No Sanctuary Read Online Free PDF

yards,” Bert said.
    “Want to get out and pace it off?”
    “Thanks anyway. It might be a mile the way Jean gives directions.”
    Rick slowed the car. The area to the right was thickly wooded, the spruce and pines brilliant green in the sunlight but dark in the shadows beyond the edge of the road. It looked foreboding.
    Rick flinched at the blare of a honking horn. He checked the rearview. A van bore down on them. Without slowing, it veered into the other lane and rushed by. It had a mountain landscape, red in the sunset, painted on its side panel. Rick watched it speed around a bend.
    “There!” Bert stuck an arm out of the window and pointed.
    Rick eased off the road and stopped. He peered through Bert’s window. “You think that’s it?” he asked.
    “Must be.”
    All he saw were tire tracks like parallel walking paths leading into the woods. Between the tracks was a hump with foliage growing on it.
    “Fondly referred to as ‘the fun part,’ ” Rick said, and steered onto the twin paths.
    Only a few dusty shafts of sunlight slanted down and mottled the forest floor, not enough to dispel the gloom of the heavy shadows. The car rocked and bounced along. Sometimes, the springy limbs of nearby saplings brushed the sides of the car or scraped along with squealing sounds like fingernails on a chalkboard.
    Rick wondered vaguely if they were scraping the paint.
    The least of my worries, he thought.
    “What happens if we meet another car?” he asked.
    “It’ll get interesting,” Bert said.
    “Or have a breakdown?”
    “We’ll call the Auto Club.”
    “Yuk, yuk.”
    “You worry too much.”
    A rock on the center hump scraped and clattered against the undercarriage.
    Rick took one hand at a time off the steering wheel and wiped each dry on his trousers.
    The tracks rose up a gende grade and dipped on its other side. At the bottom, the tire ruts were puddles. The water whooshed as Rick drove through.
    “Thirty miles of this?” he asked.
    “Maybe it gets better,” Bert said.
    Around the next curve, the way was blocked by a fallen branch. Bert shrugged.
    “You don’t suppose,” Rick said, “someone put that there to discourage us?”
    “Could be an ambush.”
    Rick smiled, but he scanned the nearby trees before climbing out. Quickly, he walked in front of the car and stopped at the broken end of the limb. He crouched over it. The branch had neither been sawed off nor hacked with an axe.
    Of course not. Rick felt a little silly for even suspecting such a thing. There was a long split up one side. The limb had simply been torn from a tree by its own weight or a strong wind or a burden of winter snow.
    He lifted it with both hands and stepped across the tracks, swinging it out of the way. He gave it a shove and let go. The limb dropped with a soft thud onto the brown mat of pine needles. There was sap on the index finger of his left hand. He bent the finger and felt the skin stick. He sniffed the brown stain. It smelled like a Christmas tree.
    Turning back toward the car, he saw Bert behind the steering wheel. He went to the passenger door and climbed in.
    “Mind if I drive?” she asked.
    Bert seemed to enjoy it. Rick enjoyed watching her. She sat forward, away from the seat back, and peered intently out of the windshield. She held the steering wheel with both hands. Sometimes the tip of her tongue appeared at the corner of her mouth.
    As time passed, however, Rick found himself watching the woods more often than he watched Bert. He gazed out the windows, half expecting to spot someone in the deep shadows sneaking around among the trees. He saw no one. But the farther they traveled along the dirt tracks, the more certain he became that they were not alone. Once, a sudden moving shape deep in the woods made his heart jump before his mind registered that the shape was merely a deer.
    This is going to be a long week, he told himself, if you don’t settle down. Nobody’s out there. Nobody’s stalking