She hoisted the backpack on her shoulder and followed the detective the two blocks to the store.
She watched his back as he pulled out his phone card and punched the number.
“What?” Lockhart said after a moment.
“What what?” Barbara asked.
“Listen,” Lockhart said, lifting the receiver.
“The number you have called is no longer in service, please check the number and dial again. Two-three-two. The number you have called is no longer…”
“What number did you dial?” Barb asked.
“The eight hundred number,” Kelly snapped, slamming the phone down and digging in his pocket for change.
“Don’t mind me, I’m just a scared old lady,” Barbara said. “But let me point out that it’s getting dark.”
“I know,” Kelly said, thumbing quarters in the phone. He dialed a number rapidly and then cursed. “Son of a bitch!”
Barbara could hear the same recording.
“Let me try,” she said. “Got any more change?”
Her home number wouldn’t work and neither would her father’s number in Denver. Neither did the operator pick up when she dialed zero.
“Okay,” Kelly said, shaking his head. “Somehow they, whoever they are, are fucking with the phone.”
“Watch your language,” Barbara snapped automatically. “Okay, I would say we are officially in Indian Country and cut off from reinforcements, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes,” Kelly said, trying not to smile.
“In that case, our job is to survive and either wait for supports or get out if we can,” Barb said, nodding to herself. “The hotel isn’t great, but it’s the best we’re going to get. We go there, hunker down, and hope like hell when you don’t check in the lieutenant sends somebody out for you. Will he?”
“Probably,” Lockhart said. “I told him enough to have him worried. But I want to talk to the old man. Stick with plan b. You go get a room, I’ll pick up your bottle. I’ll get a room also, but we’ll hunker down in yours.”
“I assume I can trust you to be gentlemanly,” Barbara said, smiling, as they started to walk back to the hotel.
“Of course!” Kelly said. “I am nothing if not a gentleman.”
When Barbara got back to the hotel she considered her options. The fact was that she was scared. More scared than when she’d been attacked in college. Nearly as scared as when Allison had been struck by a car. She had come to the conclusion that something was very wrong in Thibideau, Louisiana, and that the wrongness was probably going to reach out for her. All day long she’d felt a strange uneasiness like being just a little sick. She knew she wasn’t; it was something else. Something weird.
“Dear Lord,” she said, sinking to her knees and clasping her hands, “I ask you to hear my prayer. I believe I am in the midst of evil and I ask only that your divine power comfort me in my trial. I will act on my own behalf if evil men come for me but, Lord, I sense a greater power of evil at work. Shelter me from that, I ask in Jesus’ name, and I’ll take care of the rest. For though I walk through the valley, thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. Watch over me as the shepherd watches his sheep and I will do my Christian best to stay alive. Amen.”
She felt comforted after that but she’d made a promise to the Lord and it was time to see what she could do to ensure she kept the promise.
“First things first,” she muttered, unzipping her boots. “The f… the boots have got to go.” If she had to run, better that it be in running shoes. If she fell and twisted her ankle, she’d never live it down. Hell, she probably wouldn’t live much longer.
The jeans… were too tight. She had a looser pair. They were darker as well. The tennis shoes were white, but mud would fix that if she had to. Dark blouse, the dark leather jacket. Among other things it would mildly deflect a blow from a knife. If she had to sneak, her face and hair would give her away. She pulled out a black silk blouse and, wincing, began slitting the seams. A few quick stitches with her sewing kit and she had a perfectly adequate hood. She cut eyeholes with the locking-blade knife from her purse, finishing with the dying rays of the sun.
She dumped the drinks out of the backpack, dumping out the remnant water in the bottom on the floor, and slid her purse into it. She pulled out her holster and put that on, slipping in the spare magazines and then, after a moment’s thought, racked a round into the chamber of the H K and used the decock lever to drop the hammer safely. She put the pillows on the bed under the covers, making a lump. What the heck, it worked in movies. Then she grabbed her makeup case and sat down cross-legged in the corner. She had one shade of very deep blue eye shadow that would probably work for camouflage. She rubbed some around her eyes and then all over her hands. It was slightly shiny, but better than skin.
She rummaged through her bag looking for useful items. Makeup… all the use it was going to be. Nail polish… nothing came to mind. Lighter. That went in a pocket. Locking knife, that clipped to her right pocket. Nail polish remover. Potentially useful but where to carry it? She slid it in the backpack and added the remaining bottles of water, wishing she’d picked more up at the store. Sodas as well. Hair-spray… oh, yeah. Take.
She put everything useful in the backpack and then dumped the bag off to the side, wishing she had a roll of duct tape. No particular reason, but duct tape had a thousand and one uses. One of them came to mind and she crept quietly over to the dumped out empty water bottles and collected them. If she found a roll of duct tape…
She realized what she was contemplating and froze.
“First degree murder,” she muttered, frowning as she sat back down in a lotus position. Well, if it came to premeditated murder or dying, she was just going to do the deed.
Yes, “thou shalt not kill” correctly translated as “thou shalt not murder.” But that was what she was contemplating. If she had to fight her way out of town, she wasn’t going to do it like a cowboy in the westerns. She was going to do it the way daddy taught her: Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape. Never come at a frontal position. Use concealment as long as possible. Never give an enemy an even break.
Murder them before they knew you were there.
Murder. The bottles could be used as field expedient silencers. Using a silencer was, de facto and de jure, proof of prior intent. First degree murder.
She was getting angry, too. The deep, cold-hot anger that she worked every day to control but this came with a righteous strain that somehow made it stronger and more potent. She could feel the demon straining at its leash and she knew that soon it would be let loose. Murder, she knew, wasn’t the true stain on the soul, it was the tarnish that came with the feelings surrounding it, the anger and the sick feeling of power to give or take life. That was the center of the sin against oneself, against God.
But there were times, and this seemed like one of them, when letting the demon out of the jar was acceptable and appropriate. She wondered how hard it would be to get the lid back on.
She was contemplating that moral and legal dilemma when she suddenly realized it was full dark.
And Kelly hadn’t returned.
Kelly stepped to the rotten door on the side of the boathouse, hand on his service Glock, and ducked inside, looking around.
The room was gloomy and covered in spider webs, half the roof gone. The old man was in a corner, shaking and moaning. But he was the only one there.