12

When I'd driven past Mrs. Warren's property, I'd made the mistake of using Kate's Volvo. Petey might have recognized it. This time, I drove only to the outskirts of town, where I left the car among others at a shopping mall. I put on my knapsack and hiked into the countryside.

As in most midwestern farm communities, the road system was laid out in a grid that contained squares or rectangles of land. Avoiding the road that fronted Mrs. Warren's property, I took an indirect route that added several miles, coming at the wooded eighty acres from the road behind. Under a bright, hot sun, I hiked past fields, past cattle grazing, past farmers tending their crops. I adjusted my baseball cap and moved my fanny pack to a more comfortable spot on my waist, trying to look as if I didn't have a care in the world, that I was merely out for a pleasant day of walking. In truth, I wanted desperately to run. The adrenaline burning through me needed exertion to keep it controlled. If I didn't do something to vent the pressure swelling inside me, I feared I'd go crazy. To my right, across a field, the woods got larger. Nearer. Kate and Jason. They're alive, I told myself. They have to be.

Worried about being noticed crossing the field toward the woods, I waited until a car went by and there wasn't any other traffic. The stream that I'd seen in the photographs crossed the field and went under the road. I climbed down to it. Its banks were high enough that I was out of view as I walked next to the water. In contrast with the stark sun, the air was cool down there.

After five minutes, the stream entered the trees. I ducked under a fence, climbed the slippery bank, and found myself among maples, oaks, and elms. The noise I made in the undergrowth troubled me, but who would hear me? Petey wasn't going to be patrolling his fences, guarding his property against intruders. The logical place for him to be was at the house. Or maybe he'd be off somewhere, committing God knew what crimes.

The forest cast a shadow. A spongy layer of dead leaves smelled damp and moldy. I wiped my sweat-gritted face, took off my knapsack, and pulled out a holster that I'd bought that morning. It was attached to the right side of a sturdy belt. My spare fifteen-round magazine was in a pouch to the left, along with two other newly purchased magazines. A hunting knife went next to it and a five-inch long, thumb-width flashlight called Surefire, which the clerk in the gun shop had shown me was surprisingly powerful for its size. I took the pistol from my fanny pack and shoved it into the holster. The weight of the equipment dug into my waist.

Thirsty from nervousness, I sipped water from one of three canteens in the knapsack. I ate a stick of beef jerky and several handfuls of mixed peanuts and raisins. Uneasiness made me urinate. Then I put on the knapsack and pulled a compass from my shirt pocket. Unlike a year ago, I'd taken the time to learn how to use it. Remembering the photographs, estimating the angle that I needed to follow in order to reach the house, I took a southeast direction, making my way through the trees.

All the while, I listened for suspicious noises in the forest. The scrape of a branch might have been Petey creeping toward me, but it turned out to be a squirrel racing up a tree. The snap of a twig startled me, until I realized that it was a rabbit bounding away. Birds fluttered. Wary, I scanned the undergrowth, studied my compass again, and moved cautiously forward.

The next time I stopped to get a drink, I checked my watch, surprised to find that what had seemed like thirty minutes had actually been two hours. The air felt thicker. Sweat stuck my shirt and jeans to me. I took another step and immediately dropped to a crouch, seeing where the trees thinned.

On my stomach, I squirmed through the undergrowth, the moldy smell of the earth widening my nostrils. I crawled slowly, trying not to move bushes and reveal my position. From having designed homes for wealthy clients, I was familiar with intrusion detectors. I watched for anything ahead of me, motion sensors on posts or a wire that might be attached to a vibration detector. Nothing struck me as unusual. In fact, now that I thought about it, an intrusion detector would be useless in the woods. The animals roaming about would trigger it.

Animals? I suddenly realized that for a while I hadn't noticed any animals. Nor a single bird. The sense of barrenness reminded me of what I'd felt at the Dant farm.

Snakes? I studied the ground ahead of me. Nothing rippled. Taking a deep breath, I squirmed forward. The trees became more sparse, the bushes less thick. Peering through low branches, I saw a clearing. A lawn. A flower garden.

In the middle was the redbrick house. I'd come at it from its right side. The two-and-a-half-story wall had ivy. White wooden lawn furniture and a brightly colored miniature windmill decorated the lawn.

I took binoculars from my knapsack and made sure that the sun wasn't at an angle that would cause a reflection off the lenses. Then I focused them and studied the downstairs and upstairs windows. All had lace curtains. Nothing moved beyond them. In the photographs I'd taken, the pickup truck had been parked on the opposite side of the house, so to find out if it was still there, I'd have to crawl around to that side.

I stayed as flat as possible while I shifted through the undergrowth. When I came within view of the back of the house, I still didn't see movement in any of the windows. I stared at the open area behind the house, which from ground level seemed to have a natural slope, its slightly sunken outline no longer apparent. An unsuspecting visitor would have noticed nothing unusual about it, except that the lawn and gardens were attractive. If there was indeed a room beneath it, I assumed that Petey watered and fertilized that area frequently to compensate for the shallow roots that the underground structure would cause. If so, today wasn't his day to work in the garden. He wasn't in sight. The place seemed abandoned.

I dared to hope that I'd gotten lucky, that he wasn't home. But as I crept through the bushes toward the other side of the house, my stomach soured when I saw the pickup truck where it had been the previous afternoon. Angry, I continued through the undergrowth on that side of the house, coming to a view of the front, where a roofed porch had a rocking chair and a hammock, homey and inviting.

But no one was visible there, either, and I retreated to a sheltered spot that gave me a view of the side, part of the back, part of the front, and all of the truck. Bushes enclosed me. I eased out of my knapsack, sipped from one of the canteens, ate more beef jerky, peanuts, and raisins.

And waited.

13

Hours later, I was still waiting. The sun eased below the trees. Seeing a light come on in a downstairs window, I felt my muscles compact. Then a light came on in an adjacent room, and another farther over. I strained to see movement through the curtains, but the house continued to seem deserted. For all I knew, the lights were controlled by timers. When an upstairs light came on and a shadow moved past a window, I held my breath for a moment.

A man's shadow. I was certain of it. I'd caught only a glimpse, but the broad shoulders and forceful stride obviously didn't belong to a female. Several seconds later, the shadow appeared downstairs, going from one room to another. Raising my binoculars, I strained to see through the windows and suddenly focused on a man with a beard. His face was toward me for only a few seconds before he went through an archway into the kitchen.

But a few seconds were all I needed. Regardless of the beard, I couldn't fail to recognize him. Even through binoculars, the solid shoulders and the intense eyes were unmistakable.