Turning from Wyatt’s reflection to the real man, Joanna said, “Optime wants the entire human race liquidated. So does this thing, Optime’s apostle. And it’s going to start here. We’re dead if we don’t get out of this place right now.”
He didn’t disagree. “But where do we go?”
“Beyond whatever the effective radius is, just in case it was lying when it said it won’t read us again, or if it changes its mind. Someplace where our thoughts are private, where we can figure out how to deal with it.”
“And if there is no way to deal with it?”
Joanna turned to survey the room. Although the house had so little changed in twenty-four years, although it had once been a haven and a comfort, it now seemed as strange as if it stood on a world other than the one on which she’d been born.
“Do you feel its presence, Joanna? Is the thing here now?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so.” She snatched her purse from the coffee table. “Come on. Leave the luggage, leave everything, just get out quick.”
In the garage, her rented Explorer stood alone. Wyatt’s Range Rover was outside in the driveway, where they’d left it when they had returned from the visit to Hector and Jimmy Alvarez.
She grimaced at an acrid smell that hadn’t been here before. She couldn’t identify it and didn’t take time to seek the source.
Wyatt settled in the passenger seat, and she got behind the wheel. The engine would not turn over.
Neither Joanna nor Wyatt had any illusions. The battery hadn’t gone dead. The vehicle hadn’t failed because of any fault of the manufacturer.
They got out of the Explorer. He opened the hood, and they both recoiled from the spectacle revealed.
Oil-stained rats squirmed and wriggled through the tightly packed equipment in the engine compartment. As many as a dozen rats had stripped the insulation from the wiring, gnawed apart the fan belts, worried loose as many connections as they could find. Holes had been eaten through the battery casing from which acid dripped, and two rodents lay death-frozen in convulsive configurations, with plumes of blood-streaked yellow foam issuing from their open mouths. As one, the living vermin raised their slick heads and turned their eyes on Joanna, and she knew that one entity regarded her from those many eyes, the secret friend who was not her friend anymore.
Wyatt slammed the hood shut, and without a word, Joanna went to the control pad and raised the roll-up door.
They met at the threshold, where wind-driven rain snapped against the concrete floor. In the driveway, the Range Rover faced them, the hood raised. Scattered on the pavement were spark plugs, torn fan belts, wires, the preheater hose, the oil-pan cap . . .
A creature far bigger than rats had served as an avatar to tear at the most vulnerable elements of the engine. She thought of her father being thrown from his frightened horse—or dragged out of the saddle to be eviscerated. Either that long-ago executioner or its kin had descended from the high hills tonight, and it was surely nearby in the storm, waiting to be used for bloodier work than disabling a Range Rover.
Wyatt stepped into the rain, evidently to have a closer look at the damage that had been done to the SUV.
“Get back,” Joanna warned. She hurried to the control pad to close the door before some beast might lunge inside and the garage become an abattoir.
75
Vance Potter, who managed Rustling Willows for Liam O’Hara, had spent most of the day at home in Buckleton, doing paperwork, which he enjoyed every bit as much as he enjoyed dental surgery. Numbers didn’t give him trouble; he could keep the books of the ranch better than he kept the Lord’s commandments, though he tried harder on the latter than on the former.
In the late afternoon, Edna, his missus and best friend, got in one of her Food Network moods. Judging by all the noise coming from the kitchen, an entire crew was busy filming an episode of Iron Chef in there. Soon the noise was accompanied by mouthwatering aromas that made it impossible to care about ranch maintenance costs.
On and off all day, he had been thinking about Wyatt Rider, out there at Rustling Willows since early the previous afternoon. He had expected the detective to call him with this and that question, but had heard nothing from him.
When at last he and Edna sat down to a glorious dinner, the conversation eventually turned to the O’Hara family, how they came for their first stay at the ranch and departed hurriedly, in fact seemed to flee, days before they were scheduled to leave. As Vance had shared with Edna previously, he more often than not felt watched when he was at work on the ranch. Eventually it had seemed to him that animals were intrigued by him there as they were nowhere else. A crow, ignoring others of its kind, sometimes followed Vance for an hour or two, winging from fence post to tree branch to roof gutter as he moved about on various tasks. Frequently, he’d seen a coyote observing him from a distance. It didn’t appear to be engaged in stalking behavior; but for a species that tended to shy away from human beings, it was strangely bold. And it wasn’t always the same coyote, as though an entire pack of them must be curious about him. He’d experienced similar encounters with deer and raccoons. He had told only Edna about the mysterious interest in him that Nature’s creatures seemed to have at Rustling Willows. No one but Edna was likely to believe him so readily; he was not even certain of what he’d witnessed or of what it meant, if it meant anything at all.