Unauthorized Access (36 page)

A CHILL RAN down Rob’s spine. He moved over in front of Lesley, blocking her from Tim.

“Hey now,” Rob said. “You don’t need that.”

Tim pointed the shotgun squarely at Rob’s chest. Rob kicked himself mentally for leaving Kirsten’s gun in his car.

“You want to know why I did it?” Tim said.

“Put the gun down.”

“That’s what you said, right? You can’t figure out why anyone would do such a thing to mister big man on campus Donovan.”

“Tim, come on.”

“That’s just like you, you know that? Nobody would do anything bad to Rob. Everybody loves Rob.”

Rob took a step toward Tim.

“Look, this is really—”

Tim snapped the gun up to his shoulder and sighted down the barrel at Rob, who wisely stopped moving.

“You have no idea what it’s like to be the little guy,” Tim said, “the one who gets to stay home when you’re out having fun. Well it’s payback time.”

“How did I ever—”

Tim shouted at him. “She was the only good thing that ever happened to me!”

Tim’s knuckles whitened from gripping the shotgun so tightly. Rob hardly dared to breathe.

“And you took her away,” Tim said. “You could have had any girl you wanted, but you had to steal mine.”

“Tim,” Lesley said.

Rob hadn’t noticed Lesley move to one side. She was no longer behind him. Tim’s gaze shifted to Lesley, then flicked nervously to Rob once again, back and forth like the eyes of a sentry expecting attack from two directions.

“Tim,” Lesley said. “Look at me.”

He did so, but the shotgun still pointed in Rob’s direction.

“Rob didn’t steal me. He couldn’t have, because I was never yours to begin with.”

“You were too.”

“It was never going to work between us,” Lesley said. “That’s why I broke up with you, way back in high school.”

“You’re lying. You’re trying to protect him.”

“Face it, Tim,” she said. “You’re moaning about losing something you never had.”

This time when Tim’s eyes shifted back to Lesley, the barrel of the shotgun followed suit.

“Whoa, now,” Rob said, stepping in front of Lesley once more. “Let’s everybody just calm down.”

He could see a tear running down Tim’s cheek.

“I know you don’t want to shoot us,” Rob said, “so why don’t Lesley and I just leave?”

Tim continued to stare down the barrel at Rob, silent tears still streaming down his face. Rob took Lesley’s hand and took one tentative sideways step in the direction of the door.

“No,” Tim said.

Rob and Lesley stopped.

Tim bit his lip, then continued.

“If you walk out that door, then I go to prison.”

Tim had been quite willing for Rob to do the same, but it didn’t seem like the right time to point that out. Tim’s hands trembled, which caused the barrel of the shotgun to quiver—and Rob’s pulse to race even faster.

“Lots of people know we came up here together,” Lesley said. “You’ll go to prison for the rest of your life if you pull that trigger. Besides, I know you’re not a murderer.”

Hopelessness and despair blanketed Tim’s face. Suddenly he flipped the shotgun around so it pointed under his chin. He put one thumb on the trigger.

“No!” Lesley said.

Tim’s breaths came in shuddering gasps. His eyes locked on Lesley’s.

“All I wanted was for us to be together,” he said.

He squeezed his eyes shut. Lesley grabbed Rob’s hand—hard. Rob found himself holding his breath, waiting for the deafening blast.

It never came. Instead Tim whipped the shotgun around so it pointed at Rob and Lesley. He started backing toward the door.

“Don’t try to follow me,” he said.

That was one request Rob had every intention of heeding.

Tim fumbled the door open with his eyes still on Rob. He backed through the doorway and was gone into the night.

Rob heard rapid footsteps outside, then a car door slammed and an engine started. He went to the door and saw the Camaro fishtail away from the cabin, spewing gravel as it went. Within seconds the trees hid the glare from the headlights and the sound of the growling engine faded away.

Rob turned back inside and slumped against the countertop as he tried to breathe again.

Lesley had not moved. Her arms were crossed tightly across her chest. Tears streamed down her face.

“I should have believed you,” she said.

Rob sighed. “It doesn’t matter now.”

“Of course it does.”

“Get your stuff. I’ll take you home.”

“I want to explain.”

“I saw what was going on. I don’t need any more explanation than that.”

“But you don’t understand.”

Rob closed his eyes and massaged his pounding temples. “Let’s just go, okay?”

“I know it looks bad, but if you’d just listen—”

Rob’s head snapped up. “Why should I? You didn’t listen to me. Nobody did.”

Lesley looked down at the floor for a moment, then back up at Rob.

“Then maybe you should understand why you need to hear me out.”

“We don’t have time for this. What if Tim changes his mind and comes back?” He pulled out his car keys. “We need to get out of here.”

Lesley reached out with a trembling hand, turned one of the kitchen chairs in her direction and sat down. She wiped at her eyes with one sleeve of her robe.

“I came here for you, you know,” she said.

Rob rolled his eyes. “Oh, right. You went away for the weekend with another guy, and I’m supposed to believe you did it for me. And what were you and Tim doing on the couch, swapping stories about me?”

“I got him to tell me the truth,” Lesley said. “What more do you want?”

Her face was blotchy red as she stared beseechingly up at him from the chair. “Okay, so I didn’t believe you at first, but I wanted to, I really did, and I decided I had to try something, but …”

Her chest heaved as she tried to keep it together. She sniffed, and said, “I didn’t really expect it to work.”

The pounding in Rob’s head made it difficult to decide what to believe.

“Come on,” he said, “get your bags. We can talk about this later.”

Lesley looked at him for a few moments with a hang-dog look. Then she got up to shuffle over to the armchair and retrieve the holdall, after which she headed into the bedroom.

“Here, take these,” she said.

She tossed out a pillow and sleeping bag, which Rob picked up.

She emerged from the bedroom with a bag in each hand. “Let’s put these in the car,” she said, “then I’ll get Leo and we can go.”

Lesley slipped her feet into her sneakers, set one of the bags down, pulled the door open, and was leaning over to pick up the bag again when a hand appeared from outside. She looked up to see a pistol in her face.

“Back inside you go,” a man’s voice said.

Rob’s bowels loosened at the sound of the voice. It couldn’t be.

Lesley backed away from the doorway. Ray Landry followed her inside.

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTY-
S
EVEN

TIM ROCKETED PAST the stop sign at the end of the dirt road. The Camaro jounced over the edge of the blacktop and swung wide into the far lane. Tires squealed and left black curves on the asphalt as he wrenched the steering wheel to the right and floored the accelerator. Fifty yards later he made it back into the right-hand lane.

His hands on the wheel matched his state of mind, jerky and spasmodic. An overcorrection sent the right rear tire scrabbling for purchase in the roadside gravel before it grabbed angrily at the pavement again. His face was grim in the darkness.

Road signs and mileage markers whizzed by, barely seen as they melted into the confusion. Lesley’s face loomed in Tim’s mind, taunting and jeering. “I never was yours,” the face said. Snuggling with Rob, rubbing it in. Tim’s fist joined the vision and crushed Rob’s nose, pummeling, jarring teeth loose.

A strident honk jolted Tim back into the moment. He swerved as a pickup truck hurtled by on his left. The pickup’s horn bellowed, a long indignant Doppler effect. The Camaro yearned for the ditch but Tim wrestled it back in the right direction so he was once again headed … where?

Away. Home.

Tim moaned aloud as he came to the realization that he no longer had a home. The police would find him there and drag him off to the land of loathsome cellmates.

But where else could he go? Should he try to disappear? How would he live? He wasn’t ready. This wasn’t in the plan. He was supposed to—

Tim noticed too late that the road veered to the left. Even the Camaro’s stiff suspension was unable to keep the car from skidding off onto the right shoulder. He stood on the brakes as the back end swung around. The car settled in a cloud of dust, facing back in the direction from which it had come.

His chest heaved as a wave of hopelessness washed over him. He was headed nowhere. He sighed and a great cloud of beer breath condensed on the cold windshield.

He looked at the shotgun propped against the passenger-side door. The easy way out. One quick blast and someone else had to deal with the mess, not him.

But why should Rob end up with Lesley? Tim’s brow furrowed as this new thought started to jell slowly, fighting to make itself heard above the raucous alcoholic buzz.

Why had he left them together at the cabin? It was the same old story as always. Tim folds and runs away, Rob wins. Tim could go back there and … what? Win Lesley back? Convince Rob not to send him to prison?

Yeah, right. As if.

He probably wouldn’t gain much by going back, but where else did he have to go? The Camaro idled in quiet indifference while he agonized.

* * *

Rob recognized the nine-millimeter pointed at Lesley’s face even before Landry stepped into the cabin. The silencer was not attached this time, but Rob had spent enough time staring at the thing in close quarters to have no trouble identifying it. The thought of Landry in the same room with Lesley galvanized him into instant action.

“No,” Rob yelled.

He dropped the bags and launched himself at Landry, shouldering Lesley out of the way as he did so. With Landry still constrained by the tight space in the doorway, Rob managed to grab the man’s wrist with both hands and force the gun upwards. Landry’s reaction came so quickly that Rob would have been hard pressed to reconstruct the details later.

Landry spun in under Rob’s arms, forcing him to choose between letting go or having his wrists broken. Something hard drove into Rob’s lower gut. All the air seemed to leave his body and he took a half step backwards. Then a pile driver kick to his upper chest sent him sprawling. A bolt of pain wracked his sore shoulder when he landed on the linoleum.

Rob writhed on the floor for a few moments before he was able to draw enough breath to raise his head. Landry had a handful of Lesley’s hair and held her so she was doubled over. He pointed the nine-millimeter at Rob.

“That was stupid,” Landry said. “Don’t try it again.”

Rob might have agreed with him but he couldn’t speak.

Landry pushed Lesley away and closed the door behind him. He took a quick look around the cabin, then walked over and pulled two chairs away from the table, setting them about eight feet apart. Lesley flinched as he grabbed her by the arm and shoved her toward one of them.

“Sit,” he said.

Lesley stared at him with wide-eyed terror as she groped behind herself with one hand for the chair. She almost missed the seat when she sat down, and had to scoot to one side to keep from falling. Landry produced a roll of duct tape from the pocket of his windbreaker. A couple of quick turns around the middle of her chest bound her to the chair back. Landry glanced at Rob to make sure he was still no threat, then put the gun down momentarily on the table and did a more thorough job of immobilizing Lesley. The chair had no arms, so her hands ended up pointing straight down at the floor.

“There’s some money in my purse,” she said. “You don’t need to hurt us. You can take whatever you want.”

Landry ignored her. He picked up the pistol and said to Rob, “Your turn.”

Rob looked at the vacant chair. The lower part of his insides squirmed at the thought of sitting in it, but he had no choice. He walked over and sat down. His neck muscles tightened with fear as Landry approached him from behind and then used one hand to make the initial wrap of duct tape around his abdomen and lower arms. The noise of the tape being pulled from the roll rubbed like sandpaper against Rob’s nerves.