Michael Prescott - Blind Pursuit

Mrs. Williams took out a phone book and found the number of the police department’s Traffic Enforcement Division. Annie was about to dial when she realized she couldn’t remember Erin’s license plate.

“We have it on file,” Mrs. Williams said, opening a cabinet drawer. “Have to ensure that our tenants park in their reserved spaces.”

Annie reached a traffic-division sergeant, who took down the car’s make, model, and license number, then put her on hold. She waited through an interval of silence, shifting her weight and wishing she could make her damn mouth shed its idiot grin.

You are no good in a crisis, Annie, no good at all.

If this was a crisis. But it wasn’t; it couldn’t be.

In her mind she heard the sergeant’s voice, oddly tentative. Ms. Reilly? I’m sorry, ma’am, but your sister was in a crash earlier today… Hit by an oncoming truck, a Mack truck, big one… She’s dead, ma ‘am.

She’s in a coma, ma’am.

She’s paralyzed, a quadriplegic.

She’s -

“Hello?” The sergeant again. The real sergeant, not her fantasy tormentor.

“Yes?” Fear throbbed in her chest, and she felt the spiraling onset of light-headedness.

“I’ve checked. There’s no report of any accident involving the vehicle you described.”

Annie put out her free hand to grip the edge of Mrs. Williams’s desk. “I see. Well… that’s good, isn’t it?”

“Ma’am?”

“But then-where is she?”

The sergeant cleared his throat. “Excuse me?”

Annie blinked. “Nothing. I just… nothing. Thank you very much for your help.”

Her fingers continued to grip the handset even after she had set it down in its cradle.

Mrs. Williams regarded her with worried eyes. “No traffic accident?”

“No.”

“I’m glad to hear that, at least.”

“Yes. So am I.”

“Do you have any idea… I mean… Has your sister ever disappeared before?”

“She hasn’t disappeared,” Annie snapped.

Mrs. Williams said nothing.

Annie lowered her head, bit her lip. Her knees were trembling.

“Sorry,” she whispered. “I guess… I guess she has.”

“Anybody there? Can anybody hear me?”

Fists hammering the cellar door. Shock waves of sound echoing in the room.

“If you hear me, please answer! Please! ”

Nothing.

Exhausted, Erin turned away from the door and slumped against the wall.

She had expected no response. Her abductor was too smart to hide her in a place frequented by other people. She doubted there was another habitation within a mile of this one.

Still, there was always a chance someone would pass by, near enough to hear her-a mailman on a rural route, a child playing in a forbidden yard, a gas-company meter reader. Anyone.

That was why, several times since waking, she had battered at the door and strained her voice in futile cries.

She assumed it was now noon or shortly after; without a wristwatch or other timepiece, she could judge time only by her schedule of meals. She’d already eaten breakfast-a banana and an orange, accompanied by her next-to-last Tegretol, washed down with lukewarm water from the sillcock-and she was beginning to think about lunch.

The rest of her morning had been spent keeping busy. The dirt and mildew in the room had offended her; she’d set to work with paper towels, scrubbing and cleaning, until the worst of the grime was gone. Next she’d organized the contents of her suitcase, straightened and smoothed the futon’s cotton blanket, dusted the chairs.

Those chores done, she’d stripped off her pajamas and robe, given herself a sponge bath, washed and combed her hair, subjected herself to the humiliating exercise of urination with the help of one of the empty milk jugs left for that purpose, and finally dressed.

She’d started with underpants and a bra, slipping them on with distaste bordering on revulsion. He had handled these items, these most personal garments. Feeling them against her skin had been almost like… like feeling his hands on her body.

Mustn’t think about it, she’d told herself. Anyway, he had probably worn gloves while packing the suitcase.

Looking through the other clothes he’d brought her, she had selected a cotton shirt, denim shorts, and boots.

The shirt was beige-an optimistic choice. It would blend in with the sere tones of the desert should she find a way to escape.

Escape. Sure.

She might as well have put on a bright red shirt with a target painted on it for all the difference it made. She wasn’t getting out of here.

With that thought, they began to prick at her again-vague and tentative manifestations of claustrophobia, which had been teasing her all morning. She paced the room, fighting to dispel the groundless fear.

Well, of course it was groundless. Utterly irrational. She ought to know; she treated phobias all the time.

The walls were awfully close, though. She could cross from one end of the room to the other in four strides.

Back and forth, back and forth, her perambulations ticking like the strokes of a pendulum.

Low ceiling-she had to dodge the hundred-watt bulb on the chain. The room’s only source of light-if the bulb failed, she would be sealed up in darkness.

Don’t think about it.

She didn’t want to, but the awareness of confinement was getting to her, accelerating her heartbeat, clenching the muscles of her abdomen.

Trapped here in this underground chamber-it was like being buried alive.

Suppose her abductor never returned. No one would know where she was.

The meager provisions he’d left would soon run out. The bulb would flicker and fail. In the dark she would starve slowly; deprived of her medicine, she would suffer seizures. Eventually she would die.

But first she would surely go insane.

“Don’t,” she snapped at herself, but the ugly thoughts would not leave her alone.

She sat in her chair and closed her eyes. Willed herself to relax, to go limp. She had done it last night when she was being carried to an unknown fate; she could do it now.

But the stiffness in her neck and shoulders wouldn’t abate, and her breathing still came fast and shallow. She was starting to hyperventilate.

Go away, Erin. Go away to some peaceful spot far from here.

She had visited San Francisco last year. Muir Woods, northwest of the city, had fascinated her. She hadn’t seen such dense stands of trees since her early childhood in California.

Now she pictured herself among the dizzying redwoods, in a place of birdsong and cool shadows and rustling greenery, misty in early morning, the air pregnant with droplets that tingled on her face.

So different from the heat and aridity, the vast spaciousness of the desert. Here in the forest she could see no more than a few yards into the tangled groves. The sun, low over the horizon, was hidden behind thick walls of foliage. Canopied branches shut out the sky, locking the woods in perpetual shade.

Colonnades of tree trunks, scrims of leaves… all of it close-too close-hemming her in. The moist air, clogging her lungs. Hard to breathe Damn.

She stood, her heart hammering against her ribs.

So much for visualization exercises. What was another strategy to control phobic panic?

Distraction.

She had tried that already, when she cleaned her cell. Hopeful of spotting something else to tidy up, she scanned the floor, but the place was immaculate save for two small rectangular cards lying near her suitcase.

Her driver’s license and MasterCard. She’d pocketed them in her robe last night after failing to slip the latch on the door; they must have fallen out when she folded the robe this morning. She picked them up and put them in the side pocket of her shorts.