The Forbidden Door

by Dean Koontz

  Texas isn’t real and neither are Texans, but Egon Gottfrey hates the state and its people nonetheless.

  There’s no point hating the Unknown Playwright who created Texas and Texans; because when all is said and done, this has been conceived as a dramatic vehicle in which Gottfrey will triumph and achieve greatness as an iconic loner. But though he doesn’t hate the U.P., Gottfrey does sometimes wonder about his/her/its mental state.

  Now the street darkles under the paused storm.

  He arrives at the Ackerman property.

  Posey and Johnny Don are in Florida.

  Although the daughters, Kay and Lucy, will do all errands for Ancel and Clare, so that the fugitives can remain in the house and not risk being recognized, the siblings will now be at their own homes with their families.

  Gottfrey follows the long driveway to the house.

  The landscape lights, evidently on a timer, are not yet lit.

  Immense pine trees overhang the driveway.

  All is secluded, dark, and quiet except for the rainwater that drips from the branches of the pines.

  The house has a security system provided by Vigilant Eagle, Inc. It no longer works.

  From his hotel suite in Beaumont, using a laptop, via the NSA, Gottfrey had entered the Vigilant Eagle computer system by a back door. From there he’d accessed the computer that the alarm company had installed in the Ackerman house to monitor and ensure the proper response condition was at all times maintained by door, window, motion-detection, and glass-break sensors. He did a bit of fiddling.

  The readouts that are part of the alarm keypads throughout the residence continue to show a properly functioning system. But when he forces entry, no alarm will sound and no alert will be received at Vigilant Eagle’s central station.

  He circles the imposing house, studying it.

  A few lights brighten windows upstairs. The only lights downstairs are toward the front of the residence.

  Some windows are covered with draperies or at least sheers, but others allow him views of the interior. He doesn’t see anyone.

  The kitchen at the back of the house is dark.

  Rather than a porch, there is a large covered patio.

  By the back door, he puts down the Medexpress carrier and the tote bag. From the tote, he withdraws a LockAid lock-release gun that will automatically pick any deadbolt.

  This device isn’t entirely silent. He will need to pull the trigger a few times to cast all the pins to the shear line. In a quiet house, the clicking noise might draw attention.

  He can hear no music, no television.

  When he hesitates, the storm abruptly resumes, rain hammering on the patio roof.

  Gottfrey smiles.

  There is no lightning or thunder at the moment, but the rataplan of rain will mask what noise the lock-release gun makes.

  He uses a penlight, on and quickly off, to locate the keyway in the deadbolt. He inserts the thin pick of the gun. He needs to pull the trigger five times to disengage the lock.

  He puts away the LockAid. From the tote bag he removes a Taser pistol and a spray bottle of chloroform.

  Leaving the tote and the cooler of ampules on the patio, he enters the kitchen and eases the door shut behind him.

  His long-building frustration is about to be relieved. To get information about Jane and her boy, he needs only to inject one of her in-laws, which will be Ancel. If Clare is still the looker that Lonnie John Bricker says she is, he will use her and then beat her to death with his collapsible baton.

  His eyes are sufficiently dark adapted that he has no fear of setting a foot wrong and making noise. Besides, he is the lead of this drama, every line of every scene crafted to serve him.

  On the farther side of the kitchen, a door to a hallway stands half open. Soft light beyond.

  He circles the kitchen island. The susurration of the rain in the night. The hum of the refrigerator. Two glowing digital readouts mark the time on the stacked ovens.

  He is two steps short of the half-open hallway door when the cold muzzle of a gun is pressed to the back of his head.

  Startled, Gottfrey lets the bottle of chloroform slip from his left hand.

  A man with a deep voice says, “Drop the Taser, too. Don’t mind doin’ my share of housework, but I don’t want to be moppin’ up your brains from this nice mahogany floor.”

  Gottfrey drops the Taser.

  “How many others,” the man asks.

  “Other what?”

  “Other pestilential specimens like you.”

  “There’s only me,” Gottfrey replies, trying to imagine how the U.P. is going to get him past this reversal of fortunes and allow his inevitable triumph by the end of this act.

  “Only you?” says the gunman. “Not damn likely.”

  “I’m an iconic loner,” Gottfrey declares with some pride. “Like Dirty Harry or Shane.”

  The gunman is silent for a moment but then says, “Loner, my ass. You’re a creature of the hive if ever there was one.”

  23

  THREE MINUTES AFTER LUTHER TILLMAN parked the black Suburban at the back of the fenced compound, Ferrante Escobar’s men had pulled off the forged federal license plates identifying it as Department of Justice ordnance. One minute after that, they’d moved the vehicle into the paint shop to strip it down and repaint it neither white nor black. Maybe Sahara Sand or Grecian Blue.

  In anticipation of the rescue party’s success, Ferrante’s uncle, Enrique de Soto, had gifted Jane and her team with a bottle of Dom Pérignon, which all along had been chilling in the Tiffin Allegro’s refrigerator. There was a large bottle of root beer for Travis.

  “Umm. Umm. I would prefer root beer, too,” said Cornell, who did not stand with them, but sat apart in a chair that was too small for him. “Root beer, please and thank you.”

  A card from Ricky came with an offer to take back the Tiffin and the Suburban, for which Jane had paid $120,000 cash; he’d give her a $50,000 credit toward whatever future purchase she might make. He proposed an alternative deal in which she would receive $90,000 in credit instead of $50,000, but the terms were onerous.

  Jane was and wasn’t in the mood for a brief celebration. She was inexpressibly grateful to have Travis safe with her. However, in truth, no one in her company would be safe for long; and she needed to decide on other arrangements for him.

  Whether she felt like a celebration or not, she knew the value of one: the essential sense of camaraderie it generated, the hope that it inspired. They sipped the icy champagne from plastic cups, and Travis had his root beer, which he shared with Cornell, while the dogs drank water from a bowl and ate peanut-butter treats and repeatedly explored the motor home, wagging their tails and delighting in a banquet of smells that no human nose could detect.

  Neither Jane nor Luther nor Bernie—nor probably Cornell—could shake the foreboding with which the events of the past few hours had left them. Their laughter was muted. What toasts they made were modest and too solemn for a celebration.

  She loved these three men for their courage, their loyalty, their kindness, but she could not keep her eyes from Travis. If the sight of the boy filled her with gratitude, it also settled on her a sadness close to grief, because they would so soon need to part.

  24

  AFTER FLYING LUTHER TO PALM Springs in his Learjet and then driving him to Ferrante Escobar’s place of business earlier that day, Leland Sacket had returned to Palm Springs in his rental car to wait for a call. Now he was once more en route to Indio. Before this day was done, he and Luther would fly back to the Sacket Home and School in Texas. Jolie Tillman waited there for her father, in the company of scores of orphans, wondering if she would soon be one of them.

  Jane walked with Luther to the guardhouse near the entrance to Ferrante’s compound and explained why Travis wou
ld not, after all, be going to Texas with him.

  “I hope to God these Techno Arcadian bastards don’t find you and Jolie there. I don’t think they will. I think the link between the Sackets and Nick’s family is too obscure for them to smell it out. But if they do…This is awful and selfish of me, Luther, but I’ve got to say it anyway. If they do smell out that connection and find you and Jolie there, they will inevitably find Travis. I’ve never met your Jolie, but I know I’d love her. And I love you. I can’t have all three of you in one place. I can’t lose all of you in one moment. Besides, there’s the issue of Cornell.”

  He said, “I’ve been wondering about that.”

  “It’s truly amazing how Travis has bonded with Cornell in such a short time. He’s going to be devastated if I send him somewhere different from where Cornell goes. He’s a strong little kid, but he isn’t stone. He’s lost so much. He can’t lose Cornell, too.”

  “Maybe Cornell can’t handle losing him, either.”

  She smiled. “I think you’re right.”

  The early April afternoon began to submit to a sunset that gilded the fleecy clouds in the west, and a warm breeze issued out of the north, bearing on it something like the scent of orange blossoms.

  “But, Jane, Cornell can’t take care of Travis long term.”

  “No, he can’t. Anyway, soon they’re going to find his library for the end of the world, his bunker, and they’re going to know he harbored Travis, and after that he’ll be almost as wanted as I am. Do you realize how much they’ll torture him just by touching? Poor Cornell has no defenses against people like them.”

  “But where…?”

  “Bernie had a talk with me. He says his daughter, Nasia, and her husband, Segev, have a big house on a double lot in Scottsdale. The property is very private. No one has to know there’s two new residents. Travis and Cornell will each have his own room. And Bernie says they love dogs, they have one of their own, so Duke and Queenie are welcome. Nasia and Segev—they’ve been wanting Bernie to give up driving from one end of the country to the other, and now he has even more reasons to stay in Scottsdale. They’ll like that.”

  “But do they know what they’re getting into, who you are, the risks of taking in Travis and Cornell?”

  “Bernie told them about the little adventure we had together a couple of weeks ago, the night I carjacked him—and the next day at Ricky de Soto’s place in Nogales. He didn’t know who I was then, but later he saw me on TV, and he put it all together. They know where he went today and why. He says they’re half expecting they might have…visitors.”

  Luther stood amazed. “How extraordinary.”

  “More than you know. Bernie was a child in Auschwitz. He lost his parents there.”

  “My God.”

  “He told me a little while ago. It’s a miracle he survived, thrived, became the sweet and optimistic man he is. He understands what totalitarianism is, from the right, from the left. He knows the evil of these Arcadians and knows this is war, there’s no retreating from it. He says not to take in Travis and Cornell would be to shame himself forever and soil the names of his mother and father. He says that Nasia and Segev feel the same and, if they didn’t, he couldn’t abide them, even though Nasia is his only child. If I can’t trust Bernie, then this is a world where no one can be trusted.”

  Just then, Leland Sacket pulled up to the guardhouse in his rental car.

  Jane felt as though everything was slipping away from her: all those she loved, the past, the future, the light of the day and all other light that it represented. She put her arms around Luther and held him very tight, and his arms were strong around her as they said their good-byes.

  She waved at Leland Sacket and stood watching the two men drive away, stood watching the highway even after they were out of sight, stood watching as the gilded clouds grew as red as blood in the west, and then she walked back to the motor home before the night came all the way down.

  25

  IN THE TIFFIN ALLEGRO, SHE settled with Travis on the queen-size bed and held him and listened to him talk of Cornell’s good sandwiches and coconut-pineapple muffins and Coca-Cola in Atlanta and Mr. Paul Simon and the problem with leaving your toothbrush on the bathroom sink.

  He was trying to buy time with his stories, keep her with him by the power of his voice. He’d known they wouldn’t yet be together permanently again as they had been in Virginia, before his dad died, but he had hoped to have a few days with her, not just a few hours.

  When it was time for him to join Bernie and Cornell in Bernie’s Mercedes E350, they moved from the bed to the front door in stages, parting in baby steps, pausing for him to ask questions.

  “Will you come visit us?”

  “You know I will.”

  “When?”

  “As soon as I can.”

  “Will you get the bad guys, they killed my dad.”

  “Am I FBI or what?”

  “You’re major FBI,” he said.

  He didn’t know the depth of the ocean of trouble in which she swam, didn’t know that she was America’s most-wanted fugitive, the beautiful monster of ten thousand newscasts, hunted by legions.

  “Do you think Hannah’s okay?” he asked.

  Hannah was the pony that Gavin and Jessie had gotten him soon before they’d had to go on the run with the boy. The pony had been left behind.

  “Hannah’s being well taken care of, honey.”

  “Will I see her again one day?”

  “I’m sure of it,” Jane lied.

  “I was getting real good, riding her. Uncle Gavin said I was gonna be a real horseman.”

  “Which you will be. I’ve no doubt about it.”

  “Even rodeos, you think?”

  In Nick’s youth, he had competed in rodeos.

  “Even rodeos,” Jane said.

  At the car, he held fast to her. She didn’t know if she could get him to let go. She didn’t know if she could make herself let go.

  In the end, because she was who she was and because he was his mother’s son, they did let go.

  She watched the Mercedes drive away into the night, as she had watched Luther and Leland drive away in the light of sunset, watched until there was nothing to see.

  Then she loaded all her gear from the motor home into her Ford Explorer Sport.

  26

  EGON GOTTFREY SITS AT A desk in a book-lined study.

  Six men stand at various points in the room, watching him. None of them is Ancel Hawk.

  They say that one of their friends is already driving the Rhino GX to Austin, where he will strip out the GPS and then abandon the vehicle.

  This does not concern Gottfrey. After all, the Rhino cannot be proven to exist, and neither can Austin. The room in which he sits is also an illusion.

  He needs only to think of what must be done to put him in sync once more with the intentions of the Unknown Playwright, and all will be well.

  From time to time, one of the men questions Gottfrey, and they remain half convinced there are others in the night with whom they must deal.

  His answer is always the same, the five words he knows that the U.P. wants to hear from him. “I am an iconic loner.”

  Almost an hour after Gottfrey was taken captive, Ancel Hawk finally appears. He carries the Medexpress cooler that contains the control mechanisms in ampules of amber fluid.

  As Ancel places the cooler on the desk, lightning rips the fabric of the night, and thunder speaks against the window glass.

  One of the other men says, “Ben can do that, Ancel. You keep Clare company, hold her hand.”

  Clare Hawk appears in the doorway. “I don’t need my hand held. And we can’t ask any of you to do a thing like this.”

  “The bastard deserves it,” another man declares.

  “He no doubt do
es,” Clare says. “But this is going to be on no one’s conscience but mine and Ancel’s.”

  The readout on the Medexpress cooler reports a temperature of forty-seven degrees. The control mechanisms are still viable.

  An uneasiness arises in Egon Gottfrey. Ever since he shot Rupert Baldwin and Vince Penn, he has assumed that this drama is a stirring story of his dedication to the revolution, his genius for sleuthing, and his skill at violent action. As he watches Ancel Hawk open the cooler and as dry-ice vapor steams from it, a dark thought crosses Gottfrey’s mind. Could it be that the U.P. has taken a detour into Shakespeare territory, the land of Macbeth and Lear and Hamlet? Could this be not at all what Gottfrey has thought? Could this be a tragedy?

  27

  JANE SAT IN THE EXPLORER, near the Tiffin Allegro, in the dark, with the engine running and the air-conditioning blowing hard. She needed to leave this place, but she could not drive.

  She had wept as profoundly as this when she found her mother dead, when she lost Nick, but never otherwise in nearly twenty-eight years of life. Those first two times, she wept from mortal cause—her mother lost, her husband gone forever. But her precious child was not lost, and she despised this sobbing, not because it revealed a fatal weakness in her, but because it seemed to tempt fate. Even though she didn’t believe in fate, she felt that crying this hard, letting grief so rack her, might somehow ensure that this weeping was for Travis in advance of his certain death, that she was losing him by crying so hard for him.

  When Ferrante Escobar knocked on the window in the driver’s door, she told him to go away, but he would not go. He bent down, staring in at her, until at last she lowered the window. “I’m all right, Ferrante. I don’t need anyone to talk to. Just a minute. A minute or two, and then I’ll go.”

  “I have nothing to say to you, Jane Hawk. I’m not a man of words. I just thought…you might need a hand to hold.”