Dark Rivers of the Heart

Grant-"Spencer, wait!"-Roy had known that the dog must have sensed their presence.
        They had made no telltale noise, so it could only be the damned dog.
        Roy considered easing past the artist to the edge of the open door. He could try a shot to the head of the first person who came out of the stairwell.
        But it might be Grant. He didn't want to waste Grant until he had some answers from him. And if it was the woman who was shot dead on the spot, Steven wouldn't be as motivated to help extract information from his son as he would be if he knew that he could look forward to bringing her to a state of angelic beauty.
        Peach in. Green out.
        Worse: Assuming that the pair below were still armed with the submachine gun they had used to destroy the stabilizer of the chopper in Cedar City, and assuming that the first one across the threshold would be armed with that piece, the risk of a confrontation at this juncture was too great. If Roy missed with his attempted head shot, the burst of return fire from the Micro Uzi would chop him and Steven to pieces.
        Discretion seemed wise.
        Roy touched the artist on the shoulder and gestured for him to follow.
        'They could not quickly reach the open back of the cupboard and then slip through the pine cabinet doors into the room beyond, because to get there they would have to cross in front of the cellar stairs.
        Even if neither of the pair below was far enough up the stairs to see them, their passage through the center of the room, directly under the yellow light, would ensure that their darting shadows betrayed them.
        Instead, staying flat against the concrete blocks to avoid casting shadows into the room, they sidled away from the door to the wall directly opposite the entrance from the cupboard. They squeezed into the narrow space behind the displaced back wall of the cupboard, which Grant or the woman had rolled into the vestibule on a set of sliding-door tracks. 'That movable section was seven feet high and more than four feet wide. There was an eighteen-inch-wide hiding space between it and the concrete wall. Standing at an angle between them and the cellar door, it provided just enough cover.
        If Grant or the woman or both of them came into the vestibule and crept to the gaping hole in the back wall of the cupboard, Roy could lean out from concealment and shoot one or both of them in the back, disabling rather than killing them.
        If they came instead to look into the narrow space behind the dislocated guts of the cabinet, he would still have to try for a head shot before they opened fire.
        Peach in. Green out.
        He listened intently. Pistol in his right hand. Muzzle aimed at the ceiling.
        He heard the stealthy scrape of a shoe on concrete. Someone had reached the top of the stairs.
        Spencer remained at the bottom of the stairs. He wished that Ellie had given him a chance to go up there in her place.
        Three steps from the top, she paused for perhaps half a minute, listening, then proceeded to the landing at the head of the stairs.
        She stood for a moment, silhouetted in the rectangle of yellow light from the upper room, framed in the blue light of the lower room, like a stark figure in a modernistic painting.
        Spencer realized that Rocky had lost interest in the room above and had slipped away from his side. The dog was at the other side of the cellar, at the open gray door.
        Above, Ellie crossed the threshold and stopped just inside the vestibule. She looked left and right, listening.
        In the cellar, Spencer glanced at Rocky again. One ear pricked, head cocked, trembling, the dog peered warily into the passageway that led to the catacombs and on to the heart of the horror.
        Speaking to Ellie, Spencer said, "Looks like fur face is just having a bad case of the heebie-geebies."
        From the vestibule, she glanced down at him.
        Behind him, Rocky whined.
        "Now he's at the other door, ready to make a puddle if I don't keep looking at him."
        "Seems to be okay up here," she said, and she descended the stairs again.
        "The whole place spooks him, that's all," Spencer said. "My friend here is easily frightened by most new places. This time, of course, it's with damned good reason."
        He engaged the safety on the pistol and again tucked it under the waistband of his