Mortal Pursuit

72

With a groan of protest, the four-by-eight panel finally came free, opening an exit in the closet wall.

“Did it,” Philip gasped, blinking perspiration away.

Only the drywall remained, the last barrier. Barbara, guiding the work by flashlight, pulled off her left pump and handed it to Philip. “Use this.”

The two-inch heel made a serviceable tool. Crouching low, Philip attacked the bottom portion of the drywall.

Each tap was loud. Charles might have been right, Barbara reflected nervously. The noise could draw the killers.

It took Philip less than a minute to break open an irregular hole two feet wide, bracketed by wooden studs.

“Okay,” he said without bravado, “I’m going through.”

Charles stood up. “Just you Alone”

There was something odd about the way he said it, as if he felt threatened by the prospect.

Philip shook his head. “We’ve got to stick together.”

“Right.” Charles nodded, manic intensity gleaming in his eyes. “We stick together. Nobody goes anywhere alone.”

Barbara wondered if her husband was having a breakdown.

Philip crawled into the linen closet, then pushed on the door. It groaned-the explosion must have warped the frame-but yielded to his pressure.

When it was fully open he scrambled out. A whisper: “Coast is clear.”

Barbara looked at Judy, who took the flash and waved her on. “You next.”

On hands and knees Barbara squeezed through the hole, splinters and bent screws clutching at her dress and hair. Her head bumped against the linen closet’s bottom shelf. Philip helped her to her feet, then knelt to assist his wife.

Blinking, Barbara looked around at the master bath. The medicine cabinets, unlatched, had spilled their contents on the marble countertop and in the porcelain basin and across the tile floor. Above the sink, twin sconces still glowed, the bulbs unbroken, but the mirror had shattered, as had the skylight over the Roman tub.

Her mind barely registered the damage. The important thing was that the killers had not come. And in the darkened bedroom just beyond the doorway, there ought to be a telephone.

Stick together, Philip had said. But Judy was taking forever to struggle through the gap. Charles would follow. Philip was preoccupied with helping. Another minute would pass before all four of them were out.

She couldn’t wait that long.

Kicking off her other pump, she moved to the doorway and cast a sidelong glance down the hall.

Dark. Silent. She didn’t think anyone was there.

A breath of courage, and she left the bathroom. Barefoot, she crossed the suite, staying close to the spill of light from the bathroom, avoiding broken glass and fallen plaster.

Quickly around the nearest bed. A frightened pause: Was that a footstep in the hall

No, nothing. Get to the phone. Hurry.

Normally it rested on the nightstand next to her favorite lamp, the one with the seashell shade. Now lamp and phone were a spray of ceramic shards and a tangle of wires on the floor.

She stooped, groping in the shadows for the handset, but it had been ripped from the base and discarded somewhere, and she couldn’t find it.

When she stood, she saw Judy and the two men gathered in the bathroom doorway. She held up the useless base unit in explanation.

“Where are your other phones” Philip whispered as Barbara rejoined the group.

He could have asked Charles, of course. But judging by the glazed vacancy of his stare, Barbara doubted her husband would have answered.

“Ally’s room,” she said. “Just down the hall.”

Philip hesitated. “You don’t happen to keep a gun around”

“Sorry.”

“Maybe we won’t need it. Place is pretty quiet. They may have left.”

Charles flinched at the words. Barbara wondered why.

Single file they crept down the lightless hall to the first door on the right.

Ally’s room-but the doorway had collapsed. The gap between the warped frame and the door, wedged ajar by debris, was too narrow to permit entry.

Barbara peered inside, her gaze roving over a shadowed waste of toppled bookcases and fallen curtains and broken glass, hunting fearfully for some sign of her daughter.

If Ally was in there, she was hidden in the wreckage. And making no sound. No sound at all.

Trembling, she turned away and caught Philip’s interrogative glance. With effort she focused on the immediate problem.

A telephone. Where

“Kitchen,” she said, her voice hushed. “Or we could go out the back door, circle around to the garage, use the car phone.”

Philip thought for a moment, his eyes cutting toward the far end of the hallway with the eerie regularity of a metronome.

“Safer to stay inside,” he decided. “Doesn’t sound like they’re in the house, but they may be patrolling the yard.”

“Why would they” Judy asked.

Philip shrugged. “Why would they do any of this”

Charles looked away.

Quickly to the end of the hall, Philip in the lead. He pivoted into the dining area, then motioned for the others to follow.

Into the kitchen, the only part of the house still brightly lit. Barbara blinked in astonishment at the scorched ruins of the cellar doorway, then reached for the cordless phone.

But there was no phone-no handset, no base unit, only the bracket sagging from the wall on loosened screws.

Damn.

“Our other phone’s in the den,” she said, answering Philip’s unspoken question. “Across from the foyer.”

She was moving toward the kitchen doorway when she noticed Charles, half hidden behind the central island, stooping low.

He felt her stare and straightened instantly, a hand on his lapel. “Some of their equipment,” he whispered.

Barbara glanced over the island and saw a black duffel bag, its contents strewn across the floor.

“Thought there might be something useful-a cell phone or a radio.” Charles frowned. “No luck.”

“How about a gun” Philip asked.

“No luck, I said.”

“Well”-Philip shrugged-“it was worth a look.”

They left the kitchen, Philip still the leader, Barbara second in line.

Distantly she was glad Charles had searched the bag, even though he’d found nothing of value. At least he was trying.

Really, it was the first positive thing her husband had done all night.