John Saul - Black Lightning

But how long had it been like this? What if the motor home was already down there?

He reached into the glove compartment, took out his gun, then got out of the car.

Anne, immediately understanding what he was about to do, scrambled out the passenger door.

“Get back in the car!” Mark shouted over the wind that was screaming through the trees, driving the rain almost horizontally. “You can’t—”

“If you can go down there, so can I,” Anne shouted back. “It’s my daughter, remember?” Before Mark could protest further, she started picking her way down the muddy road, steadying herself against the trunks of trees, grabbing at the shrubbery when she felt her feet skid on the slippery mud.

It wasn’t until she was halfway down the twisting lane that she realized she hadn’t even thought about the possibility that she might be wrong; that Glen — the real, loving Glen — might be with Heather, rather than merely the body of her husband, now fully controlled by a monstrous, vengeful Richard Kraven.

An image of the monogram Kraven had carved into the flesh of each of his victims leapt into her mind, and she visualized Heather, her chest cut open, her lungs and heart—

No!

Not Heather! It couldn’t happen to Heather — she wouldn’t let it happen to Heather!

A strangled sound of fear, fury, and frustration rose in her throat, and she bolted ahead, terrified that even now the motor home might be parked at the foot of the lane.

Terrified that Richard Kraven might already have begun his work.

“It won’t hurt, you know.”

Heather tried not to look at the man who no longer bore any resemblance at all to her father.

He’d pulled the motor home off the road into a picnic area, a spot so secluded that even if a car passed on the road a few yards away, she knew the van probably wouldn’t even be noticed. And if someone did see it, why would they come to see if something was wrong? People parked motor homes everywhere, and nobody ever thought about what might be happening inside them.

The man had pulled all the curtains closed and turned on the generator.

Heather hadn’t dared even to move out of the passenger seat.

Part of it was the look in the man’s eye. The warmth she’d always seen in her father’s eyes, the gentle love she’d always felt when her father looked at her, was gone. The eyes that now stared cruelly from her father’s face had a dead look to them, glazed over as if hiding the fact that there was no soul behind them, no human spirit that might show her any kindness. Was it that look of death that had made her slowly come to believe he hadn’t lied to her, that he truly was Richard Kraven?

She knew what Kraven had done, knew how many bodies had been found in the area to which this man who was not her father had brought her tonight. She’d read the descriptions of the corpses they’d found, their breasts torn open, their hearts ripped out. It was what he’d meant when he said he wanted to touch her heart, and as the meaning of the words sank in, her terror had inexorably paralyzed her.

She couldn’t run, couldn’t bring herself even to try to bolt from the motor home. He would catch her before she even reached the door. And even if she made it out into the raging storm, what would she do? Where would she go?

He was getting something out of one of the cupboards now. A plastic bottle, filled with a liquid. He’d taken a rag out of a drawer, and was soaking it now with the liquid from the bottle.

She could smell it, smell the fumes that were filling the confines of the motor home.

He was moving toward her, holding the rag in his hand, his eyes fixing on her the way those of a rattlesnake fix on its prey in the moments before it strikes. She felt hypnotized by his gaze, and when he reached out to press the rag over her nose and mouth, her fear robbed her even of the power to turn away.

Taking a deep breath, Heather closed her eyes and prayed that Richard Kraven hadn’t lied to her, that at least she would feel nothing as he reached inside her body to touch her heart.

Touch her, and kill her.

Anne burst out of the mouth of the dirt road, stumbling as her foot struck a rock hidden by the blackness of the night and the thick grass of the meadow. Mark Blakemoor caught her arm, steadying her, even as he played the brilliant beam of a halogen light over the area. Despite the rain, there were still a pair of curving tracks where the grass had been crushed by the weight of a car driving through it recently. “This is the place Kevin told us about,” he said, almost shouting to make himself heard above the howling wind.

“But where are they?” Anne cried. “You said they’d be here—”

“I said we’ll find them, and we will!” Mark replied. He moved closer to the river and played his light on the opposite bank. A moment later he found what he was looking for — the pile of stones Kevin said his father had been looking through. Mark started toward the river, keeping the light steady on the rocks, and even before he’d waded into the stream, Anne knew what he was going to do.

“Are you crazy?” she shouted. “You’ll never make it — you’ll drown!” But he ignored her words, striding into the river, slowing down only enough to make sure of his footing on the rocky bottom. She stood shivering in the rain, her soaked clothes clinging to her skin as the rain sluiced over her, her teeth chattering, her eyes glued to the bobbing beam of the halogen flashlight. After what seemed like an eternity, but couldn’t have been more than a few minutes, he was back.

“Come on,” he said, his voice taking on a new urgency. “I think we might be running out of time.”

“You found him, didn’t you?” Anne asked as they started back up the road, half walking, half scrambling through the mud, clinging to each other and whatever else they could find to keep themselves from sliding backward down the slippery track. “You found Danny Harrar.”

Blakemoor nodded, seeing no point in trying to keep what he’d found from Anne. He’d been so certain he’d find nothing in the pile of rocks, that even if the knife Glen had found that morning were indeed Danny Harrar’s, it meant nothing more than that the boy had dropped it somewhere along the river long ago. What he’d found beneath the rocks, though, had finally convinced him that however bizarre Anne’s theory might sound, it was at least an explanation for something he could rationalize no other way. And if it was Richard Kraven that Heather was with instead of her father …

Even the veteran homicide detective couldn’t bring himself to think about what might be happening to her.

Both of them panting, they finally arrived back at the car. “You drive,” Mark told Anne, getting into the passenger seat. “I want to concentrate on the radio. I can’t believe that by now this whole area isn’t crawling with cops!” As Anne started the car, put it in gear, and headed up the road, Mark Blakemoor grabbed the radio’s microphone, attempting to raise the police dispatcher. Another sheet of lightning tore at the darkness, and a roar of thunder drowned out the static that was all that emerged from the radio’s speakers.

Anne struggled to see through the rain-streaked windshield. The wipers couldn’t even begin to keep up with the wind-driven torrent running down the glass in wide rivulets. Mark suddenly grabbed her arm. “Stop the car!”

Startled by his command, Anne shifted her foot from the accelerator to the brake, hitting it so hard the car lost its traction, the rear end fishtailing wildly before she released the brake, steered into a skid, and felt the tires grab the wet pavement. As the car rolled to a stop, Mark cranked his window down and stuck his head out into the force of the storm. “Back up,” he cried, his words all but inaudible, immediately carried away by the wind. Her heart pounding, Anne carefully began backing down the slope. Suddenly the headlights caught a sign with the familiar symbol of a picnic table.