Mortal Pursuit

65

In a tree trunk inches from Ally’s head, a thump of impact. Splintered bark sprayed her hair.

For a bewildered moment she could make no sense of what was happening, and then she remembered Lilith in the living room, impersonating Trish, the mimicry eerily persuasive.

Another pop, and the manzanita rustled, the bullet kicking up dirt near her face.

She lurched sideways, then flung out her arms and launched into a furious crawl, struggling through a dense ground cover of buckbrush and dogwood and blueblossom.

A third bullet chased her, missing by a half yard.

Hot breath on Trish’s cheek. A moplike fall of hair brushing her neck.

The man with the ponytail. On the radio Cain had called him Tyler.

He scrabbled at her belt buckle. Undid it. The belt dropped away.

Then he was hauling her through the doorway into a cramped, airless room musty with the lingering odor of grease.

A counter ran along the left wall. He slammed her against it, and she doubled over, gasping. His pelvis dug into the small of her back. Leather fingers pinned her wrists at her side.

Close to her ear, a western drawl: “Where is she”

For a moment, stunned and winded, Trish honestly did not understand the question.

“Who” she croaked. “Where’s who”

He took her incomprehension as defiance. With a pelvic thrust he rammed her spine, driving her forward, the counter’s sharp edge biting into her abdomen.

“The brat,” he snarled. “Where is she”

Past pain, past fear, she understood that this was why he hadn’t shot her through the door or window. This was why he’d taken her alive. He wanted her to give up Ally.

“Safe,” Trish hissed. “That’s where she is. She’s safe.”

Ally crawled through weeds and wildflowers, driven only by the mindless urge to flee, get away, put distance between herself and her pursuer, and then rationality reasserted control.

She had to think. Think like Trish. What would Trish do

Take cover. Shoot back. Even if her aim was wild, she could buy time.

She scrambled behind a black oak, clambering over a pile of thick and twisted roots fisted tightly in the earth. Rough bark chafed her shoulder blades through the ragged dress. Crouching low, she raised the pistol-But there was no pistol. She stared at her empty hands. “Alison,” a lisping voice cooed from the shadows, “you lost your gun …”