Vortex (13 page)

“Yeah?” she whispered.

“Karen, its Crystal. I’m sorry to bother you, but Penny’s very upset and—”

“Let me talk to her!” Penny said urgently near the phone.

“What’s wrong?” Karen whispered.

“I’m not sure,” Crystal said. “She says that something—oh, I’ll let you talk to her.” She sounded frustrated.

Penny said, “Karen, you’re at the ranch, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“You have to be very care—no, you have to get out of there.
Right now.
”

“What?”

“Just
leave.
Get
out
of there! Something
bad
is going to happen!”

“
What’s
going to happen?”

“I’m not sure, but something is—”

A black-gloved hand closed on the cell phone and snapped it shut.

Karen gasped and took a step backward. A man dressed in black, wearing a ski mask and holding a gun to her temple said quietly, “Come with me.”

P
enny cried out as she dropped the phone and stumbled backward so quickly, she nearly fell over. Her eyes were wide and glistening with pooling tears.

“What’s wrong?” Crystal said.

“They’ve got her.”

“
Who’s
got her?”

“
Them.
She was cut off. She’s in trouble. They’ve got her.” Crystal’s hands trembled as she picked up the phone. “Please calm down, Penny, and—”

“We have to do s’omething. Let’s get out there. Now!” Although she didn’t want to admit it, Crystal was
afraid
to drive out to the Mahler ranch. She had no doubt that Penny was right and something bad
was
happening out there—she didn’t want to get involved. But she was
already
involved and had little choice—she had to do something.

“At least call Gavin,” Penny said. “Let him know Karen is in trouble!”

She pressed a button on the phone, saying, “I don’t have Gavin’s number, but Martin has it. I’ll call him.”

Karen turned further to her left and saw that there were two men beside her. One held a gun to her head—he was the taller of the two by at least three inches—and the other stood behind him and to his right and held a gun down at his side. The men were dressed in identical black clothes and black ski masks.

“That way,” the first man said with a jerk of his head toward the white building several hundred yards away.

Karen started walking and the men followed her. The snow crunched beneath their feet. She appeared to be calm, but her mind was racing. She struggled to get a firm hold on her thoughts, organize them and sort through them methodically.

Gavin was so close, but so far. Her cell phone had been taken away from her. She was on her own. Her .38 was tucked into the waist of her jeans at the small of her back beneath her thick sweater and with the men behind her, reaching for it would be pointless at the moment.

You’ve winged it before
, she thought as the building drew closer.
Just remain calm and keep your eyes open for opportunities.

Karen heard a rhythmic, whispery sound to her left that rapidly grew louder. She turned her head and saw something moving over the snow toward them. Directly toward them. When she saw what it was, she blinked a couple of times and stumbled as she walked. And when she became certain of what it was and that it was deliberately coming straight for them, she stopped.

“Hey,” the tall man behind her said, “keep going, keep—”

“Wait a second,” the other man said.

“Is that a—”

“Holy shit.”

Karen turned her body to the left and glanced at the men as they raised their guns, but the mountain lion was moving fast,
very
fast, kicking up snow with its large paws, and its gaze was leveled not at them as a group, but directly at the taller of the two men, the man standing right next to her.

Both guns fired. Both missed.

Without uttering a sound, the cat sprang into the air as it lunged forward in a blur of fangs.

It hit the tall man, paws first, with a heavy sound of contact. He released a grunting burst of air when he hit the ground, then immediately began to scream. His arms flailed as the cat’s fangs tore at his face and throat and he fired his gun once before his hand opened and it dropped to the snow.

Karen kept a firm grip on her fear and shoved down a rising sense of panic so she could take everything in and take advantage of the situation.

The tall man kicked and flailed his arms and his screams collapsed into gargling sounds as the cat ripped his throat open. A deep red began to spread over the snow around his head.

His companion aimed his gun at the mountain lion and fired once, a second time, then a third. The lion fell sideways, its snout bloodied, then tried to get up again. The man fired again.

While he was doing that, Karen drew her .38, aimed at the man and fired twice.

He went down as the cat continued to struggle and the tall man went on writhing and gurgling.

Her mind reeled as she processed what had just happened. In broad daylight, a mountain lion had run across a snowy field with clear intent, its attention focused solely on the taller of the two men escorting Karen to the lab, and had attacked him without making a sound. It was surreal.

He can make people think things
, Penny had said of Pyk.
And do things. Even things they don’t want to do, things they’d
never
do otherwise. He’s very powerful.

If he could do that to people, it seemed reasonable that he could do it to a wild animal.

He knows I’m here
, Karen thought.
And he knows
why
I’m here. He’s protecting me.

Karen turned and ran toward the house.

By then, others were running toward her from the lab and the two motorhomes. She could hear their feet hitting the snow fast, getting closer.

The crack of a gun cut through the cold air and a fiery pain exploded in Karen’s back just below her left shoulder. After that, bits of time seemed to drop out of her consciousness. She didn’t remember falling but was suddenly face-down in the snow. An instant later, she was being lifted off the ground. Then she was being carried. Then she was indoors. And the pain was exquisite.

“I don’t understand why you’ve come to me,” Mahler said. “I’ve told you nothing you couldn’t have gotten from many sources. Who was it that recommended that you come see me?”

Gavin was tired. He’d been listening to Mahler drone on about the reasons he had come to Mt. Shasta, which included a lot of his mostly self-styled New Age beliefs in the mountain as a vortex of purifying energy that has been drawing seekers since the dawn of man. He wasn’t getting anything useful out of Mahler and only hoped Karen was managing to accomplish something outside the house.

“A couple of people in town this morning,” Gavin said. “We were asking around and your name came up a couple of times.”

Mahler’s bushy steel-colored eyebrows gathered over his straight nose and he shook his head slightly. “I don’t really know anyone in town. I pretty much keep to myself. I don’t understand why they would—”

“Ah, don’t be silly, August,” Mrs. Mahler said. “The man came to ask you some questions, what’s wrong with that?” The old man’s smile was hesitant. “Yes, yes, I didn’t mean to be inhospitable, I just... well.”

“Is your friend all right?” Mrs. Mahler asked Gavin. “She seems to have been in the bathroom for some time, now.”

“Um, she was having some indigestion after breakfast.”

“Ah. Perhaps that’s it. Should I go check on her?”

“No, I’m sure she’s—”

Gavin’s phone chirped in his pocket. It was Burgess. “Gavin, where are you?”

“I’m at the home of the Mahler’s in Mt. Shasta and were—

“Is Karen with you?”

“She’s... well, she’s not in the room with me at the moment.”

“She’s gone investigating on her own, hasn’t she?”

“Yes.”

“Well, she’s in trouble. You need to get to her right away.”

“What? How do you—I don’t understand.”

“Crystal called me. Penny’s coming out of her skin. She says something bad is going on there and that Karen is in big trouble. They talked to Karen briefly on the phone but something interrupted their conversation. Penny insists that Karen is in danger. Seriously, Gavin, you need to—”

A rush of noise and movement startled Gavin and the Mahlers. Gavin stopped listening to Burgess as footsteps rushed down the hall and four men came into the kitchen. They wore black clothes, gloves, ski masks and carried guns. One of them raised his gun and aimed at it Gavin’s head. “Hang up the phone,” he said. “Now!”

Gavin closed the phone and put it on the table.

Mahler pounded a fist on the table and began to stand up, chin jutting, mouth curled into a snarl.

Gavin reached across the table and grabbed Mahler’s forearm. “Just sit down, August. Don’t say anything. Just sit down and let’s do as they say.”

Gavin flinched when he heard gunshots outside. He recognized the sound—there was no doubt that guns were being fired. More than one. The distinctive cracks of gunfire occurred close together in a cluster, stopped, then a moment later, there were a couple more. Then silence.

Mahler’s eyes met Gavin’s. He knew it was gunfire, too.
Karen
, Gavin thought as his insides tightened with fear. The masked man who was aiming his gun at Gavin stepped forward. “You the one who came with the woman?” Gavin nodded.

“Get up. Come with us.”

“
I
can’t drive any faster,” Crystal said. “It’s snowing, the road is slick and if I drive any faster, we might not get there at all.”

Penny fidgeted in the passenger seat.

“Take a few deep breaths, honey. Try to relax, okay? You’re gonna, like, make yourself sick, or something, and that—” Crystal gasped when a cat darted across the road in front of her car. She reflexively stamped her foot on the brake pedal and the car swerved as the tires slid over the road. She quickly let up on the brake and corrected with the steering wheel. Once she had the car under control, she released a long, loud sigh.

“See what I mean?” she said. “Just try to relax, Penny. We’ll get there.”

A while after the gunfire outside, Ryker’s cell phone trilled. Preston, one of his security men, informed him breathlessly and in a hoarse voice that the female intruder had been shot and was in custody in the lab. The Mahler house was under control and Ryker instructed that the male intruder be brought to the motorhome. He slapped the cell phone closed before Preston was finished talking—he’d heard all he needed to hear. Ryker wanted to keep the two intruders apart for the time being.

“Marjorie, please take Stewart into the bedroom,” Ryker said. “Stay there until I call you. I have to step out for a moment, but someone is going to be brought here while I’m gone. When I return, Stewart, I want you to read him for me and tell me who he is, why he’s here and who sent him. Will you do that for me?”

Stewart nodded. He was still frowning.

“Don’t you
ever
smile, Stewart?” Ryker asked.

“Almost never,” Marjorie said.

“Okay, into the bedroom with both of you. I’ll be back soon.”