Blind Pursuit

by Michael Prescott

  Gund paid scant attention to any of it. Outwardly composed, he was struggling inside to clamp down on the feelings and hold them in check.

  If he were to relax control, he knew what would happen. He would click off.

  That was how he thought of it. To click off was to relinquish control, to let his conscious mind retreat to an insignificant corner of himself while his compulsion rose to the surface and took over.

  What he would do then would be shocking, horrible, yet the rational part of him would watch it without influence or authority.

  He had come near to clicking off several times already. Only an iron effort of will had allowed him to maintain a degree of precarious self-mastery.

  If he lost control now, alone with Annie in the shop ... he didn’t want to know what he might do.

  And even if he held on until work was over, how could he possibly make it through the night?

  Somehow he must. Erin could not die yet. There was much more work for her to do. Much more progress to be made.

  Progress. Yes. Already he had shown progress. Perhaps he could use what he had learned to maintain control. If so, he and Erin could continue to explore his illness together until they found a cure.

  At least he need not worry about any further escape attempts on her part. After a night and day staked out on the sand, she would be properly chastened and submissive, her spirit broken.

  She would give him no trouble. He was certain of that. No trouble ever again.

  Of course, he could never let her go.

  He’d decided as much last night. She had seen his face ... and the ranch.

  He would keep her alive until his treatment was complete. Then ... kill her. Not out of compulsion, and not by fire. He should be rid of those impulses by that time.

  A bullet in the brain. That was how he would do it. Neat and quick.

  The killing would afford him no pleasure. It would be a simple matter of practical necessity. She’d brought it on herself, after all. If the little bitch had just been more cooperative—

  “You going to lunch?”

  Annie’s voice.

  He looked up from the lily of the valley in his hands, its slender stem wound in rose wire and stem-wrap tape. “Huh?”

  “It’s one o’clock.”

  “Oh. Yes.”

  So late already. He’d been completely unaware of the time.

  Though he wasn’t hungry, he had better eat. Best not to disrupt his daily routine. Normally he went next door for a deli sandwich at this hour, and Annie did likewise upon his return at one-thirty.

  “See you in a bit,” he said automatically as he stepped out from behind the counter.

  She nodded without answer. She, too, was distracted by thoughts of Erin, he knew, but they were thoughts of a very different kind from his own.

  He left the shop, emerging into the afternoon glare.

  Instantly a blanket of heat smothered him.

  It was like summer out here. An Arizona summer, which was a dress rehearsal for hell.

  Behind him, the shop door swung shut with a rattle and bang.

  He barely heard it. He was thinking of Erin. Erin, staked out in the wash under the sun.

  Had it been this hot all day?

  He remembered turning on the air-conditioning at nine. The duct fans rarely had stopped whirring, and the compressor’s motor throbbed steadily like a pumping heart. Consumed by his inner struggle, he hadn’t noticed, hadn’t even thought about it.

  Yet the UPS man had been sweating hard when he lugged in those cartons at ten. And customers had kept making comments to Annie about the weather, hadn’t they? And the paper-flower vendor from Nogales—mucho calor, he’d said. Hot day.

  Damn it, he should have been more alert.

  Blinking sweat out of his eyes, he gazed across the shopping plaza at the clock tower of a bank. Below the clock a digital board displayed the temperature: 101 degrees.

  Twenty degrees hotter than yesterday’s high. Well above normal for this time of year. And at lower elevations the temperature would be three to five degrees higher than in the foothills. At the ranch, the mercury must be brushing 105 on the scale.

  Desert soil, absorbing the sun’s heat, became hotter than the air. Erin might be roasting in temperatures of 115 degrees or more.

  “My God,” Gund whispered, drawing a stare from a woman bustling past with a child in tow.

  He must get to Erin. Take her inside and apply first aid for heat exhaustion or heatstroke.

  If it wasn’t already too late.

  The trip to the ranch and back would require at least an hour, twice the length of his usual lunch break. He needed an excuse.

  With a glance at his van, he had one.

  Annie was surprised to see him reenter the shop only a minute after leaving. “Forget something?”

  “No. Well, yes. What I forgot was my van. I mean, I need to take it to a body shop, get an estimate for insurance purposes. You know.”

  Ordinarily he was a cool and practiced liar, but now the words kept jamming up in his mouth. It was too much to handle all at once—the compulsion rising in him, Erin cooking in the sun, the need for urgency balanced with the charade of calm.

  “Okay,” Annie said, puzzlement in her eyes.

  “It may take a while. An hour or longer. I’m sorry.”

  “Use all the time you need.” She gifted him with a warm smile. “How could I possibly object after you’ve been such a help?”

  He did not smile in answer. He never smiled.

  “Thanks, Annie,” he said simply, turning to go.

  Her voice stopped him. “Harold? You didn’t hurt yourself in that accident, did you?”

  “Of course not. What makes you ask?”

  “You seem ... tense.”

  “It’s the weather.”

  That much, at least, was true.

  Starting the van’s engine, he looked at the bank tower again. As he watched, the last digit of the Fahrenheit reading flickered, and the display changed from 101 to 102 degrees.

  The day was continuing to heat up. By the time he arrived at the ranch, thirty minutes from now, what would the temperature be?

  Gund reversed away from the curb and pulled onto Craycroft Road, speeding south.

  37

  Erin was dying.

  She knew it, in those rare moments when she knew anything.

  Shortly after the sun reached its zenith, she’d noticed that chilly beads of sweat were no longer seeping from her hairline or rolling down her arms. Her skin, having lost its sheen of perspiration, was becoming flushed and dry, as dry as her parched mouth and burning eyes.

  That was when she’d understood that she would not survive until evening. Would not survive even another two hours.

  The sun had wheeled westward since then, into early afternoon. Must be one o’clock by now, or later. She had little time left.

  Just as well. Death would bring release. Release from thirst and cramps and fevered thoughts.

  No.

  She rallied. For the thousandth time she strained her shoulders, chafing her bound wrists against the stake.

  The rope was fraying. It had to split soon. Had to.

  Then she sagged, giving up. She had long since lost all strength and muscular coordination. Even if the rope did break, her nerveless fingers could not undo the knot securing her ankles to the other stake, and her legs, knotted in cramps, could not carry her to shade.

  She was finished.

  Her pulse, ticking in her ears, was rapid but weak—a frantic flutter that signaled imminent collapse. Nausea bubbled in her stomach. Wracking shivers, like halfhearted convulsions, shook her without warning.

  She wondered how she would die, exactly. Would there be a slow gray-out, a long slide into unconsciousness, deepening to coma, ending in death? Or staccato alterations of awareness and oblivion, culminating in a few final moments of wrenching agony as her heart failed?

  It didn’t matter. Nothing mat
tered. The death she imagined was only a dream. Her hours of exposure, her captivity in the cellar, her abduction—all of it, a dream.

  She had never lived in Arizona, that place of barren land and unforgiving heat. Had never left Sierra Springs. There had been no reason to leave it. No fatal fire, no inexplicable craziness that possessed a loving father, no years of post-traumatic recovery, of unanswered questions and haunted sleep.

  She was a young girl again, seven years old, playing in the green yard of the Reilly house, under a maple tree’s cooling umbrella of leaves. A swing hung from a low branch, and Erin climbed onto it, gripping the rusty chains. She kicked the ground away, and then she was flying, propelling herself to ever greater heights in wild, reckless swoops that carried her out of shadow and into the clear California sunlight.

  Below, Annie yelled encouragement. Higher, Erin, higher!

  Erin leaned back on the wooden seat, legs thrust out, warm air whistling past her as the chains creaked and her hair streamed like a comet’s tail, and she was laughing.

  Laughing ...

  She tried to laugh and choked on the wadded cloth in her mouth. The effort required to stifle her gag reflex jerked her back to this moment.

  The swing was gone, and Annie, and the green yard, and there was only heat and dust and pain.

  What time was it? Two o’clock? Two-thirty?

  No, not yet. But if she could hold out that long, until two-thirty or three, when the sun would be behind her, not shining quite so directly on her face ...

  Then she rolled her head to one side and pressed her right temple to her forearm, pinioned over her head. She felt the febrile heat radiating from, her own skin.

  I’m radioactive, she thought with a giddy stab at humor. Erin Reilly, the human microwave.

  Her last hope withered. No chance she could last until mid-afternoon. Another half hour, at most, was all she had.

  Away again to Sierra Springs, the shaded yard. The swing described a final, reckless arc. Then her father, kind and sane, took her and Annie by the hand and led them upstairs to their bedroom. Night had fallen, although, strangely, it had been daytime only a moment earlier.

  A moth beat against the window screen. Crickets chirruped in singsong choruses. Somewhere on the ground floor their mother hummed a soft, sad tune.

  Albert Reilly tucked in Annie first, then moved to Erin’s bed and pulled the covers up to her neck. She smelled his masculine scent, comforting in the dark. His hands stroked her hair, her forehead. Large hands. Sensitive hands.

  “Christ,” he whispered, “you’re feverish.”

  That seemed an odd thing for her father to say. But she had no power left to question it.

  Snug in her bed, Erin slept.

  * * *

  A shock of cool water on her face revived her. She blinked alert and found herself sprawled on a concrete floor, propped against a brick wall, both surfaces wonderfully cool.

  The cellar. She was back in the cellar.

  And the man swabbing her face with a damp washcloth, his features blurred and doubled, discolored by the red haze that hung over everything like a permanent filter ...

  Him.

  He had returned for her. Had saved her life.

  She licked her lips, then realized that her mouth wasn’t stoppered with a gag any longer, nor was it parched with thirst. Her tongue, running lightly over her gums, tasted salt.

  He must have force-fed her a few sips of salt water. Standard remedy for dehydration.

  The cloth moved lower, wetting her neck, her collarbone. At her cleavage he hesitated, as though debating whether or not to probe deeper. Then abruptly he rose upright and crossed the room to the sillcock in the wall.

  A low hiss—flow of water from the tap. He held the cloth under the stream, then knelt by her again and began to scrub her legs.

  She observed all this with blank detachment, feeling nothing except boundless relief at being indoors, and dangerous gratitude toward the man who’d brought her here.

  The cloth was chilly against her ankles. Gooseflesh bumped up on her legs. She shivered.

  “Cold?” he asked.

  The brief, staccato chatter of her teeth was sufficient response.

  “Better get you into bed.”

  He carried her to the foam pad in the corner, deposited her gently on her side. Eyes shut, she felt him draw the cotton blanket over her, leaving only her head exposed.

  “Sleep,” he whispered, and for a disoriented moment reality melded with hallucination, and he was her father, tucking her in at bedtime. “I’ll be back this evening. You’ll be all better by then. And we’ll continue our work.”

  Yes, she thought dreamily. Our work. Got to continue ... the work ...

  It seemed vitally important that the work proceed, the most important thing in the world, though she no longer recalled just what sort of work it was or why it mattered.

  Her breathing slowed and deepened, and she went away again—not to Sierra Springs this time, but to nowhere at all.

  38

  Annie was rearranging her display of gift baskets, not out of necessity but simply to take her mind off Erin, when the shop door jingled open at two-fifteen.

  She turned, and a sudden smile dimpled her cheeks. “Jeez, Harold, look at you. You’re a mess.”

  Gund paused in the doorway, gazing down at himself. His pants, badly rumpled, were soiled from knees to cuffs with blotches of tan desert dust.

  He blinked as if embarrassed. “Yes ... well ... there was some damage to the chassis. I had to crawl under the van to check it out.”

  “We’d better get you cleaned up or you’ll scare away the clientele.”

  Briskly she rummaged in a drawer behind the counter until she found a large brush useful for cleaning clothes and smocks dirtied by potting soil.

  “So what was the estimate?” she asked as she stepped to the middle of the room.

  “Twelve hundred dollars.”

  She let out a low whistle. “That’s a bundle.”

  “My insurance will pay for it.”

  She stooped and began brushing his pants with quick, vigorous strokes. “Was it the other driver’s fault?”

  “Yeah. He cut me off.”

  His answer was clipped, his posture stiff. Apparently he found her close contact uncomfortable. Funny for a man in his forties to be so shy.

  Well, this would take only a minute. To distract him, she said, “If the other guy’s to blame, he should pay.”

  “He hasn’t got any insurance.”

  “Not even liability? Isn’t that illegal in Arizona?”

  “He’s from out of state. A snowbird.”

  Annie frowned. Snowbirds were part-year residents, fleeing harsh northern winters. If this negligent motorist could afford to maintain two homes, he ought to be able to reimburse Harold out of pocket.

  She was about to say as much when she noticed the belt.

  A western-style belt, black leather with a snakeskin overlay and a brass buckle. Harold wore it often, nearly every day, but she’d never gotten a close look at it before.

  The overlay was studded with small turquoise beads.

  One of the beads was missing.

  Her hand opened reflexively, and she dropped the brush.

  “Oops. Clumsy me.” The words were spoken by someone far away, someone who would remain composed in any crisis, someone like her sister. “Think I’m done, anyhow.”

  Gund took a quick step back, as if anxious to distance himself from her.

  She replaced the brush in the drawer. Her mind was frozen. When she opened her mouth, she had no idea what she was about to say.

  “Gotta use the powder room for a sec. Hold down the fort, will you?”

  He nodded. His face seemed slightly flushed, and his eyes wouldn’t meet hers.

  Did he realize she’d been staring at the belt? No, that wasn’t it. He was ... aroused. Bending near his waist, stroking his trousers, inadvertently she had turned him on.
/>   The thought left her feeling unclean. In the small bathroom at the rear of the shop, she washed her hands unnecessarily.

  Then she unclasped her purse and removed the creased square of tissue. Nesting within its folds was the turquoise from Erin’s apartment.

  She held up the stone to the light. It might very well match those on Gund’s belt.

  Eyes shut, she pictured Gund in Erin’s bathroom, leaning against the counter, reaching for the top shelf of the medicine cabinet, where the Tegretol was kept. His waist rubbing against the countertop’s Formica edge, the loose turquoise bead coming free and dropping, unnoticed, to the floor ...

  “No,” she whispered. “It can’t be him. Just can’t be.”

  But what if it was?

  She sat on the closed lid of the commode, staring blankly at the stone in her hand, which gazed back like an unwinking eye. She asked herself how much she really knew about Harold Gund.

  She’d hired him six months ago, when he responded to a help-wanted sign in the shop window. She almost hadn’t taken him on; a flower shop seemed a peculiar place for a large, burly man, and a dead-end job at little better than minimum wage was hardly ideal for someone his age.

  But Harold had explained his circumstances, quietly and sincerely. For twenty years he had worked as a custodian at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. Last September his wife had died; she remembered him fumbling in his wallet for her photo and showing it to her. Miriam had been her name.

  They’d had no children. All they’d shared was each other. Now she was gone, and as autumn yielded to winter, Harold had found that he couldn’t face another season of bleakness and cold.

  He’d applied for a custodial position at the University of Arizona, then had come southwest with an assurance that the job was his. Through a bureaucratic bungle someone else had been hired before he’d arrived. Now he was stuck in an unfamiliar city with no employment.

  The story was almost too affecting to be true. But she hadn’t doubted him. He seemed incapable of duplicity, with his round, smooth face, his sad blue eyes, his large belly overspilling his belt. Though he was years older than she, he conveyed a pleasantly boyish quality, and an instant sense of familiarity, as if he were an amalgam of two old-time movie actors she liked—the face of Ernest Borgnine and the voice of Aldo Ray.