The police? Sharon thought. Was it possible?
Pamela stepped up to Sharon's cage and took hold of the lock.
'Open it,' she said to him. 'Get away from there!' Tegg warned in that sharp voice. He gave the dog's heavy collar a tug, and it came to its feet. 'Give me the key. I'll do it,' Pamela said, her voice shaking. 'We can give her the electroshock, can't we? Some Ketamine and electroshock. We can leave her at a hospital, no one the wiser. We dismantle everything here and what's there to find?' It took every bit of her strength to address him like this. 'You said it yourself: The police don't have anything. They're fishing is all. We can still do this, Elden. We can still get out of this.'
'We most certainly cannot. I told you: There's a contract. There are things of which you have no idea. I have a plan! It's all settled.' 'Settled? It can't be settled. Give me the key.'
'Of course I won't. Use your head.'
Pamela picked up the shovel. 'We can still save her, Elden.
Contracts can be broken.' She felt as if she were dealing with a child. This wasn't the same man of even a week ago. 'You're not well,' she told him. 'Away from there!' he roared.
She had chosen the wrong words. Her knees trembled. His strength was overwhelming, almost like a bright light you can't look at. She wanted to please him, to help him.
He stepped toward her. Felix followed. 'Stand back,' he ordered. Her heart sank, but she felt her feet refuse to obey. What was happening to her?
She raised the shovel and delivered another blow. To her joy, although the lock remained closed, the latch broke a rivet and the door came partially open.
Sharon felt the hair on her arms stand at attention. Freedom?
Was it possible?
The Keeper mechanically jerked his head toward her and shouted, 'Stay right where you are!'
Sharon thought of the needle in her hand. She'd never managed to come up with a plan for the dog, but one step at a time, she reminded herself.
Pamela said, 'How can you justify taking one life in order to save another? What sense is there in that?'
The Keeper's expression hardened. 'What sense?' His shoulders went military and he shook his head. 'Lift your shirt, Pamela.'
He repeated, 'Remove your shirt. Now! Don't question me, Pamela. Show it to me!' His tone was that of a doctor-clinical and authoritative. Pamela stunned Sharon by removing her jacket and unbuttoning her shirt, allowing it to hang open.
From that moment on, Sharon knew it was over. Pamela had given in. She was his.
Below her ribs was a five-inch scar. 'Touch it for me,' he instructed. Pamela shook her head in one last try at defiance. 'No, I won't.'
'Do it!' he thundered. Tears came to her eyes.
She reached down and traced the long scar with a quivering fingertip.
He nodded. 'I saved you. Hmm? I delivered, when no one else was able. Let me tell you this, when one faces losing a young friend as precious, as individual as you, one becomes capable of things he never dreamed possible.' He experienced one of those tics then-his head jerking, his shoulder lifting, his eyes squinting shut. Sharon had witnessed this once before. He straightened himself, like a man adjusting his tie, and continued as if nothing had happened. 'I told you a little white lie, a little fib back then, because to do otherwise would have caused you undue anxiety and might have interfered with your recovery. Hmm? Do you remember asking me about where I had located your liver? Hmm? I may not have done the actual transplant, but I saved your life-you know that's true. The truth is inescapable, is it not? It is the biggest burden of all. Hmm? Did you sense the truth? I suspect you did. You must have thought at some point that it hadn't really come from a trauma patient … No, of course it didn't. But I protected you from the truth because I knew how it would hurt you.'
Pamela sobbed and sank to her knees. She was mumbling to herself, but Sharon couldn't understand a word. 'That's what I'm offering you now, you know. Protection. But you don't seem to see that. Protection from them: the police; your parents; your fears. But you must join me. Hmm? Not go against me. I can protect you. Believe me.' 'You lied to me?' she asked incredulously. 'What did you think happened to Anna?' he asked.
Pamela covered her ears. The man raised his voice to her ear.
'Did it ever strike you as odd that Anna just up and disappeared at the same time you were seriously ill? You must have thought of that!' He said, 'There was an accident-a fatal accident-and there she was.' He pointed to the floor. 'What was I to do? I tested her blood type, that's what! A godsend is what it was. She was your blood type … You live because another died, and yet you would deny it for someone else?'
'Nooooo!' she screamed. She came at him with the shovel raised high.
Sharon broke for the door to her cage. 'Stop!' he commanded Sharon, his finger pointed at her ominously.
The Keeper flickered his wrist next to the dog's eyes. He uttered but a single word: 'Hit!'
The pit bull sprang forward. The Keeper dodged the swing of the shovel. The dog leaped several feet into the air and knocked Pamela to the cement. 'Back!' The Keeper ordered, but the starving dog would not obey. 'Back!' he demanded, sensing his loss of control. 'Off of her!!' The dog was wild with hunger and the scent of the blood. The Keeper lifted the shovel and went after the dog.
Sharon looked away. The sounds of the slaughter echoed throughout the building. The Keeper shouted, he struck the dog again and again, but the dog's will overcame it all.
Sharon fainted. When she awakened, it was dark in the kennel.
She heard a car racing away.
Moving arrows of white light shot through the trees, followed by the growing whine of a car engine advancing steadily toward her. Daphne switched off the flashlight and darted into the trees as that sound grew increasingly louder. Tegg or some stranger? Maybe this wasn't a driveway after all, the way it seemed to go on forever.
She hid behind a tree, standing completely still as the vehicle passed, her breathing competing with the sound of tires in the mud. It was the Troopertegg. Wherever he had been for the last half hour, he was now leaving.
She headed back onto the road and took up running again, though this time with the light off, guided only by the glow of a broken moon. She checked over her shoulder repeatedly: If he returned the way he had come, perhaps he was gone for good; if, however, he turned left at the end of this long road, he would come across her car and most certainly return.
She ran faster, rounding two long turns. All at once the road spilled out into a clearing. The moon played its game of hide-and-seek, disappearing and denying her any sight of what lay ahead. It was far too dark to see anything clearly, but she edged her way tentatively out into the muddy, rutwormed driveway and followed it slowly up a rise. A large, heavy shape loomed to her right, another smaller, more angular shape directly ahead.
The moon cleared the clouds and it was like someone turning on the stage lights: ahead of her an old two- story homesteader log cabin; to her right, the large arcing curve of a Quonset hut.
No lights in the cabin. A single vehicle parked that she recognized immediately as belonging to Pamela Chase. A sense of dread filled her-had there been two people in the Trooper? She had seen the outline of only one. Had it been Tegg or Pamela Chase? Could she be certain?
She switched on the flashlight and sprinted to the cabin, drawing her weapon as she went. She could feel her heart clear up in her throat. She tried to swallow the lump away. Was Sharon here? She attempted to blink away the annoying white sparks that interfered with her vision. It had been two long years since she had tasted terror.
She climbed the wooden stairs, slipped off the gun's safety, and made herself alert for the slightest noise. A board creaked slightly underfoot.
The Quonset hut exploded in barking. It so startled her that she dropped to one knee and trained her gun in that direction, the flashlight tucked immediately beneath the weapon. For a moment she couldn't catch her breath, she was so surprised and startled. Frightened.
The dogs howled constantly for the better part of a minute and then gave it up to silence. Daphne, winded from the exhausting run, collected herself. She stood and circled the perimeter of the cabin, sliding her back against the logs, rushing quickly across the windows, weapon pointed through the glass. The kitchen door was open, its window broken. She edged it open with the toe of her shoe, and stepped inside, glass crunching beneath her shoes.
