Blind Pursuit

52

At the eastern end of the side road where she’d lost Gund’s trail at nightfall, Annie found a ranch with a padlocked gate.

Brief excitement shook her. But the duplicate key marked GATE would not open the lock, and neither would any other key on the ring.

Disappointed, she doubled back to Houghton Road and continued south.

Already her quest was beginning to feel hopeless. It was one thing to assume that Gund had a ranch in this vicinity; it was quite another to search every side street, every dirt road, every unmarked lane intersecting with Houghton for miles.

For all she knew, Gund’s ranch was far south of here, perhaps south of Interstate 10 and the Pima County Fairgrounds. Or-a grimmer prospect-it might be nowhere in the area at all.

If Gund had known all along that she was following him, he might have driven out of his way deliberately, in order to give no clue to his true destination, before performing whatever mysterious maneuver had made him disappear.

There were so many possibilities, and the desert was so dark, so vast. She could very well be wasting her time.

Another side road passed by, this one on her left. Unmarked, barely visible. She nearly missed seeing it.

With a squeal of brakes she cut her speed and executed a skidding U-turn, then pulled onto the narrow dirt lane.

The Miata bounced lightly on the rutted surface. To the north, barbed-wire fencing glided by; beyond it lay the dim shapes of a house and barn.

She stiffened in her seat as a distant memory snapped into focus.

“Can’t be coincidence,” she whispered, unaware that she was voicing her thoughts. “Can’t be.”

Her headlights picked up an obstruction ahead.

A gate.

The Miata slowed to a halt. Annie sat in the driver’s seat, very still, barely breathing.

The twin circles of her halogen beams played on the gate. Unlocked, it creaked lazily on rusted hinges.

If the labels on the key ring meant anything, then the gate of Gund’s ranch was padlocked.

This couldn’t be it, then.

But she knew it was.

Because this was the old Connor place. The ranch she and Erin had tracked down on a spring day in 1985.

There had been no reason to think of that visit in years. She’d forgotten all about the ranch, forgotten its location, its very existence.

Until now.

Now she knew-she knew — that this was the place she was looking for.

Harold Gund owned the ranch… and Erin was inside.

Switching on her high beams, she scanned the grounds. Part of the fence, she noticed, had been torn apart as if by a speeding vehicle. She thought of the damage to Gund’s van.

His van. If he was here, it ought to be within view. Parked in the carport or on the gravel court at the front of the house.

It was nowhere. And the house was dark.

Apparently Gund hadn’t returned. Perhaps he really had fled, as she’d hoped.

Or perhaps he was on his way here right now.

She killed the high beams, using only her parking lights. Cautiously she eased the Miata forward and nosed open the gate. The car hummed over yards of stiff brown grass and came to a stop fifty feet from the house.

When she shut off the motor, the night’s sudden stillness pressed in on her, squeezing her chest, making it difficult to breathe.

She left her key in the ignition-her experience in Gund’s neighborhood had alerted her to the advantages of a quick getaway-and got out of the car, being careful not to slam the door. The warm night wrapped itself around her, dry and dark.

Her shoes crunched loudly on the gravel, an oddly hungry sound, like the grinding of some large animal’s jaws, as she walked to the house’s front door.

It was locked. Searching the key ring, squinting at each hand-labeled tag in the starlight, she found the key marked FRONT DOOR.

Even before inserting it in the keyhole, she was irrationally certain it would fit.

It did.

The door glided open under her hand. She stepped into a spacious living room, unfurnished, empty except for a potbelly stove bolted to the floor.

No light was apparent, other than shafts of feeble

Starlight lancing through the broken windows. No sound was audible save the hum and whistle of the wind.

Annie moved forward, into the dark, and found her voice. “Erin …?”