Blind Pursuit

56

Tramp of shoes. Air moving past her face.

Erin blinked, coming back to herself. For a disoriented moment she was a small child, and her father was carrying her up the stairs to bed.

Sleep would be good. She was tired, so tired…

No.

It was her father, but not Albert Reilly.

Oliver was climbing the cellar stairs, and she was slung over his shoulder, a sack of trash, a bedroll. The chain trailing from her leg clanked after her, the padlock at the other end bouncing noisily.

Groaning, she tried to squirm free. Useless. The effects of the stun gun hadn’t fully worn off. Though her mind was clear, her limbs were numb, her movements uncoordinated. She flailed and kicked without strength, landing soft, random blows.

Top of the stairs now. Into the hallway.

She wanted to speak, to argue, to plead, but her mouth wouldn’t work right. The sounds she made were not words, not even wordless protests, merely unintelligible grunts and gasps, expressions of blind, consuming panic, panic of phobic intensity, panic that set her heart racing rabbit-fast and thrilled her with a roar of blood in her ears and a high electric whine in the bones of her skull.

She thought of the arroyo. Of flame.

Faint ambient light. The living room. Starlight spearing through the broken windows.

Hard to breathe. No air in her lungs, and her throat had closed. She remembered choking on fumes in a burning house, twenty-three years ago. That had been like this. Like this.

He stopped in the middle of the room, near its sole furnishing, the potbelly stove.

Alongside the stove, a shapeless heap of hair and clothes.

Annie.

Limp and still. Unconscious or dead. Propped in a seated position, her legs stretched out on the hardwood floorboards, her back resting against the stove’s round belly.

Oliver hadn’t simply deposited her there. He’d arranged her in that pose, as carefully as he would have arranged a bouquet in the flower shop. He’d made a display of her.

Erin saw all that, and abruptly she understood what he was about to do.

Not the arroyo.

Here.

He would burn them here, in the house of his childhood.

“ No!” she screamed, fear finding a human voice at last.

Oliver flung her down.

She hit the floor hard. A groan racked her.

He crouched by her side. She wanted to scratch his face, gouge and claw, but still her body would not respond to her will. She could only thrash weakly, gasping in inarticulate protest, as he shoved her up against the stove opposite her sister.

Snap, and the padlock securing the chain to her ankle was released, the chain pulled free.

The ribbon of heavy welded links was drawn across her waist, her arms, then wound around the stove, encircling Annie also, before its two ends met, a snake swallowing itself.

With a jerk of his wrists Oliver yanked the chain tight, chokingly tight across her midsection, crushing her arms to her sides, pinning her to the stove.

Snap. The padlock was again engaged, joining the two ends of the chain.

Erin moaned, struggling for speech and failing.

Oliver moved away, his back to her, and then he was out the door, lost in the darkness of the night.

She stared blankly after him for a long moment. Then with a spasm of violent energy she shook her head, twisted her body, clenched her fists, reviving dulled nerves and spent muscles.

She could not afford numbness and lethargy, not now. She had to fight. Fight for survival-her own and Annie’s, too.

Blinking rapidly to clear her vision, she gazed down at the padlock nestled in her lap, its steel shackle glinting at her like a smiling mouth. The chain extended on either side of it, binding her and Annie to the stove.

If she could raise the chain a few inches, to the point where the stove’s belly narrowed in diameter, she might be able to slip free.

Breathing hard, she contracted the muscles of her lower back, pressed her palms to the floor, and struggled to push herself up.

The chain wouldn’t budge.

But why not? Why the hell not?

Craning her neck, peering at the front of the stove out of the corner of her eye, she saw the reason.

Oliver had carefully looped the chain under the handle of the loading door and snagged it on one of the pin hinges. It could be neither raised nor lowered.

All right, then, how about the stove itself? Could it be moved?

A downward glance gave her the answer. The stove’s legs were bolted to the floor.

There had to be something she could do. Free her arms, at least.

But she couldn’t. The chain was wound too tight, jamming her elbows hard against her ribs.

No hope, then. No chance for her. For either of them.

Licking her lips, dispelling the last of the numbness that had frozen her mouth, she called her sister’s name.

“Annie?”

She heard no answer. She had expected none.

Maybe Annie was dead already. It might be best that way.

Her gaze moved to the front door, hanging ajar, letting in the warm night breeze.

Oliver still had not returned.

But he would, of course.

Soon.

With gasoline.