Seize the Night

Like most of the surrounding buildings, this one was rectangular, with thirty-foot-high corrugated-steel walls rising from a concrete foundation to a curved metal roof. At one end was a roll-up door big enough to admit cargo-laden trucks, it was closed, but beside it, a man-size door stood wide open.
    Previously bold, Orson became hesitant as he approached this entrance.
    The room past the threshold was even darker than the serviceway around us, which itself was illuminated only by starlight. The dog seemed not entirely to trust his nose to detect a threat in the warehouse, as if the scents on which he relied were filtered beyond detection by the very thickness of the murk inside the place.
    Keeping my back to the wall, I sidled along the building to the doorway.
    I stopped just short of the jamb, with my pistol raised and the muzzle pointed at the sky.
    I listened, holding my breath, nearly as silent as the dead except for the faint gurgle of my stomach, which continued to work on a pre-midnight snack of jack cheese, onion bread, and jalapeńo peppers.
    If anyone waited to ambush me just inside the entrance, he must actually have been dead, because he was even quieter than I was.
    Whether he was dead or not, his breath was no doubt sweeter than mine.
    Though Orson was as difficult to see as a flow of ink across wet black silk, I watched as he stopped short of the entrance. After a hesitation that struck me as being full of puzzlement, he turned away from the door and ventured a few steps across the serviceway toward the next building.
    He, too, was silent—no tick of claws on paving, no panting, not even any digestive noises—as though he were only the ghost of a dog. He peered intently back the way we'd come, his eyes dimly revealed by a reflection of star shine, the faint white points of his bared teeth were like the unsettling phosphorescent grin of an apparition.
    I didn't feel that his hesitancy was caused by fear of what lay ahead of us. Instead, he no longer seemed to be certain where the trail led.
    I consulted my wristwatch. Each faintly blinking second marked not only the passage of time but the fading of Jimmy Wing's life force.
    Almost certainly not taken for ransom, he had been seized to satisfy dark needs, perhaps including savageries that didn't bear consideration.
    I waited, struggling to suppress my vivid imagination, but when Orson finally turned again to the open door of the warehouse without indicating any greater confidence that our quarry was inside, I decided to act. Fortune favors the bold. Of course, so does Death.
    With my left hand, I reached for the flashlight tucked against the small of my back. Crouching, I entered the doorway, crossed the threshold, and scuttled quickly to the left. Even as I switched on the flash, I rolled it across the floor, a simple and perhaps foolish ruse to draw gunfire away from me.
    No gunfire erupted, and when the flashlight rolled to a stop, the stillness in the warehouse was as deep as the silence of a dead planet with no atmosphere. Somewhat to my surprise, when I tried to breathe, I could.
    I retrieved the flashlight. Most of the warehouse was given over to a single room of such length that the beam didn't penetrate from one end to the other, it even failed to reach halfway across the much narrower width of the building to illuminate either side wall.
    As I scythed away the shadows, they regrew immediately after the beam passed, lusher and blacker than ever. At least no looming adversary was revealed.
    Looking more doubtful than suspicious, Orson padded into the light and, after a hesitation, seemed to dismiss the warehouse with a sneeze.
    He headed toward the door.
    A muffled clang broke the silence elsewhere in the building. The cold acoustics caused the sound to resonate along the walls of this cavernous chamber, lingering until the initial hard metallic quality softened into an eerie, whispery ringing like the voices of summer insects.
    I switched off the flashlight.
    In the blinding dark, I felt Orson return to my side, his flank brushing against my leg.
    I wanted to move .
    I didn't know where to move.
    Jimmy must be near and still alive, because the kidnapper hadn't yet reached the dark altar where he would play his ritualistic games and sacrifice the lamb. Jimmy, who was small and frightened and alone.
    Whose dad was dead like mine. Whose mother would be forever withered by grief if I failed her.
    Patience. That is one of the great virtues God