Desperation gave him the strength to tear the shotgun loose from its moorings. It was loaded: The slide worked smoothly and he heard a shell snick into the chamber.
The fireplace poker was useless now; Macklin tossed it into the runoff stream. With the shotgun crooked carefully under his arm, he swung the flash beam in a wide arc. It passed over the black woods, the deserted lane, the estate fence, the entrance gates—
He jerked it back when he realized that the gates stood partway open. They’d been shut all the times he’d driven by; he and Shelby had both assumed the place was closed up for the winter.
Was that where she was, somewhere on the estate grounds? The gates might have been blown open by the storm, but that wasn’t likely since they opened inward. Somebody must’ve unlocked them … somebody was there or had been there.
Macklin hurried across the roadway, and as he sloshed through swampy earth and grass he had the presence of mind to click off the flash. He’d already thrown light over the gates, but anybody on the other side would have to be close by to have seen it. Possible someone was hiding there in the dark … he couldn’t just go blundering onto the property with the flash on. Take it slow and careful.
He eased up to the nearest gate half, stopped there to peer through the gap. Thick darkness, unbroken except for the faint vertical outlines of trees—a dozen people could be hiding within twenty yards of him and he wouldn’t be able to see any of them. He put a strain on his hearing. Magnified faucet-drip from the waterlogged branches, the distant pounding of surf. No other sounds.
He stepped through, took a few steps forward and felt the driveway begin to slope downward. He might be able to follow it down through the woods without using the torch, but he was afraid to risk it. Too easy to veer off, stumble and fall … hurt himself, bring on another cardiac episode. His breathing was a little off again and the squeezing sensation had returned. There was a growing numbness in his hands and feet, too—the bitter windchill penetrating the layers of clothing and robbing him of body heat.
He had the flash pointed straight down, his thumb on the switch, when the light flickers showed below.
Now he knew for sure someone was on the grounds. Moving in or beyond the timber on the south side, where he judged the estate buildings to be. He stood tensed, watching, as the flickers lengthened and then steadied into a long shaft. Whoever it was had moved out from behind the screening trees, probably onto the driveway, and was heading this way.
Before the shaft cut around in his direction, Macklin backed up quickly to the gates and then went to his right along the fence. Some kind of scraggly ground cover grew along it; he trampled through the vegetation, his shoulder brushing the rough boards, his shoes sinking into a soggy cushion of pine needles.
The approaching light was slanted upward now, not quite piercing the darkness as far as the gates.
Shelby?
But the hope died as fast as it had been born. She’d be running or at least hurrying, and judging by the rate the beam was advancing, whoever held the torch was maintaining a steady pace but in no real hurry. Going where?
A thick pine trunk jutted a few feet to Macklin’s right; he pushed off the fence and stepped over to use the tree as a shield. His heartbeat had quickened and the metallic taste was back in his mouth. The stock and barrel of the shotgun had a heavy, leaden feel in his gloved fingers.
Two choices. Step out when whoever it was reached the gates, click on his flash, catch the person by surprise. Or stay hidden and try to see who it was, where he was headed.
No-brainer. He still had no idea who had killed Lomax—Shelby or the missing deputy or some unknown third party. Or why Lomax was dead. Or what the situation was here. He’d be the one at a disadvantage if the light-holder was armed and dangerous. He had no experience with a shotgun; to use it he’d have to take the glove off his right hand, and his fingers were cramped and without much feeling as it was. He’d be a damn fool to even think about trying to fire it one-handed while holding the flashlight steady on his target.
He bent forward against the pine trunk, watching the wavering ray draw closer, reach up to splash brightness over the gate halves. A single figure took dim shape behind it, slowed and then stopped to pull one and then the other half wide open. There wasn’t enough backspill for Macklin to get a clear look at him. But he could tell one thing as the man and the light passed out through the opening: What he was wearing was not a deputy sheriff’s uniform.
Macklin waited half a dozen beats. Snippets of light coming through chinks between the fence boards told him that the man was moving across the lane toward the parked cruiser. But he wasn’t planning to leave the area, head for the highway; he wouldn’t have opened the gates all the way if that was his intention. Must be going to bring the cruiser back inside, hide it on the estate grounds.
Was he the one who’d killed Lomax? If so, then wouldn’t he also want to get the corpse off the lane? Put it into the cruiser or drag it into the woods where it wouldn’t be easily found? That would take time, and so would stopping to close the gates after he drove the cruiser through.
Hurry!
Macklin stepped out to the rain-slick driveway, eased along it several paces in the dark while he altered his grip on the torch, closing his fingers around the bulb end and splaying them over the lens. When he switched on, enough light leaked through on a downward slant to show him what lay directly ahead, let him lengthen his stride. Every few steps he glanced over his shoulder at the gates. If the cruiser’s headlights appeared before he reached the end of the driveway, he’d darken the torch and get off into the trees as fast as he could.
His breathing was still erratic; he kept expecting the chest constriction to erupt into smothering pain. But he didn’t let it slow him down. Finding Shelby was all he let himself think about.
The driveway’s looping descent had almost cleared the woods when he saw, first, the yellowish rectangle ahead to his left and at almost the same time, the brighter illumination tingeing the night above and behind him. But the cruiser’s headlamps were still outside the fence, just now swinging around to the entrance. He couldn’t make out the gates from where he was, but the buildings had begun to materialize ahead, the dark outlines of the big estate house on the edge of the bluff and the smaller, closer structure with the lamplit window.
The driveway forked; he veered onto the left fork, drawn by the light ahead.
Halfway there, he took another look beind him. Headlight glare showed through the trees … moving at first, then becoming stationary. The cruiser was inside the gates and the man had gotten out to close them. Only a matter of minutes before he’d be down here.
The small building was a rough-built cabin. Macklin stumbled and slowed as he neared it, his breath like fire in his lungs. He passed a closed door, brought up next to the unshaded window. Sleeved his eyes clear of rain and sweat and peered through the streaked glass.
Jesus!
He lunged sideways to the door, dragged it open just long enough to thrust his body inside. On the battered gray sofa Shelby’s head came up and her eyes rounded into an open-mouthed stare. She cried his name, twice, in a voice that cracked with emotion.
Relief flooded him. She wasn’t hurt, she looked all right.
“Thank God, Jay, but how did you—”