Deadly Pursuit

33

Free.

A final jerk of her wrists snapped the worn wire, liberating her hands.

Kirstie stretched her arms, teeth gritted against the pops of pain in her joints, the aching soreness in every muscle.

“God,” she whispered. “Oh, my God.”

She leaned forward, intending to attack the antenna wire that secured her feet to the chair, then experienced a swoon of vertigo. Head lowered, she shut her eyes and fought off ripples of faintness.

Her fingers were numb and clumsy. She fumbled with the knot Jack had tied to bind her ankles. It wouldn’t yield. Wild frustration rose in her and nearly tore a scream out of her throat.

Finally she found the knot’s weakness. It unraveled in her hands. The loop of antenna wire slipped to the floor.

Awkwardly she rose upright. Her knees fluttered. She took a rickety step, then another.

Steve and Jack had left via the front door. She hadn’t heard them come back in. They must still be still out front.

She’d have to leave via the back exit. Hidden in the woods, she could plan her next move.

She glanced around the radio room. The lone window was sealed shut by humidity; Steve had tried to pry it open shortly after their arrival, only to find that it resisted his best efforts.

The patio, then.

Anastasia lay before her, a mottled heap. Kirstie knew she had no time to waste; the men might return at any second, and her opportunity would be lost.

Still, she couldn’t deny herself a last moment with her dog. Kneeling, she stroked the borzoi’s fur, once so smooth and silken, now stiff, bristly, matted with drying blood.

Her hand came away red and tacky. A rather small hand, yet not long ago Anastasia had very nearly fit inside it. Kirstie remembered staying up with Ana on her first night in a new home, patiently waiting out the darkness, holding the tiny, shivering pup close enough to hear the comforting beat of her mistress’s heart.

“You’re a good dog, honey,” she heard herself whisper now, though she knew the time was long since past when such words could matter. “A good, good dog.”

Tears misted her vision. She was reminded, absurdly, of how peeling onions always made her cry.

Enough of this. Time to get moving. Come on, now.

She stood, wiped her eyes, and left the room without looking at Ana again.

Her sandals clicked on the kitchen floor, the faint noise loud as an alarm bell in her ears. Leaning against a counter, she removed the sandals, then held them in one hand and proceeded barefoot.

Not only her hearing but all her senses seemed heightened, unnaturally acute. She perceived every detail of the room: the hum-rattle-hum of the refrigerator, the smudges of grease on the stove’s burners, the dinner dishes still soaking in the sink, where she had left them four hours and a lifetime ago.

In the middle of the kitchen she stopped, arrested by a thought.

Dinner dishes. Silverware.

Knives.

There were knives in the drawer near the sink. Some were steak knives, long-handled, with serrated blades. Good weapons.

She was by no means sure she could actually… stab someone…

But it would be good to have the option.

She stepped up to the drawer, pulled it open.

Blood shouted at her. A small pool of blood, crusted over, nearly dry, and centered in it, Jack’s Swiss Army knife, the wicked spear blade still extended, striped in red-brown streaks.

In her mind she saw it all again: the casual swipe of Jack’s hand, the blade slitting Ana’s throat like a letter opener, the dog’s racking convulsions.

Shock propelled her backward. The drawer came with her, sliding out of its frame. It crashed on the floor. Knives, forks, spoons scattered across the tiles in a ringing spray of metal.

A loud noise. To her ears, deafening. It would have been easily heard outside the house.

If the men were on the front porch, as she assumed, then they must be coming for her now.

Get out. Get out!

She left the knives and broke into a run, streaking through the dining room, her heartbeat accelerating as time dilated into dreamlike slow motion.

The patio doors were just ahead, hanging ajar to let in the night breeze.

Outside. Through the patio and garden. Her bare feet padding on concrete, on grass, on dirt.

The gate was shut but not latched. She threw it open, slipped her sandals on, and then the path was unwinding before her, drained of color in the monochromatic starlight, as she sprinted away from the house.

Irrationally she was afraid to look back, afraid she would see Jack bearing down on her, the bloody knife in his fist.

She plunged ahead, veering drunkenly from side to side on the path, beating stray branches clear of her face. There was no sound in her world but her panting breath and the furious scuffing of her sandals. Around her, walls of clotted shadow, the dense foliage bordering the path. Ahead, only darkness. Darkness…

Light.

She rounded a curve and stumbled to a halt.

In front of her, perhaps twenty yards away, was the bobbing circle of a flashlight’s beam.

The wan yellow glow illuminated Jack Dance’s face from beneath, throwing his features into ghastly relief.

Directly behind him stood Steve, gun in hand.

But it wasn’t possible. They had gone out the front door. She’d heard them. What were they doing here?

“Shit.” That was Jack, his voice knifing through the madcap confusion of her thoughts. “How the hell did you get loose?”

The beam rose to dazzle her as he focused the flashlight on her face.

“Your wife is getting to be a real problem, Stevie.” There was ugly relish in the words. “The kind of problem that cries out for a solution.”

The beam brightened, the amber circle expanding. Jack was coming closer.

Steve stood motionless, his expression oddly dazed, vacant. He looked like he was asleep on his feet.

She would get no help from him. And Jack knew it. The cold, feral gleam in his eyes told her as much.

Back in the house. Dammit, go!

She turned. Ran.

The flashlight’s glare had temporarily wiped out her night vision, and she nearly blundered off the trail as she sprinted headlong for the garden gate. No need to look over her shoulder; she could gauge Jack’s distance by the brightness of the beam tracking her.

The gate flew up fast and slammed into her midsection. She flung it wide, ran through, then shut it and gambled a precious second fumbling with the latch. It snicked into place, and then she was running again.

Hope lifted her. The flashlight no longer had her pinned in its beam. She seemed to have outdistanced her pursuit.

As she passed the wicker lounger chair, she tipped it on its side, blocking the portico. Anything to slow Jack down and give her time to get out the front door, to the dock, the boats Just inside the patio doorway, she whirled, intending to close and lock the French doors.

She froze. Hope died. A new surge of terror grabbed her by the throat.

Jack was there.

She had not outrun him. He must have discarded the flashlight somewhere along the trail, then vaulted the gate and the lounge chair without slowing down. Now he was a yard from the doors, closing in like an express train.

She tried to slam the doors-too late-he wedged an arm and leg into the opening and pushed with the weight of his body.

Kirstie pushed back, palms pressed to the frame, her face inches from Jack’s, divided from him only by a quarter-inch panel of glass.

No use. She wasn’t strong enough to hold him back. The doors were easing open as he muscled his way inside.

She gave up and ran for the doorway to the living room, knowing she wouldn’t make it.

Behind her, a tinkle of shattering glass as the doors were flung wide. Thudding footfalls, Jack’s bobbing shadow on the wall.

Steely fingers clamped over her arm. The room spun like a carousel. She executed a half pirouette and came face to face with Jack from a foot away.

His teeth were white in the chandelier’s glow. He looked like a hungry animal, ready to feed.

Someone was screaming, and the cries were her own.

A blur of motion. Her fists, beating wildly at his chest.

He let her go. For a heady instant she imagined she’d hurt him with her blows.

Then, laughing soundlessly, he hooked his foot behind her ankle and upended her. Briefly she was weightless, her body tumbling in space, arms and legs extended in an endless free fall. She brushed past the dining table, her head barely clearing the sharp corner, and a square of inlaid floor tile flew up and socked her in the jaw. She groaned.

“Guess what, darling?” Jack’s mouth was still stretched wide in unvoiced laughter. “Your hubby isn’t here this time. Which means I am going to have some major-league fun with you.”

The dining table loomed over her. She crawled under it, blindly seeking shelter.

Jack’s fist snagged a belt loop on her shorts. “Uh-uh.” He spoke to her in a chiding tone, heavy with mockery. “You’re not going anywhere.”

The floor began to slide, smooth tiles slipping past her, a moving sidewalk. He was dragging her out into the open.

Her fingers groped for a leg of the table, a niche in the tiles, anything to hold on to.

She touched something sharp.

Porcelain shards. The broken bits of the salad bowls Jack had dropped earlier, when he’d lunged for Steve’s gun.

Her fist closed over a shard. She twisted free of Jack’s grasp. Snap-rolled into a squat and came up fast, thrusting the weapon at him. She was snarling.

The arrow-sharp tip punched through Jack’s blue jeans, penetrating the meat of his left thigh. He stumbled backward, the shard still embedded in his leg, and then she was scrambling past him, through the nearest doorway.

Too late she realized she’d entered the kitchen. This route led back to the radio room. Dead end.

She spun around, hoping to retrace her steps, but Jack was already charging in pursuit. His face was crazed, splotchy with fury. He ran limping, blood wet on his pants.

No choice now but to retreat into the radio room. She slammed the door, locked it.

The knob rattled. Jack’s voice through the door, muffled: “God damn you, bitch!”

The room was narrow, low-ceilinged, the walls closing in. She had to get out of here, had to get out of here.

Through the thin gap between the door and the frame, just above the latch bolt, poked the edge of a credit card. It withdrew, then appeared again, an inch lower.

Jack was trying to slip the latch.

She glanced wildly around the room. The only exit was the window, swollen shut. She was sure she couldn’t open it.

But smashing it-that was another story.

She ran to the chair where she’d been tied up, hefted it with a grunt of strain.

The latch slid momentarily, jostled loose by the card, then sprang back into its socket before Jack could open the door. He would be quicker next time.

Hurry, hurry.

She shoved the chair through the windowpane in a cascade of glass fragments. Climbed up on the sill, swung her legs out.

Behind her, the door creaked open like a casket lid.

She flung herself forward. Hit the ground on one knee and dived into a thicket of saw palmettos. Burrowed in deeper, thrusting the pointed, fan-shaped leaves out of her way, belly-crawling over the tangled, creeping stems that littered the ground like a nest of snakes.

A shout from the window: “Sorry, Mrs. Gardner! You’re not getting away!”

Jack probably couldn’t see her. But he could follow anyway. There was no way for her to move fast enough in the choking brush to evade his pursuit-not without making enough noise to draw his attention.

Had it all been for nothing, then? All her efforts, wasted?

Desperately she wriggled forward on elbows and knees, hot tears welling in her eyes.