“Sorry, a little disaster at the store, gotta go,” she said in a rush. “I’ll see you when you get back.”
“Sure thing. I’ll walk you to the door.”
Darla did her best not to flinch as he lightly caught her arm and escorted her. She hadn’t realized before how strong his grip was. She remembered, too, how he’d talked about playing baseball in high school, and later in college. It occurred to her now that there couldn’t be much difference between swinging a bat and swinging a crowbar.
Quit thinking about it, and just get the hell out of here, she told herself.
Once she was out the door and out of his sight, she’d do the high-school-athlete thing herself and break a few cross-country records on her way back to the store. Anything after that was Reese’s problem. She breathed a quiet sigh of relief as Barry reached for the doorknob, and the familiar earsplitting shriek of rusted hinges rang out.
Except that he hadn’t yet turned the knob, and the shriek wasn’t from the hinges.
“Hamlet!” she cried, abruptly forgetting that she was trying to make good an escape. “That was my cat. He’s in here somewhere, and he sounds like he’s hurt. Hamlet!”
Had she tried to describe the sound, it would be the piercing cry of a screaming baby overlaid by the nerve-tingling scrape of chalk on a board. It sounded angry . . . and frightened. Pulling away from Barry’s grasp, she ran to where the foyer and narrow hall met, frantically listening for another feline screech. “Hamlet, where are you?”
“Me-ooooooooow!”
“There,” she cried, pointing to the closed basement door. “He’s down there.”
“Darla, no! Don’t go down there!”
His expression anxious, Barry raced toward her, but she had already jerked open the door and was rushing down the steps. The faint light from the corner was enough to guide her down and bright enough to show her that Barry had left his big flashlight on and sitting on the bottom step. She grabbed it, shouting, “Hamlet, where are you?”
“Me-ooooooooow!”
The sound was coming from the boiler area. She moved forward, swiftly picking her way through a path of disassembled boiler parts, and shined the light in that direction, aware of Barry’s heavy footsteps pounding down the stairs after her. Hamlet screeched again, sounding this time more demanding than frightened, as if he’d been waiting impatiently for her to find him.
“Hamlet, I’m coming! What’s wrong?” she called as she reached the unlit boiler and shined her light behind it.
Her beam illuminated a pair of golden green eyes that seemed to be floating well above the height of an average cat. Moving closer, she saw in relief the familiar silhouette of Hamlet, apparently unharmed. He’d stopped his unearthly crying, but as Darla watched he began pawing at something beneath him. She aimed the flashlight beam lower and then bit back a scream at what she saw.
Hamlet stood balanced atop what appeared at first glance to be a roll of black sheeting, rather like the plastic she’d seen outside in the roll-away container. But this bundle had been tied at intervals, giving it an unsettlingly familiar shape. As her beam swept farther out, Darla could see where someone had pried up the century-old brick flooring next to it and had been digging in the damp soil. A shovel had been thrust into the small pile of dirt that had already accumulated, as if the digger had stopped in his task but intended to return.
And then she noticed something else. At the spot where Hamlet had been pawing, what appeared to be a hank of long blond hair snaked out from the end of the bundle.
Oh my God, Darla thought. I’ve found Tera!
TWENTY-ONE
“I TOLD YOU TO STAY OUT OF THE BASEMENT, DARLA.”
Barry’s voice was almost in her ear, startling her so that she jumped and dropped the flashlight. The long silver cylinder rolled lazily across the brick floor, its white beam rising and falling against the far wall. Unhurried, Barry went to retrieve it and then turned and shined the light in her direction.
“It’s not what you think, Darla,” he said in an oddly conversational tone. “Well, actually, I suppose it is. And I guess your next logical conclusion would be that I must have killed Curt, too.”
That conclusion James and Robert had already reached. With an effort, Darla tore her gaze from tail of blond hair, which looked almost white beneath the flashlight beam, grateful that the rest of Tera was hidden away beneath the black plastic.