Michael Prescott - Blind Pursuit

Lock herself in…

But she couldn’t. There was no way she could secure the chain lock from inside the room. Working blind, she could never guide the slide bolt into the slot. Lifting it out had been difficult enough; dropping it back in would be impossible.

Panic seized her. She was stuck, trapped, unable to advance or retreat.

The engine was silent. Or maybe she simply couldn’t hear it over the hammer-and-anvil racket of her heart.

Either way, he would be here in seconds.

Her hand dived into her pocket, found the driver’s license and credit card she’d transferred there after changing out of her pajamas and robe.

If the latch was a spring mechanism, and if the beveled end faced toward her, she could loid it with one of the cards.

Had to work. Had to.

She tried the credit card first. No good. The clearance between the door and jamb was too narrow, the fit much tighter than that of the door below. The card wouldn’t go in.

Driver’s license, then. Thinner, more flexible.

She jabbed the license into the crack in the doorway, found the bolt, pressed hard against it.

Nothing.

She withdrew the card slightly, tried again to slip the latch. Still no response.

The ragged chuffs of her breath, the sweaty strands of hair dipping into her eyes, the ache in her wrists and fingers-that was all there was for her-that, and the card’s fitful probing.

From somewhere close by, the groan of a door.

He had entered the house.

Little time left. He would be at this door very soon.

With a last furious effort she drove the laminated card forward, flexing it at a sharp angle, prying madly at the bolt, and this time-thank God-the latch sprang back.

She jerked the knob, and the door swung away from her.

If the hinges creaked, he would hear and come running.

The door opened as silently as a door in a dream. No wonder she’d never heard it from the cellar.

Nearby, footsteps on hardwood. Approaching.

She slipped out of the doorway and found herself at the end of a narrow hall, dimly illuminated by a wash of ambient light from the front of the house.

To her right, the tramp of shoes.

To her left, a single door, two yards away.

She padded to it, gripped the knob, turned. The door opened an inch, letting in a rush of night air, then stopped.

Jesus, what was it this time? Another chain?

No, not a chain. A padlock, fastened to a steel hasp.

The footsteps, closer.

She shut the door again. No getting out that way. The original lock must have been faulty, so the paranoid son of a bitch had padlocked the door from the outside.

Turning, her eyes wild, heart racing, she stared down the hallway and saw no exit, no hope. She was trapped in a dead end. The only escape route would bring her face to face with her abductor when he turned the corner five seconds from now.

Think, Erin. Think or die.

The cellar door. Hanging open at a thirty-degree angle to the corridor wall.

The space between door and wall could serve as a temporary hiding place, the kind of nook a child might use in a game of hide-and-seek.

In three quick, soundless steps she ducked behind the door.

He turned the corner. She felt the floorboards quiver with his approach.

Hugging the wall, straining not to breathe, she waited.

His footsteps quickened, then stopped abruptly a yard away in time with a grunt of surprise.

He was standing at the top of the stairs, on the other side of the door. An inch of wood separated her from him.

He’ll hear my heart, she thought insanely. Hear it knocking in my chest.

She remembered childhood nightmares, dreams that had visited her after the summer of 1973, terrible dreams in which she would flee through a labyrinth of darkness, pursued by some shapeless horror. Always the dreams would end with her huddled in a cubbyhole, breathless and rigid, while the beast prowled close by, snuffling nearer, ever nearer, the odor of gasoline on its breath.

This was like that. Except tonight there would be no waking up. And in this nightmare, unlike the others, the beast would not wear the face of her father.

“How could you do this?” he breathed, his voice impossibly close. “How could you leave me?”

Fury in his words, and something more-a threat of tears.

Then a cold click of metal, the release of a pistol’s safety catch.

He had the gun with him. And this time he would use it.

She waited, grimly certain he was on to her, sure that at any moment he would slam the door shut and reveal her pinned helplessly against the wall.

Stamp of feet on the stairs.

He was descending to the cellar.

Relief weakened her. He hadn’t thought to look behind the door, after all. He wasn’t omniscient, wasn’t infallible. He could be beaten at this game.

All right, time to quit the congratulations and get going. No, hold it.

Balancing first on one foot, then the other, she removed her boots. Clutched them in her left hand, the leather warm against her fingers. Her footsteps would be muffled now.

“ I’ll kill you!” he shouted suddenly, his voice more distant than before. He had entered the cellar room.

She eased the door away from the wall and stepped out from behind it.

Do it. Now, while he was preoccupied.

She took a breath, then darted past the doorway. Dared a glance toward the bottom of the stairs, saw his huge, distorted shadow crawling on the brick wall.

Then she was beyond the doorway, padding barefoot down the hall and out into what had to be the main room of the house.

The room was large and musty and unfurnished save for a potbelly stove squatting troll-like on the floor. Starlight filtered through dust-coated windows, the panes webbed with cracks. A beamed ceiling, the rafters silvery in the subtle light, hung overhead like rows of leviathan ribs.

Moving cautiously, aware that footsteps could be heard in the cellar, she crossed yards of semidarkness to the front door.

It opened, promptly and fully, as all doors should-no improvised tools, no desperate prayers, simply a twist of the knob.

Air on her face. The oily smell of greasewood. Click and buzz of nocturnal insects.

Quietly she shut the door, then put on her boots and sprinted across a gravel court to the gate.

It was wrapped in multiple coils of chain, secured with a rusty but formidable padlock.

Climb over? No, impossible. Wicked barbed wire was strung across the top. And on both sides of the gate, barbed-wire fence extended along the roadside-five bands of wire, the lowest a foot from the ground, the highest just above her head, knotted to wooden posts driven into the ground at four-foot intervals.

She couldn’t get through that fence or over it, not without slashing herself to tatters and leaving a trail of blood.

She turned and surveyed the area. The place was a ranch of some kind, the main house a one-story wood-frame structure, flanked on the left by a modest barn with a fenced paddock attached. Against a waning crescent moon, the barn’s weathervane and cupola were etched in stark silhouette.

Something was missing from the scene. She looked closer at the house, took note of the carport extending from a side wall.

Empty.

Where was the vehicle she’d heard?

Dimly she made out tire tracks in the gravel at her feet, curving toward the barn. The big double doors were shut to conceal her abductor’s truck or van, parked inside.

And perhaps to conceal her Taurus also.

He had made her write to Annie, saying she’d gone away. The ruse would fool no one if her car was still sitting in its reserved space at Pantano Fountains.

She sprinted for the barn, leaving the gravel behind, crossing yards of stiff, dead grass. The big double door loomed before her, the old wood ragged with strips of peeling paint. The barn must have been green once, with a white roof and orange trim-unusual color scheme for a desert ranch.