Dead Cold Mysteries Box Set #3: Books 9-12 (A Dead Cold Box Set), Blake Banner [reading in the dark TXT] 📗

the answer to her questions. I added, unhelpfully, “Somebody is playing a very deep game.”

She studied my face a moment. “That trance…” She turned back to the fire. “I’m no expert, but that looked pretty real to me.”

I agreed. “I’ve seen people hypnotized before a few times, and when a person goes into deep trance you get a few signs: Their pulse slows right down, their breathing becomes very shallow and slow, slightly shorter on the intake than on the exhalation, and the skin goes kind of soft and pasty. They are things that are impossible to fake because they are autonomic responses. She displayed all of them. She was in a trance.”

She stared at me again, knitting her brows, shrugged with just one shoulder and said, “Why do you know that? Normal people don’t know that kind of thing, Stone.”

“When you’re sixty-five million years old, like me, you learn all kinds of useful things.”

“OK, I guess that makes sense.” She turned back to the fire. “So why… Sorry, so what is inducing these trances in Jasmine? Or who is inducing these trances?”

“That is what I hope we are going to find out tonight.” After a moment, I added, “It’s going to be a long night. I’ll take first watch till two, then we’ll swap.”

She smiled at me and nodded. “Anything, anything happens, and you wake me. You got that, Mr. Diplodocus?”

I stood and she lay on the sofa. I picked up one of the bear skins and laid it over her, hairy side down. She grinned and I kissed the tip of her nose. “It’s Mr. Tyrannosaurus. Get it right.”

She chuckled and within five minutes she was deeply asleep. I grabbed a couple of hefty logs from the basket and stoked up the fire, then I cocked my pistol, helped myself to a generous slice of pie and poured myself a glass of whiskey. On the bookshelves, I found a volume of O. Henry’s short stories and settled myself to wait for whatever was going to happen.

The time passed very slowly. The immensity of the room, the heat from the fire, and the lazy crackle and spit seemed somehow to dilate every minute into an eternity. By eleven o’clock, the lines in the book were beginning to cross and I felt I had sandbags on my eyes. I put down the book, stood, went to the kitchen, and splashed my face with cold water. I tested the kitchen door, found it locked, and slipped the key in my pocket—something, I told myself, I should have done earlier.

I then went back to the cavernous living room, did a couple of circuits, gazing up at the landing, and noticed for the first time the glint of moonlight from the doors onto the terrace.

I climbed the steps and tested the door. It had a dead bolt at the top and another at the bottom. They were both pushed to. I tried them and they were stiff and noisy. Nobody could open them without my hearing them. I peered through the glass. The moon was in its first waning, vast and bright as a spotlight, reflecting off the wood on the terrace, tinting the turquoise sky almost green and making stencils out of the tops of the giant pine trees. Unconsciously, I scanned the sky for UFOs. Then sighed and made my way down the stairs again.

I checked Dehan. She was still sleeping. I sipped my drink and looked at my watch. It was eleven thirty.

At eleven fifty, I climbed the stairs again, strolled along the galleried landing listening for sounds of movement, looked out onto the terrace, and saw and heard nothing. At ten past twelve, I went back down the stairs, wondering. I checked on Dehan, checked the front door, then checked the kitchen. All was well, and that worried me, because it shouldn’t be.

I returned to stand in front of the fire. Almost simultaneously I felt a chill on my face and heard Don’s voice from above.

“Stone…”

He was standing at the railing in his pajamas, watching me. His wife was by his side in a flimsy white dressing gown. She had her eyes closed and she was swaying slightly. He said, “You should come and see this.”

He turned and started to walk toward the doors to the terrace. I snapped, “Dehan! Wake up!”

I ran for the stairs and as I went up them, I realized the cold air was coming from the open door. I swore under my breath and clambered to the landing. Now I could see Don and Jasmine on the terrace with their backs to me, staring at the moonlit forest. I was aware of Dehan below running for the stairs, and the bedroom doors opening behind me. I stepped out.

The night air at that altitude, even in June, was cold, and small clouds of condensation billowed from our mouths. Don turned to me and pointed at the vast black woodland that stretched away under the moonlight. “Look,” he said, “look over there.”

I approached and looked at Jasmine. Her eyes were still closed. I turned to where Don was pointing. Behind me I could hear Dehan’s boots, plus the rustle and shuffle of the others coming through the doors. I said, “I don’t see anything.”

“Keep watching.”

I looked back. Dehan was there, Stuart and May holding onto each other, the colonel, no sign of Paul. I turned to Don. “Where is Paul?”

“Look…”

I leaned over the terrace and stared down. It was possible, for an athlete like Paul, to have climbed down. I cursed myself for not having heard him, and gazed out toward where Don was pointing.

“Where is this meeting of paths, Don? We can’t let just him go to his death! Where is he going?”

Jasmine started to tremble. Her breath rasped in her throat and she fell to the floor,