by Brian Harper
No movement anywhere. No boat in the shallows. No footprints in the sand.
Cain lowered the binoculars and glanced at Lilith, squatting beside him.
“Must’ve come ashore in the woods,” he breathed. “You look there. I’ll check out the picnic area. And stay off the air. They may have gotten hold of Gage’s radio by now.”
“Where do we meet”
“Back at the parking lot.” She was starting to move away when Cain added: “If the Kent girl’s unarmed-take her alive.”
Lilith frowned. “Isn’t it getting a little late for fun and games”
“It won’t take any extra time. There are two beds in the master bedroom. I can do Ally and her mom side by side.” He smiled. “Double the fun.”
“You’re the boss. How about Robinson”
His smile vanished. “Kill her on sight.”
They separated. Cain prowled north, retracing his route along the dirt pathway.
He looked back once in the direction of the trees and saw Lilith dissolve into grainy darkness, a shadow merging with other shadows, smoke fading in air.
A sudden inexplicable sense of misgiving almost prompted him to call her back.
Ridiculous.
His Lilith might behave like a child at times, but she was fully capable of fending for herself. She was as helpless as a tigress.
Of course, Cain reflected as he moved on, Officer Robinson had proved herself a tigress too.
63
Harried by lightheadedness, Trish reached a dirt trail at the edge of the woods.
On the far side lay a eucalyptus grove, scattered with long wooden tables, lacquered and gleaming in the starlight. Beyond the tables wavered the suggestion of a building, white and small.
The snack shop If so, the phones waited there.
And maybe an ambush.
Wet with sweat, leaning on her crutch, she unholstered the Glock. Holding the gun felt good. Its weight and solidity were as reassuring as a handshake.
But she knew whatever comfort the gun provided was increasingly illusory. She couldn’t steady her hand, couldn’t aim, couldn’t hope to hit anything except by luck-and she had already pressed her luck to the breaking point tonight.
A high, tuneless buzz filled the space between her ears. Pure will held her upright.
No medals for …
Oh, to hell with it.
Swallowing fear, she hobbled into the grove. Behind the nearest eucalyptus, she sank to the ground.
The crutch would only slow her down now. She left the pine branch propped against the tree, where she could retrieve it later.
If there was a later.
Barefoot, the Glock gripped in two hands, Ally crept through the woods.
She had waited only long enough to fasten the FireStar’s mooring line to a willow tree before heading away from shore. Trish had been moving fast, but Ally thought she could catch up.
No way Trish was going into danger alone. Suppose she felt faint again. Suppose she collapsed and couldn’t get up.
She needed help, and that was that, and if she didn’t like it, well, too damn bad.
The darkness was thick and heavy on all sides, a blanket of night. Though there was no trail to follow. Ally was fairly sure she knew the way. Another twenty yards or so, and she-Pain punched like a hot needle through the sole of her right foot. Bramble, twig, something sharp.
She hissed a curse, then dropped instantly into a defensive crouch, aware that her voice must have carried in the stillness.
“Ally”
The whisper reached her from a nest of shrubs and shadows fifty feet away.
Seal-walking on her belly, Trish advanced to the next eucalyptus and the next, until the trees thinned.
Then she wriggled alongside a garbage can-Don’t Trash Our Park, it warned-and from there to an adjacent picnic table. She took cover under the built-in bench, her breath coming in explosive gasps.
On her elbows she struggled to the end of the table, then peered out from under the bench.
The building was now less than ten feet from her. A plywood hut, white-painted, the awning emblazoned Bobby’s Snack Shack.
A closed sign was wedged in a window near the door. At the corner of the shop stood twin kiosks.
Pay phones.
Between herself and the phones-no more tables, no trash cans, no trees, only a bare span of lawn.
Her heart racketed in her ears. She crawled forward, aware of her terrible vulnerability.
On the margin of her sight, a blur of motion.
Gun
No. A bat, a little brown bat, flitting among the eucalyptus branches.
Bats just like that one had fluttered over the field near the old farmhouse while she and Marta sat together on the porch in the summer twilight.
The memory was vivid, achingly real.
She kept going. Reached the front wall of the shop. Crouched against it, strips of peeled paint flapping in her hair.
Motionless against a white background, she could have been a target on a shooting range.
Her enemies never would have a better chance than this.
Eyes wide, head pounding, she waited for the fatal shot.
64
Ally’s heart sped up. She licked her lips and peered into the night. “Trish”
“Yeah. It’s me.” A dark, slender shape, unmistakably female, took substance among the tangled foliage. “You okay”
“I’m fine, just hurt my foot, you’re not mad, are you” Ally knew she was babbling. “I’m sorry, I know I was supposed to stay by the boat, but I couldn’t let you go by yourself, I just couldn’t.”
“It’s all right.”
She blinked, catching her breath. “Is it”
“Get over here.”
Relief lifted her. Quickly she moved forward, limping a little on her bloodied foot.
Trish was just ahead, a kneeling figure in silhouette, wearing a gun belt, a pistol in her hand.
“I’m glad you’re not ticked off or anything,” Ally whispered. “I really thought you’d kill me.”
Very close now, and in the shadows Trish was rising, her gun lifting as she stood.
Stood-without the crutch.
This wasn’t Trish, wasn’t Trish.
Ally threw herself to the ground behind a leafy scrim of manzanita, and a cork popped.
After an endless moment Trish relaxed, breath sighing out of her, and lowered the Glock.
Her gamble had paid off. Cain and his accomplices really had cleared out.
Clinging to the wall, she pulled herself upright, then crabbed to the corner of the shop and faced the first kiosk.
She lifted the handset, blinking back tears of relief.
It would be so good finally to ask for help. So good no longer to carry this weight of responsibility for so many lives.
Her trembling finger stabbed the keypad three times.
Nine-one-one.
She put the phone to her ear.
No ringing.
No dial tone.
Silence.
She stared at the phone. The thought occurred to her that she needed money, had to feed a quarter into the slot, and she didn’t have a quarter—
Stop.
A 911 call didn’t require payment. She knew that. She was just getting hysterical.
She touched the digits again.
The silence continued.
Out of order. Must be.
Well, there was a second phone. Maybe that one would work.
Please, God, please let it work.
She tried replacing the handset, but her shaking hand released it too soon, and it fell.
The handset thumped on the grass, trailing a severed cord.
Sabotaged.
Her gaze shifted to the other kiosk. A cut cord dangled from that handset also.
They were here.
Or had been. Could have left by now. But she didn’t think so.
Creak of hinges.
The
shop door.
She started to turn, and powerful arms seized her from behind, crushing her stomach, driving breath from her lungs.
A gloved hand chopped her wrist. The Glock fell.
She was disarmed, helpless.
Finished.
65
In a tree trunk inches from Ally’s head, a thump of impact. Splintered bark sprayed her hair.
For a bewildered moment she could make no sense of what was happening, and then she remembered Lilith in the living room, impersonating Trish, the mimicry eerily persuasive.
Another pop, and the manzanita rustled, the bullet kicking up dirt near her face.
She lurched sideways, then flung out her arms and launched into a furious crawl, struggling through a dense ground cover of buckbrush and dogwood and blueblossom.
A third bullet chased her, missing by a half yard.
Hot breath on Trish’s cheek. A moplike fall of hair brushing her neck.
The man with the ponytail. On the radio Cain had called him Tyler.
He scrabbled at her belt buckle. Undid it. The belt dropped away.
Then he was hauling her through the doorway into a cramped, airless room musty with the lingering odor of grease.
A counter ran along the left wall. He slammed her against it, and she doubled over, gasping. His pelvis dug into the small of her back. Leather fingers pinned her wrists at her side.
Close to her ear, a western drawl: “Where is she”
For a moment, stunned and winded, Trish honestly did not understand the question.
“Who” she croaked. “Where’s who”
He took her incomprehension as defiance. With a pelvic thrust he rammed her spine, driving her forward, the counter’s sharp edge biting into her abdomen.
“The brat,” he snarled. “Where is she”
Past pain, past fear, she understood that this was why he hadn’t shot her through the door or window. This was why he’d taken her alive. He wanted her to give up Ally.
“Safe,” Trish hissed. “That’s where she is. She’s safe.”
Ally crawled through weeds and wildflowers, driven only by the mindless urge to flee, get away, put distance between herself and her pursuer, and then rationality reasserted control.
She had to think. Think like Trish. What would Trish do
Take cover. Shoot back. Even if her aim was wild, she could buy time.
She scrambled behind a black oak, clambering over a pile of thick and twisted roots fisted tightly in the earth. Rough bark chafed her shoulder blades through the ragged dress. Crouching low, she raised the pistol-But there was no pistol. She stared at her empty hands. “Alison,” a lisping voice cooed from the shadows, “you lost your gun …”
66
“You’ll tell me, Trish,” the man named Tyler breathed. “You’ll tell me exactly where to find your traveling companion.”
She wished she had never admitted her nickname in the presence of Cain and his thugs. She hated hearing it from this man’s mouth.
Through gritted teeth she whispered, “No chance.”
“Oh, yes. You’ll tell.”
The way he said it wasn’t good. He sounded much too sure of himself.
He released his hold on her wrists. Reached across the counter to a stainless steel sink. Plugged the drain, then ran cold water from the tap in a foaming gush.
She listened to the hiss of water, her mind frozen.
“Now listen, Trish.” His voice was a hiss also. “Our schedule’s getting kind of hairy. We may not have time to hunt down some high school whore and still get paid. And we will get paid. I got a red Porsche, showroom new, just waiting for me.”
The sink was half full now.
“So here’s the thing. I’m gonna kill you, okay We both already know that. But it can be easy, or it can be hard. Easy way is with a bullet. Hard way-well, it’s like this.”
In one motion he thrust her forward and plunged her head into the sink.
For a wild moment Ally imagined Lilith as some sort of evil spirit, not human at all, a supernatural presence able to snatch a gun away.
No. Quit it.
The real answer was much more obvious. Harassed by bullets, confused by fear, she had simply dropped the pistol when she started to crawl.
And Lilith, tracking her, had picked it up.
Wonder Woman’s partner, she thought in a scalding wave of self-reproach. Sure.
Breath streamed from Trish’s mouth in agitated bubbles. As if from a distance she sensed the pops and jerks of her own shoulders as she struggled to break free of his grasp.
It was the car trunk again. Cold water rising until the air pocket was gone. Ache in her lungs, terrible need to draw a breath, mounting helplessness and terror—
He yanked her head back, his fingers knotted in her hair. She gulped air, water running like tears down her face.
“You like that, Trish You like that”
A spasm of dry retching was the only answer she could give.
He jostled her into silence. “Didn’t think you would. So talk to me.” He leaned close, his whisper caressing her right ear. “Talk and I’ll go easy on you, I promise I will.”
She shook all over. Couldn’t face another submersion, couldn’t stand the thought of the inevitable moment when she inhaled water and felt her lungs ice over.
In the woods, a light snapped on.
Ally hugged the tree as white glare diffused through the misty air on both sides of her. The beam of Lilith’s flash, probing the night.
Facing an unarmed adversary, Lilith could afford to reveal her position. And Ally, sheltered only by the tree, couldn’t move without being instantly seen.
Don’t come this way, she prayed. Go in another direction. Please, please don’t find me.
“Alison …”
The girlish singsong raised a skitter of gooseflesh on Ally’s bare arms.
The cone of light swayed, exploring the foliage on either side of the oak but never straying far enough to give her a chance at escape.
Crackle of sticks. Boots treading closer. The glare brightened, droplets of mist sparkling in a funnel of white.
Too late she saw a torn fragment of her dress snagged on the bark, fluttering in the breeze, marking her position like a flag.
An elfin titter, and she knew Lilith had seen it too.
“I think you’re behind that tree, Alison …”
She choked back a moan.
“Be smart, Trish,” Tyler breathed fiercely. “Tell me where she is.”
Had to say something, or he would dunk her again.
Her answer came without conscious preparation. “The island. I came alone. Left her … on the island.”
“That’s a lie.”
“No, really-“
“You wouldn’t take the boat and strand her there. If you got caught, she’d be a sitting duck.”
“I … I didn’t think of that.”
“You think of everything,” he said, and pushed her under.
Loose hairs waved around her face. Air dribbled from her pursed lips. A high, tuneless buzz filled the space between her ears. Somewhere someone was screaming, and someone else was saying, It’s all right, and neither voice was hers.
He jerked her head up, and she was coughing, then gasping, then coughing again, real tears mixing now with the water on her face.
“I don’t like liars,” Tyler snarled. “You got that”
No hope of talking her way out of this. She had to take action, fight back. Somehow.
“Now, Trish”-his voice ominously gentle again-“I’ll ask you real nicely just once more.”
Her forearms were still wedged between his body and her own, but he wasn’t holding them anymore. She had some limited mobility.
“Where’s your sidekick at”
She groped blindly behind her, looking for a weapon, a diversion, anything to save her from going back down into the wet and the dark.
“Last chance.” His breath stirred
the fine down on her cheek. “Talk to me, and talk straight-or next time, sweetheart, you ain’t coming up for air.”
67
Nowhere to hide.
Blindly, pointlessly. Ally tried pressing closer to the tree, willing her body in some magical way to become one with the bundled roots and the branching canopy of leaves.
Then the ambient glow coalesced into a single focused orb, and she lifted her head, looking past the flashlight at the pale crescent of a smile.
“Now look what we have here.” Lilith released a low, velvety purr. “The virgin princess.”
“Talk!” Tyler screamed. “Last chance.”
Trish probed the unknown space at her back, and her hand touched leather.
His belt.
Sheathed to the left side-his combat knife.
“Okay,” she gasped. “I’ll tell.” Bending her wrist, she closed her fingers over the knife’s handle. “You … you’d find her anyway.”
“That’s right, Trish. Finally you’re getting smart.”
Lilith took a step forward, and Ally saw the gun in her right hand, its muzzle staring down at her.
“Cain told me to take you alive if I could. But I don’t know. I’ve never shot anybody before.” A giggle, light and airy. “Guess I’m sort of a virgin too.”
The gun steadied, the laser diode beaming a red-orange line at Ally’s chest.
“I think,” Lilith said, “it’s time for me to lose my innocence.”
Careful, careful.
Draw the knife without sound, without pressure.
“I sent her-“
The knife sliding, whisper quiet.
“-up the hill-“
Her grip precarious, elbow bending as her hand lifted, threatening to give her away.
“-to wait by the road.”
“Why there”
“For an ambulance … once I called for help.”
The blade nearly free.
“Makes sense,” he whispered. “Thanks, Trish. By the way-I’m the one who locked you in that trunk.”
He shoved her forward, submerging her again, and she lost her grip on the knife.
