real than ever.
She hoped, despite what he’d said, that he wouldn’t burn her. Death by fire was her worst fear, had been since childhood.
The gun would be better. Easier.
His hand reached for the flash.
He had to see her now. Couldn’t miss her.
Except… he wasn’t looking.
He hadn’t bothered to lie prostrate and poke his head under the chassis. He was still kneeling, groping blindly.
His fingers brushed the flashlight’s metal casing. The flash rolled again, and for a heart-twisting second Erin was sure it would roll out of his reach, and he would have no choice but to belly-crawl after it.
Then he clamped a firm hand on the flash, pulled it toward him, and rose to his feet.
Rattle, slam, and he was out of the barn, intent on hunting her in the night.
Erin pressed her face to her forearm and lay very still as tension sighed out of her in a hissing stream.
Close one.
Very close.
25
Gund still had no idea how the bitch managed to free herself from the cellar, and he didn’t much care. All he knew, all that mattered to him, was that he would track her down, and then she would pay.
He had never been so angry. She’d left him. Wrong of her to do that, so very wrong, unforgivably wrong.
He could have killed her last night, but had he? No. She was special to him-still was, despite her betrayal-and he had treated her accordingly. He’d cleaned up the cellar room, stocked it with food and other necessities, even gone to the trouble of installing a foam pad so she could sleep in comfort. He hadn’t chained her to the wall, as he easily could have. Hadn’t shackled her feet or manacled her hands.
Right from the start he’d been good to her. He’d treated her with consideration and respect. And this was how she’d responded, the ungrateful little whore, the goddamned filth.
His breath came hard, partly from the exertion of frantic activity but mostly from sheer, towering rage.
The good thing was that she couldn’t have gone far. He’d been away for less than a half hour, and it must have taken time for her to defeat the two locked doors.
He was guessing she had left the house only moments before his return.
Her car keys were in his pocket, so unless she could hot-wire an ignition, the Taurus was useless to her. Penned in by barbed wire, she had two options-to hide on the grounds of the ranch, or to circle behind the house in search of another way out.
Pausing at the side of the barn, he beamed his flash into the grain bin and fuel shed. Both were empty.
The flashlight guided him as he loped across yards of scorched, bristly grass. A flattened, S-shaped thing-a dead gopher snake-was briefly visible amid a patch of purple weeds.
Behind the house was a utility shed. He looked inside. Nothing.
He didn’t expect her to hide, anyway. She would run. And he knew where she was likeliest to go.
Two hundred feet beyond the shed, his property ended in a line of barbed wire, silver in the starlight. Just before the fence was an arroyo.
The wide, dry streambed, carved by seasonal flash floods, ran west to Houghton Road, with no gates or fences along the way. Though Erin couldn’t know the wash’s destination, she was sure to see that it offered the only means of exit from the ranch, and like any local resident, she would know that arroyos were the natural roadways of the desert, ideal for easy hiking.
He sprinted for the wash, certain the flashlight would reveal her footprints.
Once he picked up her trail, all he need do was track her, a coyote stalking prey.
Erin groped in the dirt by the ladder, hunting among the scatter of broken rungs until she found a nail.
In darkness she fingered it. A two-inch nail, slightly rusty but still sharp.
Just what she needed.
She had been ready to climb behind the Ford’s steering wheel when the idea occurred to her. Her abductor was sure to hear the engine as soon as she started it. He would give chase in his van.
Unless the van had been sabotaged.
He couldn’t drive it on four flat tires.
Fumbling blindly, wishing he hadn’t shut the barn doors when he left, she touched the side panel of her Ford. Its smooth surface guided her as she crept forward in a half crouch, one hand patting the car, the other upraised before her, searching for obstructions.
Deprived of sight, she found her other senses temporarily heightened. She could hear the faint creaks of the barn walls, aged wood shifting under the wind’s caress. The smells of rot and fecal decay blended with the closer, more pungent odor of her own sweat.
The car ended, giving way to empty space. Memory directed her to the Chevy Astro, dead ahead in the blackness.
Something skittered past her right foot. Involuntarily she kicked at it with a gasp and heard a small, outraged squeak. Patter of rodent feet, diminishing, gone.
Just a mouse, Erin. Don’t start getting hysterical on me, okay?
Oddly, the reassuring voice in her head was Annie’s. Erin was irrationally glad to hear it, grateful for even the illusory comfort it provided.
Her probing hand found the van’s hood. She searched lower and discovered a flat metal disk. Hubcap. The front wheel on the passenger side.
All right, then. First deflate this tire, then the others. Shouldn’t take longer than two minutes, and she would buy herself infinitely more time to make her getaway.
If she could do it at all. Having never tried to puncture a tire, she had no idea how thick the rubber might be, how difficult to penetrate.
Only one way to find out.
Clutching the nail in her fist, the point extending from between two fingers, she tensed her arm, took a breath, and struck.
The nail slammed into the tire and punched through. She had time to congratulate herself on the successful execution of the first phase of her plan, and then an alarm went off.
For a startled second she couldn’t identify the source of the sudden noise and glare. All she knew was that the darkness was banished, the barn abruptly lit by a yellow stroboscopic light, the silence shattered by a foghorn’s furious blatting that went on and on.
Then she understood that the van was equipped with a burglar alarm, and by attacking the tire she had tripped the system.
“Jesus,” she hissed, the word lost in the insane racket howling and whooping around her.
That bedlam would be audible for a thousand yards in any direction. It was as good as a searchlight pinpointing her position.
She left the nail imbedded in the tire and sprang to her feet.
Ran for her car, now clearly visible in beats of yellow radiance from the van’s parking lights, flashing in distress.
Misjudged the distance, banged her thigh on the Ford’s bumper-sparkle of pain down her leg.
Reached the driver’s door. Locked?
No, not locked. She flung herself behind the wheel, fumbled the key out of her pocket, fingers sweaty and trembling.
The key slipped from her grasp, fell somewhere on the floor of the car.
Find it, find it.
