Page 30 of Preying Game

Chapter 11

“We’re too late,” Jonah gasped, feeling his heart turn over as he stared down. “He burned the place.”

As he dug his nails into the edge of his seat, he saw Grant follow his gaze, then bank and circle. He came down for a landing near the house and a sign that said, “No Trespassing. Danger. Keep Out.” Jonah scrambled out and ran toward the ruined building.

Grant cut the engine and followed.

Jonah struggled to stop himself from howling as he stared at the burned structure. Examining the contours of the building, he could make out a wing below ground, where he saw a room big enough to be a gym. Leading to it must be the corridor with Alice’s cell. In the other direction was the stairway to the main part of the house. He thought he saw the dining room, then the kitchen.

“My God, what happened?” he gasped out.

“You’re sure this is the right place?” Grant asked.

Jonah’s mouth was so parched he could hardly speak, but he managed to say, “It’s the layout.”

Grant cleared his throat. “But this isn’t a new fire.”

“What?”

“You’re saying you left this morning. This place was burned a long time ago.”

Jonah tried to drag air into his lungs as he struggled to digest what his friend was saying. “A long time ago,” he repeated.

Grant gestured toward the faded sign. “That’s not new either.”

“Jesus,” was all Jonah could say as he tried to cope with what he was seeing and what it meant.

“Let’s go back to how Alice contacted you,” Grant said in a steady voice.

“On the radio of the 1955 Chevy I was restoring.”

“Yeah.” His friend let that hang in the air between them.

“1955,” Jonah repeated, as other details leaped into his mind. The floor in the prison had been vinyl asbestos—a material that was no longer used. The kitchen had looked antique. And then there was the way he’d drawn a blank when he’d tried to find someone named Alice Davenport. It had seemed as if she hadn’t existed. “My God—is it possible—do you think I’ve been communicating with someone who’s in 1955?”

“Yeah,” Grant answered. Probably only another Decorah agent would have agreed with Jonah’s assessment. But they’d all been through too many weird things to discount what would seem impossible to a layman. Plus, Grant had psychic powers that were similar to Jonah’s.

The enormity of the realization rolled over him as though he’d been flattened by a steamroller. “Then it’s already too late,” he gasped out.

“No.”

“Hayward already hunted and killed her.”

Grant clasped Jonah by the shoulders and shook him. “You’re not thinking straight,” he bellowed. “You talked to her. Then you told me you went back there. She was alive when you were there.”

Jonah tried to grasp on to that like a drowning man who had snatched at a log floating by.

“I’d better ask you—the time of day was the same, right?”

“What do you mean?”

“You got there at night, when she was in her cell.”

“Yes.”

“Then it’s the same time there now. If he’s going to hunt her tonight, you’ve got plenty of time to get there.”

“I was going to bring a bunch of Decorah agents to screw up Hayward’s plans.”

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