Blind Pursuit (3 page)

5

Erin regained consciousness and found herself in the dark, the absolute dark of a nightmare, and she couldn’t move,
she couldn’t move
.

Seizure, she thought in blank confusion. Had a seizure, and now I’m paralyzed somehow.

But that couldn’t be it. She hadn’t had an epileptic episode since she was fifteen. And besides, she was forgetting something, something vitally important, something that had happened to her just a short time ago.

The lobby.

Man in a baseball cap.

Electric pain shocking her body.

Kidnapped. Not a seizure. She’d been kidnapped.

A scream of blind terror welled in her throat but found no release. Her mouth wouldn’t open. Her lips were sealed.

She twisted wildly, found her legs lashed together at the ankles, her wrists tied.

And her eyes—heavy cloth was stretched tightly over them, imprisoning her in darkness.

Bound. Muzzled. Blindfolded.

Helpless.

The pounding drumbeat of her heart, the choked grunts behind her closed lips, the snorts of breath flaring her nostrils—these were the only sounds in her world, her only reality.

He could do anything he liked with her, anything at all, and she was powerless to defend herself. At this moment he might be standing over her with a knife or a gun, might be preparing to slice her throat or put a bullet in her, or something worse, inflict some variety of slow torture, and there was nothing she could do about it, no way out, no chance for her, no hope—

Stop it.

The voice in her mind, firm and authoritative, was her own.

Stop it, Erin, come on now, stop it and think.

Think. Yes. She had to think, because thinking was the only recourse left open to her. Had to think and understand.

With trembling effort she forced down panic, struggling for calm, directing the splintered chaos of her thoughts into straight-line patterns.

First question: Where was she?

She lay still, listening hard. Over the violent rhythm of her heart she heard the throb of an engine.

A vehicle. Was she in the trunk of a car?

No, she sensed somehow that the space around her was bigger than that. And the cold metal surface beneath her, vibrating with the engine, felt like the uncarpeted floor of the cargo compartment in a truck or van.

Moving pretty fast, she’d guess. Maybe forty or forty-five miles an hour. No stops for traffic signals. On a highway, but not an interstate. The road was too rough. One of the older highways that led out of town.

Out of town ...

Into the desert? There could be reasons for taking her to an isolated spot, far from buildings and people.

Fear rose in her again, squeezing her heart in its cold grip. She thought she might pass out.

No. She had to remain conscious. It was her only chance.

There was a possibility he would unseal her lips at some point, if only to hear her scream or plead. Should he do that, she would reason with him, try to establish contact. Dealing with irrationality was her daily business. There ought to be some way for her to get through.

Then she remembered his eyes, so blue, so cold.

Well, she could try, anyway. If he let her talk at all.

And if for some reason he untied her? What then?

She would have to fight.

The idea was not entirely desperate. Three years ago she’d taken a class in tae kwon do, the Korean form of karate, as part of a training program designed to help therapists defend themselves against violent patients.

She was by no means a martial-arts expert—she’d earned only a yellow belt, qualifying her as barely more than a beginner—but if she could deliver a snap kick to her abductor’s kneecap or a palm-heel strike to his throat, she might be able to drop him to the ground long enough to flee.

In practice sessions, at least, she’d done well enough. Annie, a suitably impressed spectator, had dubbed her Erin-san, the Irish Ninja. But then, what could you expect from a woman who’d named her cat Stink?

Annie ...

The voice over the intercom. Annie’s voice.

Oh, God, did he have her, too?

Erin wished she hadn’t been gagged. Wished she could call out Annie’s name, learn if her sister was somewhere nearby. Perhaps trussed and silenced as she herself was, sharing the nightmare.

Would he have wanted them both? Why? They had no enemies. It didn’t make sense.

Who was he, anyway? She’d seen his face only briefly; it had seemed utterly unfamiliar. That thick red beard and shock of carrot-top hair ...

But perhaps the beard was a disguise. If so, he could be nearly anybody. One of her patients, even.

Any therapist could become a target. That was why she’d been careful to keep an unlisted address, and why she’d chosen to live in a security building.

Three of her current patients had shown occasional violent tendencies. Nothing like this, though. And none of the three had those chilly blue eyes.

Well, maybe he was someone she’d treated years ago, during her internship at a psychology clinic downtown. Or one of the numberless transients she’d met while doing pro bono work at the local shelters—sad, lost men whose faces she never would remember, because they were all alike.

Her speculations led nowhere. His identity was unguessable, and without knowing who he was, she couldn’t know his intention in abducting her. But on that point she had to assume the worst.

Had to assume he meant to kill her.

Twisting her wrists, she tried to loosen the cord that secured them. The bristly scrape of the binding against her skin told her that he had tied her hands with rope. Thick, stiff rope lashed around her wrists in multiple coils, python-snug.

She had seen a calf trussed once at a rodeo, its hooves bound with a cowboy’s lasso. Though she had pitied the bleating animal, she had never imagined one day sharing its fate.

Even its ultimate fate? To be led to slaughter, to sag under a butcher’s saw?

The sticky stuff sealing her lips was tape. If she could lift her hands to her face, she could untape her mouth, then chew at the rope on her wrists until possibly the knot came undone.

But her arms wouldn’t move. They were pinned to her right thigh by another loop of rope, knotted so tightly it threatened to cut off the circulation in her leg. She was unable to work it loose.

Bending at the waist, she tried to bring her head closer to her hands, close enough that she could at least raise the blindfold.

No use. She would have to be a contortionist to do it.

Never had she been so vulnerable, so completely powerless. Even in her parents’ house on that August night twenty-three years ago, she’d been able to take action, fight for survival.

The noise in her throat was a choked moan.

Erin prayed that her sister wasn’t with her. Prayed that the voice over the intercom had been only a trick, and Annie was safe at home.

She wanted one of them, at least, to survive this night.

6

The van’s high beams splashed white light across a blur of macadam and roadside mesquite shrubs as Harold Gund sped south on Houghton Road.

He wondered if Erin was alert yet. The others had recovered quickly from the incapacitating shock. All three had been fully conscious when he’d carried them into the wilderness and hammered the stakes into the ground.

The memory of those women, of what he had done to them in the woods, made him feel ...

But he didn’t know how he felt.

His hands gripped the steering wheel, the knuckles squeezed bloodless. From this clue he surmised that what he felt was fury.

Fury at himself? Or at the women, for having been so damnably easy to abduct? Or at a world that could make possible a thing like him? And what kind of thing was that?

He had no answers to these questions. Introspection was unknown to him. When he looked inside himself, he saw only darkness, as deep and still as the desert gloom.

His turnoff was coming up shortly. He cut his speed a bit and leaned forward, eyes narrowed. The unmarked side road would be easy to miss, especially in this dark landscape devoid of variation, this infinite sweep of sameness.

He wondered how many little lives were fated to be snuffed out tonight in the expanse of brush and weeds around him. How many cactus wrens would be plucked from their nests, how many rabbits would perish in their burrows? Even now, among the gnarled trees and glistening cacti, warm blood was being spilled, moist flesh tasted.

He was not so different from the rest of creation. Perhaps it was the safely civilized members of the human species who were unnatural, not he.

Or perhaps not.

He shook his head, defeated, as always, by the enigma of himself.

Sometimes he listened to the TV specials that promised to explain men like him, hoping for insight. So far he had been disappointed.

The experts consulted by the police and the media were fools. Possibly they knew something about others of his kind, but of him they understood nothing.

He recalled an interview with one such specimen, described as a psychological profiler. The man wore a gray suit and a red telegenic tie. He sat behind his office desk, haloed in diplomas, buttressed by shelves of books. His opinions were stated with the blunt obviousness of a factual report.

The typical serial killer, or lust murderer as he is more accurately identified
, the man explained in a bland, professorial tone,
views murder as a substitute for sex. He attains sexual release by spilling his victim’s blood or by abusing the body afterward. For him, killing is a form of intimacy, the only intimacy he knows
.

The interviewer asked if such a man might experience twisted feelings of love for his victim.
Oh, yes
, the expert replied.
Love or at least erotic desire. Often the woman is a surrogate for someone who rejected him or hurt him—a particular woman from his past
.

He killed strangers to avenge a past wrong?
That’s right. And to give a purpose to his existence. The only organizing principle of his life, the only order and structure imposed on it, is his cyclic pattern of violence. He lives solely to kill
.

Would he ever stop?
Never He doesn’t want to. He feels alive while killing, feels powerful and whole. This is not a tormented person. This is a man who’s quite comfortable with what he does ... and what he is
.

Gund closed his eyes briefly.

Jackass.

Less than a mile north of Interstate 10, he turned onto a narrow side road. The yellow sign warned NO OUTLET.

The road was a mere strip of rutted dirt, a foot wider than the van on either side. Palo verde trees, blooming yellow, lined the road, casting windblown blossoms on Gund’s windshield. Abruptly the trees on the left side vanished, replaced by a barbed-wire fence, rows of knotty strings gleaming white in the starlight.

Beyond the fence, ramshackle buildings slouched in crooked silhouette against the mountainous horizon. No lights burned in the windows.

Centered in Gund’s high beams was a gate, hinged on posts that straddled the road. A padlocked chain kept it shut—an unnecessary precaution, since nobody ever came here.

Nobody but him.

7

The vehicle slowed.

Erin perceived the gradual abatement of engine noise, felt the transmission shudder through a change of gears. The ride, which had been rough for several minutes, became rougher still.

Dirt road? Felt like one.

The brakes sighed.

Dead stop. Motor idling.

Creak of a door swinging open. Pause. Clunk—the door slammed shut.

Moving again, but only at a crawl. The chassis lurched and jounced, shock absorbers squeaking like mattress springs. Had he driven off the road altogether?

Whatever was happening, one thing was clear. He had reached his destination.

Her heart ran like a rabbit in her chest. She could be dead soon. Her private universe, extinguished.

Her parents, both strict Irish Catholics, had given her the beginnings of a religious upbringing, which Lydia Connor had carried on; but college had bled a lot of that out of her. She wasn’t sure if she could believe in a life beyond this one. It was a problem she hadn’t expected to face with any urgency for years. For decades.

Never got married. Never had a kid. Never took that trip to Ireland to look for the original Reillys and Morgans. Never, never, never; and now, maybe, she never would.

Stop that. Stay focused.

Again the vehicle was slowing. It rumbled to a stop.

For the second time a door groaned open.

Footsteps on dirt or gravel. Closer. Closer.

He was coming for her.

Fear soared toward blind panic; she fought to ground her emotions before they carried her away.

To struggle would be pointless as long as her hands were bound. For the moment her best hope was to feign unconsciousness. If he thought she was still out cold, he might get careless, give her an opportunity to strike.

She made herself go limp, drawing long, rhythmic breaths.

Turn of a key, rattle of a sliding door. Double thump as he climbed up into the rear of the vehicle where she lay.

He planted his feet directly before her. She smelled shoe leather.

“Still asleep?” he murmured, sounding puzzled.

She inhaled, exhaled, the slow cadence of her breath playing in counterpoint to the jackhammer pounding of her heart.

Creak of a knee as he crouched down. When he spoke again, his voice was very close.

“Well, not for much longer.”

What did that mean? Nothing, forget it, concentrate on breathing in, out, in, out, no break in the pattern, nothing to give herself away.

Hands.

Large hands, rough-textured. Stroking her hair, her face.

Was he going to rape her? Mustn’t think about that, mustn’t think about anything.

His touch was clumsy yet tender, almost loving, but the word that issued from his mouth was uttered like an obscenity:
“Filth.”

Abruptly she was lifted. Surprise nearly jostled a gasp out of her. She felt her body tensing reflexively. With an effort of will she relaxed.

He draped her over his right shoulder, supporting her with one hand, and rose to his feet. She heard no grunt of strain. A big man, powerful. She remembered that he had looked tall and heavyset in the lobby.

How could she ever hope to fight him even if she got free? He must outweigh her by a hundred pounds.

She replayed the few words he’d spoken, tried to remember if she’d heard his voice anywhere before. It was distinctive enough—gravelly and breathy at the same time, deep but not resonant.

Not one of her current patients; she was sure of that. Nobody she’d ever treated, as best she could recall.

A stranger, almost certainly. Yet he seemed to have strong personal feelings toward her, both positive and negative, an unsettling blend of desire and hostility.

Scary. Scarier by the minute.

He was climbing down out of the vehicle now. A brief pause as he bent and hefted something, apparently in his left hand. It swung in time with the rhythm of his stride, rubbing against his pants leg; she heard the whisper of friction.

He carried her through yards of musty enclosed space, then out into the open. Night breeze on her face, chillier than it would be in town. The wind blew unobstructed here, in the desert’s open spaces.

His shoes crackled on dirt and dry brush, then on what sounded like gravel.

He stopped. Metallic tinkle. Keys.

He was unlocking a door. The hinges mewled as he pushed it open.

Inside.

Smell of dust and neglect. Drumbeat of his footfalls on a hardwood floor.

She heard him panting now. So he was human, at least. He was showing fatigue. Perhaps if he slipped up, she’d have some kind of chance against him.

The sound of his footsteps altered. Not the hollow crack of contact with wood, but a more solid thud, suggestive of concrete. It took her a moment to realize that he was going down a flight of stairs.

Cellar? Must be.

The implications of a cellar weren’t good. A hidden place, a place for buried secrets and suppressed desires. Bodies had a way of turning up in cellars.

She tried hard not pursue those thoughts.

At the bottom now. His breath puffed in short bursts. Lugging her all this distance had worn him out. If she sensed any opportunity, she would take it.

Keys again. Another door, easing open.

This new space felt smaller. The air was stale, spiced with unclean smells.

Soft thump as he set down whatever item he’d been carrying in his left hand. Then he shrugged her off his shoulder, deposited her carefully in a chair. It creaked and wobbled. Wooden chair, not new.

The rope around her ankles came loose.

He was releasing her. She had only to continue her rag-doll charade a minute longer. Then with her hands free—attack.

He fumbled at the rope securing her wrists to her thigh. If he had a knife, he would simply slice through the knot. No knife, then. And the high-voltage weapon he’d used—one of those stun guns, obviously, the kind she’d seen in TV news clips—was probably tucked away in his pocket, not instantly accessible.

She would not wait for him to raise the blindfold. She could do that herself, as soon as he had freed her hands.

As part of her tae kwon do training, she’d learned to do push-ups on her fists, a habit she had maintained even after discontinuing the class. Her wrists were strong, her knuckles toughened.

In a karate-style punch, executed with the first two knuckles projecting from the fist, she could damage her abductor’s larynx or dislocate his jaw. After that, a knee to the groin or an elbow to the ribs, and he would be immobilized.

Except in harmless classroom sparring, she’d never used violence against another person. But she was certain she could do it. In defense of her life, she could do whatever was necessary.

Hesitation, squeamishness—these were weaknesses she couldn’t afford. Once she sprang, she would be in a fight for survival, as savage and unforgiving as any struggle of animals in the wild.

She was ready. Ready to kill or die.

Her hands were fully untied now, no longer lashed together or pinned to her leg. But he had not let them go.

He held them in her lap, stroking her fingers, palms, wrists....

His grip tightened. His thumbs squeezed her wrists hard.

“So,” he hissed.

She stayed limp, breathing deeply, deeply, her eyes open wide behind the blindfold.

“It’s no good, Dr. Reilly. I know you’re awake.”

No, he couldn’t know that. It was a bluff. Had to be.

“You gave a good performance. Extremely convincing. But I’m afraid your pulse rate has given you away.”

His thumbs dug deeper into the veins of her wrists.

“It’s at least one-twenty. Much too fast for a person who’s genuinely unconscious.”

Still she gave no response, tried to brazen it out.

“You’ve been playing possum for a reason, I imagine. You were planning to try something. Well, let’s get one thing straight between us right from the start.”

Abruptly he clamped her wrists together, clutching them in one hand, while with the other he jerked the tape free of her mouth.

Pain seared her lips as the adhesive pulled away. Involuntarily she let out a sharp cry.

“You don’t toy with me, Doc. Not ever. No tricks, no scams. Understood?”

Though it was pointless to try fooling him now, she couldn’t bring herself to answer. Her throat seemed paralyzed.

He shook her by the shoulder. The rickety chair legs squeaked.

“
Understood?”

Had to respond or he might turn more violent. No predicting what he would do.

Weakly she nodded. “I understand.”

The hoarse rasp of her own voice startled her.

“Good,” he breathed, still holding her wrists. “I’m gratified to see that you take me seriously. But I’m not entirely certain you’ve learned your lesson.” Rustle of clothing. “Maybe this will make you a better student.”

Inches from her face, a faint electric crackle.

“No,” she croaked. “Please don’t. Not again.”

She hated to beg, because she knew begging—helpless submission—was what he wanted. But she couldn’t face the prospect of more pain, and worse, another blackout, when she would be utterly defenseless and he could do whatever he liked.

“Don’t,” she said once more, her body rigid in expectation of a new jolt of agony.

The stun gun sizzled angrily for a moment longer, then fell silent without touching her.

“I’ll cut you a break this time,” he said.

An involuntary shudder of relief trembled through her.

“But,” he added coldly, “any more nonsense, and you’ll learn what pain really is.” He released her wrists. “Now sit still. Don’t move a muscle till I tell you to.”

Footsteps, receding. The door clicked shut.

“All right, Doc.” His voice, muffled, came from outside the room. “Remove the blindfold. And take a look at your new home.”