Abandon

FORTY-FOUR

A

bigail’s watch showed 2:49 A.M. as the sprawling menace of Emerald House appeared through the falling snow. They’d killed their headlamps after leaving the switchbacks, and it had proved exceedingly difficult plowing their way through the basin in the total darkness of the storm. At the lake’s edge, a hundred yards from the big Douglas fir trunks of the portico, they collapsed in the snow.

“I’m dying here, Lawrence.”

“I know, me, too.”

“I don’t think I can walk much farther.” Aside from her heart beating in her ears, the only other sounds were the lake lapping at the bank and the distant drone of wind tearing over the peaks. “I still think we should just hike back to camp, get my cell, try to—”

“I told you we won’t get service in the canyon.”

“But maybe up at the pass—”

“In this storm? Are you kidding?”

“Then let’s just get the hell out of here, Lawrence. Go for help.”

“It’s twenty-seven miles back to civilization, and you just said you didn’t know if you could walk any farther. In this weather, we wouldn’t reach Silverton until Thursday morning at the earliest, and that would be hiking nonstop, hauling ass, assuming we didn’t get lost or take a fall climbing down the icy south side of the Sawblade. Look, I brought the Tozers out here. Now that Emmett’s dead, June’s my responsibility, and I’m not leaving her in that mansion with Stu.”

Oh, now you’re responsible, when it might get us killed.

“Then what do you want to do?” she asked.

He struggled to his feet, reached down, helped his daughter up out of the snow.

“I want you to follow me and keep quiet.”

They stole up to the west wing of Emerald House and Lawrence boosted Abigail into the same windowsill they’d attempted to escape through several hours earlier. Once inside, she watched her father hoist himself onto the sill, then gave him a hand stepping down into the kitchen on his sprained ankle.

Together, they slipped through the French doors and eased out into the corridor—just a gaping black hole that made Abigail temporarily forget the awful pain in her tailbone.

“I can’t see,” Lawrence whispered, “so just go slow, and make sure you don’t trip on anything. We make the slightest sound, it’s over.”

“Is the floor safe?”

“Nothing is.”

They proceeded with meticulous caution, testing the floorboards with every step to avoid a potentially fatal creak of weak wood.

The darkness never let up, and without the aid of headlamps, they had to trail their hands along the wall to ensure a straight trajectory down the corridor. Abigail followed a few feet behind her father, and she kept looking back over her shoulder, plagued by the unrelenting premonition that someone was creeping up behind them.

When Lawrence stopped, she said, “I don’t like this. I wanna get out of here right now.”

“Look.” Thirty feet ahead, a dim splotch of light shone onto the marble floor of the foyer. “It’s June,” he whispered.

In the vicinity of June’s headlamp, shapes began to materialize out of the darkness. Abigail could see Emmett’s widow sitting on the floor on the other side of the staircase, her back roped to a timber that had fallen out of the ceiling, her hands pinioned, shoulders heaving with grief.

Abigail spotted Emmett’s body, not ten feet away, at the base of the steps. It was impaled on a thick banister. She braced against the image, forced back the bile rising up her throat, made herself move on to the next moment. There was madness in the details, in the lingering.

Lawrence whispered, “Where’s Stu?”

Abigail shrugged, quietly unzipped her jacket, and pulled a wallet from an inner pocket. She fished out a dime, knelt down. The coin made a soft and delicate purr as it rolled across the marble, spinning out just a foot from June’s right leg.

The woman looked up, the bulb of her headlamp making it difficult for Lawrence and Abigail to see her.

“Hurry,” June whispered. “He’ll be back any minute.”