Michael Prescott - Blind Pursuit

“But now,” she whispered, “I do know it.”

“Sadly, yes.”

“Which means you can’t let me go.”

His eyes closed briefly, registering his first hint of emotion-a flicker of regret. “Afraid not, Doc.”

“Is that why you came here? To end it? To… kill me?”

A tremor rippled through the muscles of his cheek. “No. Not tonight. I won’t-I won’t — do it tonight.”

The violence of his reply was a window on the turmoil churning just below his placid surface. He drew a slow, calming breath.

“Not tonight,” he said again, more softly. “Not for a while. Days, weeks, whatever it takes. We’ll do the work. You’ll treat me. Cure me. Set me free. And then…” His lower lip trembled briefly. “Then it will be goodbye. But not by fire.”

He reached into his jacket pocket and withdrew a blue-barreled pistol.

“This way.” His voice was very small. “No pain. I promise. Quick and easy. You won’t even know, it’ll be so fast, so… clean. You won’t even know.”

She said nothing.

“Let’s get started,” he added brusquely.

He turned away from her with a jerk of his shoulders and sat in the chair nearest the door. The gun fidgeted in his lap like a small, nervous dog.

Encumbered by the chain, she shuffled over to the facing chair. Her sore muscles protested as she seated herself, and the searing sunburn on her chest cried out at the scrape of her shirt.

For a moment, as they sat watching each other like wary animals, Erin was at a loss for anything to say. She’d had no time or inclination to prepare for a second session.

Then she remembered the list of unanswered questions she’d compiled only a short while earlier.

Risky to probe Oliver’s past when he was clearly on the edge of losing his grip. Even so, she would chance it.

Because she had to know, had to understand.

And because she had so little left to lose.

“You realize, of course,” she began casually, “you’re supposed to be dead.”

“I made it look as though I was.”

He sat stiffly in the chair, one hand on the gun, the other balled in a fist, his body language expressive of rigid self-restraint. It was as if his clenched muscles and locked joints formed a barrier against the wild surge of emotion swirling in him, a dam straining against floodwaters. She waited tensely for the first fatal cracks to appear.

“But your father,” she said softly. “He’s really dead, isn’t he?”

A brief incline of his head. “Yes.”

“You killed him.” Not a question.

“He deserved it.”

“Why?”

He didn’t reply at once. His hand stroked the pistol in his lap. Erin tried not to look at it, not to think of the explosive violence it contained.

“Lincoln Connor was a great guy,” he said finally, his voice low and bitter. “Everyone said so. Always smiling and joking, and so good with horses. Believed in discipline, though. People knew that. They heard stories about how he beat his son. Well, every kid needs to learn a lesson now and then, right? Only, the discipline my father imposed didn’t always stop with a beating. Sometimes he found other ways of hurting me.”

“What ways?”

“Two fingers up the rectum. Then three fingers.” The chair creaked as he shifted his weight, and she knew the sphincter muscles near the base of his spine were tightening involuntarily. “When I was old enough, big enough… his fist. And then… not his fist.”

She felt a pang of pity, not for the killer before her but for the small boy he had been. But of course it was no longer possible to separate the two. The hurt little boy still lived within this man, buried alive somewhere deep inside, and screaming, unheard.

But the women in the woods-they had screamed, too.

“What age were you when it started?” she asked.

“Little. Maybe four.”

“Did Lydia know?”

He shook his head slowly. “She never had a clue.”

“How could Lincoln keep it secret?”

“He did it only when she wasn’t around. Lydia was in charge of the ranch’s inventory; she was always going into town for supplies. Lincoln had no shortage of opportunities. And I never told. I was scared, ashamed. And…”

“And what?”

“And so I… kept the secret,” he finished lamely.

“That’s not what you started to say.” No reply. “You wanted to tell me something more.”

Tense silence ticked in the room. She knew it was crazy, suicidal, to push further on this point. So she wouldn’t, of course. She wouldn’t.

She did. “In our first session, there was a point when you thought I’d implied you were gay.”

“Hadn’t you?”

“No.”

“Then why raise the issue again?”

“I think you know why.”

He said nothing.

“You enjoyed it. What your father did.” Each word was a step forward into an unknown darkness strewn with lethal trip wires. “At least sometimes. At least a little bit. Didn’t you, Oliver?”

His right hand closed over the barrel of the gun, clutching it tight.

“You do think I’m queer,” he breathed.

“I haven’t said that.”

“Don’t bullshit me. Don’t bullshit me, you little whore.”

“Oliver-”

“You filth. Stinking filth.”

His hand was sliding down the gun barrel toward the handle, and she knew that when he reached it, he would lift the gun and shoot, shoot without thinking, shoot to kill.

“Oliver,” she said more sharply. “Stop it.”

His hand froze an inch from the checkered grip.

“I’m sorry if you heard me say something I didn’t mean to say.” She spoke softly, keeping her tone neutral and nondefensive. “It wasn’t my intention to suggest that you were homosexual. I hope you understand that.”

He seemed slightly mollified, but his hand remained on the gun. “Then what were you suggesting?”

“Only that you may still be afraid of something you felt with your father, years ago. An emotion or a physical sensation. A fleeting response, meaningless… but it haunts you. I think that’s why you see sexual needs as threatening, dangerous-”

“But I don’t,” he cut in. “I’m not threatened. You’re on the wrong track. Sex doesn’t have anything to do with… with anything.”

“You believe that, I’m sure. But it may not be true.”

“Are you saying I’m a liar?”

“I’m saying your true feelings are buried deep. So deep that you can’t find them, can’t acknowledge their reality.”

“That’s just stupid,” he whispered, but she heard doubt in his voice for the first time.

“Don’t fight me on this, Oliver,” she said. “Open up to me. Please.”

He didn’t speak for a long moment. Then slowly he lifted the gun, as if to remind her of its presence. A shade too ostentatiously, he slipped it back into the side pocket of his jacket.

“I thought we were talking about my father,” he said mildly.

She yielded, afraid to press any harder and see the pistol return. “How long did Lincoln continue to mistreat you?”

“Until I left home.”

“At eighteen?”

“Yes.”

“He was still abusing you at that age?”

“Not as often. But… yes.”

“Did you leave because of Lincoln?”

“No. It was Lydia. She disowned me. Ordered me out of the house.”

Erin blinked, taken by surprise. “Lydia? But… why?”

He fixed his stare on her. “That, you can’t know.”

Instinctively she understood that this was one territory she dared not explore, the one secret he would not share.

“All right,” she said evenly. “So you left Tucson. Went to the Prescott area, as I recall.”

“In a stolen car. I ditched it when it was almost out of gas. Had no money to fill the tank. Started walking, and met up with a bunch of kids my age. Hippies. My hair was long, and I looked scruffy enough to fit in. We got to talking, and I improvised a story about burning my draft card and going underground.”