Satisfied, she lit the way for Jim and sidestepped, keeping her back near the wall.
He could heave Cora right off here, she thought.
Finley’d probably shoot him, though.
Hell, he’s been untied for hours. He’s had plenty of chances to jump us. Or make a break for it. He’s in on it with us, just like he says.
Unless it’s just that he’s scared of the shotgun.
Scared of his big brother, Hank, that’s what he is. Wants us to do the dirty work for him.
And Finley’ll be glad to comply.
‘Okay,’ Cora said. ‘This is far enough.’
Abilene halted only a few strides from the end of the balcony. Jim lowered Cora. She released her hold, got her good foot on the floor, pivoted and grabbed the top of the split log railing.
‘This’ll be perfect,’ she said.
Vivian squeezed past Finley. She and Jim clutched Cora by her upper arms and eased her down. She sat with her legs outstretched and hooked an arm around one of the uprights.
Finley brought the shotgun to Abilene. ‘Keep us covered, okay?’
‘Don’t mess around down there. He might be anywhere.’
‘Won’t take long.’ She started away. ‘Let’s go,’ she said, and gave Jim a pat on the flank. Vivian went first, lighting the way.
Abilene watched the three of them hurry along the balcony. She lowered the shotgun until its stock bumped softly against the floor. Its barrels felt cool and slippery in her hand. She hoped she wouldn’t need to use it, but knew that she could if she had to. Her dad, immersed in the lore of the Old West, had trained her not only in the art of the quick-draw, but in how to hit what she aimed with sixgun, rifle and shotgun. He’d even taken to calling her ‘Dead-eye.’
Good thing Finley never caught wind of that, she thought as she watched her friends descend the stairs, Jim between them.
They came back through the lobby, the light swinging from side to side like the headbeam of a miniature locomotive. Abilene kept her eyes on it, half expecting it to reveal Hank leaping out from behind a support.
Then the light darted up at her. She squinted and turned her face away from its glare.
‘Right about there’s fine,’ Cora said.
The light slid away. Abilene stepped closer to the railing and looked down. They were directly below her, eight or ten feet beyond the balcony’s overhang.
Jim leaned back against a support beam. He hitched up his drooping cut-offs, then put his arms behind the post. Finley pulled a rope from a front pocket of her shorts. The one they’d used before? The last time Abilene had seen that rope was when she’d untied Jim down in the outside pool.
Maybe someone had gone to get it while she’d been asleep.
One more thing I missed, she thought.
Finley stepped behind the post. Vivian aimed the light back there while Finley tied Jim’s hands.
‘Not too tight,’ Vivian said.
‘I know, I know.’ When she was done, she asked Jim, ‘How’s that?’
‘I guess okay.’
‘If it was any looser, it’d fall right off.’
‘It’s okay.’
‘All right. Good luck.’ She gave Jim’s shoulder a squeeze.
She's sure done a turn-around, Abilene thought as Finley followed Vivian back toward the stairway. Not so long ago, she’d attacked Jim in the pool and even threatened to kill him. Now she was treating him like a pal.
She must’ve finally decided he really is on our side.
Or maybe she’d started to find herself attracted to him.
Wouldn’t be the first time she’d gotten the hots for a young stranger.
He was a dim shape down there against the post. Even with his deep tan, his skin seemed pale compared to his cut-offs and the darkness around him. He had a strip of very white skin below his waist. Because of the way his shorts hung crooked, it was narrow at one hip and got much wider as it crossed his belly.
Abilene supposed she couldn’t blame Finley for warming up to the guy.
He was slim and handsome and you sure couldn’t miss the fact that he wasn’t wearing much. On top of that, he’d apparently spent all his years in the wilds. There was something of the primitive savage about him. But he seemed vulnerable, shy and friendly.
Also, you couldn’t help but feel a litde sorry for him. His whole family was dead except for his maniac of a brother. A freak who makes Jim lick his eyes and does God-knows-what-else to him. Molests him, apparently.
He’d had a tough, strange life.
Part of you feared the wildness in him. Part of you wanted to hug and comfort him. Part of you wanted to slip that rope suspender off his shoulder and climb all over him.
No wonder, really, that Finley had started treating him nice.
Abilene switched her flashlight on. She aimed its beam down at Jim. He squinted up at her. His skin was gleaming as if slick with oil. ‘Are you doing okay?’ she asked.
‘Yeah. Thanks.’
Then Finley and Vivian were coming along the balcony. Abilene turned off her flashlight. She gave the shotgun to Finley.
Finley stepped past her, leaned against the railing and peered down.
Vivian lowered herself to the floor on the other side of Cora.
Abilene sat cross-legged near Cora’s feet. Gazing between the uprights, she could see Jim down below lashed to his post like a prisoner of Indians about to be tortured or burned at the stake.
Or like a witch waiting for the same kind of end.
A male witch is called a warlock, she thought.
She wondered what that made Batty.
And felt a tremor as she remembered Batty’s threat to kill them all. Get me plenty a fresh items for m’stock. Including one of Finley’s breasts. I’ll cut me this one right off.
This is all bad enough without thinking about that, she told herself.
I broke Batty’s arm. He can’t hurt us. She can’t. It can’t. Unless with magic…
Forget it.
Just worry about Hank.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
The windows at the front of the lobby, which had been rectangles of dim gray a short while ago, now were nearly black. Abilene watched them through the gaps between the uprights of the balcony railing. She tried to watch the door, too. She knew just where it ought to be, but she couldn’t see it.
I’ll see it if it opens, she thought. It’ll let in darkness, but that’s bound to be brighter than what we’ve got in here.
She doubted that Hank would enter the lodge from the front, anyway.
Sometimes, she scanned the long room below her from the foot of the stairway to the fireplace at the other end. Not that she could see the stairway or the fireplace. All that she could really make out, down there, were the vague shapes of the support beams. Probably a dozen of them. A few were visible against the lesser darkness of the windows. She could distinguish the others, just barely, because they seemed to be a shade lighter than the wood of the walls and floorboards. A very slight degree of a shade lighter, so that they almost seemed not to be there at all, and appeared to melt away if she tried too hard to see them.
She didn’t like looking at those posts. Didn’t like it at all. The way they shifted and vanished. The way she kept expecting someone, hiding among them, to slide into view and scurry from one to another.
Every so often, when her nerves needed a rest from the vigil, she looked at Jim.
Some time ago, he’d slid down the beam and sat on the floor.
She could see him there, now, his legs stretched out. Only his bare skin was visible, blurred and dusky. His head hung forward so that his dark hair concealed his face. Where his cut-off jeans covered him, he didn’t appear to be there at all. He looked like a torso and legs, as if the section from just below his hips to partway down his thighs had been severed and thrown away.
Not a pretty idea, she thought.