Michael Prescott: Blind Pursuit

“Michael?” The hoarse, whispery voice was Annie’s.

Over the threshold, a shuddering creak.

Another ceiling beam threatened to give way.

Erin grabbed her sister’s hand and pulled her upright.

Sparks rained down as the beam weakened. The man called Michael took a last step forward, reaching out to them.

Erin’s fingers locked on his wrist. He pulled her, stumbling, through the doorway. Annie clung to Erin’s hand and followed.

Inside the house, a sudden wrenching groan.

Erin looked back in time to see the rafter above the threshold plunge down in a curtain of fire, engulfing the doorway in a roaring shower of debris.

Together they staggered across the gravel court. Fifty feet from the house they stopped, safely distanced from the waves of blistering heat and the torrent of smoke.

Erin’s knees unhinged. She sank into a crouch. Annie knelt beside her, coughing weakly.

From the direction of the gate came the squeal of tires, the pulse of dome lights-police cars arriving at the scene.

Erin looked at the man kneeling beside her. “Who… who are you?”

“Michael Walker.” He forced out the words between harsh gasps. Sweat streaked his face and neck, pasting the open collar of his shirt to his skin. “Tucson P.D.”

“Got here… just in time.”

“Should have been sooner.” He looked at Annie. “Much sooner.”

Annie rubbed the smoke from her eyes. “Well”-she managed a smile-“better late than never.”

Walker’s startled laugh died in a wheeze.

Erin had one other question, but almost no strength to ask it. She tugged Walker’s sleeve, met his gaze, and voiced one word.

“Gund?”

“Dead.”

Slowly she looked away, toward the burning house, and nodded.

“Good.”

In darkness, the buzz of an intercom.

Blinking awake, Erin leaned on one elbow and stared at her bedside clock.

12:03 A.M.

It’s happening again, she thought groggily. Oliver is back.

Crazy notion. Insane.

Even so, she was trembling as she threw off the covers and padded into the living room.

She thumbed the Talk button. “Yes?”

“Erin? It’s me.” The voice was Annie’s. “Sorry to come over so late, but… I need to talk.”

Need to talk. Even the same words as last time.

“Annie? Is that you? Is it really?”

“Of course it is… Oh, I get it. I–I didn’t think of that. Maybe I shouldn’t have stopped by, huh?”

Oh, hell. “You’re here, so come on up.”

Pressing Enter, she buzzed open the lobby door.

It would take Annie a minute or so to ride the elevator to the fourth floor. While waiting, Erin returned to her bedroom and put on her slippers and robe.

Which was exactly what she’d done that other night, she reflected grimly, then shook her head in self-disgust.

Stupid of her to entertain such a blatantly irrational fear-especially after Detective Walker had explained precisely how Annie’s voice had crackled over the intercom on the night of the kidnapping.

Nothing mystical about it. Oliver owned a tape recorder with an attachment that let him tape directly off his phone line. He called Annie’s number while she was out and recorded her answering machine’s outgoing message.

Hi, this is Annie. I’m not home right now, so if you’re a burglar, I’m in trouble. If you need to leave a message, please wait for the tone and then talk. Bye.

Then he edited the tape, leaving in only certain words. The spliced audiocassette was found during a thorough search of his apartment.

This is Annie… I’m in trouble… Please… Need to… talk.

The doorbell rang. Annie was here.

If it really was Annie, and not Oliver once again returned from the dead.

At the door Erin flipped the wall switch, illuminating the living room. Before retracting the dead bolt, she checked the peephole. The face in the fish-eye lens was her sister’s.

She opened the door. “Annie. You okay?”

“Okay?” Annie stepped inside, smiling blithely at the question. “I’m perfect. That’s what Lydia used to say about us, you remember? That we were perfect.”

Her words were strange, her smile oddly fixed. A worry flitted through Erin’s mind that her sister might be having some sort of breakdown.

Never should have told her, she reproached herself for the hundredth time.

Though she’d given the police most of the details of Oliver’s past, Erin had withheld one crucial part of the story-Maureen’s rape and pregnancy. That secret had been shared only with Annie.

It had seemed only proper. Her sister, after all, had every right to know. But Annie had taken the news hard, terribly hard.

And why not? Such an ugly word, redolent of ancient taboo: incest.

Erin felt it, too-that crawling sense of unfitness, of impurity. Had felt it ever since she grasped the truth about Oliver and his relationship with Maureen. In the two weeks since the fire at the ranch, she’d tried to rationalize the problem out of existence. When those efforts had failed, she found herself taking long baths and too many showers, hoping illogically to wash away the physical sensation of corruption.

No use. There were some things water couldn’t cleanse.

She was tainted; they both were. Contaminated.

Filth. She heard Oliver’s voice in her mind. And, deeper in memory, Albert Reilly raging: Abominations.

She pushed away those thoughts and gestured toward the sofa. “Why don’t we sit down?”

“Not there.” Annie was still smiling, smiling, an unnatural glitter in her eyes. “The dining table. Light’s better there.”

Though Erin had no idea why the light would matter, she complied, seating herself across the table from her sister.

“Sorry to drop by so late,” Annie said. “You were asleep, I guess.”

“It’s all right.” Erin kept her tone neutral.

“I couldn’t sleep, myself. Came back from a date with Michael around ten o’clock.”

“A date? How long has this been going on?”

“Oh, I don’t know. This was-let’s see-our third date. He’s a nice guy, as it turns out. But I mean, it’s not real serious.”

“Think it will be?”

“Too early to tell. Anyway, that’s not what kept me awake.” Annie fumbled open her purse, exposing a remarkable clutter of junk inside. “I was doing some research.”

“Research?”

“Going through the family records-the stuff Lydia inherited from Maureen. Found a few interesting items.” From the purse she removed a thin sheaf of folded papers, then unfolded one and gave it to Erin. “First thing… Maureen and Albert’s wedding license.”

Erin accepted the faded document with a frown, intellectual curiosity beginning to override her concern.

“September 2, 1965,” she said thoughtfully. “Seven months before we were born. Two months after Maureen’s visit to the Connor ranch.”

“And two and a half months after June 15. That was when they officially celebrated their anniversary.”

Erin had forgotten that. She nodded slowly. “Keeping up appearances. The whole family must have played along.”

“Sure. They all believed they were covering up some premarital indiscretion on the part of Albert and Maureen. Even Albert himself believed that. At least until 1968, only Maureen knew the truth.”

“Interesting.” She gave her sister an inquisitive look. “But not what you came here at midnight to discuss.”

“I found a couple of other things. Here’s one.”

Annie handed over a second sheet of paper, older than the first, the creases deeper, the corners badly dog-eared.

Erin smoothed it out. Maureen’s birth certificate, dated April 22, 1944.

Mystified, uncertain why this would matter, she looked expectantly at Annie.