Blood lure

"Unless there was something here that needed doing," A

They mulled that over for a time but came up with nothing. What could an old man and a boy want in the Glacier wilderness? There was ho gold, no silver, no oil or natural gas, no buried Aztec treasure that anybody knew of. Glacier lilies had been dug up and spirited away but they were worthless, financially speaking.

Thinking of the lilies, A

"No way to trace him without numbers," he said. "Social security, driver's license, date of birth-but I'll see if anybody with those names filed a backcountry permit."

"I don't know if he's even old enough to have a driver's license," A

Ruick wrote "McCaskil, William" on his legal pad. "What else?" he asked.

A

Ruick stared out the window, tapping his pen absentmindedly, top then tip, like a tiny baton.

The clock on his desk said it was quarter till five. The day had slipped away. Indoors, cooped up with people, A

Harry looked at her and laughed. "Tomorrow is soon enough. I expect we've all earned an early night."

Chapter 10

The sound of claws came in the night. At first A

Panic opened A

Open-mouthed, she couldn't scream. Not a sound came out. Her arms and legs lay heavy as deadwood on the mattress. The teeth slipped through the screen, a faint tearing noise, then a paw, clattering claws so long they struck the sill, came through the wire. Still A

With a tremendous effort she fought to move. The resulting jerk woke her, freed her from the nightmare. For half a minute she lay in the bed reassuring herself that now, really, this time, she was awake, not merely dreaming she was, safe from the black quicksand of her subconscious.

Then the sound of claws was repeated and the nightmare began again. This time A

Joan had inherited the house with curtains. She must have. A

Snaking her hand between the oversized geometricpatterned drapes and the wall, A

Adrenaline subsided. Cold sank into her bare skin, worse where buttocks and shoulder blades touched the plaster of the wall, but she did not return to bed. Waiting was an art form. Seldom had she gone wrong with waiting, watching another minute. Another five minutes.

Scratch. Scratch. A claw, a single claw, the sere black forefinger of a crone, crept up from beneath the sill and raked at the screen.

Soundlessly, A

Joan lived like a pacifist. The only weapon that presented itself in the shadow-filled living room was a three-legged footstool beside the Barcalounger where A

Moving quickly, she let herself out the kitchen door at the back of the house and ran quietly around the garage, her boots nearly soundless on the lush summer grass. Bobbing like a duck for a June bug, she peeked around the corner then ducked back.

A shape was crouched beneath her bedroom window.

Given the real and imagined beasts that had haunted her nights, she forgot for a moment who took honors for the most dangerous species, and was comforted by its human contours.

Whoever scratched at her screen had his back to her. Carrying the stool up against her shoulder, ready for defensive or offensive use, A

Scratch. The crone's finger was a stick the croucher pushed up to scrape the wires. The croucher wore a dark coat but his pale hair caught the light. A

Leaning down, mouth near the intruder's ear, she whispered, "Rory, what are you doing?" The result was most satisfying. Rory Van Slyke clamped both hands over his mouth. His twig went flying and he collapsed in a heap, his back against the wall of the house, his eyes huge above his hands.

The only thing missing was noise. Rory had not made a sound. Not a squeak or a grunt. Somewhere along the line he'd learned not to cry out. A

She swung down the stool she'd been brandishing and sat on it. "What are you doing?" she repeated, this time in a normal voice.

"Shh," Rory hushed her. "I was trying to get your attention," he whispered.

"Why didn't you knock on the door?" A

"I didn't want to wake Joan," Rory replied. He sat up. "Can we go someplace? For a walk maybe?"

Sleep had been pretty much ruined for an hour or so, at least till the adrenaline had time to be reabsorbed. "Sure," A

"No. Take mine," Rory said, slipping out of a dark fleece coat. "I don't want to wake Joan," he said again.

A

"Oh. Just anywhere." Beneath the fleece he wore blue jeans and a sweatshirt with "Mariners" stenciled across the chest. Shoving his hands into his jeans pockets, he walked across the grass to the street. A

Whatever it was, A