Cutter (Gail McCarthy Mystery series) (19 page)

I could not, I told myself fiercely, just lie here and wait to die. If I couldn't get my hands free, what could I do? I wondered if I could stand up. My feet were tied tightly, crossed at the ankles. I tried to get up on them, but every time I got farther than my knees I fell. The falls sent waves of pain like electric shocks to my already aching brain. Not good.

I could roll over, maybe. I tried it. By jerking and twisting I could flop over, all right, like a fish out of water. The pain it caused my shoulders and head and knee left me gasping.

Remembering the heavy blow that had landed on my skull, I wondered if I was concussed. Thought of the quiet and rest prescribed for concussions and decided it didn't much matter. I had to get out of here, wherever here was, if I was to have any future at all.

I rolled over again. And again. I began to sweat. The pain when I jerked and twisted and thumped against the ground grew in intensity. My shoulders screamed. My knee felt as big as a football. I rolled again, cursing steadily, finding words I never thought I'd have a use for.

After a dozen or so rolls I lay still. I didn't think I could face another one. My face was pressed into the alfalfa-sweet green dust in my nose. I ached and throbbed and started to shiver again. One thing about the rolling, it kept away the cold.

My mind drifted. Lonny-he was out of town. No reason for him to worry if he couldn't reach me. I was often out on call; he would simply assume that was the case. Bret would think I was with Lonny, if he noticed my absence at all. If, in fact, he was still staying at my house. No way of knowing.

My house. I thought of its simple comforts-warmth, food, a soft bed-and tears swam into my eyes. I would never undervalue those things again. That is if I lived through this, which seemed unlikely. No one, I faced the fact, would come looking for me tonight. If it was still tonight. I had no idea how long I'd been unconscious.

Gathering myself, I tensed my muscles. I would not give up. There was no point in giving up. I rolled. Rolling made my shoulders shriek, jerked my head into throbbing life. I bit the gag in my mouth and rolled again. Another thing about it, when I rolled I didn't worry about being killed; I hurt too much to worry.

I rolled again. Sometime, somewhere, I had to hit something. The wall of the barn, if I was right. A wall I could rub against. I was not, I could not be, on some endless plain of hay, in some eternal limbo. Eventually, I had to hit a wall. I rolled.

Another roll. And another. I had to rest. I lay and sweated and wondered if I had any more left in me. Wondered about strength and weakness. I'd always thought I was strong, but I'd never imagined facing a test like this. I didn't feel strong now; I felt weak and helpless. I longed for some Sir Galahad to gallop to my rescue like a maiden in a story. Unfortunately, I couldn't see that it was likely to happen. I had to find the strength to reach that wall. I rolled again.

I rolled five more times. On the fifth roll I hit the wall. I lay there with my cheek against it for a long time, not thinking at all.

Eventually the cold twitched my mind back in gear. The one who had left me here could be corning back any time. Now that I had the possible means at hand to save myself there was no excuse to lie waiting to be killed.

I rubbed the side of my face against the wall. Rough, splintery boards that caught on the cloth tied around my eyes. I needed something that would catch more. Wiggling along the wall, I kept rubbing at the boards. After a while, I found what I'd been looking for. A nice sharp nail sticking out of a board. It dragged at my blindfold when I rubbed against it.

I rubbed. Pushed. Pulled. Occasionally, I'd miss my aim or push too hard and drive splinters or the nail into my face. I kept rubbing and pushing. There was a warm feeling on my cheek.

Slowly one corner of the blindfold worked its way down, then another. I fought with it and scraped at it and it came free suddenly, slipping over my nose.

It took me a minute to realize it had come off because the darkness seemed as absolute without it as with it. I rolled my head around, but I couldn't make out any shapes. No sunlight or moonlight leaked into my prison. It had been a moonless night, I remembered, when I'd left Indian Gulch Ranch.

Was it even the same night? A sudden panic rushed over me. I had no idea-no way of telling. I could have been out cold for days; I could be anywhere. In a barn somewhere in Nevada, maybe. Was I even on the earth, was life, as I understood it, still the same?

With all my will, I forced my mind to quit blithering. Stay calm, I told myself, don't panic. How likely is it they have alfalfa hay on Mars?

The thought of the hay, something known and familiar in this frightening blackness, was comforting. I rubbed my nose into it, smelled the sweet, dusty, green smell and tried to ground myself in reality.

It was unnerving not to be able to see, now that the blindfold was off. I was still sure I was in a barn, but what barn and where?

I wondered how long I'd been here. It seemed like forever, but I guessed it might have been for as little as two or three hours. Somehow I felt it was the same night, though again I couldn't be sure. It had been about nine-thirty when I'd left Melissa's; it could be, say, midnight now. If that was right, there would be many more long, dark, cold hours before morning.

Or would my killer step through the door in five minutes?

The thought sent me to rubbing my bound wrists on the nail, but it was soon obvious I was making no progress. Since I couldn't think of any other productive thing, I set myself at getting the gag off the same way I'd gotten the blindfold off. It took a long time. I persisted.

By the time it finally came off I'd been tasting the warm rusty flavor of my blood for a while. Lying still for a second with the gag and blindfold loosely around my neck like scarves, I was aware of my knee aching. Then I started yelling.

At first it sounded like a feeble croak. I sucked more air into my lungs and did my best. "Help! I need help! Come here. Anybody!"

Even in the straits I was in, it was hard to do. I felt ridiculous. But it couldn't hurt, I reasoned, and might help. If my captor had left me gagged, it meant he wanted me quiet. Maybe there was someone, somewhere, within hearing distance, who might come to my aid.

I yelled for a long time, but eventually hope faded. No one answered; no one came. No response of any sort. The barn remained unrelentingly silent. Once, when I stopped to listen, I heard an owl hoot. That was it.

My spirits, which had risen a little, plummeted drastically. Once again tears rose in my eyes as I contemplated the hopelessness of my situation. Nobody was going to help me. I was going to die, I was sure of it.

Frantically I started yelling again. "Help! Please help!" I kept it up, near hysteria driving me.

It was when I stopped to draw a breath that I heard the noise. Bushes crackling, leaves crunching, an irregular crashing in the brush. My whole body tensed and froze and cold reason gripped my mind. Someone was out there. Should I yell again?

I listened intently. Crackle, crunch. Silence. Snap, rustle. Not very far away. Someone or something, I corrected myself. The noises were erratic, haphazard, not the steady tromp, tromp that would be more typical of a human being. Deer, probably-maybe cattle or horses, though I didn't think so. There was none of the thud, thud effect that their heavier bodies were apt to produce.

I tried a tentative "Help!" and all noise ceased for a moment. Then, once again, crackle, crash, as the creature moved through the scrub. I yelled some more, on general principles, but produced no other results. The barn was somewhere remote, then, or at least somewhere where there was brush around it, and deer.

Still, I wouldn't have been left gagged if noise didn't matter. It was an off chance, probably, but the only chance I could see. I began yelling again, forcing myself to shout, "Help! I need help!"

I stopped to listen and heard only silence. Even the deer seemed to have disappeared. I shouted again, listened, shouted, for what seemed like hours, but could have been only minutes. My voice grew sore and my shoulders and knee throbbed agonizingly. Finally I lay still, feeling beaten, my face pressed against the hay, my eyes staring unseeingly at the darkness.

You will not quit, I told myself silently. You will not quit. I opened my mouth to shout again and saw light. Faint, but growing steadily brighter, it came from across the barn, fitful and bouncing, flaring suddenly and then dimming, gradually illuminating an open archway in the barn wall, revealing itself as the round yellow beam of a flashlight.

Hope surged hard in me, followed instantly by fear. For a long moment I lay perfectly still, my eyes fixed on the doorway and the approaching light. Closer, closer, it bounced and jerked until a figure stepped into the barn. In the peripheral glow of the flashlight, I could see the gist of his features under his cowboy hat and my heart dropped to the pit of my stomach.

This, most assuredly, was not rescue. Helplessly I watched the flashlight beam sweep to a spot maybe fifty feet away from me; the spot, I imagined, where I'd been left. Finding nothing, the light combed the barn relentlessly, searching.

There was nowhere to hide, no way to move quickly. My heart pounded as if it would burst from my chest; I strained against my ropes and tried to fight down an intolerable panic. The light was approaching.

It touched my face, blinding me, and I heard a muttered grunt of satisfaction.

Desperately, praying someone else was somewhere around, I screamed, "Help! Come quick!" at the top of my voice.

No response but quick footsteps across the hay and a savage "Shut up, bitch." A boot connected with my jaw and my head seemed to explode.

For a second I saw stars, literally, stars of shocking pain. Blinking my eyes, I willed myself to stay conscious, and stared up at the man above me.

With a wide, mirthless grin, Dave Allison met my eyes. "Now we'll see about you, miss nosy veterinarian."

Chapter TWENTY

It was the face I'd been imagining since I finished my phone calls; my fearful mind pictured him with all the sharp clarity of high noon, though I could barely see him with the flashlight trained in my direction.

Faded hair and skin, belligerent eyes, the strong wiry body of a man in his fifties just starting to sag toward the slackness of old age. Dave Allison. The failed horse trainer.

He reached down and flipped me over roughly, checking to see if my arms and legs were still securely tied, and my very flesh recoiled from his touch, cringing like a sea anemone.

Apparently he was satisfied; shoving me back on my side, he set the flashlight on its end and fiddled with it until it shed a soft diffuse glow rather than a sharp beam-instant lantern. Putting down a pack of some sort that he carried over one arm, he turned back toward me and stared into my face.

"Well now, I guess you were a little too smart for your own good." His expression terrified me. Sharp, eager malice. He was pleased to see me tied up and miserable. It made him feel good.

Desperately I searched the barn for possibilities in the light of the lantern, but drew a blank. It was just an empty barn-no hay bales, no equipment, nothing. Only the loose chaff covering the floor, residue of the alfalfa hay that had once been stacked here. Virtually an endless plain of hay from my point of view on the ground, stretching maybe fifty feet to the wide open archway of the door. Bitterly I noted that I'd probably taken the longest possible route to a wall in my rolling.

Dave Allison prodded me with the toe of his boot. "Did you think you were gonna get me locked up?"

He was gloating. I could hardly believe it. Naked, savage pleasure was plain on his face. I'm not sure what I expected, but not this.

Steeling myself, I croaked, "I don't know what you're talking about. I don't even know who you are."

He kicked me in the ribs, hard enough to hurt, and grinned at the wince I couldn't hide. "Don't bullshit me. I know what you've been doing."

I was silent and he smiled in satisfaction. "And you're not going to be around to keep doing it. I got it all figured out." He looked happy.

His hole, I thought desperately, his hole. His pride. Keep him talking. "Why do you need to kill me?" I tried to keep my voice calm.

"You think I was gonna wait around for you to ruin me? Old Dave's a little smarter than that. You're dead, you stupid bitch. You're not playing any more detective games with me."

He stood looking down at me, the phony good-old-boy mask completely gone. A weak, spiteful child looked out of the faded eyes, but a dangerous child. A child who could kill.

Fighting down my panic, I kept my tone conversational. "Pretty good scam you pulled off."

He couldn't resist the impulse to brag. "You're damn right. I just collected twenty thousand dollars, and you're not going to get in my way, honey."

Scared as I was, I resented the "honey" and the sneer in his voice, but I managed to trot out a wide-eyed look. "How'd you make it work?"

"Don't you know, with all your poking around?"

"I know Will George rode a ringer at the Futurity, and that you were the one who produced it. You rode the Gus horse for Will."

"Well, I'll be damned. You ain't as smart as I thought you were. Seeing as you'll be dead shortly, though, I'll tell you; Will had nothin' to do with it. Will ain't smart enough to plan a thing like this." Smug satisfaction in his voice.

He seemed to like bragging to me while I was tied up at his feet, beaten and helpless, so I kept it up. "How'd you do it?"

"It was easy. That Gus horse is a solid bay, not a white hair on him. I went back to Texas and found me a good old pony who could really work and looked a hell of a lot like the three-year-old. There were a couple of little things, sure; the old horse had a big scar on his chest, but I got a breast collar that mostly hid it. Will never even looked at the colt the whole time I had it; I knew he couldn't know the difference.

"See, Will didn't like Casey. I guess you knew that. He didn't want to ride a horse Casey trained, so he had me ride him and just got on him at the Futurity. He had no idea he was riding a ringer. Will was my dupe, all right. I put him on the old horse to ride at the Futurity and sent him back home with the three-year-old and he never knew the difference."