One Door From Heaven

that the storm had adequately screened him from observers when he had captured the Hand. Even if other campers, at their windows, had been able to glimpse anything of significance in the bleak light and the occluding cloudburst, they would be likely to interpret what they'd seen as nothing more sinister than a father scooping up his errant child and carrying her through thunderclaps and thunderbolts to safety.
        As for the two women and the boy from that Fleetwood, he had no clue who they were or what they had been doing in his motor home. He doubted that they were associates of the Slut Queen, because if she'd come to Nun's Lake with backup, she probably wouldn't have stationed herself alone in the woods to watch the farmhouse.
        Whoever they were, they could not have gotten past the alarm system unless the Black Hole had let them inside. When Preston had left for the Teelroy farm, he'd told the stupid bitch to keep the Fair Wind buttoned up tight. In the past, she'd always done what he
        required oilier. 'Hint was the deal. She knew the deal well,;ill the paragraphs and subparagraphs and clauses, knew it as well as if it actually existed in a written form that she could study. It was a good deal for her, a dream contract, providing a fortune in drugs and a quality of life she couldn't otherwise have known, guaranteeing the aggressive and unrelenting dissolution for which she hungered. In spite of how crazy she was-crazy and venal and sick-she'd always upheld her end of the bargain.
        Occasionally, of course, the Hole stuffed herself with so many contraindicated chemicals that she didn't remember the deal any more than she remembered who she was. Those depths of indulgence rarely occurred this early in the day, but nearly always at night, when he usually arranged to be present to manage her with a whiff of this same homemade anesthetic if she could not be calmed by words or by a little physical force.
        He removed the cloth from the girl's face and threw it on the floor instead of bothering to return it to the plastic bag. She still groaned and rolled her head against the back of the seat, but the job was done: They had reached the turnoff to the Teelroy farm.
        THE DRIVING WIND gave way to hard shifting gusts that blew from more than one point of the compass, causing the door to rattle and bang against the side of the big Prevost, but still no one rushed to secure it.
        Drenched during the few seconds that he was exposed while racing from the car to the motor home, Noah Farrel entered cautiously but without pausing to knock. He ascended the steps, stood beside the co-pilot's seat. He listened to the door thumping behind him and to the mad drumming of the rain on the metal roof, seeking other sounds that might help him to analyze the situation, hearing nothing useful.
        An unfolded sofabed occupied most of the lounge. One lamp cast light down upon three hula dolls, two motionless and one rotating its hips, and sprayed light up on a dreamily smiling painted face that filled most of the ceiling.
        Disregarding the daylight, which settled as gray as a coat of wet ashes on the windows, the only additional illumination issued from the rear of the vehicle, past the open door to the bedroom. The light back there was subdued and red.
        Saturday afternoon, when he'd left Geneva Davis's place to do some final research on Maddoc and to pack a suitcase, and again this morning during his flight to Coeur d'Alene and then during his drive to Nun's Lake, Noah mulled over numerous approaches to the problem, each depending on different circumstances that he might encounter when he arrived here. None of his scenarios included this situation, however, and after all his mulling, he was forced to wing it.
        The first choice was whether to proceed silently or to announce his presence. He decided on the latter course. Affecting a jolly-fellow-camper voice, he called out, "Hello! Anybody home?" And when he got no reply, he eased past the sofabed, toward the galley. "Saw your door open in the rain. Thought something was wrong."
        More hula dolls on the dining-nook table. On the galley counter.
        He glanced toward the front of the Prevost. No one had entered behind him.
        Lightning flared repeatedly, and every window flickered like a television screen afflicted by inconstant reception. Ghostly faces, formed of shadows, swarmed the rain-smeared