Michael Prescott - Blind Pursuit

The ticking of a clock had been the only reply.

In the den she’d noticed Erin’s computer, the keyboard covered by a dust shield. Erin kept a journal on the hard disk. Walker had recommended reading it for clues to her state of mind.

A waste of time, most likely; still, no option could be overlooked. And Annie had known of nothing else to do.

Sitting at the desk, she’d booted up the word processing software. With a vague feeling of guilt about invading her sister’s privacy, she’d begun to read the journal. The earliest entries were dated two years ago; the file was forty pages long.

She’d assumed the journal was personal, but quickly discovered she’d been wrong. It was concerned almost exclusively with the progress of Erin’s patients. Little about her private life was included.

Even so, Annie had read it all. She’d sat there staring at the amber monitor for two hours. And she’d learned nothing.

In Erin’s notes there had been no hint of any intention to stop work or leave town. Quite the contrary, in fact. The last entry, dated April 16, had concluded: Tony still resisting; try sentence-completion Wed.

Wednesday was tomorrow.

No, Erin hadn’t been planning to abandon her patients. But Annie had already known that.

Grimacing, she rubbed her forehead.

Aspirin. She needed aspirin. Major headache coming on.

Wearily she wandered down the hall, into the bathroom.

The door to the medicine cabinet hung open. Funny. She thought she remembered Walker closing it.

She looked inside. Allergy pills, antacid tablets, antibacterial ointments…

Then she frowned, suddenly alert, headache and exhaustion forgotten.

Where was the Tegretol?

The new refill of Erin’s prescription had been kept on the upper shelf. Walker had studied it, then put it back-and now it was gone.

But it couldn’t be gone.

Had Walker only pretended to replace the bottle? Had he taken it for some reason? No, ridiculous. Removing property from the premises without permission must be illegal. Anyway, why would he want it?

She looked through all the items on every shelf of the cabinet. No Tegretol.

The bottle had disappeared. And the cabinet had been left open…

As if someone had been here. As if someone had taken the pills.

Crazy thought. She’d been in the apartment the whole time. Nobody could have broken in without her hearing it.

But maybe there’d been no need to break in. Maybe the intruder had used Erin’s keys.

Maybe it had been Erin herself.

No, impossible, unthinkable. She was imagining all this. Of course she was.

Yet even as she told herself as much, her gaze crept to the far end of the bathroom, to the shower stall and the blue shower curtain hanging limply from the rod.

The curtain was translucent, but the glow of the ceiling light barely reached into the stall. Someone could be hidden behind it.

And suddenly she felt with unnatural certainty that someone was.

“Erin?” she whispered. “Erin, are you there?”

She took a step toward the curtain.

Every instinct shouted at her not to touch it, not to draw it back and expose whatever-whoever-might be concealed on the other side.

Another step. She was within reach of the blue plastic folds.

Her hand closed over the edge of the curtain.

Don’t, a panicky internal voice warned.

A jerk of her shoulder, and she threw aside the curtain.

Hooks scraped noisily on the rod. The curtain accordioned against the tiled wall.

No one was there.

Annie exhaled a slow sigh.

Nerves. That was all it had been. Just nerves getting the better of her.

She turned away from the shower, then glanced back to reassure herself that it was empty. A soft chuckle briefly startled her before she recognized it as her own.

Nobody had come here to steal the Tegretol. The stuff was missing for some perfectly ordinary reason. Perhaps it simply had fallen off the shelf to the floor, then rolled out of sight.

She stooped, looking under the sink and behind the door.

Nothing.

But in a corner a blue-green sparkle caught her attention. A small turquoise stone, catching the light of the overhead lamp.

The stone bothered Annie, though she wasn’t sure why. She picked it up, studying it with a frown.

Then she realized what was troubling her. Erin never wore turquoise. Disliked it intensely, in fact. Always had, ever since childhood, despite the gem’s ubiquity in Arizona.

So what was it doing here?

Well, other people had used the bathroom. Friends, neighbors, anyone who’d dropped by for a visit. Presumably one of them had lost the stone, which might easily have fallen free of a gem-inlaid boot or purse.

The missing Tegretol was a mystery, but in all likelihood the turquoise was of no significance at all.

Even so, before leaving the apartment, Annie wrapped the stone carefully in a tissue and put it in her purse.

Gund didn’t relax until he had pulled out of the parking lot onto Broadway. When Erin’s apartment building shrank to nothingness in his sideview mirror, he began to breathe normally again.

He had avoided an encounter with Annie by a dangerously thin margin. If he hadn’t heard movement in the den and left the bathroom immediately, ducking into the living room with a heartbeat to spare, she would have come face to face with him.

And now she would be dead.

His grip on the steering wheel tightened. He pictured himself squeezing her slender neck. Choking, strangling…

Bad thought. He didn’t want to kill her. Didn’t want either of them-Annie or her sister-to die. Of course he didn’t.

Of course.

At Houghton Road he hooked south, heading for the ranch.

It took Erin a half hour, by her estimate, to make the tool she needed.

Carefully she had cracked off the fine teeth at the narrow end of the comb until that part of the spine had been stripped naked, a spindly, mangled finger.

Then, rubbing the comb against the can opener’s blade, back and forth, back and forth, she had scraped away layers of plastic. Tortoiseshell shavings had accumulated on the floor.

The thought had occurred to her that a witness to her behavior would conclude that she’d lost it. Poor thing, a sympathetic voice had clucked in her mind, she’s cracked under the strain.

There was method to her madness, though. At least she hoped there was.

After two hundred strokes the comb’s narrow end was as sleekly tapered as a stiletto, its tip nearly as keen.

Not an ice pick. But close.

She wondered if she still had time to use it. Maybe safer to wait until after her abductor had come and gone.

But she was only guessing at the time, after all. It might be hours earlier than she imagined.

Before proceeding, she took a moment to swallow her last Tegretol. The bottle was empty now. If her abductor didn’t return and she was unable to break free, then within twenty-four hours the first withdrawal symptoms would develop. Status epilepticus. A bad way to die.

Quickly to the door, heart drumming.

The doorframe had warped slightly with age, leaving considerable clearance between the door and the jamb. Erin inserted the modified end of the comb into the crack, pressing its sharpened tip against the side of the bolt at the point where the small movable bar sank into the socket in the striker plate.

The comb slipped off the bolt the first time she levered it sideways. No good. Maybe if she held it in place with one hand while manipulating it with the other…

That did the trick. She only wished her hands weren’t so damp, and that they would stop trembling.

She could do it, could bust out of this joint, run away before her jailer returned.