Just beyond the arch, she found a closet, then a bathroom. Farther down the hall, on the left, was a small room with exercise equipment. Squinting into the darkness, she saw a Nautilus, treadmill, rowing machine and weights, a mat on the floor and a wall of mirrors.
Then she came to the bedroom. Standing close to the open door, her back pressed to the wall, she held her breath and listened. No sounds came from the room. She wiped her sweaty hands on her shorts. Flashlight still off, she stepped away from the wall and moved in front of the doorway.
In spite of the closed curtains, the room had a dim gray glow. Gillian peered at the bed. Its cover was flat except for the bulge of pillows near the headboard.
That’s that, she thought.
Suddenly exhausted, she sagged against the doorframe.
End of Phase One, she told herself. You’re safely in and nobody’s here.
Of course, someone could be here, hiding. It was unlikely, though. So unlikely that it wasn’t even worth worrying about.
Even if all the other indications were misleading, the stuffy air of the closed-up house was sure proof.
After a while, Gillian thrust herself away from the doorframe and walked toward the bed. She turned on her flashlight. Though it was aimed at the king-sized bed, a bright beam streaked across the ceiling.
She flinched and looked up.
Mirrors. Mirrors on the ceiling above the bed.
Well now, Gillian thought. Whoever lives here must be quite a sport.
Turning around, she found the light beam ricocheting off mirrors on the wall. Even the shut door of the closet had them.
Grinning, Gillian went to the bed, sat on it, and gasped as she sank into the mattress. Waves rolled back against her rump.
A water bed!
This is going to be terrific.
She flopped down on the undulating softness, felt herself rise and fall on the gently moving surface, stared up at her reflection in the mirrors.
She’d been in a few houses with water beds but none with mirrors like this. It would be strange, trying to sack out with images of herself on the ceiling and wall.
The sport who lives here must get quite a kick out of looking at himself... or herself. Could be a woman, she thought. But definitely not married. Definitely on the make.
Her curiosity aroused, Gillian went to the closet and opened it. The inside of the door had a necktie bar. On the floor were men’s shoes. The hanging clothes were shirts, slacks, and sport coats.
Our Narcissus, she decided, is definitely a guy.
Gillian shut the closet. Beyond the end of the bed was a bureau. She could inspect its contents later. Beside it was another television. This TV, like the one in the den, had a VCR attached.
Leaving the room, Gillian went to the front door. She opened it, looked around, then stepped out on the porch. She gathered up her shoes, clothes, purse and suitcase, and carried them into the house.
Then she headed back into the den. She spent the next few minutes gluing the square of glass into its original place in the door. She taped it there to hold it while the glue had a chance to set. Then she packed up her tool satchel and entered the house.
She locked the sliding door.
In the living room, she opened her suitcase and took out her burglar bar. She extended its telescoping rod, fitted its V-shaped end under the doorknob and jammed its other end against the carpet at a wide angle.
“All right,” she said. “The house is mine.”
Chapter Six
Rick woke up. The tent was dark. He pulled an arm out of his mummy bag and fingered a tab at the side of his wristwatch to light the digital numbers. Eleven-fifty. He grimaced. He’d been asleep less than two hours, and now he felt wide awake.
Bert, in her own bag alongside his, breathed slowly in and out. She was deeply asleep, gone, and Rick felt abandoned.
Trying to find a more comfortable position, he rolled onto his side. The rubber mat under his bag helped a little, but it was thin and the cold earth was unyielding. Too much weight bore down on his shoulder, upper arm and hip.
They’ll fall asleep before I do, he thought.
He rolled the rest of the way over and crossed his arms beneath the makeshift pillow of his rolled coat. This was better; the ground felt fine under his thigh muscles. But he was pressing down hard on his lower ribs. His penis, sideways against his groin, felt mashed. He turned slightly to relieve the pressure. Now his knee pushed against the ground and there was more weight on the left side of his ribcage. After a while, the knee and ribs began to ache.
Muttering, “Shit,” he rolled onto his back again and gazed at the slanted walls of the tent.
This is madness, he thought. I could be home in my own soft bed, instead of out here in the wilderness scared out of my gourd. Like last time ...
He listened to Bert’s slow breathing, and resented her. This was all her fault.
“Get off it,” he told himself. “You didn’t have to come. And she’s been great.”
Rick wished he’d had a couple of shots before turning in. He’d been reluctant, however, to let Bert find out that he’d brought the bourbon along. She might not complain, but she would certainly disapprove. She did complain about her parents’ drinking, whose cocktail hour had stretched into two hours on the several occasions when she and Rick had dined at their house. She didn’t complain to them. She complained to Rick later on. By implication, her comments seemed directed at Rick since he had matched her parents drink for drink. “Can’t people have a good time,” she would say, “without trying one on?”
Rick had seen opportunities to sneak a couple of slugs after dinner tonight when Bert left camp to gather firewood. But he’d resisted the urge, knowing that she would smell it on his breath later when they made love.
I should’ve brought vodka instead of bourbon, Rick thought. Hell, she would’ve smelled that, too. Its odor is faint compared to bourbon, but distinctive.
He thought about the bottle. It was near the bottom of his pack.
They had left their packs outside the tent, resting atop slabs of rock on the other side of the campsite and covered with ponchos.
Not only was his bourbon out there, but so was his revolver. A lot of good the gun would do them some forty feet from the tent, but Rick didn’t want Bert to know about that, either. The gun was a double-whammy; she hated firearms in general, and Rick bringing one on the camping trip would probably be seen as an act of cowardice.
If I’d had a gun the last time ...
Maybe I should’ve told Bert the whole truth this morning. Giving her that sanitized version probably just made me look yellow—like I was a kid back when it happened, scared of my own shadow.
Rick had never told the whole truth about that camping trip to anyone.
When they first came upon the lake, Rick had wanted to keep moving. It was a deep shade of blue, itself beautiful, but trapped in a landscape of such desolation that Rick felt the skin crawl on the back of his neck in spite of the heavy sun.
Steep canyon walls loomed over the lake on three sides. High up were gray stretches of glacier shaded by overhangs so that they probably never melted completely, year after year. There were a few scraggly patches of foliage on the rock walls, trees stunted and twisted into grotesque shapes. Otherwise, the slopes were bleached tumbles of broken granite.
The trail down from Windover Pass led to a small oasis that looked alien in the midst of the otherwise bleak surroundings. The oasis, a shady clearing near the lake shore, had a campsite.