Blind Pursuit

42

Two miles from the turnoff to the ranch, Gund became aware of being followed.

Though the sun had set, enough light remained to reflect off the windshield of a vehicle well to his rear, maintaining a constant distance from his van.

Of course, the driver might be only a commuter heading home to one of the rare, remote subdivisions along this road. But then why keep the headlights off, despite the dusk? Why, unless to avoid being seen, while holding the van just within view?

Testing his hypothesis, Gund accelerated. The other vehicle disappeared briefly, dropping below the horizon, then promptly reemerged.

Gund relaxed his pressure on the gas pedal; the speedometer needle dipped. His pursuer edged slightly closer before falling back to a safe distance.

No question now. None at all.

Someone was after him.

Pursuit implied suspicion; suspicion suggested the prospect of arrest. Of punishment.

Fear ballooned in Gund’s chest and was transmuted instantly into furious anger.

“Son of a bitch,” he breathed, in reference to no one and nothing. “Son of a bitch.”

He had known punishment before. Now in a disorienting flashback he felt the awful, crippling pain again, and with it the ugly shame of his forced submission.

Random scraps of memory whirled in his mind-hiss of running water, blood running down his leg like a menstrual flow, wadded tissue paper stuffed inside him to stop the bleeding, Lydia knocking tentatively at the locked bathroom door: “Oliver…? Oliver? ” The quaver in his adolescent voice as he made some reply. The sight of his face in the mirror over the blood-dappled sink, his eyes briefly haunted, then going safely blank.

A shudder slithered through him now, breath catching in his throat.

Oh, yes, he’d had his share of punishment, of discipline, of authority’s brutal lessons.

The police were only another brand of authority, offering a different form of abuse.

Yet not so very different, after all. He’d heard what went on in prisons.

If he was caught… sentenced…

Then he would not be Harold Gund any longer. He would be Oliver once more, Oliver Ryan Connor, poor helpless boy, pitiable victim.

No. He would not endure it again. He’d made that vow nearly three decades ago, in a forest clearing, and he would keep it as the sacred promise that it was.

No more punishment. Not ever.

Squinting in the sideview mirror, he strained to distinguish some details of the mystery vehicle’s appearance-shape, color, markings. White T.P.D. cruiser? Gold sheriff’s department car?

Couldn’t tell. Night was rapidly leaching the sky of the sunset’s last afterglow. He could see nothing.

But it was surely a law enforcement vehicle of some kind. Nobody else would be tailing him.

Had they tied him to Erin’s disappearance? He froze, chilled by that thought.

“No,” he grunted. “They don’t know. There’s no way they can know.”

But suppose they did.

Throughout the day he’d fought the impulses rising in him, maintained precarious control. He had not clicked off. Not yet.

Now anger began to split his concentration.

Won’t do it to me again, he thought, the words beating in measured counterpoint to the racing hammer blows of his heart. Not again.

The turnoff for the ranch was less than a half mile away. Just ahead, a different side road approached, running west, toward the fading memory of daylight.

He pumped the brake pedal briefly, cutting his speed only enough to take the curve without risk of a skid, and veered onto the intersecting road. Instantly he switched off the van’s single intact headlight.

This area was well known to him. In his youth he’d taken many long, solitary walks, exploring the desert around his parents’ ranch. He remembered the arroyo that paralleled this road, shallow and narrow, inconsequential compared with the one behind his ranch, but adequate for his present purposes.

Slowing to a crawl, he eased the van off the asphalt onto powdery desert soil, maneuvering among spiny outcrops of ocotillo and dark clumps of prickly pear.

Careful, careful. Another flat tire would be a catastrophe. He’d already made use of his only spare.

The lip of the arroyo slid into view. The pebbly bottom was no more than five feet deep, the incline of the embankment pleasingly gradual.

Shifting into low gear, he nosed the Chevy over the edge, descended to the streambed, and eased the van into hiding behind a fringe of mesquite shrubs along the arroyo’s rim. He cut the motor.

Clumsily he pawed at the glove-compartment latch. The pistol was in there, a blue-steel 9mm Taurus PT.

Wait. Better idea.

Under the dashboard, a mounted shotgun. A sawed-off Remington 870, purchased from a firearms dealer in Tucson shortly after his arrival. His purpose in buying it had been purely nostalgic; the gun was an exact twin of the one found in Lincoln Connor’s hand in 1968.

Gund unhooked the twelve-gauge, climbed out of the van. Ascended the embankment in darkness, then thudded down on his elbows and belly in a concealing patch of desert willow, the gun outstretched before him, the shortened sixteen-inch barrel snuffling at the road.

He worked the pump action, chambering a shell. Curled his forefinger around the trigger. And waited.

His breathing was low and regular, his pulse barely above normal. A gnat buzzed his left ear; he made no effort to brush it away.

He was a machine, reduced to a single function, his body a mere extension of the firearm in his hands, and, like the firearm, a deadly instrument. Shotgun and man were one, each capable of explosive violence, each held delicately in check. But not for long.

Nearby, a motor.

Splash of high beams through a scrim of weeds.

The pursuing car turned onto the side road, headlights on now, pace slowed to a crawl. The driver was clearly baffled. Must be wondering how the van could have evaporated, leaving no trace.

Slowly, almost lovingly, Gund tightened his grip on the trigger.

An easy kill. No need even to aim precisely. Just wait for the right moment, then point and shoot.

The spray of buckshot would tear through the car’s passenger compartment like shrapnel from a bomb. Anyone inside would be instantly cut to pieces. No time even for fear or pain. A hail of shattered glass and shotgun pellets, a split second of startled bewilderment, and then nothing more for the driver, only silence and darkness vaster than the desert’s desolation, forever.

He remembered what one blast from an identical shotgun had done to Lincoln’s face. Of course, that shot had been fired at point-blank range.

The strip of asphalt directly before him brightened with the headlights’ shine. The car crept closer, nearly alongside him now.

Not a squad car. Some low-slung, sporty model. Undercover vehicle. Must be.

Gund squinted along the barrel, lining up the sights, and prepared to shoot.

His face was calm, empty of expression. His pulse had slowed to that of a sleeping man. No slightest tremor moved through his body. Despite the warm night, no bead of sweat glistened on his brow.

A machine-man. Emotionless and efficient.

The shotgun lifted slightly, targeting the silhouetted figure in the driver’s seat, less than fifteen feet away.

His trigger finger began its lethal flex.

And he recognized her.

Annie. Her face dimly outlined in the glow of the dashboard gauges.

The car-it was her red Miata.

She was his pursuer. Not a cop. Annie.

His superficial calm shattered. His heart sped up; his mouth turned dry.

The car was moving on. Shock had nearly cost him his chance at a clean shot.

He drew down on the trigger again.

Another ounce of pressure, that was all it would take, and Annie Reilly would be dead.

But he couldn’t.

Not her.

Damn it, not her.

With a trembling effort, the greatest exertion of his life, he lowered the shotgun.

The Miata hummed past, the triangle pattern of its taillights shrinking, shrinking, gone.

Gund lay motionless, panting, until his pulse dropped to normal.

Then slowly he got to his feet. He stood on the roadside, surveying the darkness, dabbing distractedly at the film of sweat on his face.

She knew.

Or suspected, anyway.

But how? He’d done nothing to incriminate himself. He was sure he hadn’t.

Whatever the explanation, she was on to him somehow. And that meant she could not be allowed to live.

Despite his momentary lapse of resolve, it was obvious that to protect himself, he must kill her. He simply must.

“ No.”

The word, torn out of him, was wafted away on the warm, dry breeze.

He would not.

Yet there was no alternative. Already, Erin knew too much. Now Annie, too, had learned part of the truth.

Neither could live. Both must die.

“No,” Gund said again, but his voice was softer this time, a whisper almost, and the desert did not hear.