Blind Pursuit

24

The room was large and musty and unfurnished save for a potbelly stove squatting troll-like on the floor. Starlight filtered through dust-coated windows, the panes webbed with cracks. A beamed ceiling, the rafters silvery in the subtle light, hung overhead like rows of leviathan ribs.

Moving cautiously, aware that footsteps could be heard in the cellar, she crossed yards of semidarkness to the front door.

It opened, promptly and fully, as all doors should-no improvised tools, no desperate prayers, simply a twist of the knob.

Air on her face. The oily smell of greasewood. Click and buzz of nocturnal insects.

Quietly she shut the door, then put on her boots and sprinted across a gravel court to the gate.

It was wrapped in multiple coils of chain, secured with a rusty but formidable padlock.

Climb over? No, impossible. Wicked barbed wire was strung across the top. And on both sides of the gate, barbed-wire fence extended along the roadside-five bands of wire, the lowest a foot from the ground, the highest just above her head, knotted to wooden posts driven into the ground at four-foot intervals.

She couldn’t get through that fence or over it, not without slashing herself to tatters and leaving a trail of blood.

She turned and surveyed the area. The place was a ranch of some kind, the main house a one-story wood-frame structure, flanked on the left by a modest barn with a fenced paddock attached. Against a waning crescent moon, the barn’s weathervane and cupola were etched in stark silhouette.

Something was missing from the scene. She looked closer at the house, took note of the carport extending from a side wall.

Empty.

Where was the vehicle she’d heard?

Dimly she made out tire tracks in the gravel at her feet, curving toward the barn. The big double doors were shut to conceal her abductor’s truck or van, parked inside.

And perhaps to conceal her Taurus also.

He had made her write to Annie, saying she’d gone away. The ruse would fool no one if her car was still sitting in its reserved space at Pantano Fountains.

She sprinted for the barn, leaving the gravel behind, crossing yards of stiff, dead grass. The big double door loomed before her, the old wood ragged with strips of peeling paint. The barn must have been green once, with a white roof and orange trim-unusual color scheme for a desert ranch.

One of the doors swung open easily in response to her brief tug. She crept inside and pulled it nearly shut, allowing only a pale fan of starlight to bleed through the crack.

Standing motionless, she waited impatiently for her eyesight to adjust to the gloom.

The place smelled of must and age, and not of hay.

No provender had been stored here for years, for decades.

A central feed passage, trough, and manure gutter bisected the barn. The left side was lined with stalls, the half-doors ajar. Horse stalls. This had been a horse ranch once.

No stalls on the right side, only an open space, filled now with a gray Chevrolet Astro van and, beyond it, faintly visible in the barn’s recesses, her Ford Taurus.

“Oh, baby,” she whispered. “Sweet baby, am I ever glad to see you.”

He had taken the keys from her purse. But unless he was supernaturally prescient, he could not have known about the other car key she carried, the duplicate key reserved for emergencies.

And if her present situation didn’t qualify as an emergency, nothing ever would.

Pulse racing, she ran to the car, then crouched low and frisked the underside of the chassis. A moment of frightened groping, just long enough for her to fear that he’d found it or it had fallen off somehow-and then her hand closed over a small magnetic case.

She detached it, snapped it open, and the spare key dropped like magic into her palm.

Exhilaration at getting this far competed with naked terror at the thought that she wasn’t safe yet; she could still be stopped.

The key in her pocket, she crossed the barn to the main doors, prepared to throw them wide Her heart chilled.

The distant thud she had heard was the slam of a door.

Crunch of gravel, then of weeds.

Through the crack she glimpsed a bulky figure covering ground in long strides, a gleam of metal-the handgun-bright at his side.

Coming here. Coming to the barn.

Silently she eased the door shut.

Total darkness now.

She had to find an escape route. Hunt down a side door and use it.

Sightless, she groped her way along the wall, feeling for a door, finding none.

Too late she realized she shouldn’t have closed the main doors so tight. The blackness around her was absolute, impenetrable, making her progress dangerously slow as she crept forward.

Her questing hands brushed the rear of her car. She could hide inside it-lie on the floor, hope he didn’t see her-but the risk of discovery was too great.

Better to keep going, find some way out. There had to be another door somewhere, had to be.

Past the car, and now she was at the rear of the barn, under the hayloft, she believed.

He would be here any second. And still there was no exit, only empty space, yards of black void in every direction.

Frantic now, she flailed about wildly, searching for a door or cubbyhole, any sort of hiding place.

With a gasp she blundered into something wooden and rickety.

A ladder.

Propped almost vertically, leading upward to the loft.

If she could get up there, hide in shadows…

Her best chance. She didn’t hesitate. Already her boots were planted on the lower rungs, and she was gripping the side rails, climbing fast, oblivious of the wood splinters chewing her palms, ignoring the sway of the ladder as it wobbled under her, precariously balanced.

Halfway up. Not far to go. She set her foot on another rung Crack.

Rotten with age, the rung collapsed.

She plunged down, the impact of her descent shattering the next rung in line, and the next, and the next.

Her fists closed over the side rails and broke her fall. She dangled briefly, then found an unbroken rung and stood on it, straining for breath.

She had not screamed. That was something, at least.

But she was still trapped, still hopelessly exposed, and now the ladder was unusable. She couldn’t reach the loft.

An eddy of wind. Brightening glow behind her.

The barn door, opening.

He was here.

She dropped to the ground, hoping the brief storm of dust stirred up by the wind could cover the soft thud of her fall.

Crouching low, she gazed toward the front of the barn.

In the doorway he was silhouetted against a gray sweep of desert and a sprinkling of stars. A large, stoop-shouldered figure in long pants and a short-sleeve shirt, his head oddly bulbous, curvilinear as a bullet.

He hadn’t seen her yet. She was cut off from him by his van and her car and yards of distance; the light from outside hadn’t touched the farthest reaches of the barn.

Sinking to all fours, she scrambled behind the front end of her Ford and huddled there.

His shoes crackled on the dirt floor as he advanced inside.

“Burn you, bitch.” His voice was a sleepwalker’s slurred monotone. “Pour the gas down your lying throat. Choke you with it before I light the match.”

The low chuckling noises that followed were not any human form of laughter.

Soundlessly she stretched out on her stomach and wriggled under the Ford.

The driver’s door of the van canted open. The Chevy rocked on its springs as he swung inside. He climbed out a moment later, and a strong white light winked on, dispelling the barn’s shadows.

Flashlight. Must have gotten it out of the glove compartment.

The beam swept over the car, then explored its interior. She pressed herself snug against the ground, terrified that he would examine the underside of the vehicle next.

He studied the car a moment longer, then directed the beam upward at the hayloft.

Safe for the moment. But would he notice the broken ladder? Her footprints in the dirt?

Apparently not. The flashlight beam passed over the ladder without pausing, the beam seeking out the doorway of a small room at the rear of the barn. A tack room, long unused, empty save for a built-in sink. Had she found that room and tried to hide in it, she would be dead now.

Next, the horse stalls. The flash probed them one by one, looking for any uninvited occupant.

Finally he seemed satisfied. The beam was angling toward the floor at his feet when a gust of wind blew the main door shut.

The sharp slam, like an amplified handclap, startled him.

He dropped the flash.

It hit the ground, intact, the beam shining directly at her from ten feet away.

She stared, paralyzed, into the cone of light. Fear closed her throat. She couldn’t breathe.

“Hell,” he muttered.

He took a sideways step to pick up the flash, and kicked it accidentally.

It rolled-God, no-it rolled under the car.

He would have to see her now. The flashlight lay between the Ford’s front wheels, less than a yard from her head. She was impaled in its beam.

Past the haze of light, her abductor grunted as he got down on his knees.

Erin felt wetness in her eyes and a sick, feverish trembling in her lower body. The nightmare was back, more real than ever.

She hoped, despite what he’d said, that he wouldn’t burn her. Death by fire was her worst fear, had been since childhood.

The gun would be better. Easier.

His hand reached for the flash.

He had to see her now. Couldn’t miss her.

Except… he wasn’t looking.

He hadn’t bothered to lie prostrate and poke his head under the chassis. He was still kneeling, groping blindly.

His fingers brushed the flashlight’s metal casing. The flash rolled again, and for a heart-twisting second Erin was sure it would roll out of his reach, and he would have no choice but to belly-crawl after it.

Then he clamped a firm hand on the flash, pulled it toward him, and rose to his feet.

Rattle, slam, and he was out of the barn, intent on hunting her in the night.

Erin pressed her face to her forearm and lay very still as tension sighed out of her in a hissing stream.

Close one.

Very close.