Chill Of Fear tbscus-8

by Кей Хупер

  Stephanie nodded. "And Cullen has been asked to go on with his daily routine rather than hover in there watching you. I'd take advantage of the time, if I were you." She half lifted a hand in a casual salute and left them.

  "I say we listen to the lady," Nate said. "Quentin, I'm assuming you'd prefer we conduct the search ourselves?"

  "Yeah. Time enough to bring in more of your people when we find something."

  "You're very confident we will find something," Diana murmured.

  "I know we will." And, suddenly, it was true. Quentin knew without a doubt that they would find something in this old barn, something important. But this time it wasn't a whisper in his mind that told him. It was an echo of that chill foreboding he had felt earlier.

  It's coming.

  He didn't know what it was, not yet. All he knew was that it was what he had sensed here during a childhood summer twenty-five years ago. What Bishop had sensed here five years ago. And what Diana had in some way touched only hours ago.

  Something old, and dark, and cold. Something evil.

  It was near. And for the first time, he could feel it.

  Nate McDaniel had argued for the search because Quentin had asked it of him. But he never expected to find anything, not really.

  Which made it all the more ironic that he was the one who found it.

  The preliminary search of the fairly large, open room had been quick and simple. And revealed, as expected, nothing. So then it was time to begin tapping the plaster-over-lath walls in search of a hollow spot, with Nate and Quentin beginning at the same point and moving in opposite directions around the room. They used the handles of a couple of screwdrivers to more effectively sound out the walls.

  "Think they could have a few more saddles in here?" Nate demanded in exasperation, stretching to reach around and above one hanging on a wall-mounted rack nearly as tall as he was.

  "It is a tack room," Quentin reminded him dryly.

  "There are maybe a dozen horses in this barn, and I've never seen one wear more than one saddle at a time; there must be thirty saddles in here."

  Diana said, "It's easy to accumulate tack over the years. Different-sized saddles for different horses, changing styles, the preferences of different riders. Plus tack that gets worn or damaged and never repaired. Every tack room I've ever seen looks a lot like this one."

  Surprised, Quentin paused to say, "For some reason, I didn't expect you to be a rider."

  "Oh, yeah." She didn't elaborate.

  He frowned slightly as he looked at her. She was standing in the center of the room, her gaze almost idly wandering from saddle to saddle, from bridle to halter to utility tray. Anyone watching her might suppose she was slightly bored, paying little attention to the search going on around her, even daydreaming.

  But Quentin recognized the expression. He'd seen many psychics wear it in moments of quiet, that inward-turned, almost meditative waiting. The half-conscious stilling of the usual five senses so that the other ones could be heard.

  Since she'd had no training, he didn't know whether someone else could help her focus or would merely be a distraction. He flipped a mental coin.

  "Diana?"

  "Hmm?"

  "What do you hear?"

  "Water. Dripping."

  "Where?"

  "Underneath us."

  Before Quentin could question her further, Nate broke the quiet with a decidedly surprised exclamation.

  "Holy shit."

  Quentin turned to see that the cop had somehow managed to shift one of the heavy floor-standing racks nearly a foot to one side, presumably to better get at the wall behind it. But he wasn't staring at the wall. He was staring at the floor.

  "What?" Quentin went to join him.

  "Either I'm out of my mind, or else I'm looking at one side of a trap door."

  "You're kidding."

  "Take a look." Nate went down on one knee, tracing with one finger the clear break in the seemingly solid floorboards. "Here.

  The edge was hidden by the base of this saddle rack. And I'm betting that if we move the rack on the other side of this one, we'll find the hinges."

  The two saddle racks were back in an awkward corner, each piled with several old saddles and musty-smelling saddle blankets and that plus a number of cobwebs made it obvious that they were well out of the usual traffic pattern of the room. They might well have sat undisturbed for years.

  Diana came over to join the men, watching silently as Quentin and Nate carefully pushed the two heavy saddle racks out of the way.

  It was a trap door, the hinges that had been hidden by the second rack old, heavy iron. There was no handle, but when Quentin wedged one of the screwdrivers into the edge opposite the hinges, it lifted easily.

  They all saw the rough round opening in the ground beneath the door, large enough for a big man to pass through. They all saw the heavy iron ladder bolted seemingly to the granite bedrock and disappearing into the darkness. And they all felt and smelled the wave of damp, chilly air that wafted up as soon as the door was opened.

  "Water," Diana murmured. "Dripping."

  CHAPTER 10

  "I don't know what's going on," Mrs. Kincaid said to Stephanie, "but I'm telling you that girl is up to something, Ms. Boyd." Stephanie took another sip of her strong black coffee, wishing she'd been granted another hour or so of sleep this morning. She hated mornings as a rule, and this one was turning out even worse than usual.

  "What do you expect me to do, Mrs. Kincaid?" she asked, keeping her tone brisk but pleasant. "Ellie Weeks hasn't done anything wrong. So far, anyway. Certainly nothing to merit any kind of warning from me."

  "I realize that, Ms. Boyd," the housekeeper responded, her tone stiff. "And as head of the housekeeping staff, it is of course my responsibility to issue any such warnings. I simply thought it best to keep you informed."

  Informed of what? Stephanie wanted to ask. But she didn't.

  Instead, she said, "I appreciate that, Mrs. Kincaid. And I trust you'll continue to do so."

  "Naturally I will."

  Stephanie nodded. "Great. And I wanted to inform you that the police have asked to review old paperwork and historical documents stored in the basement, as well as go through whatever's in the attic, so don't be alarmed to find any of them or Agent Hayes in the areas of the hotel normally out of bounds to guests."

  The housekeeper frowned. "The attic?"

  "Is there a problem?"

  "I don't know what they expect to find in the attic."

  "Neither do I, but since they're investigating the death of a child here at The Lodge, I certainly don't want to declare any area at all off-limits to their investigation."

  "No, of course not." But the housekeeper's frown lingered. "I do hope you remind them, Ms. Boyd, that both the attic and basement are merely storage areas and, as such, are not cleaned or aired on a regular basis."

  It was, Stephanie thought, rather amazing how some people became so protective of their domains. First Cullen Ruppe down at the stables, resisting a search of his tack room, and now Mrs. Kincaid worrying about her reputation due to dust in the basement and attic.

  Trying not to sound patronizing rather than soothing, Stephanie said, "I'm sure they'll understand that, Mrs. Kincaid."

  "I hope so, Ms. Boyd." The housekeeper rose to her feet and turned to the door, then paused and looked back at Stephanie behind her big desk. In a rare moment of loquaciousness, she said, "I've been here a long time, you know. Longer than anyone else on the staff. And my mother worked here before me, as housekeeper."

  Surprised, Stephanie said, "I didn't know that."

  Mrs. Kincaid nodded. "That Agent Hayes — he was here as a child, with his parents. Twenty-five years ago. I remember him."

  Since the housekeeper rarely had any direct contact with guests, Stephanie was even more surprised. "After so many years?"

  With another nod, Mrs. Kincaid said, "That was a bad summer, and not one I'm likely to ever forget. On
e of our maids then had a little girl who was murdered. The police never found out who killed her." She paused, then added, "He was a friend of hers. Agent Hayes. They said he was the last one to see poor little Missy alive. Other than the murderer, of course."

  Stephanie didn't know what to say.

  Returning to the subject that had brought her to the office, the housekeeper said, "I'll keep an eye on Ellie, Ms. Boyd. You don't have to worry about that."

  "Fine." Stephanie wasn't about to remind Mrs. Kincaid that watching the girl was her own idea.

  Apparently satisfied, the housekeeper left the office, closing the door softly behind her.

  Stephanie sighed, then drained her coffee and got to her feet, deciding to return to the stables and see if the search of the tack room had turned up anything.

  She had a feeling it had.

  A very bad feeling.

  Nate flatly refused to allow anyone to go down that ladder until the backup he called for arrived.

  "There's no way in hell," he told Quentin, "that you're going down there without me. Which means neither of us is going down there until I get someone here to watch our backs."

  Diana was reasonably sure that Quentin wasn't happy about the delay, even though he agreed readily. She was very sure of her own emotions on the subject.

  She did not want to go down there.

  Not that either of the two cops had said or implied that she would, but she knew. She knew that she was meant to see whatever was down there, just as Quentin was. That she had to go down that ladder and into the darkness.

  Shivering, she dug her hands deeper into the pockets of her jacket. Why was she still cold?

  Nate checked his watch, then said, "Look, it'll take a good half hour or more to get some of my people out here and get set up. You two go get some breakfast. I'll wait here."

  "You haven't eaten either," Quentin said.

  "Yeah, well. Send somebody down with a gallon of coffee and an egg sandwich, and I'll be fine."

  From the tack room door, Stephanie Boyd said, "I can take care of that." Her gaze was on the uncovered and open trap door, and she added incredulously, "You found something?"

  Quentin took Diana's arm and guided her past the other woman as Stephanie stepped into the tack room. "We found something, all right. Nate, if you even think of going down that ladder without me—"

  "I won't, I won't. Go eat breakfast."

  "There's a ladder?" Stephanie was even more incredulous.

  Diana couldn't help smiling wryly as she and Quentin moved out of the tack room and out of earshot. "Why do I think she's going to want to go down that ladder too?"

  Quentin must have heard something in her voice, because his question was immediate. "Don't you?"

  "Not really."

  "Why not? Something you sense?"

  Diana took a breath and let it out slowly, shifting just a bit as they walked to remove her arm from his light grasp. "It's a black hole in the ground, Quentin. Doesn't seem very inviting. My usual five senses are telling me that much."

  He didn't bother to remind her that she was responsible for the fact that they even knew about that black hole. Instead, he said, "You don't have to tell me you'd have been far happier if we hadn't found anything at all in there."

  That surprised her, and she shot him a quick look.

  "So you could tell yourself once again that you were just imagining things," he explained.

  Diana couldn't think of anything to say in defense of her defensiveness, so she changed the subject. "What can an old hole in the ground possibly have to do with murdered children?"

  "I have no idea," he admitted.

  "If you've been investigating this place for years, how did you miss it?"

  "I haven't been investigating this place — unfortunately," Quentin said. "At least, not on site, and not farther back than the last twenty-five years. I have a feeling what we found is a hell of a lot older than that."

  "The trap door? Or the hole itself?"

  "Both, I'd say. That barn's been there a hundred years, or close to it; it was one of the original structures here. I know that much from the postcards they sell in the gift shop, the ones showing this place around 1902, just after it was first built."

  "You think the hole must have been... excavated... before the barn was built?"

  "Probably. It would have been hell to dig the thing from inside that tack room. You saw the ground; unless that was a natural opening, somebody had to bore or blast through solid granite at least partway down. It could have been an old well at one time; the size is about right. Maybe it went dry, or the water was bad and it couldn't be used anymore."

  "What about the ladder?"

  "I've never seen one in a well, even an old one. Looks to me like that hole's been used in some other way."

  "Which means we'll find more than water at the bottom."

  "More than possible."

  Diana shook her head. "The hinges didn't squeak. Did you notice that?"

  "Yeah. Old iron hinges with no rust and no squeaks. Which means that somebody's taken care of that trap door."

  "It was hidden."

  "But in such a way that the saddle racks could be moved aside with very little effort."

  "Why?" Diana demanded, hearing the strain increasing in her voice.

  "We can't even guess about that, not until we see what's down there."

  "And none of you — as kids — found the trap?" She glanced at him in time to see a quick frown.

  "Not that I remember," he said.

  Diana was silent for a few moments as they continued up the path from the stables to the main building of The Lodge. It was still very early, but the usual dawn risers were up and stirring: gardeners and maintenance people, somebody splashing in the pool, someone practicing their serve on the tennis courts. A morning jogger passed them with an absent nod, his eyes already fixed on the looming mountains whose winding trails challenged hikers and joggers.

  For most of the guests, it was just another morning, punctuated as usual with habit and ritual.

  Diana wondered what it felt like, that normalcy.

  When they stepped up onto the veranda, they pretty much had their pick of tables for breakfast. Only two were occupied, one by a young couple and the other by the little girl Diana recognized from — was it only yesterday morning?

  It felt like weeks since she had stood with Quentin in the observation tower and looked down on the little girl and her dog on the lawn below.

  Now, the dog was lying across the little girl's lap, and she sent Diana a shy, fleeting smile before continuing to gently stroke her sleeping pet.

  "She's up early," Diana murmured.

  "Again," Quentin agreed. He indicated a table near the one they had occupied the day before, and as they sat down added, "So far, I've only seen her and one other kid, a little boy. A few teenagers coming and going. As I said, this place doesn't really cater to families."

  A waitress approached them with a bright "Good morning" and the coffeepot, effectively ending the discussion for the time being. They accepted coffee and ordered breakfast, neither needing to see a menu.

  Diana wrapped her hands around the hot cup, again conscious of a chill she found difficult to understand. The sun was warm on the veranda, on their table. The air was warm and smelled fragrantly of flowers mixed with the sharper scent of bacon cooking.

  It had been more than two hours since she'd come out of the gray time. So why was she still cold?

  "Diana?"

  She met his gaze reluctantly.

  "What's bothering you?"

  She heard a little laugh escape her.

  Quentin smiled. "Okay, dumb question."

  Before he could ask a more reasonable variation of it, Diana changed the subject. "You said that you didn't remember if any of you found the trap door that summer."

  "That's right."

  "I guess... I assumed your memories of the summer would be vivid. That you would have remembered
everything because of how traumatic Missy's murder was."

  Quentin looked down at his coffee, that slight frown returning. "An understandable assumption. And I don't know why it isn't so. Some things stand out, of course, as clear as snapshots in my mind. Other things..." He shook his head. "There are gaps I can't really explain. A fuzziness to some of my memories."

  "Maybe because of the shock of finding Missy," Diana suggested.

  "Maybe."

  "You were awfully young, Quentin. And it has been twenty-five years."

  "Yeah. Still. I should remember more, and what I do remember should be clearer." He shrugged. "Maybe if I could be hypnotized, I could get at the memories. But since that isn't possible..."

  "You can't be hypnotized?"

  "No. And neither can you." He sipped his coffee, adding, "Psychics are always in that percentage of people who can't be hypnotized. No one knows why."

  With some feeling, Diana said, "Just once, I'd love to be able to say you were wrong about something like that. About me."

  "Sorry."

  "No, you're not."

  "Okay, I'm not. Diana, I know all this is hard for you. I get that, I really do. But you have to admit that continuing to deny the paranormal when you're experiencing it on a regular basis is just a little bit stubborn."

  "You think so?"

  "Just a little bit."

  "Well, pardon me for needing more than twenty-four hours to get used to the idea."

  Quentin chuckled. "Point taken. I can be impatient sometimes."

  "No, really?"

  "Sorry. I'll try to do better. And try to remember this is all very new to you."

  "I suppose it was something easy for you to accept?"

  He hesitated, then grimaced. "It was fairly easy for me to accept the existence of my abilities. But it didn't make my life any easier when it first dawned on me that I was different. Especially since my father, being an engineer, didn't have a whole lot of tolerance for anything that couldn't be scientifically weighed, measured, and analyzed. Still doesn't, really."

  "How does he feel about the work you're doing now?"

  "He wasn't very happy that I chose to use my law degree in police work, but we're still on speaking terms. Which is something, I suppose."