David Morrell - Double Image

He dropped back farther, hoping that the increasingly difficult driving conditions would make his sluggish pace seem appropriate. But Walt slowed also. Don’t tell me he figured out who’s behind him, Coltrane thought in alarm. Walt slowed more. Jesus. Then Walt’s right signal light flashed, and the Mountaineer headed up a road. At first there were cottages, then only snow-laden pine trees. After a quarter mile, Walt steered to the left up a lane. By the time Coltrane reached the turnoff, the Mountaineer had disappeared.

He eased to a stop and stared out his driver’s window toward the tracks leading up the lane, toward the curtain of snowflakes that prevented him from seeing past the trees. Is this where Walt was headed, or did he notice me and he’s trying to lead me where there’ll be only the two of us?

The falling snow made a hissing sound, beginning to fill the tracks. So what’s it going to be? Coltrane brooded. If I wait too long, there won’t be any tracks to follow. He shut off the car, put on his hat, gloves, and scarf, adjusted the neck strap on his camera so that the camera was under his ski jacket, then zipped up the jacket and got out of the car.

The cold had deepened. It didn’t matter. Finding Tash mattered. Getting answers mattered. He followed the tracks along the tree-flanked road. The snow came up to his ankles, an inch away from the top of his thick leather hiking boots. The increasingly heavy flakes brushed against his eyelids, making him blink repeatedly. Wary, he studied the drift-covered undergrowth on each side in case Walt might be hiding there. Then the road reached a Y; the tracks headed to the right, and Coltrane followed them nervously.

Except for the hiss of the snow and the muffled tread of his footsteps, the late afternoon was totally silent. Dusk thickened. He went another fifty paces before he lurched to a stop, a huge shadow towering over him, lights punctuating it. This isn’t a road, he realized with a start. I’m on a driveway. I’ve reached a house.

A CABIN, he corrected himself, although it certainly looked as sizable as a house: two stories, a roofed porch, a massive chimney. He barely took in these details before he ducked off the driveway into the cover of the pine trees and waited uneasily for any indication that he had been spotted. After a minute passed and the only sound was the intensifying hiss of the falling snow, he slowly rose and took a harder look at the cabin, or as much of it as he could see through the snowfall. The cabin’s base was built from huge rocks held together by concrete. Mortared logs formed the rest of the structure, except for the chimney, and two others that now became apparent, all made from the same huge stones along the cabin’s base. Solid, substantial.

Keeping to the trees, he eased along the edge of the clearing, all the while studying the cabin. The porch continued along the right side. A small balcony projected from the second story. The roof was sharply peaked. A small structure to the side had tire tracks leading into it.

I’m still too exposed, he thought. Even with the snow falling, if I can see the cabin, someone inside can see me .

So what? Now that you’ve found Tash, what difference does it make if you’re seen? Go up on the porch and pound on the front door. Demand to know what’s going on.

But I don’t know for certain Tash is in there. Just because I saw Walt go into the post office, that doesn’t mean he has the same PO box she does. She might be staying in town or at another cabin. If I barge in on Walt and he’s all by himself, what’s that going to look like?

A shadow moved beyond a window, prompting Coltrane to tense. He backed deeper into the forest and relaxed only when the falling snow prevented him from seeing the cabin. The time was a little before five. Dusk, intensified by the weather, became more pronounced. It would soon be dark. The thing to do is find a place to hole up and wait, he thought. It’s not like I haven’t been in snow in the mountains before.

Sure, in Bosnia.

The thought startled him. Where the hell did that come from? Pushing it away, he glanced around and saw a wooded slope behind him. From its top, he would have a vantage point on the cabin as soon as the weather lifted. A drift spilled over the tops of his hiking boots, but his wool socks kept most of it from chilling his ankles. Breathing rapidly from the unaccustomed altitude, he arrived on the bluff, assumed he was in line with the unseen cabin, and took shelter beneath the snow-laden boughs of a fir tree. Its limbs were bent over him in a tent shape.

Again, he had the feeling that he’d done this before.

In Bosnia.

I haven’t come far, he dismally thought.

AT SIX, the weather moved on. Stars glistened. Moonlight sparkled off drifts, as did lights from the cabin, now visible below him. His cold-pinched nostrils were pinched even more by the smell of smoke that drifted from the biggest chimney. It was the only imperfection in the Norman Rockwell homeyness of what he saw.

Muscles compacting, he noticed someone move beyond the lamp glow in a window down there. Even though he was confident that the illumination in the house would make the windows like mirrors and prevent anyone from seeing him in the night-cloaked forest, he reflexively crouched behind a fir-tree branch, peering cautiously over its snow-covered needles. At a distance of what he judged to be a hundred yards, he couldn’t make out who was at the window, so he hurriedly unzipped his ski jacket, pulled out his camera, and rezipped the jacket against the cold that attacked his chest. He fumbled with a gloved hand to remove the camera’s lens cap, pocketing it. He peered through the viewfinder and simultaneously held his breath so that frost from his mouth wouldn’t waft up and cloud his vision. Then he zoomed in on the window, adjusted the focus, and felt his chest turn cold again when he saw Walt facing the window, looking down at something, making a stirring motion.

Walt wore a red checked shirt. The magnification of the camera wasn’t strong enough to reveal the slight scar above his right eyebrow, but the sand color of his mustache was readily discernible. Walt turned to his right, Coltrane’s left, and spoke to someone. With the zoom lens at its maximum, Coltrane concentrated on Walt’s lips but couldn’t read them. Someone came into view at a sliding glass door farther to the left. Coltrane aimed the camera in that direction, and if he hadn’t already held his breath to avoid clouding the viewfinder, he would have done so now, for what he saw made his soul ache.

Wearing jeans and a gray rag-wool sweater that accentuated her lush hair hanging loosely, framing her heartbreakingly beautiful features, Tash had both hands gripped around a coffee mug. Coltrane so projected himself within her that his hands could feel the heat from the mug. She looked out at the snow-covered porch, then turned to speak to Walt, who moved toward her, his imposing body close to her. She was tall, but he was taller. He placed his large hands on her shoulders in a gesture of domination. She returned his stare.

He kissed her.

Coltrane flinched, almost charged from cover, almost raced toward the porch. But shock overwhelmed him. He heard a click and whir, and discovered that he had taken a photograph. What am I seeing? he thought. Walt’s hands remained on her shoulders. She made no effort to set down the coffee cup and embrace him. She didn’t move her head to avoid his kiss, but she didn’t accept it, either.

Walt studied her. He asked her a question. Whether Tash’s response was one of rejection or affection, Coltrane couldn’t tell.

I need to get closer. Not caring whether his tracks would be seen in the morning, Coltrane responded to his sense of urgency and headed down the slope. Failing to look down, he stumbled over a snow-covered log and barely managed not to fall. With a lurch that jarred him, he came to the bottom half-running and strained to avoid tree limbs he scraped past. Frantic, he took slower steps and at last came to a stop, alarmed by how forceful his breathing was, how fierce his heartbeat.