Blind Pursuit

20

Gund didn’t relax until he had pulled out of the parking lot onto Broadway. When Erin’s apartment building shrank to nothingness in his sideview mirror, he began to breathe normally again.

He had avoided an encounter with Annie by a dangerously thin margin. If he hadn’t heard movement in the den and left the bathroom immediately, ducking into the living room with a heartbeat to spare, she would have come face to face with him.

And now she would be dead.

His grip on the steering wheel tightened. He pictured himself squeezing her slender neck. Choking, strangling…

Bad thought. He didn’t want to kill her. Didn’t want either of them-Annie or her sister-to die. Of course he didn’t.

Of course.

At Houghton Road he hooked south, heading for the ranch.

It took Erin a half hour, by her estimate, to make the tool she needed.

Carefully she had cracked off the fine teeth at the narrow end of the comb until that part of the spine had been stripped naked, a spindly, mangled finger.

Then, rubbing the comb against the can opener’s blade, back and forth, back and forth, she had scraped away layers of plastic. Tortoiseshell shavings had accumulated on the floor.

The thought had occurred to her that a witness to her behavior would conclude that she’d lost it. Poor thing, a sympathetic voice had clucked in her mind, she’s cracked under the strain.

There was method to her madness, though. At least she hoped there was.

After two hundred strokes the comb’s narrow end was as sleekly tapered as a stiletto, its tip nearly as keen.

Not an ice pick. But close.

She wondered if she still had time to use it. Maybe safer to wait until after her abductor had come and gone.

But she was only guessing at the time, after all. It might be hours earlier than she imagined.

Before proceeding, she took a moment to swallow her last Tegretol. The bottle was empty now. If her abductor didn’t return and she was unable to break free, then within twenty-four hours the first withdrawal symptoms would develop. Status epilepticus. A bad way to die.

Quickly to the door, heart drumming.

The doorframe had warped slightly with age, leaving considerable clearance between the door and the jamb. Erin inserted the modified end of the comb into the crack, pressing its sharpened tip against the side of the bolt at the point where the small movable bar sank into the socket in the striker plate.

The comb slipped off the bolt the first time she levered it sideways. No good. Maybe if she held it in place with one hand while manipulating it with the other…

That did the trick. She only wished her hands weren’t so damp, and that they would stop trembling.

She could do it, could bust out of this joint, run away before her jailer returned.

Smiling fiercely, she imagined his shock at being outwitted, his rage at having failed in this ultimate test of control.

“Very sorry, sir,” she whispered in the tone of an efficient receptionist as she began prying at the bolt. “I’m afraid the doctor is not in.”

For some reason this struck her as much funnier than it was, hilarious even. She giggled, soft, manic laughter rising from her throat, until she realized she was displaying symptoms of incipient hysteria.

“Cut it out,” she ordered, focusing her undivided attention on the job at hand.

She worked the comb left, right, left, right. It flexed with each twist of her arm, each calculated increase in pressure, but it did not break. The plastic spine seemed sturdy enough to withstand the demands she was making.

There.

The bolt had moved. She’d felt it. She was sure she had.

An inconsequential victory, a slippage of the bar that could amount to no more than a trivial fraction of an inch, but it was something, anyway.

And the bar had not jerked back. That meant it was a dead bolt, not a spring latch. Good. Had the bolt rested on springs, it would have fought her every step of the way.

This was going to happen, she realized with a surge of exhilaration so intense as to be almost disorienting.

She was Houdini, she was Papillon; no locked cell could hold her.

She wedged the tip of the comb in deeper-it definitely was finding purchase now-and wrenched the tool sideways.

Again.

Again.

With a faint muffled rasp, the bolt retracted another hairbreadth.

She’d almost gotten it. She was nearly free.

The tip of the comb scrabbled eagerly, desperately.

Sweat, beading on her eyelashes, dripped onto the bridge of her nose. A muscle in her neck twitched, taut with nervous tension.

Just a little more. Another quarter of an inch to go. That wasn’t asking so much, was it? A lousy quarter inch…

From the bolt, a thin squeal of complaint, as welcome to her ears as a newborn’s first squalling cry.

Good God, she’d done it, done it, done it.

Triumph thrilled her. She knew, even before squinting through the crack for confirmation, that she had pried it completely out of the socket.

The door was unlocked.

All she had to do now was ease it open, not a simple task when there was no doorknob on her side. With her fingertips she gripped the edge of the door and tugged.

The damn thing was heavy-solid mahogany-and inertia held it motionless for a long, frustrating moment.

It seemed unnecessarily cruel for anything to impede her progress now. In a more benevolent world the door would have opened by magic as soon as the bolt was retracted.

Of course, in a more benevolent world she wouldn’t have been held prisoner in the first place.

She pulled harder. With a reluctant sigh of hinges, the door yielded.

Slowly it swung inward under her hands… halfway clear of the jamb now… completely clear… a half inch of space between door and frame It stopped.

Though she pulled desperately, the door would open no farther.

Crouching, she peered through the narrow aperture, and her heart twisted.

A chain. Her abductor had installed a security chain.

“Damn it,” she whispered. “Oh, damn it, that’s not fair.”

The chain links, heavy and thick, would challenge even a good-sized bolt cutter. No way she could hope to snap them.

She curled both hands around the edge of the door and yanked at it. If the screws securing the chain weren’t imbedded too deeply, she might be able to jar them loose.

After straining every muscle in her arms and shoulders, she concluded that the screws were fastened immovably to the wood.

Defeat the chain, then. There had to be a way. If she Outside, the rumble of an engine.

She recognized that sound. The motor of the van or truck that had transported her here.

He was back.

Oh, Jesus, close the door, close the door!

She closed it, but the bolt was still retracted. He was certain to notice that.

The engine was silent now. The vehicle had been parked.

She jabbed the narrow end of the comb into the clearance between the door and jamb, pried at the bolt, trying to reverse what she’d done a minute ago, dig the bar out of the faceplate and insert it in the jamb socket again.

Upstairs, the creak of a door.

Footsteps on the ceiling.

The bolt slid partway out of the latch assembly, but still it was not engaged in the socket.

The footsteps now directly above her.

She pressed harder. The spine of the comb curved.

Thump-thump-thump — she heard him descending the cellar stairs.

Frantically she levered the comb, the pointed tip scratching like an agitated pencil. The bolt eased forward another fraction of an inch, just enough to sink into the socket in the striker plate…

And the comb snapped.

Its narrow end, broken off, slid down the crack, disappearing under the door, out of reach.

A double thud of footfalls. He was in the cellar, approaching the door.

Just in time she remembered the peephole.

She pushed herself upright and retreated to the rear of her cell.

The single percussive beat startled her. She needed a second to identify it as the rap of his hand on the door.

“I’m back, Doc.” The familiar raspy voice, muffled by two inches of solid mahogany.

Half of the comb was still in her hand. As casually as possible, she turned slightly, concealing it from his view. “I heard.” Her voice was steady, betraying nothing.

“Put on the blindfold.”

“Yes. Of course.”

She leaned over the cardboard box and made a show of rummaging through it as she hid the comb inside.

Her gaze traveled from the box to the floor nearby, where there was a small, telltale pile of tortoiseshell shavings.

“Can’t you find it?” he demanded.

“Yes. Yes, here it is.”

She took out the blindfold, then stepped away from the box. With a nonchalant scuff of her shoe she scattered the shavings.

One problem taken care of.

But when he opened the door…

Her heart kept up a frantic staccato rhythm. The palsied shaking of her hands made it difficult to knot the blindfold in place.

When he opened the door, he might see it. The piece of the comb under there.

Impossible for her to explain away the tool as anything innocent. If he noticed it, she was dead.

“Hurry up,” he ordered.

Quickly she finished fastening the cloth over her eyes. She groped for the chair, found it, and sat.

“Ready,” she called. The chilly finger tickling the base of her spine was a trickle of sweat.

Rattle-a key. Clunk of the bolt retracting. Rasp of hinges.

Footsteps in the room.

The chair opposite hers scraped the floor, then protested as he sat.

He hadn’t seen the comb. Thank God.

She might live a little longer, then.

She’d lost her best chance of escape and broken the tool that had made it possible, broken it probably beyond repair, but at least, this night, she wouldn’t burn.

“Excited, Doc?” he asked softly.

“What makes you say that?”

“You seem… on edge.”

“I’m always a little tense when I’m working.” The lie came fluently. “That is why you’re here, isn’t it? To start our work together?”

“Of course it is.” His chair creaked as he leaned forward. “As of this moment, Doc, our first session has officially begun.”