Wolf Lake. John Verdon
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“You could say that.”
“A slimebag who may be about to inherit a fortune.”
“Yep.”
“From a brother who just died in peculiar circumstances.”
“Yep again.”
“But, as far as you know, Peyton’s not on Fenton’s radar?”
“Not even near it.” Hardwick’s voice broke up into a scattering of unintelligible syllables, ending in silence.
Gurney glanced at his phone screen and saw that the signal strength was zero. Madeleine was watching. “You lost the call?”
“Dead zone.”
All his attention was now on the road ahead. The superfine sleet was sticking to the surface, obscuring the position of the road’s edges.
“How much farther do we have to go?”
“No idea.” He glanced over at her.
Her hands were clenched into fists, her fingers wrapped around her thumbs.
He was focusing now on a ravine about ten feet to the left of where he estimated the left side of the road to be. Then and there, at the worst point for it to occur, the pitch of the road increased by a few degrees. A moment later the tires lost traction.
Gurney dropped down into first gear and tried inching forward, but the rear of the car began slipping sideways toward the ravine. He took his foot off the gas, applied the brake gently. After an unnerving lateral slide, the car came to stop. He put the gear lever in reverse and crept backward down the road and away from the ravine. When he was well below the point at which the pitch steepened, he braked as lightly as he could. Gradually the car came to a halt.
Madeleine was peering out into the surrounding woods. “What do we do now?”
Gurney looked up the road as far as he could see. “I think the crest is about a hundred yards ahead of us. If I can get some momentum . . .”
He eased the car forward. As he tried to accelerate through the spot where the trouble had begun, the rear of the car swung out suddenly, pointing the front end at the ravine. He turned the steering wheel rapidly in the opposite direction—an overcompensation that ended with a jarring thud as the passenger-side tires entered a drainage ditch at the edge of the road.
The engine stalled. In the ensuing silence he could hear the wind picking up and the rapid tick-tick-tick-tick of ice pellets blowing against the windshield.
When his attempts to extricate the car succeeded only in getting it more deeply entrenched, Gurney decided to venture on foot up to the crest of the hill where he hoped he might be able to get either a cell signal or a sense of how much farther it was to the lodge.
He put on his ski cap, turned up his collar, and headed up the road. He’d hardly started when a sound stopped him dead—an eerie howling that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere in particular. He’d grown used to the yips and howls of coyotes in the hills around Walnut Crossing, but this was different—deeper, with a quavering pitch that produced instant gooseflesh. Then it stopped as suddenly as it began.
He considered moving the Beretta from his ankle holster to his jacket pocket, but he didn’t want to ratchet up Madeleine’s anxiety; so he just resumed his trudge up the hill.
He’d proceeded no more than a dozen yards when he was stopped again—this time by a cry from the car.
“David!”
He spun around, slipped, and fell hard on his side.
As he scrambled to his feet he caught sight of the cause of her alarm.
A looming gray figure was standing in the icy mist no more than ten feet from the car.
As Gurney moved forward cautiously, he could see more clearly that it was a tall, gaunt man in a long canvas barn coat. A hat of matted fur, seemingly stitched together from parts of animals pelts, covered his head. A sheathed hatchet hung from a rough leather strap around his waist.
With the car between them, Gurney raised his right leg and slipped the Beretta out of its ankle holster and into his jacket pocket, gripping it firmly, thumb on the safety.
There was something almost feral in the man’s amber eyes. His discolored teeth had either been broken or filed to jagged points.
“Be warnt.” His voice was harsh as a rusted hinge.
Gurney responded evenly. “About what?”
“Evil here.”
“Here at Wolf Lake?”
“Aye. Lake’s got no bottom.”
“No bottom?”
“Nay, none, never was.”
“What kind of evil is here?”
“The hawk knows.”
“The hawk?”
“The hawk knows the evil. Hawk man knows what the hawk knows. Sets the hawk loose. Into the sun, into the moon.”
“What do you do here?”
“Fix what’s broke.”
“Around the lodge?”
“Aye.”
While keeping a close eye on the hatchet, Gurney decided to proceed with the conversation as if it were perfectly normal, to see if it might start to make sense. “My name is Dave Gurney. What’s yours?”
There was a flash of something in those strange eyes, a moment of keen attention.
Gurney thought that his name had been recognized. But when the man turned his sharp gaze up the road, it became clear something else had grabbed his attention. Seconds later Gurney heard it—the sound of a vehicle approaching in low gear. He was able to make out a pair of headlights, white disks in the frozen mist, coming over the crest and down the road.
He glanced over to check his visitor’s reaction. But he was nowhere in sight.
Getting out of the car, Madeleine pointed. “He ran off into those trees.” Gurney listened for footfalls, rustling branches; but all he heard was the wind.
Madeleine looked toward the approaching vehicle. “Thank God for whoever this is.”
A vintage Land Rover, the sort in old safari films, came to a stop a little way up the incline from the Outback. The tall, lean man who emerged from it in a country-chic Barbour rain jacket and knee-high Wellington boots created the impression of an English gentleman out for a pheasant shoot on an inclement day. He pulled the jacket hood over his closely cropped gray hair. “Damn rotten weather, eh?”
Gurney agreed.
Madeleine was shivering, burying her hands in her jacket pockets. “Are you from the lodge?”
“From it, yes. But of it, no.
“Excuse me?”
“I did drive here from the lodge. But I’m not an employee of it. Merely a guest. Norris Landon’s the name.”
Instead of walking across the ice to shake the man’s hand, Gurney simply introduced himself. As he was about to introduce Madeleine, Landon spoke first.
“And this would be your lovely wife, Madeleine—am I right?”
Madeleine responded with a surprised smile. “You must be the welcoming committee.”
“I’m not exactly that. But I am a man with a winch—which I expect you’ll find more useful.”
Madeleine looked hopeful. “Do you think it’ll get us out of the ditch?”