Read Online Dance with the Devil by Dean Koontz - Free Book Online Page A

letter-Lydia was looking over something in a book she had taken from the shelves-Alex Boland poked his head in the door. “I think I'll be going into town, Mother. Still want Katherine to go with me?”
        “Yes,” Lydia said. She put her book down and turned to Katherine. “I believe your records say you ski.”
        “There's a run into town?” Katherine asked.
        “An excellent one,” Alex said. “About a two mile winding slope that leads gently through the pines and feeds almost directly into Costerfeld Avenue.”
        “I'd like you to accompany Alex,” Lydia said. “Let him show you the town. Roxburgh has been my life, or most of it, and I want you to become thoroughly familiar with it.”
        “I'll have to change,” Katherine said. “Give me twenty minutes.”
        “Right,” Alex said. “I'll meet you outside the kitchen door.”
        
        The day was cold but, without the wind, she found it far more endurable than the day before. She was dressed in blue insulated ski slacks, black sweater, thermal jacket, sturdy boots and toboggan hat. When she came out the kitchen door, she saw Alex standing far off to the south, at the edge of the mountain slope where the first downward angling of the land began. She went to him, kicking at the snow as she did.
        He said, “How much have you skied before?”
        “Quite a bit,” she said. “The orphanage where I grew up was near a resort that used to let us kids in free if we were interested. I was one of the few who were interested, and I spent a lot of my free time there.”
        He nodded. “This shouldn't be any trouble. Look.”
        A wide swath of clean snow, guarded by towering pines, lead down the mountainside, cut at one edge by what appeared to be power pylons carrying two thick cables.
        “It looks easy enough,” she said.
        They put on their skis, and Alex went over the edge first, swishing through the clean snow, cutting two shallow runners as he went. She followed close behind, watching him, letting his movements dictate hers as they swept down the snaking trail.
        The wind bit at her, whined off her vinyl slacks and jacket, snapped her yellow hair out behind her and tried to tug away the toboggan cap which was strapped beneath her chin.
        Snow thrown up behind Alex spattered her goggles. She wiped them off and dropped back fifty feet until she was not bothered by his wake.
        The trees flashed by so fast that, if she looked to either side, they almost seemed like a continuous rail fence of gargantuan proportions.
        She felt gloriously free and renewed. One day on the job, and already she knew that she would be happy to be Lydia Boland's secretary and companion for the next fifty years if Lydia happened to live to be over a hundred.
        Suddenly, the trail twisted and swept directly down toward the village of Roxburgh, the slope grading into a gentle run at the bottom of which, two hundred feet away, Alex waited beside the last of the tall, gray pylons. She brought herself to a stop beside him, showering snow over his head.
        “Like it?” he asked.
        “Wonderful!”
        He drew her attention to the pylon beside them and showed her how to operate the simple controls. The cables did not carry electrical power at all, but formed a rudimentary ski-lift to the top of the mountain. One had only to grasp the lower cable, turn on the device and be dragged up the mountainside.
        “It can be hard on the arms,” Alex said. “But you can stop and rest once or twice and then grab it again. It won't shut off until you reach the top and re-set the controls up there.”
        “I was so excited about getting on skis again that I never wondered how we would get back. I guess the road isn't open yet.”
        “Not yet,” he said. “But without the wind, the drifting won't be so bad. They'll have everything cleared up by tonight.” He sat down in the snow and