Michael Prescott - Deadly Pursuit

Too late she realized she’d entered the kitchen. This route led back to the radio room. Dead end.

She spun around, hoping to retrace her steps, but Jack was already charging in pursuit. His face was crazed, splotchy with fury. He ran limping, blood wet on his pants.

No choice now but to retreat into the radio room. She slammed the door, locked it.

The knob rattled. Jack’s voice through the door, muffled: “God damn you, bitch!”

The room was narrow, low-ceilinged, the walls closing in. She had to get out of here, had to get out of here.

Through the thin gap between the door and the frame, just above the latch bolt, poked the edge of a credit card. It withdrew, then appeared again, an inch lower.

Jack was trying to slip the latch.

She glanced wildly around the room. The only exit was the window, swollen shut. She was sure she couldn’t open it.

But smashing it-that was another story.

She ran to the chair where she’d been tied up, hefted it with a grunt of strain.

The latch slid momentarily, jostled loose by the card, then sprang back into its socket before Jack could open the door. He would be quicker next time.

Hurry, hurry.

She shoved the chair through the windowpane in a cascade of glass fragments. Climbed up on the sill, swung her legs out.

Behind her, the door creaked open like a casket lid.

She flung herself forward. Hit the ground on one knee and dived into a thicket of saw palmettos. Burrowed in deeper, thrusting the pointed, fan-shaped leaves out of her way, belly-crawling over the tangled, creeping stems that littered the ground like a nest of snakes.

A shout from the window: “Sorry, Mrs. Gardner! You’re not getting away!”

Jack probably couldn’t see her. But he could follow anyway. There was no way for her to move fast enough in the choking brush to evade his pursuit-not without making enough noise to draw his attention.

Had it all been for nothing, then? All her efforts, wasted?

Desperately she wriggled forward on elbows and knees, hot tears welling in her eyes.

Standing at the window of the radio room, blood pasting his pants leg to his thigh, Jack Dance smiled.

This was what he lived for. Con jobs were lucrative, and ordinary seductions could be briefly satisfying, but nothing could compare with the twitch and jerk of a woman’s body, her chortling death rattle, the blank amazement that invariably lingered in her unseeing eyes.

A few yards from the house, thickets of underbrush rustled frantically. Kirstie was somewhere in that tangle of shadows.

Even without his flashlight he could pick up her trail. Soon he would pay her back for the red hole in his leg.

Still grinning, he gripped the edges of the window frame and began to hoist himself onto the sill.

“Jack!”

He froze. The voice was Steve’s, and it came from inside the house.

“Goddammit, Jack, don’t you touch her!”

Hell. Little Stevie had been fading fast on the trail; Jack had assumed the sedative had put him under by now. But apparently adrenaline, triggered by concern for his wife, had restored his flagging energy.

Jack lowered his feet to the floor and moved away from the window. Kirstie would have to wait. As long as Steve had the gun and remained alert and active, he took top priority.

Steve’s footsteps pounded for the front door. No doubt he was expecting to find Kirstie on the dock. When he saw she wasn’t there, he would search the house.

Jack had to move fast.

He crept into the kitchen. From the scatter of silverware on the floor he retrieved his Swiss Army knife.

In the foyer, the front door banged open.

“Kirstie! Jack!”

Steve must be standing on the porch, peering at the dock in the strong starlight. There was a new quality to his voice, a blend of desperation, anguish, and escalating hysteria.

He would shoot Jack when he saw him. Shoot to kill. Jack had no doubt of that.

Got to take you out first, old buddy. And I think I know the way.

He switched off the lights in the kitchen and dining room.

The front door thudded shut. Fast footsteps retreated down the loggia. Having failed to spot Kirstie on the dock, Steve was exploring the house’s east wing.

Jack entered the living room. He grabbed the remote-control device for the color TV, stuck it in his shirt pocket.

The room was lit by two table lamps and a torchiere. He unplugged all three lights and cut the cords.

Darkness. The only remaining illumination, a faint glow from the loggia.

He crouched behind the sofa, the knife in one hand, the remote-control in the other. Waited, heart beating hard and steady in a rapid metronomic rhythm.

Never before had he gone up against armed prey.

Danger added a new, electrifying dimension to the sport.

One thrust of the knife. That was all the chance he would have.

And all he would need.

Steve needed every bit of his energy to keep his legs moving, his eyes open, his head clear.

He understood now. Understood what Jack had done to him. The sleeping pills. Jack had tricked him into drugging himself.

On the trail he’d been close to collapse when Kirstie blundered into view. The shock of seeing her-the spurt of terror at the prospect of what Jack would do when he caught her-had been enough to rouse him to one last effort.

He had to find Jack. Not to talk with him, not to bide time until morning. All of that was over. It should never have begun.

Once, years ago, Steve had read an article about dogs crossbred with wolves to produce half-breed pets. The domesticated wolves were friendly, loyal, capable of learning commands. In most respects they seemed indistinguishable from normal dogs.

But at any moment, unpredictably, the wild wolf in the animal’s makeup could tear through the semi-civilized veneer to slash and kill. There had been ugly, horrific incidents.

Jack was like that. An untamed thing, wearing the gloss of civilized urbanity. Because he spoke well and dressed nicely, because he smiled and laughed, he disguised the snarling predator within.

On the boat at the reef, it had been almost possible to forget that this man killed for pleasure, cheated women of their lives for a fleeting sexual thrill.

But when he cut Anastasia’s throat, he had been truly himself. Steve had seen his face then.

He had glimpsed the same look-the same savage appetite-as Jack took off after Kirstie on the forest trail.

Steve would not play the role of partner to a wild beast. To do so would be to surrender his humanity to the bestial side of himself.

There would be no more rationalizations, no more compromises, no more bargains. He would find Jack and march him out to the generator shed and lock him inside.

Then take Kirstie to Islamorada and confess everything to the authorities.

He would go to prison. For years. Maybe for life. But he would survive. And through it all, he would hold clear title to his own soul.

The bedroom doorway expanded before him. Sudden vivid imagery crowded his brain-Kirstie cornered in the room, flung supine on the bed, beaten and molested by Jack. Nightmarish scenes, distorted and terrifying. He pushed them away. The sedative was playing with his head, blurring the borderline between sensory input and hallucination.

The pistol in his hand felt reassuringly real. Tightening his grip on the handle, he slipped into the bedroom.

Empty.

He checked out the bathroom next. Foam from the fire extinguisher still slimed the walls. An acrid odor, a memory of smoke, hung in the air like a dissipating ghost.

No one in here, either. The west wing of the house, then. The kitchen, the radio room. That was where he’d find them.

He doubled back, fighting the looseness of his knees, the icy numbness in his hands.