouched. Serena looked frantically around, but Will wasn't there.

Through the uncurtained windows, lightning flashed. Rain flooded against the glass panes. She didn't like summer storms. They frightened her. She had always been careful to be safe at home when they struck. But tonight the hacienda held more terror than the storm.

Serena turned off the light and left Will's empty room behind, leaving, too, part of her certainty in what she could trust to be good and right. She crept downstairs, feeling now that danger lurked in the dark rooms. She reached the den and threaded her way around shadowy clumps of furniture to the gun case. Reaching up on the ledge, she found the key and opened the case. She carefully lifted out the Winchester rifle from the second slot. Using the same key, she unlocked the drawer beneath the cabinet and felt until she found the right cartridge boxes. She slipped two boxes deep into the pocket of her poncho after loading the rifle.

She knew guns, knew bullets. Thanks to Uncle Dan she could shoot very well indeed. She could drop a running coyote at fifty yards.

Perhaps that would come as a surprise to someone tonight.

The house still seemed deserted when she reached the front hall. She edged the door open, slipped out onto the porch. Behind her the house lay dark and quiet as the hulk of a drowned boat. She felt menace, sensed it in the brooding lifelessness of the silent house. She plunged out into the battering rain almost with a sense of relief.

A gigantic spear of lightning exploded above her, splitting into jagged prongs that lit the night with a ghostly radiance. Rain came down so thick that it shimmered like a curtain of silver.

The rain struck Serena with physical force, pelting her head and shoulders. She pulled the hood of the poncho low over her face and ran from memory, her boots slipping in inches-deep water.

Serena was breathless by the time she reached the door of the stables. She had never ridden Hurricane in this kind of weather. He was a steady, serious horse. Would he panic and bolt when big lightning flashes danced above him? But there was no other way to reach the cave.

The cave might lie empty, might be a musty bat stop on the way to nowhere.

But Joe had to be somewhere.

She opened the stable door and started to step inside, then she saw light spilling out of the tack room. Boots gritted against concrete.

Serena dodged to her left and crouched at the end of the stalls.

A stall door opened and a horse moved uneasily. A man swore and grunted as he slapped the saddle atop the horse and cinched it. Then footsteps came toward the end of the stables.

Serena saw them pass. She saw his face, strained and hard, a frightening distortion of a face she knew so well. As the stable door slammed shut behind horse and rider, Serena was torn by relief and sadness.

It wasn't Jed. Oh God, it wasn't Jed. But pain twisted inside her. She had grown up with Will. She had been sure in her heart that she could always count on Will.

She tried to shut the memory of his pale, strained face from her mind as she saddled Hurricane. It did no good to think. She must not think, she must only move and do this night. She would not think.

She slid the rifle into its long holster and led Hurricane to the door. When she opened it and the rain's spume slanted inside, Hurricane stiffened his legs. She patted his shoulder and talked softly to him. She mounted and gently urged him forward. Hurricane hesitated for an instant, then he moved.

Rain splashed over them like the thundering wash from a waterfall. Hurricane stepped jerkily for a few minutes, then, as if to say, well, all right, whatever you want, he settled into a steady trot.

They couldn't see, of course. The night was a wild melange of darkness and brief wavering light, slatting water and rushing rivulets, but they kept going, trusting to memory, to their years together, to a knowledge born of experience.

Serena strained to see whenever the lightning burned the night sky, but she found no trace of Will.

Should she have hurried faster, tried to follow him? But she had to trust her own hunch. She had to find Joe.

Usually, it took ten minutes to ride the broad flat trail that ended on a bluff overlooking the river. Tonight, she struggled through the wind and rain for almost a half-hour. Her hands were numb with cold by the time she reined in Hurricane beneath the cottonwood tree that bent and creaked in the wind. She dismounted, dropping the reins in front of Hurricane.

The storm's fury struck her full force when she began her descent. Wind howled and shrieked around her. Rain pummeled her back. Serena edged carefully down, clinging to exposed roots and sharp-edged bits of rock.

She almost missed the cave mouth. It was even narrower than she remembered, an oblique slit in the rock face, half-hidden by a boulder.

Serena paused in the narrow opening. Darkness pressed against her eyes.

“Joe?”

She whispered and the light sound of her voice vanished into emptiness.

“Joe.”

She yanked the flashlight out of her pocket and switched it on. Dark shapes began to move above her, fluttering and turning, a band of bats startled into motion.

The flashlight beam dipped toward the back of the cave then froze like a stage spotlight until it began to bounce, throwing wild shadows against the walls, as Serena half-ran, half-stumbled the length of the cave to drop beside a still figure.

Serena's hands trembled uncontrollably. The light wavered up and down but she could see clearly, too clearly. The back of Joe's head looked soft and misshapen, and dark brownish splotches of blood spread thickly beside him.

She reached out, touched the hand curled so defenselessly. Cold. Cold and stiff.

Serena huddled beside him, her head pressed against her knees. She didn't cry. There would be time later for tears. She sat in an agony of loss and horror.

If she hadn't gone in to Santa Fe . . . Oh Joe, Joe . . .

Finally, she lifted her head and stared somberly at his body. It was clear now what had happened. Joe had taken Danny away from the hacienda, hidden him to keep him safe, left a message for Serena in the Kachina doll. But someone else found and read that message and came to the cave.

Serena stared at the bloodied back of Joe's head. That told a story, too. The killer must have claimed Serena sent him, must have gained Joe's confidence.

Serena worked it out. The killer came to the cave, talked to Joe, pretended Serena had sent him. Joe, glad perhaps to share the responsibility of Danny, must have revealed the boy's hiding place. They turned to go, Joe leading the way, and, savagely, brutally, a raised hand slammed downward.

Stiffly, Serena started to get up. The flashlight dipped forward. Abruptly, Serena held it steady, focused the beam just beyond Joe's outstretched hand.

Blood dries a dark brown.

Joe had almost finished his message. Thin uneven letters straggled away into a smear. But there was enough. ANASA and part of a Z. Joe had used his last weakening spurt of life to try and save Danny.

How much time, Serena wondered, did she have? Or had time already run out for Danny? Had someone stalked him as he waited for Joe to return to the cliffside dwellings built so long ago by the Anasazi, the Old People. The golden adobe ruins clung to the cliff, accessible only by a man-made footbridge or by a narrow rock bridge that curved over the canyon.

Time or no time, Serena had no choice. She must go. She was Danny's only chance, slim as it might be. If she returned to the ranch, the killer would have plenty of time to find Danny and kill him, making it possible to rid the ranch of Serena, making it safe to use the ranch for every kind of smuggling.

When she came out of the cave, the storm took her breath away, the rain water blinded her. Another time she would have thought the climb back up the bluff impossible, but tonight her desperate determination to reach Danny propelled her up.

Hurricane stood waiting with his back to the sharply slanting rain. Serena mounted and turned his head toward the mountain path. He held back for just a moment, then, when she insisted, started forward.

Wonderful horse. Gallant, courageous, superb horse. Soon they were flying through the darkness, both of them straining ahead, the rain and thunder and jagged streaks of lightning surrounding them like a devil's chorus. As they climbed higher, moved up into the fir-thick forest, the trees absorbed the violence of the rain but the lightning danced and crackled in the tree tops. Off to the left, a tree blazed. Serena's yellow poncho glistened in the smoky light.