sabotages way

The Way hung in the air in the middle of the trail, maybe fifty yards back into the forest, an oblong mirror of silver light. Its bottom edge was maybe six feet off the ground, and a wooden staircase had been built to allow access to it. Behind us, back over toward the beach, I could hear low drumbeats of impact, the crackling scream of shattering concrete. The two Bobs were going at it hammer and tongs, and I desperately hoped that my old friend was all right.
There was another worry, too. If Bob couldn’t stop Evil Bob from coming through the Way after us, we’d be caught with the Corpsetaker in front of us and Evil Bob behind. I didn’t imagine things would go very well for us if that happened.
A flutter in the energies around the Way danced across my senses, and I paused to focus more intently on the Way itself, going so far as to call up my Sight for a quick peek. A glance told me everything I needed to know: The Way was unstable. Rather than being the steady, solid, steel-and-concrete bridge between here and the mortal world that I had seen before, it was instead a bridge made of frayed and straining ropes that looked like it might fall apart the instant it was used.
“Bob, you tricky little bastard,” I murmured admiringly. My former lab assistant had been lying his socks off earlier. Bob wasn’t planning on closing the Way behind us—because he had already rigged it to collapse as soon as we went through. His verbal explanation to me had been meant for Evil Bob’s ear holes. If Evil Bob thought we were dependent on Bob to shut the door behind us, then he would have no reason to hurry after us. And if Bob had told me the real deal out loud, Evil Bob could have simply rushed to the Way ahead of us and collapsed it himself, leaving us totally shut out.
Bob was really playing with fire. If he’d taken time to sabotage the Way before he came to back me up, it meant that he had left me to face the wolfwaffen and their boss and gambled that I’d be able to hold my own until he circled back to me. On this side of things, his ploy to keep Evil Bob’s attention meant that Evil Bob was free to focus entirely on tearing him apart, confident that he could always come charging at our backs as soon as he finished off my Bob.
More concrete shattered, somewhere back toward the beach. Bits of small debris, most of it no larger than my fist, came raining down among the trees a moment later.


Ghost Story Chapter 45, Page 466-467