In the yard Hal Brognola stopped to look at the cabin once more, as if his stare could will some message, a clue, of his family's whereabouts. He discerned on an outside wall of the lodge a sailboat, now disused, that he had fashioned out of driftwood for his son in earlier years. Hal's mind raced to the rooms inside, silent witnesses to adolescent dreams of sparkling water and buccaneers; rooms that kept secret tender endearments and the sounds of frenetic lovemaking on soft summer nights.

But what his eyes perceived instead made him take an involuntary step backward. The orange glow from lighted windows seemed to him a feral glare, the cabin's grim facade now mocking, taunting, slavering for blood. This refuge from the concrete jungle, Hal thought, this haven of love and happy times had betrayed him, surrendered his family to unspeakable and insidious evil.

Suddenly Hal Brognola felt a loathing for the place.

Shivering, although it was still warm, he stepped inside the cabin and called their names. Then he checked each empty room. But only silence greeted him, grating on his nerves like salt ground into an open wound.

Alternatives.

He had already wasted what — an hour? — tracking down the several low-risk possibilities. For peace of mind, if nothing else, the futile exercise had been an absolute necessity. That done, he recognized the need to search for answers on the darker side.

The cabin showed no evidence of any struggle. Clearly they had been here long enough to stow their luggage, and for Helen to begin unpacking. Food was waiting in the fridge, but they had not progressed as far as starting dinner. There, between the everyday parameters of settling in and sitting down to eat, must lie the extraordinary answer to the riddle of a lifetime. And Brognola realized with perfect certainty that everything depended on his own ability to solve that riddle quickly.

If there had been an accident, an injury to any of them, they would certainly have headed back to town. And if the station wagon had perhaps refused to start, they would have called an ambulance.