John Saul (12 page)

No one else, however, had even glimpsed the shadowed figure.

It was as if he hadn’t been there at all.

MaryAnne went to bed early that night, worn out from the funeral and the reception that had followed. But sometime near midnight she woke up suddenly, feeling something was wrong.

Something that had nothing to do with the events that had drained her energy that day.

No, it was something else.

Something about the house.

She lay still in bed for a moment, listening. Nothing but the normal sounds of the night.

And yet the sense that all was not right wouldn’t leave her. She got out of bed, slipped into her bathrobe, and left her room, leaving the door open so that the light by her bed would spill out into the hallway.

Moving to Alison’s door, she listened for a moment, then opened it a crack and peeped inside.

Her daughter was asleep, sprawled on her back, her hair spread out on the pillow. Silently closing the door, she went on to Logan’s room. Her son, curled up with a pillow in his arms, was also sound asleep.

Finally, she hesitated at Joey’s door, then tapped softly. When there was no response—not even a whimper from Storm—she opened the door and looked inside.

Joey’s bed covers were thrown back. The room was empty. “Oh, God,” MaryAnne whispered softly, hurrying to the window to peer out into the night. She scanned the yard and the field, searching for any sign of the boy or the dog, but there was nothing. Then a movement caught her eye and she turned to look at the barn.

One of its great doors was open, swinging in the wind.

What was he doing out there? Hurrying downstairs, MaryAnne clutched the robe around her as she left the
house through the kitchen door and trotted across to the barn. Inside, the horses were whinnying nervously, and Sheika, who had reappeared on the day after MaryAnne arrived, was stamping at the straw that littered her stall. “Joey?” she called as she stepped through the open door. “Joey, are you out here?”

She listened, and for a moment heard nothing, but then there was a low sound, unidentifiable, from the far end of the barn. One of the horses reared up, snorting loudly.

“Joey—”

The sound from the far reaches of the barn swelled into a snarl, then something came charging out of the blackness toward her. Acting only on her reflexes, MaryAnne jerked back from the gaping darkness, slamming the door shut and dropping the bar into place just as the thing, whatever it was, hurled itself against the other side. Her heart pounding, she turned and fled back across the yard, slamming the kitchen door shut as soon as she was inside the house.

What was it?

What had been in the barn?

It couldn’t have been Joey—it
couldn’t
have been! Surely he would have answered her when she called to him. And Storm wouldn’t have attacked her.

Would he?

But it was impossible! If anything, the big shepherd was too friendly, constantly licking people and begging to be petted!

Her pulse slowly returning to normal, she quickly checked the living room and the den, praying that Joey might have come downstairs in the night and fallen asleep on one of the sofas.

There was no sign of him.

Finally, she picked up the telephone on the table behind the stairs, and was about to dial the deputy’s office when she heard the kitchen door open. For a moment she froze. Was it possible that whatever had been in the barn was now in the house?

“J-Joey?” she stammered, her voice choking in her throat. A moment later Storm bounded out of the dining room, his tail wagging, and threw himself on her, his paws
resting on her chest as he tried to lick her face. A second later Joey himself appeared, dressed in jeans, a T-shirt showing under his denim jacket. “Get down, Storm,” MaryAnne protested, twisting away from the enthusiastic dog. “Joey, get him off me!”

“Sit, Storm,” Joey commanded, and the dog instantly dropped to the floor, his tail curling around his feet, his eyes fastening on his master.

“Joey, where were you?” MaryAnne demanded, the fear of a few minutes before now giving way to annoyance. “Do you know what time it is?”

Joey’s eyes darkened. “It’s only about midnight. I couldn’t sleep, so Storm and I went for a walk.”

“A walk?” MaryAnne echoed, Rick Martin’s questions that morning loomed once more in her mind. “Joey, did you see someone again? Was it like last night?”

Joey shook his head. “I didn’t see anything. I just wanted to go for a walk. What’s wrong with that?”

MaryAnne felt disoriented. He was only thirteen, and it was the middle of the night, and God only knew what might be in the woods. Surely Audrey hadn’t approved of—

And then she was sure she understood.

Only that day, he had watched both his parents being buried.

What must it have been like for him?

She couldn’t even begin to imagine.

This night, the finality of the funeral still fresh in his mind, must have been an endless agony for him. She should have sat up herself, with her door open and her light on, in case he needed her.

But he hadn’t wanted to waken her, hadn’t wanted to bother anyone with his grief, she thought, fighting back the sting of tears as sympathy for this slight, solemn-eyed child overwhelmed her. So he’d taken his dog and gone for a walk.

But what about the barn? What had he been doing in there? And why had Storm come at her like that, scaring her half to death?

“Didn’t you hear me when I called you in the barn?” she asked, her voice now devoid of any anger.

Joey’s brows knit into a frown. “I wasn’t in the barn. We just went along by the creek for a while.”

Now it was MaryAnne’s turn to frown. “But I was just out there, Joey. The barn door was open, and some—” She hesitated, then decided which word to use. “
Something
was inside. It came at me!”

Joey stared at her. “Well, there isn’t anything out there now,” he said. “I stopped to check on the horses just before we came in. Everything’s fine.”

With Storm at his heels, Joey bounded up the stairs. MaryAnne heard his door close.

Nonplussed, she turned off the downstairs lights. The darkness and silence of the night once more closed around her.

But tonight, the peaceful countryside, the darkness and silence of the ranch, had abruptly taken on an ominous feeling, a feeling that made MaryAnne shiver although the night was warm, almost balmy.

It was a long time before she fell asleep. Twice she got up to peer out into the velvet darkness beyond the window.

Though she saw nothing, heard nothing, she still had the uneasy feeling that something—
someone
—was out there.

Out there watching, and waiting.

M
aryAnne was up early on Monday morning, having made up her mind the night before that although it was Labor Day, she would begin the serious business of finding out just what was involved in running the ranch. Until now, all her energies had been depleted by grief over the loss of her closest friend, and by the demands of dealing with the double funeral, as well. But it was over now, and after the weekend spent hiking the ranch with Alison and Logan—and trying to remember as much as she could of Joey’s continuous explanation of what they were seeing—she’d decided that this morning it was time to begin putting together some kind of routine, holiday or not.

Besides, she’d discovered yesterday that in Sugarloaf, Labor Day was celebrated on Sunday, regardless of what the rest of the country might do. “Ranches don’t know anything about days off,” Charley Hawkins had explained to her on Friday, “and around here, it’s just one last chance to milk the summer tourists.” So the “traditional” picnic had been yesterday (open to tourists at twenty-five dollars a head) along with the rodeo (another twenty dollars) and a “genuine square dance” in the evening (fifteen dollars, drinks five bucks a shot). “Then the stores stay open all day Monday, just in case anyone has any cash left,” Charley had explained. But following his advice as well as her own instincts, MaryAnne and the children had stayed home. “It’s one thing to go on with your lives,” Charley had counseled. “But if I were you, I’d give it some time before I started doing much of a social nature.” Thus, the four of them had stuck close to the ranch all day Saturday and Sunday, but when she’d seen Bill Sikes coming back from town the
night before, she’d gone out to ask him to come to the house at seven o’clock this morning.

Sikes had pursed his lips in apparent protest. “Mr. Wilkenson never wanted me in before eight—maybe eight-thirty,” he’d complained, but even as he uttered the words, MaryAnne had sensed the first test of her authority.

In retrospect, she thought she had handled the situation pretty well.

“I’m sure I’ll do a lot of things differently from Mr. Wilkenson,” she’d replied evenly, “so if you’ll just come to the kitchen at seven, I’ll have coffee ready for us, and we can begin going over things.”

Sikes had said nothing, but MaryAnne took the tiny movement of his head as agreement, and when she went to bed that night, she set her alarm for six o’clock. She intended to be showered, dressed, and ready for the interview—complete with the coffee she’d promised—at least ten minutes before the appointed hour.

By seven-fifteen, when there was still no sign of Bill Sikes, she began to feel annoyed with the man. Should she keep waiting for him, or call him? Or even go looking for him?

What if she found him in his cabin, sound asleep, with an empty whiskey bottle by his bed? Would she have to fire him? And then what would she do? She couldn’t run the ranch by herself—

A knock at the back door interrupted her thoughts, and when she looked up to see Sikes himself peering through the window, she instantly abandoned all notions of firing him. He’d come, and it was still forty-five minutes earlier than he’d been required to report to Ted—assuming she believed his story, although she wasn’t at all sure she did. If he wanted to be a little late just to prove his independence, so be it. She’d deal with it.

She waved him in, pouring him a mug of coffee, then nodded toward the table in the corner of the large room. “Did you have a good night?” she asked.

Bill Sikes shrugged disinterestedly, pulled off the knit cap he habitually wore on his grizzled head, but made no move to settle into one of the chairs at the table. “I been
thinkin’,” he said without preamble. “I’m prob’ly gonna be quittin’.”

MaryAnne froze, the mug of coffee she’d just poured hovering in the air. Quitting? But he couldn’t do that! How could she manage without—And then a thought came to her.

He was testing her again, no doubt seeing if he could get more money out of her by threatening to leave her on her own. “I see,” she said, keeping her voice calm, masking the twinge of panic that had seized her. “Well, why don’t we sit down and talk about it?” Putting his mug on the table, she pulled one of the chairs out for him, then seated herself on another.

Sikes hesitated a moment, then almost reluctantly sat down. As he sipped his coffee, MaryAnne eyed him surreptitiously, trying to read the expression on his face. She still had no idea how old he might be, and his dark skin and black eyes suggested that at least part of his heritage was Native American. His skin had the leathery look of a man who had spent most of his life outdoors, and though he was no more than five-foot-six or-seven, there was a wiry power to his body. Was he angry about something? She searched his face, but realized that she couldn’t tell. If anything, he looked more worried than angry. “Why don’t you tell me what’s wrong?” she asked. “Perhaps if we discuss why you want to quit, we can work something out.”

“Just doesn’t seem right anymore, that’s all,” Sikes said, his eyes avoiding hers.

“You mean because of what happened to Ted and Audrey.” MaryAnne nodded sympathetically, fighting back a wave of grief at the reminder of what had happened to her friends. “I know it must be as much of a shock to you as it was to me, but—”

“It’s not just that,” Sikes interrupted. “It’s somethin’ else, too. If I was you, I’d just put this place on the market, and take Joey back to wherever you came from. A woman like you can’t run a ranch—”

“A woman like me?” MaryAnne cut in sharply. “Exactly what kind of woman would that be, Mr. Sikes?”

Bill Sikes’s eyes narrowed to slits. “Don’t get on your
high horse with me, young lady,” he said. “You know what I’m talkin’ about. What do you know about running a ranch?”

“Not any more than Ted and Audrey did when they first came out here,” MaryAnne shot back. “And I suspect that the man on this place who knew the most about ranching was you. If you could teach Ted and Audrey, I don’t see any reason why you can’t teach me, too.” Though she was absolutely certain she had just given Bill Sikes far more credit than he deserved for the running of the ranch—and Ted and Audrey Wilkenson far less—the flattery seemed to work. Sikes sat up a little straighter in his chair, and his head tilted in acknowledgment of the compliment.

“I’ve learned a thing or two in my time,” he admitted, then shaking his head, added, “Still, somethin’s not right around here. I just don’t believe what happened to Mr. and Mrs. Wilkenson was an accident. Mr. W. was good with horses. Good, and real careful, too. He wouldn’ta spooked Sheika. And somethin’ about that accident with Mrs. W. ain’t right, either.”

MaryAnne felt her pulse quicken. “Have you talked to Rick Martin about it?”

“Oh, yeah. Fact is, he don’t like it any better’n I do. He’s been up to see me twice now, askin’ all kinds of questions.” He glanced at MaryAnne as if expecting her to press him for more information, but instead of saying anything, she simply met his gaze with her own. Finally Sikes broke the look, shifting his gaze back to the tabletop in front of him. “Fact is, I don’t know what’s goin’ on around here. But for quite a while now, things ain’t been quite right.” His eyes met hers again. “You ever think about the animals?” he asked abruptly.

Startled by the sudden shift of the conversation, MaryAnne could only echo Bill Sikes’s last words. “The animals?”

Sikes nodded. “The animals whose land this is. The bears and wolves and deer. The raccoons. The beaver. All kinds of animals. An’ it seems like lately all we’re doin’ is pushin’ ’em aside, makin’ more an’ more room for ourselves. You ever think about that? You ever think about the
animals when you look at all them condos goin’ up in town?”