Cold.
Metal lips kissed the nape of her neck.
Behind her, a whisper: “But I do.”
Cain’s voice.
And Cain’s gun, the muzzle chilly on her skin.
He had entered through the doorway while her back was turned.
“Drop the gun,” Cain ordered.
Her hand opened. She watched the Glock fall, feeling nothing, her emotions on hold.
“I tried to make her say where the girl is.” Tyler gasped out the words like a last testament. “She told me a story. I don’t know if it’s true.”
Cain was unconcerned. “Lilith will handle the girl.”
Trish shut her eyes.
Lilith. The one with the cold, flat eyes that gleamed with malice.
Ally would have no chance against her.
It was over, then. Over for both of them.
A cough from Tyler. “So do it. Waste her.”
Trish waited, thinking emptily that she had started the night with Cain’s gun to her head, and now here she was, two hours and a lifetime later, in this mean little shop amid the racks of Lay’s potato chips and the napkin dispensers and the stale smell of grease, and nothing had changed.
“Turn around, Trish.” Cain said it almost gently, as if addressing a child.
She hesitated.
“Come on now. Don’t be shy.” He was breathing slowly, deeply, like a man in a trance. “I just want one last look at those big blue eyes.”
Tyler tried a chuckle but managed only another dry cough.
She turned slowly, transferring her grip on the counter from her left hand to her right, ashamed somehow of her lameness. She hated having them see her like this, beaten in so many ways.
A broad chest swung into view. A shiny Glock, unsilenced, in a gloved hand. Past the gun, the grainy smear of a face.
She raised her head, meeting Cain’s eyes, those smoke-gray eyes that had studied her through holes in a ski mask last time.
No mask now. She saw his face.
God-his face.
In stunned recognition she whispered one word.
“You.”
68
“I’ve got it.”
Barbara turned toward the rear corner of the closet, where Philip Danforth knelt amid the fallen wardrobes and the dislodged shelves, shining the flashlight at the wall.
“Got what” she asked.
His answer made her heart speed up: “A way out.”
She was crouching at his side an instant later.
“I’ve been checking the walls for damage.” Excitement trembled in his voice. “The explosion shook this place pretty hard. Look here.”
Her gaze followed the pointing flash. One of the heavy oak panels, four feet wide and eight feet high, had been wrenched partly free of the studs.
“We can pull the panel away,” Barbara whispered, “and crawl through.”
“Can we really” That was Judy. “Thank God. Thank God.”
From his perch on the wicker hamper, where he seemed permanently enthroned, Charles spoke up. “In case you’ve forgotten, there’s another wall on the opposite side.”
Philip glanced at Barbara. “Is it oak”
She had to think for a moment, imagining the layout of the bedroom suite. “No. It’s the linen closet in the master bath. Drywall, not oak. Half-inch drywall.”
A shrug from Philip. “We can punch right through that.”
“They’ll hear us,” Charles said.
“I’m not talking about busting down the damn doors.” Philip was losing his patience. “This won’t make nearly as much noise.”
“They might hear us anyway. Even if they don’t, suppose they happen to come back while you’re crawling through-“
“Then they’ll shoot me.” Philip’s face was sweaty in the flashlight’s glow, the cut on his lip an ugly vertical line. “I’ll risk it.”
“They may shoot all of us. Will you risk that”
“I will,” Barbara snapped, fed up with her husband’s weakness, his unaccountable passivity.
Judy touched the bare spot at her throat where her fingers sought a crucifix. “Me too.”
“Now wait a minute-“
“You’re outvoted, Charles.” Philip spoke briskly, a man in a hurry. “Three to one.” He turned to Barbara. “We need a tool to pry the panel loose. Crowbar, claw hammer, something like that.”
“Damn it.” Charles made one last effort. “You’re all getting hysterical. You need to calm down and think-“
Judy whirled on him. “Oh, shut your fucking mouth.”
There was a moment of politely shocked silence, and even Judy seemed to blush. But no one apologized.
Barbara broke the stillness. To Philip: “How about this”
She handed him a heavy wooden hanger salvaged from the heap of clothes. Philip wedged one corner of the triangular frame into the crack between the panel and the stud.
“Could work,” he grunted, applying pressure.
As Barbara watched, the panel shuddered outward a fraction of an inch, the long screws groaning.
“It’s coming,” she whispered, exultation singing in the words.
Judy managed a tremulous half-smile.
And Charles … he simply watched, rigid on the hamper, his facial muscles oddly slack, his eyes empty-as if he were witnessing the death of hope.
69
“Come on, boss,” Tyler growled, “do her.”
Cain didn’t bother to answer. His gaze remained fixed on Trish Robinson.
“You know me,” he said softly.
It was not a question. He had heard her astonished whisper, had seen the recognition in her eyes.
Slowly she nodded. “I know you.”
“How”
“Marta Palmer.”
The name was meaningless to him. He waited.
“She was nine years old. You picked her up as she was walking home from school.” Her voice was low and steady, the voice of a judge pronouncing sentence. “You made her take you to a secluded place, an abandoned farmhouse she knew about. And when you got there, you raped her, and you killed her, and you left her in the field with a jump rope tied around her neck.”
The jump rope was what did it. He remembered that detail. The rest was largely lost in a haze of distance, but the jump rope stood out in his mind with photographic clarity. He could see the braided red-and-white cord, the
