Deadly Pursuit (17 page)

Boldly she took a step toward him.

“This is ridiculous,” she heard herself say.

“Keep back.” Steve waved the gun at her.

Ordinarily the Beretta would have scared her—she’d always been nervous in its presence—but here, now, it seemed to hold no menace. It was a toy, a prop, not even aimed at her but at some other woman she was observing from a secure vantage point.

She took another step. “Get out of my way.”

A string of words ran through her mind, spoken in a stranger’s voice, remote and wise: She’s being very brave.

Steve licked his lips. “I said, get back.”

She didn’t listen. Another step, and now she was facing him from an arm’s length away. Beads of golden fire, the reflected glow of the chandelier bulbs, glittered on the lenses of his glasses, masking his eyes.

“I don’t know what you’ve gotten yourself involved in,” she said, “but you’re not a murderer.”

He raised the gun, the muzzle pointed at her chest.

“And even if you are,” she added, “you won’t kill me.”

She brushed past him, into the kitchen, and then she was walking swiftly toward the door to the radio room, refusing to look back.

Steve’s shout rose after her. “Where are you going?”

“To contact the police.”

There. It was said. Let him shoot her now, if he wanted to.

Nothing happened.

She stepped into the radio room, out of the gun’s range, and then abruptly she lost the comforting perspective of distance and snapped back inside herself.

Her composure shattered. Violent tremors radiated through her body. Her shoulders popped and jerked.

It took all her remaining strength to turn on the overhead light, to slide the chair away from the table, to sit, to find the radio’s power switch and flip it up.

Then the microphone was in her hand, and she was spinning the channel-selector dial, searching for a distress frequency, wishing she could stop her teeth from chattering so badly.

29

Steve felt as if someone had reached inside him and scooped out all his guts, leaving him eviscerated, hollow.

He stood in the doorway, staring across the length of the kitchen, and thought of horror movies, the dead roused to a shambling semblance of life. Those meandering zombies, glassy-eyed and stiff-limbed—he was one of them now, a walking corpse.

Jack moved to his side and followed his gaze.

“I can’t shoot her,” Steve said. “You know that.”

“I know.”

“So it’s over.” He wasn’t sure whether to be frightened or relieved. He seemed past the point of feeling anything at all.

“No, it isn’t.”

“She’s talking to the police right now.”

“Don’t count on it.”

Steve turned to him. “Why not?”

“Because I think of everything, Stevie.” Jack smiled. “Remember that.” He went through the doorway. “Come on. Let’s collect your wife. She’s got a date with Mr. Sandman.”

Steve took his arm roughly, animated by a brief spurt of living energy. “But not Mister Twister.”

Jack shook himself free. Smiled again. A cold, reptilian smile. “Of course not.”

He headed through the kitchen, sauntering with the lazy suppleness of a man in complete, unquestioned control.

Steve let a moment pass, then—reluctantly but inevitably—followed.

* * *

The radio was an old Kenwood model with separate transmitter and receiver components. Chester Pice had shown Kirstie how to use it two weeks ago, when she and Steve had arrived on Pelican Key.

In an emergency, Pice had said, all she had to do was dial either the UHF frequency 243.0 or the VHF frequency 121.5, then broadcast a request for help. Easy enough.

Except it wasn’t working, dammit. It wasn’t
working
.

She sat hunched over the transmitter, frantically twisting the channel-selector dial through a series of full rotations.

No frequency numbers appeared on the LED display. She couldn’t tune in any channels. The thing was broken. Worthless.

She spun the dial once more with a savage jerk of her wrist.

Still nothing.

Desperately she fought to restrain her fear, to suppress it as she’d done earlier, but this time she couldn’t overpower the crazed, wailing terror rising in her, shaking her as if with palsy, chopping her thoughts into witless fragments, reducing her nearly to screams and tears.

This was too much, too damn
much
. The radio had to work. For it to malfunction now was simply unfair.

“No fair,” she babbled, “no fair at all.”

Dimly she was aware that she was talking—thinking—like a frightened child.

Stop it, stop it right now. Deal with this. And figure it out.

She focused her thoughts, tried to think the problem through.

Were all the components connected? She couldn’t find any loose wires.

How about the antenna feed line? Oh, hell, it looked okay, too.

One of the knobs on the transmitter’s face was labeled POWER & WATTAGE. Maybe that was the problem. Not enough power.

She dialed the wattage higher, tried the channel selector again.

No luck.

She was out of options. There was nothing else she knew how to do.

“Come on,” she whispered, furious at the radio for failing her when she needed it. “Damn you”—she banged her fist against the side of the transmitter—
“come on!”

Behind her, soft laughter.

She whirled in her seat, and there was Jack, leaning against the wall just inside the doorway, chuckling mirthlessly. And a yard behind him—who else but his buddy, his ally, Steve, stiff and shell-shocked, his face unreadable.

Slowly Kirstie set down the microphone.

“What did you do to it?” she asked Jack, her voice dulled by a sudden crushing onset of despair.

“A little minor sabotage.” His fixed smile made his face a comic mask. “Simple, actually. I lifted off the cover of the transmitter and found the VFO. Variable frequency oscillator, I mean. This one was a Colpitts circuit, wired to the tuning knob. I tore it apart. Just reached in with my fist and ripped out the circuitry. Not the most sophisticated way to attack the problem, but it worked. You can still pick up signals—I didn’t mess with the receiver—but as for transmitting, forget it.”

“I see.”

“Bottom line: you’re cut off from the outside world, Mrs. Gardner.”

“I see,” she said again.

“Where did you learn about radios?” Steve asked.

Jack answered without turning. “In prison. Shop class.”

Kirstie wasn’t listening anymore. She heard only the dull throb of the twin generators outside, the sound pulsing through the thin exterior wall like an echo of her own heartbeat.

Her gaze slid away from Jack, briefly exploring the room.

No back door. A window in the side wall, but it was sealed shut by dampness.

The doorway to the kitchen was the only usable exit, then.

She took a breath, rose from the chair. “Well, it looks like I’ll have to talk to the police in person.”

Jack went on smiling. “Now, how do you plan to do that?”

“I’ll take the motorboat.”

“No chance.”

“I’m going.”

She moved toward him. He stepped up fast and slammed her backward with a sudden, vicious shove. The floor skidded out from under her, and she collapsed into the chair.

“Hey,” Steve snapped. “Watch it.”

“I didn’t hurt her, Stevie. Now give me the pills.” Steve hesitated. “Give them to me.”

Kirstie could see Steve didn’t want to. And she could see that he would.

Slowly he handed them over.

Jack rested his elbow on the arm of the chair and leaned close to her, the six white capsules in his palm filling her world. “Swallow these.”

Lips sealed, she shook her head.

“They won’t kill you. Put you to sleep for a while, that’s all.” He pressed his hand to her mouth. “Go on.”

She averted her face. Jack grabbed her by the chin, made her look at him.

“Open your damn mouth.”

She looked past Jack and saw Steve watching.

“I said,
open your mouth
.”

Desperately she gazed into her husband’s eyes, pleading voicelessly for help. She saw anguish in his face, but no resolve.

Jack’s fingers crept up under her lips like burrowing beetles and peeled them back from her teeth.

“You’re very stubborn, Kirsten Gardner,” he breathed. “It’s an unattractive trait in a woman.”

If he tried to pry her jaws apart, she would bite off his fingers like a snapping turtle.

He seemed to guess her intention. “You won’t cooperate?” He let go of her mouth and studied her coldly. “Well, maybe I can persuade you.”

The first stinging slap caught her on the left side of her face. A backhanded slap: she felt the crack of his knuckles on her cheek.

“Don’t.”
Steve stepped forward, lifting the gun.

Jack didn’t even look at him. “Shut up, Stevie. This is business, not pleasure.”

Past involuntary tears of pain, Kirstie saw Steve’s face, still tormented, still irresolute.

“Will you take the pills?” Jack hissed.

She glared at him, projecting all the wordless defiance she could summon.

His right arm blurred. A second slap, harder than the first, rocked her sideways. She sagged, gasping, and Jack took advantage of her momentary weakness to force one of the capsules into her mouth.

Somewhere in the background, a clatter of footsteps and an angry woof. Anastasia had heard the slaps. She scampered into the room, casting bewildered looks at her master and mistress and her Uncle Jack.

Jack ignored the dog. “Swallow it,” he ordered Kirstie. “Come on. Swallow it!”

Kirstie rallied her strength and spat the pill in his face.

“Shit.”
Jack raised his hand to strike again. Ana snarled.

“Cut it out, Jack.” It was Steve who’d spoken, his voice abruptly firm and calm. “Right now.”

Jack hesitated as if gauging Steve’s seriousness, then drew back with a slow exhalation of breath. A meaningless smile twitched like a tic at the corner of his mouth.

“Sure. No problem.” He pocketed the five remaining pills and circled behind the chair. “She doesn’t have to take the damn things anyway.” Kirstie watched him unhook the rubber-insulated wire linking receiver and transmitter. “I’ll just skip ahead to part two of the procedure. If that’s okay with you ... buddy.”

Kirstie looked at her husband. He swallowed.

“I don’t know,” he whispered. “Maybe we shouldn’t. I mean ... maybe it’s not too late to work something out, some other plan ...”

“It
is
too late.” Jack flicked the wire in his hand. “You’re in deep now, Steve-o. You’re committed.”

The wire traced another arc, a slow-motion whip.

Kirstie stared at it, then at Steve, then at the wire again. Her mind seemed frozen; she couldn’t think, couldn’t imagine what Jack was about to do.

“If she’d taken the pills without realizing,” Steve said, “it might have been different. She would have just gone to sleep. This way ...”

“This way is harder.” Jack nodded, and the wire swished again, slapping his open palm. “So? I’ve done hard things in my time. Now it’s your turn. Unless you can’t handle it. Unless you’re too weak.”

Kirstie spoke up. “Don’t let him manipulate you—”

“Shut your damn mouth.” The absence of emotion in Jack’s voice made the command somehow more dangerous. “How about it, Stevie? You know what’s necessary. Either let me go ahead, or start measuring yourself for prison blues. Your call.”

Steve stared at Kirstie for a long moment, then slowly closed his eyes.

“Do it,” he said thickly.

Jack seized her two arms, twisted them roughly behind her back. Agony screamed in her elbows and shoulders. She let out a small yelp of surprise and pain, and Anastasia barked twice.

“Sorry, Mrs. G.” The tender skin of her wrists burned as he wound the wire around them. “But I’m afraid this is for your own good.”

Panic clamped down on her. Bound, she would be helpless, more helpless than she’d ever been in her life. She couldn’t fight back, couldn’t run, couldn’t protect herself in any way.

“Let go of me!” It was her own voice, pitched to a keening frenzy.
“Let go!”

She kicked her legs wildly. The chair creaked, rocking under her. Anastasia’s whine escalated to a ululant howl.

“Sit still, goddammit.” Jack knotted the wire in place. “You’re not helping yourself.”

With the microphone cord he lashed her wrists to the chair’s wooden back rail. Kirstie tugged desperately, needles of fire shooting through her shoulders, lancing her neck.

Steve still had not opened his eyes. His face was a tight mask.

Anastasia howled louder. She crouched on her haunches in a corner, head lifted, shrilling crazily like a wolf baying at the moon.

“Shut her up,” Jack snapped.

Steve blinked, unwillingly dragged back into the moment. He glanced down at the dog and seemed to notice her presence in the room for the first time.

“Ana. Be quiet, girl.” The order, empty of force, fell listlessly from his mouth. There was no expression on his face. “Hey, quiet now. Quiet.”

The borzoi didn’t even hear him. She lifted her head and pitched another wild, piercing lament.

And then Jack was moving toward her, a gleam of silver in his hand.

The knife.

A flick of his thumbnail, and a wicked blade popped up.

He seized Anastasia by the ears, jerked her head back—one stroke of his wrist—the blade sliced her throat in a wide arc, choking off her next cry in a frothy gurgle of blood.

“No!”
Kirstie was shrieking now, all dignity lost, shrieking not in fear but in blind fury and grief.
“No, no, no, no!”

Steve stared as if hypnotized, eyes glassy, as Ana’s elegant, angular snout whipsawed wildly, her white coat blushing scarlet, the floor under her feet awash in a sudden lake of blood.

Kirstie writhed helplessly in the chair, straining at the cords and screaming, screaming, screaming.

Jack pointed the red knife at her. “Hush. Or you’re next.”

Her screams trailed off into sobs and whimpers. She blinked to clear her vision, then looked at the two men who were her captors: Jack, grinning, manic, delirious with the ecstasy of the kill; and her husband, dazed, almost comatose, staring dumbstruck at the bloody harlequin still quivering on the floor.

“Steve”—her words were forced out between shuddering catch-and-gasp sobs—“you can’t let him go on doing this. He’s crazy. He’s insane.”

Steve’s lips moved. He mouthed one word:
Insane
. He showed no other response.

Jack laughed. “No, I’m not.” He crossed to the far side of the room. “I’m a realist, that’s all. I’ll do what’s necessary to ensure my own survival.”

The dripping blade hacked through the antenna feed line. He jerked the other end out of the radio.

“And your hubby’s no different. Little Stevie may lack my dramatic flourish”—he knelt and looped the antenna wire around Kirstie’s ankles, lashing them together, then secured her legs to the chair—“but he’s equally committed to staying alive. At any cost.”

That statement seemed to reach Steve at last. To reach him even though Ana’s death had not. Slowly he shook his head in feeble protest.

“Not ...
any
cost.” He coughed, trying to clear his voice of its unnatural rasp, and focused his gaze on Kirstie. “I told him I wouldn’t allow you to be harmed. And I won’t. I swear.”

She refused to permit him to get away with that. “I’ve been harmed already. In more ways than one.”

He flinched as if struck. “I’m ... sorry.”

The words were so small, so obviously inadequate, that no reply was necessary.

Jack checked all the knots again, then nodded. “You’re not going anywhere. Have a nice night, Mrs. Gardner. Hope you don’t mind the smell of blood.”