“We should go back through the crypt. We’ll run into fewer people that way.”
“Shawna, it’s dusk, nearly completely dark. How many people are you expecting to find in the cemetery?” Skylar asked.
She shook her head. “I don’t know, I just think that it’s safer if fewer people know what we’re up to.”
Alistair stared at her hard. She returned the stare. Had Hawk Douglas decided to trust Alistair—or had Alistair just happened upon them?
Shawna didn’t know which, but Alistair was, it seemed, a member of their search party now.
“We’ll go back through the crypt,” Hawk said. He took a lantern and his wife’s hand and led the way back down the stairs and through the corridor of the crypt to the stairway leading to the cemetery. Shawna glanced nervously at Alistair as they walked. She was glad that her cousin was with her…
And still slightly afraid.
She should trust Alistair, she taunted herself. She had claimed him innocent often enough to David.
Yet…
She prayed he was innocent. Because she loved him.
Darkness was falling, but the moon, which was very nearly full, rode high in the heavens, casting eerie shadows upon the faces of cherubs and seraphs that had been carved into the gravestones. Sculpted angels cast strange forms upon the earth. Larger, bulkier, even more mysterious shadows were created by the vaults of the dead. The vaults themselves, though eerie in the moonlight, were handsome exhibits of architecture, many of them built in Greek or Roman fashion, with fine white columns and meticulous scrollwork.
The cemetery faced the northwest, toward the dense forest there. As it happened, or perhaps by some ancient design, it was tucked away in the corner of the property, and here now in the moonlight, it was difficult to believe that not more than several hundred yards around the stone base of Castle Rock was the grand entrance to the great hall of the castle.
The air was crisp and cool. A ground fog was rising, adding to the ghostly feel of the shadows that fell upon the ground from angels and archangels. Their footsteps, even against the grass, seemed loud in the night. No sounds from elsewhere seemed to penetrate into the moonlit haze of the cemetery.
“McCloud, there it is, just ahead,” Shawna advised, seeing the family name in large, sculpted letters atop one of the mausoleums that stood before them. Her voice seemed loud in the night.
Hawk strode ahead to the vault, walking up the three steps that led to the heavy door at the entry. The others followed just slightly behind him, watching as he went through the keys. “Is there any way to identify the proper key?” he queried, looking back at Shawna.
“Rainor—the undertaker from the village—knows them all. I’m afraid I don’t.”
“We are at a Douglas holding,” Alistair reminded him. He shrugged. “I’ve no idea which key.”
“It’s trial and error,” Shawna apologized.
Hawk nodded and tried a key in the lock. He went on to a second key, and a third. The hardwood door to the vault groaned open.
Yet, even as it did so, Hawk suddenly spun around, hearing something Shawna had not heard. He cried out a sharp warning to them all.
“Down!” he thundered.
He fell atop his own wife, pressing them both to the earth. Shawna heard Alistair swear. Then, to his credit, her cousin cast his own body atop hers, bearing them both to the earth. A clump of mud flew up against her just as a hail of bullets went crashing through the cemetery, ricocheting off stone tombs, angels, and death’s-heads.
“Sweet Jesus!” Hawk muttered, his head just above a tombstone.
“Someone is shooting at us—in the cemetery!” Alistair said incredulously.
“Do you see anyone?” Hawk called.
It seemed that the fog had rolled in more thickly the very second Hawk spoke. A field of clouds seemed to lie on the ground where they had fallen for protection.
It surely did offer them protection from the bullets. But it blinded them as well.
“Shawna, Alistair…creep this way. Down on the ground, snakelike. Get into the vault!” Hawk commanded.
“Go!” Alistair urged Shawna.
“But you?—”