Sylvie dropped her hands from her face and leaned out and dragged open the refrigerator door.
"Now what the hell're you doing?"
Two more shots blasted up chunks of the living room floor. A paisley cushion on the couch ruptured, spewing a cloud of batting into the air. Some of it caught in a draft from the ceiling fan and began to float toward the kitchen. A few feet away one of the rockers was pumping furiously.
Leaning forward, Sylvie peered into the refrigerator, moved aside a carton of milk. She shifted a couple of other items and sat back, smiling with satisfaction and holding out before her a large jar of tomato sauce.
"This stuff is much better, you make it fresh."
Thorn wiped the sweat from his forehead and watched as she unscrewed the metal lid and put her nose to the edge of the jar.
"Myself, I'd never eat this junk," she said quietly. "I guess Darcy wasn't much of a cook, huh?"
Thorn took a breath, and bit back what he wanted to say.
Sylvie said, "Okay, so it's not perfect, but it should do all right for this circumstance."
Another shot smashed through the floor in the middle of the living area, then up, ricocheting off the ceiling fan. One of the fan blades shattered, dangled down, flapped for a moment as the fan turned, then fell. Out of balance, the old Hunter began thumping against the ceiling. It wobbled more and more until it twisted so far out of line, one of the remaining blades caught against the ceiling and the fan strained to a halt.
"Man, your place," she said. "It's coming all apart. Somebody better do something quick, or you won't have a house anymore."
Sylvie leaned out from the stove and held the lid of the tomato sauce out over the floor and gave it a flip, then drew back beside Thorn, flattening herself against the wall. The lid spun around two or three times like a coin on a countertop, and then another pistol blast hit nearby and sent the lid skittering across the floor.
"Yell," she whispered into his ear. "Yell, damn it!"
When Thorn said nothing, she sputtered, "He hit you. He shot you. Yell, you're dying."
Thorn gave it a try. Moaned. Dragged it out.
"That was lame," she whispered. "Very lame." Shaking her head at him. Shaking it some more, she said, "Okay, hold me."
She pointed to the rear waistband of her cutoffs, and after a moment's confusion, Thorn grabbed them as she began to lean out perilously from the stove.
Sylvie angled to her right, stretching her arm out as far as she could reach and dumped the contents of the jar into the newest hole. Shook the last of it out. And they watched the glop ooze through the opening. Suddenly the flashlight beamed on it. The light held still, focusing on the bright red drool.
"He tastes it, we're in trouble," she murmured, coming back to rest on the burner. Bringing her lips close to his ear, she said, "But if he's the chickenshit you think, he isn't going to dab his finger in the blood of his victims. Huh? You think?"
Thorn said nothing. He leaned away from the woman, looked at her, then back at the hole. The flashlight switched off.
"You think I'm a lunatic, maybe? Well, wait. See what he does, then tell me I'm crazy."
They were quiet, Thorn straining for any sound of the shooter. Feeling a hot whirl of anger rising from his gut. Pissed at himself for being so defenseless and unprepared, at the gutless bastard downstairs, and angry as hell at this woman next to him, grinning, pulling her silly stunt with the tomato sauce. Something a kid raised on cartoons might come up with. For all he knew she was a lunatic, with that nutty light in her eyes, the scatterbrained grin. Giddily leading them into disaster.
She leaned close and whispered, "He's staring at it, but he won't go near. Doesn't have the stomach for it. Not into gore. I hate people like that. Prissy shits."
Two more shots came in quick succession, the first a foot in front of the stove, the next skimming the oven door. Sylvie gasped and pressed her body back against the wall.
And Thorn jammed a rigid finger against her lips, then pulled it away and pointed the finger toward the creak of the stairway. The weight of a heavy man straining the teak. Thorn let himself down from the stove, slipped over to the silverware drawer, eased it open and took out the first knife with any size.
He halted at the edge of the living room, stood motionless. Another creak of wood outside. The shooter halfway up, eight, nine more stairs to go, taking it slow. Nervous, or crafty. Thorn wasn't sure he'd called it right, the guy a chickenshit. He could just as easily be a professional hitter, bored by the point-blank approach, looking for some new titillation.
Thorn edged across the room, sidestepping the gouges. Put a hand on the rocker to still it. Carrying the knife lightly, he inched to the doorway and flattened his back against the wall. Tense, shifting the knife to an overhand position. Thinking he'd hack the guy in a major muscle group, knock the pistol out of his hand. Trying to picture it, get the image clear, clean all the clumsiness out of it.
He set his feet, listening to the stairs creak, and to the sound of a man exhaling out there. A long gasp Thorn couldn't read. He glanced to his right, a quick check of the knife, and saw he'd chosen not only the largest one, but the dullest, most useless one. An antique from Darcy's hope chest. An ornamental scimitar of tarnished silver. Her great-grandmother's. Its blade would be taxed by a brick of cheddar. A damn jewelry store knickknack meant to be displayed in a glass break-front. Unless the shooter's muscles were creamy soft, the thing in Thorn's hand was utterly worthless.
Outside, the stairs strained again. Thorn thought he could feel the subtle shift, the house registering the man's bulk.
"What're you going to do?" Sylvie whispered at his back. "Butter him to death?"
Thorn swung around, almost took a swipe at her. She tiptoed across the floor to the side window and stared out.
"There he goes down your driveway. Saw the tomato sauce and vamoosed. Just like I said he'd do."
Thorn hurried to the front closet. He pulled down the Smith & Wesson from the top shelf. His heart churning, a nasty headache sinking its claws through his temples.
"Man, you should get yourself a damn phone. You're going to make enemies like that, you should have a direct line to police headquarters."
He felt around on the top shelf, but there were no ammo boxes there. Sylvie followed him over to the desk, sat in his desk chair, hands in her lap. He ransacked the desk but found only one round, a .22 slug from god knew where. Useless.
Sylvie turned on the desk lamp, put out her hand, and said, "Hello, Mr. Thorn. Nice to make your acquaintance."
He held on to the round and looked at her in the light. She had a narrow face, with a sharp, angular nose and sculpted cheekbones. Gleaming black hair, boot-camp short, an inch or so on the sides, just enough length to keep some of it lying down, and a spray of cowlick bristles at the back. Her eyes were beetle-black, larger and more widely spaced than was glamorously correct. Her lips were plump for such a thin face.
It was a face with spunk, the vitality of the hybrid. Small-boned and elegantly chiseled, but with oversize features, as though she were the offspring of two clashing breeds that somehow had produced a daughter of jarring good looks. At another time, another place, Thorn might have been attracted.
She gave up and lowered her hand.
"Who are you and what the hell are you doing here?"
"I told you. I'm Sylvie."
"Look, goddamn it, what's going on?"
Sylvie stood up, brushed past him, stepped into the middle of the floor and surveyed the room as if she were assessing the rustic decor, the minimal decorations for signs of his character. When she was done, she brought her eyes slowly back to him. Her skittish grin was gone.
"You and Darcy, you weren't married?"
"What're you talking about?"
"You're not wearing a wedding ring."
Thorn looked down at his left hand.
"We lived together. We weren't married."
"For how long?"
"What the fuck is it to you how long I lived with her?"
"How long? A year, three years?"
"Two years."
"Good," she said. "That'll do."
"Now, what're you doing in my house?"
"Why I'm here," she said, glancing around at the bullet-riddled floor. "If you want to get right down to the basic truth, Sylvie is looking to find somebody who has the guts to step inside the ring of fire, get her out. She needs a hero."
Thorn was silent.
"You think you're up to that?" she said. "Think you can save Sylvie? Carry her out of the ring of fire?"
"What?"
"You gotta hear everything twice? I'm asking you to save Sylvie's life. I'm giving you an opportunity to slay the dragon, carry off the maiden."
Thorn stared hard at her. A smile flirting on her mouth.
Quietly, he said, "I don't know what you think you're doing, but I can tell you one thing, lady — I got all the fucking dragons I can handle at the moment. I don't need one of yours. Okay? Are we clear?"
She released a breath and closed her eyes briefly, and when she opened them again some of the radiance in them had leaked away. They were flatter and darker.
"You're sure?"
"I'm sure," he said. "Now, what did you have to do with Darcy?"
"Oh, I'll tell you," she said blandly. "I'll tell you all about it. But first, that guy, the one trying to kill us, remember him? He's getting the hell away. Aren't you going after him or anything?" Keeping her eyes from him, her shoulders slumping. She eased backward and let herself down into Thorn's desk chair.
"Okay," he said. "But you're coming with me."
"I think it's starting to hit me now," she said. "I'm feeling a little seasick."
"Stand up, you're coming with me."
"Look, I told you I'd wait for you. Don't worry. You can handcuff me to your bed if you want. Sylvie'll be here when you return. She wants to talk to you some more. Wants to make her case."
Thorn hesitated a moment, then turned and hurried to the door. Ran down the steps, out into the yard. Sprinted along the edge of the long gravel drive. But he saw no one. And out on the highway, breathing hard, there was no sign of anyone in either direction. He jogged back to the VW, drove to the Little General. The Firebird was gone. He sped the ten miles to Murtha's condo, parked in the lot beneath his apartment. No Firebird there either. He went up to 218, hammered on the door for five minutes, but got no response. Not even Rochelle came to the door this time.
Behind the rec center, he located the manager's office. A sour woman in her fifties wearing a flowered nightie, she wouldn't open her door to Thorn, keeping a half foot back of the gold security chain, telling him, no, sir, she certainly was not going to open Mr. Murtha's apartment, and to get the hell off the property or she'd call the cops, and come to think of it, maybe she'd just call them anyway.
Thorn marched back to the parking lot, stood for a few minutes looking up at Murtha's condo, wondering what the hell he could do, thinking of absolutely nothing, then got into his car and drove home.
All the lights were off inside his house.
He stood below the porch for a moment, but heard nothing this time. As he was starting up, he glimpsed something on the bottom stair. In the moonlight it seemed to glow. He stooped and picked it up, held it out to the light. It resembled a tiny human finger twisted by arthritis. A single Chee?to.
He flicked it out into the dark and walked soundlessly up the stairs. All the lights were out. He eased open the door and slid inside the darkened house. With his back against the wall of the living room, he listened carefully but heard nothing. After a few more cautious moments, readying himself for a dive and roll for cover, he flipped on the overhead light.
But the room was empty. He went carefully into the bedroom, opened the closet doors, the bathroom, the small pantry. Sylvie Winchester was gone.
He walked around turning on the rest of the lights, even lit a couple of kerosene lanterns. For a few minutes he examined the damage. Then he made himself a drink. Just enough Coke to darken the rum. He sat down at his fly-tying desk, swiveled the chair around, and looked again at the gouges in the floor and roof.
After he'd finished the drink, he stood up, turned the chair back around, and pushed it under the desk. And there on the desk was a sheet of lined tablet paper. In purple ink was a childish drawing. A stick-figure girl in a triangle skirt stood inside a flaming circle of ragged lines with her arms stretched out through the flames as if waiting for an embrace. At the bottom of the page a single word was printed in the same clumsy hand.
Please.
CHAPTER 13
It was well after midnight, and Harden Winchester sat on the front porch of his motel cabin at the Largo Lodge, mile marker 102. The cabin next door was vacant; on the other side was a small beach and beyond that Tarpon Basin, glimmering black in the moonlight. Same room they always stayed in. Twice a month they'd been making the trek over to Key Largo. Harden's hunger to glimpse Doris Albright seemed to be growing stronger every hour.
Tonight he was in gray running shorts, no top, his old white Adidas running shoes. Smoking a Havana cigar. A box of them came once a month from a friend of his still out in the field. A friend who owed Harden his life. One of many who did.
Minutes earlier, when Sylvie returned, she'd refused to speak to him. She walked past him into the cabin, showered and changed into her sleeveless nightgown, and now she was sitting in the wicker chair beside him, fanning the cigar smoke away.
"So where'd you sneak away to?"
"Took a walk in the starlight. Communing with the interstellar radio waves."
"Where'd you go, Sylvie?"
Harden blew a stream of smoke toward the screen, toward a moth that was battling to get inside, wanting to hold itself close to the porch light and set its flimsy wings on fire.
"Down the highway is all. I had a cup of coffee. Walked back."
"I can tell when you lie. I can always tell."
"Well, then," she said. "You're so psychic, let's hear it, Daddy — where've I been?"
Harden had another draw on his cigar. Let the smoke drift out of his mouth.
"The police won't help you," he said. "You should know that by now. You've lost your credibility, girl. Your crazy stories. The most that'll happen, they'll come talk to me, it'll end up the same embarrassing way as always. They take a look at your record, they'll be apologizing for disturbing me, backing out the door with their hats in their hands."
"You always underestimate me, Daddy."
"It won't work, Sylvie. None of it will. I'm going to put the Winchester family back together again, and nothing you can do is going to spoil that."
"I'm in love," she said.
He looked at her.
"The thunderbolt struck tonight, came crackling out of the heavenly dark. I found my own sweet prince."
"This is something new?"
She said, "Now I can be as obsessed as you. Hide in the trees, spy on my lover with binoculars. Spend all my waking hours plotting to get him in bed beside me. Like father, like daughter. Wackos of a feather."
"You don't need to keep doing this, Sylvie. You can spare yourself the trouble."
"It's no trouble, Daddy. No trouble at all. It's my job as your daughter to make your life hell."
She rose from her chair, walked to the edge of the porch, and looked out toward the black water. Harden thought of her long, arching neck, her throat, the bones in her cheeks, the soft shine of her eyes. With her back to him, he could see the shadowy ridges of her spinal column, her lumbar region's gentle sway.
As she stood looking out at the black-jelly shine of the bay, Harden pictured the shape of her vertebrae, the neural arches, the cartilaginous joints, the tender notches of bone that shielded the spinal cord.
And though she was only twenty-five, prison-camp thin, her hair black and shorn with savage disregard for appearance, despite all that, in the pale light, she was as striking as her mother.
Powerful chromosomal echoes. The same bones floating under that same moon-white flesh. The same liquid light in the eyes, the same steam in her voice.
Another kind of man might have used Sylvie to rehearse the strokes and nibbles and caresses he would someday soon lavish on her mother. But Harden Winchester would never do that. He treasured the sanctity of his own family. He was no goddamn child molester. It was one of the few inhibitions he knew.
***
Two o'clock, then two-thirty. Harden sat on the porch in the dark with his cigar, watching the moths fluttering at the screens. Hearing finally the drone of Sylvie's snore, barely more than a purr.
He stood up, eased out the screen door, loped across the gravel parking lot, up to the highway, then out along the empty road, a loafing pace, through the tall grass of the median over to the northbound shoulder, then heading south, cutting onto the bike path, and opening up his stride for a mile, another, his breath coming easy and free, running a little over half speed, feeling light, fluent, increasing his pace gradually for the last mile till he was up on his toes, sprinting into her neighborhood, onto her street, and at last slowing and coming to a stop in front of her house.
His breath fast but not labored as he gazed up at the place. Standing in a swatch of shadow outside the range of the streetlights, he listened to the soft trill of an owl in the mangroves, to a distant dog barking at some stray scent.
When he had attuned himself to the resonances of the neighborhood, he came out of the shadows and climbed the stairs of her house. Her front door was simple. A useless Yale lock, no dead bolt, his wire key scratching in the slot, finding the cams, smoothing them all into place. Opening the door, stepping into the dark hush of her living room.
Harden stood there for a moment breathing her air. Trying to detect any sound of her. But the house was still.
Lathered from his run, Harden thought now as he crossed the living room rug that tomorrow when Doris woke, this house would be full of his evaporated sweat, filling her lungs, his invisible fragrance entering her, maybe even evoking in her some brief recollection of him.
Mean High Tide (Thorn Series Book 3) Page 12