J. JANCE - Hour of the Hunter

“But what about you and my mother?” Davy whispered.

“No matter what happens, you must stay hidden until morning, until someone you know comes to find you.”

Looks At Nothing sat hunched forward in the speeding tow truck as though by merely peering blindly ahead through the windshield he could somehow remove all obstacles from their path. “How soon will we be there?” he asked.

Fat Crack was driving flat out, red lights flashing. “Fifteen minutes,” he said, not daring to take his eyes from the road long enough to check his watch. “Ten if we’re lucky.”

For a time, there was no sound in the cab other than the wind rushing through the open windows. “We will probably have to kill him, you know,” the old man said finally. “Before it’s over, one of us may kill the ohb . Have you ever killed before?”

It was a startling question, asked in the same manner Looks At Nothing might have inquired about the weather, but this was no rhetorical question, and it demanded a serious answer. “No,” Fat Crack replied.

“I have,” Looks At Nothing continued. “Long ago. When I worked in the mines in Ajo, I accidentally killed a man, another Indian. Afterward, there was no one to help me paint my face black, no one to bring me food and water for sixteen days. That is one of the reasons I’itoi took away my sight. If you are the one who kills the ohb , I will bring you food and water. If I do, will you bring it to me?”

As a child, Fat Crack had heard stories of how ancient Papago warriors who killed in battle were forced to remain outside their villages, purifying themselves by eating very little and by praying for sixteen days until the souls of those they killed were finally quiet. This was 1975. He was driving a two-ton tow truck, not riding a horse. After-battle ceremonies should have been a thing of the past, but they were not. Looks At Nothing was absolutely serious, and Fat Crack could not bring himself to deny the medicine man’s request.

“Yes, old man,” Fat Crack replied. “If you kill the ohb , I will bring food and water.”

Louella Walker left Toby’s bedside long enough to use the rest room down the hall. When she returned, she touched Brandon’s shoulder. Although his eyes were wide open, he jumped as though wakened from a sound sleep. She nodded toward the door, and he followed her into the hallway.

“What is it?” he asked.

“There’s a phone call for you at the nurses’ station.”

He seemed dazed. “A phone call? For me?” he asked vaguely.

She nodded. “Over there.”

Watching him go to the phone made her heart ache. He looked much as his father had looked years earlier-the same impatient gestures, the same lean features. But Brandon was almost a stranger to her. She had expended so much energy and concentration denying what was happening to Toby that she had totally lost touch with her son.

Putting down the phone, he turned back toward her with his face contorted by anger or grief, Louella couldn’t tell which. She wondered who had been on the phone. From his look, the news must have been as bad or worse than what was going on beyond the swinging door of her husband’s room.

“Brandon,” she said, reaching out to him. “What’s wrong?”

He pushed her hand aside and shook his head. “Nothing,” he said irritably. “It’s work.”

“Don’t lie to me,” Louella flared. “It isn’t nothing. It must be important. I can see it in your face.”

To her dismay, Brandon exploded in anger. “You’re right. It is important. Terribly important, but what the hell am I supposed to do? I can’t be in two goddamned places at once!”

With her child of a husband far beyond help, Louella searched her heart for strength enough to once more be a mother to her child. “It’s all right, Brandon,” she said, giving his shoulder a reassuring pat. “You do what you have to. Your father and I will stay right here. We’ll be fine until you get back.”

As Davy’s hands came free, Rita’s heart overflowed with thanks to Understanding Woman for giving her granddaughter the owij , for teaching Dancing Quail to be an expert with it. There was no tool Rita knew better, nothing she had held in her hands longer.

At once she reached down and went to work on the twine binding Davy’s feet. It was important that he be totally free and capable of running, even if her own knots were still securely tied.

Breathing shallowly, the priest lay still, while no sounds at all came from the rest of the house. The ominous silence filled the old woman with misgiving. She knew some of what had been done to Gina, and she hated to think what that ho’ok , that monster, might be doing to Diana. Whatever it was, at least Davy wouldn’t see, not if he followed her directions and did as he’d been told.

The twine around Davy’s legs tugged free at last. Rita turned her attention on her own bindings. With one arm in a cast, it should have been much more difficult, but her craftsman’s fingers quickly learned the secrets of Andrew Carlisle’s crude knots, which melted apart beneath the probing point of her awl.

With Davy quaking beside her, Rita began to pray. First she addressed I’itoi, asking that the boy and his mother both be granted strength and courage. Then she spoke to Father John’s God, asking that the priest be spared from dying there on the root-cellar floor. Finally, to comfort herself as much as the boy, she took up the refrain of her song, crooning softly in the darkness.

“Remember what I say, Little Olhoni,

You must run swiftly and not look back.

That is the only way to help your mother.

That is the only way to help me.

Be like I’itoi, little Olhoni.

Hide in a crack and do not come out.”

“Get dressed,” he whispered in her ear, snapping her head back with a savage pull on her hair that loosened some of it from the roots. As tears sprang to her eyes, the ghost of an elusive memory fluttered briefly, but she couldn’t capture it. It required all her mental stamina to resist the temptation to cry out. Earlier, sinking his teeth deep into the tender flesh of her breast, he had elicited one involuntary gasp of pain. She had sensed his excited, eager response. She was grimly determined not to let it happen again.

Carlisle let go of her hair, and she fell limply back to the bed. “I said move!”

Diana had lost all sense of time. She might have been battling with him for minutes or hours or days. After his first, frenzied attack, he had dragged her from the living room to the bedroom, where he had assaulted her again. Survival instinct warned her to obey his commands, but her body refused. Bruised and bloodied, her flesh functioned at a level that was somehow beyond whatever further violation Andrew Carlisle could inflict.

Davy’s dead . The words ran through her head like a broken record. Davy’s dead, and so is Rita. Grappling with catastrophe, Diana lost all will to carry on. Whatever happened to her no longer mattered.

Carlisle grabbed one ankle and twisted it until Diana was forced onto her back. She lay naked on the bed while he feasted his eyes on her. He particularly admired the series of angry bruises around her swollen nipples. He congratulated himself for his self-restraint for being able to let go once he had fastened his teeth on her. He was saving the nipples for later.

He enjoyed the look of wary watchfulness in her eyes. She must be wondering, dreading to learn what might come next. He regretted that he couldn’t get it up again right that minute, but there was plenty of time. He would show her that, hard-on or not, he was still full of surprises.

Her gritty silence annoyed him. Diana Ladd was one tough cookie, but he knew she wouldn’t be able to deny him forever. He’d find her weakness eventually. In the face of his carefully focused efforts, she wouldn’t always keep quiet. When the agonized sounds finally escaped her lips, they would be music to his ears. You’ll come around, he thought, smiling down at her.