Cover of Night Read online

  “All of us are gathering at the Richardsons’ place,” he said. “Their basement is completely protected. It’s too small for everyone to stay there, but it’ll do until Creed and I get something figured out.”

  “F-figured out? Call the cops! That’s what you do!”

  “The phones are out. No electricity, either. We’re stranded.” As he spoke he looked around, trying to see if there was anything useful up here that she could use as a crutch. Nada. He’d have to think of something, but first things first. “Okay, we need to get out of this attic; there’s no protection up here. Angelina needs to put on some warm clothes and some shoes—”

  “I can’t walk,” Gena said. “I’ve tried.”

  “Do you have an Ace bandage I can wrap around the ankle for support? I’ll find something you can use as a crutch, but you have to walk. You don’t have a choice. It’ll hurt like hell, but you have to do it.” He kept his gaze steady on hers, telling her without words how dire the situation was.

  “Ace bandage? Ah…I think so. In the bathroom.”

  “I’ll get it.” He was down the ladder in a matter of seconds, jerking open the drawers in the bathroom vanity until he found the rolled Ace bandage. While he was in the bathroom, he looked in the medicine cabinet and found a bottle of aspirin, which he pocketed; then he returned to the attic.

  “Take a couple of aspirin,” he said, handing the bottle to Gena. “There’s no water, so chew them up if you can’t swallow them whole.”

  Obediently she chewed, making a horrible face, while he swiftly and efficiently wrapped her ankle. “Here’s the plan: I take Angelina down first, and put her in the kitchen to change clothes—”

  “Why the kitchen?”

  “More protection. Just listen, and do what I say, because I may not have time to explain every detail. I’ll come back and get you, and once you’re safer, I’ll look for something you can use as a crutch.”

  “Mario has his father’s walking stick.” Her lips trembled as she mentioned her husband, but she sucked it up and went on. “In the living room closet.”

  “Okay, good.” Not as good as a crutch, but better than nothing, and he wouldn’t have to use up valuable time fashioning something. Rising to a crouch, he took Angelina’s hand. “Come on, cricket, let’s go down the ladder.”

  “Cricket?” She giggled, diverted. “Mommy, he called me a cricket.”

  “I know, honey.” She stroked her daughter’s hair. “Go with Cal and do what he says, change clothes in the kitchen while he helps me down the ladder. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  Cal positioned Angelina between him and the ladder, so she wouldn’t be afraid of falling, and guided her down the wobbly steps. When she noticed the living room windows had been broken, she said, “Look!” indignantly and started into the room, but he intercepted her. The last thing he wanted was for her to look out the window and see her father’s body, nor did he want her to cut her bare feet on the broken glass.

  “You can’t go in there,” he explained, herding her toward her bedroom. “That glass on the floor would cut your feet even if you were wearing shoes.”

  “It would cut through the shoes?”

  “Right through them. That was special glass.”

  “Wow,” she said, wide-eyed, as she peered back at the glass in question.

  Little-girl clothing, he found, was basically the same as little-boy clothing, just pink. He found jeans and a pullover shirt, little sneakers with pink shoestrings, socks with flowers on them, and a pink fleece hooded jacket. “Can you put these on by yourself?” he asked, guiding her into the kitchen.

  She nodded, looking confused. “I put my clothes on in my bedroom, not the kitchen.”

  “This one time Mommy wants you to change clothes here in the kitchen,” he replied. “She told you about it, remember?”

  She nodded, then said, “Why?”

  Oh, hell, now what did he tell her? Recalling experiences with his own mother, he pulled out an old standby: “Because she said so.”

  Evidently Angelina had run into that edict from on high before. She sighed and sat down on the floor. “Okay, but you can’t watch.”

  “I won’t. I’m going to get your mommy from the attic. Don’t leave the kitchen. Stay right where you are.”

  Taking another long-suffering sigh as agreement, he went back to the ladder and looked up to find Gena sitting in the opening. “I scooted,” she explained, experimentally setting her left foot on the second rung down and bracing her arms on each side of the opening so she could turn around. He’d been thinking of lowering her with a rope, but what the hell, she was already on the ladder.

  There was no way she could come down without using her sprained ankle. The first time she put weight on it, she couldn’t hold back a sharp cry of pain that she quickly muffled. The next time she tried, she bit her lip and simply forced herself to bear the pain for the brief time it took her to step down with her good foot. She rested there, waiting for the pain to recede, then did it again. Cal steadied the ladder as much as possible, but he couldn’t go up it to help her because the flimsy ladder wasn’t built to hold that much weight. When she was far enough down that he could reach her waist, he simply plucked her off the rungs and carried her to the kitchen, where he sat her in one of the chairs at the table.

  Angelina was in the process of putting on her shoes, and she jumped up to run to her mother. Gena gathered her close, her blond head bent down to Angelina’s dark one. “I’ll get the walking stick,” he said, and went into the living room. The stick was shoved in the very back of the closet, but he found it in short order and took it back to Gena.

  “We’ll go out the back door. I’ll carry Angelina. I know your ankle hurts, Gena, but you have to keep up with me.”

  “I’ll try,” she said, still so white-faced she looked as if she’d faint at any moment. She hadn’t let her gaze so much as flicker toward the living room, as if she was afraid she would see Mario and she knew she couldn’t bear that.

  “Sometimes we’ll have to crawl. Just do what I do.” He didn’t have time to explain the tortuous angles he’d worked out that would keep them mostly hidden from the thermal scopes. Infrared didn’t work as well during a warm day anyway, because the temperature difference between the ambient air and a human wasn’t as great. After two unusually chilly days, today was noticeably warmer. That, together with the fact that the human eye couldn’t see everything at the same time in such a wide radius as the shooters would be scanning, would help him get them to the Richardsons’ with minimal exposure. There were a couple of places where there was simply no structure available for shielding movement, and then Gena would have to hurry as best she could. The second person crossing was always in more danger than the first.

  He had a lot to do, more people to find, but he put that out of his mind and simply concentrated on the task at hand. It took time—too much time, but Gena was doing the best she could. Finally he got them to a place where he could send them on without him. “You’re leaving us here?” Gena gasped, when he told her he was going back.

  “You can make it; it’s just a couple hundred yards. I haven’t found the Starkeys yet, or the Youngs.” Despite her protests, he sent her on, then doubled back.

  Before continuing his search, he worked his way to the feed store. Pressed against the back of the building, he darted his head around for quick looks as he studied the stairs leading up to his place, and the angles that would expose him to rifle fire. The stairs were just too risky, and that was the only entrance; there wasn’t one from inside the feed store.

  Yet.

  Using the butt of his shotgun, he beat the lock off the door to the back storeroom; the residents of Trail Stop might not lock up their houses, but that didn’t mean they left their businesses unprotected. Inside the storeroom was the chain saw he’d been using to cut firewood for the winter—there was already a sizable stack just outside the door—as well as the small ax he used to split the sma