She was lying on the beach. She could hear the nearby surf. Her skin was sizzling.
I’m going to have a doozy of a sunburn, she thought.
I’d better roll over.
She couldn’t move. The sun seemed to be pressing down on her, holding her motionless.
If I don’t roll over ...
A kid ran by, kicking up sand. Grains of it flew into Gillian’s open mouth. She started to choke.
Coughing, she raised her head and pushed herself up on her elbows. The sight of her naked, battered body destroyed the dream. She coughed and spat. Blood sprayed her chest. So did bits of something—not sand, though. Chips of broken teeth? Her vision darkened and swam. She twisted quickly onto her side and vomited.
When she was done, she squirmed away from the mess. She rolled onto her back and her right leg slipped into emptiness. With a gasp of alarm, she jerked it up and crossed it over her other leg. Her pounding heart sent waves of pain through her head. She patted the ground and felt an edge of rock no more than two inches from her side.
Carefully, she sat up. She looked around, forcing her head to turn on her tight neck.
She was sitting on a shelf of rock that jutted out no more than five or six feet from the sheer face of the mountain. It was less than four feet wide. The center was depressed slightly, and as sandy as a beach.
She started to look down, felt a swell of panic, and scooted cautiously until her back pressed the solid wall of rock. There, she gripped the edge beside her right hip. She took deep breaths. She shut her eyes, but snapped them open, fearful of falling. Too close to the edge. She eased herself closer to the middle.
She tried to think back. Her brain pulsed and burned with the headache. Her memory seemed scattered.
She remembered a fall—from a diving board. At Jerry’s swimming pool. But that was a long time ago.
At least I remembered it, she thought. A place to start.
The board had torn off her bikini pants. Jerry gave her a robe to wear. She wore it next door, to the place she was staying. That was a house she’d broken into. She must’ve been on one of her adventures, her intrusions.
She’d gone back to the house. She remembered opening the drier to put the robe in, and ...
The scrapbook.
She suddenly remembered. She skipped her mind over the nightmare that started with her capture, touching on bits and pieces of her ordeal, and found the part she needed to remember.
The last seconds.
Holden had been chasing her through the woods. She’d rushed right up to the edge of a cliff, tried to stop, teetered for a moment, then fallen. She’d expected her body to be dashed apart on the rocks far below.
By some miracle, she was still alive.
By the miracle of landing on this, she thought, looking at the small shelf surrounding her.
She couldn’t remember landing. She must’ve been knocked senseless by ...
Wincing, she twisted her head and looked up the mountain.
Holden was nowhere in sight.
The wall looming above her was nearly vertical. She couldn’t see the top.
From what Gillian could see, however, she guessed that her perch must be well below the edge.
She realized she would have a better view if she crawled out to the end of the shelf and turned her back to the open space.
No way.
Instead, she raised her knees. Her right knee was stiff and swollen, and hurt when she bent it. But she kept it bent along with her left, to hold her feet away from the edge when she scooted forward. With her back a few inches from the wall, she looked over each shoulder and scanned the area above her.
She still couldn’t see Holden.
Still couldn’t see the top.
But she saw that the rock face was slightly concave. Though the angle was so slight that the mountainside didn’t appear to overhang her, there was enough tilt to prevent Holden from climbing down to her.
Unless he had a good long rope.
There was no mountain climbing rope in the trunk of his car, that she knew. And she would bet he didn’t have one in the front, either.
Only one way he’ll get down here, she thought. The same way I did.
He’s a fucking lunatic, but he’s not suicidal. Nobody would jump off up there on the chance of landing the way I did. Not even me. I would’ve let him catch me before I would’ve jumped. Maybe.
If he tries it, he’ll miss.
If he lands here, I’ll kick him off.
He won’t try it. Not a chance. He cares a hell of a lot for his own hide. Here’s a bastard who goes out ofstate to do his killings, who drove me hundreds of miles just so my body wouldn’t turn up near his neighborhood. He’s a bastard who loves himself and wants to live so he can go on torturing and , murdering. No way is he going to jump off a goddamn cliff.
But he can’t let me live. No way is he going to drive away and leave me breathing.
Gillian slid backward until she was safely against the wall again.
Maybe he thinks I’m dead, she told herself.
He must have gone to the edge of the cliff and looked down. If he did that, he saw me. I was out cold for a while. Was he still looking when I woke up and tossed my cookies?
Maybe, maybe not. Maybe he
I must’ve
Her skin was shiny with sweat, glowing from the sun, streaked and smeared with blood and dirt, cross- hatched with fresh welts, scratched and scraped, split in six or eight places from knife wounds that looked raw but no longer bled. There were swollen patches of red, a deeper hue than the sun had caused, that would turn into bruises. There were even purple-gray marks left over from the beating at his house like an undercoating of old hurts. Gillian touched her face. She felt dry, puffy lips, a knot on the point of her chin, a left cheek that seemed like twice its normal size. She could actually see a slope of cheek below her eye.
She ran her tongue gently along the broken edges of her teeth.
And started to weep.
Cut it out, she told herself. I’m alive. •¦•¦»
My dentist is gonna love me.
Couple months, I’ll look good as new.
If I’m still alive. If I make it out of here.
Holden, he’s not gonna leave till he’s sure I’m dead.
Maybe he does think I’m dead, she told herself again.
A guy like him, how come he didn’t drop some rocks on me? When he saw me down here, he could’ve bombed me till he crushed my head. How come he didn’t?
Maybe he fell.
The thought struck her like a promise of life. She wiped the tears from her eyes.
What if Holden came running out of the trees, full tilt, the same way I did? What if he couldn’t stop in time, either, and went right over the edge?
She whispered, “Jesus,” through her broken lips.
Then she crawled forward on her hands and knees. When • she neared the edge, a falling sensation forced her to lie down flat. She squirmed a few more inches forward, then peered down over the rim.
A short distance below her perch, other rocks protruded from the mountain wall. None were large enough to break a fall. The slope was still nearly vertical for fifty or sixty feet. If Holden went off the cliff, he would’ve dropped that distance, then crashed onto the boulders that were heaped at the foot of the wall.
Gillian didn’t see his body.
