With an Extreme Burning

by Bill Pronzini

  She didn't reply with words. Her answer was to run around between the cars and thrust her body onto the seat beside him.

  TWENTY-SIX

  “Amy. Wake up, Amy.”

  Voice in her ear, hand shaking her shoulder. She came up jerkily out of a thin, cold sleep, groggy for a second, then amazed at herself for having fallen asleep, then frightened and pulling away from his touch as her eyes slitted open and she saw him leaning over her. There was light in the room—he'd turned the table lamp on again. His blond hair was all mussed from the wind, his eyes as shiny as blue glass. The skin over his cheekbones and around his mouth looked like wax in the lampglow.

  He straightened. “It's time,” he said.

  “Time for what?”

  “Time to go.”

  “What time is it?”

  “Time to go, Amy.”

  She shook her head; it was like Alice and the White Rabbit talking nonsense. I'm late, I'm late, for a very important date. Instinctively she tried to burrow back under the blanket. He didn't like that. He yanked it off her, wadded it, and threw it on the floor behind him.

  “I said it's time. Stand up, young lady.”

  The cliffs …

  Her body didn't want to move. And her right leg, caught under her left, was partly numb. “All right,” he said. He clamped onto her arm, lifted her out of the chair with hardly any effort.

  As soon as she put weight on the numb leg, it buckled. She said, “Ow,” and wrenched loose and sat down again.

  “What's the matter?”

  “My leg … it's asleep.”

  “It won't do you any good to lie to me.”

  “I swear to God. It's asleep.”

  “Rub it, then. Keep rubbing until the feeling comes back.”

  She leaned over and rubbed with both hands, thinking about the cliffs waiting in the darkness. I don't want to die. The leg started to tingle, to burn a little the way legs and arms did when the blood was flowing again. She'd be able to stand now. But she didn't get up. She kept rubbing, rubbing.

  “Hurry up, Amy.”

  “It's still numb. I don't think I can walk.”

  “I'll help you. Give me your hand.”

  She extended her left hand; his fingers closed hot and sticky around hers. Once more, standing at the front side of the recliner, his body slanted toward her, he lifted her strongly to her feet. And this time, turned as he was, turning as she did, she was right up in his face.

  She stepped down hard on his instep, shifted her weight, and drove her right knee into his crotch.

  Ballbuster! He jackknifed at the waist, yelled, let go of her hand, and staggered backward, moaning deep in his throat. A wild elation flooded her. But he didn't fall and the direction he went put him between her and the front door. There was no way to get past him quickly and no time to unbolt and unchain the door. The elation died as quickly as it had been born. No time to run to the kitchen for a knife either; he was already starting to unbend, one hand clutching himself and the other fumbling at his belt for the gun, his face all pulled out of shape, his eyes popped so wide it was as if they were coming right out of their sockets.

  “Damn … little … bitch!”

  She ran for the balcony door.

  He hadn't flipped the lock; she got it open wide enough to squeeze through, slid it partway shut behind her. The wind, strong and chill, almost took her breath away. She fled across the balcony to the outer railing, peered over and down. It looked like a long way to the shadowy sand and grass below. Ten feet, maybe more. She threw a look over her shoulder at the sliding door.

  It was opening—he was coming through.

  She caught the railing, swung her legs and hips over it, and let go.

  * * *

  Mile after mile of dark, twisting roads, yellow-white headlights, red taillights, wind moaning at the windows, tires humming, the hiss and rumble of passing cars. After a while it began to have a hypnotic effect on Cecca, creating a feeling of detachment and suspension in time. The same feeling induced by the muscle relaxers Dr. Peavey had prescribed to help her sleep after the breakup with Chet.

  But it was an illusory calm, a surface detachment as thin as an ice glaze over roiling water. It could be shattered easily, in an instant. She was no different from Eileen in that respect. The black currents and whirlpools were the same, and it was possible that she, too, could be sucked down into them. Once already she'd imagined she could hear the currents, like voices whispering to her: If Amy dies, it's your fault. You shouldn't have left her alone. You should have sent her away, hidden her someplace safe. It'll be your fault …

  For the countless time she looked at the dashboard clock: 12:58. And while her eyes were still on it: 12:59. On the road for more than two hours now. They ought to be nearing Gualala, must be close to Sea Ranch, but thick forest crowded in on both sides of the car here and the road was so sharp-winding it was almost switch-backed. The ocean seemed far away.

  At least the long, treacherous section of highway that hugged the cliffs between Jenner and Fort Ross was behind them. She'd never liked that section—what her father called “white-knuckle territory.” Tonight it had seemed even more frightening. Bright moonlight made the sheer rock walls and the foaming ocean far below stand out in sharp relief. It had been too easy to imagine Amy at the bottom of one of the cliffs, broken, lifeless—or worse, a smoldering charcoal ruin. Shutting her eyes had only sharpened the images. She'd endured the stretch of road with her eyes open.

  The dashboard clock now read 1:03.

  She shifted her gaze to Dix. He sat bow-backed over the wheel, pinching grit out of his eyes with thumb and forefinger. As tired as she was, but alert. He didn't seem to need conversation to help him maintain his concentration. And she didn't want it to intrude on the thin surface of her calm.

  The woods thinned out and the road straightened into a long line of white-striped black. There were no lights on it except theirs, but she could see house lights off on both sides ahead. And the ocean again, too, wind-whitened in the distance. Sea Ranch, the wealthy retirement enclave just south of Gualala.

  Dix said, “It won't be much longer. Another half hour.”

  “Yes.”

  “You holding up all right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Sure?”

  “Yes.” As if it were the only word left in her vocabulary.

  We'll find Amy. We'll find her alive.

  Yes. Yes.

  But he didn't say his lines. And she didn't say hers.

  The drifted sand cushioned Amy's fall. But she landed flat-footed, with not enough bend in her knees, and the force of impact drove pain up both legs, pitched her forward onto her face. Grimacing, she gathered herself onto her knees. She didn't turn her head to look upward; she could hear him at the railing, his voice rising furiously above the wind.

  “Don't run, Amy! You can't get away!”

  She was already on her feet, already running.

  “I'll shoot you, I'll blow your head off, I won't let you do this to me …”

  She hunched her shoulders, but she didn't stop or slow her hobbled pace. One of her shoes had come off in the fall; the other had filled with sand after only a few steps and she'd kicked it off. Fragments of shell and wood dug into the soles of her bare feet as she dodged into the shadows behind one of the scrub pines. That and the hurt in her legs and the clinging sand made it seem as if she were hardly moving.

  Any second he would fire the gun … but he didn't. She dodged again, so she could look back to the cottage past the branches of the pine. He wasn't on the balcony anymore. He wasn't anywhere that she could see.

  Coming after her.

  The Honda was off to her right, a thick, boxy shape at the edge of her vision. Why hadn't she listened to Mom and put a spare key in a magnetic holder under the bumper! She ran, and the grit underfoot deepened, grew less firm … it was like being in heavy syrup up to your ankles, having it tangle up every step. The muscles in her legs were alr
eady burning from the strain. But she was nearing the dunes, almost to where the loose sand gave way to a mat of sawgrass and weeds that would make running a little easier.

  The dunes bulked high and round against the sky, their coarse grass coats swaying and rustling in the wind. The dips between them were deep-shadowed, like the craters in pictures of the moon landing. She plowed ahead, gaining speed as the footing improved, and finally reached the first of the cratered areas. But then her left foot came down on something hard and sharp; the sudden stinging threw her off stride, almost toppled her. She said, “Shit!” under her breath and looked back again. She could still see the upper part of the cottage, the lamp burning behind the door glass, but the sand hills and scrub cut off her view of the car and the road and the flats.

  If she couldn't see him, then he couldn't see her either.

  The thought rekindled the elation she'd felt when she kneed him. All she had to do was to keep moving, get deep in the maze of dunes, and then find a place where she could cover herself with sand and grass and anything else she could find. He'd never find her then, not even if he kept hunting until after daybreak. The dune area was at least two hundred yards wide and a mile or two long, and some of the hills were thirty feet high. He'd have to be able to fly to spot her hiding place.

  Her foot throbbed. Cut, probably, by whatever she'd stepped on. She limped and slogged to her left, around a small dune, and then to her right around a higher one. There was a scatter of driftwood at that one's base. She poked quickly among the wood, found a slender, crooked piece about three feet long: a crutch to help her walk, and a weapon just in case.

  She was out of breath and her thighs were quivering. She had to rest for a couple of minutes or she'd collapse. The slope there was as good a place as any; she sank onto the sand and grass still warm from the day's sun. Down low like this, she was sheltered from the wind, but it was still cold. Her bare legs were icy to the touch. She'd have to find a place where she could burrow pretty soon—for warmth as well as for safety.

  She listened to the night around her. Small sounds: the wind skimming over the tops of the dunes, the seagrass whispering, the breakers making their hissing rumble in the distance. That was all. Not that he'd be out there shouting her name. And you couldn't hear anybody walking in sand anyway.

  Amy pulled her left leg over her right, twisting her foot so she could probe at the sole with her fingers. Cut, all right. Sticky with blood and caked grit. But it didn't feel deep and it didn't hurt the way her hand had the time she'd sliced it with the can lid and had to have stitches. A cut foot was the least of her troubles. She dismissed it from her mind.

  Her breathing was back under control and the quivery feeling was gone from her thighs. Better get moving. She used the driftwood crutch to lift herself upright. The cottage was to her right and behind her; she looked up at the moon and what stars were visible among the clouds to make sure. Straight ahead, then, or at an angle to the left—toward the beat of the surf. In a little while she could veer north or south, to put even more distance between her and the Dunes.

  The moon threw her shadow out alongside her, an extended goblin shape on the whitewashed sand and grass, as she struggled between two smaller hills. Big tufts grew thickly in the lower places here, and walking was easier than it had been. Along the flank of another drift, to where a burned-out log was half buried in the sand: the remains of somebody's cookout fire. She skirted that, rounded another dune—

  Something made her stop. All at once there was a tingling on her neck, a clenching in her stomach. One of the more massive dunes reared up on her left, its hairy sides wind-sculpted into ridges. Her gaze crawled up along it.

  He was standing on the matted grass at the top, legs spread, outlined blackly against the sky.

  She stood in frozen disbelief.

  No! He couldn't have found her, it wasn't fair, she'd done everything right, she was safe, he couldn't have found her—

  “I told you you couldn't get away, Amy.”

  Voice booming above the thrum of the wind, the words like a lash that broke her paralysis. She stumbled away, but now it was like running in one of those mixed-up dreams: somebody chasing you and you ran and ran and got nowhere at all. And at the same time he was flying down the dune's side, long, sliding steps that tore the grass and kicked up spurts of sand.

  He caught her before she could get clear of the cratered area. Grabbed her arm, jerked her around. She hissed at him like a cat, a sound she'd never made before, and swung the length of driftwood with all her strength. Hit him with it—low on his body, bringing a grunt but not doing any damage. Off balance, she tried to club his head. It was a weak blow without leverage and he fended it off with his arm. Then he clutched at the wood, caught a grip on it, wrenched it out of her fingers, and hurled it away.

  She fought him, still hissing—hands, feet, knees. But she was mired in loose sand and he was too strong for her. He twined his fingers in her hair, whipped her head back with such force that cartilage cracked in her neck.

  “Bad girl,” he said.

  The whole left side of her face erupted in pain. But only for an instant.

  The abandoned development near Manchester State Beach was a wasteland at this hour: lifeless, no lights except at a distant dairy ranch, not even a parked car. The grassy dunes stretched ghostly pale along the left flank of the road. Wind spurts blew sand that ticked against the surfaces of the Buick, fluttered in the headlight beams like will-o'-the-wisps.

  Dix's head ached. The strain of driving, pain radiating upward through his neck from knotted shoulder muscles. The last twenty miles had been the hardest, with the urge strong in him to increase his already excessive speed. Only the winding road and the possibility of encountering a highway patrolman or deputy sheriff kept him from giving in to the impulse. Now, finally, the long drive was almost over. And at the end of it, at the cottage, what would they find?

  Please let her be there, he thought, please let her be all right.

  It was the closest he'd come to praying since his altar-boy days at Old Saint Thomas.

  Cecca had been leaning forward, her hands gripping the dash, since they'd turned off Highway One. She said, “The Dunes is on the other side of that sharp bend ahead.”

  “Visible from the road?” he asked. He didn't remember.

  “Yes. All by itself on higher ground.”

  They were halfway through the bend when he saw it, insubstantial-looking on its pilings, like a black cardboard cutout propped up with sticks. Not wholly black, though. Lampglow made a pale rectangle of one of the fronting windows.

  Cecca sucked in her breath. He said warningly, “Easy. Maybe Chet's spending the weekend here.”

  “No, he was here last weekend, he invited Amy. He wouldn't come again the week after a long holiday—”

  Brighter lights seemed to jump out of the darkness, under or behind the cottage. Moving lights—arcing around the building, then separating into two eyelike beams. Car headlamps.

  “Dix!”

  He gunned the engine. Now the other headlights were making erratic vertical jumps as the car bounced downhill toward the road. It was on a weedy access lane; Dix saw the intersection materialize in the glare of his lights. Saw, too, that they were closer to the junction than the other car. Block it off, he thought, and veered over to the left side of the road. His blights slid over the car's small, lumpish shape, gave him a brief glimpse of the driver.

  Cecca cried, “That's Amy's Honda!”

  But it wasn't Amy behind the wheel.

  The Honda was twenty yards away when Dix skidded the Buick to an angled stop across the foot of the lane. Jerry Gordon Whittington Cotter kept coming without slackening speed. At first Dix thought he would try to ram them out of the way; he yelled, “Brace yourself!” to Cecca. But with only a few feet to spare, the Honda sheered off the lane onto the grass and packed sand that bordered it—Jerry gambling on enough traction to slide him around the Buick and onto the road.
>
  He made it a little farther than halfway before the tires began to slip and spin. The Honda slowed, settled, the engine roaring. Dix threw his door open, fumbling to free the Beretta, and ran to the compact and ripped at the door handle on the driver's side. Locked. Through the glass, in the glow of the dashlights, he could see Amy slumped in the passenger seat. Unconscious? Dead?

  No, she was moving one of her arms …

  Cecca had pushed up close beside him, was trying to peer inside. She screamed at Jerry, “What have you done to her, you son of a bitch!”

  Jerry's strained white face had turned toward them. Astonishment was written on it, and dismay; he couldn't comprehend how they'd known to come here. He mouthed something that Dix couldn't hear over the howl of the engine and the sand-churn of the tires. Dix moved Cecca back to give himself more room, then hammered on the window with the butt of the gun. The glass wouldn't break. He backed off a step, thinking to take aim, thinking: I'll shot you through the window if that's what it takes.

  The tires, spinning deeper, caught traction.

  The Honda jerked, gained a firmer bite, and slewed ahead out of the soft grit onto the asphalt. It fishtailed violently on the sand film there, seemed on the verge of going out of control. Then it straightened and shot away.

  Dix ran back to the Buick. The engine was still running; as soon as Cecca was inside, he snapped the transmission into gear, cut into a sliding turn in the Honda's wake.

  Cecca said in a voice caught midway between relief and panic, “Amy … she was in there with him. Could you tell if she—?”

  “Alive,” he said, “she's alive.”

  But for how much longer? Ahead of them Jerry was already driving faster than Dix dared to, at a deadly, reckless speed.

  Amy clung to the hand-bar with her right hand, the edge of the seat with her left, her feet braced hard against the floorboards. Outside, the highway and the few scattered buildings of Manchester hurtled past. He'd been going faster and faster since she'd regained her senses, realized where she was and that they were turning out of Stoneboro Road onto Highway One. Why so fast? Headlights bobbed behind them, not traveling quite as fast but staying pretty close. Was he trying to get away from whoever was in the car back there? The police … was it the police?