Ridley Pearson - The Angel Maker

The kidney bandage cried out to her. How could she have done such a thing? Was she to be party to a murder? And what did that mean about Elden? Had he ever told her the truth about anything? She felt sick to her stomach-the smell, the pleading expression on this poor woman's face. And then another wave of calm swept through her, and she felt much less upset. She could handle this; everything was okay.

And then it struck her again that she was at least partly responsible. Where did her own involvement stop and Tegg's begin?

The woman in the cage-Sharon-laced her fingers through the wire cage and shook, deliberately ignoring the punishment of the shock collar that beeped its warning.

No apparent pain. The dogs were wild with excitement, but Pamela was used to the dogs, she hardly heard them; it was this woman's exceptional behavior that impressed her and held her interest. Pamela took several steps closer. How could she inflict that kind of punishment on herself and endure it?

"I'm coming," she announced, wondering why she was walking, not running. Wondering how she could feel this comfortable.

Pamela seized hold of the lock attempting to communicate to Sharon that she intended to get her out of here.

Sharon pointed and nodded violently. "The key?" Pamela asked.

"Is there a key in this building?"

The woman shook her head. "I'm going to get you out," Pamela said confidently, unsure where such confidence came from.

The captive nodded enthusiastically. She looked around. Without a key, then what? The shovel? Could she beat the lock apart? She walked over to the shovel, knowing she should hurry, but strangely in no hurry. it was okay. Everything was okay.

Sharon became frantic. Shouting. Waving her arms. Slapping the cement floor. Hopping up and down. God, she looked like one of the animals.

What was this? Several of the dogs quieted; they all began pacing their cages at once.

Sharon kept slapping the cement, in an ungainly primitive dance.

Pamela struck the lock with the end of the shovel. Nothing.

She tried again. "I'm trying," she told the frantic woman inside. This woman's behavior was making her nervous. "Stop it!" she said. Only when she identified this fleeting nervousness did she realize what a huge dose of Valium it must have been-there was a gulf between how she should have been, and what she actually was, feeling.

She struck the lock with the shovel again. Nothing.Now Sharon was shaking her wrist toward the main door. Pounding the cement again and pointing hysterically toward the door.

Finally, Pamela understood as she felt a rumble under her feet.

The dogs barking had covered the approaching sounds, but now Pamela heard them distinctly.

A car! But if a car, it could only be one of two people: Maybeck or Elden. And if either of them caught her in here doing this

Sharon grabbed hold of the cage again. Her collar sounded and Pamela watched as the collar punished her. She held on an impossibly long time. She pointed emphatically toward the door.

Close the door! Of course! Pamela moved quite quickly now, surprising herself. First toward the door; then, stopping, she returned to the cage and started in with the shovel again.

She should have never come here, she thought. All a mistake.

She glanced toward the door. Sharon pointed furiously. "I know," Pamela said. "I know." What Sharon didn't understand was that there was no way to lock that door from the inside. The only hope now was to get her free of the cage.

She never should have gone against him, she realized. He was too powerful for her.

She dropped the shovel, abandoning her efforts. It clanked to the floor. She felt terrified of him before she ever saw him. The Valium did little to help with this fear.

Sharon let out a muffled, anguished cry. The dogs went completely hysterical. Pamela wanted to disappear, to vanish. Anything but face his wrath. She had glimpsed his anger before. She shook with fear, unable to imagine how he might react to this.

The door creaked. Sharon retreated, curling back into a ball in the center of her cage.

Pamela felt like hiding, too. She watched as a hand pushed open the door.

She knew that hand.

Daphne had the Prelude up to forty, which in the dim light of an inconsistent moon seemed more like twice that. She careened through puddles, sending water up in a torrential spray, blurring her windshield and demanding the wipers.

She had lost him. A few seconds earlier his taillights had been distant but visible. She had slowed to avoid pressing herself on him. When she caught herself giving him too much leeway, she had sped back up. Now, he was nowhere to be seen.

She pushed the car a little harder, a little faster. Dangerous at best, given the slippery conditions and the lack of visibility. They had been on these backroads for the better part of fifteen minutes-it seemed more like an hour.

There! She just caught a glimpse of some lights out of the corner of her eye. She craned her neck to look out the mudsplattered side window. Was that a road?

A painful cramp stabbed into her neck and locked. She cried out.

Her hand just barely tugged the wheel. She forced her head back around as the car began a weightless crabbing to the right, drifting slowly on all four tires, the front end surrendering to momentum and releasing its careful grip. Like a rock tossed out onto a frozen pond. She corrected the wheel to the right. Waited. Nothing. Cut it back. Nothing. Drifting, like a chain was pulling her off the road. She tapped the brakes tentatively, and that did it: The car seemed to snap; the back end swung completely around on her-she was looking back from where she had just come, flying backwards now. Pitch black. Vertigo. Perilously close to the ditch. Mud flying everywhere. The horrible sound of machinery doing what it wasn't designed to do.

She jerked the wheel to the right with authority and bounced her foot off the brake again. A rear tire caught on something. The front end of the car jumped so fast, so hard, that it stole the wheel from her hands. The front end bounced into the shallow drainage ditch. Her head slammed hard against the side glass. The car came to a grinding halt, its engine still running.

She just sat there for a moment collecting herself, checking herself with small movements, the flexing of a muscle, the movement of a joint. She got control of her breathing, though her heart was lost to adrenaline. It took the better part of a minute to get her vision down to one image.

No time! it suddenly occurred to her. In the heat of the moment she had forgotten what she was even doing out here. She forced the car into first gear-it didn't want to go-and let out the clutch. There was a bad noise, but then the front tires suddenly spun. She felt the tire dig a hole in what seemed like a fraction of a second. The front end sank perceptibly.

She tried to back up, tried to go forward: mired. The car rocked once, and then dug in deeply one final time. She climbed out. The car was beached, high centered on the lip of the ditch, both front tires rutted in up to their hubs.

She grabbed the keys. She kept jumper cables, snow chains, and a heavy-duty black rubber flashlight in the trunk' She grabbed the flashlight, pocketed the keys, and took off at a run through the sloppy mud.

The flashlight showed her the path of her car: an improbable tangle of deep ruts, crisscrossed and pretzled, that led back to two perfectly straight tire tracks and the arching curve of Tegg's tires where the four-wheel drive had turned. She followed Tegg's tracks up a road that quickly narrowed.

She found the edge of the road easier for running, though her TopSiders became heavy with mud. After about fifty yards it narrowed again, and the texture became more gravel than mud, although it remained spongy. The flashlight caught an occasional boot print, washed by the recent rains, but clearly distinguishable. Now that she caught onto it, it was one long line of boot tracks coming right at her-someone either exceptionally tall or running fast.