Her high beams flicked on. Gund exploded out of the ranch, loping into the headlights’ twin funnels, flashlight in one hand, pistol in the other.
Of course, Annie had not the slightest intention of fleeing.
Run away? Abandon her sister to a psychopath’s mercies?
She never would. It wasn’t a question of bravery or loyalty or commitment, but of simple self-preservation. To flee and leave Erin to die would be as good as committing suicide. She couldn’t live with herself after that.
He had a gun, all right. But a car could be a weapon, too.
Annie hunched low over the wheel and floored the gas pedal.
For a heart-freezing second the Miata’s tires spun uselessly, chewing gravel.
Gund stopped, twenty feet away, pinned in the high beams. Threw aside the flashlight. Lifted the pistol in both hands.
Annie had time to think she made a perfect target, stationary and at close range, and then with a squeal of rubber the tires caught.
Sudden acceleration punched her backward, hard against the seat.
The pistol bucked in time with a sharp crack of sound.
She jerked to one side as the windshield puckered. Crumbs of tempered glass showered her, gummy fragments seeding her hair.
She didn’t slow down. Refused to be intimidated.
Gund was ten feet from the Miata’s front end. Five.
Annie braced for impact.
At the last instant Gund leaped.
Timing the jump perfectly, he flung himself onto the hood, landing spread-eagle on his belly.
The car left the gravel court, bouncing on mounds of dirt and patches of stiff, dead grass.
Gund extended his left arm, smashed through the windshield, and thrust the gun at her face.
The blued barrel gleamed, catching the spectrum of colors from the dashboard gauges. The muzzle was a hungry, sucking hole, a lamprey’s mouth.
Annie spun the steering wheel.
Gund slid sideways, his aim thrown off as he squeezed the trigger.
The report deafened her. The bullet screamed past her face and clawed a hole in the convertible’s top. A tongue of black cloth flapped wildly over her head, inches away.
Close, Annie noted, strangely unmoved despite the nearness of death.
Gund’s pistol swung toward her again, the barrel compressed by foreshortening until it had disappeared and there was only the muzzle, inches from her right eye.
She stomped on the brake pedal.
The Miata screamed into a skid. The world blurred. The night sky, the barbed-wire fence, the ranch buildings all melted together in a giddy smear, like the view from a carousel.
Inertia yanked Gund halfway off the hood. He clung to the windshield frame a heartbeat longer, his knuckles squeezed bloodless, then let go and was gone, vanishing in the dark, rolling somewhere in the brittle grass.
The Miata pirouetted, completing a full circle, and shuddered to a stop.
Silence. Sudden and absolute.
The engine had stalled.
Annie heard a soft, plaintive whimper and realized it was her own.
The unreal calm that had armored her a few seconds earlier was gone, replaced by fear—pure, uncomplicated animal fear that choked her in a breathless stranglehold.
What to do? Start the car again. Yes. Get it moving and find Gund—injured, maybe unconscious—find him and mow him down, crush him under the wheels like roadkill, finish him, finish the bastard now.
Feverish thoughts and images beat like bat wings in her brain as she twisted the key in the ignition.
The motor coughed, died. Coughed, died.
“Start,” she hissed, tossing frightened glances at the rearview and side view mirrors.
She jerked the key again. The engine feebly cleared its throat, then expired with a chortling death rattle.
Movement on her left.
She turned, and a gasp hiccupped out of her.
Gund.
At the open window on the driver’s side.
In his hand, the pistol—or something like a pistol. Sleek and metallic and coming at her face.
Instinctively she recoiled.
Too late.
Pincers bit her neck in a vampire kiss.
Crackle of static, and pain clamped down on her, every muscle clenching.
Vision faded. Reality receded. Awareness broke up, flying into fragments like the Miata’s windshield, plans and memories and speculations shattering in a mist of crystal dust.
Erin—it was her last thought before her mind was lost in a haze of glistening white—I’m sorry.
55
He picked up the phone on its fourth ring. “Walker.”
“Okay, Mike. I got what you wanted.”
The slightly whiny voice on the other end of the line belonged to Roger Dickinson of the county tax assessor’s office.
It was 9:25. Walker hadn’t expected his friend to get back to him so quickly. “Fast work, Rog.”
“Yeah, well, you try hanging out in the County Administrative Center when the place is deserted. It’s giving me the creeps.”
“You still there?”
“Sure. In my office. Got the info you wanted right in front of me.”
Walker uncapped a pen and flipped open a memo pad. “Shoot.”
Papers shuffled. “Harold Gund did purchase a ranch outside town. Two and a half acres in an unincorporated area of Pima County. Escrow was recorded on the ninth of February this year. Place must be in piss-poor condition; it was assessed at only $119,000—a bargain for a parcel that size.”
Even so, Walker wondered how Gund could have afforded the down payment on a clerk’s income, much less qualified for the financing.
“Address?” he asked, pen poised over the pad.
“One hundred East Ravine Road.”
As he wrote it down. Walker found himself frowning. The address tickled his memory, though he wasn’t sure why.
“Mike? You there?”
“Sorry, Rog. Just thinking. Look, thanks a lot for your help. I appreciate this.”
“We’re even for those Suns tickets.” It was not a question.
“All square. Thanks again.”
Walker killed the phone, got out a spiral-bound map book, and looked up Ravine Road in the index.
Flipping to the appropriate page, he surprised himself by stating the address aloud.
“One hundred East Ravine Road.”
Suddenly he remembered.
In the clutter of papers on his dining table were the two Tucson Standard articles Gary had given him. He found the one on the deaths of Lincoln and Oliver Connor.
First paragraph. Almost the very first words.
... Lincoln Connor, 46, of 100 E. Ravine Road in the Tucson area ...
The Connor family had lived there. At the ranch. The ranch Harold Gund bought just two months ago.
Fear crawled in Walker’s gut, slimy and cold.
The fact that Gund had purloined a copy of Erin and Annie’s photo portrait might indicate nothing more alarming than an adolescent infatuation with one or both of the women.
But someone who sought out and purchased the old Connor home, paying more to acquire it than he possibly could afford, was in the grip of more—much more—than a harmless schoolboy crush.
Annie might be right about this man Harold Gund.
Walker blinked.
Harold ...
The loose end in the Connor case. A missing teenager. First name Harold. Last name unknown.
The same Harold? Harold Gund?
No, couldn’t be. Made no sense.
But Annie’s assistant spending a small fortune to purchase the Connor ranch—that didn’t make sense, either.
Or maybe it did. Maybe it all fit together perfectly in some subtle way Walker couldn’t quite see.
He shook his head. Didn’t matter. Time to puzzle it out later. Now he had to get hold of Annie, tell her what he’d learned.
He dialed her number
. A message machine answered.
Not home. Damn. Where would she go?
He remembered her telling him how she’d followed Gund into the desert. Had she gone back, looking for the ranch?
Walker didn’t want to believe that. Wanted to think she had more sense.
But somehow he knew better.
He returned his attention to the map book. Ravine Road was a minor dead-end street, southeast of town, off Houghton.
Didn’t appear as if there were too many roads or ranches in that area. If Annie had gone looking for Gund’s place, she might well have found it.
And if Harold Gund was there, he might have found her.
“Christ.” Walker grabbed his car keys and his walkie-talkie. The ranch was outside T.P.D. jurisdiction, but it would take too long to explain all this to the sheriff’s department.
Out the door. Sprinting to his car, a blue Mustang, parked in the driveway. The engine turned over instantly. At the corner he hooked south.
The Mustang, his personal car, had no siren or light bar. He exceeded the speed limit anyway. He would run red lights if he had to. What the hell. He was a cop.
As the Mustang skidded west on Fort Lowell Road, speeding toward Interstate 10, Walker was speaking into the portable radio microphone, requesting backup.
56
Tramp of shoes. Air moving past her face.
Erin blinked, coming back to herself. For a disoriented moment she was a small child, and her father was carrying her up the stairs to bed.
Sleep would be good. She was tired, so tired ...
No.
It was her father, but not Albert Reilly.
Oliver was climbing the cellar stairs, and she was slung over his shoulder, a sack of trash, a bedroll. The chain trailing from her leg clanked after her, the padlock at the other end bouncing noisily.
Groaning, she tried to squirm free. Useless. The effects of the stun gun hadn’t fully worn off. Though her mind was clear, her limbs were numb, her movements uncoordinated. She flailed and kicked without strength, landing soft, random blows.
Top of the stairs now. Into the hallway.
She wanted to speak, to argue, to plead, but her mouth wouldn’t work right. The sounds she made were not words, not even wordless protests, merely unintelligible grunts and gasps, expressions of blind, consuming panic, panic of phobic intensity, panic that set her heart racing rabbit-fast and thrilled her with a roar of blood in her ears and a high electric whine in the bones of her skull.
She thought of the arroyo. Of flame.
Faint ambient light. The living room. Starlight spearing through the broken windows.
Hard to breathe. No air in her lungs, and her throat had closed. She remembered choking on fumes in a burning house, twenty-three years ago. That had been like this. Like this.
He stopped in the middle of the room, near its sole furnishing, the potbelly stove.
Alongside the stove, a shapeless heap of hair and clothes.
Annie.
Limp and still. Unconscious or dead. Propped in a seated position, her legs stretched out on the hardwood floorboards, her back resting against the stove’s round belly.
Oliver hadn’t simply deposited her there. He’d arranged her in that pose, as carefully as he would have arranged a bouquet in the flower shop. He’d made a display of her.
Erin saw all that, and abruptly she understood what he was about to do.
Not the arroyo.
Here.
He would burn them here, in the house of his childhood.
“No!” she screamed, fear finding a human voice at last.
Oliver flung her down.
She hit the floor hard. A groan racked her.
He crouched by her side. She wanted to scratch his face, gouge and claw, but still her body would not respond to her will. She could only thrash weakly, gasping in inarticulate protest, as he shoved her up against the stove opposite her sister.
Snap, and the padlock securing the chain to her ankle was released, the chain pulled free.
The ribbon of heavy welded links was drawn across her waist, her arms, then wound around the stove, encircling Annie also, before its two ends met, a snake swallowing itself.
With a jerk of his wrists Oliver yanked the chain tight, chokingly tight across her midsection, crushing her arms to her sides, pinning her to the stove.
Snap. The padlock was again engaged, joining the two ends of the chain.
Erin moaned, struggling for speech and failing.
Oliver moved away, his back to her, and then he was out the door, lost in the darkness of the night.
She stared blankly after him for a long moment. Then with a spasm of violent energy she shook her head, twisted her body, clenched her fists, reviving dulled nerves and spent muscles.
She could not afford numbness and lethargy, not now. She had to fight. Fight for survival—her own and Annie’s, too.
Blinking rapidly to clear her vision, she gazed down at the padlock nestled in her lap, its steel shackle glinting at her like a smiling mouth. The chain extended on either side of it, binding her and Annie to the stove.
If she could raise the chain a few inches, to the point where the stove’s belly narrowed in diameter, she might be able to slip free.
Breathing hard, she contracted the muscles of her lower back, pressed her palms to the floor, and struggled to push herself up.
The chain wouldn’t budge.
But why not? Why the hell not?
Craning her neck, peering at the front of the stove out of the corner of her eye, she saw the reason.
Oliver had carefully looped the chain under the handle of the loading door and snagged it on one of the pin hinges. It could be neither raised nor lowered.
All right, then, how about the stove itself? Could it be moved?
A downward glance gave her the answer. The stove’s legs were bolted to the floor.
There had to be something she could do. Free her arms, at least.
But she couldn’t. The chain was wound too tight, jamming her elbows hard against her ribs.
No hope, then. No chance for her. For either of them.
Licking her lips, dispelling the last of the numbness that had frozen her mouth, she called her sister’s name.
“Annie?”
She heard no answer. She had expected none.
Maybe Annie was dead already. It might be best that way.
Her gaze moved to the front door, hanging ajar, letting in the warm night breeze.
Oliver still had not returned.
But he would, of course.
Soon.
With gasoline.
57
Walker picked up two T.P.D. patrol cars at the interstate’s Miracle Mile entrance. As he passed the Valencia Road on-ramp, he collected a sheriff’s department cruiser also.
The patrol cars activated neither sirens nor light bars on the freeway, a standard safety precaution. Walker, still in the lead, used his horn to scare slower traffic out of the fast lane.
On a tactical frequency the other units were asking questions, and he was doing his best to fill them in. But his best, he had to admit, wasn’t very good.
All he really knew was that a suspect in a possible kidnapping might be at a ranch on Ravine Road, with a hostage.
Or two hostages.
Driving with one hand, he put down his walkie-talkie, switched on his car phone, and punched in Annie’s number.
A recorded voice came on, as it had the last time he’d called. “Hi, this is Annie. I’m not home right now, so if you’re a burglar, I’m in trouble—”
He turned off the phone. Swallowed hard.
I’m in trouble, the message had said.
A joke, of course. Recorded days or weeks ago, irrelevant to this situation.
I’m in trouble.
Ridiculous to dwell on those words, the mock plaintive tone of voice.
I’m in trouble.
Leaning forward, Walker pushed the Mustang
to eighty-five.
* * *
“Annie?”
Still no response from the other side of the stove.
Though it was futile, Erin struggled against the chain, as if believing that by sheer force of will she could crack open the welded links.
“Dammit, Annie, answer me.”
“Sorry, Doc. She can’t.”
Erin jerked her head toward the doorway, where Oliver stood motionless, watching her across yards of darkness.
His arms hung straight at his sides, his hands wrapped around the handles of two bulky metal canisters.
Gas cans.
“Did you ... shoot her?” Erin whispered. “Is she dead?”
“Unconscious.” He spoke in a monotone, all emotion drained from his voice.
“Let her go. Please. If you want one of us”—she sucked in a sharp, shallow breath—“take me.”
“I’m taking you both.”
He set down the gasoline cans near the door, knelt, and calmly unscrewed the lids, his actions controlled, deliberate, robotic.
Nothing she said could move him. Even so, she had to try.
“Oliver.” She held her voice steady, fear channeled into her madly shaking hands. “You can’t do this. Can’t keep on killing.”
“I won’t. You two will be the last. Once you’re gone, I’ll be free.”
He picked up one can, tilted it, and began to pour.
The gurgle of fluid from the spout set Erin’s heart racing still faster. Her legs twisted, knees bending and straightening, boot heels dragging on the floor’s hardwood planks.
In her mind a stranger’s voice kept up a manic, witless patter: I’m afraid, so afraid, so very afraid ...
But when she spoke, her own voice was calm and reasonable, the voice of a therapist doing her job. “You’ll never be free that way.”
“Yes, I will.” Oliver walked with the can, pouring as he went, staying close to the living room wall. “Once I’m through with you ... once you’re out of my life ...”
“We’ve been out of your life before. After 1968 you weren’t Oliver Ryan Connor anymore. You could have stayed away from us forever. You didn’t.”
“No.”
“You waited until August of 1973. And then ... Well, you know what you did then.”
Blind Pursuit Page 27