“Just do it,” Dryden said. “Tell us what it is.”
“I told you where it is. Go see it for yourself if you want to know about it. You can walk right up to it. No one’s going to stop you.”
Before Dryden could respond to that, Rachel’s forehead furrowed, and she turned her head toward the cabin’s nearest wall.
“Who’s in the next room?” she asked.
Dryden ignored the question—that she was referring to someone in her dream was obvious, but to dwell on that for even a second would only further break the spell.
“Alright then,” Dryden said. “Tell us again where this thing is.”
Rachel stared at the wall a moment longer, her face still full of concern.
“Stop stalling, Rachel. Tell us.”
“Elias Dry Lake, in Utah.” She gave up on the wall and sank back onto the fabric of her sleeping bag. “It’s right there. You can’t miss it.”
“Keep talking,” Dryden said. “Tell us what’s there.”
A strange little smile turned up the corners of her mouth. If anything, it made her look more scared.
“What’s the point of threatening me now?” she whispered. “I already know what Gaul’s going to do to me. So do you guys.”
Dryden could see tremors running through her body. It was all he could do to keep from putting a hand on her shoulder.
“It must burn him up, though, right?” Rachel said. “He gets something as useful as me in his hands, and he doesn’t get to keep me? Someone else builds a new toy for themselves, and Gaul has to kill me because…” Rachel laughed; the sound of it crept under Dryden’s skin. How many times had he heard a prisoner laugh that same way, in the deep end of despair, holding on to bravado as if it were a punctured raft? “Because any time now they’re going to stop test driving that new toy and really give it the gas … and if I’m still alive when that happens … talk about a wrench in the gears—”
She cut herself off. All at once she looked confused. For a second Dryden expected her to open her eyes.
Then she said, “Who are you? Wait … Sam?”
Dryden spoke softly again. “Yeah, it’s me.”
“Who’s with you? Who’s in the next room?”
“There is no other room, Rachel.”
She started to reply, then stopped herself. She looked thoughtful. “I’m dreaming, right?”
“You’re dreaming,” Dryden said. No point trying to fool her now. “You’re dreaming there’s someone in the next room.”
Rachel shook her head. “I can hear a man thinking, but he’s not in my dream. He’s there with you. He’s right on the other side of that wall.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
In the fraction of a second it took Dryden to understand, everything changed.
Outside the cabin, feet scraped the dry ground as the intruder reacted to what Rachel had said, and then footsteps sprinted hard along the exterior wall. Sprinted toward the front of the structure, and its still-wide-open door.
Dryden came up from his sitting position beside Rachel, threw his body at the shelf next to the door, and had the SIG SAUER in his hand an instant later. He braced a palm on the door frame and shoved himself backward, dropping to a shooter’s stance in the middle of the floor.
In the next second a man appeared in the doorway.
A big man, silhouetted against the moonlit forest.
Holding a shotgun.
Dryden fired.
Three shots in rapid succession, into the figure’s chest from less than ten feet away.
Rachel woke, screaming.
The intruder dropped the shotgun and staggered backward. One foot went off the edge of the porch platform, and he fell on his back in the dirt.
Rachel called out Dryden’s name, groping around in the darkness, disoriented. Keeping the SIG and most of his attention on the fallen man outside, Dryden found Rachel’s flailing hand and held it.
“It’s okay,” he said. “I’m right here.”
He could hear her hyperventilating, trying to get control of herself. Waking up to gunshots was a hell of an alarm clock for anyone; he couldn’t imagine how it felt to a kid.
In his peripheral vision he saw Rachel sit up and look out through the doorway. The man was just visible outside. Dryden gave her hand a squeeze and then let go. He moved toward the dying man, ready to put another few shots into him at the first sign of movement. When he reached the door and got a full view past the lip of the rough platform, the SIG immediately felt heavier in his grip.
The man on the ground was a uniformed cop.
*
Implications flared in Dryden’s mind like muzzle flashes. Dots and connections, stitching together in rapid fire. He heard Rachel take a sharp breath in the dark behind him, picking up on what he’d seen.