fingertips. “I wouldn’t like it,” she said.
“Wouldn’t you?” he asked, eyeing her speculatively. “I think you would. Maybe after I eat, we could have a lesson. I’ll show you how it works right here on the kitchen table. Mr. Colt has a permanent hard-on for you. I think he’d enjoy it.”
He paused, as if waiting for Diana to comment. When she didn’t, he bent over and pulled something out of the top of his boot. She saw him out of the corner of her eye and trembled to think that he had retrieved his knife, which he would use on her as well, but when he straightened up, he wasn’t holding the knife at all. Between his fingers was a key-a familiar, old-fashioned skeleton key.
“Or maybe, little Mama,” he added with a malicious grin, “since you don’t think you’d like it, maybe I should bring that kid of yours out here and cram it down his throat or maybe up his ass a couple of inches. How much could he take? How much could you? What would you do then, Diana? Would you ask me to stop? Would you beg me to do it to you instead of him? Would you crawl on your hands and knees on the floor and kiss my feet and beg?”
A shock of recognition sent needles and pins through her hands and feet. Davy wasn’t dead after all. He was alive and in the root cellar. There was still hope, still a chance.
Suddenly, frowning, Carlisle stood up. “Hey, wait a minute, aren’t you burning the bacon?”
Putting the key down on the table and retrieving the gun, he started toward the stove. When he was three steps away, Diana grabbed the overheated handle of the frying pan and heaved it full in his face. Pieces of blackened bacon clung to his skin wherever they landed. He screamed as fiery-hot fat burned through his clothing, sealing it to his skin.
Diana dodged to one side as the gun roared to life, shattering the window behind her.
Walker, riveted by both the ungodly scream and the gunfire, knew his worst nightmare had come true. Somehow his opponents had made their way inside and were firing guns. Someone was hit and dying.
Forgetting about cover, Walker charged toward the house himself, circling around the thicket of gigantic prickly pear and coming up on the front porch from the opposite direction. He tried the door handle and found it locked. He tried kicking it, but the stout old door didn’t give way. The windows all had screens. From inside the house, Walker heard the sounds of an ongoing battle, but off to the side of the porch, the detective caught sight of movement.
“Stop,” he shouted, but two shadowy figures simply disappeared into the darkness beyond the porch. Two of them, he thought. Some inside and at least two still out here. How the hell many of them are there? Walker wondered grimly.
In silent pursuit, he moved sideways off the porch. At the side of the house, he encountered only a massive wall with a tall wooden gate. He tried the gate, but it appeared to be latched from the inside.
Through a nightmare of searing pain, Andrew Carlisle tried to wipe the clinging grease from his face and eyes. He could see nothing. I’m blind! he thought furiously. The bitch blinded me!
He slipped on the greasy floor and crashed into the table, banging it into the wall before managing to right himself. With superhuman effort, he pulled himself above the terrible pain.
“I’ll kill you,” he whispered hoarsely. “So help me God, bitch, I’ll kill you if it’s the last thing I do!”
Diana watched in horror as Carlisle attempted to wipe the blistering grease from his skin and eyes. Pieces of his face seemed to melt away with his hand, dissolving like the water-soaked Wicked Witch of the West in the
“I’ll kill you,” Carlisle muttered over and over. It was a chant and incantation. “I’ll kill you.”
Somehow he still held Diana’s.45. Frozen with fear, Diana stared at the weapon, waiting for the death- dealing explosion that would end her life, but for some strange reason Carlisle didn’t seem to be pointing it at her. He turned around and around, like a child playing blindman’s bluff.
“Where are you, bitch?” he demanded. Only then did Diana realize that he couldn’t see. The bacon grease had blinded him.
Holding her breath for fear the sound might betray her whereabouts, Diana glanced around the room, looking for an escape hatch or place to hide. On the floor beside the up-ended table, she spied the fallen key to the root cellar. As soon as she saw it, she dived for it, even though Carlisle was between her and the key.
Hearing movement, Carlisle lunged in her direction. They collided in midair and crashed to the floor together. The force of the blow knocked the.45 from Carlisle’s hand. It spun across the floor, coming to rest at the base of the sink. Of the two, he was far stronger, but being able to see gave Diana a slight advantage. Twisting away, she eluded his grasp and retrieved the key. She scrambled toward the root-cellar door and was almost there when his powerful fingers clamped shut around her ankles.
She kicked at his fingers, but her bare feet had no effect on the hands inexorably dragging her away from the door. She fought him desperately but despairingly, realizing she was no match for him, that it was only a matter of time.
Dimly, Diana became aware of Bone’s frantic scratching on the sliding glass door. If only she could let him into the house. Maybe, with the dog’s help. .
Suddenly, for the barest moment, Carlisle let go of her. She scrambled away from him, and this time managed to shove the key into the lock before he grabbed hold of her again. She tried to push him away only to have a smarting pain shoot across her hand and up her arm. Shocked, Diana looked at her arm and hand as blood spurted out. Carlisle had his knife again. This time she knew he would kill her with it. There would be no escape.
Stymied by the latched gate, Brandon Walker dropped back and then vaulted over the barrier, which seemed to be covered by a layer of wet blankets. Inside the yard, he landed on something soft and yielding, something human. His added weight brought the other man down. They fell to the ground as one and grappled there briefly until he glimpsed Fat Crack’s face in the pale starlight.
“Fat Crack!” Walker exclaimed. “What the. .”
“It’s the detective,” Fat Crack said simultaneously.
From deeper in the yard came Looks At Nothing’s commanding voice. “We must hurry! Come,” he ordered.
Fat Crack let go at once, and they both struggled to their feet. In the melee, Walker had dropped his.38 Special. They wasted precious seconds searching for it. At last Fat Crack found it and gave it back.
“If you’re out here,” Brandon whispered, “who’s in there?”
“The
Faced with her bloodied arm and inarguable evidence of her own mortality, Diana resolved that even if she died, somehow her son would live. Once more Carlisle’s fingers locked onto her ankle. Once more he dragged her toward him and toward the raised knife he held above his head, waiting to plunge it into her.
She searched desperately for something to hold onto, something to give her purchase on the slippery floor. Suddenly, her flailing hands encountered heat-the still fiery-hot frying pan. Ignoring the blistering handle, she picked it up and drove it with all her strength toward Andrew Carlisle’s forehead.
He couldn’t see it, but Carlisle felt the superheated frying pan whizzing toward him. He drew back in panic, holding up his arms in an attempt to ward off the blow. The frying pan missed his skull but struck his hand, knocking the knife away from him. While he groped blindly for it, he heard her scrabbling away from him again. Weaponless except for his bare hands, he crawled after her.
Partway across the room, something rushed past him, making for the outside door. He turned to it as if to follow.
The momentary respite gave Diana one more chance. This time she made it all the way to the root-cellar door. Still on her knees, she reached up and turned the key in the lock. Before she could move out of the way, the door banged open, knocking her backward into the wall.
