He tugged down his sweat pants.
This would be easy. He wouldn’t even need the handcuffs. He could bang her standing up, quick and dirty, her party dress hitched above her hips in a cheesecake pose.
“Here it comes, Ally.” His phallus sprang erect. “Say hello to love.”
She felt his hardness brush her thigh. With a scream of terror she twisted sideways, wrenching free, and her hands, quick as startled birds, flew at his eyes.
Instinctively Cain ducked, pulling away, and her clutching fingers hooked onto his ski mask.
The mask turned inside out and came loose, his face uncovered.
In the wash of light from the banker’s lamp, he stared at her and she stared back, both of them frozen for some timeless moment.
Cain moved first. His arm swung up. “Bitch.”
He smacked her.
Again.
Again.
She slumped against the shelves, her chin bearded in red, a bruise swelling the corner of her mouth.
Breathing hard, Cain got control of himself. His erection was gone. He tucked himself in and pulled up his sweats. No loving tonight.
No loving for poor Ally-ever.
“You’re in trouble now,” he whispered as the girl’s shoulders shook with silent sobs. “Oh, yes, pretty baby. You are in some world-class trouble now.”
23
Blair Sharkey pulled a Tekna flashlight from his hip pocket and fanned its beam across the shallow waters of the lake.
He had to admit he’d thought it was a waste of time to patrol the shore. Cain wanted both the front and rear access points covered, sure, a standard precaution, but who the hell would be out here
Well, someone was-and he knew who. That little rookie had gotten out of the trunk.
He couldn’t begin to guess how she’d pulled off that stunt, but it didn’t matter. As soon as she came up for air, he would wax her.
Blair was good with a gun, especially this laser-sighted Glock. Wouldn’t have missed her the first two times, except he could hardly believe she was actually there. Surfacing in the starlight, she’d been a vision as unreal as a mermaid.
He wouldn’t miss again.
“Come on up, Robinson,” Blair whispered to the night. “Come up and die.”
Trish hadn’t had time for a deep breath before submerging. She couldn’t stay under for long.
Pale light shifted on the water overhead, a flashlight beam restlessly skimming the surface.
She had survived one death trap only to blunder into another. Terror blended with furious, irrational indignation at a world that could toy with her so cruelly.
Roughly she pushed those distractions aside. She needed cover. Was there any place the beam couldn’t touch
The dock. Huddled alongside it, she would be screened from sight.
Staying well below the surface, she swam toward the nearest piling, her cuffed hands pawing water in a clumsy approximation of a butterfly stroke.
She didn’t think he could see her. If she was wrong, she would find out when the next bullet stopped her heart.
A darting shadow.
Robinson. Swimming for the dock.
Blair lifted his gun-too late. The streak of motion had already passed behind the farthest pilings.
From the beach he had no decent angle of fire. He broke into a run, boots raising white geysers of sand.
Stealth was unnecessary. The cop was unarmed, defenseless.
For all practical purposes, she was dead already.
Mossy wood brushed Trish’s hands. She gripped the piling and lifted her head to breathe, and then she heard it, felt it.
Rattle and shiver. Rapid footfalls on the planks.
He’d guessed her strategy. He was coming.
She kicked away from the piling, took refuge beneath the dock. The lake was shallower here, only six or seven feet deep. She waited, treading water, while green floating plants, some species of waterwort, swirled lazily around her.
The footsteps passed overhead, then stopped. The flashlight probed the water near the post where she had hidden moments earlier.
There was something unreal about all this. For most of her twenty-four years she’d led a monotonously ordinary life. Now here she was, handcuffed, bobbing in dark waters, while a man with a flashlight and a silenced pistol hunted her with the cold intent to kill.
He doesn’t even know me, she thought, aware that there was no possible relevance to this fact, stupidly astonished by it nevertheless.
Blair was enjoying himself. There was an intense, almost sexual thrill in stalking human prey. It could be addictive.
He really should have radioed Cain by now. That was the drill: In case of trouble, get on channel three and report.
But Cain would send Tyler and Gage, and Blair didn’t want their help. He wanted to bag Robinson himself.
It wouldn’t be hard. She had to be hiding under the dock. Out of sight, but not for long.
He crossed to the ladder and descended, almost regretful the game would soon be up.
Black boots on aluminum rungs. Trish submerged.
The flashlight searched for her. Even on the lake floor, her hands plowing the silty bottom, she wasn’t deep enough to escape its reach.
But she didn’t have to be. The thick scum of waterwort clogging the surface deflected the beam and kept her safe.
For the moment her adversary couldn’t find her. But he must know she was here somewhere, and he would not stop looking until he made her dead.
To survive she had to think. Come on now, think.
She’d seen a pair of boats moored at the dock. If she could circle around the boats and surface behind one of them, screened from his view …
She moved forward along the lake floor, her lungs emptying, the need for air urgent once again.
Where was she
Balanced on the bottom rug of the ladder, Blair peered below the dock at a green carpet of heart-shaped plants. Robinson was under there, he would bet on it, but where
He waited another full minute, then reluctantly concluded that only a real mermaid could hold her breath this long. She must have given him the slip.
No choice now but to summon help. Together he and Tyler and Gage would flush her out of hiding.
Pocketing the flashlight, he took out his transceiver. His finger was poised over the push-to-talk button when he heard a soft splash.
