Mortal Pursuit

17

Barbara took a last look at her daughter. Then the thug who’d struck Philip shoved her sharply from behind, and she stumbled into the side hallway.

The intersection with the rear hall was only a few steps away. That hall led outside to the patio. She wondered if she and the others would be taken outside.

A movie sequence unreeled in her mind. She and Charles and the Danforths lined up against the exterior wall. Spurt of silenced gunfire. Blood on the patio. Wind chimes tinkling over shattered bodies.

Past fear she was conscious of anger, cold and unforgiving. Anger at the killers, to be sure, but a different and perhaps deeper anger also, directed at her husband.

She had disliked Charles before, hated him now.

Philip, at least, had made an effort. He’d signaled with the tapping of his spoon, defied the order to march. He had guts. He had, as her father would have said, balls.

Where are your balls, Charles she thought acidly.

Then the rear hall passed, and the two thugs, male and female, herded the prisoners deeper into the east wing.

On her left Ally’s bedroom appeared, the room where her daughter had been held hostage when the police arrived. Through the doorway Barbara glimpsed a four-poster bed, a tidy bookcase, an Apple computer on a writing desk.

She asked herself if Ally ever would sleep in that bed again, or read those books or do homework at that desk.

Well, of course she would. The man had said he wouldn’t hurt her.

And he hadn’t shot that patrolwoman.

But the other officer, though-he was dead. Shot and killed in the foyer of her house, gunned down like an animal.

The hall ended at the doorway to the master suite.

How odd to enter her bedroom in the company of others, to see it through strangers’ eyes. She was absurdly glad she’d made the beds.

Lace curtains billowed over the windows, the breeze carrying a perfume of roses from the front yard. The suite’s opposite wall was taken up by double bifold doors that opened on a walk-in closet.

The female killer opened the doors, and her companion gestured with the gun. “In there.”

“The closet” Judy sounded more bewildered than afraid.

“Yes, damn it.”

That one had a short temper and sounded young. They all seemed young, Barbara thought, except for their leader. He was about her age, she guessed. Forty or forty-five.

Men of that age sometimes developed a taste for young girls. Ally looked so lovely in that white dress.

It showed a little cleavage. Was that man looking down her dress now, studying the lacy border of her bra, the hint of her white breasts

If he forced her …

“In,” the male thug snapped, shoving her again, and she realized she had hesitated at the threshold of the closet, wrapped in ugly thoughts.

She joined Charles and the Danforths. The closet was as large as a freight elevator, not claustrophobically crowded even with the four of them inside. Several of Charles’s suits hung behind her, cellophane envelopes crinkling as they brushed her hair.

The doors banged shut. Darkness.

Bad to be here in the dark. Images came to her, images of Ally in her white dress-white, a virginal color; her daughter was still a virgin, she was quite sure of that-God, please let her be a virgin after tonight …

Outside, the rattle of a chain, then the click of a padlock.

Footsteps. Leaving.

The killers had gone, but the ugly images remained, and the awful thoughts, and the cold terror …

“He’s going to hurt her,” someone whispered, and with a small shock she realized it was herself. “The look in his eyes …”

Charles, her husband, Ally’s father-he was the one who ought to have comforted her now. He didn’t move.

It was Judy who took her hand in a warm, reassuring squeeze.

Alone with Ally in the dining area, Cain felt the girl’s violent trembling, her helpless terror, and liked it.

Movement in the foyer. Tyler reentered the house. He knelt by Trish Robinson, rolled her over, and unbuckled her gun belt.

Ally watched the procedure with peculiar intensity. Cain tightened his grip on her shoulder.

“In the den,” he said, not harshly.

They crossed the living room together. As they reached the den, Tyler slung the cop, beltless but still cuffed, over his shoulder. Blood trickled out of her hairline, striping her cheek.

He carried her through the front door. Ally watched him go.

“He won’t hurt her,” she whispered. “Will he”

“You don’t even know the lady. What’s it to you”

“She seemed… nice.”

Cain smiled under his mask. “Nice people get hurt sometimes.” He touched the girl’s delicate chin. “How about you You’re a nice person, aren’t you”

Teardrops dewed her lashes. Her mouth worked without sound. Such a pretty mouth.

“Aren’t you. Ally Aren’t you nice”

Still smiling, he led her into the den.