John Saul (5 page)

She was at the foot of the stairs when she sensed a movement above her. She looked up to see Joey, still dressed, starting down, Storm at his heels. “Honey? Why aren’t you in bed?”

“The barn,” Joey said. “The door’s closed.”

Audrey cocked her head in puzzlement. “It’s always closed at night.”

“But what about Sheika? What if she comes back?”

He was at the bottom of the stairs now, looking up at her, his dark eyes worried.

“She’ll just stay in the field, sweetheart,” Audrey told him. “And she might not come back tonight at all. If she was frightened, she could have run for miles.”

Joey shook his head. “She’ll come back,” he said. “I know she will.” His face set in the stubborn expression that told Audrey he was prepared to argue for hours, and she realized there was no way she could cope with a fight with her son tonight.

“All right,” she said. “We’ll leave it open. But we’re going to make sure the stalls are locked. The last thing we need is to have the other horses gone tomorrow.”

Together they went out the front door, leaving it standing
open behind them. The moon was high in a cloudless sky, and a gentle breeze drifted down from the mountains above. Audrey reached out and took Joey’s hand as they started toward the barn, and for the first time in months he didn’t pull away from her with the self-consciousness of adolescence. But when they were halfway across the yard, he suddenly stopped, dropped her hand and pointed.

“Look! There she is!”

Peering into the darkness, Audrey gazed across the field toward the woods. At first she saw nothing. A second later, though, something moved, and then she saw the great form of the mare move out of the shadows of the forest into the brilliance of the moonlight. She halted, and lowered her head to graze, but as Joey called out to her, she looked up, her ears pricking and her tail arching gracefully.

“Sheika?” Joey called. “Sheika! Come on, Sheika!”

With Storm trotting after him, Joey started running out toward the field.

“Joey, stop!” Audrey called after him. “If we just leave the barn open, she’ll go in!”

But even as she watched, the horse shied away and disappeared into the trees.

“Get a tether, Mom,” Joey yelled. “I’ll keep her in sight!”

Audrey stood rooted to the spot as the surrealism of the moment whirled around her. What were they doing outside in the middle of the night, only hours after Ted had died, chasing a horse?

It was insane!

It was ridiculous!

It was—

And then she realized.

It was exactly what Ted would have wanted them to be doing. She could almost hear him:
You’re still alive, Audrey. And so is Joey. Go get her!

The fatigue vanishing from her body, her mind finally overcoming the shock of finding Ted’s body on the floor of the wash stall, Audrey breathed deeply of the night air, then ran to the barn, pulled the door open and slipped inside. In the tack room she found a lunging tether and a flashlight,
then she left the barn and strode across the field toward Joey.

She caught up with him at the edge of the forest. He was calling out to the horse, then listening carefully for any sound of the animal moving in the darkness of the woods.

His dog was nowhere to be seen.

“Where’s Storm?” she asked, dropping her voice, although the two of them were completely alone.

“I sent him to find Sheika,” Joey replied. A moment later they heard a sharp bark from somewhere in the forest. Then the tone of Storm’s bark changed as the dog began trailing the horse. “Come on,” Joey cried, charging down a path that cut through dense undergrowth that had never been cleared from this part of the woods.

Audrey switched on the light, following in the direction her son had taken, though he was already out of sight as he ran toward the sound of the baying dog. Then, as Storm fell silent, Audrey broke into a trot, stopping short when she came to a fork in the trail a hundred yards farther on.

Which way had Joey gone?

She listened for the sound of Storm’s barking.

Nothing.

“Joey?” she called. “Joey, where are you?”

She waited, but there was no response. For an instant she felt a twinge of panic, but quickly put it down as she remembered where she was. Though the trail branched here, it came together again a few hundred yards farther up, where it ended at a bluff that overlooked the entire Sugarloaf Valley. The fork to the right was the easier one, the one to the left a little shorter. Either way, there were no other paths leading off the trail, and the underbrush was too dense even for Joey—let alone the horse—to leave the trail. Whichever path she chose, she would eventually come upon both her son and Sheika.

Sighing, she started the climb, choosing the right fork. She moved as fast as she could, pausing every now and then to call out to Joey and the dog, but it was as if the night had swallowed them.

She was still a hundred yards from the bluff when she began to worry.

What had happened to them?

Surely they must be able to hear her calling!

Was Joey playing some kind of morbid joke on her, tonight of all nights?

But what if he wasn’t?

Her worry edging into fear, she hurried her step.

Abruptly, she stopped, sensing something close by.

Joey?

Storm?

What if it was neither?

What if it was a bear?

She froze, listening.

Silence.

She called out once more, but once again heard only the silence of the night. Though the wind soughed softly in the trees, she suddenly realized that she heard no sounds of birds rustling in their sleep, or insects chirping in the darkness.

Danger.

She sensed it all around her now, and automatically turned, instinct warning her to run down the trail and across the field to the safety of the house.

But she couldn’t! Not with Joey still out here!

She pushed on, refusing to let panic overcome her, calling out every few seconds now, but still hearing nothing in reply. Then, as fatigue tugged at her, she burst out from the forest onto the bluff. Instantly, with the woods no longer enclosing her, and the full light of the moon flooding the valley below with a silver glow, her fear subsided. Any second, either Joey and Storm, or Sheika, or all three of them, would emerge from the other trailhead a hundred feet away, and then all of them would start back down.

She stepped out onto the edge of the bluff, gazing out over the valley. At the far end, the lights of Sugarloaf village twinkled in the darkness, and here and there, dotting the valley floor, she could see the lights of the houses between El Monte and the town.

How many times had she and Ted come up here when the moon was full?

How many times had they stood here together—

She froze, sensing that she was no longer alone.

“Joey?” Her son’s name seemed to hang in the air for a moment, then died away into the silence.

She heard something, a faint rustling behind her.

She turned then, praying that whatever was there would be something familiar.

Almost invisible in the deep shadows of the trailhead, a dark form was slinking toward her.

She gasped, uncertain what the strange shape might be, but sensing the peril that emanated from it.

She stepped back, instinctively putting more distance between herself and the creature.

And then it leaped, hurtling out of the darkness toward her, its menace palpable in the night.

A scream of terror rose in Audrey’s throat. She lurched back, the sudden movement taking her off balance, and realized a split-second too late that there was no longer anything beneath her foot.

She teetered for a moment, struggling to regain her footing. The scream in her throat finally broke free as she tumbled over the edge, scraped roughly against the bare stone face of the bluff, then felt herself dropping downward.

Her scream went on, only to end in sudden silence as she struck the rocks two hundred feet below.

M
aryAnne Carpenter jerked upright, her eyes opening wide as the sound of a scream echoed in her head. For a moment she felt totally disoriented, for the voice that had awakened her had been clearly recognizable.

Audrey.

Audrey Wilkenson.

But it was crazy—Audrey was in Idaho!

It must have been something else. Some other sound. A police siren on the street outside. A cat’s strangely human cry. She started to get out of bed, and only then, startled for a moment, became aware of Alan, sound asleep next to her, the single sheet that covered them shoved down to his waist, one arm curled around his pillow.

Why hadn’t he awakened, too?

She silently slipped out of bed, pulled on her robe and left the room, leaving the door slightly ajar, afraid that even the click of the latch might awaken her husband.

She moved into the living room, leaving the lights off, and dropped down onto the sofa.

She shouldn’t have let Alan stay.

She should have simply sent him home when the kids went to bed last night, and not further confused the already complicated situation by letting him seduce her.

And that was exactly what it was—a seduction.

He’d helped her with the dishes, then suggested the four of them play a game of Monopoly. She almost groaned with the corniness of it—how many years had it been since the four of them had sat down to play a game together? She couldn’t remember. Yet when Alan had suggested that it
“would be just like old times,” she had fallen right into it. But what old times had he been talking about?

The old times when the four of them had sat in front of the television, just like everyone else, staring at the tube and pretending that their comments on the shows were conversation? It had taken the kids half an hour even to find the Monopoly set, for God’s sake! Who were they kidding?

Yet she had gone along with it, enjoying the unfamiliar closeness of the family, allowing herself to forget that an evening without television—and without a quarrel between Alison and Logan, for that matter—was something that had rarely happened before, and undoubtedly wouldn’t happen again if she let Alan move back in. Instead, it would be back to business as usual, with the television filling the time between dinner and bedtime, and eventually Alan would begin working late again.

Working late!

Maybe that was what the scream in her mind had really been about. Maybe it had been a scream of protest that she was letting herself be sucked back into a marriage that only yesterday she had been quite sure was over. Until Alan had begun nuzzling her at the sink, and then, after the kids had gone to bed, beginning his campaign to spend the night.

And it had worked.

Oh, God, had it worked!

Even now, as she sat in the darkness, she could feel the warmth of his body against hers, the touch of his fingers on her flesh, the—

Stop it!
she commanded herself.
Just stop it!

The cry in the night hadn’t been about herself at all.

The voice hadn’t been hers: it had been Audrey’s!

She realized, of course, that it hadn’t been her friend at all. It had been her own cry, she thought, regaining a measure of control, that her dreaming mind had assigned to Audrey simply because she didn’t want to face the true depths of her own confusion. What she really needed to do was to
talk
to Audrey. And not in the morning, either, after her subconscious had had a whole night to work her over and make her think that maybe everything wasn’t as bad as it seemed right now.

Weil, why not? What was stopping her?

She got up from the sofa, her mind made up. Going to the kitchen, she snapped on the light and glanced at the clock above the sink. One-thirty. Only eleven-thirty in Idaho.

Even if Audrey had already gone to bed, she couldn’t possibly be asleep yet.

MaryAnne picked up the phone, dialing the number from memory. The instrument at the other end began ringing. On the eighth ring the connection clicked and she heard Audrey’s voice.

Her recorded voice, saying she couldn’t come to the phone right now, and to leave a message. When the electronic beep came, MaryAnne’s words tumbled from her lips in a nervous staccato: “It’s me, Aud. MaryAnne. I know this is really stupid—I just got a weird feeling—lots of weirdness going on just now—and I wanted to talk to you, right away. So I called, and you’re not even home. Dumb, huh? Anyway, I really do need to talk to you. It’s about—Alan and me. He—Oh, shit, I hate these machines! Call me in the morning, huh?”

As she hung up the phone, she heard the kitchen door open, and turned to see Alan, naked, standing in the doorway, squinting in the glare of the kitchen lights. “MaryAnne? What are you doing? Do you know what time it is?”

She forced a smile, her mind racing. “I—It’s just one of those women’s things. I woke up with the feeling that Audrey needs me, so I called her.”

Alan’s lips twisted scornfully. “Audrey needs you?” he asked, his voice etched with bitterness. “What would someone who married a hundred and fifty million dollars need with you?”

MaryAnne’s jaw tightened, and Alan instantly realized his mistake. “I’m sorry, honey,” he went on, his tone softening. “I didn’t really mean it the way it sounded. I just—”

“Maybe you’d better just go home,” MaryAnne interrupted. “I’ve never understood how you can hate a man you don’t even know!”

“I don’t hate him,” Alan protested. “But you have to admit
that there aren’t many problems Audrey could have that Ted’s money wouldn’t solve.”

“I can,” MaryAnne shot back, her eyes boring into Alan’s. “How about another woman? How would his money solve a problem like that?”

Alan looked instantly contrite. “You’re right,” he said quietly. “I guess I deserved that. And I guess I deserve a lot more, too. But I want to make it right, MaryAnne. I really do. Eileen was a mistake, and I only hope you’ll be able to forgive me someday.”

Don’t listen to him, MaryAnne told herself. Don’t believe him! He said it all when he talked about Ted’s money. Revealed so much more about himself than even he knows. “I don’t want to talk about it right now, Alan,” she said. “I just want you to—”