Snowbound

Fifteen

At the approximate point where he and Tribucci had first entered the wind-combed trees, Cain stopped against the bole of one fir and studied the area. The tracks they had made coming across the sloping snowfield had been partially obliterated by the storm; through the flurries he could make out nothing except the dark outlines of cottage and church, the vague illumination of the church’s stained-glass side windows.

With his gloved fingers opening and closing steadily, agitatedly, around the butt of the Walther PPK, he started down and across the open area. The wind shoved harshly at his back, bending him forward from the waist, and the tails of his coat flapped against his legs like the wings of a fettered bird. Firn crackled and crunched beneath his boot soles. He kept his head up, watching the cottage looming ahead, breathing shallowly.

Long moments later he reached the rear of the attached garage, took the gun out of his pocket, and went along the building’s southern, front wall. Icicles hung from its eaves like pointed giant’s teeth; shutters closed across one of the facing windows rattled loudly above the storm’s querulous skirling. Cain stopped at the forward corner, and from there he could see the gray-black opening of the glassless belfry window and the ice-coated rope hanging down out of it; but neither was discernible from any distance.

Crossing to the church, he edged slowly and carefully toward the front. When he had come midway, he could see all of the near third of the parking lot. Three cars, each of them shrouded in white, were parked nose up against log brakes set on a line with the church’s southern wall. Snow had built little ledges on the sills of their windshields and near passenger windows, and was frozen to the glass itself in streaks and spatters.

Cain went another dozen steps, and two more cars came within range of his vision-both parked with their front bumpers extending to the edge of the church walk, one in the center of the lot and the other down near Sierra Street. Their windows, too, were like blind white eyes. Within a foot of the corner, he squatted and leaned his left shoulder on the icy boarding and stretched out just enough so that he was able to see the area immediately fronting the church. One last car, as frozen and abandoned-looking as the other five.

A muscle in his left leg began to cramp with cold, and Cain straightened up again. A guard in one of those cars would logically keep at least one window facing the church clear of snow and ice, so he could watch the entrance doors; too, it was likely he’d have the engine running and the heater and defroster on, with a wing open or window rolled partway down to circumvent the threat of carbon monoxide poisoning. There were no puffs of exhaust smoke, no sounds above the wind, no car windows open or clear. No other sheltered place in the vicinity. No tracks anywhere.

No guard.

Okay, Cain thought. Okay.

He craned his head forward a second time and swept his gaze over the parking lot, Sierra Street and the wind-shaped drifts in the meadow beyond. The lights shining farther into the village were all there was for him to see; the snow flurries continued to place visibility in a constant flux. Pulling back, he tugged the fur hat down tighter over his ears and rubbed at his cold-deadened face. The wiry beard hairs were like brittle threads of ice, and he imagined that in the rubbing he had depilitated part of the growth. He swallowed a nervously humorless laugh, shook himself mentally to keep his thoughts in tight check.

How do we deploy when Tribucci gets back? he asked himself. One of us here, one of us by that car nearest the entrance? That seemed the best way to do it, all right. They would be separated, but not so far apart that one would be unable to offer protection for the other or to minimize the potential advantage of a crossfire. And they would be positioned at the closest possible points to the doors, so as to guard the entrance fully and effectively. They’d have to figure a way to cover the tracks from here to the car, though; they couldn’t afford to wait for the storm to do it. Maybe there was something they could use in the cottage-a whisk broom, a trowel, something.

The wind began to gust, whistling mournfully, sweeping snow in misty sheets down close to the ground. Cain bunched the collar of his coat tighter against his throat with his left hand, repocketed the gun with his right. Minutes passed. Again he checked the area fronting the church; again he saw nothing. His feet were so achingly chilled now that he had almost no feeling in his toes; he lifted first one leg and then the other, like a man doing calisthenics in slow motion, to keep the blood circulating. The movement of time seemed to have slowed down to an inert crawl, as if the bitterly cold night had managed to wrap it, too, in a cloak of ice Time, Cain thought.

Abruptly he pushed back the left sleeve of his coat and squinted at the luminous numerals of his watch. It was seven five. Tribucci had said it would take him less than half an hour to get the guns from his brother’s house and return here, but it was nearly forty-five minutes since they had parted in the wood. If nothing had happened, he should have been here by now. If nothing had happened…

The clot of anxiety under Cain’s breastbone expanded. He made one last quick and fruitless reconnaissance of Sierra Street and then hurried back to the rear corner and across to the cottage and along its facade again to the garage corner. He stared beyond the snowfield at the trees: black-and-white emptiness everywhere.

Where was he?

Where was Tribucci?