Michael Prescott - Blind Pursuit

No, not yet. But if she could hold out that long, until two-thirty or three, when the sun would be behind her, not shining quite so directly on her face…

Then she rolled her head to one side and pressed her right temple to her forearm, pinioned over her head. She felt the febrile heat radiating from, her own skin.

I’m radioactive, she thought with a giddy stab at humor. Erin Reilly, the human microwave.

Her last hope withered. No chance she could last until mid-afternoon. Another half hour, at most, was all she had.

Away again to Sierra Springs, the shaded yard. The swing described a final, reckless arc. Then her father, kind and sane, took her and Annie by the hand and led them upstairs to their bedroom. Night had fallen, although, strangely, it had been daytime only a moment earlier.

A moth beat against the window screen. Crickets chirruped in singsong choruses. Somewhere on the ground floor their mother hummed a soft, sad tune.

Albert Reilly tucked in Annie first, then moved to Erin’s bed and pulled the covers up to her neck. She smelled his masculine scent, comforting in the dark. His hands stroked her hair, her forehead. Large hands. Sensitive hands.

“Christ,” he whispered, “you’re feverish.”

That seemed an odd thing for her father to say. But she had no power left to question it.

Snug in her bed, Erin slept.

A shock of cool water on her face revived her. She blinked alert and found herself sprawled on a concrete floor, propped against a brick wall, both surfaces wonderfully cool.

The cellar. She was back in the cellar.

And the man swabbing her face with a damp washcloth, his features blurred and doubled, discolored by the red haze that hung over everything like a permanent filter…

Him.

He had returned for her. Had saved her life.

She licked her lips, then realized that her mouth wasn’t stoppered with a gag any longer, nor was it parched with thirst. Her tongue, running lightly over her gums, tasted salt.

He must have force-fed her a few sips of salt water. Standard remedy for dehydration.

The cloth moved lower, wetting her neck, her collarbone. At her cleavage he hesitated, as though debating whether or not to probe deeper. Then abruptly he rose upright and crossed the room to the sillcock in the wall.

A low hiss-flow of water from the tap. He held the cloth under the stream, then knelt by her again and began to scrub her legs.

She observed all this with blank detachment, feeling nothing except boundless relief at being indoors, and dangerous gratitude toward the man who’d brought her here.

The cloth was chilly against her ankles. Gooseflesh bumped up on her legs. She shivered.

“Cold?” he asked.

The brief, staccato chatter of her teeth was sufficient response.

“Better get you into bed.”

He carried her to the foam pad in the corner, deposited her gently on her side. Eyes shut, she felt him draw the cotton blanket over her, leaving only her head exposed.

“Sleep,” he whispered, and for a disoriented moment reality melded with hallucination, and he was her father, tucking her in at bedtime. “I’ll be back this evening. You’ll be all better by then. And we’ll continue our work.”

Yes, she thought dreamily. Our work. Got to continue… the work

…

It seemed vitally important that the work proceed, the most important thing in the world, though she no longer recalled just what sort of work it was or why it mattered.

Her breathing slowed and deepened, and she went away again-not to Sierra Springs this time, but to nowhere at all.

Annie was rearranging her display of gift baskets, not out of necessity but simply to take her mind off Erin, when the shop door jingled open at two-fifteen.

She turned, and a sudden smile dimpled her cheeks. “Jeez, Harold, look at you. You’re a mess.”

Gund paused in the doorway, gazing down at himself. His pants, badly rumpled, were soiled from knees to cuffs with blotches of tan desert dust.

He blinked as if embarrassed. “Yes… well… there was some damage to the chassis. I had to crawl under the van to check it out.”

“We’d better get you cleaned up or you’ll scare away the clientele.”

Briskly she rummaged in a drawer behind the counter until she found a large brush useful for cleaning clothes and smocks dirtied by potting soil.

“So what was the estimate?” she asked as she stepped to the middle of the room.

“Twelve hundred dollars.”

She let out a low whistle. “That’s a bundle.”

“My insurance will pay for it.”

She stooped and began brushing his pants with quick, vigorous strokes. “Was it the other driver’s fault?”

“Yeah. He cut me off.”

His answer was clipped, his posture stiff. Apparently he found her close contact uncomfortable. Funny for a man in his forties to be so shy.

Well, this would take only a minute. To distract him, she said, “If the other guy’s to blame, he should pay.”

“He hasn’t got any insurance.”

“Not even liability? Isn’t that illegal in Arizona?”

“He’s from out of state. A snowbird.”

Annie frowned. Snowbirds were part-year residents, fleeing harsh northern winters. If this negligent motorist could afford to maintain two homes, he ought to be able to reimburse Harold out of pocket.

She was about to say as much when she noticed the belt.

A western-style belt, black leather with a snakeskin overlay and a brass buckle. Harold wore it often, nearly every day, but she’d never gotten a close look at it before.

The overlay was studded with small turquoise beads.

One of the beads was missing.

Her hand opened reflexively, and she dropped the brush.

“Oops. Clumsy me.” The words were spoken by someone far away, someone who would remain composed in any crisis, someone like her sister. “Think I’m done, anyhow.”

Gund took a quick step back, as if anxious to distance himself from her.

She replaced the brush in the drawer. Her mind was frozen. When she opened her mouth, she had no idea what she was about to say.

“Gotta use the powder room for a sec. Hold down the fort, will you?”

He nodded. His face seemed slightly flushed, and his eyes wouldn’t meet hers.

Did he realize she’d been staring at the belt? No, that wasn’t it. He was… aroused. Bending near his waist, stroking his trousers, inadvertently she had turned him on.

The thought left her feeling unclean. In the small bathroom at the rear of the shop, she washed her hands unnecessarily.

Then she unclasped her purse and removed the creased square of tissue. Nesting within its folds was the turquoise from Erin’s apartment.

She held up the stone to the light. It might very well match those on Gund’s belt.

Eyes shut, she pictured Gund in Erin’s bathroom, leaning against the counter, reaching for the top shelf of the medicine cabinet, where the Tegretol was kept. His waist rubbing against the countertop’s Formica edge, the loose turquoise bead coming free and dropping, unnoticed, to the floor…

“No,” she whispered. “It can’t be him. Just can’t be.”

But what if it was?

She sat on the closed lid of the commode, staring blankly at the stone in her hand, which gazed back like an unwinking eye. She asked herself how much she really knew about Harold Gund.

She’d hired him six months ago, when he responded to a help-wanted sign in the shop window. She almost hadn’t taken him on; a flower shop seemed a peculiar place for a large, burly man, and a dead-end job at little better than minimum wage was hardly ideal for someone his age.

But Harold had explained his circumstances, quietly and sincerely. For twenty years he had worked as a custodian at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. Last September his wife had died; she remembered him fumbling in his wallet for her photo and showing it to her. Miriam had been her name.