Michael Prescott: Blind Pursuit

But he risked it. To improve his chances he invented a mawkish story about his late wife. The wallet photo he showed Annie was actually one he’d found among Deborah Collins’s belongings. Deborah’s mother, probably.

Annie fell for it. He got the job. Later he tailed her to her home; on a weekend afternoon he spied on her and Erin as they played tennis, then shadowed Erin to her apartment complex.

Once he knew where Erin lived, he began to finalize the preparations for her abduction and captivity. His last step was to purchase the old Connor ranch, the ranch of his boyhood, depleting nearly all of his twenty years of savings to make a single payment of $119,000 in cash. The ranch, isolated yet convenient to town, was ideal for his purposes.

An impeccable strategy, faultlessly implemented. He was sure of that. He had planned and executed every stage of the operation without a single misstep.

And yet here he was, speeding out of town, abandoning his possessions and his very identity to pursue a life on the run.

A freeway sign alerted him to the next exit. Houghton Road.

His foot eased up on the gas pedal, and the van’s speed began to drop.

Odd.

Why was he slowing down? He’d been making good time, and there was nobody ahead of him.

The steering wheel turned under his hands. The beam of his one headlight crossed over the white line as the van pulled into the right-hand lane.

The exit lane.

The off-ramp for Houghton Road lay a hundred yards ahead.

A flick of his hand, and the right turn signal flashed.

He dropped his gaze. Nerveless, paralyzed, he stared at the small, flashing arrow on the dashboard for what seemed like a very long time.

He got it now. Of course he did.

There would be no trip across the state line, no change of identity, no fugitive existence.

None of that ever had been his purpose. He’d merely imagined that it was. The idea had been only a twitch, a last, feeble spasm of rational thought; it had not moved him.

Because he had clicked off. Become unplugged.

Sometime during that episode of rage and frenzy in his apartment, when he’d been hunting Annie, he had slipped into this altered state of mind without even realizing it.

Since then he had been operating on automatic pilot, thoughts running on one track, actions proceeding along another.

At forty miles an hour he left the interstate, then swung north on Houghton Road. He passed the gas station where Erin tried making a 911 call last night.

There were reasons, sound reasons, for returning to the interstate and continuing his drive east. But those arguments held no force. They had long since folded under the pressure of the beating needs in control of him.

Only one impulse motivated him now.

He would kill her. Kill Erin. Take her out to the arroyo and stake her to the ground and burn her.

Next, Annie. Sooner or later she would return to her townhouse. When she did, he would be there. He would tie her to a chair or truss her on the floor, and then…

The van thumped and rattled, and he realized with mild surprise that he had turned onto the side road that led to the ranch. He hadn’t even been aware of slowing down or steering to his right.

Ahead, the gate of the ranch was open, the padlock and chain removed this afternoon to serve as Erin’s shackles.

He guided the van through the gate, to the barn. The barn doors, too, had been left open in his hasty departure. Careless-the wreck of Erin’s Taurus was dimly visible within.

He parked alongside the car. From the van’s glove compartment he took his flashlight and the stun gun.

The flash would be helpful in the arroyo. And the stun gun might be necessary to get Erin there without unduly harming her.

He wanted her conscious when he struck the fatal match.

Funny how calm he felt. Calm outwardly, of course; he always was, once his plug was pulled. But the strange thing was that he felt the same tranquility within. There was none of the turmoil that had accompanied his other killings. No inner witness who looked on aghast.

He was at peace with himself. The words of that smug TV expert came back to him: This is not a tormented person. This is a man who’s quite comfortable with what he does-and what he is.

That never had been true of him before. Had been the furthest thing from reality. But not tonight.

Tonight the burning felt good to him. Felt right.

Flashlight and keys in hand, the side pockets of his jacket stuffed with the pistol and stun gun, he strode out of the barn. He shut the main doors behind him, then crossed yards of brittle grass to the house, his legs cutting space with mechanical efficiency, his gaze focused straight ahead.

Felt right, he thought again. Well, of course it did. Why wouldn’t it?

It was right.

The burnings in the woods up north had been wrong.

He saw that now. The three women he’d killed meant nothing to him. They were mere random strangers, surrogates for the two he’d really wanted. Symbolic sacrifices, that was all. Their deaths, satisfying him only briefly, served no lasting purpose.

But these two were different. These were no strangers, no stand-ins. These were the two who had ruined his life. Who had haunted him, obsessed him, poisoned his mind with unclean thoughts.

Everything he’d done-it was their fault, entirely theirs. They had been the source of all his troubles and afflictions right from the start. They were the unhealed sore in his soul.

He reached the front door, turned the key in the lock. As he entered the house, he nodded in silent assent to his own thoughts, then went on nodding, nodding, the slight incline of his head repeated like a programmed routine.

It was right, so right, that he do this. There could be no hesitation, no doubt. Not this time.

Never could he be liberated from the torment that plagued him-never-until Erin and Annie Reilly were dead.

With a final twist of her wrists, Erin wrenched the coupling nut free.

As she separated the two halves of the sillcock, she heard the familiar rumble of the van’s engine.

Oliver had returned, as she’d known he would.

He wouldn’t expect her to be unchained. There was a chance she could take him by surprise.

Quickly she shrugged on her blouse and buttoned it. She tossed the bra and its unhooked strap into the cardboard box containing her provisions, then slid the box in front of the sillcock.

Footsteps overhead. The stairs drummed as he descended.

The sillcock’s detached spout would make a serviceable weapon. She tucked it into the waistband of her shorts behind her back.

Then she seated herself in the chair facing the door, one end of the chain still padlocked to her ankle, the loose end snaking behind the cardboard box, out of sight.

A key rattled in the lock. The door opened, and Oliver was there.

Yet not there, not really. She could see that.

His face was expressionless, a mask of slack flesh.

He stepped forward into the glow of the bare light bulb on the chain. The shadows lifted from his eyes, and she saw his dull, glazed stare.

Fugue state, she thought with a ripple of dread.

The pockets of his jacket were bulging-she glimpsed the checkered grip of the pistol, and the stun gun’s metallic gleam-but his hands held only a set of keys and a flashlight, switched off.

“ ’Evening, Doc.” His affectless monotone matched the emptiness of his eyes.

“Hello, Oliver.”

“I’ve come for you.” He moved nearer, then stopped behind the other chair. “She’s on to me. Your sister. She knows.”

He said it so simply that Erin needed a moment to grasp the significance of the words.

Annie knew.

She kept her own voice safely casual. “Does she?”