A gloved hand chopped her wrist. The Glock fell.
She was disarmed, helpless.
Finished.
65
In a tree trunk inches from Ally’s head, a thump of impact. Splintered bark sprayed her hair.
For a bewildered moment she could make no sense of what was happening, and then she remembered Lilith in the living room, impersonating Trish, the mimicry eerily persuasive.
Another pop, and the manzanita rustled, the bullet kicking up dirt near her face.
She lurched sideways, then flung out her arms and launched into a furious crawl, struggling through a dense ground cover of buckbrush and dogwood and blueblossom.
A third bullet chased her, missing by a half yard.
Hot breath on Trish’s cheek. A moplike fall of hair brushing her neck.
The man with the ponytail. On the radio Cain had called him Tyler.
He scrabbled at her belt buckle. Undid it. The belt dropped away.
Then he was hauling her through the doorway into a cramped, airless room musty with the lingering odor of grease.
A counter ran along the left wall. He slammed her against it, and she doubled over, gasping. His pelvis dug into the small of her back. Leather fingers pinned her wrists at her side.
Close to her ear, a western drawl: “Where is she”
For a moment, stunned and winded, Trish honestly did not understand the question.
“Who” she croaked. “Where’s who”
He took her incomprehension as defiance. With a pelvic thrust he rammed her spine, driving her forward, the counter’s sharp edge biting into her abdomen.
“The brat,” he snarled. “Where is she”
Past pain, past fear, she understood that this was why he hadn’t shot her through the door or window. This was why he’d taken her alive. He wanted her to give up Ally.
“Safe,” Trish hissed. “That’s where she is. She’s safe.”
Ally crawled through weeds and wildflowers, driven only by the mindless urge to flee, get away, put distance between herself and her pursuer, and then rationality reasserted control.
She had to think. Think like Trish. What would Trish do
Take cover. Shoot back. Even if her aim was wild, she could buy time.
She scrambled behind a black oak, clambering over a pile of thick and twisted roots fisted tightly in the earth. Rough bark chafed her shoulder blades through the ragged dress. Crouching low, she raised the pistol-But there was no pistol. She stared at her empty hands. “Alison,” a lisping voice cooed from the shadows, “you lost your gun …”
66
“You’ll tell me, Trish,” the man named Tyler breathed. “You’ll tell me exactly where to find your traveling companion.”
She wished she had never admitted her nickname in the presence of Cain and his thugs. She hated hearing it from this man’s mouth.
Through gritted teeth she whispered, “No chance.”
“Oh, yes. You’ll tell.”
The way he said it wasn’t good. He sounded much too sure of himself.
He released his hold on her wrists. Reached across the counter to a stainless steel sink. Plugged the drain, then ran cold water from the tap in a foaming gush.
She listened to the hiss of water, her mind frozen.
“Now listen, Trish.” His voice was a hiss also. “Our schedule’s getting kind of hairy. We may not have time to hunt down some high school whore and still get paid. And we will get paid. I got a red Porsche, showroom new, just waiting for me.”
The sink was half full now.
“So here’s the thing. I’m gonna kill you, okay We both already know that. But it can be easy, or it can be hard. Easy way is with a bullet. Hard way-well, it’s like this.”
In one motion he thrust her forward and plunged her head into the sink.
For a wild moment Ally imagined Lilith as some sort of evil spirit, not human at all, a supernatural presence able to snatch a gun away.
No. Quit it.
The real answer was much more obvious. Harassed by bullets, confused by fear, she had simply dropped the pistol when she started to crawl.
And Lilith, tracking her, had picked it up.
Wonder Woman’s partner, she thought in a scalding wave of self-reproach. Sure.
Breath streamed from Trish’s mouth in agitated bubbles. As if from a distance she sensed the pops and jerks of her own shoulders as she struggled to break free of his grasp.
It was the car trunk again. Cold water rising until the air pocket was gone. Ache in her lungs, terrible need to draw a breath, mounting helplessness and terror—
He yanked her head back, his fingers knotted in her hair. She gulped air, water running like tears down her face.
“You like that, Trish You like that”
A spasm of dry retching was the only answer she could give.
He jostled her into silence. “Didn’t think you would. So talk to me.” He leaned close, his whisper caressing her right ear. “Talk and I’ll go easy on you, I promise I will.”
She shook all over. Couldn’t face another submersion, couldn’t stand the thought of the inevitable moment when she inhaled water and felt her lungs ice over.
In the woods, a light snapped on.
Ally hugged the tree as white glare diffused through the misty air on both sides of her. The beam of Lilith’s flash, probing the night.
Facing an unarmed adversary, Lilith could afford to reveal her position. And Ally, sheltered only by the tree, couldn’t move without being instantly seen.
Don’t come this way, she prayed. Go in another direction. Please, please don’t find me.
“Alison …”
The girlish singsong raised a skitter of gooseflesh on Ally’s bare arms.
The cone of light swayed, exploring the foliage on either side of the oak but never straying far enough to give her a chance at escape.
Crackle of sticks. Boots treading closer. The glare brightened, droplets of mist sparkling in a funnel of white.
Too late she saw a torn fragment of her dress snagged on the bark, fluttering in the breeze, marking her position like a flag.
An elfin titter, and she knew Lilith had seen it too.
“I think you’re behind that tree, Alison …”
She choked back a moan.
