Her grandfather. The idea of it felt like a size fourteen dress on a size two body—too big and shapeless and yet— He tried to kill my grandfather, too?
With even more determination, she solidified her plan to give Elizabeth her one best split second of seeing them as they drove by the Crabapple Café. Seeing, realizing something was wrong when she doesn’t stop, and calling for help. It was all she had.
Odd, the things you think about while you’re driving toward death.
For instance, it made sense to Sophie that with a lethal weapon so nearby, one’s awareness of something as small as a leg itch would be suspended for more important considerations . . . like the way a gunshot face would ruin her open casket funeral.
Problem was: she needed an itch at the moment.
Another thing? Frank Lanyard and his gun weren’t as intimidating in a moving vehicle; he wasn’t going to shoot her while she was driving, right?
So Sophie dropped her left hand to rub her knee and then put it back on the wheel as she started counting . . . Eddy’s Eatery, Granny’s Attic. She scratched below her knee, then put her hands back to ten and two on the wheel. They passed Lemming’s Plumbing and poor Maury Weims’s drugstore—she tilted a bit to scratch lower on her leg—Betty’s Boutique and Clearfield Credit Union . . . and she shivered watching the big window front of the Crabapple Café coming up. She asked her mother for help.
Amazed at her perfect timing, she bent low, close to the steering wheel, reached for her ankle, turned her face toward the café and pretended to lean unintentionally on the horn.
Her smug delight lasted barely two seconds before Lanyard’s gun crashed down on her right shoulder—she went blind from the pain, and the screaming cry she produced was unlike anything she’d heard before.
She ground her teeth to the shatter point against the intense throbbing, then glared at her captor.
“It was an accident!”
“Like hell.” He kept looking back to see if she’d disturbed the evening quiet of Clearfield.
One glance in her rearview mirror and doom settled inside her. She was going to die.
And was this the reason her real mother had suffered so, clung to life with all her might and oh-so reluctantly let go? To be on the other side to greet her daughter a year later, like Lonny said? She was torn between intense relief and the utter unfairness of it . . . and guilt. If Lonny was right, her mother—her real mother—paid the ultimate price in the most excruciating way for simply taking her into her heart as an infant and loving her. Her heart felt shredded. The pain blotted out the discomfort in her shoulder.
They were far enough outside town that there were fewer and fewer places to pull over or turn around, so when she spotted a deserted exit for a gravel county road, she took it.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Frank bellowed in tense disbelief. “Keep to the road. Drive on.”
“No.” Flint. Flint! “I’m— We’re going to lay Billy right here, out of the way but close enough to the road to be seen.”
“The hell we are.”
“He needs help and this isn’t a discussion.” She may have been out of her mind at the moment, but it wasn’t all gone. She went silent when the big black gun pressed against her forehead.
“Maybe you are as crazy as she was.”
“Who?” she whispered, then realized she didn’t care anymore. It was about survival now and she had a better chance of it . . . they both had a better chance if Billy wasn’t with them. “Billy hasn’t done anything. Your beef is clearly with me. I’ll go with you. Quietly. If we leave Billy here.”
He shook his head, bent his elbow to tip the gun toward the roof. “Let me explain this to ya. You don’t get a say. You and old Cubeck made your choices. You two started all this. Now it’s my turn. And I choose for you to disappear so you can’t do to me what you did to my old buddies. This is self-defense.”
“Disappear or die?” His shrug was indifferent. She sneered. “Self-defense. If this was self-defense, you wouldn’t be keeping Billy hostage. And you’d be out in the open, defending yourself for everyone to see. Not scurrying off to . . . wherever we’re scurrying off to, like the filthy rodent you are.” She’d started out calm but ended up a little insane again. “I never even met Arthur Cubeck. And I didn’t do anything to your buddies!”
He puckered his lips up and tipped his head thoughtfully. With no change in his expression he simply lowered the barrel of his gun over the back of her seat at Billy. Hope waned. Stupid. She’d tipped her hand and he saw that she cared about Billy’s life.
Not that she cared more about Billy’s life than her own—she was no martyr—but she cared enough that he was leverage.
“Here’s what I’ll do for ya, honey.” His voice was thick with disdain. He drew a large, crumpled white handkerchief from his back pocket—clean or not, that remained a question mark. “You tie his hands up with this. Take your shirt off and cover his face with it. He don’t see me, he lives.”
“If he doesn’t bleed to death, you mean.” Her mind flashed back to the three of them in the hospital parking lot. Billy couldn’t have seen him with that grip in his hair . . . but he’d tried and Lanyard jerked at the roots.
She looked through his glasses into callous brown eyes and suspected he was lying about letting Billy live, but she couldn’t take the chance. It might be the only chance Billy had.
Plus, it was time. Time for Drew to discover her gone. Time to think of another plan for escape. Time for the cops to find them. More time to live. Maybe even time for Lanyard to come to his senses, change his mind—but she wasn’t feeling that lucky.
“Fine.” She retrieved her phone while snatching the rag from his hand, refusing to think about what it had been used for, and jerked on the door handle to get out. Once again she felt the urge to run as she tucked the cell into the back pocket of her denim skirt—but she still couldn’t picture herself being faster than a speeding bullet.
Opening the back door, it was Billy’s pallor that jumped out at her first, sending a cold chill to the tips of her fingers and toes. She shivered, muttered something incoherent as she reached out to touch his cheek. Warm. There was a strong pulse in his neck and an easy rhythm to his breathing. A slight thaw came as she noted the dry blood cracking on his face and the dark clot congealing in his matted hair.
She heard a car coming up the road and froze. Was Lanyard crazy enough to kill her with a witness? Her gaze shifted toward him. He peaked his brows as if to ask her the same question and made a point of stabbing Billy’s ribs with the barrel of his gun. Something evil and dark seeped like black extra-heavy crude oil into the crevices between her fear and her anger; and though she’d had no experience with it until this moment, she recognized it immediately: pure hatred.
Her shoulders drooped in defeat as she listened to her freedom pass behind her. She glanced over her left shoulder—because she had to—but the driver gave no indication of having noticed them. She refused to peek at her captor; simply couldn’t give him the satisfaction and rejected the idea of giving up.
Her one best chance was still to come. She’d wait and watch for it.
Both of Billy’s arms were in front; hands near his knees and too far from where she stood. A glance at Lanyard caught his gaze on her chest—she wished him dead a thousand times over—unbuttoned the front of her soft cotton top and shucked it off . . . so, so, so grateful she’d gone with a pretty, feminine aqua-colored cami instead of an overtly sexy bra for Drew’s seduction.
Was he missing her yet?
She took great care in lifting Billy’s head off the backseat—trying to ignore the way the blood pulled at his skin before giving it up. She inserted half her shirt below his head and just as carefully put it to rest again before drawing the other half of the shirt down over his eyes, leaving his nose and mouth uncovered so he could get all the air he needed.
Job half done, she looked up for a sign to move on to his hands. Once her g
aze caught Lanyard’s, he deliberately raked his gawking eyes slowly down her satin-covered breasts, took his time, let them creep back up to hers. It was a sexless stare designed to humiliate her. And it did.
“Tie it up. Tight.”
“What?”
“The shirt. Unless you want him to wiggle out of it and die.”
She didn’t. Pulling the excess material to the top side of his head, opposite his wound, she calculated that it might not be such a bad thing to do. It would keep him as safe as possible and put pressure on his wound. She put herself into the task and tied a sturdy knot over his parietal bone—on the order of the rosette wraps she’d fashioned for her mom after she lost her hair to chemotherapy. From another world she watched as she gave it a satisfied pat before backing off to close the door.
Another car, a pickup truck, came around the long curve in the road. She sensed Lanyard watching her but was overwhelmed by the urge to stand and observe the driver as he passed. His eyes never left the road as he passed.
Were they invisible?
Walking around the back of the car to get to the other door and gain access to Billy’s hands, it was important to let Frank Lanyard know she wasn’t afraid of him, that she was keeping her end of the deal and there would be a penalty to pay if he didn’t keep his—she had no idea what yet, but it was worth a good bluff.
In fact, everything she did was becoming very worth it.
With her most insolent expression in place, she looked fiercely through the back window, prepared to face the nose of his gun without a flinch. He wasn’t even looking at her. Instead, he had his arm between the seats reaching for Billy. She rushed to wrench open the door.
“Do not touch him!” Impulse made her swipe at his hand as he pulled it back after checking the fit of Billy’s blindfold. “Keep your hands off him. You said if he couldn’t see you, he’d be safe. You’ve hurt him enough already. Don’t touch him.”
“Who has the gun here, honey?” He simpered at her and tried once more to debase her with his eyes.
This time it didn’t work. The top drawer of her bureau at home was bulging with skimpy lingerie that made this particular cami seem more like a parka. Her glare was defiant. He gave it a mild test, but surprised her by turning away in what looked inexplicably like regret. He rolled back in the seat to face front. “She didn’t know when to give up, either.”
She took her time tying Billy’s hands together—and assuming Frank Lanyard would test for slack, and hoping Billy would be in less danger if he couldn’t get loose, she trussed them good and tight. Touching his warm hands, the steady pulse in his wrist, and watching his easy breathing encouraged her to be optimistic. Resentful, too, of the fifty-fifty chance he had of seeing tomorrow.
“You son of a bitch!” The belated realization was like a kick in the gut. “He heard me say your name! You knew. You had no intention of—”
“Keep it up.” He sighed, seeming almost resigned to her being a pain in his ass. “It doesn’t really matter to me when I kill him, you know.”
Looking up at the top half of Lanyard’s head above the seat back, she got the impression his attention was mostly elsewhere. A quick scan of the back of the car that she kept vacuumed and clutter-free turned up no weapons—shocker!—and backing silently away from the door, she found nothing on the ground that was solid enough to do damage but stones no larger than peach pits.
After another expectant and disappointing examination of the road behind them, there was nothing else she could think of to do but get back in the driver’s seat. . . .
She settled in. The leather seat having lost all warmth from the heat of the day was cold against her bare back—a reminder to stay cool and wait for her chance. She reached for her seat belt like it still mattered, like she’d be a cautious, law abiding, well-behaved kindergarten teacher until her last breath was drawn.
And that would be okay, she decided out of the blue with a burst of pride. There were so many worse things to be. She looked at Frank Lanyard.
“So what is it you think Mr. Cubeck told me? Who’s this ‘her’ you keep referring to?” she asked, turning the key to start the car again. Habit had her checking her mirrors—and the lights telegraphing the presence of yet another car coming at them got her thinking of a rescue again. She lit up her own headlights.
“What’s that you’re doin’?”
“Headlights. Sun’s almost set. We’ll draw more attention without them than with them on.” But if she left the high beams on, she’d annoy everyone who went by—someone could be fostering a good case of road rage and chase them down. You never knew.
“Don’t push me, girl. I mean it. I’m in no mood for tricks.”
Satisfied with the way her headlights flashed back at them from the rearview mirror in the car ahead, she pulled back onto the road behind it. She gunned the engine to keep up, but the other driver was already up to the speed limit and was well away from them in no time. She’d get the next one.
In the silence that followed, she took stock of their surroundings—a house here and there, sometimes two or three grouped together between patches of woods and a few open fields; mostly county roads but the occasional rack of mailboxes indicated homes farther along . . . one abandoned shop of some sort.
Where were all the speed traps when you needed a cop?
Frank Lanyard was a loud breather, especially in the silence, as she realized that he hadn’t answered her question.
Apparently, the quiet was what she’d needed because that’s when it happened. That’s when she understood. That’s when the puzzle pieces began to fall from out of nowhere and started snapping into place. Click. Click. Click. She frowned into the twilight, winced as an achy chill pushed up each side of her neck, through her jaw, into the temples on both sides of her head. It pulsed. Boom. Boom. Boom.
“Oh, no. It’s Lonora, isn’t it?” She didn’t know why she put the question mark on that—she already knew the answer. “She’s what this is about. She is, isn’t she?”
Lonny’s words gnawed at her mind. . . . The first time I saw my Cora. She was a sailor’s delight with eyes the color of a noon sky in midsummer.
Right. That was it. Only she wasn’t a sailor’s delight because he was fresh out of the navy, it was that old adage. How’d it go? “Red sky in the morning, sailor’s warning. Red sky at night, sailor’s delight.” Red. Like her hair. Like Lonora’s hair. Like Cora’s hair. That’s how Maury Weims first recognized her at the drugstore, and he told Cliff Palmeroy. Though Lonora’s face had finer, more delicate contours, their similarities were bold enough to set any phasmophobe on their ear—no wonder Maury Weims thought she was a ghost. Her hair, her smile, maybe a dozen other tiny things is why she’d seemed so familiar to Jesse. The people at Arthur Cubeck’s funeral hadn’t been peeking and whispering because she was a stranger in a strange circumstance in their town—she was a vaguely familiar-looking stranger in a strange circumstance in their town.
“I’m right, aren’t I? This is all about her.”
“Pay attention there,” he growled as the car swerved on the road. “Watch what you’re doin’ or you’ll end up in the back with him.” He jerked his head toward Billy and then let it loll the other way. “Ha. That idiot Maury said you and the young doc had something going on, not this one here.” He paused. “Course you could be boinkin’ ’em both.”
Sophie knew five-year-olds who had more talent for the art of distraction in their little fingers than Frank Lanyard had in his whole hulking body.
“I look like her, don’t I? I saw a picture.” She came up short. Her thoughts became a slideshow: I’ll be twenty-seven in August . . . November 12, 1985 . . . disappearance of Lonora Elizabeth Campbell is being termed “suspicious” by police. . .
“You had something to do with it. The night she went missing . . . you knew where she was.”
She didn’t know when to give up, either . . . rushed to be treated. . .
“You hurt her. There we
re cuts and bruises. It was in the newspaper.”
Tell me what this is about? Her throat closed. You!
“It is me. Oh God. It is me. You beat that little girl. Lonora. You raped her, didn’t you? You did! You pig! Oh God. Oh God! . You’re him—the father . . . my father . . . the sperm donor.” Even she could hear her voice cracking with hysteria. “Aren’t you?”
“How the hell should I know?” he shouted back.
What did that mean? He’d know if he had sex with her, right? There were ten more questions, bitter and sticky on her tongue, but before she could spit them out, he said, “Turn left up there. Beyond that sign.”
“No!” Did she say that out loud? Yeah, she did. “No. Not until you tell me. I want to know.” He lifted the gun off his lap. “Oh, sure. Shoot me! Go ahead. If you’re my father I think I want to die.”
“Settle down!” His loud voice set her back, in spite of her anger . . . and no minor amount of disgust. “Watch the road. And you damned well will turn up ahead there.”
She slowed down, squealing her tires on the hard ninety-degree turn she made with equal amounts of fear and anger bubbling in her stomach. Her headlights hit the sign—it was decorative, announcing the entrance to the Calvin B. Harvey Park and Arboretum. She flew onto a dark, unlit tar-and-gravel road that almost immediately slanted uphill.
“Knock it off!” he bellowed in her right ear. She did—but only because she was scaring herself.
“Now,” he said, calmer. “We’ll talk . . . if you don’t drive us off the damn road first. Seems you don’t know as much as Maury thought you did. Christ, girl, who taught you how to drive?”
“My real dad, that’s who. My real dad who loves me and will hunt you down like a dog for this. My real dad who’ll—who’ll . . . well, I don’t think he’ll kill you with his bare hands because he’s kind and sweet and wonderful and my mom was a pacifist, but he’ll make sure you’re caught and suffer forever in prison.” Her chin quivered and tears of regret gathered in her eyes for calling him the worst father in the whole world when he nixed that stupid Canadian ski trip with Mike Fullerton in seventh grade. “My real dad held me when I was sick and gave me a standing ovation for my performance as the entire grain group in the food pyramid on Health Day, and told me I was too good for Paul Lyton anyway, and let me sleep on his shoulder while he watched my mom die . . . my real mom. That’s what dads do. Real dads. They don’t—”
Something About Sophie Page 19
