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By Root 590 0

from beneath its wooden roof, and proceeded another fifty yards until reaching a break in the trees on his right. The large Caprice barely cleared brush on both sides as Pauling inched down a rutted path that had been washed out in spots, necessitating backing up and moving closer to bushes that scraped the sides of the car like fingernails on a blackboard. The outline of the cabin came into view in the headlights. Pauling stopped and studied the scene. A covered front porch ran the width of the building. It was one story, the door in the middle. Pauling then noticed that the road jogged to the right of the cabin and seemed to go behind it. He drove in that direction until passing the cabin on his left. Ahead of him was the river shown on the property map. He backed up, turned the wheel hard left, and maneuvered closer to the river, between two trees that would afford some cover for the car. He got out and approached the cabin, saw two wooden steps leading up to a back door. He went to it and tried the knob. Locked. A curtain over its glass portion obscured any view of the interior.

He went to the front of the cabin, his shoes coming out of the mud creating sucking sounds. He stepped onto the porch and opened a screen door, tried the handle of the solid inside door. It too was locked. Double-hung windows flanked the door. Pauling took out the Glock 17 and used the handle to smash one of the small panes of glass, reached through, turned the sash lock, and raised the bottom half of the window. He hunched over and stepped through the opening, his foot knocking over a small piece of furniture. Now inside, he strained to see in the room’s darkness. He always carried a small flashlight in his vest and tried a few pockets until coming up with it. The narrow beam showed a light switch on the wall just inside the door, but Pauling didn’t turn it on. Instead, he examined the space using the small light. It was one large room, with a Pullman kitchen at the far end. Next to it was the only door leading from the room. Pauling opened it and stepped into a cramped bathroom with a stall shower wedged into a corner.

He returned to the main room and looked through the window. No car lights—yet.

He used the time to see what else was in the room. A sleeper couch was on the front wall between the two windows. Battered green leather chairs occupied opposite corners. Above the couch, two fly rods rigged with reels and line hung from wooden pegs. In one corner, behind a chair, a gun cabinet contained four long guns, two rifles and two shotguns. Needs a woman’s touch, he thought absently.

He turned from the couch and played the light over the back wall. An eight-foot-long wooden chest sat next to a wood-burning stove. Pauling went to the chest and lifted the lid. Inside was an arsenal. Machine guns, grenades, what appeared to be a dozen handguns, two bulletproof vests, and hard and soft cases. He picked up an empty soft-sided case, approximately five feet long, made of canvas, with a heavy zipper. He dropped it into the chest, was about to close the lid when he saw a small pile of what appeared to be maps in a corner. He pulled them out and examined them. They were aeronautical flight charts for Boise, Idaho; San Jose, California; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; and Westchester County airport in New York.

He held the charts in one hand as he closed the lid and went into the small kitchen area, stopping on the way to unlock the cabin’s rear door and to slide open one end of a curtain covering the glass a few inches. He kicked broken glass from the front window under a chair, spread out the worst of his muddy footprints with the sole of his shoe, and sat on a tall wooden stool in front of the sink. The wind-whipped raindrops hitting the windows sounded like the marching of toy wooden soldiers, and the wind whistled down the chimney. He pulled the pistol from his vest pocket, turned off the pen-light, and waited.

Chapter 42

That Same Evening

West Virginia

How many different emotions can one experience in a compressed period of time? Jessica