Moving cautiously along the main hall, aware that she faced danger in front as well as behind now, she passed the library where the two women waited. She felt certain that the stalker was still behind her, watching and waiting for the proper moment to make his move. She passed the dining room where she could hear Mason Keene speaking to someone else. She assumed he must be talking to Alex and that surprised her. She had assumed that it was Alex behind her, waiting to trip her up.
Of course, Alex did not have to be the only one of the cultists in Owlsden, did he? He might easily have stationed one of his friends upstairs in the event that she tried to slip away from them.
She stepped into the kitchen, turned and shut the door. She stepped quickly to the table in the center of the room, fumbled around until she found a wooden chair, turned and placed the chair against the door so that the back of it was braced under the knob.
She waited.
Slowly, her eyes adjusted to the darkness and fully used the shallow snowlight that came through the big windows.
Had she been imagining the stalker? Had there really been someone behind her, or had she—
Someone tried the door, not boldly, not normally— but stealthily, as if he half expected it to be locked.
Katherine turned and went quickly across the kitchen.
Behind her, someone was cautiously putting a shoulder to the door, trying to pop the brace loose with a minimum of noise.
You'll be with Michael in a few minutes, she told herself. Everything will be fine then. He'll take care of you; he'll joke with you; he'll make everything bright and fine.
She opened the kitchen door, stepped into the wind and snow, closed the door behind her, and was instantly relieved that she had taken the first major step in her flight from this strange house.
CHAPTER 15
When she had gone only twenty steps from the kitchen door, her eyes watering from the fierce assault of the wind, her face numb with cold, Katherine began to wonder if the loss of power had, after all, been due to the storm. Inside Owlsden, she had become accustomed to the continuous growl of the elements without really understanding how furious they really were. The first snow had been a spring shower compared to this thunderstorm of a buzzard. She could not see more than another step in front of her, and she guided herself as much by instinct as by anything she came across in the way of landmarks. The snow was well over her knees except where the wind had scoured it away to drift it elsewhere, and she was required to expand an enormous amount of energy to make any headway at all. Why hadn't Michael told her how rough it would be? The heavy insulation of her ski-suit did not keep her as toasty warm as usual; chills ran up her spine as the most severe blasts seemed somehow to cut right through the quilted fabric and dry the thin sheen of perspiration on her body.
Twice, she turned and looked back toward the house to see if anyone were following her, but the first time she knew she wouldn't have seen him even if he was — and the second time, she could not make out the lines of Owlsden, though it must have been fairly close still.
She doubted even Michael's driving ability to force the Rover up the mountain in this — and then she stopped thinking along those lines. She could not afford to doubt Michael. He might be her only chance.
She had been counting her steps in the event she had to attempt to retrace her path, and for this reason she knew that it was the fifty-seventh step on which she floundered and went down in the cold, soft snow. Her foot slipped on something beneath the snow and twisted under her just as the wind shifted slightly and pounded down on her in a brutal gust. She threw her arms out in a vain effort to break her fall, and she sprawled full-length in the snow.
For a moment, all sound ceased.
Everything was deadly silent.
She lay still, wondering what had happened, whether she was conscious and even, for a second, if she might be dead. But she could hear her heart thumping rapidly; she could hear that much, and that much was enough. She realized that she could not hear the wind because her head was cushioned in deep snow that filtered the keening wail above her.
She lay there for a moment, sucking in wet, cold breaths, recovering the strength to get up again.
This was only the second time she had faced a major battle with the elements, and her mind was suddenly drawn back to that other time, when she was seven years old… the water rising slowly across the farmyard and moving relentlessly in on the house… her father wading through it toward the barn, carrying the buckets with which he hoped to bail out the machinery pit where the tractor lay. At all costs, the machinery must remain dry, all thirty thousand dollars worth of it… everything in the house already moved to the second floor… her mother going after her father to help… Katherine alone at the second floor bedroom window, watching them… then the water… not just rising slowly any longer… a sudden wall of it, as if something had burst farther up the valley… her father looking up in horror… throwing the buckets down… yelling at her mother… her mother frozen there, watching it as her father ran toward her… then the water, everywhere the water, sweeping over the both of them… Windows shattering downstairs as it blasted into the house and gushed almost to the top of the stairs in one sudden explosion of terrifying noise…
In the snow outside Owlsden, Katherine got to her feet. It had occurred to her that she might find lying in the snow much too pleasant and, when the critical moment came, be as unwilling or as unable to move out of the path of death as her mother had been.
She started out again, colder than before, cold clear through to her bones. She was shivering so badly that her teeth chattered together, and there was nothing she could do to stop them.
Suddenly, ahead, a flashlight flickered in the darkness.
She stopped, squinted, lost sight of it.
“Hey!” she shouted.
She thought, for a moment, she might have circled back to Owlsden without being aware of it and might now be calling to those who were out searching for her from that end.
It didn't matter; she had to find help.
“Hey!”
She stumbled forward, went down to her knees again, struggled up and went on. “Michael!”
The light flicked again, closer.
“Hey!”
This tune, it stayed on.
A moment later, she nearly crashed into them and knocked them down as they loomed out of the snowstorm directly in front of her: Michael Harrison and the tall, blond friend of his whose name was Kerry Markwood. She went forward, into his arms, and leaned against him as she recovered her breath.
“It's worse up here than in the valley,” he said, talking loudly so she could hear him above the storm. “When we got here and saw how awful it was, I began to worry.”
Her mouth was dry. She wanted to scoop up a handful of snow and eat it, but she knew that was the wrong thing to do. She needed something hot, coffee or tea. She hoped it wouldn't take them long to get into town.
“Are you all right?” Kerry Markwood asked.
“Fine,” she said.
Michael smiled. “I was afraid they might not let you go.”
“I was followed,” she said.
The two men looked at each other, obviously concerned by that.
“If s all right,” she explained. “I lost him.” She described, rapidly, how the stalker had followed her through the house and how she had foiled him at the kitchen door.
“Great girl!” Michael said. “You really are something!”
“Now,” she said, “where's the Rover? I'm freezing to death out here.” She shuddered to make her point.
Even with most of his face hidden by the red toboggan hat he had drawn firmly down around his ears, and even with the neck scarf that hid his entire chin, he managed to look embarrassed. “I'm afraid I am less of a driver than I thought,” he said.