Blind Pursuit

by Michael Prescott

  Driver’s license, then. Thinner, more flexible.

  She jabbed the license into the crack in the doorway, found the bolt, pressed hard against it.

  Nothing.

  She withdrew the card slightly, tried again to slip the latch. Still no response.

  The ragged chuffs of her breath, the sweaty strands of hair dipping into her eyes, the ache in her wrists and fingers—that was all there was for her—that, and the card’s fitful probing.

  From somewhere close by, the groan of a door.

  He had entered the house.

  Little time left. He would be at this door very soon.

  With a last furious effort she drove the laminated card forward, flexing it at a sharp angle, prying madly at the bolt, and this time—thank God—the latch sprang back.

  She jerked the knob, and the door swung away from her.

  If the hinges creaked, he would hear and come running.

  The door opened as silently as a door in a dream. No wonder she’d never heard it from the cellar.

  Nearby, footsteps on hardwood. Approaching.

  She slipped out of the doorway and found herself at the end of a narrow hall, dimly illuminated by a wash of ambient light from the front of the house.

  To her right, the tramp of shoes.

  To her left, a single door, two yards away.

  She padded to it, gripped the knob, turned. The door opened an inch, letting in a rush of night air, then stopped.

  Jesus, what was it this time? Another chain?

  No, not a chain. A padlock, fastened to a steel hasp.

  The footsteps, closer.

  She shut the door again. No getting out that way. The original lock must have been faulty, so the paranoid son of a bitch had padlocked the door from the outside.

  Turning, her eyes wild, heart racing, she stared down the hallway and saw no exit, no hope. She was trapped in a dead end. The only escape route would bring her face to face with her abductor when he turned the corner five seconds from now.

  Think, Erin. Think or die.

  The cellar door. Hanging open at a thirty-degree angle to the corridor wall.

  The space between door and wall could serve as a temporary hiding place, the kind of nook a child might use in a game of hide-and-seek.

  In three quick, soundless steps she ducked behind the door.

  He turned the corner. She felt the floorboards quiver with his approach.

  Hugging the wall, straining not to breathe, she waited.

  His footsteps quickened, then stopped abruptly a yard away in time with a grunt of surprise.

  He was standing at the top of the stairs, on the other side of the door. An inch of wood separated her from him.

  He’ll hear my heart, she thought insanely. Hear it knocking in my chest.

  She remembered childhood nightmares, dreams that had visited her after the summer of 1973, terrible dreams in which she would flee through a labyrinth of darkness, pursued by some shapeless horror. Always the dreams would end with her huddled in a cubbyhole, breathless and rigid, while the beast prowled close by, snuffling nearer, ever nearer, the odor of gasoline on its breath.

  This was like that. Except tonight there would be no waking up. And in this nightmare, unlike the others, the beast would not wear the face of her father.

  “How could you do this?” he breathed, his voice impossibly close. “How could you leave me?”

  Fury in his words, and something more—a threat of tears.

  Then a cold click of metal, the release of a pistol’s safety catch.

  He had the gun with him. And this time he would use it.

  She waited, grimly certain he was on to her, sure that at any moment he would slam the door shut and reveal her pinned helplessly against the wall.

  Stamp of feet on the stairs.

  He was descending to the cellar.

  Relief weakened her. He hadn’t thought to look behind the door, after all. He wasn’t omniscient, wasn’t infallible. He could be beaten at this game.

  All right, time to quit the congratulations and get going. No, hold it.

  Balancing first on one foot, then the other, she removed her boots. Clutched them in her left hand, the leather warm against her fingers. Her footsteps would be muffled now.

  “I’ll kill you!” he shouted suddenly, his voice more distant than before. He had entered the cellar room.

  She eased the door away from the wall and stepped out from behind it.

  Do it. Now, while he was preoccupied.

  She took a breath, then darted past the doorway. Dared a glance toward the bottom of the stairs, saw his huge, distorted shadow crawling on the brick wall.

  Then she was beyond the doorway, padding barefoot down the hall and out into what had to be the main room of the house.

  24

  The room was large and musty and unfurnished save for a potbelly stove squatting troll-like on the floor. Starlight filtered through dust-coated windows, the panes webbed with cracks. A beamed ceiling, the rafters silvery in the subtle light, hung overhead like rows of leviathan ribs.

  Moving cautiously, aware that footsteps could be heard in the cellar, she crossed yards of semidarkness to the front door.

  It opened, promptly and fully, as all doors should—no improvised tools, no desperate prayers, simply a twist of the knob.

  Air on her face. The oily smell of greasewood. Click and buzz of nocturnal insects.

  Quietly she shut the door, then put on her boots and sprinted across a gravel court to the gate.

  It was wrapped in multiple coils of chain, secured with a rusty but formidable padlock.

  Climb over? No, impossible. Wicked barbed wire was strung across the top. And on both sides of the gate, barbed-wire fence extended along the roadside—five bands of wire, the lowest a foot from the ground, the highest just above her head, knotted to wooden posts driven into the ground at four-foot intervals.

  She couldn’t get through that fence or over it, not without slashing herself to tatters and leaving a trail of blood.

  She turned and surveyed the area. The place was a ranch of some kind, the main house a one-story wood-frame structure, flanked on the left by a modest barn with a fenced paddock attached. Against a waning crescent moon, the barn’s weathervane and cupola were etched in stark silhouette.

  Something was missing from the scene. She looked closer at the house, took note of the carport extending from a side wall.

  Empty.

  Where was the vehicle she’d heard?

  Dimly she made out tire tracks in the gravel at her feet, curving toward the barn. The big double doors were shut to conceal her abductor’s truck or van, parked inside.

  And perhaps to conceal her Taurus also.

  He had made her write to Annie, saying she’d gone away. The ruse would fool no one if her car was still sitting in its reserved space at Pantano Fountains.

  She sprinted for the barn, leaving the gravel behind, crossing yards of stiff, dead grass. The big double door loomed before her, the old wood ragged with strips of peeling paint. The barn must have been green once, with a white roof and orange trim—unusual color scheme for a desert ranch.

  One of the doors swung open easily in response to her brief tug. She crept inside and pulled it nearly shut, allowing only a pale fan of starlight to bleed through the crack.

  Standing motionless, she waited impatiently for her eyesight to adjust to the gloom.

  The place smelled of must and age, and not of hay.

  No provender had been stored here for years, for decades.

  A central feed passage, trough, and manure gutter bisected the barn. The left side was lined with stalls, the half-doors ajar. Horse stalls. This had been a horse ranch once.

  No stalls on the right side, only an open space, filled now with a gray Chevrolet Astro van and, beyond it, faintly visible in the barn’s recesses, her Ford Taurus.

  “Oh, baby,” she whispered. “Sweet baby, am I ever glad to see you.”<
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  He had taken the keys from her purse. But unless he was supernaturally prescient, he could not have known about the other car key she carried, the duplicate key reserved for emergencies.

  And if her present situation didn’t qualify as an emergency, nothing ever would.

  Pulse racing, she ran to the car, then crouched low and frisked the underside of the chassis. A moment of frightened groping, just long enough for her to fear that he’d found it or it had fallen off somehow—and then her hand closed over a small magnetic case.

  She detached it, snapped it open, and the spare key dropped like magic into her palm.

  Exhilaration at getting this far competed with naked terror at the thought that she wasn’t safe yet; she could still be stopped.

  The key in her pocket, she crossed the barn to the main doors, prepared to throw them wide—

  Her heart chilled.

  The distant thud she had heard was the slam of a door.

  Crunch of gravel, then of weeds.

  Through the crack she glimpsed a bulky figure covering ground in long strides, a gleam of metal—the handgun—bright at his side.

  Coming here. Coming to the barn.

  Silently she eased the door shut.

  Total darkness now.

  She had to find an escape route. Hunt down a side door and use it.

  Sightless, she groped her way along the wall, feeling for a door, finding none.

  Too late she realized she shouldn’t have closed the main doors so tight. The blackness around her was absolute, impenetrable, making her progress dangerously slow as she crept forward.

  Her questing hands brushed the rear of her car. She could hide inside it—lie on the floor, hope he didn’t see her—but the risk of discovery was too great.

  Better to keep going, find some way out. There had to be another door somewhere, had to be.

  Past the car, and now she was at the rear of the barn, under the hayloft, she believed.

  He would be here any second. And still there was no exit, only empty space, yards of black void in every direction.

  Frantic now, she flailed about wildly, searching for a door or cubbyhole, any sort of hiding place.

  With a gasp she blundered into something wooden and rickety.

  A ladder.

  Propped almost vertically, leading upward to the loft.

  If she could get up there, hide in shadows ...

  Her best chance. She didn’t hesitate. Already her boots were planted on the lower rungs, and she was gripping the side rails, climbing fast, oblivious of the wood splinters chewing her palms, ignoring the sway of the ladder as it wobbled under her, precariously balanced.

  Halfway up. Not far to go. She set her foot on another rung—

  Crack.

  Rotten with age, the rung collapsed.

  She plunged down, the impact of her descent shattering the next rung in line, and the next, and the next.

  Her fists closed over the side rails and broke her fall. She dangled briefly, then found an unbroken rung and stood on it, straining for breath.

  She had not screamed. That was something, at least.

  But she was still trapped, still hopelessly exposed, and now the ladder was unusable. She couldn’t reach the loft.

  An eddy of wind. Brightening glow behind her.

  The barn door, opening.

  He was here.

  She dropped to the ground, hoping the brief storm of dust stirred up by the wind could cover the soft thud of her fall.

  Crouching low, she gazed toward the front of the barn.

  In the doorway he was silhouetted against a gray sweep of desert and a sprinkling of stars. A large, stoop-shouldered figure in long pants and a short-sleeve shirt, his head oddly bulbous, curvilinear as a bullet.

  He hadn’t seen her yet. She was cut off from him by his van and her car and yards of distance; the light from outside hadn’t touched the farthest reaches of the barn.

  Sinking to all fours, she scrambled behind the front end of her Ford and huddled there.

  His shoes crackled on the dirt floor as he advanced inside.

  “Burn you, bitch.” His voice was a sleepwalker’s slurred monotone. “Pour the gas down your lying throat. Choke you with it before I light the match.”

  The low chuckling noises that followed were not any human form of laughter.

  Soundlessly she stretched out on her stomach and wriggled under the Ford.

  The driver’s door of the van canted open. The Chevy rocked on its springs as he swung inside. He climbed out a moment later, and a strong white light winked on, dispelling the barn’s shadows.

  Flashlight. Must have gotten it out of the glove compartment.

  The beam swept over the car, then explored its interior. She pressed herself snug against the ground, terrified that he would examine the underside of the vehicle next.

  He studied the car a moment longer, then directed the beam upward at the hayloft.

  Safe for the moment. But would he notice the broken ladder? Her footprints in the dirt?

  Apparently not. The flashlight beam passed over the ladder without pausing, the beam seeking out the doorway of a small room at the rear of the barn. A tack room, long unused, empty save for a built-in sink. Had she found that room and tried to hide in it, she would be dead now.

  Next, the horse stalls. The flash probed them one by one, looking for any uninvited occupant.

  Finally he seemed satisfied. The beam was angling toward the floor at his feet when a gust of wind blew the main door shut.

  The sharp slam, like an amplified handclap, startled him.

  He dropped the flash.

  It hit the ground, intact, the beam shining directly at her from ten feet away.

  She stared, paralyzed, into the cone of light. Fear closed her throat. She couldn’t breathe.

  “Hell,” he muttered.

  He took a sideways step to pick up the flash, and kicked it accidentally.

  It rolled—God, no—it rolled under the car.

  He would have to see her now. The flashlight lay between the Ford’s front wheels, less than a yard from her head. She was impaled in its beam.

  Past the haze of light, her abductor grunted as he got down on his knees.

  Erin felt wetness in her eyes and a sick, feverish trembling in her lower body. The nightmare was back, more real than ever.

  She hoped, despite what he’d said, that he wouldn’t burn her. Death by fire was her worst fear, had been since childhood.

  The gun would be better. Easier.

  His hand reached for the flash.

  He had to see her now. Couldn’t miss her.

  Except ... he wasn’t looking.

  He hadn’t bothered to lie prostrate and poke his head under the chassis. He was still kneeling, groping blindly.

  His fingers brushed the flashlight’s metal casing. The flash rolled again, and for a heart-twisting second Erin was sure it would roll out of his reach, and he would have no choice but to belly-crawl after it.

  Then he clamped a firm hand on the flash, pulled it toward him, and rose to his feet.

  Rattle, slam, and he was out of the barn, intent on hunting her in the night.

  Erin pressed her face to her forearm and lay very still as tension sighed out of her in a hissing stream.

  Close one.

  Very close.

  25

  Gund still had no idea how the bitch managed to free herself from the cellar, and he didn’t much care. All he knew, all that mattered to him, was that he would track her down, and then she would pay.

  He had never been so angry. She’d left him. Wrong of her to do that, so very wrong, unforgivably wrong.

  He could have killed her last night, but had he? No. She was special to him—still was, despite her betrayal—and he had treated her accordingly. He’d cleaned up the cellar room, stocked it with food and other necessities, even gone to the trouble of installing a foam pad so she could sleep in comfort. He hadn’t chai
ned her to the wall, as he easily could have. Hadn’t shackled her feet or manacled her hands.

  Right from the start he’d been good to her. He’d treated her with consideration and respect. And this was how she’d responded, the ungrateful little whore, the goddamned filth.

  His breath came hard, partly from the exertion of frantic activity but mostly from sheer, towering rage.

  The good thing was that she couldn’t have gone far. He’d been away for less than a half hour, and it must have taken time for her to defeat the two locked doors.

  He was guessing she had left the house only moments before his return.

  Her car keys were in his pocket, so unless she could hot-wire an ignition, the Taurus was useless to her. Penned in by barbed wire, she had two options—to hide on the grounds of the ranch, or to circle behind the house in search of another way out.

  Pausing at the side of the barn, he beamed his flash into the grain bin and fuel shed. Both were empty.

  The flashlight guided him as he loped across yards of scorched, bristly grass. A flattened, S-shaped thing—a dead gopher snake—was briefly visible amid a patch of purple weeds.

  Behind the house was a utility shed. He looked inside. Nothing.

  He didn’t expect her to hide, anyway. She would run. And he knew where she was likeliest to go.

  Two hundred feet beyond the shed, his property ended in a line of barbed wire, silver in the starlight. Just before the fence was an arroyo.

  The wide, dry streambed, carved by seasonal flash floods, ran west to Houghton Road, with no gates or fences along the way. Though Erin couldn’t know the wash’s destination, she was sure to see that it offered the only means of exit from the ranch, and like any local resident, she would know that arroyos were the natural roadways of the desert, ideal for easy hiking.

  He sprinted for the wash, certain the flashlight would reveal her footprints.

  Once he picked up her trail, all he need do was track her, a coyote stalking prey.

  * * *

  Erin groped in the dirt by the ladder, hunting among the scatter of broken rungs until she found a nail.

  In darkness she fingered it. A two-inch nail, slightly rusty but still sharp.