by Linda Howard
Then that weird sense of anticipation rose in him again, the antsy feeling he got when he knew he was going to be in a fight and was actually looking forward to it. He’d been in a lot worse situations than this, he thought. He’d waded into brawls with nothing but his fists, kicking ass and breaking heads, and come out of it okay. Lolly had a tongue like a scorpion, but that was about it. He could handle her and anything she dished out. “Thanks,” he said to his mother. “I’ll see you in about an hour.” Then he dashed back out into the cold rain and the deepening gloom, off to fetch the spoiled princess from her mountain.
Chapter Two
Earlier that afternoon
The old white Blazer, crusted with grime and salt, turned into the small parking lot of the local grocery store. A skinny, ill-kempt man with straggly, dirty-blond hair pulled the Blazer so it was facing the road and put the gear in park. “Ready,” he said, drumming his fingers rapidly on the steering wheel. “I’m ready. Ready to go.” The words were fast and abrupt. “You got the gun?”
“Right here,” the woman beside him said, shoving a pistol into her stained, red canvas tote bag. She was as skinny and straggly as he was, her eyes and cheeks sunken, her long, dark hair plastered to her head so that her ears stuck out through the strands. Her gaze roved restlessly around the parking lot, darted to the front of the grocery store, back to the parking lot. She put her hand on the door handle and shoved the door open, then quickly closed it again when another vehicle turned into the parking lot and drove past. She watched as a black Mercedes SUV, driven by a lone woman, went past them with tires hissing on the wet pavement and parked in a slot close to the store door.
“What’re you waiting for?” the man asked, still drumming his fingers. He shifted restlessly in the seat. His name was Darwin Girard, and he hadn’t slept in three or four days, maybe even longer. Despite that, he felt as if he might explode with energy, and just sitting there was almost more than he could handle.
“That woman looked at me.” Niki Vann indicated the driver of the black Mercedes as the woman got out of the small SUV and pointed a remote at it. The lights blinked, signaling that the vehicle was locked, and the woman hurried through the rain into the little grocery store.
“She did?” Darwin asked, his attention zeroing in on the woman like a laser. No one was supposed to notice them. That was the plan, and he didn’t like people messing with his plans. Feral hostility glowed in his sunken eyes as he glared at the door through which she’d passed.
“Yeah. Bitch,” Niki growled, for no reason other than that the other woman was driving a Mercedes. Then an idea began to squirm in her brain. “I bet she’s got a lot of money in her purse. Look at what she’s driving. I bet she’s got more than that rinky-dink little grocery, and she’s by herself.”
Darwin drummed his fingers faster, faster. “What’re you thinking?” he asked, as if he didn’t know, grinning at her. Niki was even better than he was at seeing an opportunity and not hesitating to act on it. Because of her, their supply of meth was fairly steady. She was always looking for a way to get more money.
She shoved the Blazer door open again, and got out. “Be back in a minute,” she said before closing the door, then she darted through the rain, her thin body almost dwarfed by the huge green jacket she wore.
Inside the store, Lolly Helton grabbed a cart and headed down the first aisle. She didn’t need much, just some cans of soup and a couple of sandwich items, maybe a couple of magazines to read, and she wanted to be home before dark so she was in a hurry. Because she was in a hurry, of course, she was stopped almost immediately.
“Lolly!” said a woman wearing a bright red apron that covered her from neck to knees, looking around from where she was neatening the stacks of produce that had been disordered by customers picking through them for a perfect head of cabbage, or apples that were either firm or soft according to their individual tastes. “I heard you were back. You’re looking well.”
“Thank you,” said Lolly, good manners making her pause. “You, too. How have you been?” Mr. and Mrs. Richard had owned the little grocery store for as long as she could remember, and she’d always liked Mrs. Richard, who loved to joke and gossip and never had anything negative to say about anyone. The door opened behind her and a gust of cold air swept in. She didn’t look around, but moved her cart to the side so the newcomer could pass by.
“Well. Busy, this time of year, with all the holiday cooking.” She wiped her hands on the apron, her gaze moving beyond Lolly to whoever had entered the store behind her. She gave a brief nod of acknowledgment, then turned her attention back to Lolly. “Where are you staying tonight?”
“At home,” said Lolly, a little startled. Where else would she be?
“Goodness, child, haven’t you been listening to the radio? They’re predicting ice for tonight.”
An ice storm! As if she could see the approaching storm, Lolly turned and looked out the window, her gaze sliding past the woman who had entered behind her. It wasn’t anyone she knew—didn’t look like anyone she’d want to know—so she didn’t make eye contact. “I haven’t had the radio on,” she admitted. She seldom listened to the radio anyway, preferring her own CD collection for music.
“You can’t stay way out there by yourself. If you don’t have anyone you could stay with, Joseph and I have an extra bedroom—two of them, in fact, now that the boys are married and gone.”
Lolly’s mind raced. She didn’t have any old school friends she could stay with for the duration of the storm, mainly because she hadn’t really been friends with anyone. Her school years hadn’t been good ones. She was much better at making friends now, but that meant all of them were back in Portland. She didn’t like the idea of staying with Mr. and Mrs. Richard—she liked them, but she wasn’t close to them—but with an ice storm looming she had to make some fast decisions.
“Thank you, I’ll take you up on that offer, at least for tonight,” she said, lifting her purse from the cart. She wouldn’t need any groceries, after all. “I need to go home and get some of my things. How much time do I have?”
“The weather service said it should start around dark. Don’t tarry.”
Lolly checked the time. She had a few hours, but the icing could start sooner than that at home because the house was at a higher elevation. “I’ll be back as soon as I can,” she said. “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate the offer.”
Mrs. Richard made a shooing motion with her hand. “Go on, hurry!”
Lolly did, though she took the time to return the cart to the small corral, pushing it past the woman wearing an oversized green jacket and carrying a dirty red canvas tote, as if that was her nod to the Christmas season. A sense of urgency drove her to almost run back to her vehicle; an ice storm was nothing to dismiss. Snow was nothing, at least to a native Mainer, but ice was unbelievably destructive. She could have been stranded for days, even weeks, if she hadn’t happened to stop by the grocery store and talked to Mrs. Richard.
So much for her plans, she thought ruefully as she wheeled out of the parking lot, but a looming ice storm trumped packing. There weren’t even that many personal items left to pack up, so it wasn’t as if she had to get everything done right now. The house had been used so seldom in the past several years, there was just the bare minimum of furniture and some odds and ends left, anyway. She had intended to take her time packing—in fact, her actual plans for the night had been to heat some soup, turn on the gas fireplace, and read, leaving packing for tomorrow morning. She enjoyed the peace and quiet, and there was something about being snug in a warm house on a snowy night that deeply appealed to her.
She had come here this week wanting to enjoy a few leisurely days in the house where she’d grown up, wallowing in warm fuzzy memories and, in her own way, saying good-bye to the house and to Wilson Creek. With her parents in Florida and her job keeping her busy in Portland, there was no need for a vacation home that was so rarely used.
The Helton
house had once been the finest in the county, a large and somewhat extravagant—for the area—two-story house on the mountainside, just outside of town. For a lot of years all the important local political meetings and parties had been held there, which Lolly found slightly ironic, as she was the only family member left in Maine and she had no interest in politics and even less in partying. She’d outgrown some of her youthful awkward shyness, but she’d never be outgoing. She much preferred an evening at home to a night on the town.
She didn’t look forward to staying with the Richards, preferring to be on her own, but she’d deal. She worked for an insurance company and had learned, out of necessity, how to interact with people. As a child and, even worse, a teenager, she’d always hung back, never knowing exactly what to say and certain no one wanted to talk to her anyway. She’d hidden all those painful insecurities behind a wall of hostility, so it wasn’t surprising she hadn’t had any real friends here. She didn’t know why she kept coming back, but she managed at least one trip almost every year. She wished she could afford to live here, in the house where she’d grown up, but Wilson Creek simply didn’t have much in the way of job opportunities, and she didn’t have the money to open her own small business.
The windshield wipers swished back and forth, clearing away the light rain that hadn’t varied in intensity all day. There was something unnerving about the sheer unchanging relentlessness of the rain, as if the very lightness of it was proof that Mother Nature didn’t need to make a dramatic statement to squash civilization like a bug. All it took was a rain not much heavier than a mist, and some cold air in the right position, to wreak havoc. She felt a chill run up her spine; even though it was hours yet until nightfall, the gloom was deepening, and she had to turn on her headlights. She hadn’t met any traffic since turning on this road, and that in itself was kind of spooky. For a moment she felt the urge to turn around, buy some pajamas and underwear in town, and dart for the safety of the Richards’ house.
Then she saw the blur of a vehicle behind her, too far for her to make out any details, but just knowing she wasn’t alone on the road was enough to settle her nerves. She’d allow herself fifteen minutes, no more, to gather what she needed and head back to town. She should be safe and secure well ahead of the storm’s arrival.
Within minutes she had turned off the main road and was carefully navigating the narrower road that wound up the side of the mountain toward the house. She still knew every curve, every tree and rock, of this road, because she had driven it so often after she’d gotten her driver’s license. Even before that, her mother had taken her to school every day, and picked her up in the afternoons, so for almost her entire life she’d had at least two trips a day up and down this mountain. The road held no surprises for her, no fears; it was the weather that made her anxious.
Her sure-footed SUV, bought used three years ago because she’d needed a dependable four-wheel-drive vehicle, climbed steadily. Visibility dropped as the mist grew heavier. She took a quick glance at the outside temperature gauge and saw that the temp was just a couple of degrees above freezing. The trees had a faint silvery cast to them; was ice already beginning to form?
Then she turned into the driveway, powering up the long slope toward home. It wouldn’t be “home” much longer, she thought, but right now it still looked welcoming and somehow just right. Never mind that the house was almost sixty years old, had faded a bit, and sagged here and there; it was still large and solid, offering a warm, safe refuge on a wintry night. Too bad she couldn’t stay here, but if she got iced in it would be a couple of weeks before she could get off the mountain, depending on how bad the damage was and how many trees came down.
Much as she loved this place, she knew it was time for the house she’d grown up in to be home to a family again, as it had been home to her. Once the few remaining personal effects here were packed away, sold, or stored, her childhood home would go on the market, and it would no longer be hers in any way. Too bad she wouldn’t have the few days of escaping into the past that she’d wanted, but the weather had other plans.
She didn’t bother with parking in the detached garage, just pulled up close to the front porch. Keys in hand, she hurried up the steps and unlocked the front door. As soon as she let herself in she shed her heavy, hooded winter coat, tossing it over the newel post and dropping her purse on the bottom step. Detouring to the back, she grabbed her snow boots from the mud room and brought them to join her coat and purse.
She didn’t know when she’d be able to come back, she thought as she started up the stairs. Was there anything in the refrigerator she needed to clean out? No, she didn’t think so. She’d been eating granola bars for breakfast, not bothering even with milk for cereal, and at night she’d either had peanut butter and jelly sandwiches or picked up a sandwich in town. She knew how to turn off the water at the valve, and turn off the gas to the water heater; other than locking the door, that was all she could do to get the house ready to withstand the coming storm.
She was halfway up the stairs when she heard the rumble of a vehicle. She stopped, then reversed her path. Knowing the people here as she did, she wouldn’t be at all surprised if someone had heard about the storm, realized she was here with no television or phone, and come to collect her. This had always been the kind of community where neighbors looked after neighbors, and she missed that—some days. She was both glad for the company and concerned at the delay.
Crossing her fingers that she wouldn’t have any trouble getting down the hill, Lolly opened the front door. She expected to find someone she knew, an old friend of her parents or the closest thing she had to a neighbor, and a welcoming smile was on her face. The smile froze when she realized she didn’t know the rough-looking couple coming up the porch steps, though the woman looked vaguely familiar. Then Lolly remembered seeing her in the grocery store earlier, recognized her even though the stringy dark hair was now partially covered by a knit cap, and a thick coat disguised her thinness.
A couple of possibilities rapidly crossed her mind. Were they lost? Looking for shelter? Maybe they were unfamiliar with the area and didn’t know that they did not want to be stuck here on the mountain if the ice was as bad as predicted.
“I’m just on my way out …” Lolly began.
The man right behind the stringy-haired woman pulled a gun from his parka pocket. Shock hit Lolly like a slap in the face; she gaped at the gun, barely comprehending what she saw, then she sucked in a quick breath and instinctively stepped back. The man and woman both rushed at her, shoving her back inside so roughly that she slammed hard into the newel post, staggered, saved herself from falling with a desperate grab at the wood.
The man shoved the door shut behind them. The woman glanced around, at the living room on the left, the flight of stairs straight ahead, the dining room on the right. She smiled, showing discolored and rotten teeth. “See, baby, I told you she was alone.”
Lolly clung to the newel post, literally frozen under the sudden lash of terror, her brain numb, coherent thoughts scattered before they could even form. She groped for understanding, and finally, like a switch being flipped, her sluggish brain began to function. Home invasion—here, in Wilson Creek! It was so wrong, that something like this could happen here, that sheer indignation abruptly shoved terror aside and suddenly she could move, was already moving even before she realized. She ran, ran for her life.
The man shouted, “You bitch! Fuck!” as Lolly darted through the dining room, dodging around the table, grabbing one of the heavy chairs and slinging it in his path then racing into the kitchen. Footsteps thudded behind her but she didn’t look, didn’t spare even a split second, just ran for her life. If she could just get outside—
She grabbed for the doorknob, and a hand grabbed her hair. Pain laced her scalp; her head jerked back and she was sent spinning away from the door. Her feet went out from under her and she fell to the floor, the man’s grip cruelly tight on her hair. He shoved her down and she hit the c
old, hard linoleum face-first.
Lolly screamed, then caught her breath and held it. She grabbed for her hair, trying to pry his hands away. The sudden weight of his body on hers was heavy and hot. He pressed her into the floor, forcing her breath out, and she couldn’t take another.
“Now you got me all excited,” he whispered in her ear, grinding himself against her bottom. His breath was hot and fetid, and a rough stubble scratched her cheek. She turned her head away from the stink and roughness, but she couldn’t move far. Her fingers scrabbled at the linoleum, trying to find purchase, trying to find something, anything—
There was nothing. A kitchen was full of weapons, but none of them were on the floor.
He began tugging at her jeans, trying to pull them down.
Damn it, no! Both panicked and enraged, she instinctively fought back, slinging her elbows back as far as they would go, trying to hit him. She wiggled and bucked and squirmed, trying to throw him off, but he was too heavy and she was in a helpless position, flat on her stomach on the floor.
He couldn’t get her jeans down. He shoved his hand under her and fumbled with the button and zipper, grunting like an animal. Lolly pressed her hips harder to the floor, trying to mash his hand so he couldn’t get the zipper down, but he jerked her head up and slammed it down on the floor again and white spots swam in her vision. Dazed with pain, she went limp for a second and he shoved his rough hand inside her jeans, against her bare belly.
She was going to die. He was going to rape her, and kill her. Her last minutes alive would be filled with unspeakable terror.
Tears filled her eyes, and she screamed. The sound was rough and raw, like an animal’s, the noise tearing from her throat. She didn’t want to die; she didn’t want her last memory made in this house to be a nightmare. She screamed again and again, unable to stop herself.
