Jeffery Deaver - Praying for Sleep

Following these clear imprints Owen walked for a short way through the grass. He decided that he would make certain that Hrubek was indeed going west then would return to his truck and cruise slowly along the highway, looking for his quarry from the road. Just another ten yards, he decided, and climbed through a notch in a low stone fence, leading to a large field beyond.

It was there that he tripped over the hidden wire and fell, face forward, toward the steel trap.

The big Ottawa Manufacturing coyote trap had been laid brilliantly-in a section of the path with no handholds for arresting falls, just beyond the stone wall so that a searcher couldn’t get his other foot to the ground in time to stop his tumble. In an instant Owen dropped the flashlight and covered his face with his left arm, lifting his pistol and firing four.357 Magnum rounds at the round trigger plate in a desperate effort to snap it closed before he struck it. The blue-steel device danced under the impact of the powerful slugs. Stones, twigs and hot bits of shattered bullets flew into the air as Owen twisted sideways to let his broad shoulder take the impact of the fall.

When he landed, his head bounced off the closed jaws of the trap and he lay, stunned, feeling the blood on his forehead and fighting down the horrific image of the blue metal straps snapping shut on his face. An instant later he rolled away, assuming that Hrubek had used the trap as Owen himself would have-as a diversion-meant to hold him immobile and in agony while Hrubek attacked from behind. Owen glanced about, huddling beside the fence. When there was no immediate assault he ejected the spent and unfired cartridges then reloaded. He pocketed the two good rounds and scanned the area once more.

Nothing. No sound but a faint wind in the lofty treetops. Owen stood slowly. So the trap had been meant merely to injure a scenting dog. In fury Owen picked up the bullet-dented trap and flung it deep into the field. He found the spent shells and buried them then, by touch, surveyed the damage to his face and shoulder. It was minor.

His anger vanished quickly and Owen Atcheson began to laugh. Not from relief at escaping serious injury. No, it was a laugh of pure pleasure. The trap said to him that Michael Hrubek was a worthy adversary after all-ruthless as well as clever. Owen was never as alive as when he had a strong enemy that he was about to engage-an enemy that might test him.

Hurrying to the Cherokee he started the engine and drove slowly west, staring at the fields to his left. He was so intent on catching sight of his prey that he grazed a road sign with the truck’s windshield. Startled by the loud noise he braked quickly and glanced at the sign.

It told him that he was exactly forty-seven miles from home.

Michael Hrubek, crouched down in a stand of grass, caressed his John Worker overalls and wondered about the car at which he stared.

Surely it was a trap. Snipers were probably sighting on it with long-barreled muskets. Snipers in those trees just ahead, waiting for him to sneak up to the sports car. He breathed shallowly and reminded himself not to give away his position.

After he’d passed the GET TO sign he’d hurried west through the fields of grass and pumpkin vines, paralleling the dim strip of Route 236. He’d made good time and had stopped only once-to place one of the animal traps beside a stone fence. He’d set a few leaves on top of the metal and hurried on.

Now, Hrubek raised himself up and looked again at the car. He saw no one around it. But still he remained hidden, in the foxhole of grass, waiting, aiming the blade sight of his gun at the trees ahead and looking for any sign of motion. As he smelled the grass a dark memory loomed. He tried his best to ignore it but the image refused to disappear.

Oh, what’s that on your head, Mama? What’re you wearing there?

Mama…

Take off that hat, Mama. I don’t like it one bit.

Fifteen years ago Michael Hrubek had been a boy both very muscular and very fat, with waddling feet and a long trunk of a neck. One day, playing in the tall grass field behind an old willow tree, he heard: “Michael! Miiiichael!” His mother walked onto the back porch of the family’s trim suburban home in Westbury, Pennsylvania. “Michael, please come here.” She wore a broad-brimmed red hat, beneath which her beautiful hair danced like yellow fire in the wind. Even from the distance he could see the dots of her red nails like raw cigarette burns. Her eyes were dark, obscured by the brim of the hat and by the amazing little masks that she dabbed on her eyes from the tubes of mask carrier on her makeup table. She did this, he suspected, to hide from him.

“Honey… Come here, I need you.” Slowly he stood and walked to her. “I just got home. I didn’t have time to stop. I want you to go by the grocery store. I need some things.”

“Oh, no,” the boy said tragically.

She knew he didn’t want to, his mother said. But Mr. and Mrs. Klevan or the Abernathys or the Potters would be here at any minute and she needed milk and coffee. Or something. She needed it.

“No, I can’t.”

Yes, yes, he could. He was her little soldier. He was brave, wasn’t he?

He whined, “I don’t know about this. There are reasons why I can’t do it.”

“And mind the change. People shortchange you.”

“They won’t let me cross the street,” Michael retorted. “I don’t know where it is!”

“Don’t worry, honey, I’ll give you the instructions,” she said soothingly. “I’ll write it down.”

“I can’t.”

“Do it for me. Please. Do it quickly.”

“I don’t know!”

“You’re twelve years old. You can do it.” Her composure was steadfast.

“No, no, no…”

“All you have to do”-her mouth curved into a smile-“is go by the store and get what I need. My brave little soldier boy can do that, can’t he?”

But the Klevans or the Milfords or the Pilchers arrived the next minute and his mother didn’t get a chance to write down the directions for him. She sent him on his way. Michael, frightened to the point of nausea, a five-dollar bill clutched in a death grip, started out on a journey to the nearby store.

An hour passed and his mother, stewing with mounting concern and anger, received a phone call from the market. Michael had wandered into the store ten minutes before and had caused an incident.

“Your son,” the beleaguered manager said, “wants the store.”

“He wants the store ?” she asked, bewildered.

“He said you told him to buy the store. I’m near to calling the police. He touched one of our checkers. Her, you know, chest. She’s in a state.”

“Oh, for the love of Christ.”

She sped to the market.

Michael, shaking with panic, stood in the checkout line. Confronted with the apparent impossibility of doing what he’d been told to do- Go buy the store -his conscious thought dissolved and he’d belligerently grabbed the checker’s fat arm and thrust the cash into her blouse pocket as she stood, hands at her side, sobbing.

“Take it!” he screamed at her, over and over. “Take the money!”

His mother collected him and when they returned home, she led him straight into the bathroom.

“I’m scared.”

“Are you, darling? My little soldier boy’s scared? Of what, I wonder.”

“Where was I? I don’t remember nothing.”

“ ‘Anything.’ ‘I don’t remember anything.’ Now get out of those filthy clothes.” They were stained with sawdust and dirt; Michael had belly-flopped to the floor, seeking cover, when his mother, eyes blazing beneath her stylish hat, charged through the pneumatic door of the supermarket. “Then I want you to come out and tell my guests you’re sorry for what you did. After that you’ll go to bed for the day.”