"Call it off unless Nate needs it. I'm not really hurt, just disoriented."
"You sure?"
"I'm sure."
"Nate, how are you doin'?"
"Fine, Dad," the boy said, obviously trying to be brave.
''We're going to the emergency room. If nothing is wrong, then they'll release you," Dan said.
"What if the police start asking questions?"
"You may be right about that." He paused. "I suppose we could take you in the car. We shouldn't say anything to the authorities if we can help it until we talk to the clients."
"All they did was steal back what we took from them."
"This was different and you know it."
"Our theft's different from theirs?"
"We aren't like them." Dan hugged Nate to his side. "Not a bit."
Pepacita canceled the ambulance. Dan, Maria, Pepacita, and Nate drove to the emergency room with the camera in hand, and by the time they arrived, Maria claimed she felt "almost normal." Nate, although frightened, was not physically injured. Not wanting to argue any more, Dan acceded and they pulled away from the emergency-room door.
"Let's pack some stuff and go to the Palmer Inn. The door is broken; furniture has burn marks; one window is broken," Dan said as they drove.
"You know there's that logging conference in town," Maria said. "There won't be a decent room left. And it's three o'clock in the morning."
When they got back to the house, Pepacita looked dubious and sighed. Dan studied Nate.
"I'm OK," Nate said.
"Let's all sleep in the living room, like camping," Maria said. Dan paused as if it was a bit of a stretch. "It's at the other end of the house. They didn't come in there."
"Yeah," Nate said. "We could even put up the tent."
Dan smiled at Pepacita and took her aside. They talked, but Maria couldn't hear.
Then Dan came back to Maria. "We were just saying, maybe if we closed off this part of the house and all got in the tent, it would seem different enough for Nate."
"I'm not scared anymore, Dad."
"Uh-huh," Dan said. "OK, we'll try the tent. But, Nate, if you can't sleep, we're going to the Palmer Inn." Dan turned to Maria. "My wife had a heavy flannel nightgown she used to wear with stretch pants. What it lacks in looks, I was told it makes up for in comfort."
"That sounds great," Maria said. It took her about two minutes in the bathroom to change.
They moved the couches and chairs in the living room back to the walls, then put the tent in the middle of the room, tying off the lines to the furniture. It was a good-sized cabin-style tent. Dan and Maria blew up four air mattresses.
"I'm too old and fat for this," Pepacita announced after surveying the situation. "I think I'll sleep in bed."
"OK," Dan said.
"Don't let the bedbugs bite," Nate said. After the three of them were in their already-too-hot sleeping bags, the lights were out, and Maria was almost asleep, she was slightly startled to feel Dan's hand cupped over her ear.
"This is unusual."
"Not as unusual as what's going on out there in the woods," she whispered back.
David Dun
At The Edge
"What did you see when you were in the tree?"
''I'm worried Nate will hear you," Maria said. ''I imagine he's pretty keyed up."
"He's out like a light."
"Let's talk in the morning."
"I'm curious."
"Well, it seems like I saw a big green something snaking through the forest."
"A what?"
"I just remember green and round and, like, translucent. Like a giant garden hose winding through the trees."
"You're not going to tell me it looked alive, are you?"
"I don't know what I saw, except it was green. It seemed a block or two long."
"They're probably hiding the Loch Ness monster."
She yawned and turned over.
"Hey, did you hear that?" Nate said in a suddenly alert voice.
"It's the wind in the trees. They creak," Dan said.
"Pretty scary night tonight," Nate said.
"Yeah."
"Are you gonna go out on dates with Ms. Fischer?"
"No, I'm not."
There was silence for a while.
"I won't rub it in," she whispered.
"Thanks," Dan said.
10
"I hate to lose five hundred thousand." Jeb Otran sat with one arm braced straight against the library table. They were in the conference room at the Hutchin firm with Patty McCafferty on the speaker phone. "As for the compound in the woods, that's really the business of those who own it-unless they have our money. I just wonder if what you saw was on Amada or Metco."
"We couldn't tell, although I believe it was at least near Amada land, because we were in the upper end of the forest," Maria said. She sat with Dan on one side of the table, Jeb and Hutchin on the other.
"If you tell the police about this locked room and this threatening conversation or whatever it was, I would suppose you'll have to tell them about the money," Jeb said.
"Oh, this is great," Patty McCafferty groaned over the speaker box.
"We could ask the sheriff not to publicize it. After all, there's no particular reason they should. We don't have to officially report the theft."
"So we just ignore the fact that we were assaulted and robbed with a deadly weapon? That we were shot at? That someone tried to kill us?"
"Maria, you're right. It's tough to remain silent," Patty said. "And perhaps even dangerous. On the other hand, at the moment it seems you're safe. We also need to worry about what they're really doing out there. If they are doing something illegal, it could be dangerous."
"If they broke in and stole the photos, they damn well know you've figured out they're up to something weird," said Hutchin. "They'll have some explanation for all that stuff if the police go out there."
"Of course," Jeb said, and looked at Dan, "they may have come and taken those pictures for purely business reasons. You may have engaged in an act of industrial espionage without realizing it."
"You mean we stole their property," Maria said.
"One wonders if we're dealing in both cases with the same people. And that is perhaps the best reason for reporting it. The violence, I mean," Otran said. "What's going on in the woods may be somebody's legitimate business. It's private property. But, of course, breaking into your house, if it was them, makes it illegitimate."
''But, Jeb, you've got to be concerned about what's going on out there…," Patty began.
"Curious is a better word. Like I said, it's private property."
"For the forty years we've known each other, you've been obsessed with a person's right to screw up the world on his own land."
"Relax," Otran said, "I didn't say we wouldn't find out. I was about to say I didn't want our lawyer or, for that matter, your lawyer out breaking the law anymore-subject to the proviso that we need to get the money back legally."
"Well, it seems to me-"
"Patty, if you'll just let me finish…"
Dan stared at Maria, who was also trying to conceal her shock. This strange conversation indicated a level of familiarity between Jeb Otran and Patty McCafferty that they never would have guessed at.
Now that Otran was telling them to cease and desist in their investigation of the compound in the woods-except as it might pertain to getting the money-Dan decided he would say nothing in front of the others about the photographs in his camera. Still, for personal reasons, Dan felt compelled to tell Otran privately after the meeting. Maria appeared to be staying quiet on the issue as well.
"We are still left with the theft of the money and the shooting. I think it should be reported," Jeb said.
"And I do too," Patty agreed.
"I can claim attorney-client privilege as to the source of the money," Dan said. "I don't think I have to disclose it. Just that it was taken, that we gave chase, that we were shot at in our car."