A new reason occurred to her for his caginess in doing his online work out of her sight. The satellite shots apparently came from some commercial site. He may not have wanted her witnessing the details of the transaction, even if entirely aboveboard. The account he used to pay, for example, could be something she had no need to know.

She straightened up, smoothing her hair back from her forehead. It was warm in the room – she always had trouble in motel rooms, finding a balance point between gooseflesh and sweat.

"So there's our target," she said with a sigh.

"It's a leading candidate," he said.

She moved up close and put a hand on his shoulder. "Where does that leave us?" she asked.

He looked up at her with a grin. "With a job excellently done."

"I know what happened last time I asked a question like this," she said, "but what now?"

"There are certain arrangements I must make," he told her. "Give me a day. Then we shall go together to reconnoiter this mysterious farmhouse."

"But what about the child? What might they be doing to him?"

"Nothing we shall be able to rescue him from if we rush in lacking adequate preparation."

"All right," she said.

Chapter 23

Through the binoculars, the dilapidated abandoned farmhouse looked like exactly that.

The vagaries of the New Mexico autumn had swept the snow almost clean off the landscape. Though the late morning was not exactly what Annja would call warm, the sun was bright, and that did the trick. Of the heavy snow that had fallen on the area two nights before, all that remained were a few drifted deposits in shaded areas, such as among the pines on the ridge from where Annja surveilled her objective.

High up in the air a dark shape drifted, wheeling against a sky like an endless well filled with blue. Whether it was an eagle or a red-tailed hawk, or some other large bird of prey, she couldn't tell. She'd never been good at identifying birds, although she enjoyed looking at them.

She turned her attention back to the farmhouse. Nothing had happened in the hour she'd been there. She had made a wide, careful circuit to reconnoiter after she arrived from parking her rented car among some trees about two miles away. She had seen no sign of any activity, nor any signs that some vast underground facility slumbered beneath the hill.

With a sigh she slung the binoculars around her neck, stood up and began walking toward the farmhouse two hundred yards away.

I'm going to feel like a fool if I ditched Robert for nothing, she thought.

The sun was warm on her face. Some big clouds hung over the mountains to the south, behind her, and also away in the northeast. Overhead the sky was clear but for some drifty cotton-ball cumulus. Little birds called to each other. As she walked down into the small valley between the forested ridge and the hill where the house stood, she passed through little clouds of near invisible midges that swarmed around her face.

The night before in the motel room, when Annja had agreed to wait a day for Godin to put his affairs in order, she had literally had her fingers crossed behind her back. She knew that was childish.

But she had known, even then, exactly what she had to do. She could not risk having his charmingly anachronistic gallantry interfere.

He had left her just before sunrise, slipping away with a quiet promise to return quickly. She had risen as soon as she was sure he was well away. She ate breakfast at a nearby Denny's, then drove north on I-25 paralleling the Rio Grande, grateful that the balloon fiesta had finally ended. The early-morning traffic heading north to day jobs in Santa Fe and Los Alamos was maddeningly slow enough.

She saw no point in trying to sneak around now. If this was an entrance to a supersecret installation of some sort, she guessed various undetectable sensors or surveillance devices would certainly have picked her up long ago. The most she could hope for was that they would take her for a casual hiker whose curiosity got the better of her sense of propriety.

The house did not look so badly decayed up close. It seemed structurally sound enough. The elevated porch was not sagging at top or bottom. Cosmetically it looked rough, with paint faded to shades of gray and peeling and the tin roof looking battered as if by hailstones. The windows were covered from the inside with plywood. The front door looked solid. And it was closed.

She slowed, frowning. "What if this isn'tan abandoned farmhouse?" she asked herself aloud. If she went traipsing into somebody's home she was going to feel bad about it, not to mention the fact that folks hereabouts tended to keep guns near to hand. Also there was the little matter of the law calling it "breaking and entering."

From somewhere behind her she heard the sound of a baby crying.

Every muscle wound itself taut. Her pulse began to boom like Japanese drums in her ears. She stopped just feet shy of the porch and looked around.

She saw nothing. Just the placid meadows swooping with deceptive gentleness between the rises, tall, tan tufts of grass nodding in the breeze, pools of tiny white-and-pale-lavender wildflowers nodding in the sun, defiant as the bugs of the early onset, and rapid retreat, of winter. A larger insect, a horsefly perhaps, buzzed by her cheek.

The crying sound came from the same direction as before. It raised the short hairs on her arm and at her nape. She looked that way. Nothing.

The sound rose in volume and came from several directions at once. The unseen source seemed to be getting closer.

In a leap Annja was on the porch. The doorknob was dull, as if stained from hand grease and weather. It turned beneath her hand. The door opened into dim coolness that smelled of dust and mold as the blood-freezing cries rose to a crescendo behind her.

She spun and slammed the door shut. Inside was a surprisingly bright yellow lock plate with a dead-bolt toggle, visible in light slanting in over the tops of the plywood plates in the windows. She locked the door with a convulsive twist.

She stood for a moment, panting, trying to force herself to breathe regularly through flared nostrils, not through her mouth. The horrid cries had stopped. She did not think the door or walls were enough to keep the sound out.

She turned then. She stood in a short foyer with doors opening to either side into small rooms filled so far as she could see only with darkness. Ahead was deeper darkness. To her left a stairway mounted, likewise into black.

She took a red steel flashlight from her light backpack and turned it on. Its beam was narrow but intense. It gave her absurdly disproportionate comfort.

Get ahold of yourself! she admonished herself fiercely. She was tempted but did not summon the sword. It would only get in the way exploring the darkened house.

Annja rummaged in her pack again and brought out her Glock. Holding the compact flashlight in her mouth, she pulled the handgun's black slide back enough to see the confirming silver glint of a cartridge inside. The Triton high-velocity 135-grain hollowpoint bullets had proved themselves among the world's very most effective defensive rounds against human attackers.

She hoped not to have to test them on monsters.

Her training had not included handling flashlight and firearm together. Not feeling confident about using the crossed-wrist brace Godin had employed, she held the gun at arm's length before her. With her left hand she held the light out away from her hips. She knew the biggest consideration in using the two in concert was to keep her flashlight hand from straying into her own line of fire.