Burning Bright (Peter Ash #2)(98)

“This is us,” said June. There was something in her voice, but she didn’t say anything more. Peter slowed for the turn then hit the gas again, the big rumbling engine pushing them forward.

The gravel turned to dirt as it skirted the hay field, heading steadily uphill, then picked up a watercourse that looked small until you saw the depth and velocity of the water. It seemed to come directly through the wall of the mountain ahead of them.

Then river and road changed direction and some trick of the terrain unfolded into a narrow defile through which both river and road squeezed. At the entrance was a simple wooden sign with peeling paint:


Agricultural Research Facility

Private Property No Trespassing

This Means You!

At the tightest point, the passage had evidently once been only a narrow river canyon made by water cutting through stone over thousands of years.

Someone had built a one-lane slotted-steel bridge maybe a hundred feet long, with walls of living rock forty feet tall on both sides and the river tumbling white beneath it. Peter imagined the bridge-builders on some kind of work raft, two men drilling holes and bolting brackets deep into the stone while a third managed the ropes and pulleys that held the whole floating enterprise in place.

From the look of the thing it had been there for fifty years or more. He couldn’t decide if they were lunatics or geniuses. But they couldn’t have designed a more defensible point if they’d tried. Park a bulldozer on the narrow span and whatever lay beyond would be yours to keep. Unless Uncle Sam came along with a couple of Apache gunships, but at that point your problems were probably fairly serious already.

The defensive possibilities had clearly occurred to someone besides Peter. At the end of the defile, a tall wall of steel stood mounted to giant I-beams rising from the road bed, blocking the way. A gate.

“This was what did it,” said June. “This fucking gate. He said it was for security reasons, to keep people out, but I knew he was trying to keep me in, too.”

Peter smiled. “You stole his truck to go skiing, alone at thirteen,” he said. “That’s dangerous. If you were my daughter, I’d have tried to keep you home, too.”

“Don’t say that.” Her voice was sharp. “It wasn’t my fault. He wanted to wall off the whole world. He had keypads installed on the goddamn barns. What did we need that kind of security for? My dad was some kind of goofy-ass backyard scientist and paranoid survival nut. Who would care what the fuck he was up to?”

Well, thought Peter, he’s sure as hell up to something now.

The gate looked more and more like the drawbridge to some rough keep, hidden and secret from the world. He wished Lewis had been able to find out more about the man who had built it. After Sasha Kolodny’s last business had collapsed, the man had essentially disappeared.

He looked sideways at her. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

“I don’t want to do this at all,” she said, staring at the gate. “What choice do I have? I have to find out if my father—”

She wiped her sleeve across her eyes. Cleared her throat.

“If my father killed my mother.”

Without another word, she opened her door and hopped out of the truck.

Peter followed. Below a small overhang by the gate, a yellow walkie-talkie hung from a thin black wire. It was an older version of the radios he and Lewis had bought the day before.

Peter traced the wire with his eyes and realized it was a charging cord connected to a storage battery and a little solar panel mounted on the shelter’s roof. Simple and low-tech. If the walkie-talkie died, they could just buy another pair. But it wasn’t entirely low-tech. He looked closer and saw a small fish-eye lens whose view would cover the entire passage.

June lifted the radio, turned it on, and pressed the talk button. “Anyone home?”

There was no crackle of static, and no answer.

She tried again. “Anyone home? This is June Cassidy. I used to live here. Hello?”

Peter stepped away from the overhang and looked up. He saw a small shadow in the sky, circling. It could be a turkey vulture, expertly riding the thermals. It could be something else.

“I think the Yeti’s expecting us.”

He put both hands against the heavy steel and pushed. It took some effort because of its weight, but the gate was beautifully balanced, and once in motion it swung inexorably open until Peter curled his fingers around the edge and fought it to a stop. Now he could see the structure of the thing, thick reinforced steel hanging on giant pintles, the latch bolts concealed within a broad armature, the whole thing simple and strong and designed to last for generations in the dry air with no more maintenance than some kind of grease for the hinges. There was another solar panel mounted on the back, with another storage battery. It looked like it powered some kind of remote-controlled electromagnet for the latch bolts.

The Yeti didn’t fuck around.

Peter followed June back to the truck and drove through the gate, the gearshift solid in his hand. “We’re not closing that gate behind us,” she said with a grim look.

“You’re the boss,” he said.

“You’re goddamned right.” She put her hand on his arm.

“Tell me how you see this going from here,” he said.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t have a plan past right now.”