Stephen Gallagher - The Boat House

"About a mile out, still moving."

A couple of seconds later, they heard Diane reporting on the same channel. She said that she and McCarthy hadn't seen anything yet, either.

Marinello said, "I don't like it. I don't know what's going on, but I haven't seen anything to warrant any of this." The whole car dropped with a jolt as they hit a bad pothole, and the engine complained as Ivie changed down a gear to get them out of it. The Rover was an ex army model, unbelievably old and not fit for much more than carrying small parties up to the shooting butts. Marinello added, as Ivie was changing back up again, "I think we're being set up, here."

"For what?"

"I don't know. But say they've got a situation, the four of them, and now everything's gone wrong and nobody's thinking straight. Can't you just see it?"

"I suppose it's possible."

"What do they think we are? Stupid?"

Ivie couldn't say that he was as fully convinced as Marinello seemed to be, but he didn't have any evidence that he could offer for his doubts.

But he'd heard that whispering, on the stairs. And he'd seen the way that the waitress had been looking at the child.

Aldridge said that he'd seen her in action, and perhaps this was the same kind of thing. If you hadn't been there, it was impossible to explain.

Ivie suddenly hit the brakes, and then started to reverse.

"I saw something," he said.

What he'd seen proved to be the glint of a hubcap, lying in the grass beyond a gatepost a few yards back. The post itself was leaning, the wood splintered and showing fresh… as if somebody inexperienced in a big, unfamiliar car had taken the entrance too fast.

"I'll call," Ivie said, reaching for the radio.

"No," Marinello said abruptly. "Let's be sure we get to her before anyone else does."

And so instead of calling, he hauled on the wheel to turn the heavy vehicle into the driveway.

Ivie recognised the track. It led out to the old trap shooting range where Diane had sometimes come to practice. It was all overgrown now, but another car had been here ahead of them and it had passed by fairly recently.

They came to the limousine about a hundred yards further on, around the bend and out of sight of the main track. Ahead of it was the clearing for the range with its group of small, weathered silver wooden huts. The limo's side had been damaged and its rear bumper had been torn halfway loose; the driver's door was wide open and at a strange angle.

There was nobody inside it, or anywhere around.

They stopped the Rover, and got out. The woodland was strangely quiet — no birdsong, even. Marinello didn't seem worried, but he took the shotgun anyway. He'd told Ivie that he was keeping the safety on, almost as if in concession to their shared doubts.

"What's her name?" Marinello said. "Can you remember?"

"Anna, I think."

"Not Anna," Marinello said. "More unusual. Anya. No… Alina." And then he turned and cupped his hands and called through them to the entire forest. "Hey, Alina," he called, "You can come out, we're not going to hurt you. We know you haven't done anything." He waited for a while, and then carried on, "It's either us, or the others. You know what it means if they find you?"

More silence.

"She could be well away by now," Ivie suggested, half hoping.

"Last chance!" Marinello called, almost shouting himself hoarse this time.

And just as it was starting to seem that Ivie was right, she stepped out of cover.

She'd been around behind one of the huts, not so far away; she was shoeless, looking lost and scared, and she was shivering in her lightweight cotton dress even though it wasn't particularly cold. Tony Marinello started toward her immediately. Glancing back over his shoulder, he said, "God, look at the state of her. Get that car rug out of the back, Bob."

He was already striding out toward her. She looked every bit as bleak and as lost as that child back there in the Hall; Ivie was now thinking that his fears and his suspicions were showing themselves to be formless, finding no reflection in this reality at all.

Marinello had reached Alina and put his arm around her shoulders. The shotgun was over his other forearm. He'd broken it open for extra safety, and the empty barrel was pointing at the ground. They were walking back toward the Rover.

Ivie gave himself a shake. What could he have been thinking of? He turned away and reached into the back of the Rover for the checkered wool travelling blanket that lay folded on one of the vinyl benches. It would be musty, but it would do for now. As he was bringing it out, he glanced at the radio that was hanging from the mirror bracket.

" No, I don't think so, " Ivie muttered, and turned back to meet the others.

Marinello was in trouble.

He'd fallen to his knees after covering only half of the return distance, and now it was Alina who was showing concern for him. The shotgun lay on the ground where he'd dropped it, a few strides back. Ivie started to run forward. As he did Marinello looked up, purpling, eyes literally starting to bulge in a manner so unnatural that it was almost fascinating; he started to raise his hand in a gesture of appeal, asking for Ivie's help in something that he simply couldn't understand.

Alina looked up, too.

Ivie saw the green fire in her eyes, and a new and frightening intensity in her attitude; he knew then that everything had been a sham, that his first instincts had been the only correct ones, and that Aldridge had been telling the truth even though he hadn't been telling it all. Ivie realised all of this in the time that it took for Alina to cover the distance between them.

She struck at him, her hand as hard and flat as a blade, but the rug that he was holding took the main force of the blow. He threw it at her and ran for the Rover, flat out and feeling his age. He'd wondered for maybe a half second about reaching the gun, but knew that he had no chance. Why couldn't he have bagged it way back at the very beginning? Fortunately the door was still open, and he dived straight for the radio and snatched it down with a force that snapped the bracket and brought the mirror along as well.

He fumbled for the transmission switch. He tried to say She's here, we've got her…

But instead it came out as, "She's got us!"

A hand suddenly grabbed his collar, and in a show of immense strength he was hauled out of the Rover backwards. His head clipped the top of the door arch, hard.

This was all that he knew.

Pete's heart started to sink when he heard the garbled call. He'd deliberately done his best to bag the lakeside part of the search, citing the Zodiac's condition as his reason but really believing that it would give him his best chance of finding Alina before Aldridge could. Now he realised that he was not only wrong, but he was also trapped; he had the lake on one side and a new wire fence on the other, and there wasn't enough road for him to make a turn.

"Keep going," Diane suggested. "According to the estate plan, there's supposed to be a track somewhere ahead. It'll take us up to meet the forest road."

"I just hope it isn't too rough," Pete said. "She weighs half a ton and she steers like a tank, but there the resemblance ends." And he put on as much speed as he was able, which wasn't much with the edge of the banking only inches away.

After half a minute, Diane said, "Coming up. See it?"

"Gotcha," Pete said, and made the turn.

The track hadn't been used in years. It soon narrowed and became overgrown, with long grass in a mohican strip up the centre where tyres had never worn it down. It whipped at the underside of the car as Pete changed all the way down into first gear and still had trouble making the slope.