“I don’t want to die,” she said.
“You’re not going to die, not tonight.”
“He’s coming back.”
“I don’t think so.”
“He is. You don’t know him.”
“There’re dozens of places you could’ve gone, could’ve hidden. He can’t look everywhere in the dark. He won’t know you’re here.”
“He’ll know. He’ll be back.”
“If he does, we’ll be ready for him.”
“Stab him? Beat his head in with that poker?”
“If we can catch him by surprise.”
“I’m hurt, you’re sick, we won’t stand a chance. He’ll kill us.”
Macklin said, “No, he won’t,” making it sound definite. Then, “Why are you so sure he wants you dead?”
“He swore he’d do it if I told on him, tried to leave him. But I knew he was planning to do it anyway, no matter what I said or did. Tonight, tomorrow … that’s why he was keeping me prisoner. Working himself up to it. I could see it in his eyes. It’s the only way he can ever be sure.”
“Sure of what?”
She didn’t answer. He couldn’t be certain in the weak light but he thought her eyes were shut.
He stood, slowly walked to the couch. Leaned against it and asked again, “The only way he can ever be sure of what, Claire?”
“That he’ll be safe.”
“From what?”
“The police.” Whispering now.
“Why would the police want him?”
“For murder.”
“… Murder? Whose murder?”
“Gene,” she said. “He’s the one who killed Gene.”
T W E N T Y - T W O
THE SUDDENNESS OF THE attack was alarming. Shelby’s first thought was that it must be the sheriff’s deputy, that he was protecting county property and would release her once he had her clear of the cruiser, but it didn’t happen that way. He twisted her sideways, kicked the door shut to cut off the dome light, and kept right on dragging her backward across the blacktop.
Storm-blurred voice in her ear: “Don’t fight me.”
The words had the opposite effect on her: They brought a rush of fear, and with it the instinctive responses taught by her self-defense training. She writhed in the strong grip, kicking backward and flailing with the flashlight.
One of the hands let go of her long enough to punch up on her wrist; the force of the blow ripped the torch loose, sent it up and away in a spinning arc that threw the cruiser into weird relief for an instant before it smashed into the roadbed and went out. Thick, unrelieved blackness closed in around her and the man who held her pinned against him.
Her fear ratcheted up a notch. She fought frantically, couldn’t break free. The blurred voice came again, harsh now, the same words, “Don’t fight me!” His breath was hot in her ear, the hard-muscled contours of his body straining against hers, the powerful hands still pulling her backward but also trying to turn her toward him. It was as if she were in a mad lover’s embrace, being drawn deeper into the roiling black, into a void, an abyss.
Shelby kicked backward again, missed his wide-spread legs the first time, connected the second. The heel- blow on his shin hurt him enough to make him relax his grip. Squirming, she drove an elbow into some soft part of him that brought a grunt and finally allowed her to tear free.
She ran.
He shouted something behind her, a command or threat that was lost in the gibbering wind.
Ran in a blind zigzag, sawing the air in front of her with both hands.
The slick, pine-needled surface of the lane was under her feet and then it wasn’t. Flowing stream of water, ankle deep, that slowed her down to a high-stepping slog. The shadow shape of a tree loomed in front of her; she dodged just in time to avoid running into it head on, a move that brought her out of the water and onto solid ground again. When she caught hold of the bole to thrust herself around it, the rough bark ripped a slit in her glove and scraped skin off her palm.
Behind her an arrow of light sliced the darkness. But it didn’t come anywhere near her and she almost welcomed it, for it drove away some of the claustrophobic panic and showed her where she was—at the edge of the woods on the inland side of the lane.
The pines grew close together here, the spaces between them crowded with ground cover, deadfalls. She plowed through the undergrowth, managed to sidestep another tree. Something unseen clutched at her foot like bony fingers, toppled her to one knee a second or two before the flash beam swept past overhead, close this time. He hadn’t seen her because the light kept seesawing back and forth, but he’d guessed her approximate location.
Shelby clawed at the nearest tree, regained her feet and stumbled ahead, the heavy resinous smell of the pines clogging her nostrils, her breath coming in ragged little gasps. Cold, wet, confused. Angry, too—furious.
Why would a deputy sheriff attack her, chase her? Why would
The wind was an ally now: He couldn’t hear the sounds she made over its whistles and whines. And he still couldn’t find her with the light. She kept moving, trying to stay close to the lane. Escape would be easier if she veered deeper into the woods; she could hide somewhere, under bushes, one of the deadfalls … he’d never find her, give up searching eventually and go away—
No. It’d be even easier to get lost in there. She could wander around for hours, the whole night, looking for a way out of the blackness with the nyctophobia-induced panic slowly suffocating her.
Her objective had to be the same as before: get away somehow and make it out to the highway. There’d be places to hide until a car came along that she could flag down. Help for her, help for Jay—
One sliding foot caught in a tangle of undergrowth, threw her down again … into a nest of ferns this time, the fronds brushing cold and wet across her face. Her right hand slid into something yielding that had a clammy, spongy feel against her scraped palm and made her recoil. Dead animal? But then she realized it had crumbled apart at her touch and knew what it was—one of a cluster of fat mushrooms or toadstools growing in the soggy earth under the ferns.
When she looked up, the light was bright and moving at right angles to where she lay. He was only a few yards away, walking along the flooded edge of the blacktop, probing for her in the timber.
Shelby crawled forward, deeper among the ferns, and then lay motionless. The rain-fuzzed light was ahead of her now, moving away, until all she could see of it were quick little flicks among the trees …
After a few seconds it brightened again: He’d turned and was coming back. But he didn’t find her this time, either. The beam slid on past, diminishing as he moved.
And then suddenly it was gone, switched off.
Utter blackness brought another surge of fear, like an electric shock on raw nerve endings. She had the same feeling of breathlessness Jay must have experienced earlier; it took an effort of will to keep from hyperventilating.
She shoved onto her knees, crawled until her hand touched the wet base of a tree. The trunk was thickly twined with some kind of vine … ivy, poison oak. She grasped handfuls of it, pulled herself upright and leaned against the wet leaves. The crying wind, rainwater plopping all around her—that was all she could hear except for the blood-beat in her ears.
Why had he shut off the flashlight?
Where was he, what was he doing in the dark?
