'Don't see your car,' Harper said. 'Maybe he ditched it in town. Wherever he unloaded the kayak.'
'But then he'd have to transfer Pam.'
'Yeah. unless he killed her at your place, and left her in the car.'
Harper said it thoughtlessly, but the image of Pam curled in the trunk of the Toyota struck Anna with a vivid force, and she groaned, a soft exhalation.
'What?'
'God, if she's dead.'
'Let's cross behind the barn, check the out-buildings,' Harper whispered. 'That'll give us cover coming up to the house.'
'All right.'
They slid to the left, staying close to the underbrush as they moved into the opening around the house. Once away from the driveway, the land opened up into sparse pasture, dotted with clumps of brush. Anna used little squirts of light to guide them past the house to the barn, around the barn to the back, and then, crouching, with Harper's rifle hovering over her head, into the barn itself.
The barn was empty, but redolent with the odor of horse manure and hay. They checked the ground floor, found a range of horse-keeping equipment and stacks of feed supplement on a line of pallets.
'All right,' Harper said. 'Machine shed.'
They went out the back of the barn again, around the side, crept across a short open space to the machine shed, knelt by a window, listening. After a minute, Anna put her head up, peeked through the window. Could see nothing at all. Squeezed the flash, caught a quick glimpse of red.
'I think it's there, the car,' she breathed in Harper's ear. 'Something red in there.'
'Jesus.'
They slid to the front corner of the shed. Like the garage, the shed was old, probably pre-World War II, and the sliding doors hung from rusty overhead tracks. Harper reached around the corner and gave one of the doors a shove, and it moved a few inches. He pushed again, and got another foot.
'We can get in. Move slow, stay low,' he said. He went around the corner, and Anna followed, watching the window in the house. When she was inside the garage, Harper slowly pushed the garage door back in place.
Anna turned, wrapped her fist around the head of the flashlight, and turned it on: the beam caught the fender of her Toyota, played down the side. 'That's it,' she said. 'That's mine.' She played the beam across the back, onto the plates: 'Yeah, that's mine,' she said.
'Kill the light.'
Anna killed the light and they both moved toward the car. Harper touched a window, opened the passenger door, slowly, carefully, felt in front and in the back. Nothing.
'Can you pop the trunk?'
'Yeah. We'll have to go around.'
Anna scuttled around the car, felt up the door to the window. The window was down three or four inches, enough to get her arm through the gap. She stretched into the car, trying to reach the dome light.
'What're you doing?' Harper whispered.
'If you open this door an inch, the light comes on,' Anna said. 'I'm trying to shut it off.'
She fumbled with the switch, said, 'I think that's it,' and tried the door. No light. The trunk-opener lever was just in front of the seat, and she pulled it, heard the trunk pop, and crawled behind the car. Harper was pushing the trunk lid up, and Anna shone the flash into it.
The trunk was empty, but Harper ran his fingers the width of it once, twice, then stopped, pressed, and lifted his fingers toward Anna. They were black in the light. He pulled them back, sniffed, and he said, 'Blood. Not much. So she probably was alive when he took her out of here.'
'How do you know?'
'Why take her out if she's dead?'
Anna nodded, and crawled toward a window facing the house. 'So he's here. Now what?'
'I was afraid. What's that?'
Anna looked to the right, saw the splash of light off the brush beside the house.
'Car coming up the hill,' she said. Anna heard the slide of the rifle as Harper jacked a shell into the chamber. She fumbled the pistol from her pocket as the lights grew brighter on the trees.
Ten seconds later, a pickup pulled into the yard, and a woman hopped out and stormed toward the porch. They could see her face when she first opened the truck door, and her figure as she hurried under the yard light to the porch.
'That's Daly,' Harper said.
'Jeez, do you think she knows?' Anna asked.
'She looks mad about something.' The woman fumbled at the door, unlocking it, then pushed inside and flicked on a light. She slammed the door behind her, but before she did, they heard her shout, 'Steve?'
'Wonder what happened?' Harper asked.
'I don't know, but if he's still in the house, and we want to move up, this is the time. If he's in there, it sounds like he'll have his hands full,' Anna said.
They crawled back out through the garage door, circled back around the barn, into the darkness of the brush, and came up behind the house, near the corrals. An animal made a spitting sound as they passed: 'What the hell was that?' Harper whispered.
'I don't know; I hope it doesn't bite.'
They stopped at the side of the corral, and looked across the intervening fifty feet at the house.
'Gonna have to decide something,' Harper said.
'Whatever's in the corral. Probably the llama. I don't think they're dangerous,' Anna said. 'I'm gonna roll through there and work my way up to the gate. 'If I don't see anything, I'm gonna make a run across the yardyou get ready with the rifle.'
'Maybe I oughta make the ran.'
'No. You've got the rifle, I've just got this thing,' Anna said, holding up the pistol. 'At fifty feet I might not be able to hit the house.'
As she said it, she slipped under the lowest rail of the corral. Whatever was in the corral stayed at the back. She could here it stomping nervously, maybe the Llama, maybe a pony, as she moved to the gate.
Taking a breath, she glanced back at the spot where she'd left Jake, and stuck one leg through the gate.
BAAAAAZZZZZZZZ.
The buzzer sounded like the end of the world, as loud as a jet plane, fifteen feet overhead.
In a half-second, she knew exactly what had happened: the gate was alarmed, just like the gate at the bottom of the hill. A light beam or movement sensor was probably buried in the gatepost, out beyond the gate itself, so an animal inside the corral couldn't set it offbut she'd put her leg right through it.
She'd been so occupied with the thought of closing on the house that she hadn't thought to look. And she didn't stop to think when the buzzer went. Instead, she scrambled sideways, across the corral, to the far corner, holding tight to the pistol.
The buzzing went on for three or four seconds, and then, just as abruptly, stopped. For another twenty seconds, nothing moved inside the house, and Anna, watching the back door, began to relax.
'Anna?' Jake's stage whisper cut through the dead silence. She turned her head to answer when the back door banged open, and what looked like a drank staggered onto the back porch, twisting, turning in the dim light.
'Anna?' The voice. She knew it this time. 'Anna, I know you're out there.'
Anna, straining toward the turning figure, finally made it out; not one person, but two. A man with his arm around a woman's neck, the woman struggling against him; and when her struggles became too violent, he would lever her off the ground until she stopped.
'Anna.' Judge was screaming her name. Anna said nothing. Maybe he'd decide that an animal had set off the alarm. Maybe he'd come out where they could get at him: but at the moment, the woman's body blocked any possibility of a shot.
'Are you out there? I know you're out there.' The straggle on the porch started again, and Anna lifted the pistol and aimed it, took it down again: no way.
'Anna.' He was bawling into the night. Then: 'You think I'm fucking around? Think again, huh? Think again, Anna.'
He moved back toward the door, reached inside, and clicked on a yellow porch light.
'I know you're out there. You like to make movies? Make a movie of this.'