All of Amanda’s nightmares had to do with extreme heights—and this, waking, was the high diving board with no water in the pool, the dizzying lip from which there was no hope of a broken fall because the cliff curved inward. She walked stiffly ahead of Dickens into the living room, concentrating on the child in the telephone chair.
“Look, Rosie.” She was bright about it, drawing the white satin ribbon from her pocket as triumphantly as if they were alone. She had to be bright, because a buried memory was beginning to stir; she could feel it growing an icy frill around her ribs. “Raggie. I washed and ironed him.”
On any other occasion it would have been as impossible to deceive the child in this matter as to soothe a bereaved mother by offering an alien infant, but Rosie’s need for comfort was so desperate that she hesitated for only a second before putting out a wondering hand. While Amanda held her breath, because this was of paramount importance, she fingered one of the snowy knots, her haggard little face absorbed, and put it testingly in her mouth. At an incredulous snicker from the killer she snatched it out again, flinching against the chair back.
Amanda spun, her control snapped. “You savage. ”
Che next few seconds went by so fast that she was not even sure who was responsible for what. The flat face sharpened with rage, the long eyes blazed as though matches had been lit in them, he came out of the doorway at her. Dickens, also in motion, barked a single odd-sounding syllable. An end table went crashing, carrying a lamp and an ashtray with it, Amanda’s thigh met a bookcase corner with astonishing pain—and suddenly everything stopped, and she was standing there with her heart knocking coldly in her throat.
Ellie Peale had said something like that just before she died, observed the pounding blood, and there had been no one to restrain the man who was like a wolf leaping out of its cage. Dickens might be acting under duress of some kind—there was no mistaking the barely contained anger that had been emanating from him, unconnected with Amanda—but in a moment of crisis he was in command.
That he had intervened was not, she recognized, steadying herself unobtrusively against the bookcase because her legs had gone boneless with reaction, reassuring in the least; he was taking care of her as he would take care of a pack animal which was the only means to safe ground. She made herself look at him, as if by doing so she could escape from that other balked stare, and his eyes flashed steadily back at her, more icily warning than anything he could have said.
And from the corner of the chair came a series of snuffling gasps. Rosie knew the punishment for crying —one side of her face was still slightly swollen—but the explosion of violence had been too much for her.
Amanda reached her and picked her up as Dickens made a purposeful move, but he was only retrieving the toppled lamp, which was now flaring crazily down the room at the Christmas tree, and the ashtray. There had been a single cigarette end in it; he picked that up too and rubbed a sprinkle of ash into the rug with his shoe.
So that the room should look calm and orderly when—
“Okay,” said Dickens, and now he did walk toward her. “Hand her over.”
Amanda’s arms tightened helplessly, because they were about to go out into the night again, she with the man who moments ago would have killed her with his hands, injury or not; Rosie with Dickens, who didn’t like children and had a low threshold of annoyance.
She said over the tumbled dark head cradled against her shoulder, “You’d better keep it in mind that this child is known to half the doctors and nurses in Albuquerque.”
So that if you think there was a hue and cry over Ellie Peale . . .
Dickens exhibited his white and wintry teeth as he took Rosie from her, carelessly, as if she were a bundle of draperies destined for the cleaner. “You keep it in mind,” he said, and snapped off the lamp.
There was clearly no need for communication between the two men; they had taken care of that while Amanda, dispatched to her bedroom, was fashioning the ribbon talisman now clutched so tensely in Rosie’s fist. Amanda smiled at her, her mouth feeling as stiff as canvas, but in return got only a dubious flicker, as for a stranger whose intentions had not yet been determined. How long before the child would trust anyone again?
In the hall, Dickens paused alertly, staring at the Irish wool scarf hanging from the coatrack. “Put that over your head,” he ordered.
Because they were in Amanda’s territory, and top-gathered hair would make a distinctive silhouette in the unlikely event of other headlights washing through the Volkswagen? To reach the scarf she had to pass a small round mirror, recessed in pottery like a miniature well, and at once the memory which had been lying in wait reached out and struck at her.
Eyes. Not mirrored but seen across a steel examining table on which crouched her miniature black poodle— twelve years ago, thirteen? He had been hit by a car, but glancingly, and because the only evidence of dam age was a trickle of blood from one nostril, Amanda, knowing nothing of the internal injuries sustained when there was no massive bone structure as a shield, had thought he would be all right and have learned his lesson and never go near the road again. She did register the fact that the poodle, usually a
