telepath to counter … what the hell was all that? An animal wouldn’t have the decision-making capability to act the part of a psychic—would it? Could it have been the man who’d been influencing us and not the animal at all? But why hadn’t he pursued us? And the more I thought about it, the more it didn’t seem like the scalpel of telepathic influence at all, but an indiscriminate, panic-inducing blast from man and beast both. What the hell was going on here?
I kept one unnerved eye on the empty lawn while I took stock. My Colt was on the hardwood floor a few feet away, empty, with its slide locked open. After scooping it up, I cast about for the revolver but couldn’t find it. I vaguely recalled dropping it when it had run out of ammo. Or … I had thrown it at the corpse of the animal? While shouting? I couldn’t remember.
Pilar was sitting up now, the phone to her ear. Her workout gear stuck to her in damp patches, her hair plastered to her face and neck and her makeup in wet streaks of black and tan.
I probably should have thought to offer the revolver to Pilar, but apparently she hadn’t needed it. Her CZ was locked open on empty too, but she’d hung on to it—the hand not holding the phone was still around the gun in a death grip. The side of her palm was bleeding, but it didn’t look serious.
My extra magazines were all missing, probably dropped at the scene while reloading. I hit the slide release and stuck the empty gun back in my belt. I was feeling reasonably coherent as long as I didn’t think too hard about … anything we had seen. But it was striking me as more and more eerie that after all that, we were still alone in an empty hallway. Everything about this place was all wrong.
I crouched down next to Pilar. “Can you move?”
“I’m all right.” She said the words both to me and into the phone, then added to Simon, “Yes. Thanks. Thank you. Okay. Bye.”
She handed the phone back to me, and I hung it up before I could second-guess myself.
“I think he wanted to check in with you,” Pilar said.
“Too bad.” I hesitated. “What did you see out there?”
“I—I don’t know. An animal.” She shivered. “What do you think it was?”
“Did you see a person?”
“No, just—whatever that thing was, but I—why?” The rattled look in her eyes got a little worse, her pupils dilating out more. “Did you see someone?”
“No,” I lied.
Pilar had fallen facing the other way from me, hadn’t she? She’d reared up between me and the man, when she’d pulled me out and saved both of us. She wouldn’t have seen in his direction.
Or I’d invented him.
Another flash in my head, someone who looked like him but different, holding a stopwatch and saying “go—”
“Cas? Are you okay?” Pilar asked.
“Yeah. Come on.”
Pilar scrambled up with a little help from the wall, and like me, hit the slide release on her weapon before stowing it away. Then she pulled off her soft fabric hairband and wrapped it around her bleeding hand.
For a split second, I juggled the decision of whether to abort and regroup. Running wasn’t my style, but with both of us shaken and out of ammo, and a possible enemy lurking who could take us down without a word or a strike …
No. We were here. Clues to Arthur might be too. Whatever strange luck had granted us a lack of pursuit, we should take advantage of it.
I led the way down the hallway, my stride firmer than I felt.
The inside of the ranch was all varnished wood and airy architecture. In sunlight, with people, the building was designed to be bright and pleasant with a kiss of rustic warmth. Now, it was like a movie set made out of lifeless props: ghostly and out of place without its intended purpose.
Pilar ran a finger along a windowsill and frowned at the track she made in the dust.
“Don’t touch things unless you need to,” I said. I was never as cautious about fingerprints as I should be myself, but Pilar probably cared more about not having a criminal record.
“Right,” she whispered back, and scrubbed out the finger trail with the edge of her sleeve.
I’d noticed the dust too. A little over five months’ worth, by my calculations. The grass outside had been the soft type that didn’t need mowing