Нора Робертс - The Search

She had to stop a moment, had to breathe. “Nothing works,” she repeated. “Pain, shock, then numb, useless. I felt sick when I came to in the trunk. It was dark, and I felt the movement, the sound of the tires on the road. Can’t scream, can’t kick, can hardly move.”

She stopped, breathed it out, took a slow sip of wine. “I cried awhile because he was going to kill me and I couldn’t stop him. He was going to kill me because I wanted to take a morning run by myself. I thought about my family, and Greg, my friends, my life. I stopped crying and got mad. I hadn’t done anything to deserve this.”

She stopped again, drank again while the breeze whispered through the pines. “And I had to pee. That was humiliating, and as stupid as it is, the thought that I’d pee my pants before he killed me just revved me up. So I’m fighting that, sort of squirming around, and I felt the lump in my pocket. I had a hidden pocket in my jogging pants—one of those inside-the-back deals. Greg had given me this little Swiss Army knife.” She reached in the pocket of her jeans, pulled it out.

“Tiny little knife, cute little scissors, mini nail file. A girl knife.” She closed her hand around it. “It saved my life. He’d taken my keys, the coffee money I had zipped in my jacket pocket, but he hadn’t thought of the inner pocket in the pants. Couldn’t know it was there, I guess. My hands were tied behind my back. I could just reach it. I think I was most scared then, when I managed to get the knife, when I started to think maybe, maybe there was a way out.”

“Can I see it?” When she offered it, Simon opened it, studied the knife in the bright afternoon sun. Half as long as his thumb, he thought. “You cut through the nylon cord with this?”

“Cut, sawed, hacked. It took me forever just to get it open, or it seemed like it, and a lifetime to saw through the rope. I had to cut through the one around my ankles because I couldn’t loosen the knot. First I was terrified he’d stop the car before I’d finished, then I was terrified he’d never stop that fucking car. But he did. He did, and he got out whistling a tune. I’ll never forget that sound.”

He thought of it—a girl, trapped, terrified, very likely bloody where the cords had cut into her. And armed with a knife barely more lethal than a thumbtack.

“I put the duct tape back over my mouth.”

She said it so calmly now, so matter-of-factly that he turned his head to stare at her.

“And I wound the rope around my ankles, put my hands behind my back. I closed my eyes. When he opened the trunk, he kept right on whistling.

“He leaned in, tapped my cheek to bring me around. And I stuck that little knife in him. I’d hoped for the eye, but I missed and got him in the face. Still it surprised him, hurt him enough to give me a second. I rammed my fist into his face and swung my legs around and kicked. Not as hard as I wanted because the rope got tangled some, but hard enough to knock him back so I could get out. The shovel was right there, where he’d dropped it when I stabbed him. I grabbed it and I slammed it against his head—a couple of times. I got his keys. I’m still a little blurry on all of it—shock, adrenaline, they said—but I got in the car and floored it.”

“You knocked him out and drove away,” Simon murmured, stunned and fascinated.

“I didn’t know where I was, where I was going, and I’m lucky I didn’t kill myself, but I drove like a bat out of hell. There was a lodge, a hotel—I saw the lights. He’d taken me into the Olympic National Forest. They called the rangers, and the rangers called in the FBI and so on and so on. He got away, but I gave them a description. They had the car, his name, his address. Or the one he had on record. And still, he eluded them for nearly a year. Until he shot Greg and Kong, and Kong stopped him. Kong gave his life to stop him.”

She took the knife back, slipped it into her pocket.

“You seem like a fairly smart woman,” Simon commented after a few moments. “So you know that what you did saved other women. The bastard’s put away, right?”

“Multiple and consecutive life terms. They made the deal after I testified, after he realized he’d be convicted for Greg, for me, and he’d face the death penalty.”

“Why’d they deal?”

“For confessions on Greg, on me, on the other twelve victims, for the whereabouts of his notebooks, his tapes, for closure for the families of the murdered women. For answers. And the certainty he’d never get out.”

She nodded as if to a question in her head. “I always thought it was the right thing to do. It gave me, strangely enough, relief to hear him go through all of it, step by step, and to know he’d pay for it, for all of it, for a very, very long time. I wanted to put it behind me, close the door. My father died just nine weeks later. So suddenly, so unexpectedly, and the bottom dropped out again.”

She rubbed her hands over her face. “Horrible times. I came out to stay with Syl for a few weeks, a couple months, I thought, but I realized I didn’t want to go back. I needed to start over, and I wanted to start over here. So I did, and most of the time that door stays closed.”

“What opened it today?”

“Davey came to tell me someone is using Perry’s pattern, including details that weren’t released to the public. There’ve been two so far. In California. It’s started again.”

Questions circled in his head, but he didn’t ask them. She was done, he thought. Purged what she’d needed to purge for now.

“Rough on you. Brings it all back, makes it now instead of then.”

Again she closed her eyes, and her whole body seemed to relax. “Yes. Yes, exactly. God, maybe it’s stupid, but it really helps to have someone say that. To have someone get that. So thanks.”

She laid a hand on his knee, a brief connection. “I have to go in, make some calls.”

“Okay.” He handed her the glass. “Thanks for the drink.”

“You earned it.”

Simon walked over to pick up the puppy, who immediately started bathing his face as if they’d been parted for a decade.

As he drove away, he glanced back to see Fiona going inside, closely followed by her dogs.

Fiona thought about dinner, and had another glass of wine instead. Talking to Greg’s parents tore off the scar tissue and opened the wound again. She knew the healthy option was to fix a meal, maybe take a long walk with the dogs. Get out of the house, get out of herself.

Instead she shooed the dogs outside and indulged in a long session of brooding so wide and deep her hackles rose at the interruption of another visitor.

Couldn’t people just let her wallow?

The chorus of happy barks translated to a friend. She wasn’t surprised to see James and his Koby exchanging greetings with her dogs.

She leaned against the porch post, idly sipping her wine and watching him. In the floodlights she’d flipped on, his hair had a sheen. But then, something about James always did. His skin, an indescribable shade she thought of as caramel dipped in gold dust, was a testament to his widely mixed heritage. His eyes, a bright, shining green, often laughed out of a forest of lashes.

He turned them on Fiona now, with a quick and easy smile as he shook a jumbo take-out bag.

“I brought provisions.”

She took another slow sip of wine. “Davey talked to you.”

“Seeing as he’s married to my sister, he often does.”

He walked to her, bringing the scent of food, then just wrapped his free arm around her to bring her close. Swayed.

“I’m okay. I’ve just been holding the first meeting of my Pity Me Club.”

“I want to join. I’ll be president.”