Gurney paused to get his bearings. He began to form a picture of how the attic space related to the floor below. He had good spatial instincts and was confident that he’d soon be able to locate the portion of the attic that was above the suite bathroom.
After a few more angle and distance estimations, he made his way cautiously to a door on the far side of the extensive storage space.
Like the previous door, this one was an inch or two ajar. The overall surface bore a thick coating of dust, but the knob was clean.
“Is anyone there?”
The responding silence was so absolute it gave him a touch of gooseflesh—a feeling that was intensified by the high-pitched squeak of a hinge as he pushed the door open.
Reaching around the door jamb to grope for another light switch, he failed to find one. But he heard something that caused him to freeze. A soft sound. The sound of a single exhaled breath.
He stepped forward quickly into the dark room, then sidestepped a few yards along the inside wall. He dropped to one knee and pulled the Beretta from its ankle holster.
Peering fruitlessly into the near-total darkness, he thought he heard another breath, not as close to him as the first.
He remained perfectly still and waited.
A hint of movement caught his eye, so slight he wondered if he’d seen anything at all. Then he felt a movement of air and heard the sound of a door some distance away being eased shut.
Quietly he rose to his feet, holding the Beretta with its muzzle pointing up. After listening intently for at least another minute, he began moving tentatively in the general direction of the door he imagined to be on the opposite side of the room.
He’d taken no more than three or four steps forward when something touched his face. Startled, he jumped back, his free arm rising automatically into a defensive combat position.
As the seconds passed and his rational mind caught up with his reflexes, it dawned on him that what had touched his face was probably just another form of the switch he’d been looking for.
He reached out and wrapped his hand around a dangling pull cord.
He gave it a gentle yank. A pale light came on high in the timbered ceiling, drawing his attention upward—and delaying for a brief moment the paralyzing impact of what awaited him on the shadowy attic floor.
CHAPTER 40
With gleaming white fangs and glaring amber eyes, rough gray fur bristling and legs flexed for attack, a huge wolf was crouched less than ten feet from Gurney—a distance he knew could be erased instantly in a single leap.
Even with his gaze fixed on the beast, his hand tightening on the Beretta, he realized that the wolf was not alone.
There were four more, spread out in a loose semicircle behind the first, all with bared teeth and malevolent eyes, motionless, as if waiting for a signal.
Gurney absorbed all this as he was lowering his weapon to a firm and steady firing position. And then, as he was sighting down the barrel at the head of the feral monster in front of the pack, his finger settling into position on the trigger, he suddenly understood why the wolves confronting him were motionless.
They were all dead.
Dead, gutted, and preserved.
Their taxidermied bodies set in shockingly vivid attitudes of attack.
Their ferocity strangely undiminished by death.
Whoever had assembled this savage diorama was plainly a master of his peculiar art. But what was the diorama’s purpose? And for whom was it arranged?
Weren’t wolves a protected species in this part of the world? How long ago had they been killed? Who killed them? And why were they here in the lodge?
Engrossed in the questions raised by the presence of these . . . stuffed cadavers . . . Gurney was brought back to the moment and reminded of his purpose in the attic by the sight of a door on the far side of the room. Surely that was the door he’d sensed opening and closing in the darkness before he found the light pull.
With his weapon still in his hand, but with the safety back on, he stepped gingerly around the wolf pack, its fierce realism keeping him on edge, and headed for the door.
Before he got to it he was stopped by the sound of heavy footsteps approaching.
A moment later the door opened, and Austen Steckle stepped forward wielding a powerful LED flashlight.
The intense beam of light swept back and forth across the room, projecting shadows of the wolves across the floor and attic walls, coming finally to rest on the pistol in Gurney’s hand.
“Christ!” He raised the beam to Gurney’s face. “What the fuck’s happening here?”
Gurney blinked. “Get that out of my eyes!”
He held it in place until Gurney began to move toward him, then quickly lowered it. “Sorry. What’s the problem?”
“Did you pass anyone?”
“What?” He seemed honestly confused.
“Someone was in this room and left by that door less than a minute ago. Did you see or hear anyone?”
“Not as I was coming up.”
“What do you mean?”
“What I heard from all the way downstairs was someone calling out, ‘Is anyone there?’ A couple of times. Really loud. Sounded like something was wrong. Nobody’s supposed to be up here. This is not a public area.”
“That’s why I thought it was odd to be hearing footsteps up here.”
“What footsteps?”
“Footsteps over our bathroom. Slow, quiet, as though someone was trying not to be heard. You have any idea why someone would be creeping around up here?”
He shook his head, seeming to find the notion outlandish.
“Whoever it was, was just in this room. And left by that door less than a minute before you walked through it. You’re sure you didn’t see or hear anyone?”
“Not a soul, not a sound. Nothing.”
“This area is the part of the attic that would be directly over our suite, is that right?”
Steckle ran his free hand over his shaved scalp, which was sweating as usual, despite the attic chill. “It could be.”
“You’re not sure?”
“I got no reason to know what’s directly over what.”
“That door you came through—where does it lead?”
“Back stairwell, fire escape, ground floor, exit door, basement. Lot of places.” He paused. “If someone went out that way, that could be why I didn’t see him.”
Gurney slipped the Beretta into the back pocket of his jeans and gestured toward the crouching wolves, whose shadows continued to shift eerily on the wall with each movement of Steckle’s flashlight. “What’s the story with the private zoo?”
Steckle produced a harsh, guttural sound—one of the most unpleasant laughs Gurney had ever heard. “It’s a joke, is what it is.” He aimed his light beam at each of the wolves in a curiously deliberate way. “You heard about the crazy Gall legend?”
“You mean Dalton Gall being killed by wolves after dreaming about them?”
“Right. So Dalton’s son inherits the place. Elliman Gall. Big-game hunter. Mountain climber. All that shit. Wolves killed his father, so Elliman sees this as an opportunity to prove something. He kills a shit-load of wolves.”
There was a glint in Steckle’s eyes that suggested he wouldn’t mind killing a shitload of wolves himself. “He has a few of them stuffed. Puts the fucking wolves in the Hearth Room, for everyone to admire. Elliman Gall. Man in control.”
“I get the feeling this story has an unhappy ending.”
Again Steckle let out that eruptive hacksaw sound that passed for a laugh. “He gets the idea to plant the Gall family crest on the peak of Devil’s Fang. Big mountain climber, Elliman tries this in the middle of winter, horrible day like today, slips on the ice, falls eight hundred feet down the rock face, bounces off an outcropping on the way. They never found his head. Actually got ripped off on the way down.” Steckle grinned radiantly. “Shit happens, right?”