Mortal Pursuit

37

Down the hall.

Through the dining area.

Into the kitchen.

Trish ducked low as she passed the kitchen window. Her shoes, encrusted with loose earth from the garden, were leaving even more obvious tracks than before, but there was no time to do anything about it now.

She and Ally reached the laundry nook, stopping at the side door.

“Where’s the entrance to the garage” Trish gasped, digging in her pocket for her keys.

“Right off the path.”

“Okay.” She gulped another breath. “Here we go again.” Easing the door a few inches ajar, she peeked outside.

The guy with the ponytail. Coming this way.

Close the door, close the door.

She pushed it shut, engaged the lock and security chain. Probably he hadn’t seen her; the laundry area was dark.

The woman named Lilith would be at the front gate by now. Cain was out back.

Nowhere to go.

There might be an unguarded window on the other side of the house. If she and Ally could slip outside, then sneak around to the garage …

“New plan,” Trish whispered. “We try the east wing.”

With Ally she retreated into the kitchen, then stopped, hearing heavy footsteps in the rear hall.

Cain.

Suicidal to cut through the living room now. Trish pulled Ally back into the laundry area.

The side door trembled, the knob jerking as it was turned from outside by the ponytailed man.

Cain’s footsteps approached.

Caught between two killers.

Robinson-the mocking voice on the radio echoed in her thoughts-I’m gonna kill you quick.

She looked around, frantic.

Opposite the laundry nook, a door.

She opened it. Stairs led down into a dark cellar.

“There’s no way out of there,” Ally hissed.

The side door shuddered. The ponytailed man had attacked it with his shoulder or his boot. A crack shot through the frame.

Trish pushed Ally onto the staircase. “We don’t have any choice.”

Another jolt from outside, and the side door banged ajar but was stopped by the chain lock.

Ally hurried down. Trish followed, closing the cellar door, sealing the room in darkness.

Quickly she descended, gun in one hand, flashlight in the other. The intense, narrow beam played over concrete steps and cinder block walls.

The cellar was large and musty and damp. No windows. No other doors.

Just as Ally had said: no way out.

Following a trail of muddy shoe prints, Cain entered the kitchen just as the side door burst open, the security chain snapping, and Tyler pivoted through the doorway.

His Glock swung toward Cain, and for a bad moment Cain expected to get iced by friendly fire. Then Tyler’s face registered recognition, and sheepishly he lowered the gun.

“Bitches locked me out,” he mumbled. “I thought I was walking into a trap.”

“Don’t sweat it.” Cain knew all of them were operating on an adrenaline high. “Just stay alert. They’re somewhere close.”

He studied the soiled floor, the confusion of tracks. His quarries had advanced and backtracked, their movements erratic, panicky.

Still, they’d found some sort of hiding place.

Cain opened every kitchen cabinet, looked on all sides of the central island.

Nothing.

He moved into the laundry area, thinking vaguely of the washing machine and dryer, each perhaps roomy enough for a crouching person.

Then he saw the cellar door.

Of course.

Trish swept the cellar with her flashlight’s beam. “Is there a phone down here”

“No.” Ally’s brown eyes, huge with fear, glinted in the dimness. “My folks just use this place for storage. Old Ashcroft heirlooms.”

Trish went on exploring with her flash. The wavering funnel of light played over antique chairs wrapped in cellophane, oil portraits elaborately framed, handcrafted dressers glazed with dust. Amid the furniture and art objects stood stacks of cardboard cartons and wooden crates, meticulously labeled and tagged.

The clutter offered no shortage of hiding places, but concealment would buy them only an extra minute or two. What they needed was a means of escape.

“How about a circuit breaker box” She was thinking aloud, her voice thin and strained. “We can trip the breakers, get away in the dark before they know what’s happened.”

Ally shook her head. “Breaker box is in the garage. Anyway, there’s a backup generator. For earthquakes.”

Trish kept looking. The beam of light prowled the floor. It came to rest on a wooden panel mounted in a square cement frame, near the center of the room.

“What’s that” Pointing with the flash.

“Cover for a well.” Ally spoke in a robot’s voice. “They built this house on the foundation of the original Ashcroft place. Well was dry, so they put a lid on it.”

“We could hide in there, under the cover …”

“The bad guys would find us.”

Trish silently conceded the point. Of course they would.

She was getting desperate, that was all. She was losing it.

“Give up, Trish.” Ally’s shoulders lifted in a shrug. “There’s no hope.”

She looked at the girl. Brambles gleamed in her unkempt hair. The white dress was a muddy rag. Her bare feet looked very small against the floor’s gray expanse.

Trish thought of toe tags. She pushed the image away.

“There’s always hope,” she said. “Always.”

Nice thought. Inspirational. Mrs. Wilkes, her long-ago Girl Scout leader, would have approved.

But the truth was, they were finished.

She must have been crazy to come back to this house, crazy to go up against Cain and his personal death squad. Even Pete Wald wouldn’t have risked it, and he was a veteran cop with twenty years of field experience, while she … well, she was a rank amateur.

You blew it, Trish, said a small, scared voice in her mind. You screwed up after all.

Upstairs Cain’s heavy footsteps rumbled closer, the footsteps of a fairy-tale giant combing his castle for intruders.

Directly outside the cellar he stopped.

The sharp intake of breath was Ally’s.

Trish set down the flashlight, then aimed the Glock at the head of the staircase.

Shivering with tension, blinking sweat out of her eyes, she prepared to make a last stand.