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“He’d been working on this door. Tried to jimmy it.” He opened the door and showed Walt where a crude tool had been used in an attempt to open the door. “I switched on the outside light. Got a quick look. Six feet, broad shoulders. No face. Only his back. Jeans. Dark sweatshirt. He was gone in a flash. Very fast.”
“Hair color?” Walt was taking notes.
“No. Ball cap, I guess.”
“You must have a weapon in this place,” Walt said. Hillabrand was a former army general who’d retired into an NGO. He employed a security detail of service vets fiercely loyal to him.
“Of course. Did I pursue him into the woods? Come on, Sheriff. Give me some credit.”
“You called your own people first, I take it?”
“You really take a dim view of me, don’t you?” He leaned back.
“No. I called nine-one-one and reported the intruder. I don’t keep a posse around me, you know? Is that what you think? I have staff. Of course I do. But they keep regular hours.”
“Deputy Chalmers will remain with you, preferably in a windowless room-a second-story room will do.”
“You have to be kidding me,” Hillabrand said.
“A man of your… position, sir… our first job is your protection.” Walt contrasted this with his response to the similar situation at Vince Wy
“You think this was… nonsense. I thought… the Berkholder thing…”
“And that may be all it is, but this is the way we’re going to do it.”
Chalmers stood at the ready. Hillabrand motioned for her to follow him, and they left. Walt went out the kitchen door, his flashlight on, trained onto the dewy grass.
Tracking wasn’t a hobby for him, and it wasn’t a professional requirement. It was a study, a science, a passion. He held the Maglite’s bluish halogen bulb close to the lawn and watched as a million pearls of dew lit up and sparkled. In their midst, like a string of lakes, were lightless oval shapes, each a footprint of the intruder. He stayed to the side, following them down the curve of the lawn to the edge of the forest and from there into the ever darker woods, alert for displaced leaves, freshly broken twigs, and the bent shafts of plants and wildflowers. Lower and lower down the hill he went, hunched and attentive, excited by the puzzle solving. There were stretches where he lost all signs of the man, wishing he’d brought Beatrice along with him, instead of leaving her in the Cherokee. Tempted to go back and get her, he doubted she’d pick up a scent from the ground alone, and couldn’t trouble himself to return.
Five minutes stretched to twenty. It was a steady descent, the intruder avoiding and crossing the occasional game trail. It felt as if he knew where he was going, that this was scouted terrain. And as the invisible path that Walt followed stopped descending and began to traverse the north-facing hill, finally swinging higher and begi
A jolt of deepening concern rattled him. Fiona lived over there. As he crested the ridge and briefly glimpsed the lights below, the Engleton ranch called out as a destination. Due to terrain, and without going down to the highway, it was impossible to get from where Walt stood to the other side of the drainage without crossing the Engleton property.
Halfway between Hillabrand’s house and the Engletons’, he debated his options, favoring returning to the Cherokee, where he had a shotgun and an emergency backpack with a bigger flashlight, batteries, the satellite phone, and warm clothing. It might take him an extra five to ten minutes, because of the climb and then the drive off Hillabrand’s mountain, but it seemed worth it.
His legs, aching from the descent and climb, carried him well. He charged back up the mountain, zigzagging in order to set a sustainable pace, and picking up the first game trail he encountered. Wild animals, for the most part, made sensible, if sometimes meandering, routes through forest and across wilderness. Walt followed this trail for two hundred yards and then cut back through the trees, quickly gaining elevation. Minutes later, he reached Hillabrand’s out of breath. He radioed Chalmers and told her to allow Hillabrand to move around his house but to stay with him for the time being.
“I picked up his trail and believe he may be heading into the next drainage. I’m headed for the Engleton place.”
He called for backup on the way. His closest patrol was nearly twenty minutes away. He directed them to approach without siren or lights, expecting to have completed the first part of his rounds by the time they arrived.
Beatrice knew when Walt was excited. She shot between the seats, her paws on the center console, and licked Walt below the ear.
“Back off!” Walt shouted.
The dog whimpered and backed up, but the thumping of her tail against the backseat, in concert with the pounding of Walt’s heartbeat in his ears, gave away her enthusiasm.
Hillabrand’s two-mile driveway was crushed stone and steep with a half-dozen hairpin switchbacks. As fast as Walt drove, it wasn’t fast enough. He one-handed his phone to dial Fiona’s number from his contact list, wondering why he hadn’t programmed a speed dial number for her. It made perfect sense that he should have her number set as a speed dial, and yet it seemed too personal at the same time, and he wondered if he was afraid to be seen dialing her via the shortcut, and if so what caused such fear in him. His sense of Fiona and him, of Gail and Brandon, could get so tangled up that it seemed impossible to unknot. He couldn’t risk exposing himself to another person the way he had with Gail. It had left him raw and vulnerable in a way he hadn’t felt since adolescence, and that was too many years behind him to offer any guidance. As a teen he had stumbled and crashed his way through his early relationships, not understanding himself enough to have much to offer. By adulthood, in his twenties, his focus had been on building a career for himself, with little time or energy to devote to the otherworldly nature of getting inside Gail’s skin. They’d made love, they’d had laughs, they ate meals together and attended parties, but never with too much talking, never fully explaining themselves to the other the way he expected relationships were supposed to function. That his only fully invested relationship had collapsed, unexpectedly on his part, left him with the sinking feeling it could happen again far too easily.
The phone rang in his ear. He urged her to pick up. Then the click of the voice mail and his cursing into the car, and Beatrice whimpering again. He skidded to a stop before Hillabrand’s reinforced gate and waited for its electronic eye to detect the Cherokee’s motion and open. The steel bar climbed and Walt threw a rooster tail behind as he sped out and into a dirt-spewing fishtail turn and down the canyon road, his thumb finding the green button on his cell phone, and redialing her number.
He’d never figured out how a few minutes could stretch into hours, but that was how it felt. The short drive took too long. The Cherokee climbed up the Engleton driveway and Walt jammed the brakes. He hesitated, then shut the engine off and climbed out, ru
He pulled up just short of the door, his chest tight despite the fact that there were no signs of any problems here.
He knocked lightly, and when she failed to answer, knocked louder.
No answer.
He called out. “Fiona! It’s me!”
A ringing in his ears. The chorus of a summer evening: insects and frogs.
How far to press this?