Shadow in the Pines (26 page)

“Sit tight,” he squeezed her arm, then went up the stairs, returning momentarily with his shoes on and hers in his hand. “Here. Put these on,” he said, dropping them on the hearth beside her.

“I have to go?” she asked, looking up as he walked over to the coat rack.

“No,” he shook his head. “But I’d feel better if you had those on.”

His unspoken fears shot through her like a jolt of lightening and she did as he asked. When he was all buttoned up with a scarf wrapped tightly around his neck and one of her stocking caps covering his head, he pulled the Glock out of his pocket and checked it before gloving his hands.

“Noah…”

He winked. “It’s all right, baby. I’ll be right back.”

She was surprised to see him head for the back door, and even more surprised when she followed him and watched through the window as he headed straight for the woods behind the house. At first, she thought he was after someone, but then she saw him cut over and skirt the trail that joined the two yards. He must be afraid someone was watching. The thought chilled her even more and she stood stoically at the window, waiting for his return.

Chapter Twenty Three

It seemed like years, but in reality, according to her watch, was only about ten minutes. When he returned, he came back the same way he went, dragging a big branch behind him and swinging it in wide arcs to obliterate his footprints. He was seriously concerned.

The dark expression he wore when he re-entered the house confirmed her fears. “We’ve got a problem,” he said, stomping his feet just inside the door.

Dani followed him back to the living room, not speaking. Knowing he’d tell her when he was ready and knowing she probably didn’t want to hear it anyway. He shed his shoes in the kitchen to avoid soiling the carpet, then crossed immediately to the windows to close the blinds.

“Come on,” he nodded toward the couch. “Sit with me.”

She followed him mutely, snuggling into the corner of the couch beside him, touched that he’d saved the place closest to the fire for her.

“There’s no power or phone at my house, either,” he began slowly. “My lines have been cut.”

Dani gasped at the thought and he tightened his already firm grip on her hand.

“I suspect yours have too, but I didn’t look.” He paused and she waited. “The tires have been slashed on my truck and on the passenger side of your car.”

Dani exhaled slowly. “So it’s not the storm.”

“No, it’s not the storm,” he agreed. “The radio in my truck is smashed and I guess the cold killed the battery on my cell phone. There’s no sign of a break-in at the house, but it’s dead.”

She let it all sink in for a minute. “So, basically, we’re sitting ducks here.”

“I’m sure that’s what he’d like to think.”

“What do we do now?” she turned to him, eyes wide.

“That’s what we need to figure out. I’m not due in to work until six. No one will miss me before then,” he said, thinking out loud. “Either the guy is smart and has something planned for the next few hours, or he cut the wires while it was still dark because he was afraid he wouldn’t be able to once it was daylight.”

Dani tried, but she wasn’t following his train of thought. None of it seemed logical to her. “Talk English, Noah. I have no idea what you think.”

He looked at her sadly. “I really don’t know. It wouldn’t be hard to find out I’m scheduled to work tonight. If he wanted to take another run at you, I’d think he’d have waited until I left, then cut the power and…”

“I get it,” she shuddered. “But he didn’t. What does that mean?”

“My best guess is, it means he wants us both.”

“But… we were outside half the day yesterday. Why didn’t he just shoot us?” They both knew he could have if that’s what he wanted to do.

Noah shook his head. “Maybe he still thinks he can make it look accidental, I don’t know. Why didn’t he just conk you in the head instead of going to all the trouble of stealing snakes and locking you in the cellar?”

She nodded in agreement. It’s true. He was obviously lurking nearby. He could easily have slipped up behind her without her knowing. “Because he wanted to put the blame on someone else?”

“Hey, that’s pretty good,” he smiled briefly. “You’ve been hanging around me too much. You’re starting to think like a cop.”

“Then whatever he does, he wants to make it look like it was someone associated with Ophidian.”

“It’s only a guess, but it’s logical. There’ve been too many chances to kill us both.”

“Then, does that mean it’s
not
someone associated with Ophidian?”

Noah shook his head. “Not necessarily, but I’ll bet Atkinson would like us to think it was someone who’s still there so we won’t look too hard at him.”

“God, I’m tired of this,” she shuddered again.

“You and me both, baby.”

Dani sat, staring into the fire, then announced, “I’m not going to just sit here and wait for someone to come and try to kill me. What do we do?”

He smiled at that and tugged a strand of her hair. “Sometimes, waiting is all we can do, but you’re right. We need a plan. Let’s hypothesize. Assume you were planning to kill a school teacher and her cop boyfriend…”

Dani smiled, but appreciated his attempt to distance her from the danger.

“… you’ve eliminated their means of escape and contact with the outside world. Now they’re sitting ducks. What would you do?”

Thinking like a killer was hardly something she’d done much, but she’d read enough mysteries that the idea wasn’t totally foreign. “How did he kill the guy they found in the cellar?” she asked.

“Don’t know,” he answered. “Too decomposed to tell. And we can’t be sure it was the same guy doing the killing, although I suspect it was.”

“Well,” she said after a minute or two, “I don’t think he’ll try the snake thing again… and if he was going to shoot us, I think he’d have already done that…”

He nodded.

“I don’t know,” she said finally, drawing a blank. “There’s just too much I don’t know.”

“What I know is, we don’t want to panic and make it easy for him. He may be thinking we’ll try to walk out. That would give him a distinct advantage. We won’t fall for that.”

“That doesn’t leave many options,” she offered.

“No, it narrows it down some. But think of this. How many ways can he kill us when we’re in here and he’s out there? Especially when we’re armed.”

She thought about that for a minute, but he didn’t wait.

“As long as we keep the windows covered, he won’t try to shoot through them. He can’t know where we are.”

“But won’t he assume we’re close to the fireplace?” she reasoned.

“Maybe,” he conceded. “So I’ll board up this window. If he tried to break in, we’d hear him. If he tried to set fire to the house, we should know that before it ever got started good.”

“Even if he poured gas all around the foundation?” she asked. Fire hadn’t occurred to her.

“I think we’d hear him, but we probably should make a regular check of all the windows. Gas, I don’t think he could pull off either, unless he snuck in while we were sleeping and we won’t let that happen. Anything else, he’d either have to get in or get us out.”

“Ho, ho, ho,” she teased, feeling a little better about the whole situation. “Will they come when you don’t show up at work?”

“Yep,” he said with certainty. “So basically, we’ve just got to maintain for another…” he glanced at his watch, “…eight hours.”

“I guess going back to bed is out of the question,” she joked.

“I promise you,” he looked her straight in the eye, “it won’t happen in the next eight hours, but it will definitely happen.” He got up and headed for the kitchen. “Come help me find something to block that window.

Their search revealed nothing of value for the purpose at hand, so they finally pooled their efforts and propped the dining room table in front of the window and stacked video cabinets behind it to add depth and hold the table in place. It still wouldn’t stop a bullet at close range, but it would certainly slow the trajectory. With that done, they conducted a room-by-room search, making sure the blinds were closed and leaving the doors ajar to help them hear any noises from that area of the house.

Back downstairs, Noah secured all the windows, then pulled two guns and a box of ammunition out of his coat pocket. “I brought my spare,” he explained, seeing the question in her eyes. “Get me yours,” he added.

She retrieved it for him out of her coat pocket. He checked it and handed it back to her.

“Keep it with you, just in case.” He stood up and tucked his Glock in the shoulder holster he strapped on, then put the other one in the back waistband of his jeans. Noah smiled when he saw her expression. “Welcome to the wonderful world of armed and dangerous.”

“I guess it’s better than the alternative today,” she said.

“All right,” he rubbed his hands together. “Now to more primitive issues.” He disappeared into the kitchen and returned with a tray and a variety of kitchen utensils. “Get me a couple of wire coat hangers,” he instructed. “Hungry, much?” he smiled when she returned.

“What are you doing?” she asked, nodding.

“We’re going to have a good old fashioned wiener roast,” he smiled. “If you collect a few more things from the kitchen, that is.”

When she returned with a tray full of hot dog fixings, he was happily spearing foil-covered potatoes with hangers and arranging them around the embers beneath the grate. The glass coffee decanter was filled with water and sat on the hearth in front of the fire. He carefully threaded three wieners on a hanger and held them out over the flame.

Dani smiled, wondering if she’d have thought of any of this, or just been hungry until help arrived. It produced an odd brunch of hot dogs and chips with warm, weak tea, but she had to admit, it was good. The baked potatoes would take awhile, but they’d be good, too. With any luck, maybe they could go out to dinner.

After they’d cleared away the mess, Noah took a tour around the house, making sure all was secure, then dropped back down on the couch. “Only one problem I see,” he mused.

“No,” she shook her head. “We’re already up to our quota in problems.”

“Well, at the rate we’re going, we’ll have one more in a couple of hours,” he said, nodding at the rapidly dwindling stack of firewood.

Dani looked at the few remaining logs then at the fire that needed a few more. “Oh, no,” she said, “you’re not going outside.”

He raised his eyebrows. “It’s going to get mighty cold in here if I don’t.”

“Shit. I’ll put on my coat.”

“I went out this morning without incident, didn’t I?”

She frowned.

“I don’t have to go right now,” he said, conceding, at least temporarily, to her fears. “Got a deck of cards?”

She nodded and went to the closet to fetch them. They played Gin for awhile but Dani’s mind wasn’t really on the game. At Noah’s suggestion, she retrieved one of her mysteries to read and he played solitaire. As the afternoon wore on, Dani noticed Noah beginning to fidget more, casting furtive glances at the windows and making more frequent trips upstairs.

The gray, overcast skies had totally blocked the sun and even though it was only approaching four o’clock, it was much darker in the house than it had been even half an hour earlier.

The last of the logs had been added to the fire over an hour ago and it had dwindled to a collection of glowing coals in the bottom with an occasional burst of flame that sputtered out almost as soon as it started. The wood had been pretty wet when he brought it in yesterday and obviously hadn’t dried out fully. Consequently, the logs hadn’t been completely consumed, but they weren’t burning good either. From the look on his face, she knew what he was going to say before he spoke.

“Come upstairs with me for a minute,” he said. “No, wait.” He hurried into the kitchen and came back with a handful of cocoa mix envelopes. He took her empty mug and filled it with water from the coffee pot, then stirred in one of the envelope’s contents. “Now. Ready?”

No, she thought, but followed him up the stairs anyway. At the landing, she was shocked to see a ladder extended downward from the ceiling. She’d never even thought of exploring the attic.

“You first, or me?” he asked. When she wavered, he smiled. “You first, I’ll hold the ladder.” When she still didn’t move, he chuckled. “Don’t tell me you’re afraid of heights.”

Dani knew she’d been uncharacteristically quiet all day, but she just couldn’t seem to find the words when she needed them.

“Heat rises,” he prodded.

She smiled and took a step, climbing the ladder slowly. When she reached the top, she was amazed. There was no way to tell how much room there was up there. The attic spanned the width of the house and had large windows on each end, making it surprisingly light in there. On both sides of both windows, Noah had hung large, black trash bags.

“Let me show you,” he said, setting her mug down on a beat up coffee table in the center of the room. Without making a sound, he glided across the room and slid behind one of the hanging trash bags. “I doubt if anyone can see this far in with no light on, but just in case, I hung these to hide behind. Come here, try it.”

Dani slipped in beside him and he backed around her. “See? You’re already wearing a dark sweatshirt. If you pull this stocking cap down over your face, you could even stand in front of this and he’d never see you.” He handed her a ski mask with cutouts for the eyes and mouth.

Dani was pretty impressed. From this angle, it looked like she could see for miles into the trees on three sides. If she needed to see the other side of the house, she just had to go to the other window. The only things she couldn’t see from either location were the areas directly in front of and behind the house.

“Come look over here,” he prompted, moving to the other window. “See my house? my truck?”

“Yes,” she nodded. In fact, she could see the whole trail that led between the two better than she could from the ground. “But why are you showing me this now?”

He smiled softly. “Can’t fool you, can I?”

She looked at him steadily, not returning the smile.