Simon was ready. He’d been ready for hours, fussing around the house, watching TV, smoking a joint out on the porch, refining the game. At the last minute, he changed his mind about taking a chair down to the cellar beforehand. He was halfway down the stairs with it when it dawned on him that if Pender did enter the house through the porch door, he was as likely to head for the kitchen as the bedroom-best to leave everything as is.
Simon did an about-face on the steps. He was still in the kitchen when he heard a car coming down the drive. He raced into the living room, peeked out through the drawn blinds, saw the cab pulling up behind the Geo. He saw Pender climb out-nice hat, duude; wha’ happen, somebody break your arm? Then he saw a second figure climbing out.
Simon’s heart dropped-please let it be a cab-share-and when he recognized Dorie Bell, his jaw dropped as well. Last time he’d seen her, she was naked in the galvanized tub in the basement of 2500 and he was holding her head underwater. He knew she hadn’t drowned, but as the only participant ever to have survived the fear game, she had somehow slipped into another dimension of Simon’s consciousness, neither dead nor living; he wasn’t quite as surprised to see her as he would have been to see, say, Wayne Summers-but it was a near thing.
As the cabdriver dropped the suitcase by the front door and went back for the footlocker, Simon raced into Pender’s bedroom, thinking furiously. Dorie’s presence wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. Snatch her first, put a gun to her head, he’d have himself a bargaining chip. Think Edward G. Robinson: Freeze, G-man, or I blow her brains out. Hero cop like Pender, he’ll freeze all right. He’ll do anything I tell him to do-she’s his sweetie pie now. Some hero: he saves ’em and screws ’em.
And as he closed the bedroom door behind him, breathing hard, as engaged and excited as a soldier going into combat, Simon realized that having a second shot at Dorie was the only thing that could possibly have improved what was already promising to be the ultimate fear game. Not just a triple-header, but a chance to erase his only loss. Because when he was finished with Dorie (and this time he would insist on having a piece of what Pender had been enjoying, if it took him all night to get it in), the final score in the fear game would be Childs: 27, World: Zip-and that was without counting Zap, any of the old folks, any of the cops, or what’shis-name, Gloria’s husband, the Chinese guy in the red bikini underwear.
Linda spat out her gag. Somehow she’d held on to the coral; she had it behind the neck again with her good right hand. She told herself not to panic-it hadn’t gotten her that badly. Small mouth, short fangs, Reilly had said-they have to chew their way in. And hadn’t Reilly also said the venom was only borderline lethal and that there was always a delayed reaction. Or had he said often rather than always? Or only sometimes? And how delayed-how much time did she have?
Related question: what was going on upstairs? Linda could hear Childs running from the kitchen to the living room, then into the bedroom wing. Was Pender home? She hadn’t heard his footsteps yet-and she would have, heavy as he was. Which meant it might be too late to save herself, but she could still save him.
How? Concentrate-never mind the pain. Use it to focus. You wait until you hear a door, a heavy tread. Then you scream, “Pender, watch out! Pender, Childs is here!” If you can hear him upstairs, he can hear you downstairs.
But what if Childs already has a gun on Pender? Then all you’ve done is blow your only advantage-surprise.
No, you have another advantage: he’s already told you he plans to blind Pender while you watch. So you know you have time; he’s not going to shoot Pender as soon as he comes in. You also know he has to come back down to the cellar eventually. Wouldn’t it be smarter to-
But by then the burning sensation had begun traveling up Linda’s arm: when it reached her elbow, she understood that waiting for Childs to come to her was no longer a viable strategy.