Mortal Pursuit

28

Ally was afraid.

She stared at herself in the mirrored doors of her bedroom closet-dress torn, body twisted at an unnatural angle in the tubular desk chair, wrists lashed to the padded armrest with strips of bedding.

The room felt hot and stuffy. Stagnant air clogged her lungs like paste.

Having the windows open didn’t help. It only reminded her of the man who’d watched her through the backyard fence on those other nights.

Watched with binoculars as she stood naked, feeling the night air on her breasts. Watched as she emerged, towelless and dripping, from the shower in the adjacent bath. Watched, perhaps, as she lay in the canopy bed and touched herself, legs twisting languorously, the sheets damp with sweat.

Cain might have seen all that.

She knew his name now, his name and his face, along with the names and faces of two associates of his. That knowledge, more than anything else, was what made her so very afraid.

They had hidden nothing from her … as if it no longer mattered what she saw or heard.

Cain hadn’t even bothered putting on his mask again after the attack. She’d been left weeping in a corner as he stepped to the doorway of the den.

“Lilith, get in here.”

The soft crackle of the police radio had preceded her entrance. Ally had found it somehow obscene to see Officer Robinson’s walkie-talkie clipped to this woman’s belt.

Lilith had worn no mask either. She was short and frizzy-haired, pretty except for her eyes-small, glittery eyes that liked pain.

“You heard what happened” Cain asked.

“I heard.”

“I think young Miss Kent needs to go to her room.”

Lilith studied her with a stalking cat’s feral gaze. “Why not take care of things right now”

“I need to make it square with the management.”

“After you do-“

“I’ll do the honors.” His gloved hand brushed the gun at his hip.

She pouted. “You never let me have any fun.”

Ally had understood at least part of what she heard but somehow couldn’t make the implication real. She had offered no resistance as Cain hustled her out of the den.

They had been entering the east wing when another man, unmasked also, appeared out of the rear hall. Lanky and sun-blasted, he could have been a movie cowboy if not for his blond ponytail and storm trooper costume. Ally recognized him as the one who’d carried Officer Robinson out of the house.

“Done” Cain asked with a smile.

The cowboy nodded. “Done.” His squinty eyes narrowed. “What’ve we got here”

“Minor problem,” Cain said, handing Ally over to him. “You and Lilith handle it. I’ll get started trashing this place.”

She had been escorted into her bedroom. From the front of the house came noises of breaking glass, as distant and unreal as the soundtrack of a movie.

Briskly Lilith unmade the bed and tore a floral-patterned sheet to ribbons. Although Ally understood that the strips would be used to tie her up, still she raised no protest. She was numb with shock and fear.

Only when the cowboy lashed her wrists behind her had she finally reacted-kicking, squirming, mewling like a hurt animal.

Lilith subdued her with a slap that brought fresh blood to her mouth.

“Stupid little slut,” she lisped. “You should’ve let him do it. He wasn’t gonna off you. He just wanted to put in his dipstick, check the oil.”

“Check the oil,” the cowboy said. “I like that.”

“You can look under my hood anytime, Tyler.”

“Cain might revoke my license if I did.”

Cain. That had been the first time Ally heard the name. Instantly she knew who was meant. The scarred man. And the cowboy was Tyler.

She had registered the names with a sick feeling of dread, while desperately searching Lilith’s face for some shadow of compassion.

“The thing is,” she had whispered, shamed by the tremor in her voice, “I’ve never … you know.”

Lilith gave her a closer look. “You a virgin”

Was there empathy in the question “I’m fifteen,” Ally said, thinking perhaps a connection had been made.

“Fifteen,” Lilith echoed. “That’s only two years younger than me.” Her face turned hard, any illusion of tenderness instantly erased. “So what’s your problem, baby You frigid or something”

Ally looked away, her last hope crushed. “I’m just not ready,” she murmured.

Lilith mimicked her with cutting accuracy. “I’m just not ready.”

Tyler produced a heartless chuckle as he knotted the binding.

“Cain had me when I was thirteen,” Lilith added. “Practically busted me open, he was so frigging big. Hurt like hell.” A delicious shiver racked her. “Sister, you don’t know what you missed out on.”

Tyler had pushed her into a chair and tied her wrists to the armrest, winding additional strips around the vertical arm support.

“What are you going to do to me” Ally asked desolately as the two of them departed.

Tyler paused in the doorway, a wide grin cracking his face. “Let’s just say this ain’t exactly ladies’ night.”

Then he and Lilith had strolled down the hall, toward the sound of wreckage in the living room. Not long afterward her father had been marched past, the door pulled shut before she could do more than call out to him.

She couldn’t guess what they wanted from her dad. But their intentions toward her she understood fully.

She was to be killed. It was the only explanation for why Tyler and Lilith hadn’t worn masks, why they’d spoken so freely. To them she was dead already.

Staring at the closed door, waiting for Cain’s heavy footsteps. Ally thought about her future, the future she wasn’t going to have.

It had seemed so clear and tangible, more real than everyday life. Three more years, and she would be in college-someplace far away, maybe New England-far from the brooding tension and explosive outbursts of the Kent household.

Things would make sense in college. She’d been quietly certain of it. Nothing made sense here, not anymore. Her mom would be smiling one minute, in tears the next. And through her tears she would insist everything was fine, while her dad’s mouth worked soundlessly and his left eyelid twitched.

The hostility between them, so chronic yet for the most part so carefully suppressed, was more unsettling than violent fights would have been. She had often wished they could just get it out in the open, talk to each other, instead of simmering in this hothouse of mistrust and hate.

It got to her sometimes. Like at the Carltons’ Christmas party, when her folks kept needling each other with sharp, hurtful barbs, smiling sarcasm, cutting wit, until finally she couldn’t take it any longer and she yelled at them to stop it, just stop it, stop it, stop it, and of course the party had frozen, everybody staring, her parents mortified, and the long, silent ride home-God, what a joy that had been….

Oh, yes, it was great fun growing up rich and spoiled in the Kent household.

College, though, would be her sanctuary. She would study anthropology, her chosen field. Hearing of her ambition, people always assumed she hoped to become the next Margaret Mead. Ally thought Mead had been a sentimental fraud, romanticizing life in Samoa. That wasn’t the kind of anthropologist she intended to be. No lies for her, no cover-ups, no smiling through tears.

She would do field work, teach, write books, make documentary films, run a museum. Okay, realistically she might not be able to do all of that, but pieces of it were possible.

Or had been. Now nothing was possible, and her future had turned out to be only another lie.

For some reason she thought of Officer Robinson, remembering her in the moment when her eyes-amazing eyes, electric blue, their hue distinct even from across the room-had been focused on the gun in Cain’s hand.

Cain hadn’t shot her. He’d drowned her in the lake.

But on Ally he would use the gun. She’d seen him lightly touch the holster while saying, “I’ll do the honors.”

He would point the pistol at her, maybe put it in her ear or her mouth, and squeeze the trigger-perhaps one instant of unbearable pain, then nothing-and she would be as dead as Officer Robinson, as dead as her best hopes.

Damn. She wished she’d let Cain rape her. Wished she’d shut her eyes and just let him stick it in her. Anything was better than being dead at fifteen.

Don’t cry, she told herself. Not again. But she couldn’t help it.

She must have cried in the delivery room, when she was spanked into this world, and she would cry now as she was ushered out.