She started to stride toward the door at the end, the one that would open out into the inner area of The Halls. She looked filled with a kind of wretched fury, a horror that they could have arrived too late, that the phantom she had chased until it was the only light at the end of her tunnel had danced out of reach again.
We were standing still. She evidently didn't care if we came with her. She had to go out there. She had to see.
She didn't hear the shot.
By the time the sound reached our ears she was already falling, thrown awkwardly sideways to crash into one of the low tables. Her mouth opened to cry out, but nothing came. Zandt ran toward her.
I whirled to see a man in the doorway. McGregor. Bobby instead saw a woman behind the reception desk, and a muscle-bound youth emerging from a recessed doorway behind her, a door camouflaged to blend in with the wood panelling.
All three had guns. All were firing them.
The youth died first. His technique was pure television: gun held out sideways, gangbanger style. Bobby had him down with one shot.
I slipped behind one of the pillars and straight out the other side, getting McGregor first in the thigh, then the chest. I still only narrowly avoided taking one to the face, felt the hum as it spun past my head. I dropped to one knee and scooted behind one corner of the reception, praying the woman hadn't seen me. Reloaded, dropping half the bullets.
Zandt knelt down next to Nina, who lay crumpled, her hand fluttering toward the hole in her chest. It was high up, just under the right clavicle. 'Oh, Nina,' he said, oblivious to the cracks and whines in the air
above him. She coughed, her face caught between surprise and denial.
'Hurts,' she said.
McGregor was still shooting. The woman behind the desk nearly took Bobby out before I took a breath and stood up, emptying half of my gun into her. Only when she'd slewed backward over the muscle man did I realize it was the woman who'd talked me through the fake entry requirements. I still didn't know her name.
Bobby was standing over McGregor, his boot on the cop's wrist. A gun lay on the floor several feet away.
'Where'd they go?' he asked him. 'And how long ago? Tell me everything you know, or darkness falls.'
'Fuck you,' the cop said.
'Suits me,' Bobby shrugged, and shot him dead.
While Bobby checked the other bodies, making sure nobody was going to wake up and start shooting again, I ran over to Nina. Zandt had her hand pressed firmly over the wound in her chest.
'We're out of here,' I said.
'No,' Nina said. Her voice was surprisingly strong. She tried to haul herself upright.
'Nina, you're fucked up. We have to get you to a hospital.'
She grabbed a table leg with one hand. The other one snatched my wrist. 'Be fast. But go and see.'
I hesitated. Tried to look at Zandt for support, but Nina's eyes held me.
Bobby arrived. 'Oh shit, Nina.'
'I'm staying here and you're going in there,' she said, talking only to Zandt. She looked in pain, but not like she was going to faint. 'Please, John. Make them go. All of you. Please see if she's there. You've got to go see. Then we'll go to the hospital. I promise.'
Zandt waited a beat longer, then leaned over, kissed her quickly on the forehead. He stood up. 'I'm doing as she says.'
I started to reload my gun. 'Bobby, you stay here.' He started to protest, but I kept talking. 'Try to stop the bleeding, and take out anyone you see who isn't us. You're more use to her than either of us.'
Bobby squatted down beside the woman. 'Be careful, man.'
Zandt and I walked fast down to the end doors. 'Whatever happens,' I said, 'we stick together. You got that?'
Zandt nodded, and opened the door. Outside was a path. White light from behind illuminated perhaps fifty yards with clarity, and was enough to suggest the hulks of large houses in the middle distance. None of them showed a light.
We started to run.
34
'We should have brought a flashlight.'
'Should've brought a lot of things,' I said. 'Bigger guns, other people, some idea of what we're doing.'
We were standing at the first junction in the path. It looked like the main street of some tiny town where nobody had cars. The grass on either side was neatly trimmed. The pasture within the walls of the mountains, an area of only about ten acres, had been sculpted to provide each house with privacy and a gently rolling landscape. It seemed very unlikely there was enough room for a golf course, which meant that even their favoured realtor — the late Chip — had never been allowed inside. To either side of the path, set well back, were two houses. The path stretched out into the darkness ahead, leading via other forks to more dwellings, which couldn't yet be seen.
'You take the one on the left.'
'Did you listen to what I said? We don't split up.'
'Ward, there's how many houses? Nina's in trouble back there.'
'Getting killed isn't going to help her. You want to look in these places, we're doing it together. Which
first?'
Zandt walked quickly up the path to the right. As we approached the house, I mentally checked off the features I'd seen on the plans. The house looked like it should be in Oak Park, Chicago, the suburb where many of the early mid-period Wright had been built. It was a beautiful house, and I hated the men behind all this for misappropriating Wright's grammar. He had been about life and community, not individuals and death.
Zandt was less taken with the design. 'Where's the fucking door?'
I led him at an angle across the low terrace, to where a courtyard path snaked round to the left of the building under a balcony. A short series of steps delivered us round a corner to a large wooden door. It
was ajar.
'Main entrance?'
I nodded. Took a breath, then pushed the door gently open with my foot. Nothing happened.
I nodded to Zandt once more. He went in first.
A short corridor, a little light filtering down from a stained-glass panel in the ceiling, the illumination
turned green and cold. At the end, another sheet of detailed glass, screening out the next room.
Carefully we manoeuvred around it, revealing a long, low room. More stained glass, and clerestory windows high up. A fireplace over to the left. Bookshelves, and a seating nook. The shelves were empty. The furniture was in place, but there was no rug on the floor.
We walked very quietly across the room. The house was utterly silent. I held up a hand, pointed; Zandt looked — saw the entrance to another room, partly concealed behind a wooden screen. Nodded, and dropped back beside me. We approached it together, Zandt still glancing behind.
The doorway gave into a kitchen. It was darker, without the highlevel windows. Split-level, with a breakfast area down the end. On the table was a single cup, sitting plumb in the centre. The interior was
dry and the handle was broken. I opened a cupboard, and then a drawer. Both empty.
'This house has been cleaned out.'
Zandt nodded. 'Maybe. But we're still going to check it.'
We searched the rest of the house.
* * *
'There's somebody out there,' Nina said, meanwhile.
Bobby was squatted beside where she lay, braced in one of the big leather chairs. The lobby was in darkness. He'd been of two minds about this, reasoning that the lights had been left on, and that to turn them off would broadcast their presence to anyone else lurking in the compound. It was hard to believe that any such person could have avoided hearing the minute of heavy gunfire, however, and so in the end he'd dug around behind reception and turned them off one by one. It felt safer, though not perfect. The end wall was only partly windowed, and he thought they were safe from view, but he still felt like a sitting
duck. The lobby was large, dark, and had three dead people in it.
'I heard something a minute ago,' he admitted. 'Hoped it was them coming back.'
Nina s
hook her head. 'John will check all the houses. They'll be a little while, even if there's nothing to
find. Especially if. And the sound was coming from the front, not back there.'
He nodded. 'Ward will kill me if he finds out I've left you here alone, but I'm going to have to go look.'
'I won't tell if you won't. But don't be long.'
Bobby made sure her gun was loaded, and then dropped back from her to the wall. He scooted along it as low as he could. When he got to the main door he put his head out cautiously. Theirs was still the only car in the lot. There was no sign of anybody else, and he considered just staying put.
But then he heard something again. It wasn't loud, but it was definitely not caused by the elements. It wasn't a rain sound. It was mechanical, a short, isolated pop. It sounded like it was coming from over on the other side of the lot, where the second building stood. 'What is it?' Now that he wasn't looking at her, Nina was allowing more of the pain to be in her mind. As a result her head felt very fuzzy, and her voice sounded cracked.
'I don't know,' he said. He turned to check, and saw that Nina was well-hidden in the deepness of the huge chair. Best he could do. 'Keep the pressure on the wound.'
Still keeping low, he pushed the door open. A very cold rush of air pushed past him, ushering in the sound of rain.
* * *
The rest of the house was empty. Four bedrooms, den, library, a music room. Empty and cleaned out. Stripped of any identification at all, though it was clear that people had lived there until very recently. No dust. Zandt and I came back down the central staircase, less quietly now, and made our way to the back of the ground floor. There was a second large reception room here, a little less fancy than the one in front. A horizontal band of windows showed half an acre of landscaped yard. I flicked the safety on my gun back on.
'Next house?' It was clear that this one didn't hold anything of interest. I was done with it. I was prepared to help Zandt look for the girl's body, if that's what he wanted, but my own needs were focused on finding a live Straw Man or two. And sitting them down, and getting them to explain a few things. Nothing else could hold my attention. It was already feeling too late.
'I'll take a look out back,' Zandt said. 'Then I guess, yes. Though this isn't looking good.'
He opened the door set in the middle of the window panelling, and disappeared into the rain. I stepped out after him, but stayed at the wall. By now I was increasingly sure that Nina had been right: perhaps this guy Wang had speeded things up, but the evacuation had started right from the moment I had beaten up Chip. I'd fucked up, in other words. Given them warning, and time to get away. I hadn't expected this would be their response. They were bunkered in. They were rich and powerful; this was their land. Why run? But I'd still screwed it up. We hadn't discussed the matter, but I suspected Zandt felt I had, too. There was an increasingly wild look to the man's eyes.
As I listened to the sound of him poking about out there in the darkness, I noticed a long line of wire that lay along the bottom of the wall. It appeared from round the corner, and seemed to be buried in the beds by the wall. Cable, or something. Maybe the much-vaunted ADSL Net access. I was about to take
a closer look at it when Zandt made a sudden coughing sound.
I hurried out into the yard. He was standing right in the middle, bolt upright. 'What?'
He didn't say anything. Just pointed. .
At first I couldn't make out what he meant, but then I saw that a patch of ground just to the right
seemed a little rounded.
I walked over and looked down at it. Licked my lips. 'Tell me that's a pet or something under there.'
Zandt just shook his head, and I realized that he hadn't let his arm drop yet. Instead he was pointing
at another spot. At another mound. 'Oh Christ,' I said, my voice catching in my throat. 'Look at this.' Now I was looking for them, I could see that there were other mounds. Three short lines of them. Twelve in total.
Zandt dropped to one knee, pulled at the earth over the nearest mound. The grass slipped out of his fingers, but he got a clump out. Underneath was heavy, wet soil.
I dropped to help him, and we yanked and pulled at the ground. The going was hard and it took a couple of minutes to get down to where suddenly we had something other than soil in our hands and the
smell became awful. I started back, but Zandt pulled out two more handfuls before abruptly giving up.
'We need a shovel,' I said.
Zandt shook his head. 'Anything in these holes is dead. Sarah may still be alive somewhere.'
'Come on, man — she's going to be in one of these graves.'
Zandt was already striding back to the house. I followed him, trying to avoid the mounds but realizing
I must have stepped on at least one on the way out. Back inside Zandt strode straight through into the first reception room. 'We're going to have to look
again,' he said. 'We missed something.'
'I don't know where,' I said.
'So let's start here.'
We split to opposite sides of the room, overturning bookshelves, pulling furniture out of place. I was
quickly convinced that there was nothing there to be found, but Zandt wouldn't be budged from searching every inch.
'This is going to take hours,' I said. 'I don't
I stopped. Zandt glanced up. 'What?'
I wasn't looking at anything in the room, but staring straight out through the main bank of windows to the front of the house. Zandt stepped over to where I was standing.
'You see that?'
I pointed down to the split in the path, about twenty yards away. There, lying where it forked into the routes to all the different houses, something lay on the ground. It wasn't very large, and at this distance it was impossible to tell what it might be. A small pile of sticks, perhaps.
'I see it,' Zandt said.
'That wasn't there when we came in.'
I flicked my safety off again and we went back out through the front door. I walked slowly down the
path; Zandt holding a position back by the door, watching the other houses.
It did look like a pile of sticks. Short curved sticks, very white. Very clean. But I suspected what they were from a couple of yards away. I squatted down beside them, picked one up. Turned to indicate Zandt over.
As he approached, I took over the job of being ready to fire at anyone who might appear. Because
someone was here, without question. Someone who knew we were here, too.
After a brief inspection, Zandt said: 'Those are ribs.'
'That's what I figured. Human?'
'Yes.'
'So who put them there?'
'Ward, look.' About five yards up the path was another stick.
I walked forward, bent down to pick it up. 'Girl or boy?'
Zandt took the femur from me. Like the ribs, the leg bone was clean and white, as if some process had recently been used to bring it to museum condition. 'Can't be sure. But somebody not very old. A teenager.'
We stood together, watching either side of the path.
'Someone's leading us somewhere,' I said.
'The question is whether we follow.'
'I don't see we have any choice.'
'But we've already found the house with bodies.'
'A house. The first we looked in. Either that's a cute coincidence — or there's more than one.'
At the next junction there was another bone, just to the left of the path, as if indicating the way to the house on that side. We checked it quickly. This time the graves were spread around the side of the house, and better — or more proudly — concealed. It was only when Zandt realized that the small squares of stone set into the grass would not have formed a useful path, that we realized they were markers.
To one side of the house we found another bone, pointing the way deeper into The Halls. This bone was half of someone's pelvis.
Neither of us was sufficiently e
xpert to tell the sex of the owner right then, though the condition of the bone and the width of the sciatic notch would probably have been enough to tell Nina that it belonged to a young female, of about Sarah Becker's age.
* * *
Bobby had stood nearly a full ten minutes in the shadow of their car, waiting. There had been no more sounds since he had left the lobby, and no sign of movement. It didn't make any difference. Something had caused the previous noises, and it seemed unlikely the problem had just gone away. He was remaining stationary merely to see whether that thing would make itself apparent, giving it a chance to present itself without him having to go looking. It was just possible that it was an animal of some kind. A deer, perhaps. Not probable, but possible.
After another couple of minutes he stirred himself. Nina would be worried if he was out here for too long, and he was by now very wet and very cold. His shoulder hurt a great deal. There was no point turning round and going back in. He had to check the other building.
He walked along the line of little posts that had been driven into the tarmac to mark the parking spaces. He was bathed in light during this, but there was no other way of approaching the building. It looked like a large storage unit, without the detailing of the construction on the other side of the lot, and there were no windows that he could see. He walked all the way round the front to the left side, and finally found a door.
A large padlock hung off it, but the padlock was open. He thought about saying Ward's name, to check whether he was in there, but he knew it couldn't be. Ward would have come back through the lobby. This had to be someone else. He nudged the door open, and stepped inside.
He found himself in a short corridor, with walls that only went about two feet above his head before giving way to empty space. Almost like a stable. There was a smell of some kind, though it didn't remind him of horses. Dim light came from somewhere in the building, down at the other end. Ten feet ahead the corridor was intersected by another at right angles.
There were two doors before the intersection, and he opened them both. One held the kind of supplies he would expect for a residential community, along with a long wall of files. The other, smaller room seemed to be a wine cellar. The racks were empty. This didn't bode well. If they had enough time to clear out the Chateau Lafite, they were long gone. Strange to have left any files behind, in which case. He went back and checked that room. Pulled down a file box at random. There were no files in it, only a couple of Zip cartridges, both labelled 'Scottsdale.' He slipped them in his pocket and replaced the box.
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