Clumsily he turned the gun toward his own face.
The muzzle brushed his cheek, his chin. Mouth open, he swallowed it.
Somewhere at the end of the sixteen-inch barrel was a trigger.
He groped for it as the back of his seat erupted in flame and his scalp began to crisp.
* * *
Twenty feet from the van Walker was slip-sliding down the embankment, carrying his Smith .38 and a dry-chemical fire extinguisher from his car, when he caught sight of Harold Gund.
The man couldn’t be alive, certainly couldn’t be conscious, not in that hell of folded metal and spurting flame.
But he was.
Walker saw movement. A gleam of steel.
The shotgun again.
For a wild moment he thought Gund was trying to take another shot at him. Then the barrel swung toward Gund’s own face and the muzzle disappeared into his mouth.
A sharp crack, a viscid spatter.
The fire still burned, but Gund didn’t feel it anymore.
Walker turned away from the van, then stopped, staring along the length of the arroyo toward a distant radiance.
Another fire. Larger than this one. A house or some other structure.
“Christ,” he hissed. “Annie.”
He scrambled back up the slope to his car, praying he wasn’t already too late.
59
Annie knew what this was.
Her familiar nightmare.
Smell of smoke and gasoline. Whisper of flame. Heat on her face. The house in Sierra Springs ablaze.
She roused herself, eyelids fluttering, vision swimming into focus.
Around her, a blazing light show. Showers of sparks. Blooms of flame.
She wasn’t awake yet. Couldn’t be. The nightmare was continuing, taking a new and more vivid form....
A wave of heat pulsed over her. The stench of gasoline bit her nostrils. She choked back a cough.
No dream. Reality.
She remembered her last waking moments. Gund at the car window. Voltage coursing through her body.
Comprehension hit her like a punch in the stomach.
“Erin?”
From directly behind her, less than a yard away: “I’m here, Annie.”
Though her sister’s voice was ragged, her tone—measured and steady—gave an impression of something close to calm control. An illusion, certainly, because no one could be calm here, calm now.
“What the hell’s he doing to us?” Annie heard raw terror in her own voice. “Christ, what’s he doing?”
“Don’t panic, Annie. Please don’t.”
The words made no sense. Panic? Of course she would panic. Who wouldn’t panic, for God’s sake? Didn’t Erin understand what was going on? Didn’t she see? Gund had set the house on fire, they were going to burn, burn to death—
No. Quit it. Quit it.
With trembling effort she forced down her rising fear.
As a child in a blazing death trap she had yielded to terror, become hysterical; but she was not a child any longer.
Head lowered, she looked herself over for the first time and found that she was seated on the floor, chained to an appliance of some sort, a water heater or a furnace or something. Stubby metal legs, bolted in place, held the base of the contraption six inches off the floor.
Potbelly stove. That’s what it was. She remembered it from snapshots in Lydia’s photo album.
She strained against the chain links, trying to release her arms. No use.
“Isn’t there any way to get free of this thing?” she yelled.
“Chain’s wound tight. And it’s—” A spasm of coughing interrupted Erin’s reply. “It’s padlocked.”
Padlocked.
Annie blinked.
Twisting her right arm, she thrust her hand into the pocket of her skirt, and yes, there it was, the key ring she’d taken from Gund’s apartment.
As she pulled the keys free, it occurred to her that there was something funny about her having them, something that ought to disturb her, but there was no time to think about it now.
“I’ve got his keys!” she shouted.
“What?”
“Gund’s keys. Can you reach the padlock?”
“Think so.” Now it was Erin’s voice that quavered, not with fear but with barely suppressed hope.
“Okay,” Annie said. “I’m gonna slide ’em to you.”
“I’m ready.”
She placed the keys on the floor, took a breath, and flicked them backward, between the stove legs.
For an endless moment there was no response, and she was sure she’d blown it, blown it, hadn’t pushed the key ring far enough, and now it lay somewhere under the stove, out of her reach and Erin’s, useless to them both, their last chance wasted.
“Got them!” Erin called.
Thank God. “Do they work? Does one of them work?”
“Give me a second.”
Annie waited, tasting smoke, trying to be brave.
* * *
Fumbling one-handed, Erin found two small padlock keys on the ring. She wedged the first one between two fingers and lifted the key to the padlock at her waist.
Hard to keep her attention narrowed to this tight focus when everywhere the smoke was thickening, the heat rising to a murderous intensity.
Little time left. Couple of minutes at most. Combustion was entering its second, still more deadly phase.
The wood of the walls, ceiling, and floor, dried out after years in an arid climate, could not feed the flames for long; already the fire was fading in patches to a dull glow as it burrowed into the timber, snouting out the carbon still trapped inside. The heat would further weaken the cellulose and lignin that gave the wood its structure and strength, until the roof beams and wall panels simply fell apart, collapsing the house on top of Annie and herself in a cascade of burning debris.
The smoke might get them sooner. It was a witch’s brew of carbon monoxide and outgassed toxins from the walls—vaporized varnish, paint, glue, and insulating material. The fire was rapidly consuming the room’s remaining oxygen; before long there would be only poison to breathe.
Her hand shook, and she nearly dropped the key ring.
Come on, Erin. Concentrate.
The keyhole wasn’t visible from her angle; she had to stab the key at the bottom of the padlock case several times before it slid into the plug. She twisted her wrist.
Nothing happened.
Wrong key, then. Try the other one. Hurry.
She rotated the key ring, isolated the second padlock key, inserted it.
Clockwise turn, and the padlock released.
She stared at it, stunned, then tried to laugh and hacked out a ragged cough instead.
“Annie, it worked! It worked!”
Another spasm of coughing racked her as she kicked free of the chain. She crawled around the stove and found her sister untangling herself from the heavy links.
“This way!” Erin yelled. “Front door!”
Smoke had turned Annie’s eyes to water. “Can’t see.”
“Take my hand.”
Annie obeyed.
Erin crawled toward the doorway, guiding Annie through the inferno, just as she had led her sister through another burning house so many years ago.
Char and soot and white mineral ash whipped around them in a swirling haze. Clouds of sparks like fireflies singed their hair.
The door wasn’t far, less than twenty feet away, but it was separated from them by a river of gasoline a yard wide, its surface webbed with kinetic ripples of flame.
Have to jump across, Erin thought. If we can.
Behind them, an echoing groan.
She glanced back and saw the rafter directly above the stove splitting cleanly in the middle, raining sparks and splinters.
Close. Too close.
“Move!”
She yanked Annie forward. At their backs the ceiling beam pitched down in a rush of charred timber.
Thunderous impact. The house shook. The rafter disintegrated into a vortex of burning brands. The last of the wood’s stored energy ignited in a monstrous shout of flame, exploding like a bomb at their backs, the pressure wave hurling Erin flat against the floor, and for a second she was certain a seething comber of fire would surge over her and Annie and consume them both.
It didn’t. The flame contracted and winked out, its fuel supply devoured in an instant, leaving only a tempest of smoke and, rising above the background roar, Annie’s screams.
Erin spun toward her sister and saw her writhing on the floor as flames crawled over her skirt and blouse.
“Help me, oh, Jesus, help me!”
With her bare hands Erin slapped the flames, trying desperately to smother them. In her mind she was seven years old again, in the stairwell of another fiery house, beating her sister’s flaming pajamas with the stuffed bear called Miss Fuzzy.
Pain. Pain in her left arm.
Embers had drifted from Annie’s clothes to her own, setting the sleeve of Erin’s blouse ablaze.
She broke free of Annie, pawing at herself, smacking wildly at the bright blemish of flame, but even as she did, new hot spots erupted on her skirt, her blouse, her hair, and she was burning, burning—Oliver had won—after twenty-three years he’d had the last word, God damn him, he’d murdered them both.
Dragon hiss.
Jet of chemical spray.
An arc of aerosolized powder, soaking her and Annie in a white drizzle.
Fire extinguisher. It was a fire extinguisher.
Erin lifted her head, glimpsed a dark figure in the doorway—a man struggling toward them, sweeping the canister from side to side, cutting a narrow swath in the river of fire along the room’s perimeter.
“Michael?” The hoarse, whispery voice was Annie’s.
Over the threshold, a shuddering creak.
Another ceiling beam threatened to give way.
Erin grabbed her sister’s hand and pulled her upright.
Sparks rained down as the beam weakened. The man called Michael took a last step forward, reaching out to them.
Erin’s fingers locked on his wrist. He pulled her, stumbling, through the doorway. Annie clung to Erin’s hand and followed.
Inside the house, a sudden wrenching groan.
Erin looked back in time to see the rafter above the threshold plunge down in a curtain of fire, engulfing the doorway in a roaring shower of debris.
Together they staggered across the gravel court. Fifty feet from the house they stopped, safely distanced from the waves of blistering heat and the torrent of smoke.
Erin’s knees unhinged. She sank into a crouch. Annie knelt beside her, coughing weakly.
From the direction of the gate came the squeal of tires, the pulse of dome lights—police cars arriving at the scene.
Erin looked at the man kneeling beside her. “Who ... who are you?”
“Michael Walker.” He forced out the words between harsh gasps. Sweat streaked his face and neck, pasting the open collar of his shirt to his skin. “Tucson P.D.”
“Got here ... just in time.”
“Should have been sooner.” He looked at Annie. “Much sooner.”
Annie rubbed the smoke from her eyes. “Well”—she managed a smile—“better late than never.”
Walker’s startled laugh died in a wheeze.
Erin had one other question, but almost no strength to ask it. She tugged Walker’s sleeve, met his gaze, and voiced one word.
“Gund?”
“Dead.”
Slowly she looked away, toward the burning house, and nodded.
“Good.”
60
In darkness, the buzz of an intercom.
Blinking awake, Erin leaned on one elbow and stared at her bedside clock.
12:03 A.M.
It’s happening again, she thought groggily. Oliver is back.
Crazy notion. Insane.
Even so, she was trembling as she threw off the covers and padded into the living room.
She thumbed the Talk button. “Yes?”
“Erin? It’s me.” The voice was Annie’s. “Sorry to come over so late, but ... I need to talk.”
Need to talk. Even the same words as last time.
“Annie? Is that you? Is it really?”
“Of course it is.... Oh, I get it. I—I didn’t think of that. Maybe I shouldn’t have stopped by, huh?”
Oh, hell. “You’re here, so come on up.”
Pressing Enter, she buzzed open the lobby door.
It would take Annie a minute or so to ride the elevator to the fourth floor. While waiting, Erin returned to her bedroom and put on her slippers and robe.
Which was exactly what she’d done that other night, she reflected grimly, then shook her head in self-disgust.
Stupid of her to entertain such a blatantly irrational fear—especially after Detective Walker had explained precisely how Annie’s voice had crackled over the intercom on the night of the kidnapping.
Nothing mystical about it. Oliver owned a tape recorder with an attachment that let him tape directly off his phone line. He called Annie’s number while she was out and recorded her answering machine’s outgoing message.
Hi, this is Annie. I’m not home right now, so if you’re a burglar, I’m in trouble. If you need to leave a message, please wait for the tone and then talk. Bye.
Then he edited the tape, leaving in only certain words. The spliced audiocassette was found during a thorough search of his apartment.
This is Annie.... I’m in trouble ... Please.... Need to ... talk.
The doorbell rang. Annie was here.
If it really was Annie, and not Oliver once again returned from the dead.
At the door Erin flipped the wall switch, illuminating the living room. Before retracting the dead bolt, she checked the peephole. The face in the fish-eye lens was her sister’s.
She opened the door. “Annie. You okay?”
“Okay?” Annie stepped inside, smiling blithely at the question. “I’m perfect. That’s what Lydia used to say about us, you remember? That we were perfect.”
Her words were strange, her smile oddly fixed. A worry flitted through Erin’s mind that her sister might be having some sort of breakdown.
Never should have told her, she reproached herself for the hundredth time.
Though she’d given the police most of the details of Oliver’s past, Erin had withheld one crucial part of the story—Maureen’s rape and pregnancy. That secret had been shared only with Annie.
It had seemed only proper. Her sister, after all, had every right to know. But Annie had taken the news hard, terribly hard.
And why not? Such an ugly word, redolent of ancient taboo: incest.
Erin felt it, too—that crawling sense of unfitness, of impurity. Had felt it ever since she grasped the truth about Oliver and his relationship with Maureen. In the two weeks since the fire at the ranch, she’d tried to rationalize the problem out of existence. When those efforts had failed, she found herself taking long baths and too many showers, hoping illogically to wash away the physical sensation of corruption.
No use. There were some things water couldn’t cleanse.
She was tainted; they both were. Contaminated.
Filth. She heard Oliver’s voice in her mind. And, deeper in memory, Albert Reilly raging: Abominations.
She pushed away those thoughts and gestured toward the sofa. “Why don’t we sit down?”
“Not there.” Annie was still smiling, smiling, an unnatural glitter in her eyes. “The dining table. Light’s better there.”
Though Erin had no idea why the light would matter, she complied, seating herself across the table from her sister.
“Sorry to drop by so late,” Annie said. “You were asleep, I guess.”
“It’s all right.” Erin kept her tone neutral.
“I couldn’t sleep, myself. Came back from a date with Michael around ten o’clock.”
“A date? How long has this been going on?”
“Oh, I don’t know. This was—let’s see—our third date. He’s a nice guy, as it turns out. But I mean, it’s not real serious.”
“Think it will be?”
“Too early to tell. Anyway, that’s not what kept me awake.” Annie fumbled open her purse, exposing a remarkable clutter of junk inside. “I was doing some research.”
“Research?”
“Going through the family records—the stuff Lydia inherited from Maureen. Found a few interesting items.” From the purse she removed a thin sheaf of folded papers, then unfolded one and gave it to Erin. “First thing ... Maureen and Albert’s wedding license.”
Erin accepted the faded document with a frown, intellectual curiosity beginning to override her concern.
“September 2, 1965,” she said thoughtfully. “Seven months before we were born. Two months after Maureen’s visit to the Connor ranch.”
“And two and a half months after June 15. That was when they officially celebrated their anniversary.”
Erin had forgotten that. She nodded slowly. “Keeping up appearances. The whole family must have played along.”
“Sure. They all believed they were covering up some premarital indiscretion on the part of Albert and Maureen. Even Albert himself believed that. At least until 1968, only Maureen knew the truth.”
“Interesting.” She gave her sister an inquisitive look. “But not what you came here at midnight to discuss.”
“I found a couple of other things. Here’s one.”
Annie handed over a second sheet of paper, older than the first, the creases deeper, the corners badly dog-eared.
Erin smoothed it out. Maureen’s birth certificate, dated April 22, 1944.
Mystified, uncertain why this would matter, she looked expectantly at Annie.
“And last,” Annie said softly, with an odd note of triumph, “there’s this.”
She pushed a third folded document across the table. The oldest of all, yellow and brittle, specks of mold like liver spots dappling one corner.
Some intuitive presentiment of the document’s substance set Erin’s hands shaking as she unfolded it.
The paper was a certificate of adoption, dated August 30, 1931, for an infant girl born six weeks earlier, named Lydia Aileen O’Hara.
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