by Lois Duncan
“Last night I thought I heard someone trying to get into our room,” I said. “When I looked out the window, nobody seemed to be out there. I checked at the office this morning, and no keys were missing. I’ve been trying to make myself believe I only imagined it.”
“Maybe you did, and maybe you didn’t,” Lorelei said. “Doors can be opened with other devices than keys. The important thing now is we seem to have shaken the Camaro. The driver must have a low opinion of our intelligence or he wouldn’t have taken the risk of following so closely. I imagine now he’ll expect us to keep driving south and to get back onto the freeway the next chance we get.”
She was silent a moment as she studied the road map.
“What I think we should do is reverse directions and take the state highway north instead of south.”
Relieved to have the decision made for me, I did as she suggested and drove north on Highway 15 to a town called St. George. There we reentered the freeway and drove back south again for four more hours until we crossed the state border into Florida and stopped at a motel in St. Augustine for the night.
At least, that was our plan. It didn’t work out that way. After we checked into our room and I napped for an hour, Lorelei and I had dinner at a seafood restaurant. Then we returned to our room, and I brought in our bags. That was when we realized something was missing. It was Lorelei who first became aware of it as she rummaged through her suitcase.
“I don’t have the map,” she said. “Is it in your bag?”
“No,” I said. “I thought it got packed in yours.”
There was a pause. Then my grandmother said, “Make a search for it. Maybe it got shoved down under some of your clothes.”
“I know I don’t have it,” I said. “We must have left it in Petersburg. Does it really matter? There’s a second map in thecar.”
“That’s not the point,” Lorelei said. “I marked our route on the original map. If it didn’t get packed, then it must have been left in our room.”
“You mean—you think—” I realized where she was headed and felt a sharp pang over my heart. “You think that man may have gotten into our motel room?”
“The maids were doing the housekeeping chores when we left, and the doors to all the units were standing open. Anybody could have walked into any one of them. We must have been in the coffee shop for half an hour. That was plenty of time for someone to have checked our room to see if we’d left anything meaningful behind.”
“But if he had a marked map, he wouldn’t need to follow us,” I said. “Wouldn’t he just have driven on through to Grove City?”
“He’d still have had to locate your parents when he got there,” Lorelei said. “He doesn’t know where they live or what name they’re using. It would take time to find that out, and since he knew we were headed there anyway, the simplest thing would have been to let us lead him.”
“Newcomers stand out in a town that small,” I said. “If he asks around, he’s bound to find someone who’s noticed us.”
On the screen of my mind I saw my parents and Jason, seated in the living room playing Monopoly, with the figure of a vampire poised in the doorway. Or worse, the creature would come for them while they were sleeping. I pictured the front door swinging silently inward while the fans in the windows covered the sound of footsteps. As always, the doors to the bedrooms would be standing open to the hall to allow the air to circulate through the house. Mike Vamp could walk straight into my parents’ bedroom without even having to place his hand on the doorknob.
By the time I had gotten that far, the phone receiver was in my hand and I was frantically dialing the number of our house in Grove City. The phone rang over and over without an answer.
“They’re out,” I said. “That’s weird, because they never go anywhere.”
“Maybe they’ve gone to a friend’s house,” Lorelei suggested.
“They don’t have friends,” I said. “They keep to themselves.”
We sat on the motel beds, across from each other, each seeing her panic reflected in the eyes of the other.
“Nothing has happened to anybody yet,” Lorelei said, trying to make the statement sound reassuring. “Even if he drove nonstop from the time we left the freeway at Tutterville, there hasn’t been time for him to have reached Grove City.”
“Tom Geist is the person to call, but his number’s unlisted,” I said. “We have it at home, taped to the base of the telephone, but I never thought of copying it and carrying it with me. I guess we’d better get back in the car and start driving.”
“You’re worn out,” Lorelei said. “We’ve been on the road all day. I’ll drive the first few hours so you can rest.”
“You can’t do that with that cast on your arm,” I objected. “You said yourself you can’t manage one-handed driving.”
“I retract that statement,” said Lorelei. “I’ll manage fine. It can’t be as dangerous as your daredevil stunt on the freeway. Besides, we don’t have a choice. If we don’t warn your parents, that monster who broke my arm may injure your mother.”
So we got back into the car and took off again, with Lorelei driving the first two hours, and me, the second two.
As the road unrolled like a long, black ribbon before us, I comforted myself with the knowledge that when the Camaro arrived in Grove City the driver still would not know how to find our house. Even if he was able to get our address, the lack of street signs and curbside numbers would make it almost impossible to locate it at night. We’d had a hard enough time finding it ourselves, even with written directions and a map to guide us.
About five miles short of Grove City we hit the rain. At first it was only a spatter of drops on the windshield, but it grew increasingly heavy until by the time we reached the town limits the heavens had opened, and I couldn’t see more than a couple of yards in front of me. It was late enough so there were no other cars on the road as I inched the Porsche down the river that once had been Orange Avenue, guided by the blur of water-curtained streetlights. I missed the entrance to Lemon Lane completely and had to make a U-turn to go back and search for it. When I finally did find the road and turn the car onto it, Lorelei stared out her window into the immensity of the darkness like a traveler in space who’s been sucked into a black hole.
“There really are houses along here?” she asked doubtfully.
“A few,” I told her. “They’re back behind the trees.”
“This rain is probably a blessing in disguise,” she said. “It’s hard to imagine anyone locating anything in this downpour unless he knew exactly where he was going.”
Even I had trouble finding our house, and it was with relief that I finally spotted the mailbox. When I eased the Porsche into the narrow mouth of the driveway, I became aware of a strange, dark shape at the side of it. It took me a moment to recognize what it was, and when I did a scream rose into my throat and hung there, caught, unable to move any farther. Yanking the steering wheel hard, I sent our car spinning around in a half-moon curve so it shot off the drive and plowed through a thicket of palmetto shrubs to come to a stop facing back toward the road.
There, in the beam of our headlights, was my parents’ Plymouth, nose down in the surging waters that swept through the drainage ditch.
CHAPTER 17
Before the engine had stopped running, I wasout of the Porsche and down on my knees at the edge of the embankment, straining to see into the water-filled interior of the car. What had happened was all too obvious; whoever had been driving the Plymouth had neglected to center it at the point where the driveway narrowed to bridge the ditch, and the left front wheel had slipped off the edge of the driveway, so the car had taken the plunge diagonally and was now positioned hood down with the rear end elevated.
“Whose car is that?” asked Lorelei, materializing beside me. I could tell by her voice that she’d already guessed the answer.
“It’s ours,” I said, “but there isn’t anybody in it.”
“Thank god for that!”
exclaimed Lorelei. “But someone was in it! One or both of your parents and maybe Bram.”
“It was Mom,” I said. “I’m sure the driver was Mom.” The knowledge rose up to confront me, stark and unavoidable. “Mom’s started drinking since we’ve been in Florida, not just on special occasions, but all the time. She’s been so unhappy, so frustrated about her writing. We haven’t wanted to recognize it, so we’ve closed our eyes to it.”
Scrambling up from the ground, I broke into a run back across the yard to the house. The waterlogged steps of the porch gave beneath my feet like rotten sponges as I pounded up them with Porky at my heels. When I groped for the doorknob, I found the front door was already open, as though the last one through it had been in too much of a hurry to close it behind him.
The house was dark, and my hand shot up to the wall switch. With a click, the living room leapt into existence, the cream-color walls that Mom had recently painted a striking contrast to the shabby furnishings and the sun-bleached curtains at the windows. The room was just as it had been when I had left except that the Sunday paper had been tossed on the sofa and the coffee table held a Coke can and what appeared to be a half-empty glass of orange juice. Porky paused to shake himself, but I dashed on down the hall, snapping on lights as I ran, driving the pervasive darkness out of each room in turn. None of the rooms were occupied, and the neatly made bed in my parents’ room had obviously not been slept in. My brother’s bed was a mess, but that didn’t mean anything, since he almost never made his bed in the morning, and Mom only did it for him on the one day a week she took the sheets to the laundromat. In the kitchen, Mom’s typewriter was set up on the table with manuscript pages scattered around it like dry leaves in autumn.
My eyes flew automatically to the door of the refrigerator, which was where we always left notes for each other, but it didn’t hold any message. On the counter beside the telephone, however, there lay a scrap of paper that told as much of the story as I needed to know. Jotted on it, in my Mom’s familiar handwriting, was Kim Stanfield’s telephone number.
Immediately, I realized what must have happened. Somehow Mom had learned I was not at Kim’s house. Since Kim was not in town to tell her, the only person who could have given me away was Larry. Jason had said he’d attempted to reach me on Thursday, and his ego must have been dented when I didn’t return his call. Perhaps he had followed up with a call on Sunday and Mom had told him I’d gone to Kim’s for the weekend. Larry’s response would have been to say that was impossible since Kim had gone to Miami with her family.
The scenario rolled through my mind, so clear and immediate it was hard to believe I had not been there to see it, Mom calling Kim’s house and, getting no answer, rushing out to the car to drive herself over there. Had she gone alone, or had Dad and Jason been with her? And had anyone been hurt when the car went into the ditch? Was there anybody in town who would know what had happened?
Stricken with guilt and panic, I grabbed for the telephone and dialed the only local number I could think of. The phone seemed to ring interminably before it was answered and a man’s unfamiliar voice mumbled a groggy “Hello?”
“Please, may I speak to Larry?” I asked in a rush.
“To Larry?” the man said irritably. “Who is this anyway? Don’t you know it’s one o’clock in the morning?”
“This is Val Weber, a friend of Larry’s,” I told him. “I’m sorry to call at this hour, but it’s really important.”
“Weber?” the man said. “I’ve heard that name. You must be one of the people that guy who called here earlier was trying to get hold of.”
“Somebody tried to call us at your house?” I asked weakly.
“The guy who called Larry said he was looking for some people by the name of Corrigan. He called at midnight and woke up the whole family. I heard Larry ask him if those ‘Corrigans’ might be going by the name of ‘Weber’ and have adaughter who plays tennis and a son with two-color eyes. I don’t know what kind of game you people are playing, but I’ve got to be at work at seven in the morning, and I don’t appreciate being waked up twice in one night.”
“Please, Mr. Bushnell, let me speak to Larry,” I begged. “I’ve got to know what else he may have told that man. Did he give him directions about how to find our house?”
“You can ask him that in the morning,” the man said firmly. “I’m not going to wake my kid up again tonight.”
The phone clunked hard in my ear and was replaced by the dial tone. Behind me Porky’s toenails clicked rhythmically against the weathered kitchen linoleum as he came trotting in to explore the room.
From the living room Lorelei’s voice called, “April? Where are you?”
“In the kitchen, using the phone,” I called back to her, trying to make a decision as to what to do next. My first thought was to call the police for protection, but how could I convince them of the extent of our danger? Since I wasn’t allowed to tell them we were in Witness Protection, they would think my fears were excessive and ridiculous. The only person who would understand was Tom, and for all I knew, my father might already have called him. When Dad found out I’d run off, he was sure to have guessed I was headed for Norwood, and the reasonable thing to have done was inform Tom Geist.
I had just picked up the phone and was in the process of turning it upside down so I could read the number taped to its base when Porky suddenly burst into a volley of barking. It was the high-pitched, staccato sort of yapping that usually meant he had spotted something strange and exciting. When I glanced at him I saw that his head was lifted and his eyes were riveted to the far side of the room at about the level of my shoulder. I turned to follow his gaze and gasped in horror. There, behind the rain-streaked pane of the kitchen window, was the face of a vampire.
I could not move. I was incapable of screaming. All I could do was stand there, frozen with shock, as the reincarnation of my worst childhood nightmare stared back at me. His lips were pressed tightly together, but the corners of his mouth were curved upward in a smile that was almost as horrible as if he had been displaying fangs. He might have come straight out of a movie, but I knew that he was more dangerous than any fictional character. This was the real-life bloodseeker—this was the hit man.
Lorelei spoke from behind me.
“Porky, be quiet! You’ll raise the dead with that infernal barking. Whom are you calling, April, the police or the hospital?”
Her voice broke the spell, and I was able to move again. The phone fell out of my hands and crashed to the floor as I dashed across the kitchen to the outside door. I shoved the lock into place and whirled to face my grandmother.
“The front door!” I cried. “Did you lock it when you came in?”
“Probably not,” Lorelei said. “I was in such a hurry to see if your mother was here that I didn’t even think about it. What’s the matter? Why is Porky barking?”
“He’s there at the window!” I told her. “Don’t you see him?” I gestured toward the glass, but the face was gone. All that now could be seen was a world of blackness, alive with the eerie movement of wind-tossed tree branches.
“I’ll go lock it now,” Lorelei said. “You phone the police. Tell them a prowler is trying to break into the house.”
She started back down the hall, but I tore past her, knowingI’d let too much time go by already. The front door was not only unlocked, it was standing open and, as I had feared, the living room was no longer empty. The man with the vampire face stood framed in the doorway, backlit by a brilliant zigzag of lightning. He was tall and lean, and his water-soaked T-shirt accentuated the long, hard muscles in his arms and shoulders that made the gun in his hands an unnecessary accessory. This time, there was no blond wig to cover his thick, dark hair, but I recognized the piercing black eyes immediately.
“What do you think you’re doing here?” I demanded.
“I’m here to visit your father,” Mike Vamp told me. His voice was low-pitched and cultured, almost a purr, which seemed
to reassure Porky, who stopped his barking and started instead to wag his tail in greeting.
“I presume you’re April. Or perhaps you’d prefer to be called Valerie? People seem to have trouble knowing how to refer to you.”
“That’s the man!” Lorelei said from the doorway. “He’s the one who attacked me!”
“How are you tonight, Mrs. Gilbert?” the hit man asked her. “What a pleasant surprise that we meet again so soon. I trust your arm is mending the way it should be?”
Lorelei did a magnificent job of concealing her emotions.
“If you have any sense, you’ll get out of here,” she said. “My granddaughter’s called the police, and they’ll be here any minute now.”
“Oh, I rather doubt that,” Mike Vamp said. “There hasn’t been enough time. I saw her drop the phone before she started dialing.” He came farther into the room and closed the door, shutting out the incessant beat of the rain.
“If it’s my dad you want, he’s not here,” I told him defiantly. “We can’t tell you where he is, because we just got here.”
“I’m aware of that,” he said. “My car is parked at the side of the house, and I sat and watched as you pulled in the driveway. I thought at first it might be your parents returning, but then, from the lights, I realized it had to be the Porsche. I must admit I was surprised to see you. I hadn’t expected you ladies to drive straight through.”
“How were you able to find the house?” asked Lorelei. “We hardly found it ourselves in the rain and darkness.”
“I had directions,” Vamp told her. “During your phone conversation with your granddaughter, she mentioned a friend named Larry Bushnell. There was only one listing for Bushnell in the phone book. Larry didn’t seem very happy with you, April. When I told him I was a federal agent tracking down an embezzler, he was more than willing to do his patriotic duty. I didn’t have any problem finding the house.”
“How did you find us in Richmond?” The question burst out of its own accord, and I braced myself for the answer I didn’t want to hear.
