That she had almost escaped made her recapture seem even more cruel.
“Bitch!” The howling thing that was Charlie came charging through the door. With a push her captor shoved her aside. Summer fell to the ground, scraping her knees on the gravel path that circled the building but not caring as she clawed at the grass to get away. God was affording her one more chance at freedom, it seemed, and it was not for her to question the whys and wherefores of his gift.
Summer staggered to her feet, glancing fearfully over her shoulder as she prepared to run for her life—only to see Frankenstein bring the tire iron down on Charlie’s head with all his might.
She would recognize that Bulls cap anywhere.
Thwack! Charlie dropped like a felled tree. He toppled backward, his head striking the metal door with a resounding thud on the way down, and lay still.
“Take that, you bastard,” Frankenstein said, standing over him.
“Steve, oh, Steve!” Summer had never been so glad to see anyone in her life. She stumbled toward him, collapsing against his chest. His arms, including the one that still held the tire iron, closed around her. He hugged her tight. Summer felt something that might have been his lips brush the top of her head. “Oh, Steve!”
“Are you all right?” He held her a little away from him, looking intently down into her face.
Summer took a deep breath, nodded, and collapsed into his arms again.
“What happened to him?”
She glanced up to discover that he was staring down at Charlie’s ruined face.
“I—I did it.” Her teeth chattered with shock.
“You did it? Jesus, what did you do?”
It was only then that Summer realized she still clutched the lighter and hair spray. “I—I—this,” she stuttered, holding out her hands so that he could see the evidence.
“You lit his cigarette or styled his hair?” he asked dryly, relieving her of her weapons. He turned them over in his hands, studying them.
“I burned him.”
“You burned him?”
“If you spray the hair spray over the flame, it makes a kind of flamethrower. I saw it on F/X2.”
“F/X2?” He sounded totally at sea.
“It’s a movie.” She was shaking. His arms came around her once more, holding her close against his comforting warmth.
“Jesus.” He glanced down at Charlie again, then back at Summer. There was awe in his face. “Rosencrans, you are something else.”
A whimper came from the other side of the closed door.
“Muffy!” Summer would recognize that sound anywhere. Steve bent to shove the hair spray and lighter into the gym bag at his feet, then obligingly pushed the door open. The little dog, now limping on her hind leg, came out, skirting Charlie’s inanimate body to crowd against Summer’s ankles.
“He kicked her,” Summer said, picking Muffy up.
“Oh, yeah?” Steve glanced down as Charlie stirred and groaned, and started to sit up. “That’s for Muffy,” he said grimly, bringing the tire iron down on Charlie’s head. Charlie fell back as if he had been poleaxed. He landed so hard that his head bounced; then Steve hit him again, across the chest. Summer winced instinctively at the sound of the blow. “And that’s for Summer.”
“Stop!” Summer couldn’t stand it. “You’ll kill him!”
“He was trying to kill us, remember?” Steve said. “Anyway, I never kill people in cold blood. I just aim to put him out of commission for a while.”
Steve was hefting the tire iron skyward for what Summer suspected might be another blow just as a blond teenager in skintight jeans and an older, heavyset woman in Lycra bicycle shorts and an oversize pink T-shirt came around the corner of the building.
“I must have left it in here …” the girl was saying, only to break off as she saw Steve and Summer staring at her with Charlie sprawled at their feet. The woman saw them at the same time and clutched the girl’s arm, stopping her in her tracks. Both their eyes went wide as saucers, and their mouths gaped, as they stared.
“We were just leaving,” Steve said hastily, snatching the gym bag from the ground near his feet and pulling Summer with him as he headed away from the transfixed pair. Summer went willingly. The girl and her mother began to back away, then turned and ran in the direction from which they had come.
In the distance Summer heard sirens wail. She glanced over her shoulder in the direction of the sound. A navy Lincoln Continental nosed into view, moving slowly toward them down the gravel road that bisected the campground.
A navy Lincoln Continental … She knew that car!
“It’s them,” Summer said urgently, but Steve had already seen. He grabbed Muffy from her, tucked her under his arm, caught Summer’s hand, and pulled her around the corner of the shower building out of sight of the car. Then he ran.
Her fingers entwined with his, Summer ran too, as if all the demons of hell were after her. Which, in a manner of speaking, they were.
Even as they left the campground behind, the sirens grew louder. They ran through the trees, leaping small bushes and fallen logs, until they found a path that seemed to lead straight uphill. Keeping up with Frankenstein in full flight was hard, but terror gave Summer’s feet wings, and her lungs strength. Besides, she was deathly afraid to let go of his hand. Not for anything did she mean to get left behind.
At last they paused for breath on top of what Summer had thought was a small rise, both of them bending almost double as they gasped for air. Muffy, set on her feet, immediately collapsed with a groan, and lay panting as though she had run every step of the way, which she emphatically had not.
Glancing around, Summer was surprised to discover that the small rise was in actuality a stone-faced cliff, and they were perched near the edge of it, overlooking the campground below, spread out like a child’s playscape. She was even more surprised to see the blue lights of at least half a dozen police cars, minuscule at that distance, flashing in front of a squat building that she took to be the women’s showers.
“I never even called Sammy,” she said, puzzled. Had all those cops shown up because the girl and the woman from in front of the showers had reported a beating? But that was impossible. She had first heard the sirens while the women were still in sight.
“You didn’t need to.” Steve reached into his back pocket and drew something out, which as he unfolded it Summer recognized as the front page of the morning newspaper. “Look at this.”
He handed it to her. Summer looked and gasped.
There, in full color on the front page, staring back at her, were three remarkably clear photographs: Steve, herself, and Muffy, whom the caption grandly identified as Grand Champion Margie’s Miss Muffet.
The headline over the pictures, set in inch-high boldface type, read: CALHOUN, GIRLFRIEND, DOG SOUGHT IN CONNECTION WITH DOUBLE HOMICIDE.
Jaw dropping, Summer scanned the accompanying story. She, Muffy, and Steve were the subjects of a statewide manhunt after the bodies of Linda Miller and Betty Kern had been found in her home. The police were working with two possibilities: Either she and Steve, whose fingerprints had been found at the scene, were partners in crime, or he had taken her, and her dog, hostage. In any case, citizens spotting any of the three were asked not to try to apprehend them but to call police. They were considered armed and extremely dangerous.
“Where did you get this?” Summer asked, dumbfounded.
“In the manager’s office. I decided you were making a mistake, so I came looking for you. You weren’t where I expected you to be, but the manager was. So was this. He was reading it when I came through the door. I had to take him out.”
“Oh, my God! You didn’t …?” She glanced at him, her thoughts immediately turning to murder.
“No, I didn’t,” he said dryly. “I told you, I don’t kill people in cold blood. I just put him to sleep for a while. He never had a chance to tell anybody, and nobody else saw me. I made damned sure of that. Somebody must have recogn
ized you or the dog—I told you, she’s so weird-looking she attracts attention—and called the police.”
“I asked a woman the way to the manager’s office,” Summer said, remembering. “The way she looked at me—it must have been her!”
“Probably.” He was looking down at the scene below. People, at that distance appearing no bigger than ants, were beginning to crowd around the police cars.
“Maybe we should go back,” Summer said hesitantly, looking too. “After all, they are the police …”
He shook his head. Summer didn’t argue. As far as she was concerned, her safety now lay with Steve.
30
They were still standing there, watching the tableau far below, when a miniature pickup truck pulled up slowly to park beside the police cars. A man got out and was almost immediately joined by two uniformed police officers.
The man and the officers walked around to the back of the truck, scattering the gathered crowd. The man climbed up into the truckbed, did something, then jumped down again.
This time he was accompanied by a pack of leashed dogs.
Summer could hear shrill echoes of their cries from where she stood. Muffy came upright, her head cocking as she stared down.
“Jesus. They’ve brought in dogs.”
A third cop walked up to the group around the animals, and passed a bundle of what looked like cloth to their handler. The man took the bundle, bent and offered it for the dogs to sniff.
“Did you leave anything in the shower room?” Steve was folding the newspaper back into its small rectangle.
Summer thought. “The—the makeup kit. Uh—and my uniform! My Daisy Fresh uniform! Do you think they’re letting those dogs smell my uniform?”
“I’d say so,” Steve answered grimly, and returned the folded newspaper to his back pocket.
Even as Summer looked down again, the handler loosed the dogs. There were five brown and black hounds, and they scattered, sniffing the ground. Seconds later one of them, near the building, set up a howl.
“He’s found the trail.”
The other dogs rallied to their leader, and all five of them streaked in a pack for the woods, baying at the top of their lungs.
“Oh, God, what do we do? Do you have a plan?” Summer looked wildly at Steve.
“Yeah,” he answered, bending to scoop up Muffy and then grabbing the gym bag and Summer’s hand. “Run like hell.”
Some plan. But Summer didn’t say it. She didn’t have a chance. With Steve dragging her along behind him, it was a struggle to breathe, much less speak. The baying of the dogs was a distant, but potent, spur. Her feet barely touched the ground, she ran so fast. She almost seemed to be floating—probably because she felt light-headed.
Summer didn’t know whether that was from the altitude, hunger, or fear.
They ran down a gulley full of brush, which sported a trickle of water at its bottom. Halfway down the mountain, the gulley suddenly made a sharp left, and turned into a full-blown creek.
Steve splashed into the icy water, yanking Summer after him. She slipped on the smooth brown stones that covered the creekbed, and went down on one knee, disturbing a school of minnows, which scattered.
“Ouch!” A rock jabbed into Summer’s knee, but she had no time to suffer properly. Steve was already hauling her upright.
“Why do we have to run through a creek?” Summer wailed as she rubbed her damaged kneecap. The way it felt at that moment, she would never be able to walk again, much less run.
“Because dogs can’t track through water.” Steve paused for about two seconds, just long enough to glance down at her leg and ascertain that she was not seriously injured. “I don’t think.”
“Oh, great. You don’t think. That’s reassuring. I hope you’re right.”
Without bothering to reply, Steve jerked her into motion again. With the surefootedness of a goat, he bounded through the ankle-deep water. Slip-sliding, cursing, and praying with every step, Summer splashed precariously after him.
The sounds of the dogs grew fainter.
Finally, about the time Summer’s lungs and heart threatened to burst, Steve clambered out of the creek and collapsed facedown on the ivy-covered bank. Summer, falling on her stomach beside him, fought to breathe.
Muffy, lying on her side like a creature exhausted when she hadn’t run so much as a step, even had the temerity to pant.
Summer didn’t have the strength to do more than glare at the pampered pooch.
“Catch your breath. We can’t stop long,” Steve advised her, drawing in deep lungfuls of air.
“Where are we going? Are we still heading to your fishing camp?”
Steve shook his head. “That was Plan A, and it’s scrapped. If the police are going to scour these hills with dogs, they’ll find it in two shakes of a lamb’s tail. Now we’re on to Plan B.”
“What’s Plan B?” Summer asked with deep misgiving.
Exhausted as he was, Steve managed a brief grin. “I’m working on it, okay? Let’s go!”
Summer groaned, but he was inexorable. He was on his feet again, dragging her up with him, making her run even though her legs were still shaky from the last marathon. The sun was at their backs as they raced downward through the forest. It was just beginning to dip beneath the majestic purple peaks. At any other moment, Summer would have been most appreciative of the hot magenta and neon orange pinwheels swirling across the western third of the sky. Under the circumstances, she spared the dazzling beauty of the heavens only a cursory glance—and hoped.
Could dogs continue to track in the dark? Surely even dogs had to rest sometime.
A dirt bike roared toward them from the east. It literally flew into sight, jumping over the top of a hill and skittering semi-sideways down the slippery mountainside. A lone man was aboard, a young-looking man in jeans and a leather jacket.
Steve slowed, and Summer slowed with him.
“What now?” she gasped, ready by this time to see a bad guy behind every tree.
Steve looked at her, grinned, and let go of her hand.
“Plan B,” he said, and jogged toward the oncoming motorcycle.
It skidded to a flourishing halt in front of him, and the driver climbed off. Summer watched warily as he propped the bike on its kickstand, turned off the engine, took off his helmet, and clapped Steve on the back. He even patted Muffy on the head.
He knew Steve. He was friendly. How on earth …?
Summer approached with caution. In her experience, if something seemed too good to be true, it usually was. And an ally arriving out of nowhere certainly seemed too good to be true.
Steve was grinning as he turned to beckon her in. The man beside him was more sober-faced. He was about Steve’s age and height, but leaner. His complexion was swarthy, and his hair was as black as oil and straight. Summer realized that he was Native American.
“This is Renfro. Renfro, Summer. Here, put this on.”
Renfro nodded at Summer as Steve passed her a bright yellow helmet that he unstrapped from the rear of the bike, then turned worried eyes on Steve. “Leave the dog with me.”
Steve, putting on the helmet that Renfro had worn, shook his head. “Nah. There’s half the state and a pack of dogs besides chasing us. They catch you with the dog, they’ll know you helped us. That wouldn’t be good for your health.”
“I’m not worried.” Renfro was strapping the gym bag and tire iron on the back of the bike.
“Thanks anyway, buddy. And thanks for coming. I owe you.”
“Big time.” Renfro smiled then, flashing even white teeth as he finished his self-appointed task. “As usual.”
Steve laughed. “How will you get back?”
Renfro shrugged. “Walk. Thumb a ride. Catch a bus. Call my dad. I’ll manage.”
“If you run into the posse hunting us …”
“They won’t bother me. I’m hiking through the forest. What’s to bother? If the dogs attack me, maybe I can sue.” He said it hopefully,
with a wide grin. Summer realized that it was meant for a joke. She smiled.
“You have your helmet on?” Steve turned to look at her critically, tugging on the strap beneath her chin to make sure it was tight. His helmet was in place. She almost missed the Bulls cap, which he had tucked into the gym bag.
“Oh, I almost forgot.” Renfro dug in the pocket of his jeans and brought forth some folded bills. “Forty dollars. It’s all I had in the shop.”
“Thanks, man.” Steve accepted the money, stuffed it in his own back pocket. “Take care.”
“You too.”
Steve kicked up the stand, straddled the bike, and motioned for Summer to join him.
“What about Muffy?” She looked down at the hairball at her feet.
“You’ll have to hold her. Try to keep her out of sight. Maybe you can stick her under your shirt.”
Summer picked up Muffy, lifted the hem of her T-shirt, and tucked the little dog inside. Then she climbed awkwardly aboard the motorcycle. It was about the size of an adult’s bicycle, but thicker. There were pegs for her feet, she discovered, and a metal bar against which she could rest her back.
Perched on the narrow black vinyl seat, she felt about as secure as a cat on a high wire.
Renfro grinned broadly, surveying them. “You look like the all-American family. Dad, Mom, baby-to-be”—he patted the bulge in the tummy area of Summer’s T-shirt that was Muffy—“on a Yamaha. Maybe they’ll use you in an ad.”
“See ya, Renfro.” Steve kicked the starter. The bike roared. Renfro waved, and they were off.
Summer had never experienced such a bone-rattling ride in her life.
If she could have, Summer would have clung to Steve with all her strength as they careened over the uneven ground. But Muffy, who was not taking kindly to this new mode of transportation, was between them. She needed one arm just to hang on to Muffy. The other she clamped around Steve’s waist.
Walking After Midnight Page 22