Bill Pronzini: With an Extreme Burning

If she couldn't see him, then he couldn't see her either.

The thought rekindled the elation she'd felt when she kneed him. All she had to do was to keep moving, get deep in the maze of dunes, and then find a place where she could cover herself with sand and grass and anything else she could find. He'd never find her then, not even if he kept hunting until after daybreak. The dune area was at least two hundred yards wide and a mile or two long, and some of the hills were thirty feet high. He'd have to be able to fly to spot her hiding place.

Her foot throbbed. Cut, probably, by whatever she'd stepped on. She limped and slogged to her left, around a small dune, and then to her right around a higher one. There was a scatter of driftwood at that one's base. She poked quickly among the wood, found a slender, crooked piece about three feet long: a crutch to help her walk, and a weapon just in case.

She was out of breath and her thighs were quivering. She had to rest for a couple of minutes or she'd collapse. The slope there was as good a place as any; she sank onto the sand and grass still warm from the day's sun. Down low like this, she was sheltered from the wind, but it was still cold. Her bare legs were icy to the touch. She'd have to find a place where she could burrow pretty soon—for warmth as well as for safety.

She listened to the night around her. Small sounds: the wind skimming over the tops of the dunes, the seagrass whispering, the breakers making their hissing rumble in the distance. That was all. Not that he'd be out there shouting her name. And you couldn't hear anybody walking in sand anyway.

Amy pulled her left leg over her right, twisting her foot so she could probe at the sole with her fingers. Cut, all right. Sticky with blood and caked grit. But it didn't feel deep and it didn't hurt the way her hand had the time she'd sliced it with the can lid and had to have stitches. A cut foot was the least of her troubles. She dismissed it from her mind.

Her breathing was back under control and the quivery feeling was gone from her thighs. Better get moving. She used the driftwood crutch to lift herself upright. The cottage was to her right and behind her; she looked up at the moon and what stars were visible among the clouds to make sure. Straight ahead, then, or at an angle to the left—toward the beat of the surf. In a little while she could veer north or south, to put even more distance between her and the Dunes.

The moon threw her shadow out alongside her, an extended goblin shape on the whitewashed sand and grass, as she struggled between two smaller hills. Big tufts grew thickly in the lower places here, and walking was easier than it had been. Along the flank of another drift, to where a burned-out log was half buried in the sand: the remains of somebody's cookout fire. She skirted that, rounded another dune—

Something made her stop. All at once there was a tingling on her neck, a clenching in her stomach. One of the more massive dunes reared up on her left, its hairy sides wind-sculpted into ridges. Her gaze crawled up along it.

He was standing on the matted grass at the top, legs spread, outlined blackly against the sky.

She stood in frozen disbelief.

No! He couldn't have found her, it wasn't fair, she'd done everything right, she was safe, he couldn't have found her—

“I told you you couldn't get away, Amy.”

Voice booming above the thrum of the wind, the words like a lash that broke her paralysis. She stumbled away, but now it was like running in one of those mixed-up dreams: somebody chasing you and you ran and ran and got nowhere at all. And at the same time he was flying down the dune's side, long, sliding steps that tore the grass and kicked up spurts of sand.

He caught her before she could get clear of the cratered area. Grabbed her arm, jerked her around. She hissed at him like a cat, a sound she'd never made before, and swung the length of driftwood with all her strength. Hit him with it—low on his body, bringing a grunt but not doing any damage. Off balance, she tried to club his head. It was a weak blow without leverage and he fended it off with his arm. Then he clutched at the wood, caught a grip on it, wrenched it out of her fingers, and hurled it away.

She fought him, still hissing—hands, feet, knees. But she was mired in loose sand and he was too strong for her. He twined his fingers in her hair, whipped her head back with such force that cartilage cracked in her neck.

“Bad girl,” he said.

The whole left side of her face erupted in pain. But only for an instant.

The abandoned development near Manchester State Beach was a wasteland at this hour: lifeless, no lights except at a distant dairy ranch, not even a parked car. The grassy dunes stretched ghostly pale along the left flank of the road. Wind spurts blew sand that ticked against the surfaces of the Buick, fluttered in the headlight beams like will-o'-the-wisps.

Dix's head ached. The strain of driving, pain radiating upward through his neck from knotted shoulder muscles. The last twenty miles had been the hardest, with the urge strong in him to increase his already excessive speed. Only the winding road and the possibility of encountering a highway patrolman or deputy sheriff kept him from giving in to the impulse. Now, finally, the long drive was almost over. And at the end of it, at the cottage, what would they find?

Please let her be there, he thought, please let her be all right.

It was the closest he'd come to praying since his altar-boy days at Old Saint Thomas.

Cecca had been leaning forward, her hands gripping the dash, since they'd turned off Highway One. She said, “The Dunes is on the other side of that sharp bend ahead.”

“Visible from the road?” he asked. He didn't remember.

“Yes. All by itself on higher ground.”

They were halfway through the bend when he saw it, insubstantial-looking on its pilings, like a black cardboard cutout propped up with sticks. Not wholly black, though. Lampglow made a pale rectangle of one of the fronting windows.

Cecca sucked in her breath. He said warningly, “Easy. Maybe Chet's spending the weekend here.”

“No, he was here last weekend, he invited Amy. He wouldn't come again the week after a long holiday—”

Brighter lights seemed to jump out of the darkness, under or behind the cottage. Moving lights—arcing around the building, then separating into two eyelike beams. Car headlamps.

“Dix!”

He gunned the engine. Now the other headlights were making erratic vertical jumps as the car bounced downhill toward the road. It was on a weedy access lane; Dix saw the intersection materialize in the glare of his lights. Saw, too, that they were closer to the junction than the other car. Block it off, he thought, and veered over to the left side of the road. His blights slid over the car's small, lumpish shape, gave him a brief glimpse of the driver.

Cecca cried, “That's Amy's Honda!”

But it wasn't Amy behind the wheel.

The Honda was twenty yards away when Dix skidded the Buick to an angled stop across the foot of the lane. Jerry Gordon Whittington Cotter kept coming without slackening speed. At first Dix thought he would try to ram them out of the way; he yelled, “Brace yourself!” to Cecca. But with only a few feet to spare, the Honda sheered off the lane onto the grass and packed sand that bordered it—Jerry gambling on enough traction to slide him around the Buick and onto the road.

He made it a little farther than halfway before the tires began to slip and spin. The Honda slowed, settled, the engine roaring. Dix threw his door open, fumbling to free the Beretta, and ran to the compact and ripped at the door handle on the driver's side. Locked. Through the glass, in the glow of the dashlights, he could see Amy slumped in the passenger seat. Unconscious? Dead?