Dead Level (27 page)

Once the tank was free, he could roll it off the concrete pad it had been stationed on. Next, he’d used a wrench from the toolshed to unscrew the metal tubing’s fitting from the valve.

So now he had a tank with a valve on it, but still no way to attach the hose, which was way too small to fit over the valve’s threads. And even if it would fit, he realized as he puzzled over the thing, the tank was so pressurized that when he opened it, the outflow of gas would likely blow the hose right off again.

But … he stood there, thinking about that prison counselor and how much he wanted to spite her, and about Bob Arnold and what he had said. And the threaded fitting on the metal tube he had removed from the tank was around here somewhere, wasn’t it?

The tank still had a threaded fitting, too, matching the one on the tube. So … one thought turned over, then another.

So he could
put the metal tube back on again
.

Swiftly he scurried to where the tank had originally stood, under the cottage’s kitchen window. By the sound of it, the women were still working out there on the other side of the cabin.

Good
, he thought, reminding himself again not to venture out on that newly floored deck. Their plight might be hopeless, but they could still cause him lots of trouble, and somehow their work was meant to do just that.

So let’s get this over with. Once they’re gone, the chance of any more problems out of them will be, too
.

He eased in among the pine boughs to where he’d dropped the slim metal tubing … and found it. Still attached to the tank gauge
with a metal hex nut, the whole apparatus lay on a mat of pine needles that had accumulated against the building over the years.

Without warning, another bolt of panic pierced him, the sky overhead suddenly too large … 
wide open
, as if he might float up into it and be lost among all that … that
freedom
.

In which anything might happen. But that was
nuts
, he was
here
, he was … 
Jeeze, just shut up
, he told himself viciously.

The tank gauge still lay at his feet. Bending, he grabbed it.

Laying out decking boards to form a floor is like doing a jigsaw puzzle, except that if you don’t put the pieces in just right, they’ll fall right through to the carpet beneath the table—or, in the case of our deck, to the ground below.

“Oof.” The boards were light when we began laying them out, but by the end they were
heavy:
reach, lift, repeat. But at long last Ellie and I had put each one into its precarious—we hoped
very
precarious, their ends perched so close to the edges of the joists that a chipmunk could kick one off—place.

Then we fell down exhausted, huddled in the lattice-enclosed space under the deck. “Let’s remember not to fall through ourselves,” I said, and Ellie chuckled tiredly. But:

“Don’t laugh,” I said. “You’d be surprised how easy it is to forget that the deck boards aren’t nailed down. And no, I do not want to talk about how I know that.”

Suffice it to say I’d put a new floor on the porch at home, too, once upon a midsummer. And the space underneath that one had turned out to be full of stinging ants, much to my sorrow when I fell through into it.

Meanwhile, with the nailed-up lattice sheets around it and the newly laid-out floor over our heads, the area under this deck felt fairly safe. But it wasn’t, so as soon as we’d caught our breaths we confronted the next project: getting back inside.

And that wasn’t the only problem. Through the crisscross slats of the lattice, the moon shone in; I looked down at my hands, stained and sticky with blood. My nose was still bleeding in scary, intermittent gouts; I’d been able to hide it from Ellie by dragging my sleeve hard across my face every time it started flowing again.

I wouldn’t be able to hide my increasing dizziness for much longer, though, or the bright stars flaring in my vision whenever I stood straight. Clambering up, I reeled as a wave of faintness washed over me, and grabbed onto one of the lattice sections.

“Jake?” Ellie peered worriedly at me. “Jake, you’re …”

Yeah. All I could think of was that I must’ve hit my head harder than I’d thought, but this seemed even worse than a simple head bonk. My ears rang, and my whole body had a watery feeling as if I were dissolving.

“Go inside,” I whispered, sitting down suddenly. A ladder was our only way up to the back door, and it looked about as climbable as Mount Everest to me suddenly.

“I’ll be right in, too.” My voice had evaporated. Ditto my equilibrium.

And, of course, she noticed. “Stay right here,” she ordered, ignoring the fact that at the moment, I had little choice.

Whatever strength I possessed seemed to have leaked out my nose. Another big splotch of blood fell as I put my hands on my knees, struggling to rise. “Maybe I can …”

But that turned out to be a mistake. The world spun, my legs went weak, and a black wave of unconsciousness crashed down.

When I came to again, I was looking up at Ellie’s scared face. “We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” I whispered, trying to smile. But she wasn’t having any.

“Stay
here
,” she whispered. “I
mean
it. I’ll be right back.” She scampered up the ladder, tiptoed very,
very
carefully across the loose decking to the door, and vanished inside.

Don’t panic. Just breathe. Slow, deep breaths. You’re going to be fine
.

That’s what I told myself. But the steady drip of blood from somewhere up inside my face said otherwise. To distract myself, I concentrated on the cold, which now that we weren’t busy working had begun penetrating into my bones. I tried listening to the nearby forest sounds, the pattering of droplets from tree branches and the clickings and rustlings of unseen woodland creatures.

But the sounds only reminded me that in the woods, violent death among soft, defenseless mammals like me is commonplace, a method merely for other, toothier creatures to get something to eat.

Speaking of which, the next thing I knew, Ellie was beside me again, holding a mug from which pale, fragrant steam rose up in ghostly puffs. “Drink this.”

Shakily I reached out. But I couldn’t make my hand grip the mug tightly enough. “This,” I whispered, “is
humiliating
.”

“Don’t be silly.” She held the cup to my lips. Hot coffee was somewhere in there, not quite overpowered by brandy plus lots of sugar and cream.

I drank, gasped with relief—that stuff was
potent
—and drank more of it, sinking back against her supporting arm. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” she responded briskly, then pestered me to drink the rest until I did.

The aromatic mixture wouldn’t cure what ailed me—I was starting to think I’d need expert help, an emergency room visit or even a surgeon’s assistance, for that—but it made me feel better for now, enough so that I could appreciate what we’d done.

It looked like a deck. It
smelled
like a deck; even through my leaking, clogged-up nose I could capture the fragrance of freshly cut lumber, sharply astringent.

But it wasn’t a deck; it was our villain trap, and now all we had to do was set it.

“So now this is the only way in or out of the cottage,” I said as Ellie helped me up the stepladder to the door. Crossing the deck was a Zen-like exercise: foot up, foot down, no side-to-side shuffling—or in my
case, staggering—whatsoever. But we made it; inside I sank down at once, then rolled over on the linoleum and lay there, panting.

“Right. If he wants us, he’ll have to come and get us.” She snapped the shades up, grimacing at him, wherever he was.

“That’s right, you jerk,” she said at the darkness out there. “Get a good look. Maybe it’ll make you want to get even closer, hmm?” And when I glanced doubtfully at her:

“Jake, he’s had plenty of chances to shoot us, and he hasn’t. I’m betting that whatever he wants to do, he wants it up close.”

Right: he had, and he hadn’t, so he probably wouldn’t. That made sense.

Or it did in my addled brain, anyway. Besides, the way I felt now, getting shot would’ve been a relief. I crawled groggily across the floor to an end table where there was a box of tissues, then pressed a thick wad of them to my nose with both hands. One handful, and then another and another.

From the clearing, where it was getting darker again as the moon began setting across the lake, he could see Marianne moving around inside the cottage, where she’d raised the shades again as if taunting him. Her red-gold hair caught the lamp’s feeble glow, igniting brief sparks of brilliance.

Gotcha
, he thought again, but then she looked out toward him for a moment, setting his heart thudding; had she seen him?

He ducked behind the toolshed; having her where he wanted her, trapped and at his mercy, didn’t keep her from having a few nasty tricks still up her own sleeve, he suspected. And she could still use them on him, too, if she got the chance.

So he had to stop her. Afterwards he would burn whatever remnants of the cottage remained, make sure no telltale evidence—the hose on the propane tank, shells from the shots he’d fired, tools he’d moved, gasoline he’d used, and so on—was left to hint at non-accidental events.

The cleanup alone seemed overwhelming, when considered as a single project; he’d have to put the tank back, too, and arrange the propane feeder tube leading into the cottage plausibly, and no doubt there were more things, ones he hadn’t remembered yet.

That missing gasoline, for instance … Could he steal some from one of the other cottages, to replace it? He wasn’t sure, or even if it mattered.

But I’ve done this much
, he told himself as he crept from behind the shed.
I can do the rest, too, whatever it turns out to be
.

So, slipping around the edge of the clearing to the place under the window where he’d set up the propane tank, he began. In his hands were the tank fitting with the slim metal tubing on it, the wrench he’d found in the toolshed, and the length of black rubber hose he’d liberated from the outdoor shower setup.

The hose fit snugly onto the metal tubing. While the women kept busy at whatever foolishness they’d been engaged in behind the cottage, he’d sat working the hose onto the tubing, bit by bit, until he’d covered almost all of the metal with rubber.

Next he screwed the metal tubing’s threaded end back onto the tank’s valve opening, then he fed the free end of the rubber hose stealthily in through the window he’d broken with the firebomb, earlier. Now a turn of the valve handle would send propane flowing into the cottage. It had taken longer than he’d expected to set everything up. So they wouldn’t be outside when the gas flowed as he’d planned. But they’d worked half the night. Maybe they’d fall asleep.

Maybe luck was still with him.

He stepped away from the window and the contraption he’d rigged up underneath it. Might as well wait for dawn: just enough pale gleam from over the horizon so the glow of the fire against the sky wouldn’t alert people miles away, but dark enough still so the smoke wouldn’t show much.

A
big
fire … Silently he eased back in among the trees surrounding the cottage. When he could see the branches overhead outlined black against the lightening sky, it would be time to turn the tank on. After that, just a short wait more, and then …

He pulled a match pack that he’d liberated from one of the other lakeside cottages out of his pocket, fingering it in happy anticipation.
Bang
, he thought again, mouthing the word and savoring it deliciously this time.

Bang and done
.

“You awake?” I asked into the darkness.

“Uh-huh.” Ellie came over to where I lay shivering on the daybed. No matter how many blankets she piled on me, I couldn’t get warm; my inner thermostat, apparently, was stuck at “icy.”

“I could fix you a hot-water bottle,” she offered.

It was just past 3 a.m. We’d let the woodstove fire go out while we were working on the deck outside, and there wasn’t any wood left in the bin to start another.

“Okay,” I managed. The room stank of burned stuff; we’d tossed the firebomb-damaged items outside, trying to get rid of the reek of gasoline that they gave off, but it didn’t help much.

“And some hot tea, maybe,” I added. “If it’s not too much trouble.” Being short on blood seemed also to have cut down my body-heat-preservation ability. But somehow I had to warm up.

Or at least stop shivering; I had the gun and the bullets for it wrapped up with me in the blanket. They wouldn’t do me any good, though, if I was shaking too hard to fire the weapon when something bad happened.

Which I still felt sure it would. No one did all the things our attacker had done and then just quit for no reason. So he was coming; now we could only wait and hope we were ready for him.

“Drat.” Ellie turned off the gas stove’s knob, then turned it on again and flicked the lighter near the burner, waiting for the familiar
floof!
of blue flame.

Nothing. I closed my eyes and opened them again fast, hoping this was all just a terrible hallucination and somebody would slap me or throw cold water in my face.

But nobody did. “Maybe we’re out of propane,” I said. “Wade said he would call the propane guy to bring out a fresh tank, but I guess he forgot. Or the propane guy did.”

Which was completely out of character for either one of them; Wade was so reliable that if he didn’t show up when he’d said he would, you could be pretty sure he was dead. And once in the middle of winter, the propane guy—his one-man operation was called, appropriately enough, Mr. Propane—had strapped a tank to a snowmobile and driven it out here down the snow-choked forest road, delivering it on an hour’s notice.

True, there was an ice-fishing party going on at the time and the propane guy wanted in on it; Bella was frying the fish up as fast as people could catch them, and baking huckleberry pies.