him, hunched and troll-like on the sill, under the sash, looking over his shoulder, his eyes wild and shot with light, hissing at her through clenched teeth, hissing like some reptile, then dropping away into the dark.
She stepped to the window, saw he’d landed on all fours maybe fifteen feet below, like a cat, clad in black in the black night, looking up at her, his face a pale oval, as ghostly as that of a spirit wandering between worlds. Then quick across the lawn, toward the front of the property, the highway, and out of sight.
She put her pistol down on the vanity, slammed the window, gasping for breath as if she’d been running for her life. She went to Woody, knelt before him on the cold bathroom tile. Blood. Oh God. Spatters of blood. Yes, but not his. Blood from Shacket’s torn ear. She touched Woody’s face, smoothed his hair, picked up his hands and kissed them, all the while telling him it was all right, they were safe, the bad man was gone, she was so sorry, sorry this happened, but it was over.
Woody wasn’t here with her. Sometimes he withdrew and there was no reaching him, no indication that he saw her or heard her. He went away somewhere when he was badly stressed, although she seldom knew what stressed him, couldn’t get in his mind to learn the source of his upset, though of course she knew this time.
She sat on the floor and put her arms around Woody, pulling him into her lap as best she could, rocking him. “It’s all right, baby. Everything’s okay now.”
Glass shattered in a downstairs room and a glass-break sensor set off the security alarm. Shacket had returned.
58
One lane of highway 89 was finally cleared, and the highway patrol allowed southbound and northbound traffic to get past the remaining wreckage in alternating waves. The heavy fog began to lift as Rosa Leon drove inland from the lake, toward Tahoe City. By the time she found herself two miles from Olympic Village, the last rags of mist raveled into the darkness behind her, and the night ahead lay clear but starless under an overcast.
She had dozed off twice during the hours she’d waited in line for the overturned eighteen-wheeler to be moved to one side of the highway, and now she yawned extravagantly. This had been a long day, wearying not just because of its length but because of the sadness attendant to it. But the wonder of Kipp and her responsibility for him kept her in motion.
A couple miles short of Olympic Village, she consulted the Pied Finder app again. She was dismayed to see that, after remaining for hours in the same location, Kipp had gone on the move once more. His blinking signifier placed him on Interstate 80, west of Truckee, heading toward Donner Summit. The speed at which he moved meant he must be aboard a vehicle.
Perhaps he was in the company of a good person, or maybe someone not so good. Whoever his companion might be, that person couldn’t know that Kipp was more than a dog, that he was a treasure. Anyway, this wasn’t anyone whom Dorothy had chosen for the role of caregiver, and Rosa would, by God, not fail Dorothy.
Although she was already doing the speed limit, she pressed down on the accelerator.
59
Pistol in hand, seven rounds remaining in the magazine, Megan hurried barefoot across Woody’s bedroom, into the upstairs hallway, as Shacket threw open the front door with such force that it banged hard against its stop. He had shattered the sidelight and reached through to twist the thumb turn on the deadbolt.
Wind seethed into the house, huffing and wailing, and the alarm shrilled, and Megan reached the head of the front stairs in time to see Shacket snatch a large vase from the foyer sideboard and throw it against the wall in a rage before he disappeared panther-quick into the hallway, heading toward the back of the house.
He was insane, but he was something stranger than crazy: wild and weird and powerful and unpredictable. If he had charged up the front stairs, she would have shot him repeatedly. But as bold as he might be, he wasn’t improvident.
She recalled something that he’d said: We all make mistakes though, don’t we? I made one when I left my pistol in your kitchen earlier . . .
He’d returned to get his gun. He could ascend one set of stairs