Head To Head

by Linda Ladd

  “Shhh, Harve, don’t say anything. Just try to stay awake.”

  I crawled along on the ground, dragging him along with me and heading for the thick undergrowth that surrounded the house. When Harve collapsed in exhaustion, I knelt and got my hands under his arms and pulled him toward the woods. It took several minutes to reach cover, and I considered the barn as a hiding place but knew she’d find us there. The woods would be safer, so I half-carried, half-dragged Harve through the mud and kept my eyes on the path as long as I could. Then I saw her, a flashlight beam leading her to the back porch. Oh, God, she was going to find us missing. We had to hide, had to find someplace to hide.

  I kept going, praying she wouldn’t go into the cellar yet, giving us time to get away, but it was dark and pouring rain, and Harve was groaning. Then I heard her yelling my name in the distance, saw the flashlight beams moving from side to side in wide, sweeping arcs. She was coming.

  I saw a fallen log and dragged Harve to it, then frantically dug in the soft ground with the cleaver. When I made an indentation, I pushed Harve back under the log and raked sodden leaves up over him; then, as the light beams got closer, I slid in with my back against his chest and desperately pulled leaves and branches over both of us.

  “Annie, what’s—”

  “Shhh, Harve,” I said and clamped my hand over his mouth.

  I could hear Dottie’s voice now. “Annie, Annie, you’re being a bad, bad little girl. You’re gonna get in big trouble when you get home.”

  She was getting closer, moving back and forth in the rain. I gripped the cleaver tightly and peered through the branches. Lightning flashed, and I saw that she was only about twenty feet away.

  I lay still and waited for her to find us.

  34

  “Yoo-hoo, Annie, where are you?”

  I kept still. Harve was unconscious behind me. The first time Dottie had come looking for us, she had stepped around the log in the darkness and had not found us. This time we probably wouldn’t be so lucky. She had run back to the house when the air horn had started up again down on the lake, but I had stayed put and tried to stanch the bleeding of my shoulder with a scrap of Harve’s shirt. I was shivering uncontrollably in my torn bra and pants and was getting weaker by the minute. I knew I couldn’t drag Harve any farther, so I prayed whoever was in the boat would come up the hill and look for us. Now Dottie was back and getting closer, and the darkness was giving way to a misty gray light.

  “I’ve got a new surprise for you, Annie,” Dottie singsonged happily, about thirty yards away from the log. “You’re gonna love it.”

  I tried to see her but couldn’t without moving, and I was afraid to move. Harve groaned, and I stifled the sound with my hand.

  “I don’t have time to keep looking for you, Annie. But I tell you what: I’m not gonna kill Harve, if that’s what made you run away. I like him too much, anyway. I just wanted to kill a friend of yours in front of you, and he was the only one I had. But now that’s all changed: I’ve got somebody else to kill now, and I don’t even like him, so it’ll be easier. I’ll trade you Harve if you’ll come in and watch me kill Doctor Black.”

  I shut my eyes and didn’t move. She was lying. Please let her be lying.

  “It’s really him, Annie, and he came all the way out here to find you. You didn’t like him much at first, but you ended up sleeping with him, didn’t you? You’re not much of a friend, Annie. You just forgot all about me and Harve and spent all your time hanging around with him. Well, guess what? He’s hanging around on my porch now, just waiting for us.” She gave a cackling laugh; then there was silence under the dripping trees.

  I debated whether she could get the jump on a man like Black, but he wouldn’t be expecting Dottie to be here; he’d be expecting her to be dead. If he’d been the one blowing the horn, she could have knocked him out with something or led him into a trap when he walked up the hill.

  “Listen, Annie, hear this?” There was a crackling buzz over the sound of the drizzling rain, and I knew that sound well. I bit my lip. Oh, God, she’d gotten him with a stun gun.

  “It’s my new toy, and it works really good, Annie. You should see him jerking around on the ground, just like Mr. Twitchy Tail. I bet you never thought you’d see him get his, did you? And you know what? I’m going back over there right now, and I’m going to zap him every minute or two until you come out. When I see you, I’ll stop, but not before. So you hurry up now, you hear?”

  I put my face down in the wet dirt, and I tried to think what to do now, but I was all out of options. I’d been trained with stun guns and police Tasers. I’d seen demonstrations of what they did to people. A couple of seconds completely immobilized a grown man. Three seconds or longer felt like the victim had been dropped out of a building onto concrete. It wasn’t designed to be used more than once or twice; Black couldn’t take it over and over. Dottie wouldn’t stop until she killed him with it.

  I took a deep breath, then crawled out from under the log. Dottie was gone, so I covered Harve up with leaves and dead limbs. I kept the cleaver in one hand and the baseball bat in the other and stayed low as I edged through the undergrowth toward the opposite side of the house. Maybe she’d go inside for a moment and leave him; maybe I could find a way to get him away from her. When I was almost to the far side of the house, I heard a static crackle and then Black’s agonized cry, then Dottie’s voice.

  “That’s number five, Annie, but who’s counting? You’re not being very nice to your new boyfriend, letting me have my way with him like this. C’mon now, he’s not that bad. Even I’m beginning to feel guilty shocking him so many times.”

  I could see her now where she sat on the porch swing. She had her right foot on the railing, pushing the swing back and forth as if enjoying a quiet, rainy morning. Then she reached out and hit Black’s chest with the stun gun, and his body went into horrible, kicking spasms. I couldn’t stand it, couldn’t stand to see her hurting him. I placed the cleaver and bat on the ground and stood up, and when Dottie saw me, she jumped up and clapped her hands.

  “I knew you couldn’t stand to see him suffer. You love him, don’t you?”

  Black was still convulsing a little, and his eyes were shut, and he was groaning, and I wanted Dottie to get away from him.

  “Dottie, come help me.” I clutched my bleeding shoulder and dropped to my knees. “I’m too weak to make it any farther. I’ve lost so much blood; you’ve got to stitch me up again. I think I’m bleeding to death.”

  “No, you aren’t. That’s just a trick. You think you’re smarter than I am, but you’re not.”

  “Please help me, help me, and I’ll go with you, Dottie. I’ll be part of your family. That’s where I belong, with you and your family. That’s where I want to be forever.”

  Dottie hesitated, then moved to the top of the steps. Behind her, I saw Black coming out of the shock and trying to swing back and forth so he could kick her.

  I said, “I love you so much, Dottie. I didn’t realize it until you gave me that wonderful party, and I got to be with everyone again. It was great, and I wasn’t sad and lonely anymore. I was happy, truly happy.”

  “Do you mean it, Annie? Really, truly, that you’ll come live with us and meet the new friends I bring home?”

  Black was ready to strike now, and I held my breath as he pulled his knee up and kicked her as hard as he could with the heel of his foot. He got her in the back of the head, and she went sprawling down the steps, and in my adrenaline rush, I grabbed up the cleaver and charged her. She rolled and came up on her hands and knees and lunged at me with the stun gun, but I dodged it and swiped a gaping wound across her back. She screamed in pain but got up and ran for the path. I took the cleaver and chopped through the rope holding Black suspended. He fell, and I knelt beside him and cut his wrists apart. He was still half-dazed, but when I saw him clawing at his ankle, I realized he had a gun strapped there. I grabbed it from the holster and took off after Dottie. All I cou
ld think about was stopping her, making her pay for what she’d done to me and everyone I’d ever loved.

  By the time I reached the top of the path, she was halfway down the hill. I drew up, aimed, and fired but missed, then half-ran, half-slid down the hill after her. She was going to escape in Black’s Cobalt, and I wasn’t going to let her get away to kill again, not even if it killed me. I fired again but couldn’t hit her through the trees. Then she was in the boat. Seconds later, I jumped into the bow after her, gun out in front, but when she rammed the motor in reverse, I fell forward and the gun spiraled out of my reach. The motor died, and I scrambled after the gun, and then Dottie jerked off a boat paddle clamped to the side and hit me in the leg with it so hard, I felt a shinbone crack.

  Groaning, I lunged for the gun, but then Black was there, barreling out of nowhere, tackling Dottie and taking her with him over the side into the water. I got the gun and pulled myself up the side of the Cobalt to shoot her as sirens sounded above us at the house. But Black already had Dottie by the throat, choking her and holding her under the water, his face so dark and enraged that I knew he was going to drown her.

  “Black, Black, let her go, let her go. It’s over!”

  Black didn’t let up, didn’t even hear me, so I fired a shot in the air and that brought him spinning around to me and back to his senses. He let her go and left her floating facedown in the water. About the time he heaved himself onto the stern platform, Bud showed up on the path, gun in hand. Black crawled up to me, still shaking with rage, and I collapsed on the floor, in relief and pain and exhaustion.

  “Good God, we’ve got to stop the bleeding,” Black muttered, stripping off his shirt and holding it against the gaping hole in my shoulder. He stretched out and yelled over his shoulder to Bud, who was dragging a limp and lifeless Dottie out of the water.

  “Call an ambulance. Claire’s hurt bad!”

  I caught hold of Black’s arm and whispered, “Harve’s out in the woods beside the barn. Tell them he’s hidden under a log. Tell them to get him out of there.”

  “Okay, we’ll get him,” Black said, examining my swelling leg.

  I said, “Now, tell them now.”

  Black yelled and told them about Harve, and that’s the very last thing I remembered before I got pulled down into that safe, dark hidey-hole of unconsciousness again, where I knew no pain and nobody chased me with a cleaver.

  EPILOGUE

  Nicholas Black insisted that I recuperate at his villa in Bermuda. I objected, of course, telling him that Harve was going to need me after what had happened with Dottie. He said Harve could go, too. Could have his own private guesthouse and his own private nurse who wasn’t a goddamn eunuch in disguise.

  So away we went on Black’s Lear jet and found Bermuda was a beautiful, lush paradise with turquoise waters and balmy winds and pastel villas. Black’s villa was pale pink stucco, with a pool overlooking the ocean and three guesthouses strung amid the verdant flowers and glades of trees above the beach.

  Thomas Landers, aka Dottie Harper, didn’t die and was locked up in a hospital for the criminally insane. Poor Thomas had killed his last victim, and I still remembered very little about him when we were childhood playmates. Black had a whole team of colleagues treating him, mainly because Black wanted to know why he’d chosen poor Sylvie Border as a victim, but also because Black would probably kill him with his bare hands if he ever laid eyes on him again.

  So far Thomas had been quite forthcoming about his murderous past and said he had wanted the publicity Sylvie’s death would bring down on me, wanted me to be exposed and to suffer through a public revival of my son’s death. Sylvie had died as a means to an end. It was a tragedy, all of it, and I didn’t like thinking about it, so I didn’t, except when I awoke in the dead of night in a cold sweat and looked to see if decapitated heads on Blue Willow plates were in bed with me. But it was always Black in bed with me, and he came in very handy at nightmare time.

  I was reclining in a chaise in the shade, feeling a bit like Madonna or Barbra Streisand, or any other rich, pampered woman. Except my lower leg was in a cast, and I had about fifty stitches in my upper chest and arm. We’d been in our little Garden of Eden for over a week now, and Black had canceled all his appointments and rarely left my side. He had gotten over his own encounter with the stun gun and was angry he’d let a she-male get the jump on him. I told him he should’ve used the old duck-and-weave boxing technique he liked to tell me about. He told me that we both needed practice in that regard, and that he was enjoying my company now that I couldn’t kick his legs out and frisk him. I said I thought he liked that, but what I really thought was that he wanted me around to make sure I hadn’t gone completely bonkers after spending the night with my old friend Thomas.

  Truth was, I probably did need some intense psychological care, and one good thing about Black was, he didn’t mind doing it in bed with lots of other pleasurable things going on at the same time, too. It didn’t hurt, either, that he was a doctor and could prescribe all the painkillers I’d ever want or need. I think he probably thought it a good way to keep me quiet, too.

  “Time for a painkiller.”

  Black sat down beside my legs. He was wearing black swim trunks and had his shirt off, and despite his dark tan, I could still see all the little snakebite bruises where the stun gun had gotten him. He handed me a pill and a glass of iced tea, then laid a cool hand on my naked thigh. The cast stretched from below my knee to my toes. I was wearing a yellow string bikini because Black thought it was easier for me to get it on and off around all my casts and bandages. Off, mainly. But I was okay with it. I was okay with everything now, especially with Black.

  “I’m feeling pretty good.”

  “Maybe I should check your bandage.”

  “Maybe you should quit worrying so much and relax. I’m not used to being pampered and taken care of.”

  “Get used to it,” he said, his mouth finding mine in a kiss as slow and thorough as the rest of his lovemaking. I put my good arm around his neck and drew him down beside me on the wide chaise.

  Yeah, okay, so I had been wrong about him. He wasn’t so bad after all. In fact, he was pretty damn good.

  LIFE AFTER DOTTIE

  Brat liked the big hospital pretty much but was angry that they took his mother and her friends away and buried them, just as if they owned them. The mother didn’t like the dark, and she hated bugs. She must have been so angry. Sometimes the smell in the wide, shiny corridors reminded Brat of his father’s embalming room down in the cellar. Brat spent his days talking to the doctors, who were nice and hung on his every word, even the big lies he told them. They said Brat would probably never get out and be free again, but Brat knew better. Brat went to the hospital library every day and read all about psychiatry and mental illness and disassociative disorders and psychopaths and personality disorders and listened to everything the doctors said about Brat’s own case.

  When the time came, Brat would know what to say to get out of this place, even if it was sort of pleasant here, and then Brat would go looking for Annie again. Brat loved her so, and right before the man named Black kicked Brat in the head and ruined everything, she’d said she’d come live with Brat and travel in the trailer with them and meet all the friends he brought home. Why, there was one special nurse that gave Brat medicine who had long blond hair twisted into a crown of braids. She would be a perfect friend. Brat had been watching her ever since they locked him up. And he could find more Blue Willow plates at any flea market around.

  Oh yes, Brat couldn’t wait for that day to come. It would be so perfect, just Brat and Annie in the trailer together, driving all around the country and finding friends for their mommas. Heaven couldn’t be any better than that; he was sure of it. He got all excited just thinking about it! He hoped that his mother knew he was coming to rescue her…very, very soon.

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  Copyright ‘ 2006 by Linda Ladd

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  This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author s imagination, or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or events is entirely coincidental.

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  ISBN: 978-0-7860-2731-6