12

At the opposite end of the barn was a window high up near the peak of the roof. I knew that because it had a little gray light showing though it. Susan was soddenly asleep on the floor beside me. I got up stiffly and walked to the barn door. The horses stirred and muttered. It might have been me walking around, or maybe horses just get hungry early. Outside, except for the uprooted trees and the scattered limbs and the saturated earth, it was as if the world had begun again. The air was clean and still, pungent with the salt smell of the ocean. Nothing moved. To the east the sky was bright with the impending sun. I moved along the edge of the barn with my gun in my hand. The cliff edge was ahead of me. To my left I could see the MP9 that had disappeared in the fight last night. Most of it was washed over with mud, and only the barrel showed. I left it. It would need to be cleaned to be dependable. On the other side of the barn, and at a little distance, I heard the sound of the helicopter starting up. I edged around the corner of the barn and looked toward where I thought it was. It was a lot closer than it had seemed in last night’s pitch-black chaos. The blades were turning. And as I watched, the chopper lifted off the ground, hovered for a moment, and then banked away north toward the mainland.

I watched it fly out of sight and then went back inside the barn. The horses were all looking at me.

“I’ll make sure somebody feeds you,” I said.

Susan had sat up, leaning her back against the wall.

“Who are you talking to?” she said.

“The horses,” I said. “They’re looking for breakfast.”

“And what did you tell them?”

“I said I’d get them fed.”

Susan looked at me for a moment, fully awake now.

“My God,” she said. “I hope you look worse than I do.”

“I always look worse than you do,” I said.

“You’re a mud ball,” she said.

I looked down at myself. All of myself that I could see was caked with mud and grass. I looked at her. Her hair had dried plastered to her skull. The only makeup she had left was her eye makeup, which made dark streaks and splotches on her face. I grinned at her.

“Don’t you ever change,” I said.

“What were you doing outside?”

“Watching the helicopter take off,” I said.

“They’re gone?”

“I would say so.”

“All of them?”

“I can’t imagine a reason to leave anyone here,” I said.

Except the guy at the bottom of the cliff.

I wondered if he was still there or, more likely, had washed out to sea.

“So presumably, they’ve got the girl,” Susan said.

“Presumably,” I said.

“What are we going to do?”

“Reconnoiter,” I said.

“I need coffee,” Susan said, “and a bath, and a bright mirror, and food.”

“That will depend on when the power comes back on,” I said.

“Omigod,” Susan said. “No coffee? A cold bath?”

“Maybe there’s a generator,” I said.

We went out of the barn.

“Want to walk with me while I scope out the island,” I said. “Make sure.”

“Yes,” she said. “I don’t want to be someplace without you.”

“Here we go,” I said.

We circled the island. It was a small island. It didn’t take long. I carried my gun in my right hand at my side. I was pretty sure all the evildoers had gone. But there was no reason not to be careful. Halfway around the island there was a body. It was one of the Tashtego patrol guys. Susan stopped. I went ahead and knelt down and looked at his storm-soaked body. He’d been shot once, as far as I could see, in the forehead. I nodded to myself and got up and went back to Susan.

“Dead,” I said. “I suspect we’ll find the others the same way.”

“Rugar?” Susan said.

“Sure,” I said. “Keeping busy. While everybody’s getting ready for the wedding, he walked around and popped these guys, one at a time.”

“They’d have had no reason to be suspicious,” Susan said. “So well dressed, so distinguished, just another wedding guest, taking a stroll.”

“Yep.”

“One at a time,” Susan said. “What kind of a man does that?”

“Probably not a people person,” I said.

There was another security guy dead behind the chapel. Same bullet hole in his forehead. The chapel itself was empty except for the two bodies near the altar rail. The doors were standing open, the candlesticks tipped over, the flowers scattered, the gauze draping tangled and wet.

We moved on into the main house. The sun was up by now, but even so I could see that lights were on in the house. And I could hear the sound of the generator. Probably one of those that kicked in automatically when the power went out. The front door was locked, like that would have slowed Rugar down had he wanted to come in. I walked along the front of the house and looked in the floor-to-ceiling windows at the living room. The wedding guests were there, some asleep on the furniture, some asleep on the floor, some staring apprehensively out the window at me. Most of them looked as if they’d spent a lot of time outside in the weather. Sitting quietly in a big wing chair by the fireplace, Heidi saw me and stood. I pointed to the front door, and she nodded and walked toward it and let me in.

“Oh my God,” she said. “I thought you were dead. Do you know where Adelaide is?”

“Helicopter took off,” I said. “I assume she was aboard.”

“Oh, Jesus,” Heidi said.

“They took her for a reason,” I said. “If they wanted to kill her, they could have done it here.”

She nodded.

“Did you have any chance to save her?” she said.

“No,” I said.

“I’m sure you did your best,” she said.

I nodded.

“Anyone call the cops?” I said.

“Yes. Several people had cell phones. As soon as the candles blew out in the chapel, we all ran out and hid everyplace. The people with cell phones called nine-one-one. But of course the police had no way to get here.”

“They’ll be along,” I said.

“Have the criminals all gone?” Heidi said.

“I just scoped the island,” I said, “and found nobody.”

“Thank God for small favors,” she said.

“Or big ones,” I said.

“Are you all right, Dr. Silverman,” Heidi said.

“Yes,” Susan said.

Heidi studied us for a moment. Her face was pinched, and she looked pallid. But she was not giving in to whatever she felt.

“There’s hot water,” Heidi said. “I’m going to the kitchen now to see if we can get some sort of breakfast together. See if I can find any of the staff.”

Susan and I went to our room, and I got the first sight of myself in the mirror. I looked like I was in blackface… full body.

Susan and I went to the kitchenette, where the floor was made of stone, and took off all our clothes.

“We going to salvage any of your stuff?” I said.

“No,” Susan said.

She found a big green plastic bag in the broom closet, and we bundled the clothes up and put them in the bag. I saved my gun and a jackknife that I took from my pants pocket. Susan saved nothing.

There were two bathrooms, at least, in our suite. We each went to one of them and undertook a cleanup. It took me about half an hour. It took Susan much longer.