Michael Prescott - Blind Pursuit

She would give him no trouble. He was certain of that. No trouble ever again.

Of course, he could never let her go.

He’d decided as much last night. She had seen his face… and the ranch.

He would keep her alive until his treatment was complete. Then… kill her. Not out of compulsion, and not by fire. He should be rid of those impulses by that time.

A bullet in the brain. That was how he would do it. Neat and quick.

The killing would afford him no pleasure. It would be a simple matter of practical necessity. She’d brought it on herself, after all. If the little bitch had just been more cooperative “You going to lunch?”

Annie’s voice.

He looked up from the lily of the valley in his hands, its slender stem wound in rose wire and stem-wrap tape. “Huh?”

“It’s one o’clock.”

“Oh. Yes.”

So late already. He’d been completely unaware of the time.

Though he wasn’t hungry, he had better eat. Best not to disrupt his daily routine. Normally he went next door for a deli sandwich at this hour, and Annie did likewise upon his return at one-thirty.

“See you in a bit,” he said automatically as he stepped out from behind the counter.

She nodded without answer. She, too, was distracted by thoughts of Erin, he knew, but they were thoughts of a very different kind from his own.

He left the shop, emerging into the afternoon glare.

Instantly a blanket of heat smothered him.

It was like summer out here. An Arizona summer, which was a dress rehearsal for hell.

Behind him, the shop door swung shut with a rattle and bang.

He barely heard it. He was thinking of Erin. Erin, staked out in the wash under the sun.

Had it been this hot all day?

He remembered turning on the air-conditioning at nine. The duct fans rarely had stopped whirring, and the compressor’s motor throbbed steadily like a pumping heart. Consumed by his inner struggle, he hadn’t noticed, hadn’t even thought about it.

Yet the UPS man had been sweating hard when he lugged in those cartons at ten. And customers had kept making comments to Annie about the weather, hadn’t they? And the paper-flower vendor from Nogalesmucho calo r, he’d said. Hot day.

Damn it, he should have been more alert.

Blinking sweat out of his eyes, he gazed across the shopping plaza at the clock tower of a bank. Below the clock a digital board displayed the temperature: 101 degrees.

Twenty degrees hotter than yesterday’s high. Well above normal for this time of year. And at lower elevations the temperature would be three to five degrees higher than in the foothills. At the ranch, the mercury must be brushing 105 on the scale.

Desert soil, absorbing the sun’s heat, became hotter than the air. Erin might be roasting in temperatures of 115 degrees or more.

“My God,” Gund whispered, drawing a stare from a woman bustling past with a child in tow.

He must get to Erin. Take her inside and apply first aid for heat exhaustion or heatstroke.

If it wasn’t already too late.

The trip to the ranch and back would require at least an hour, twice the length of his usual lunch break. He needed an excuse.

With a glance at his van, he had one.

Annie was surprised to see him reenter the shop only a minute after leaving. “Forget something?”

“No. Well, yes. What I forgot was my van. I mean, I need to take it to a body shop, get an estimate for insurance purposes. You know.”

Ordinarily he was a cool and practiced liar, but now the words kept jamming up in his mouth. It was too much to handle all at once-the compulsion rising in him, Erin cooking in the sun, the need for urgency balanced with the charade of calm.

“Okay,” Annie said, puzzlement in her eyes.

“It may take a while. An hour or longer. I’m sorry.”

“Use all the time you need.” She gifted him with a warm smile. “How could I possibly object after you’ve been such a help?”

He did not smile in answer. He never smiled.

“Thanks, Annie,” he said simply, turning to go.

Her voice stopped him. “Harold? You didn’t hurt yourself in that accident, did you?”

“Of course not. What makes you ask?”

“You seem… tense.”

“It’s the weather.”

That much, at least, was true.

Starting the van’s engine, he looked at the bank tower again. As he watched, the last digit of the Fahrenheit reading flickered, and the display changed from 101 to 102 degrees.

The day was continuing to heat up. By the time he arrived at the ranch, thirty minutes from now, what would the temperature be?

Gund reversed away from the curb and pulled onto Craycroft Road, speeding south.

Erin was dying.

She knew it, in those rare moments when she knew anything.

Shortly after the sun reached its zenith, she’d noticed that chilly beads of sweat were no longer seeping from her hairline or rolling down her arms. Her skin, having lost its sheen of perspiration, was becoming flushed and dry, as dry as her parched mouth and burning eyes.

That was when she’d understood that she would not survive until evening. Would not survive even another two hours.

The sun had wheeled westward since then, into early afternoon. Must be one o’clock by now, or later. She had little time left.

Just as well. Death would bring release. Release from thirst and cramps and fevered thoughts.

No.

She rallied. For the thousandth time she strained her shoulders, chafing her bound wrists against the stake.

The rope was fraying. It had to split soon. Had to.

Then she sagged, giving up. She had long since lost all strength and muscular coordination. Even if the rope did break, her nerveless fingers could not undo the knot securing her ankles to the other stake, and her legs, knotted in cramps, could not carry her to shade.

She was finished.

Her pulse, ticking in her ears, was rapid but weak-a frantic flutter that signaled imminent collapse. Nausea bubbled in her stomach. Wracking shivers, like halfhearted convulsions, shook her without warning.

She wondered how she would die, exactly. Would there be a slow gray-out, a long slide into unconsciousness, deepening to coma, ending in death? Or staccato alterations of awareness and oblivion, culminating in a few final moments of wrenching agony as her heart failed?

It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. The death she imagined was only a dream. Her hours of exposure, her captivity in the cellar, her abduction-all of it, a dream.

She had never lived in Arizona, that place of barren land and unforgiving heat. Had never left Sierra Springs. There had been no reason to leave it. No fatal fire, no inexplicable craziness that possessed a loving father, no years of post-traumatic recovery, of unanswered questions and haunted sleep.

She was a young girl again, seven years old, playing in the green yard of the Reilly house, under a maple tree’s cooling umbrella of leaves. A swing hung from a low branch, and Erin climbed onto it, gripping the rusty chains. She kicked the ground away, and then she was flying, propelling herself to ever greater heights in wild, reckless swoops that carried her out of shadow and into the clear California sunlight.

Below, Annie yelled encouragement. Higher, Erin, higher!

Erin leaned back on the wooden seat, legs thrust out, warm air whistling past her as the chains creaked and her hair streamed like a comet’s tail, and she was laughing.

Laughing…

She tried to laugh and choked on the wadded cloth in her mouth. The effort required to stifle her gag reflex jerked her back to this moment.

The swing was gone, and Annie, and the green yard, and there was only heat and dust and pain.

What time was it? Two o’clock? Two-thirty?