“I don’t want to hear anything at all from you.” Summer poured the rest of her water onto the ground and stood up.
“I don’t know what you’re so bent out of shape about. You came on to me, if you recall. You wanted it, you got it. So why don’t you quit acting like an outraged virgin?”
“I did not come on to you!”
“Oh, yeah? Kiss me, Steve. What was that? Touch me here. Sounds like coming on to me to me.”
“Maybe I was just trying to distract you from the little ghost you’re so afraid of. Did you ever think of that? Was that the problem at the end, by the way? Did you think you were seeing Deedee again?” Summer said that last in a mocking falsetto—and she struck home. She could tell it by the clenching of his jaw, and the sense that, if humans could give off steam, he would be.
They glared at each other. Muffy, watching, burrowed her nose beneath her paws. Neither of the human combatants payed her the least bit of attention.
“Fine,” Frankenstein said suddenly, his jaw jutting. “If that’s what you want to do, it’s fine with me. Call your father-in-law. Maybe the time he and his buddies take to try to make you talk will give me just the extra hour or so I need to get away. Maybe I’ll get really lucky, and they’ll make sushi out of the mutt, too.”
“You leave Muffy out of this!”
“With pleasure.” He got to his feet, cramming the remains of their lunch into the gym bag. “Come on, Rosencrans. You want to take your chances with the law, I’ll help you find a phone.”
Good. That was just what she wanted. A phone.
“There’s a campground about five miles south of here,” Frankenstein continued, shouldering the gym bag and tucking the tire iron under his arm. “Or at least there used to be. Come on, baby, let’s take you to Papa. It’ll be a relief to get you off my hands.”
Frankenstein stomped off. Summer was left to pick up Muffy and follow.
If she hadn’t been so darned mad, by the time they reached the outskirts of the campground she would have had second thoughts about the advisability of what she meant to do. His crack about making sushi out of her and Muffy had hit home. She kept remembering Linda Miller and Betty Kern.
But she couldn’t back down now. She was too darn mad at him. Anyway, despite anything Frankenstein said to the contrary, she was making the only sane decision. She was (almost) sure of it. Sammy loved her like the daughter he had never had. He would never hurt her. She was as certain of that as it was possible to be certain of anything.
The sound of children laughing was Summer’s first clue that they had reached their destination. Hearing it, Frankenstein stopped walking and propped a shoulder against a tree, waiting for her to catch up.
“This is it,” he said laconically as she came up to him. “Hiawatha Village. We used to camp here sometimes when I was a kid. Go to the manager’s office—it’s in the middle of the campground. I’m sure you can talk somebody there into letting you use the phone. I’d loan you a quarter, but I’m fresh out.”
He seemed to be in a hurry for her to leave him. Looking ahead at what seemed to be a play area still some distance away through the trees, Summer hesitated. Should she do this?
“Getting cold feet?” he asked. Or maybe sneered was a better word.
“You can come with me,” she said. Angry as she was with him, she hated to think of him being left out in the woods all alone, with murderers on his trail. “Sammy’s not part of this. I know it in my bones.”
“Believe me, Rosencrans, your bones have got no intuitive powers. They’re good for jumping and not much else.”
That was it. That was the last straw. Summer straightened her spine, lifted her chin, and started to walk away without so much as a good-bye.
“Rosencrans!”
Summer glanced back. Having unzipped the gym bag, Frankenstein held her wadded-up uniform in one hand. As she looked at him, he heaved the garments at her.
She almost dropped Muffy as she grabbed for the clothes. Catching them clumsily, she stuffed the ball he had made of them under one arm. Aping Frankenstein, she had Muffy clamped under the other one.
“Sure you don’t want to change your mind?” he asked as their eyes met for a brief moment.
Summer shook her head. “Sure you don’t want to change yours?”
Frankenstein shook his head, then lifted a hand in a salute. Summer ignored niggling second, third, and fourth thoughts, turned her back on him, and started walking away.
She was doing the right thing. She knew it, even if her pesky heart did not.
“Yo, Rosencrans!”
She looked back at him again.
“You’ve got great tits and a great ass. If we both get out of this in one piece I might just give you a call.”
Before she could reply, he turned and strode off through the trees.
Summer found herself well and truly alone. Suddenly every tiny noise was magnified: the hum of the cicadas, the harsh squawk of an angry blue jay, the excited laughter of the distant children. The forest seemed suddenly bigger, darker, more menacing.
Muffy whimpered. Summer bent her head to rub her nose against the dog’s fur. At least she wasn’t quite alone.
The knowledge didn’t make her feel appreciably better. She was conscious of an enormous sense of loss. For a moment she almost feared she might cry. She, who never cried.
Summer clamped her teeth together so her lips would not tremble. She was better off without Steve Calhoun. Leaving him behind was the first step to disentangling herself from this mess.
No man was worth her life.
Clinging to that thought, Summer walked through the trees past the playground where children played on ancient swings and more children rode plastic animals on springs cemented to the ground and still more children swarmed over a decrepit-looking jungle gym.
They, and their tired-looking parents, paid her no mind at all.
She kept walking, past pickup campers and RVs and tents. People went about their business, none of them paying the least attention to her. In front of one tent, a couple and their sulky-looking teenage son sat in molded plastic chairs. The couple argued while the boy snapped his fingers in time to the music that apparently poured through the headphones that he wore.
“Excuse me, could you point me toward the manager’s office?” Summer asked the woman, who broke off her argument with her husband to stare suspiciously at Summer as she approached.
“Up that way,” she said, jerking her thumb in the direction of a gravel road. “But, honey, I gotta warn ya: This campground don’t allow no dogs.”
“Thank you.” Summer beat a hasty retreat. Something about the way the woman looked at her made her uneasy. Again she got the feeling that maybe, just maybe, she had made a mistake.
Maybe she should have stuck with Frankenstein after all.
She had made the right choice, Summer reassured herself stoutly as she headed up the gravel road toward, she hoped, the manager’s office. One phone call to Sammy and her troubles would be over. He would come and fetch her and take her somewhere safe and feed her and provide her with a bed and a bathtub and …
Showers. She was walking past public showers.
Summer’s head swiveled as that fact hit home. The sign on the concrete-block building’s blue-painted door was unmistakable:
WOMEN’S SHOWERS.
Before she saw Sammy, before she bearded the manager in his den and begged for the use of his phone, she could have a shower.
She could be clean!
That woman had probably been staring at her so strangely because she looked like a close cousin of the Creature from the Black Lagoon.
Not for long.
Unable to resist the lure of hot water, Summer headed for the showers.
Inside, the building was deserted, probably because early evening was an awkward time for showering for most normal folks. The concrete walls were painted white, and the tile floor was an off-shade of blue. If the grout was moldy and mi
ldew adorned the corners, why, to Summer’s mind it didn’t detract one iota from the sheer beauty of her surroundings. Dented blue lockers, grayish white shower curtains, and a mirror with a crack running across its upper right corner looked to her deprived eyes like fixtures that would have been right at home in Buckingham Palace.
So what if it smelled damp and musty? She was actually in a real live bathroom!
Muffy wriggled, and Summer put her down. Muffy sniffed the air suspiciously, then pressed close against Summer’s ankles.
Summer paid no attention to her. Instead, she went into a toilet stall, made use of the facilities—real toilet paper was such a luxury that she almost kissed the roll—and then searched the eight shower cubicles for soap. In the fourth one, she got lucky. Not only was there a sweet-smelling white rectangle left behind in the soap dish, there was an entire makeup kit in a clear plastic zippered case on the flimsy white shampoo shelf that dangled from the showerhead.
Manna from heaven!
Summer thrust her wadded up Daisy Fresh uniform onto a bench outside the shower cubicle. As she did so, a clatter attracted her attention. Glancing down, she saw that a cigarette lighter lay on the floor beneath her clothes. The cigarette lighter. The yellow Bic that had seen her and Frankenstein through their adventures. Thrown carelessly into the gym bag, it must have gotten caught up in her clothes.
How would Frankenstein start a fire tonight without that cigarette lighter?
She would not worry about him, Summer told herself stoutly. He would just have to manage on his own for the time being. Maybe Sammy could fix things for him, too.
He had been eager enough to have her leave him.
But she wasn’t going to think about Frankenstein. Not now. Now she was going to have a shower and maybe put on some makeup, and then, when she was clean and human-looking again, call Sammy.
Sammy could sort this whole mess out. If anyone could save Frankenstein, it was Sammy.
She picked up the cigarette lighter, tried not to trip over Muffy as the dog followed her into the shower, and unzipped the makeup kit. The cosmetics it contained were drugstore brands, inexpensive but adequate: a pot of Cherry Smackers lip gloss, a tube of mascara, purple—purple?—eye shadow, powder blush in a namby-pamby shade of pink, and a pressed-powder compact, luckily translucent. She had a feeling that the makeup kit belonged to a teenage blonde. But it was hers now. Finders keepers.
There was also a small brush and a purse-size can of hair spray.
Who could ask for anything more?
Adding the lighter to the bag’s contents and zipping it closed again, Summer turned on the hot water and blissed out.
Half an hour later, she stood fully dressed in front of the cracked mirror. She had washed her hair as well as her body with the sweet-smelling soap, and then brushed the damp strands around her fingers until the ends gave up and curled. After fixing the reluctant curve with a spritz of hair spray, she turned her attention to her face. The bruise on her forehead was turning yellowish—which just brought out the gold glints in her eyes, she consoled herself as she flicked mascara onto her lashes. A dab of powder on her nose—not for anything would she use that appalling pink blush, and, anyway, after two days spent outdoors without sunblock she certainly didn’t need the color—and she was almost done. As a final touch, she applied gloss to her appreciative lips.
If Frankenstein could only see her now.
Muffy, who had fled the shower at the first hint of spray but who once again hugged her ankles, yapped once.
Summer glanced down at her. Her tail was erect, and her ears were, too. Turned the opposite way around from Summer, she faced the door.
Glancing up, Summer was just in time to watch through the mirror as Charlie, the thug from her basement, stepped through the shower room’s door.
He was still wearing the same ornate western belt.
29
Moving slowly, almost of their own volition as her mind all but ceased to function, Summer’s hands fumbled among the cosmetics spread out on the sink. Lip gloss, powder compact, mascara, hair spray …
Charlie met her gaze through the mirror. He smiled, revealing yellowing teeth. Muffy growled. Suddenly weak-kneed, Summer resisted the almost overwhelming urge to whirl to face him. Her stomach pressed hard into the edge of the sink. Her hands continued their frantic search.
“Remember me?”
Summer didn’t answer. She couldn’t. Calm, she told herself fiercely. I must remain calm.
“Of course you do,” Charlie answered for her, and chuckled. “Where’s Calhoun?”
He ambled toward her, his eyes watchfully scanning the room. It must have been obvious after just a few seconds that Summer was alone, and as he relaxed a swagger entered his gait. So confident was he that he had her trapped, he didn’t even bother to make a point of displaying the wicked-looking switchblade that he grasped in one hand.
“I don’t know.” Her voice was reedy with panic. Her heart pounded. Her lips parted as she fought for breath. Terror, raw and numbing, threatened to overcome her senses.
Stay calm, she cautioned herself again.
“Sure you don’t.”
“I don’t. We—split up a while back.”
Charlie shrugged. “You don’t want to tell me now, that’s cool. You’ll tell me later—and believe me, it’s more fun that way. At least, it is for me. You might not think so.”
His gaze met hers through the mirror. He smiled again.
“Hey, you sure clean up nice. Mind, I thought you were real pretty even down in your basement.”
Oh, God, his eyes were crawling all over her body through the mirror. Summer felt unclean. Was rape as well as torture and murder on his agenda? Whatever happened, she would not go quietly into that good night. She would fight.
She didn’t know if she had the strength to fight. Fear rendered her muscles as flaccid as spaghetti. Why, oh why, had she ever left Frankenstein?
Charlie covered the twenty or so feet separating them in what seemed to Summer like the blink of an eye. And yet, he didn’t appear to hurry at all.
Now that he was close behind her, his paunchy belly almost touching her back, she grew light-headed with fear. But, she reminded herself, he would not kill her where she stood. He needed her to find the van—and Steve.
That knowledge pumped a modicum of courage into her veins.
Her fingers wrapped tightly around the items she had sought and found.
“It’s gonna be my pleasure getting you to tell me everything you know.” His hand, warm and stubby-fingered, closed over the back of her neck. A spasm of revulsion shivered along Summer’s spine.
Charlie glanced down at the floor suddenly, his expression ugly. “Oh, no you don’t,” he said, and before Summer realized who, or what, he was talking to, he drew back his foot and kicked something viciously. “You won’t piss on my foot.”
The brown fur mop that was Muffy flew through the air, crashing with a piteous yelp into the tile beneath the sink.
The distraction provided Summer with the opening she needed. Jerking free of Charlie’s hold, she threw herself to the left—and tripped over Muffy, who scuttled for safety uttering high-pitched yelps.
Summer fell heavily, landing on her elbow and hip. For a moment the pain of hitting her crazy bone against the tile floor almost paralyzed her. She barely managed to hang on to the items in her hands as electrifying tingles shot up and down her arm. Flopping like a fish, she turned onto her back.
“So you want to play, bitch?” Charlie was coming toward her, an ugly smile on his face. He loomed over her, swooping down. “I’ll play.”
He waved the knife inches above her face. He leered at her, his face ugly, menacing. Long hairs grew out of his nostrils, and he had a scar on his chin. Gathering all her courage, ignoring the lessening tingles in her arm, Summer raised her clenched fists and brought them together over her chest.
The Bic lighter was in her right hand. Summer flicked it, and a tin
y flame shot up. Almost simultaneously she depressed the nozzle butting into her left thumb. The nozzle belonged to the pink metal cylinder of the purse-size hair spray.
The sickly sweet scent of hair spray reached Summer’s nostrils milliseconds before the stream of aerosol mist hit the flame.
“What the …?” Charlie began.
With a muted roar, a tongue of fire shot two feet in the air. Charlie, leaning down, was caught full in the face. He screamed, dropping the knife and staggering backward, hands clutching his face, as the smell of burning filled the air. Summer released the nozzle, watching with horrified fascination. What she could see of his face behind his hands was bright red. Tiny flames licked at the edges of his hair.
Summer didn’t wait to see more. Still clutching her homemade flamethrower, she scrambled for the door on all fours. Muffy was ahead of her, then underneath her, running too. Summer got tangled up by the little dog, and almost fell flat on her face.
“You bitch! I’ll kill you for that, you bitch!” Sobbing, face uncovered now, Charlie lurched after her, arms opening and closing like giant pincers as he grabbed for her. Apparently his vision had been affected; it was obvious he could not see clearly. Staggering in her wake, he looked like an apparition from hell. Charred skin hung in long strips from his face. The surface that remained was pulpy and raw. His eyebrows and lashes were gone. The flames that had danced along his hairline were now extinguished, leaving little wisps of smoke in their place.
Dodging his clutching arms, Summer fought to bite back a scream. Screaming could do her no good. It would only alert Charlie’s pals, who, she was sure, lurked somewhere in the vicinity.
“I’m gonna kill you!” It was an unearthly howl. Summer’s hair stood on end. She reached the door and climbed it, scrabbling for the knob. He seemed to really see her then. His eyes focused on her. Terrified, Summer nevertheless managed to turn the knob. She yanked opened the door just as he lunged for her, and bolted—smack into a solid masculine chest.
For an instant after the collision she was shocked speechless. Hard male hands grasped her shoulders, hurting her as they held her captive. Hysterical tears rose to her eyes, making her vision swim. Despair rendered her both blind and numb. She could see nothing, feel nothing.
Walking After Midnight Page 21