Mortal Pursuit

67

Nowhere to hide.

Blindly, pointlessly. Ally tried pressing closer to the tree, willing her body in some magical way to become one with the bundled roots and the branching canopy of leaves.

Then the ambient glow coalesced into a single focused orb, and she lifted her head, looking past the flashlight at the pale crescent of a smile.

“Now look what we have here.” Lilith released a low, velvety purr. “The virgin princess.”

“Talk!” Tyler screamed. “Last chance.”

Trish probed the unknown space at her back, and her hand touched leather.

His belt.

Sheathed to the left side-his combat knife.

“Okay,” she gasped. “I’ll tell.” Bending her wrist, she closed her fingers over the knife’s handle. “You … you’d find her anyway.”

“That’s right, Trish. Finally you’re getting smart.”

Lilith took a step forward, and Ally saw the gun in her right hand, its muzzle staring down at her.

“Cain told me to take you alive if I could. But I don’t know. I’ve never shot anybody before.” A giggle, light and airy. “Guess I’m sort of a virgin too.”

The gun steadied, the laser diode beaming a red-orange line at Ally’s chest.

“I think,” Lilith said, “it’s time for me to lose my innocence.”

Careful, careful.

Draw the knife without sound, without pressure.

“I sent her-“

The knife sliding, whisper quiet.

“-up the hill-“

Her grip precarious, elbow bending as her hand lifted, threatening to give her away.

“-to wait by the road.”

“Why there”

“For an ambulance … once I called for help.”

The blade nearly free.

“Makes sense,” he whispered. “Thanks, Trish. By the way-I’m the one who locked you in that trunk.”

He shoved her forward, submerging her again, and she lost her grip on the knife.

“Cain won’t like it,” Ally whispered, her throat dry.

Lilith shrugged. “He won’t know.”

“He knew when Trish lied-on the radio.”

Hesitation.

Ally pressed her small advantage. “Doesn’t he know you better than Trish Won’t he be … disappointed in you”

Nothing further she could say. Her life was Lilith’s toy.

The laser winked out.

“You’re a smart girl, Alison.” The childish voice was flat, empty of affection. “I’ll bet you get good grades.”

Ally lifted her chin, feeling an absurd access of pride. “Straight A’s.”

“Well,”-Lilith smiled-“you’ll be starting a whole new education soon.”

Trish was drowning, drowning for real this time, drowning as the gloved hands held her under with savage tenacity, and her last hope was the knife, the knife, she had to get the knife.

She flailed behind her, pawing empty space, unable to close her fists over anything solid.

Her lungs were emptying fast. Little time left.

He’d tried to drown her in the lake, the bastard, and now he was going to finish the job in six inches of water, and she couldn’t break free.

There.

She touched the handle. Wrapped her fingers around it. Jerked it out of its sheath. Twisting it sideways, she drove the blade blindly to her right.

Momentary resistance, then a sickening surrender as the point punched through clothes and skin.

Tyler howled. Weakened by pain, he released her.

She left the knife inside him. Whipped her head out of the sink. Pivoted, gasping, in a spray of droplets. Lunged for the holster at his hip.

He had the same thought, but not in time. When he scrabbled at the holster, it was already empty, the Glock in her shaking grasp.

Her wounded leg threatened to buckle. Awkwardly she reached out with her left hand, grasping the counter for support, then backed toward the doorway. Through a net of dripping hair she watched him, ready to shoot but not wanting to.

Tyler sagged. A red glaze coated his jump suit below the haft of the embedded knife. Sweat popped out of the pores on his forehead and cheeks. His eyes were feverish and bright.

“You stuck me,” he grunted, and she could almost taste the dryness of his mouth, the same dryness she had known after being shot. “Hurt me bad.”

Grimacing, he tugged at the knife buried in his side until the blade slid free like a red tongue.

When he looked up again, his mouth formed a smile. “Now it’s your turn to be hurting.”

The threat seemed pitiful, a crippled dog’s feeble bark.

“I don’t think so,” she breathed, and took another backward step.

Cold.

Metal lips kissed the nape of her neck.

Behind her, a whisper: “But I do.”

Cain’s voice.

And Cain’s gun, the muzzle chilly on her skin.

He had entered through the doorway while her back was turned.

“Drop the gun,” Cain ordered.

Her hand opened. She watched the Glock fall, feeling nothing, her emotions on hold.

“I tried to make her say where the girl is.” Tyler gasped out the words like a last testament. “She told me a story. I don’t know if it’s true.”

Cain was unconcerned. “Lilith will handle the girl.”

Trish shut her eyes.

Lilith. The one with the cold, flat eyes that gleamed with malice.

Ally would have no chance against her.

It was over, then. Over for both of them.

A cough from Tyler. “So do it. Waste her.”

Trish waited, thinking emptily that she had started the night with Cain’s gun to her head, and now here she was, two hours and a lifetime later, in this mean little shop amid the racks of Lay’s potato chips and the napkin dispensers and the stale smell of grease, and nothing had changed.

“Turn around, Trish.” Cain said it almost gently, as if addressing a child.

She hesitated.

“Come on now. Don’t be shy.” He was breathing slowly, deeply, like a man in a trance. “I just want one last look at those big blue eyes.”

Tyler tried a chuckle but managed only another dry cough.

She turned slowly, transferring her grip on the counter from her left hand to her right, ashamed somehow of her lameness. She hated having them see her like this, beaten in so many ways.

A broad chest swung into view. A shiny Glock, unsilenced, in a gloved hand. Past the gun, the grainy smear of a face.

She raised her head, meeting Cain’s eyes, those smoke-gray eyes that had studied her through holes in a ski mask last time.

No mask now. She saw his face.

God-his face.

In stunned recognition she whispered one word.

“You.”