Michael Prescott: Blind Pursuit

“No. She was scared. I let her know that even if I served time, I’d be out in a couple of years. That was all I had to say.

“She left later that day, even before Lydia’s party. Made some excuse. Drove back to Sierra Springs. And not long afterward…”

“She found out she was pregnant.”

“That’s right, Doc. I got twin girls started that morning in the barn. I gave you life.” He switched on the stun gun again. “And what I gave, I can take back.”

Erin stared at the ribbon of current as Oliver guided it slowly toward her throat.

Upstairs, the groan of a door.

Her glance ticked upward. Oliver cocked his head.

They listened, frozen, breathless, wax figures in a tableau.

Softly, footsteps.

Someone in the house.

An emotion so intense as to be unidentifiable swept through Erin and set her body shaking.

Oh, God-the words in her mind began as a plea, ended in a silent shriek-let it be a cop, please, let it be a cop!

The footsteps stopped directly overhead.

In the sudden silence, in the motionless air, a voice.

“Erin…?”

Annie.

Recognition jerked Erin half upright. All the breath rushed out of her lungs in an urgent, warbling cry.

“ Annie, get away, he’s got a gun, he’s-”

The pincers slammed into the soft skin under her jaw, and she fell instantly into a lightless void, pursued by the echo of her scream.

Annie raced across the gravel court, her shoes scattering a fine spray of stones.

The echo of Erin’s scream rang in her memory. A scream from the cellar, abruptly cut off.

After that, footsteps drumming on the stairs. Gund, ascending at a run.

He was here, after all. He was here, though she hadn’t seen his van, hadn’t seen any lights in the windows of the house. He was here, and if he chased her down, he would kill her. Kill her and Erin, too. Annie was sure of that.

The Miata was just ahead, the driver’s window open, the door unlocked. She reached the car and fumbled for the door handle, Gund’s key ring slipping free of her grasp to land somewhere on the ground with a distant, barely noticed clink.

The door swung open. She threw herself into the bucket seat, cranked the ignition key, and the motor caught.

Her high beams flicked on. Gund exploded out of the ranch, loping into the headlights’ twin funnels, flashlight in one hand, pistol in the other.

Of course, Annie had not the slightest intention of fleeing.

Run away? Abandon her sister to a psychopath’s mercies?

She never would. It wasn’t a question of bravery or loyalty or commitment, but of simple self-preservation. To flee and leave Erin to die would be as good as committing suicide. She couldn’t live with herself after that.

He had a gun, all right. But a car could be a weapon, too.

Annie hunched low over the wheel and floored the gas pedal.

For a heart-freezing second the Miata’s tires spun uselessly, chewing gravel.

Gund stopped, twenty feet away, pinned in the high beams. Threw aside the flashlight. Lifted the pistol in both hands.

Annie had time to think she made a perfect target, stationary and at close range, and then with a squeal of rubber the tires caught.

Sudden acceleration punched her backward, hard against the seat.

The pistol bucked in time with a sharp crack of sound.

She jerked to one side as the windshield puckered. Crumbs of tempered glass showered her, gummy fragments seeding her hair.

She didn’t slow down. Refused to be intimidated.

Gund was ten feet from the Miata’s front end. Five.

Annie braced for impact.

At the last instant Gund leaped.

Timing the jump perfectly, he flung himself onto the hood, landing spread-eagle on his belly.

The car left the gravel court, bouncing on mounds of dirt and patches of stiff, dead grass.

Gund extended his left arm, smashed through the windshield, and thrust the gun at her face.

The blued barrel gleamed, catching the spectrum of colors from the dashboard gauges. The muzzle was a hungry, sucking hole, a lamprey’s mouth.

Annie spun the steering wheel.

Gund slid sideways, his aim thrown off as he squeezed the trigger.

The report deafened her. The bullet screamed past her face and clawed a hole in the convertible’s top. A tongue of black cloth flapped wildly over her head, inches away.

Close, Annie noted, strangely unmoved despite the nearness of death.

Gund’s pistol swung toward her again, the barrel compressed by foreshortening until it had disappeared and there was only the muzzle, inches from her right eye.

She stomped on the brake pedal.

The Miata screamed into a skid. The world blurred. The night sky, the barbed-wire fence, the ranch buildings all melted together in a giddy smear, like the view from a carousel.

Inertia yanked Gund halfway off the hood. He clung to the windshield frame a heartbeat longer, his knuckles squeezed bloodless, then let go and was gone, vanishing in the dark, rolling somewhere in the brittle grass.

The Miata pirouetted, completing a full circle, and shuddered to a stop.

Silence. Sudden and absolute.

The engine had stalled.

Annie heard a soft, plaintive whimper and realized it was her own.

The unreal calm that had armored her a few seconds earlier was gone, replaced by fear-pure, uncomplicated animal fear that choked her in a breathless stranglehold.

What to do? Start the car again. Yes. Get it moving and find Gund-injured, maybe unconscious-find him and mow him down, crush him under the wheels like roadkill, finish him, finish the bastard now.

Feverish thoughts and images beat like bat wings in her brain as she twisted the key in the ignition.

The motor coughed, died. Coughed, died.

“ Start,” she hissed, tossing frightened glances at the rearview and side view mirrors.

She jerked the key again. The engine feebly cleared its throat, then expired with a chortling death rattle.

Movement on her left.

She turned, and a gasp hiccupped out of her.

Gund.

At the open window on the driver’s side.

In his hand, the pistol-or something like a pistol. Sleek and metallic and coming at her face.

Instinctively she recoiled.

Too late.

Pincers bit her neck in a vampire kiss.

Crackle of static, and pain clamped down on her, every muscle clenching.

Vision faded. Reality receded. Awareness broke up, flying into fragments like the Miata’s windshield, plans and memories and speculations shattering in a mist of crystal dust.

Erin-it was her last thought before her mind was lost in a haze of glistening white-I’m sorry.

He picked up the phone on its fourth ring. “Walker.”

“Okay, Mike. I got what you wanted.”

The slightly whiny voice on the other end of the line belonged to Roger Dickinson of the county tax assessor’s office.

It was 9:25. Walker hadn’t expected his friend to get back to him so quickly. “Fast work, Rog.”

“Yeah, well, you try hanging out in the County Administrative Center when the place is deserted. It’s giving me the creeps.”

“You still there?”

“Sure. In my office. Got the info you wanted right in front of me.”

Walker uncapped a pen and flipped open a memo pad. “Shoot.”

Papers shuffled. “Harold Gund did purchase a ranch outside town. Two and a half acres in an unincorporated area of Pima County. Escrow was recorded on the ninth of February this year. Place must be in piss-poor condition; it was assessed at only $119,000-a bargain for a parcel that size.”

Even so, Walker wondered how Gund could have afforded the down payment on a clerk’s income, much less qualified for the financing.