When he was a half-mile from the cabin, he reached a fork in the road. To the right was Blaue Forelle Strasse, the cabin’s de facto driveway. He drove fifty feet past it and pulled over.
Part of him wanted to hurry, to find out why Belinda had gone silent, but he resisted the impulse. At Kultfabrik he’d rushed his clearing of the building’s third floor and had almost paid for it. If Belinda was already dead or had been taken, a headlong charge at the cabin would do nothing to change that.
He texted her again: What’s happening?
After nearly a minute of silence, the phone chimed with her response: They had been in the house.
Red, Jack texted.
Baron, came Belinda’s reply.
Gone now?
I think so, she replied.
How long ago?
Twenty, thirty minutes, Belinda texted.
How many men? asked Jack.
Don’t know! Afraid to move! Hiding in closet.
There were two possibilities, Jack decided, both plausible, and one perhaps the product of overthinking on his part: He’d gotten Belinda’s text within ten minutes of the crash at the lumberyard. If Möller’s men had been sitting on Belinda’s cabin, Möller might have ordered them to spook her, in hopes that she would send out a call for help, and then to hunker down and wait for Jack’s arrival. They had nothing to lose but time on a fruitless ambush. The second possibility was more straightforward: Having failed to kill Jack and Effrem, Möller had decided to minimize his exposure and ordered his men to withdraw. As for Effrem’s suggestion that Belinda was in league with Möller, Jack’s gut said no.
He called up Google Earth and zoomed in on the property. Sitting as it did in the river’s valley, the cabin was surrounded by trees in full bloom, fed by the Isar’s spring melt. While the terrain ruled out ambush-at-a-distance with long guns, the thickness of the foliage offered plenty of places for bad guys to hide and wait for Jack’s approach.
Nothing’s perfect, he reminded himself. No plan survives first contact with the enemy. He’d deal with whatever came.
Jack texted Belinda, I’m just passing Eching. Be there asap.
If this got passed on to Möller’s men, it might give Jack an advantage.
Jack spent the next thirty minutes picking his way through the forest until his legs were numb from crouching, his elbows and knees were raw from crawling, and the batteries in his off-brand NVGs were so weak that it was like staring into a static-filled television. The rain clouds had so far failed to open up, but rather spit droplets that struck the ground like hurled pebbles. Jack could feel a bone-deep cold settling into his limbs.
When the rear wall of the cabin finally came into view he forced himself to lie still in the undergrowth and watch for another five minutes. The cabin had indeed once been a Bavarian-style three-story farmhouse, with a cedar mansard roof, whitewashed exterior, and dark green shutters. It wasn’t far from what Jack’s younger self would have imagined a gingerbread house to be like.
Nothing was moving and he saw no lights.
Jack crawled ahead and wormed his way underneath the wraparound porch, then got out his phone and texted, Almost there. Turning onto Blaue Forelle.
This was the road leading directly to the cabin. Now to see if his impending approach got a reaction.
Belinda didn’t respond.
Another five minutes passed. Either he was alone or Möller’s men were too damned good for him to spot. Next, the house.
Before he even reached the front door he could smell the stink of gas. Jack holstered his gun; its muzzle blast would be more than enough to ignite the gas. He pulled the collar of his T-shirt up over his nose and tried the doorknob. It was unlocked. He pushed through, then sidestepped left, clear of the backlit doorway.
Belinda had said she was in a closet. Where, though? He texted the question to Belinda and again he got no response. Depending on how long this gas had been flowing, she could already be dead.
Led by his penlight, Jack moved through the cabin as quickly and quietly as possible, opening windows and stopping at every door that might be a closet until he’d cleared the first floor. He climbed the stairs and repeated his search. At the end of the hall, in a bathroom linen closet, he found Belinda curled into a ball. Clutched loosely in her hand was a cell phone, not the burner he’d given her. He checked her pulse. She was alive. He shook her. “Belinda!” No response. He rubbed his knuckles hard against her sternum and she let out a moan.
Downstairs, a door slammed.
Jack froze. Listened.
He crept to the bathroom window and looked out. The pane beside his head exploded. He ducked, dropped to his belly, crawled back to Belinda. He grabbed her wrist and dragged her into the hallway.
Think, Jack. Get shot dead or burned alive?
Belinda’s cell phone beeped. Jack grabbed it, checked the screen. It was a text.
Come out. You come with us, she goes free.
Beyond the obvious — that someone preferred him alive for the time being — this text message told Jack something: If they planned to blow the house, the ignition source was probably already in place and remotely controlled.
How and where?
Buy some time, Jack. He texted back: She’s almost dead. Can’t move her until she’s awake.
Come out now. She will be tended to.
This was a lie, of course.
When I know she’s okay, I’ll come out. Need fresh air. Breaking window. Don’t shoot.
No response.
Jack crawled back into the bathroom to the window and used the butt of his HK to shatter the remaining panes.
The phone beeped: No more windows. Five minutes. Be smart.
Was the cabin close enough to Marzling to be on city gas? Jack wondered. Maybe not. Propane, then. He hadn’t seen a tank outside, so where was it? The most likely place was the basement.
He pulled Belinda close to him, scooped her onto his shoulder, then crouch-walked back down the stairs to the kitchen. He found the basement door set into the wall behind the dining table. As quietly as he could, he slid this aside and opened the door, revealing a set of stairs leading down into darkness. The stench of propane washed over Jack, almost doubling him over. He coughed and bile filled his mouth; he swallowed it. His vision was sparkling. Though all the windows on the first floor were open, propane tended to settle, so he was likely standing waist-deep in the gas.
Go out the front, Jack. Surrender, take your chances, play for time. That might work for him, but not for Belinda, he knew. They would kill her regardless. The other option, to go out shooting, was also a nonstarter. In Hollywood blockbusters this desperate gambit was glorious to behold and almost always successful, but it rarely worked in the real world. He and Belinda wouldn’t make it off the porch before being cut down.
Root cellar. Unbidden, the words popped into Jack’s head. Maybe.
Another text: Three minutes.
Jack replied, She may be dying. Not coming out until she’s awake. You want me, you have to wait.