rope across her throat. Though she could feel that her ankles were tied, there didn’t seem to be any line connecting them to her neck. She unbent her knees a little more. A wire snagged one of her feet.
A tail light wire? A brake light wire? One or the other.
Gillian knew where she was.
In the trunk of Fredrick Holden’s car.
Her heart started slamming, pumping pain into her head, making her battered face burn.
Rick wished, once again, that he had brought the bottle with him. He was shivering. His neck was stiff, and the rigid muscles seemed to go right up into the back of his skull, squeezing pain into his head. The bourbon might have helped. On the other hand, he would have polished it off a long time ago, probably during the first hour of his vigil, and he would’ve ended up totally plastered; it might’ve even been enough to knock him out.
I’d be no good to anyone, he thought, zonked out of my gourd.
Yeah. But what good is this, anyway?
This is doing a lot of good, he told himself. It’s the one sure way to keep those bastards from sneaking out of the woods and jumping us. And it got me away from Andrea, away from temptation.
Rick was seated on the ground with his back against a tree trunk, the revolver resting on his lap.
He thought about his visit from the preacher-man.
Jeez, what a performance!
The bastard was mad as a coot but most probably harmless. Christ, he’d been out in the wilderness for fifty years or more. Enough to turn anybody crazy ...
Through a gap in the bushes ahead, he could see Jase, Luke and Wally in their sleeping bags. If the boys had a tent, they’d decided not to use it. They’d sacked out around the fire.
The fire had still been flickering when Rick arrived. Later, nothing remained except a red glow, though sometimes a flame had climbed out of the rubble like a fatally wounded survivor, quivered in the darkness for a little while, and died. Even the glow had faded out, finally. For the past hour or so, the fire had been dark and smokeless.
Rick needed no firelight. He could see the shapes on the ground better without it. The night was cloudless and pale. Where direct moonlight made it through the trees (and a patch of it fell on his left knee), Rick thought it was almost bright enough to read by. It layered everything it touched with a milky hue. And it touched the sleeping figures of Jase, Luke and Wally. They were mottled with patches of dingy white. And totally black everywhere else, as if they didn’t exist at all except where the moon found them.
All three had seemed to be asleep when Rick arrived, and they hadn’t moved since, except to alter their positions slightly. One of the bags would bulge when a body curled up or rolled under its surface, would jut when a knee pushed it up.
From the size of the mound, Rick knew which bag held Wally. Jase and Luke were in the other two, but he didn’t know which was which. Even when the fire had been going, he hadn’t been able to tell them apart. One wore a hooded sweatshirt, the other a dark stocking cap, and their faces had been turned away or half buried in their sleeping bags.
Though he couldn’t tell which body was Jase, which Luke, all three of the creeps were accounted for. They were right here, asleep, and they wouldn’t be sneaking over to the other camp as long as Rick kept watch.
The watch, he had realized long ago, was probably unnecessary.
Several times, he’d almost convinced himself to quit and return to camp.
But maybe, just maybe, their plan was to get up in the dim hours before dawn and attack when they could be certain to catch everyone fast asleep.
They’d overpower us before we knew what was happening.
You don’t have to quit, Rick told himself now. You could just hurry over to the camp and take some aspirin (and grab the bottle?) and come back.
This headache’s going to kill me if I don’t do something about it.
Rick lifted the revolver off his lap. Slowly, he drew in his legs. He got his feet beneath him, pushed himself away from the tree trunk, and started to rise.
A sleeping bag flipped open.
Rick dropped to a squat.
Peering through the gap in the bushes, he saw moonlit bits and pieces of a person sitting up. It was the kid in the hooded sweatshirt. He couldn’t make out whether it was Jase or Luke.
His heart hammered, pounding spikes of pain into his head.
Thank God I didn’t leave, he thought. This is it. This is when they make their move.
The kid pulled his legs out of the bag. He seemed to be wearing gray sweatpants. He twisted around, picked up a pair of boots that had been left near his head, and started to put them on.
Though Rick heard only the wind, something must’ve disturbed Wally’s sleep. Maybe the other kid had spoken, or maybe it was just the sound of his movements. The big mound shifted and Wally raised his head.
There were voices too soft to understand.
Wally started getting out of his bag.
“DON’T MOVE!” Rick shouted.
Both heads snapped toward him and the person in the third sleeping bag sat up fast, the bag still around his shoulders. Rick lunged forward through the bushes, arm stretched out, revolver jerking from side to side as he aimed from target to target.
Wally squealed and threw his arms around his head.
“Holy fuckin’ shit!” Jase’s voice, sharp with alarm. He was the one in the sweatsuit.
Luke sat motionless, all but his head enclosed in the bag.
Rick halted about two yards from Wally. He stood with his feet apart, knees slightly bent. He clutched the wrist of his gunhand.
“Christ, don’t shoot!” Wally bellowed.
“Just nobody move. Nobody move a muscle.”
“What the fuck are you doing?” Jase blurted. “You nuts? What is this?”
In a calm voice, Luke said, “I believe this is what is known as a pre-emptive strike.”
“What the fuck are you talking about, Burgher?”
“This poor deluded son of a bitch believes that we have designs on his harem.”
“Aw jeez,” Wally said. “Aw jeez, I knew we were gonna get it. We shouldn‘ta looked at ’em. Jeez.”
“We didn’t do nothing, mister,” Jase said. “I don’t know what your trouble is. So we looked at them. What’s the big deal?”
“It wouldn’t have stopped with looking,” Rick said. “And you know it.”
“See a shrink, pal.”
“Stop it, Jase,” Wally whined. “He’s gotta
“So what’re you gonna do, mister, shoot us?” There was bluster in Jase’s voice, and there was fear.
“All depends,” Rick said.
“If we wanted to violate your ladies,” Luke said, “why haven’t we done it? You’ll note that we were peacefully sleeping until a few moments ago when you barged in.”
“Your two friends were already up.”
“I was gonna take a fuckin’
“Me too. I just woke up ’cause Jase was messing around, and I had to go.”
“Don’t give me that shit,” Rick said. “I know what you were going to do.”
“You’re nuts, man.” Jase wrapped his arms around his chest. “It’s
“I wouldn’t rape a person even if it was hot out,” Wally said in a small voice. “You’d go to prison. And besides, I just wouldn’t do it.”
“On top of which,” Luke added, “I left my condoms at home. I most certainly wouldn’t jeopardize my health by using a bare tool on strangers.”
