Michael Prescott - Blind Pursuit

In the belly of the monster. The string of words ran through Walker’s mind, a random fragment of thought.

“It was hard to breathe.” Annie gazed into the distance, her face in profile, moisture glistening on her cheek. “Erin pulled me to the floor, where the air was cleaner. We crawled into the kitchen. No flames there yet, no gasoline trail. She helped me up on the counter, opened the window and punched out the screen, then pushed me through and followed.”

Her shoulders lifted in a shaky shrug, and abruptly all the breath seemed to sigh out of her.

“Anyway, that’s it,” she finished. “That’s how we survived.”

Walker shook his head. Seven years old, hardly more than babies-yet so incredibly brave, both of them.

For although Erin clearly had taken the lead, Annie had needed courage, too, more courage then she gave herself credit for-the courage to leave the imagined safety of the bedroom and face the dragon’s scorching breath.

“So you see?” She looked at him, desperate intensity shining in her eyes. “You see why I have to help her? She saved me. Now she’s in trouble, and it’s my turn to rescue her. It’s my turn.”

He tried to be gentle. “You’ve done all you can.”

“I haven’t done anything,” she snapped, turning away.

In the parking lot, watching her unlock her car, he looked for words of reassurance. “From everything you’ve told me, I’d say your sister can take of herself.”

“She needs me now.”

“How can you be sure?”

“SOS,” she said hotly.

“Annie…”

Her eyes flashed at him, hard and angry. “I know you think I’m overreacting. 1 know you think I should forget about it. I know you think Erin is fine, just fine. But you’re wrong.”

“I just hate to see you so worked up over-”

“You’re wrong,” she said again, and then she was behind the wheel, slamming the door, revving the engine, racing out of the lot and down the street at twice the posted speed limit, daring him or any other cop to ticket her.

He stared after the car until it hooked around a corner with a shriek of tires. Then he sighed. He supposed he would never see her again.

Or perhaps he would. Once Erin turned up unharmed, sheepish about her temporary abdication of responsibility, Annie might drop by the squad room to fill him in. He hoped so.

A new thought made him frown. The seven-year-old who had kept her presence of mind in a blazing house didn’t sound like the type to ever abdicate responsibility. A fire hadn’t rattled her; how likely was it that she would fall victim to the pressures of work?

Standing very still, feeling the steady heat of the sun on the back of his head. Walker wondered if Annie could be right.

He abducted her, she’d said, and forced her to write this phony letter, and then later he returned for the Tegretol because, without it, she could die.

Was it possible?

Oh, hell. Of course not.

What did he have to go on? An incorrect street address on an envelope? A letter that was oddly terse and impersonal?

There was nothing to justify any further investigation. Nothing.

“Sorry, Annie,” he said to the silence around him.

Before entering the station, he remembered to straighten his tie. His neck, he noticed, was damp with sweat.

The temperature must be ninety-five already; low hundreds by afternoon. Summer weather, coming early.

A real scorcher, he thought grimly, opening the lobby door.

Hot.

The sun blazed like a klieg light, painfully bright, branding a blurred red circle on her vision even through her closed eyelids.

Waves of heat radiated from the ground under her. She thought of a griddle, of sizzling meat.

Through the gag still clogging her mouth, Erin let out a choked, plaintive noise, too indistinct to be a moan.

She turned her head first to one side, then the other, trying to avert her face from the sun. The sand planted searing kisses on her cheeks.

Somewhere in the world there was shade. A cool breeze, a rustle of green leaves… She remembered Muir Woods near San Francisco. She remembered Sierra Springs.

No shade here, not anymore. The walls of the arroyo had cupped her in shadow for only a precious hour after daybreak. As the sun climbed higher, the shadow had rolled back slowly like a receding tide, exposing first her legs, then her upper body, and finally her face.

Her eyes fluttered open briefly. From the sun’s position in the eastern sky, she estimated the time at ten o’clock. She would not again be sheltered from the burning rays until evening, countless hours away.

By then it might not matter. By then, if her abductor had not returned, she might be dead.

She had been sure he meant to burn her last night. As he climbed the embankment, she struggled fiercely with the ropes, knowing that it was futile, that soon he would splash gasoline over her body and then

… and then…

At a restaurant years ago she’d watched the chef prepare a flambeed dish at the next table. The flare of the match, the breath-stopping burst of flame That was how it would be. An eruption of agony, a final surge of terror, and then, mercifully, nothing more, ever.

He had disappeared into the night. After that, a long interval of waiting. She’d lain paralyzed, watching the rim of the arroyo, listening for his return.

The sound of hammering, distant and inexplicable, had reached her. Sometime later, the cough of an engine.

His van, pulling away. The motor fading, fading… Gone.

He’d left her. She would not burn tonight.

For a few giddy minutes the intensity of her relief had blinded her to the full implications of his departure.

Then gradually she’d begun to ponder his motive. Clearly he had been furious with her. He’d called her a bad girl, told her that he regretted what he was doing, but that it had become necessary.

He must have been planning to burn her, then had changed his mind. Yes, that was it. Somehow, at the last moment, he’d made contact with the better part of himself, the embryonic conscience that had taught him about remorse.

Or perhaps not.

Perhaps she had misinterpreted his purpose all along. Perhaps his intention had never been to kill her, only to inflict punishment. To leave her here, staked supine at the bottom of the wash, exposed to the night chill and, later, to the heat of a desert day…

Flat on her back, gazing at the cold spray of stars, she had felt relief fade, supplanted by a new dread.

He might not ever come back. Might leave her to suffer a lingering death.

Anger had made her strong, as it had in the cellar.

Her wrists twisted. The rope binding them was knotted tightly, too tight to be worked free.

Straining, she’d reached out to run her fingertips over the metal stake above her head. The edge was sharp.

Shrugging her shoulders, extending her arms a few extra inches, she had pressed the loop of rope hard against the stake. Slowly she’d begun to rub in a monotonous sawing motion. Up, down. Up, down.

Within minutes, pain had radiated from her shoulder blades and neck. It had started as an ache, then sharpened rapidly to a series of electric twinges, each one contracting her facial muscles into an agonized wince.

She’d kept working. The constellations had wheeled toward dawn, and the night chill had settled deeper into her bones.

From time to time she had rested, hoping to revive muscles strained by fatigue. The worst torture was not pain or weariness, but uncertainty. She couldn’t see the binding on her wrists, couldn’t know if her efforts were showing results or merely wasting irreplaceable reserves of energy.

Pink dawn had congealed into a red sunrise. Astonishing how quickly the day had warmed up.