me.
I could risk climbing with one hand partly encumbered, but I couldn’t hold both the flashlight and the pistol and still keep my balance. The Glock wouldn’t be helpful if I wasn’t able to see trouble coming, so I holstered it and kept the light.
As I ascended from the second subterranean level toward the first, I became convinced that the kidnapper had not gone all the way up to the ground floor of the warehouse. He had climbed just one level, halfway. He was waiting there. I was certain of it. He was waiting there like a troll with a lemon-sour gaze. Going to ambush me as I clambered past the next entrance to the shaft. Lean out, smile to reveal all his neat doll-size teeth, and take a whack at my head with another club. Maybe he’d even discovered a better weapon this time. An iron pipe. An ax. A scuba diver’s spear gun loaded with a barbed, explosive-tipped, shark-killing bolt. A tactical nuclear weapon.
I slowed and finally stopped before I reached the rectangular black hole in the shaft wall. From a few rungs below, I played the flashlight beam into the alcove, but I was at an angle that allowed me to see little more than the ceiling of that space.
Indecisive, I hung on the ladder, listening.
Finally I overcame my trepidation by reminding myself that any delay could be deadly. After all, a humongous mutant tarantula was crawling toward me from the pit below, poison dripping off its serrated mandibles, fiercely angry because it hadn’t gotten me on my way
down
.
Nothing gives us courage more readily than the desire to avoid looking like a damn fool.
Emboldened, I quickly climbed past the first basement, to the main level, into the office where I had left Orson. I was neither hammered into mush by a blunt instrument nor shredded by giant arachnid jaws.
My dog was gone.
Drawing the pistol once more, I hurried from the office into the huge main room of the warehouse.
Flocks of shadows flew away from me, then circled to roost in even greater profusion at my back.
“Orson!”
When circumstances left him no alternative, he was a first-rate fighter—my brother the dog—and always reliable. He wouldn’t have allowed the kidnapper to pass, at least not without extracting a painful toll. I’d seen no blood in the office, and there was none here, either.
“Orson!”
Echoes of his name rippled across the corrugated steel walls. The repetition of those two hollow syllables was reminiscent of a church bell tolling in the distance, which made me think of funerals, and in my mind rose a vivid image of good Orson lying battered and broken, a glaze of death in his eyes.
My tongue grew so thick and my throat so tight with fear that I could barely swallow.
The door by which we’d entered was wide open, just as we had left it.
Outside, the sleeping moon remained bedded down in mattresses of clouds to the west. Only stars lit the sky.
The cool clear air hung motionless, as sharp with dire promise as the suspended blade of a guillotine.
The flashlight beam revealed a discarded socket wrench that had been left behind so long ago it was orange with rust, from its ratchet handle to its business end. An empty oil can waited for wind strong enough to roll it elsewhere. A weed bristled out of a crack in the blacktop, tiny yellow flowers rising defiantly from this inhospitable compost.
Otherwise, the serviceway was empty. No man, no dog.
Whatever might lie ahead, I’d deal with it more effectively if I recovered my night vision. I switched off the light and tucked it under my belt.
“Orson!”
I risked nothing by calling out at the top of my voice. The man I’d encountered under the warehouse already knew where I was.
“Orson!”
Possibly the dog had split shortly after I’d left him. He might have become convinced we’d followed the wrong trail. Maybe he had caught a fresh scent of Jimmy; weighing the risks of disregarding my instructions against the need to locate the missing child as quickly as
I could risk climbing with one hand partly encumbered, but I couldn’t hold both the flashlight and the pistol and still keep my balance. The Glock wouldn’t be helpful if I wasn’t able to see trouble coming, so I holstered it and kept the light.
As I ascended from the second subterranean level toward the first, I became convinced that the kidnapper had not gone all the way up to the ground floor of the warehouse. He had climbed just one level, halfway. He was waiting there. I was certain of it. He was waiting there like a troll with a lemon-sour gaze. Going to ambush me as I clambered past the next entrance to the shaft. Lean out, smile to reveal all his neat doll-size teeth, and take a whack at my head with another club. Maybe he’d even discovered a better weapon this time. An iron pipe. An ax. A scuba diver’s spear gun loaded with a barbed, explosive-tipped, shark-killing bolt. A tactical nuclear weapon.
I slowed and finally stopped before I reached the rectangular black hole in the shaft wall. From a few rungs below, I played the flashlight beam into the alcove, but I was at an angle that allowed me to see little more than the ceiling of that space.
Indecisive, I hung on the ladder, listening.
Finally I overcame my trepidation by reminding myself that any delay could be deadly. After all, a humongous mutant tarantula was crawling toward me from the pit below, poison dripping off its serrated mandibles, fiercely angry because it hadn’t gotten me on my way
down
.
Nothing gives us courage more readily than the desire to avoid looking like a damn fool.
Emboldened, I quickly climbed past the first basement, to the main level, into the office where I had left Orson. I was neither hammered into mush by a blunt instrument nor shredded by giant arachnid jaws.
My dog was gone.
Drawing the pistol once more, I hurried from the office into the huge main room of the warehouse.
Flocks of shadows flew away from me, then circled to roost in even greater profusion at my back.
“Orson!”
When circumstances left him no alternative, he was a first-rate fighter—my brother the dog—and always reliable. He wouldn’t have allowed the kidnapper to pass, at least not without extracting a painful toll. I’d seen no blood in the office, and there was none here, either.
“Orson!”
Echoes of his name rippled across the corrugated steel walls. The repetition of those two hollow syllables was reminiscent of a church bell tolling in the distance, which made me think of funerals, and in my mind rose a vivid image of good Orson lying battered and broken, a glaze of death in his eyes.
My tongue grew so thick and my throat so tight with fear that I could barely swallow.
The door by which we’d entered was wide open, just as we had left it.
Outside, the sleeping moon remained bedded down in mattresses of clouds to the west. Only stars lit the sky.
The cool clear air hung motionless, as sharp with dire promise as the suspended blade of a guillotine.
The flashlight beam revealed a discarded socket wrench that had been left behind so long ago it was orange with rust, from its ratchet handle to its business end. An empty oil can waited for wind strong enough to roll it elsewhere. A weed bristled out of a crack in the blacktop, tiny yellow flowers rising defiantly from this inhospitable compost.
Otherwise, the serviceway was empty. No man, no dog.
Whatever might lie ahead, I’d deal with it more effectively if I recovered my night vision. I switched off the light and tucked it under my belt.
“Orson!”
I risked nothing by calling out at the top of my voice. The man I’d encountered under the warehouse already knew where I was.
“Orson!”
Possibly the dog had split shortly after I’d left him. He might have become convinced we’d followed the wrong trail. Maybe he had caught a fresh scent of Jimmy; weighing the risks of disregarding my instructions against the need to locate the missing child as quickly as
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