Shadowfires

opposite direction, at the porch door, a huge yellow
butterfly clung to the screen, slowly working its wings.
    A clatter sounded from below, nothing dramatic, as if Benny had
bumped against something.
    She looked down the steps. No Benny, no shadow.
    The archway. Nothing.
    The back door. Just the butterfly.
    More noise below, quieter this time.
    “Benny?” she said softly.
    He did not answer her. Probably didn't hear her. She had spoken at barely more than a whisper, after all.
    The archway, the back door…
    The stairs: still no sign of Benny.
    “Benny,” she repeated, then saw a shadow below. For a moment her
heart twisted because the shadow looked so strange, but Benny
appeared and started up toward her, and she sighed with relief.
    “Nothing down there but an open wall safe tucked behind the water
heater,” he said when he reached the kitchen.
“It's empty, so maybe that's where he kept the files that're spread over the living room.”
    Rachael wanted to put down her gun and throw her arms around him
and hug him tight and kiss him all over his face just because he had
come back from the cellar alive. She wanted him to know how happy she
was to see him, but the garage still had to be explored.
    By unspoken agreement, she removed the tilted chair from under the
knob and opened the door, and Benny covered it with the shotgun.
Again, there was no sign of Eric.
    Benny stood on the threshold, fumbled for the switch, found it,
but the lights in the garage were dim. Even with a small window high
in one wall, the place remained shadowy. He tried another switch,
which operated the big electric door. It rolled up with much humming-
rumbling-creaking, and bright brassy sunlight flooded inside.
    “That's better,” Benny said, stepping into the garage.
    She followed him and saw the black Mercedes 560 SEL, additional
proof that Eric had been there.
    The rising door had stirred up some dust, motes of which drifted
lazily through the in-slanting sunlight. Overhead in the rafters,
spiders had been busy spinning ersatz silk.
    Rachael and Benny circled the car warily, looked through the
windows (saw the keys dangling in the ignition), and even peered
underneath. But Eric was not to be found.
    An elaborate workbench extended across the entire back of the
garage. Above it was a peg board tool rack, and each tool hung in a
painted outline of itself. Rachael noticed that no wood ax hung in
the ax-shaped outline, but she did not even give the missing
instrument a second thought because she was only looking for places
where Eric could hide; she was not, after all, doing an inventory.
    The garage provided no sheltered spaces large enough for a man to
conceal himself, and when Benny spoke again, he no longer bothered to
whisper. “I'm beginning to think maybe he's been here and gone.”
    “But that's his Mercedes.”
    “This is a two-car garage, so maybe he keeps a vehicle up here all
the time, a Jeep or four-wheel-drive pickup good for scooting around
these mountain roads. Maybe he knew there was a chance the feds would
learn what he'd done to himself and would be after him, with an APB on the car, so he split in the Jeep or whatever it was.”
    Rachael stared at the black Mercedes, which stood like a great
sleeping beast. She looked up at the webs in the rafters. She stared
at the sun-splashed dirt road that led away from the garage. The
stillness of the mountain redoubt seemed less ominous than it had
since their arrival; not peaceful and serene by any means, certainly
not welcoming, either, but it was somewhat less threatening.
    “Where would he go?” she asked.
    Benny shrugged. “I
don't know. But if I do a thorough search of the cabin, maybe I'll
find something that'll point me in the right direction.”
    “Do we have time for a search? I mean, when we left
'Sarah Kiel at the hospital last night, I didn't know the feds might
be on this same trail. I told her not to talk about what had happened
and not to tell anyone about this place. At worst, I thought maybe
Eric's business partners would start sniffing around, trying to get something out of her, and I figured she'd
be able to handle them. But she
won't be able to stall the government. And if she believes we're
traitors, she'll even think she's doing the right thing when she
tells them about this place. So they'll be here sooner or later.”
    “I agree,” Benny said, staring thoughtfully at the Mercedes.
    “Then
we've no time to worry about where