“You’ll see a fallen-down shack on your right, and then you’ll know you’re getting close,” Alice had said.
Hopefully Alice is at least telling the truth about directions, Ethan thought darkly.
After another half hour of driving, he saw the shack, a crumbling shell of what might’ve once been a homesteader’s cabin. There was an illegal dump just beyond it, full of old couches, mattresses, and car skeletons. Ethan’s headlights picked out the eyes of some nocturnal creature scuttling among the refuse.
As instructed, he went five hundred yards past the dump. But then he pulled onto the shoulder and cut the engine. He paused for a second, gathering himself, and then he grabbed the rifle and got out of the truck. He picked his way along the side of the road until he spotted what he was looking for: the red reflector nailed to a post, which—if Alice Rae wasn’t trying to get him lost forever in the Arkansas woods—marked the turnoff to Gus Hobbs’s house.
The night was very still, with barely any wind, and a half-moon offered just enough light to see. Ethan walked softly and deliberately toward his target, every sense on high alert as he followed the dirt track up the hill.
Suddenly, sound and motion exploded on his right. He jumped back and simultaneously brought up his gun. A deer shot across the way in front of him and crashed into the brush on the other side.
Ethan listened to its footsteps fade as he stood there, panting. “Shit,” he whispered. When his heartbeat had slowed, he continued on.
He’d walked nearly a mile before he saw the house up ahead, dimly illuminated in the moonlight. It was a hand-built cabin, standing in the middle of a swept-dirt yard that was as neat as Clayton’s had been messy. Ethan was so focused on the silent house that he walked right into the barbed wire that had been strung across the road fifty yards in front of the place. He stifled a cry of pain as the rusted spikes sank into his flesh at his waist and thigh. Gritting his teeth, he stepped back, tugging his skin and clothes away from the wire.
Whoever Gus Hobbs was, he had a knack for simple deterrent technology, Ethan thought. After ducking under the wire, he walked more carefully, in case Hobbs had hidden a bear trap in one of the potholes. Hobbs didn’t seem to have a guard dog, but Ethan could think of any number of defenses that were cheaper, quieter, and more lethal.
He held the rifle loosely as he went. He wasn’t going to walk in shooting. But feeling the weight of the weapon in his hands reassured him, the way it had when he was a soldier. The years in Afghanistan weren’t ones Ethan could say he’d enjoyed, but they’d shaped him. They’d turned him from a scared, uncertain kid into a man who understood honor and duty, and who recognized the kinds of sacrifices those ideals often required.
As Ethan thought about Antoine and Jeanie and others he’d lost along the way, he told himself that he wasn’t going to lose AnnieLee, too.
He crept past two cars and walked up to a dimly lit window. Inside he could see the kitchen, its counters full of cereal boxes, chip bags, and beer cans. On the left-hand side of the room was an interior door, closed. He put his fingertips under the sash and lifted. The window slid open with a sigh.
Damn. Was this how he was going to do it? Just climb in?
It was almost like a written invitation. If someone caught him halfway through the window, he’d be the easiest target imaginable—but it still felt like better odds than trying to get in through the front door.
Ethan guided the rifle through the window, balancing it on its stock against the inside wall. Then he took a deep breath and pulled himself up onto the sill.
His boots scraped noisily on the side of the house, but there was nothing he could do about that now. He got his torso through, and he was slithering the rest of the way inside when the door at the end of the kitchen swung open.
Chapter
90
Ethan didn’t have time to move. Caught in the window frame, he was face-to-face with a pair of green eyes.
And whiskers.
And two black, triangular ears. Then a low, sinewy body slunk into the kitchen, making for a food bowl in the corner. The door swung shut behind it.
Ethan nearly choked with relief as he pulled himself the rest of the way into the room. A damn cat! The creature, oblivious to the fact that it had nearly given him a heart attack, sniffed disdainfully at its dish. Then it brushed past Ethan’s legs and hopped outside the way he had come in.
Ethan bent down and picked up the rifle. He could hear the faint buzz of talk radio coming from the other side of the kitchen door. Taking a few noiseless steps forward, he reached out and turned off the light. Then he waited, letting his eyes adjust to the darkness while he listened for movement in the other room. Hearing nothing but the same low, staticky radio voices, he opened the door.