Michael Prescott: Blind Pursuit

“Address?” he asked, pen poised over the pad.

“One hundred East Ravine Road.”

As he wrote it down. Walker found himself frowning. The address tickled his memory, though he wasn’t sure why.

“Mike? You there?”

“Sorry, Rog. Just thinking. Look, thanks a lot for your help. I appreciate this.”

“We’re even for those Suns tickets.” It was not a question.

“All square. Thanks again.”

Walker killed the phone, got out a spiral-bound map book, and looked up Ravine Road in the index.

Flipping to the appropriate page, he surprised himself by stating the address aloud.

“One hundred East Ravine Road.”

Suddenly he remembered.

In the clutter of papers on his dining table were the two Tucson Standard articles Gary had given him. He found the one on the deaths of Lincoln and Oliver Connor.

First paragraph. Almost the very first words.

… Lincoln Connor, 46, of 100 E. Ravine Road in the Tucson area

…

The Connor family had lived there. At the ranch. The ranch Harold Gund bought just two months ago.

Fear crawled in Walker’s gut, slimy and cold.

The fact that Gund had purloined a copy of Erin and Annie’s photo portrait might indicate nothing more alarming than an adolescent infatuation with one or both of the women.

But someone who sought out and purchased the old Connor home, paying more to acquire it than he possibly could afford, was in the grip of more-much more-than a harmless schoolboy crush.

Annie might be right about this man Harold Gund.

Walker blinked.

Harold…

The loose end in the Connor case. A missing teenager. First name Harold. Last name unknown.

The same Harold? Harold Gund?

No, couldn’t be. Made no sense.

But Annie’s assistant spending a small fortune to purchase the Connor ranch-that didn’t make sense, either.

Or maybe it did. Maybe it all fit together perfectly in some subtle way Walker couldn’t quite see.

He shook his head. Didn’t matter. Time to puzzle it out later. Now he had to get hold of Annie, tell her what he’d learned.

He dialed her number. A message machine answered.

Not home. Damn. Where would she go?

He remembered her telling him how she’d followed Gund into the desert. Had she gone back, looking for the ranch?

Walker didn’t want to believe that. Wanted to think she had more sense.

But somehow he knew better.

He returned his attention to the map book. Ravine Road was a minor dead-end street, southeast of town, off Houghton.

Didn’t appear as if there were too many roads or ranches in that area. If Annie had gone looking for Gund’s place, she might well have found it.

And if Harold Gund was there, he might have found her.

“Christ.” Walker grabbed his car keys and his walkie-talkie. The ranch was outside T.P.D. jurisdiction, but it would take too long to explain all this to the sheriff’s department.

Out the door. Sprinting to his car, a blue Mustang, parked in the driveway. The engine turned over instantly. At the corner he hooked south.

The Mustang, his personal car, had no siren or light bar. He exceeded the speed limit anyway. He would run red lights if he had to. What the hell. He was a cop.

As the Mustang skidded west on Fort Lowell Road, speeding toward Interstate 10, Walker was speaking into the portable radio microphone, requesting backup.

Tramp of shoes. Air moving past her face.

Erin blinked, coming back to herself. For a disoriented moment she was a small child, and her father was carrying her up the stairs to bed.

Sleep would be good. She was tired, so tired…

No.

It was her father, but not Albert Reilly.

Oliver was climbing the cellar stairs, and she was slung over his shoulder, a sack of trash, a bedroll. The chain trailing from her leg clanked after her, the padlock at the other end bouncing noisily.

Groaning, she tried to squirm free. Useless. The effects of the stun gun hadn’t fully worn off. Though her mind was clear, her limbs were numb, her movements uncoordinated. She flailed and kicked without strength, landing soft, random blows.

Top of the stairs now. Into the hallway.

She wanted to speak, to argue, to plead, but her mouth wouldn’t work right. The sounds she made were not words, not even wordless protests, merely unintelligible grunts and gasps, expressions of blind, consuming panic, panic of phobic intensity, panic that set her heart racing rabbit-fast and thrilled her with a roar of blood in her ears and a high electric whine in the bones of her skull.

She thought of the arroyo. Of flame.

Faint ambient light. The living room. Starlight spearing through the broken windows.

Hard to breathe. No air in her lungs, and her throat had closed. She remembered choking on fumes in a burning house, twenty-three years ago. That had been like this. Like this.

He stopped in the middle of the room, near its sole furnishing, the potbelly stove.

Alongside the stove, a shapeless heap of hair and clothes.

Annie.

Limp and still. Unconscious or dead. Propped in a seated position, her legs stretched out on the hardwood floorboards, her back resting against the stove’s round belly.

Oliver hadn’t simply deposited her there. He’d arranged her in that pose, as carefully as he would have arranged a bouquet in the flower shop. He’d made a display of her.

Erin saw all that, and abruptly she understood what he was about to do.

Not the arroyo.

Here.

He would burn them here, in the house of his childhood.

“ No!” she screamed, fear finding a human voice at last.

Oliver flung her down.

She hit the floor hard. A groan racked her.

He crouched by her side. She wanted to scratch his face, gouge and claw, but still her body would not respond to her will. She could only thrash weakly, gasping in inarticulate protest, as he shoved her up against the stove opposite her sister.

Snap, and the padlock securing the chain to her ankle was released, the chain pulled free.

The ribbon of heavy welded links was drawn across her waist, her arms, then wound around the stove, encircling Annie also, before its two ends met, a snake swallowing itself.

With a jerk of his wrists Oliver yanked the chain tight, chokingly tight across her midsection, crushing her arms to her sides, pinning her to the stove.

Snap. The padlock was again engaged, joining the two ends of the chain.

Erin moaned, struggling for speech and failing.

Oliver moved away, his back to her, and then he was out the door, lost in the darkness of the night.

She stared blankly after him for a long moment. Then with a spasm of violent energy she shook her head, twisted her body, clenched her fists, reviving dulled nerves and spent muscles.

She could not afford numbness and lethargy, not now. She had to fight. Fight for survival-her own and Annie’s, too.

Blinking rapidly to clear her vision, she gazed down at the padlock nestled in her lap, its steel shackle glinting at her like a smiling mouth. The chain extended on either side of it, binding her and Annie to the stove.

If she could raise the chain a few inches, to the point where the stove’s belly narrowed in diameter, she might be able to slip free.

Breathing hard, she contracted the muscles of her lower back, pressed her palms to the floor, and struggled to push herself up.

The chain wouldn’t budge.

But why not? Why the hell not?

Craning her neck, peering at the front of the stove out of the corner of her eye, she saw the reason.

Oliver had carefully looped the chain under the handle of the loading door and snagged it on one of the pin hinges. It could be neither raised nor lowered.