If he tried to close the door and escape through the window, the grumbling of glass under his feet would alert them-noise of something slithering, wood against wood?
"Who's left out there?" he heard. Mclntyre's voice.
"Hyams sir. And Billings," from the stairs.
"Can you see him?"
"No, sir. I can see the door and the window. He can't move."
"Good."
"Gant—?" An unfamiliar voice.
"Shut up, Strickland!"
Before long, Chris and the other guy outside would recover, begin to think, start to outflank him. — that sliding noise again, the shuffling of bodies from the other room?
"Mclntyre?" he called.
"What—?" It was as if the man had been caught stealing, his hand in the cookie jar.
"You're finished, Gant. Give it up, asshole."
"Not yet." Beside him, the clock ticked comfortably, as if denying its circumstances.
"It's more like a Mexican standoff from in here…"
He listened. Mclntyre wasn't swallowing the bait. He had only minutes now before-car engine starting. He looked wildly towards the window as headlights leapt out like another flare. Tyres screeched, beginning to retreat almost at once.
"Agent Mclntyre!" he heard Hyams from the stairs.
"What's going on, sir?"
Another voice growled: "Asshole's gotten away-!"
Then Hyams called out: "Strickland? Hey, Strickland!" There was silence from the other room. Both of them were in the car. Mclntyre and Strickland.
Gant stirred, then restrained all movement, listening to the car engine retreat down the narrow, twisting mountain track towards Bonner Lake and Squaw Camp. Mclntyre would be driving very slowly. It wasn't much more than a hiking trail, following the contours of the mountainside for more than a mile before it reached the highway.
The deep, slow ticking of the long case clock was mocking him now, as if to lull him into inertia. He raged inwardly against Mclntyre's easy escape. The guy had just climbed out the window and gotten into his car-! The clock was like someone guarding a prisoner, a matter of feet from him along the wall. He couldn't move. Its ticking was arrogantly assured, certain of his immobility.
Mclntyre was making for his airplane at Redmond, had to be…
Strickland would disappear forever-He pressed back into the angle of the wall. The Ruger was near his left hand, the Calico suspended on his chest from its short strap. He braced himself and raised his booted feet as if they were tied together, measuring distance, force.
Glass pricked at his palms as they took his weight… he lunged-jangle of weights, heavy clockwork, the creaking of the case interrupting the clock's tall assurance. It toppled slowly, noisily, alarming the men on the stairs.
The weights banged against the case like a heart against ribs. Then it fell across the doorway, shutting the door with a slam. Hyams' voice was cut off. Gant was on his feet, two steps taken, before all noise of the glass underfoot was drowned in the clock's bedlam as it struck the floor. Three more steps, into the moment of moonlight and the sense of nakedness, his hand on the window ledge-shots ripping through the door, the deafening noise of the clock's distress drowned by gunfire. Shards of glass and wood drifted down onto him like snow.
Impact of his knees with the boards of the verandah, ricochets coming through the window. He rolled away then got to his feet, already running before he was upright. Orientated himself in the small clearing, running hunched, swerving and dodging like a footballer in a complex play. There was no shooting behind him before he reached the trees.
He plunged in out of the moonlight, stopping his flight against the rough hole of a tree. Thirty seconds since Mclntyre's engine note had disappeared into silence. The scent of gasoline still pungent in his nostrils. That way-map in his head, clear as on a screen unrolling in a cockpit. The smudge of the lake, the little dot of Squaw Camp, the place he had left the 4WD, the hiking trail twisting its way down the mountainside.
He was running through the trees, his arm up against the whip of thin branches. He plunged uphill towards the vantage point he'd used to keep the lodge under surveillance. Forty-five seconds. Mclntyre, headlights blazing, bucking down the hiking trail. He'd never cut him off, never.
For a moment, he could see the few scattered lights of Squaw Camp through the trees, and the silvered dish of Bonner Lake. Then the forest of lodgepole pines closed in around the car again, and the rear wheels slithered menacingly as he lost the hiking track, then jerked the sedan back on to it. The trail folded itself like a vast, lazy snake around the mountainside, its coils slipping lower and lower till it met the Cascade Lakes Highway at the settlement.
Mclntyre cursed the wedges of the tree trunks that constantly seemed to spring to attention in the headlights. The hiking trail was determined to lose itself among them, hide away from him. Strickland was holding his seatbelt as he might have done a coat lapel. The indicator needle waggled around thirty, its erratic movements like the measurements of Mclntyre's heartbeat. The driving mirror, the wing mirrors, remained black. Then, as if beckoning, the lake again for an instant through thinned trees, and the lights of the settlement. Three Sisters stretching away northwards, Mount Bachelor, snow-flanked still, to the south. Stars hard and big above the headlights… He realised he had slowed the car, as if to inhale the scene into choked lungs, and accelerated. At once, the car skidded on pine-mush, the rear near side wheel spinning, the engine racing.
Strickland glared at him.
"For Christ's sake, Mac-!" It sounded as if they were still field operative and Case Officer.
"Don't throw up!" Mclntyre snarled contemptuously, righting the car, the sweat cold beneath his arms.
The trail bent away from the prospect into dark trees again. Their crowded intent seemed malign, angering Mclntyre. The sense of exhilaration he had felt in escape had dissipated in the effort required to negotiate the hiking trail. He'd paid no attention when they had ascended it in the afternoon light, it had been the driver's problem.
Gant couldn't get out of the trap he'd thrown himself into… He was pinned down, would remain so… Mclntyre would have to alert a backup team when he got to the airfield at Redmond — have to call the pilot on the earphone and get the ship refuelled, a flight plan filed… to where?
He joggled the wheel in his hands, feeling his palms slip damply on the mock leather Where should he take Strickland? The guy knew the name of the man who'd hired him, the guy Fraser had promised would take care of his future… Now Fraser was dead, and his future was blown out of the water unless he could get Strickland to tell him the name. He was already more than half-persuaded that Gant wanted him dead. To stay alive, he had to trade the name for his survival.
But it might need time to make him see things that way… so, where to take him?
He glanced across at Strickland. The man was quiescent, withdrawn; almost detached. He jerked the wheel again as the trail bent away and dropped, and the headlights bucked wildly, as if terrified. An animal glanced aside into the trees, a deer or something.
I'll watch out for you!" he shouted as the engine note rose and fell like a protesting wail.
"You got to trust me, Strickland."
"Why?"
"Because the guy back there Gant he wants to kill you. You screwed up his family, his career—" Strickland tossed his head, flicking his long blond hair away from his face.
"He wants to know, Mac just like you," Strickland jibed.