“Sonofabitch,” gasped Steve. Suddenly, he whined, biting at his lower lip.
Chris looked at the doorway.
“Connie!” he called.
The cabin was silent. Chris felt a chilling tremor in his loins. “No,” he murmured.
“Connie!” he shouted again. “It’s Daddy!”
“Daddy!”
Inside the cabin, there was a sound of bare feet running. Abruptly, Connie appeared in the doorway, still wearing her pajamas. When she saw Chris she cried out convulsively and ran out of the cabin. Without looking, she rushed down the steeply sloping ground toward him.
She’d almost reached him when she slipped. Instinctively, Chris jumped forward to grab her. The next instant, flailing down the slope to keep from falling, she crashed into him, knocking him off balance. He struggled to keep his footing but couldn’t. His right foot twisted under him, pitching him sideways onto the road, the impact breaking his grip.
The revolver went sliding away from him.
“Honey, look out! “ he gasped, lunging for it desperately.
Adam got there first. Chris saw him looming overhead, his lips pulled back in a brutal smile. Then everything was blotted out by Adam’s hurtling shoe. For a split second Chris tried to fling up his hands, tried to twist away. There was no time. The shoe tip crashed against his temple, stabbing a wedge of agony into his brain. Chris toppled over backward with a cry. Somewhere Connie screamed. Chris tried to move.
The next kick sent him spinning into blackness.
THURSDAY AFTERNOON
Chapter Ten
Helen was standing by the Ford when the explosion of the shot reached her.
For an instant, she stood transfixed, the rocking waves of sound breaking over her. Then, with a gasp, she broke into a hobbling run, her sandals slapping at the dirt. She ran heedlessly, her gaze held straight ahead on the road turn where Chris had disappeared. “No, please,” she kept on murmuring. “Please.” As if she were entreating someone.
Up ahead, Connie screamed.
“No!” Helen tried to run faster and felt a sting of pain on her sole where the sliver of glass had gone in the night before. She winced but kept on running.
Suddenly, Connie appeared, fleeing around the bend of the road.
“Connie!”
Connie rushed across the uneven ground and flung herself against her mother’s legs. She couldn’t speak. She clung tightly to Helen, her body trembling. Before Helen could say a word to her, Adam came racing around the curve, the revolver in his hand. When he saw them, he skidded to a halt.
“All right,” he said. He gestured toward the shack with his gun. “Go on.”
His lips flared back in a grimace of fury as Helen stared at him. “I said go on!” he ordered.
“Mommy, no,” begged Connie, her face buried in Helen’s skirt.
“It’s all right, baby,” Helen told her. She leaned over hastily and kissed the top of Connie’s head. “Please. We have to go. Mommy will stay with you. I promise.”
Helen shuddered at the look on Adam’s face. “So help me God, lady,” he muttered, pointing the revolver at Connie’s head.
“No.” Connie stumbled beside her, her face still pressed against Helen’s body.
”It’s all right, sweetie.” Helen said in a hollow, shaking voice. “Just walk with Mommy. That’s a good girl.” She held Connie’s head against her side with rigid fingers as they walked past Adam.
“Don’t hurt her,” she whispered.
Adam said nothing. He gestured jerkily with his head and Helen tried to quicken her step. Connie stumbled and had to be pulled erect. She started to whimper again.
“It’s all right, baby.” Helen felt a spill of tears down her cheeks. “It’s all right,” she said, faintly. She glanced across her shoulder and saw Adam getting the keys out of the Ford.
When she saw Chris lying in the road, she stiffened in her tracks, eyes widening. She stared at his body, a thin wavering sound starting in her throat. She could barely feel Connie against herself.
“Come on.”
She twitched as Adam pushed the barrel end against her back. Involuntarily, she started forward, drawing Connie with her. She couldn’t take her eyes off Chris. He was so still, his body sprawled on the rutted ground, one leg twisted beneath the other, his hands above his shoulders as if, in falling, he had flung them up to ward off the blow that had put him there.
“Chris,” she murmured.
“Get in the shack!” he ordered.
She started up the steep incline, drawing Connie beside her, conscious of her own voice soft and trembling as she comforted Connie, not hearing a single word of it She kept glancing back across her shoulder at Chris and saw Adam lean over, reach under Chris’s coat.
He straightened up angrily “You have the money?” he called up after her.
She turned and stared at him.
She remembered then and reached into her coat pocket It was empty.
“I—I can’t—” she started, standing there awkwardly on the steep, rutted ground. Abruptly, she recalled that the clump of bills was in her other pocket. She tried to ease Connie away, but Connie held on with talon-like fingers.
“Baby, let me get—” Helen bit her lip and tried not to cry. She forced her left hand in between her own and Connie’s body and slipped it into the pocket of her coat.
“Come on!” snarled Adam.
Her fingers closed over the money and started to pull it out. As she did, the rubber band slipped off and several of the bills went fluttering to the ground. She tried to stoop and pick them up but couldn’t because Connie was holding on to her so tightly. She heard Adam curse again, then shrank back as he clambered up the rise and snatched the pack of money from her shaking hand.
“Get in the shack,” he told her.
“Don’t hurt her,” she said instinctively.
He jerked her around and shoved her toward the door. Helen felt a rush of dizzying shock as she found herself looking at the other man who was leaning against the shack, his left hand pressed against his shoulder, blood running between his fingers and down his wrist.
“Connie, don’t—” she pleaded. She pulled her daughter against her, shielding Connie’s eyes from the sight of the bleeding man. She almost carried her past him into the fetid chill of the shack. Pulling her to a chair, she sat
