waistline. She wasn’t surprised that he could carry her without strain, or that his footsteps shook the ceiling when he crossed the ranch’s living room.
She compared him with the boy in the remembered Kodachrome, the snapshot portrait of Oliver and Lincoln side by side on a dock. Time had done its work; there were few obvious similarities anymore.
The loose cascade of long blond hair was gone, in its place a few strawlike wisps on a balding scalp. The nose, sharp and narrow once, had been broken in a fight or fall. He was clean-shaven now, and his receding chin, partially disguised in the photo by a fine stubble of beard, was more obvious, multiplied by folds of fat blurring the transition between his jaw and neck.
For a long moment she went on staring, and he accepted her scrutiny, standing rigid, as if at attention.
“It is you,” she said finally, pointlessly.
“It’s me.”
“I never would have recognized you. Never.”
“I know. Annie sees me every day, and she hasn’t recognized me, either.”
“Annie…?”
“I work for her. I’m her assistant.”
Erin’s knees unlocked, and she stumbled backward against the wall. The chain running from her ankle rasped on the floor.
Annie’s assistant. The new man, the one who’d replaced that teenager who was always late for work. Annie had mentioned him several times in passing. Harold something.
Gund. That was it. Harold Gund.
Erin had visited Annie’s shop several times in the past few months, yet she’d never met the new employee. He always seemed to find an excuse to stay out of sight.
“You avoided me whenever I dropped by,” she said slowly. “You were always in the back room or making a delivery or out to lunch.”
“A reasonable precaution, don’t you think? I didn’t want you remembering my voice later on. I couldn’t let you know your kidnapper’s identity.”
“But now,” she whispered, “I do know it.”
“Sadly, yes.”
“Which means you can’t let me go.”
His eyes closed briefly, registering his first hint of emotion-a flicker of regret. “Afraid not, Doc.”
“Is that why you came here? To end it? To… kill me?”
A tremor rippled through the muscles of his cheek. “No. Not tonight. I won’t-I won’t — do it tonight.”
The violence of his reply was a window on the turmoil churning just below his placid surface. He drew a slow, calming breath.
“Not tonight,” he said again, more softly. “Not for a while. Days, weeks, whatever it takes. We’ll do the work. You’ll treat me. Cure me. Set me free. And then…” His lower lip trembled briefly. “Then it will be goodbye. But not by fire.”
He reached into his jacket pocket and withdrew a blue-barreled pistol.
“This way.” His voice was very small. “No pain. I promise. Quick and easy. You won’t even know, it’ll be so fast, so… clean. You won’t even know.”
She said nothing.
“Let’s get started,” he added brusquely.
He turned away from her with a jerk of his shoulders and sat in the chair nearest the door. The gun fidgeted in his lap like a small, nervous dog.
Encumbered by the chain, she shuffled over to the facing chair. Her sore muscles protested as she seated herself, and the searing sunburn on her chest cried out at the scrape of her shirt.
For a moment, as they sat watching each other like wary animals, Erin was at a loss for anything to say. She’d had no time or inclination to prepare for a second session.
Then she remembered the list of unanswered questions she’d compiled only a short while earlier.
Risky to probe Oliver’s past when he was clearly on the edge of losing his grip. Even so, she would chance it.
Because she had to know, had to understand.
And because she had so little left to lose.
45
“You realize, of course,” she began casually, “you’re supposed to be dead.”
“I made it look as though I was.”
He sat stiffly in the chair, one hand on the gun, the other balled in a fist, his body language expressive of rigid self-restraint. It was as if his clenched muscles and locked joints formed a barrier against the wild surge of emotion swirling in him, a dam straining against floodwaters. She waited tensely for the first fatal cracks to appear.
“But your father,” she said softly. “He’s really dead, isn’t he?”
A brief incline of his head. “Yes.”
“You killed him.” Not a question.
“He deserved it.”
“Why?”
He didn’t reply at once. His hand stroked the pistol in his lap. Erin tried not to look at it, not to think of the explosive violence it contained.
“Lincoln Connor was a great guy,” he said finally, his voice low and bitter. “Everyone said so. Always smiling and joking, and so good with horses. Believed in discipline, though. People knew that. They heard stories about how he beat his son. Well, every kid needs to learn a lesson now and then, right? Only, the discipline my father imposed didn’t always stop with a beating. Sometimes he found other ways of hurting me.”
“What ways?”
“Two fingers up the rectum. Then three fingers.” The chair creaked as he shifted his weight, and she knew the sphincter muscles near the base of his spine were tightening involuntarily. “When I was old enough, big enough… his fist. And then… not his fist.”
She felt a pang of pity, not for the killer before her but for the small boy he had been. But of course it was no longer possible to separate the two. The hurt little boy still lived within this man, buried alive somewhere deep inside, and screaming, unheard.
But the women in the woods-they had screamed, too.
“What age were you when it started?” she asked.
“Little. Maybe four.”
“Did Lydia know?”
He shook his head slowly. “She never had a clue.”
“How could Lincoln keep it secret?”
“He did it only when she wasn’t around. Lydia was in charge of the ranch’s inventory; she was always going into town for supplies. Lincoln had no shortage of opportunities. And I never told. I was scared, ashamed. And…”
“And what?”
“And so I… kept the secret,” he finished lamely.
“That’s not what you started to say.” No reply. “You wanted to tell me something more.”
Tense silence ticked in the room. She knew it was crazy, suicidal, to push further on this point. So she wouldn’t, of course. She wouldn’t.
She did. “In our first session, there was a point when you thought I’d implied you were gay.”
“Hadn’t you?”
“No.”
“Then why raise the issue again?”
