Beachcomber (25 page)
He was running now, too. She could tell by the way the flashlight joggled up and down, by how fast it was approaching. Lunging toward the road, gasping for
breath, she felt as if she were trapped in one of those slow-motion nightmares in which no matter how hard she tried, she could not get up any speed. Her lungs ached as she fought to fill them with the dense, moisture-laden air. Her legs quivered and threatened to give out; her feet felt heavier with every step as her sandals grew increasingly weighted down with mud.
She wasn’t going to make it. She knew it, even though she struggled on, refusing to give up, to accept the inevitable. In seconds she sensed rather than saw him closing on her, sensed rather than heard the heavy splash of his feet as he bounded along only steps behind. Her heart thudded like a trapped bird’s; adrenaline gave her legs renewed strength. Serial killer or hit man: it didn’t matter. What mattered was that when he caught her he was going to kill her. A burst of desperate speed sent her catapulting forward. Even with the slippery mud, even with the weight of her sandals and her limp legs, she managed to run as fast as she ever had in her life. But still he caught up to her as she had known he eventually would. A warm, fleshy hand wrapped around her upper arm.
Christy shrieked, managed to jerk free, and stumbled on.
A hard shove between her shoulder blades sent her hurtling to her knees. As quickly as she hit the drenched, muddy ground she knew that she was in big trouble, but it was already too late. Icy panic raced down her spine. Her stomach clenched.
With a quick jerk he grabbed a handful of hair and yanked her head back. For just an instant his body
looming over her blocked the rain from her face. He was still only a shape, a figure from a horror movie, big and dark, emanating evil in waves. She could smell a sharp, acrid odor that she thought must be her own fear. Terror closed like a fist around her throat, sent cold sweat pouring over her in waves.
She was so frightened now that she couldn’t even scream.
A vision of Elizabeth Smolski swam before her mind’s eye. Was this how the poor girl had felt, in the seconds after Christy had run away, in the seconds before he had slit her throat and left her to die?
Had she, too, prayed?
“Hi, Christy,” he crooned, in that terrible high-pitched voice that had been haunting her dreams. She heard it with nightmarish clarity over her pounding heart, over the rasp of his breathing, over the roar of the rain. Even as she registered this final confirmation that it was indeed him, the man who had attacked her in the cottage, even as she gathered herself together, prepared to fight, to scream, to do what she could to survive, he shoved something hard and cold into her neck.
No.
The pain was sudden and sharp and terrifying. Then it was—gone. She felt nothing. Nothing at all. Darkness rolled over her like an incoming tide, and she fell away into oblivion.
S
HE WASN
’
T HEAVY,
but her limp body was awkward, especially now that it was wet with rain and slippery with mud. Strong as he was, he had to struggle to lift her, and even when he got her over his shoulder it was difficult to keep her in place.
Damn the rain anyway, it was complicating everything.
For one thing, he was in his work truck, not his camper. He hadn’t really thought he’d be able to take her, not tonight, so he wasn’t as prepared as he might have been.
But just as he had known she would, the pretty little gazelle had finally ventured within reach. He’d been patient, even though he didn’t really have time for patience. He’d been following her, waiting for his chance, knowing that sooner or later it would come. His chance always came.
When her car had come swooping out of the garage, he’d been caught by surprise, though, he had to admit. He’d thought she was fixed there for the night, and he’d just decided that urgent as the need to take her was, he
didn’t want to chance another break-in. What she’d bought that day had been a factor; if she was buying bullets, she had to have a gun. No way was he risking getting himself shot. Now that she was on guard, it would be better to try to take her unawares, sometime when she was out and about.
Like tonight.
With one arm clamped around her body to hold her in place, he trudged toward her car, his head bent against the downpour. The field was a sea of mud. It sucked at his feet, making walking difficult. He tried to hurry, because it was always possible that someone would come along and catch him in their headlights, or see her car smashed against the tree. But he didn’t have his usual strength. The beast was asleep, and he was on his own.
It was because of her hair. He hated it. It was ugly. It turned him off. What she had done to herself amounted to a desecration. Even Terri was more attractive to him now. More attractive to the beast.
Which was probably just as well.
They knew he was here. Which meant that, as much as he liked his tropical paradise, he was going to have to leave. To stay in the game he required fresh pastures and anonymity.
The newspaper article about him had been a wake-up call. He’d picked one up at the hardware store and read it, and even before he’d finished he’d known that he was finished in the Outer Banks. He was going to have to pack up and get out. They’d be hunting him again, the cops, coming after him with their computers
and their DNA bases and their profilers. It was déjà vu all over again.
It was too bad, because he liked it here. Beach babes were his thing, he’d discovered. A girl in a bikini held no surprises. What you saw was what you got.
He liked that they’d given him a name, too: the Beachcomber. That was pretty cool, like the Zodiac or the Green River Killer or Son of Sam. Not every serial killer got a handle. It gave him a certain cachet.
If his old man had been alive, he would have been proud.
But his old man had been stupid, and now he was dead.
He, on the other hand, intended to live a long and productive life. But in order to do that, he was going to have to find a new hunting ground. And get rid of Christy Petrino, the one witness who could identify him.
But now he’d done that. She and her car were going to disappear tonight, never to be seen again. He’d hang around for a little while, a couple of weeks maybe, so that his departure didn’t raise any red flags, and then he’d disappear, too.
Only unlike Christy, he’d still be alive and doing his thing somewhere else.
At the thought, he smiled. Then as he reached her car and slid her off his shoulder, he had a thought: maybe he should head for California.
They had beaches, and he’d always liked that Beach Boys song about California girls.
L
UKE LAY STILL IN THE DARK,
cramped space, trying to work out where he was and what had happened. He remembered watching Christy: having changed her wet clothes for shorts, a T-shirt, and sandals, she had been rushing from room to room, cramming things into a suitcase, clearly getting ready to leave the safe confines of the cottage. For where? That was the million-dollar question. He remembered frowning blackly at the monitor as he’d tried to work that out. Was she meeting someone? She had received no calls… .
Didn’t matter, had been his thought. Wherever she went, he was going to have to follow her. He was dead tired, ticked off, turned on, and facing the prospect of cleaning cat crap off his bed, but no matter: whither the man-trap next door went, he went, too. Lucky he’d filled the Explorer up with gas while she’d been busy wreaking havoc on her hair. Lucky too that he’d outfitted her Camry with a homing device just in case she should try something stupid, like taking off for an unknown destination in the middle of a dark and stormy night. Such a night was, as he knew from experience,
one of the very worst times to try to tail someone in a vehicle. He’d have to hang back, way back, or risk having her pick up his headlights in her mirror. As spooked as she was, that wasn’t something she was likely to overlook. And given how little traffic tended to hit the streets in the wee hours on Ocracoke, he’d be doubly hard to miss. The homing device, which he’d installed more as a prudent backup than out of any real expectation of needing it, was going to prove to be a godsend tonight.
“Check the signal for the homing device,” he’d called to Gary as he’d yanked on a shirt and dry jeans.
“Not picking it up.” Luke remembered Gary saying that, and remembered cursing in response.
Then the rest of it came back to him in a rush. After glances at the various monitoring devices Gary had set up had confirmed that the homing device really, truly was not coming through and that Christy was still packing, he had taken advantage of the brief window of time he had calculated he still had before she headed out to try to figure out what was wrong with the transmitter. Armed with a flashlight, he’d sprinted through the rain to her garage, slipped inside—he now had keys to her cottage
and
her car, so slipping inside had been as easy as unlocking the overhead door and ducking beneath it—and popped her trunk. The homing device was in the spare wheel well. He had leaned in, lifted the carpet, shined the flashlight into the cavity in search of the ugly little black plastic bug—and heard the door that connected the kitchen to the garage open.
Yipes.
In the split second he’d had to consider
Christy’s reaction when she flipped on the overhead light and discovered him in her garage, he’d rolled into the trunk, which offered the only hope of concealment in the otherwise bare garage. By the time the garage light had come on as predicted, he’d had the trunk closed all but the tiniest little bit. Then he’d heard the click that had told him that she was using the button on her key ring to unlock her trunk.
Shit, like the total pain in the ass the woman had proved to be, she probably aimed to stow her suitcase in the trunk.
With something on the order of
explain this
running through his mind, he’d rolled to the back and pulled the carpet up over himself as best he could and tried to make himself as inconspicuous as possible, no easy task when his knees were practically under his chin and dust was shooting up his nose from the dislodged carpet, making him need to sneeze in the worst way.
If she looked into the trunk, she was going to think that her carpet was about nine months pregnant, which was something that he, himself, if he observed such a phenomenon in his own trunk, would instantly check out. Fortunately, she apparently didn’t look. The suitcase whacked into his knee, his knee smacked his nose, and the trunk slammed closed.
Just like that, he and the suitcase and the carpet and the dust were alone in the dark. The car rocketed backward down the driveway, slammed to a shuddering halt and then headed in the opposite direction in a way guaranteed to make him carsick before many minutes had passed. Eyes watering, cursing under his breath,
legs already starting to cramp up from just the thought that he couldn’t straighten them out, he gave vent to a mighty sneeze that snuck up on him while he wasn’t paying attention. Then he froze as it occurred to him that it was loud enough to have reached her ears. But she kept on driving without so much as touching the brake, so after a moment or two he was able to count himself safe. Hopefully the rain that was drumming like a crazed bongo player all over the car would cover up any sounds—like another sneeze, which he felt coming on—he might inadvertently make.
He’d been in tighter spots, more dangerous spots, more uncomfortable spots, no doubt about that. But from the moment he’d registered that Christy had, unknowingly, locked him in her trunk while he was supposed to be keeping her under surveillance, he hadn’t been able to think of a single more ridiculous one.
The good news was, he wasn’t going to lose her anytime soon. The bad news was, when she reached her destination he was going to have to somehow spring himself from the trunk and find a phone to use to call Gary, while managing to keep an eye on Christy at the same time.
Getting out of the trunk, while difficult, was doable. He could use the little multipurpose tool on his key ring to spring the lock, he didn’t doubt, though it might take several minutes more than he had to spare if he didn’t want to lose track of Christy. If that didn’t work, he could probably kick his way out through the backseat. Or shoot his way out, if it came to that.