Page 97 of Puzzle for Two

He turned up his jacket collar and tried to warm his hands in his pockets. He was parked next to Flint’s SUV, in the middle of the empty car park, still waiting for the police. He’d been waiting for what felt like hours, though he’d only arrived five minutes earlier.

Ahead of him, the area of the amusement park was a black mass of silence, a paper cut-out of mysterious angles and curves silhouetted against a giant white honeycomb moon. Moonlight revealed rutted, fallow fields and leafless apple orchards stretching on either side of Haunted Hollow. A single lonely lamp illuminated the vacant parking area and Flint’s abandoned vehicle. A distant string of street lights pinpointed the motionless highway beyond.

Werethe police coming?

Lt. Bill Cameron had already left for the night when Zach phoned the Ensenada del Sello police station, but had not yet reached home. So, strike two. Zach had tried explaining current events to the sergeant on duty, but he wasn’t convinced he’d managed to convey the urgency of the situation. The sergeant seemed inclined to think someone was pulling Zach’s leg.

There had been a time, not so long ago, when Zach would also have assumed he was being pranked.

Still, the sergeant had promised to send a patrol car to check out the situation, which was better than nothing.

Zach resisted the temptation to phone Bill Cameron again. Mrs. Cameron had taken his message, and she was not the kind of police officer’s wife to forget to deliver an urgent request for help.

Five more minutes, he told himself.

It was already twenty past nine. Five more minutes, and Zach was going in after Flint. He couldn’t leave Flint to deal with whatever this was on his own.

None of this made sense though. Off season or not, Haunted Hollow had to be protected by all kinds of security personnel and equipment. There would be sensors, cameras, half-trained college students with guns. Flint could very well be sitting in a security guard’s office, trying to explain his way out of being arrested for trespassing, at that very moment.

Or not.

Besides, if Chico really was trying to get rid of Zora, there were easier ways to do it.

What would his motive be?

Unless Chico was working for Rusty and Rusty had decided they needed a patsy?

If Chico had Zora, well, Zora certainly had the authority and knowledge to bypass the park’s security systems.

The same was true if Zora was behind this. Zach couldn’t say for sure ithadn’tbeen Zora on the phone. He didn’t think so, but…

He spent the last five minutes alternating between staring into his rearview mirror at the deserted highway behind him and refreshing his phone screen. He was hoping against hope the cops would arrive before he had to do something he was almost certainly going to regret.

The night remained stubbornly silent and still.

At last, the white numerals of his cell clicked onto 9:25.

Zach sucked in a harsh breath. “Okay, that’s it.”

He picked the up the Glock 43, which he’d only ever fired on the shooting range, from the passenger seat, shoved it into his waistband, and got out of the car. His heart was thumping unpleasantly and his legs felt a little wobbly. It was aggravating, but no use pretending he wasn’t afraid. Frankly, he was scared shitless. But he was even more scared for Flint.

His breath misted in the damp autumn night. It was so damned quiet out here. The sound of his careful closing of the car door sounded like a shot.

Was that all-encompassing hush a good sign or not? Certainly, the absence of shots or screaming had to be a positive.

He loped across the car park to the enormous iron entrance gates. The wordsHaunted Hollowwere spelled out in wobbly, whimsical letters.

The gates were locked. No surprise there. But the ten-foot forbidding fence consisted of solid iron bars, rather than netting, so Zach was able to scale it with relative ease. He landed on the ground on the other side, trying to ignore the throbbing in his injured knee, and limped awkwardly on.

Almost at once he came upon a small security kiosk, closed and shuttered.

Okay. But there still had to be some kind of security presence on the grounds. Right? A central office somewhere? He gazed up at the black screen of an overhead camera. At the very least, wouldn’t someone be monitoring the cameras?

If so, would that someone be friend or foe?

He’d thought to upload the visitor’s map for Haunted Hollow, and he took a moment to double-check his location. His first and only visit to the theme park had been years earlier and a lot had changed. Malice Mansion was supposed to be dead center in the middle of the park, right between the Ferris wheel and Doom Mountain.

This is a really bad idea. This is such a terrible idea.

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