by Brian Harper
“Not that way.” The urgent whisper came from behind her. “Help me with this.”
But Trish didn’t need any help. She had already unlatched one of the window screens and pushed it out of the frame by the time Ally reached her side.
She might be handcuffed and hurt and scared, maybe even as scared as Ally herself, but she sure knew how to keep her cool.
“You first,” Trish said.
Ally began climbing out. “What are you, Wonder Woman or something”
“That’s me.” The cuffs flashed. “Dig my Amazon bracelets.”
Despite urgency and danger. Ally almost smiled.
In the hall-footsteps.
Heavy and quick.
Ally froze, halfway out the window, the blood leaving her face. She breathed one word.
“Him.”
32
At the door of Ally’s bedroom, Cain paused to strip off his mask.
The girl had been so eager to see his face. Now she would have the pleasure of seeing it again in the final moment of her life.
He’d told Charles his daughter wouldn’t suffer. It was true. There was no time for a drawn-out encounter of the sort he preferred. He would simply enter the room, thrust the gun under Ally’s chin, and make spatter-art out of her brains. A no-frills hit, slick and professional.
He wadded the mask in his back pocket, then shut his eyes and drew a slow breath, feeling the smooth expansion of his rib cage, the beat of blood in the arteries of his wrists and the veins of his neck.
This was always his way before a kill. In the stillness before violence, he liked to take a moment to sink deep into the awareness of himself, his body, the autonomic functions of his heart and lungs. Though he was not a philosophical man, he found a certain wonder in the knowledge that another human being, as alive as he was, soon would be dead by his hand. No breath, no heartbeat, no movement, no life.
Bodies in motion. Bodies at rest. That was all there was in the universe, or so he’d heard. Tonight a body in motion would be set at rest, that was all-permanently at rest. And the universe would go on, indifferent and aloof.
Ready now, he grasped the doorknob.
It wouldn’t turn.
Locked.
Fear held Ally immobilized, one leg over the windowsill, the other foot planted in her bedroom.
“Shoot him,” she hissed at Trish. “Through the door.”
Trish shook her head. “The others will hear. Can’t get them all.”
The doorknob rattled.
“Go,” Trish breathed.
Ally’s paralysis broke. Twist of her upper body, and she slipped through the window and dropped onto the flower bed bordering the house. She crushed some of her mom’s geraniums and was distantly sorry about it.
Trish climbed after her, drawing the gun.
For a bewildered moment Cain stared at the door, unable to comprehend how it could be locked.
Ally was tied up, wasn’t she
Wasn’t she
Ally streaked across the yard through a tunnel of shadows. The grounds of the estate seemed enormous, bigger than three football fields. She had never imagined the yard was so large.
Trish, directly ahead, glanced back, her face pallid in the starlight, wet ribbons of hair lacing her forehead and cheeks like cracks in a marble bust.
On her right, the pool area blurred past: smear of white concrete, smell of chlorine.
The garden lay directly ahead. Trish led her into it, through high stalks of gladiolus and foxglove and pink cadmium, the plants trampled, the beautiful blooms crushed like so much wastepaper.
Ally thought it was wrong to kill the flowers-shockingly, viciously wrong that any young, healthy, blossoming thing should have to die.
Cain stepped back and delivered a powerful kick to the door, planting his boot just inside the handle. The frame splintered out, and the door flew open under his hand.
He burst inside. Scanned the room.
The desk chair-empty. Window screen-removed.
Gun in hand, he ran to the window, peered out.
In the garden, a patch of luminous white.
Ally in her party dress. A distant, moving target.
He thumbed the pressure switch on the pistol’s grip.
The laser sighting system printed a two-inch circle of reddish orange light on her back.
Cain fired.
Trish glanced over her shoulder a second time and saw a silhouetted figure at the bedroom window.
Flicker of amber light.
The laser.
“Down!”
She pulled Ally to the ground behind a clump of bellflower.
The shot was nearly silent. The bullet’s impact made a soft thud in the trunk of an olive tree.
Impelled by instinct, with no time for thought, Trish spun into a half crouch and lifted the Glock in two hands.
She forgot the laser sight, forgot everything except the trigger and how to use it.
She squeezed off two rounds in the direction of the window.
Cain saw the girl go down, but was she hit or had she merely taken cover
He couldn’t tell, had no chance to think about it, because out of the darkness burst two answering shots.
Bullets smacked into the exterior wall like mailed fists.
What the hell
Cain threw himself clear of the window and snap-rolled into a crouch, his Glock lifted defensively.
Trish had never fired a gun without ear protection. The Glock was unsilenced, the reports shockingly loud.
“Did you get him” Ally’s suntanned shoulders, revealed by the sleeveless dress, shook with inner violence.
Trish barely heard the question over the ringing clamor in her head. “Don’t think so. Come on.”
She started crawling, staying low behind spikes of lupine and lady’s slipper.
“Where to” Ally whispered.
“The gate.”
The splashback of the muzzle flashes had impaired her night vision. She blinked away blue afterimages as she seal-walked infantry style, elbows chewing up divots of spongy earth. The Glock was clutched tight in her right hand, the action hot.
Though the yard was dark, she felt helplessly exposed, as if she were crawling on a lighted stage before an audience of snipers.
The rear gate seemed impossibly far. A lifetime wouldn’t be long enough to reach it.
She kept going, Ally beside her, the elegant white dress streaked with grass stains like muddy tracks of tears.
33
Gunshots.
Barbara stared at the closet doors, certain of what she’d heard.
Two loud cracks, distant but faintly audible, originating-she believed-somewhere outside the house.
“They’re shooting,” she breathed.
She turned. Her gaze swept the closet.
Philip using the flashlight to search the overhead shelves for some means of escape.
Judy still touching the space between her collar bones where the crucifix had hung.
Charles seated on the wicker hamper, blank-faced and hollow-eyed.
None of them had heard the shots or her own whispered words.
“They’re shooting,” she said again, more sharply, and as the others looked up, she thought of Ally, alone with the killers, at their mercy.
She had worried that her daughter might be molested, but the idea that she might be … that they could …
They had guns, they were ruthless, they’d killed once already, but even so, they wouldn’t …
Ally was fifteen. A child.
They couldn’t have.
God in heaven, no.
“No,” she said aloud. “No.” She spun toward the closet doors. “No, Ally, Ally!”
Her fists on the doors, drum roll of blows, the chain clanking, and Barbara raging for her daughter, refusing comfort, hysterical and knowing it and not giving a damn.
On his knees in a corner, gripping the pistol in two gloved hands, Cain tried to make sens
e of what had happened.
It hadn’t been Ally who fired the shots. It had been someone near her-dark-clad, unseen at first glance-a lithe female figure dressed in black or …
Dark blue.
Police uniform.
Robinson.
Alive.
He tried to blink the thought away. It was crazy. It was laughable.
But he knew it was true.
Somehow she had jilted death. Obtained a gun. Rescued the girl.
Now she must be trying to get out of the yard. If she did, she and Ally could lose themselves in the woods.
Cain scuttled to the doorway, out of range of the window, then sprang upright and pounded down the hall.
Behind him, muffled shouts from the master suite. Barbara Kent’s voice. The gunfire from the yard must have been audible even inside the locked closet, damn it.
All the prisoners would be panicking now. This was just getting better and better.
Gage’s voice sputtered over the ProCom’s speaker. “Heard shots, what’s going on”
Cain answered on the run. “Lilith, relieve Gage out front. Tyler, Gage-wait for me in the rear hall. Move!”
He cut through the kitchen, sprinted past the laundry nook, reached the side door. A control panel for the rear gate was mounted on the wall. He threw the switch.
As the gate slid shut, he returned to the kitchen, flipping switches, turning on every floodlight in the yard.
Lilith. Tyler. Gage.
All three names had sputtered over the radio clipped to Trish’s belt. Though the volume was low, she’d heard the transmission clearly.
It was obvious the front gate was guarded. And the backyard would be searched-soon.
Had to get out through the rear. Not much time left. She crawled faster.
She hadn’t thought she could stay afraid for so long. She’d assumed that a fear this intense would bum itself out. But apparently her body had endless reserves of adrenaline. It could feed the fire indefinitely.
The garden thinned near the gazebo, tall foliage giving way to a carpet of vetch and Irish moss. The creeping plants provided no cover.
With a nod at Ally, Trish gave up on crawling and broke into a run, darting across a stretch of open ground as deadly as a minefield.
A succession of fragmentary thoughts crowded her mind: Black Talon cartridges-gelatin targets-wide wound channels.
She and Ally thudded to their knees behind the gazebo, miraculously intact.
“Lost my shoe,” Ally gasped. “Does that matter”
Trish struggled for breath. “Not unless you had plans to go out dancing later.”
“I’ll pass.”
“Then take off the other one. You’ll run better barefoot.”
Ally removed her remaining white pump and tossed it away. There was something childlike and achingly vulnerable about her two bare feet, toes curling on the grass.
Trish looked toward the open gate. To get there, they would have to cross another, longer expanse of treeless lawn. It meant pressing their luck, but they had no choice.
“Ready for another wind sprint” she asked.
A curt nod answered her.
Shifting into a runner’s stance, Trish tensed herself for a burst of speed.
And the gate creaked, sliding shut on a railed track.
“Oh, God,” Ally breathed, sinking back on her haunches. “They found the switch. They found the switch …”
A control switch for the gate, somewhere inside the house. That was what she must mean.
Trish felt herself trembling with a new surge of fear, an electric jolt slamming through every nerve ending in her body.
She and Ally were penned in. They could be hunted down at leisure.
Banks of lights burst ablaze. A movie moment: a prison, a night escape, sentries in watch towers, floodlights sweeping the yard.
Huddled behind the gazebo, the two of them were safe temporarily. But if they left cover, they would be caught in the glare.
From Ally, a sound like a whimper. Trish reached out awkwardly with her chained hands and touched the girl’s arm.
Up close the down on her cheeks was visible, and the dusting of freckles around her eyes. Dried blood crusted a swollen lip. The scalloped neckline of her dress had been torn.
Trish wondered if Cain had raped her. The parallel to Marta was briefly too strong to be endured, and she had to look away.
“What are we going to do” the girl murmured, hopelessness in her voice.
For a bad moment Trish had no answer. Then she remembered the cordless phone. “Call for help.”
She yanked the handset free of her belt and hit the talk button. The keypad lit up, and from the receiver came the hum of a dial tone. Still within range of the base unit in the kitchen, thank God.
Ally stared in amazement. “You are Wonder Woman.”
Trish found the strength for a smile as she touched the keypad three times. “Wonder Woman never dialed nine-one-one.”
34
Wet shoes.
The thought entered Cain’s mind as he stood at the kitchen window, switching on the last of the lights.
Robinson had been dumped in the lake. She would be soaked, dripping.
And the kitchen floor was wet.
Charles Kent hadn’t spilled his glass, as Cain had assumed. Robinson had been in here.
The trail reached the cabinet under the sink. Kneeling, he opened the doors and beamed his flash inside.
Damp spots on the wood. Shoe prints.
She must have hidden there while Charles rinsed his mouth. Hidden right under Cain’s nose.
Who was this woman
A rookie. A Girl Scout. A scared kid, that’s all, as fragile and untested as a newly hatched chick.
But she had an irritating habit of staying alive. A habit Cain intended to break.
He almost left the kitchen, then stopped, held by a new thought. What exactly had she been doing in here
Every minute she’d spent in the house had been a life-and-death gamble. She wouldn’t have wasted time just looking around. Must have been in pursuit of some objective.
A knife, maybe. But hell, she had a gun.
Cain scanned the kitchen, taking in the hooded range, the refrigerator, the central island.
Dinner dishes in the sink, filmy with soap suds. Countertop TV. Family snapshots under glass. Laminated noteboard. Telephone …
The phone was cordless. The handset was gone.
Hell.
She could call from anywhere in the house or yard. Could be calling right now.
Cain lunged for the phone and ripped it from the wall.
One ring. Two …
Trish prayed for a 911 operator to answer. The third ring was cut off, replaced by a crackling buzz. Somehow she’d been disconnected. She punched the talk button twice, first to terminate the transmission, then to try again.
This time the handset sounded a brief error tone and automatically shut down.
“Damn.” She let the phone drop from her hand.
Ally swallowed hard. “What’s wrong”
“They’re on to us.” She was trying not to tremble, but the clinking of the handcuff chain gave her away. “Switched off the phone at the base.”
“Jeez. I … I guess maybe I shouldn’t ask what we do now.”
“Let me think.”
The problem, all too obviously, was that Cain was thinking too.
Where had she gotten the gun
That was the question in Cain’s mind as he pitched the ruined phone into the trash.
Blair, of course. He had been patrolling the lake shore. It was the only answer.
If the rookie had Blair’s gun, she almost certainly would have his radio too. Might be monitoring the preset frequency.
Slowly Cain unclipped his walkie-talkie and pressed the transmit button.
“Robinson”
Trish stiffened, hearing her name.
She looked at Ally. The girl’s eyes
were suddenly too big for her face.
“Hey, Robinson.” Cain’s voice crackled like newspaper. “You there Or is it past your bedtime”
After a brief inner debate she lifted her transceiver, spoke into the microphone.
“I’m here … Cain.”
A pause. Then: “You know that much, do you”
“I try to stay informed.” She hoped he couldn’t hear the tremor in her voice.
“Yeah, you’re a quick-witted little Mouseketeer, I’ll give you that. Donald and Mickey and ol’ Uncle Walt would be real proud.”
She tried a bluff. “You’d better scram. Backup’s coming.”
“I don’t think so. That radio’s short-range only, and I trashed the phone.”
“Not before I got through. I was on the line just a couple seconds, but they do an instant trace on a nine-one-one call. Units are on their way right now, code three.”
“Are they Hey, Lilith, you monitoring the police traffic”
A familiar lisping voice answered: “That’s a ten-four.”
“Any units dispatched to this address”
“Negative.”
Trish tried a last gambit. “They know you’ve got my radio. They wouldn’t say anything over the air.”
She waited tensely through a moment’s silence, praying he would buy it.
Then a cool reply: “Nice try, Robinson. But I can always tell when you’re lying.”
“It’s your ass,” she said with forced bravado.
“No, I think it’s gonna be yours. In a body bag.”
Body bag. Vivid image. She could almost hear the rasp of the zipper sealing the flaps.
“You shouldn’t have come back to the house,” Cain added. “Why’d you do it For the girl”
Trish avoided Ally’s gaze. “Just doing my job.”
“Yeah, right. Guess I really am dealing with a hero, after all.”
“I’m no hero.”
A chuckle. “Modest too. If you got a plan for world peace, you could be the next Miss America.”
“My only plan is to put you in jail.” She regretted saying it. Lame.
“I’ve been there,” Cain said evenly. “Didn’t like it. Don’t intend on going back. Now let me tell you about my plans, blue eyes. You too, freckle-face. I know you’re listening.”
