Obsession (22 page)

Dan whizzed past the tractor.

“Did you get any water? Or anything I could take a couple of Tylenol with?” she asked once they were safely back in their lane again.

“No water. Orange juice. Milk. Soda. How bad’s your head?”

“I’ll live.”

Turning to reach into the backseat, she snagged an orange Fanta from one of the plastic bags. Then she retrieved the Tylenol from her purse, where she had tucked it away, and swallowed two capsules. The fizzy orange soda was sweet and tangy and cold, and she realized as she drank it that this particular brand was a favorite of hers.

Then the ramifications hit, and she almost choked on the mouthful she was swallowing.

How had he known that?
Had
he known it? Or was it just one more mind-bending coincidence?

“What now?” he asked, on a long-suffering note. It was only as he glanced her way and their gazes met that she realized she was staring at him.

“I like orange soda,” she said.

His attention returned to the road. “Good. So do I.”

Her eyes remained fixed unwaveringly on his face.
“You
like orange soda?”

“Didn’t I already say that?” His lips thinned impatiently. He flicked another glance at her. “Is there some sort of significance to this that I’m missing out on here?”

She wavered. After all, millions of people probably liked orange soda. That he should buy some wasn’t exactly remarkable. Was it?

Jeez, was she getting totally paranoid or what? Either she trusted the guy or she didn’t. She couldn’t keep bouncing back and forth between the two like a ball in a tennis match.

Her gut said trust him. Her brain said—who the hell knew what her brain said? It was hard to tell with scrambled brains. So she was going with her gut by default.

“No,” she said, realizing that she was way too exhausted to even begin to make sense of the labyrinthian possibilities that not trusting him presented. “I was just wondering, is all.”

He grunted by way of a reply, and that was the end of that.

Ten minutes later, Katharine realized with relief that the throbbing headache that had plagued her all day was largely gone. With her head resting back against the seat and her lids drooping with weariness, she watched tall green fields of corn and shorter green fields of soybeans and the occasional herd of cows or sheep stream past the window. The great thing about a nearly empty two-lane highway was that it was pretty easy to be sure they weren’t being followed. Soon she lightened up on the whole looking-over-her-shoulder thing, and even Dan glanced in the rearview mirror less and less frequently. For a while they traveled alongside the C&O canal, and she caught a glimpse of one of the long, mule-drawn canal boats, complete with costumed driver and loaded with tourists, as it maneuvered through a lock. Then the canal branched north, curving through a vast expanse of forest, and she lost sight of it.

“You know, I’ve been thinking about it,” Dan said as they passed through the tiny town of, according to the sign, Witt, which was really nothing more than a cluster of houses grouped around a four-way intersection, “and I think what you’re experiencing here may be some form of post-traumatic stress disorder.”

“What?” She frowned at him. “I thought that was just for, like, combat veterans.”

He shook his head. “Any kind of traumatic event can bring it on. What you experienced last night certainly qualifies. Impaired memory is one of the symptoms, and so is emotional detachment. Lack of trust is in there somewhere, too, I’m pretty sure. I’d have to look it up to be certain, but I think you fit the criteria pretty well.”

Katharine thought about that for a moment. This feeling she had that she wasn’t herself, that she didn’t look like this, that her possessions weren’t hers, was just—perception, she realized. It was possible—no, even likely, because what was the alternative?—that the problem lay with her mind. Likewise, the recurring lack of trust she was experiencing toward people like Ed and even Dan himself might well be the result of some kind of disordered thinking. She had nothing concrete with which to back up any of that. Everything was based on her perceptions, every reaction on her instincts.

Except for one thing.

“So how does that explain the tile?” she asked. Her head was starting to hurt again, as images of the different-sized tiles took possession of her mind. “I felt that floor. I couldn’t have imagined that.” Then, her confidence shaken, she added in a near whisper, “Could I?”

“I don’t know.” Dan shot her a glance. “I’m not an expert on this. But at least for right now, post-traumatic stress disorder is the best explanation we have.”

He was right, and she knew it. There were loose ends—like the tile—but the general theory fit the facts. Anyway, she wanted so much to believe in a simple, logical explanation for why she saw a stranger every time she looked in a mirror. Post-traumatic stress disorder was an answer she could deal with.

“How do you cure it?”

“Talk therapy generally helps, I believe. And medication. ”

“Great.” Her tone was borderline despairing. But, she told herself, it was still better than the best alternative she had been able to come up with—that somehow she had been caught up in some otherworldly mix-up and was trapped in another woman’s life.

There was no medication for that.

“Sometimes it even gets better on its own,” Dan added, on a more cheerful note. “Who knows, you may wake up tomorrow and be perfectly fine.”

“From your lips to God’s ears.” Katharine gave him a small, wry smile. Then she took a deep breath and allowed her head to drop back against the seat again. Despite the Tylenol, her headache was back in spades.

The farther they went, the more rural the scenery became. Clapboard farmhouses and ranch-style brick houses and the occasional trailer set well back from the road became the order of the day. Barns and black-painted board fences dotted the landscape, which was emerald green and rolling as far as the eye could see. In the distance, the smoky blue peaks of the Appalachian Mountains formed a towering western horizon that looked like jagged teeth biting into the sky. The sun soared overhead, round and yellow as an egg yolk stuck smack in the middle of an upside-down blue bowl, and everything—plants, animals, and humans alike—seemed wilted by its heat.

Even though she was in an air-conditioned vehicle, Katharine felt wilted, too. If she’d been just a little less anxious, she would have fallen asleep. But she couldn’t quite stop with the occasional quick glance out the back windshield. Distrust and detachment and a weird inability to recognize herself might be all in her head. The fact that someone was hunting her definitely was not.

If they were being followed, though, it had to be by a crow. She was as sure as it was possible to be that nothing any larger was on their tail.

By the time they turned off onto a hard-packed gravel road and started bumping through a forest so thick with old-growth maples and oaks and elms that their entwined branches formed a leafy canopy that blocked out the sun, she realized that thinking about his cabin as being in the back of beyond had most likely been an understatement. There was nothing around but woods. The thing was, she was almost too tired to care. Her eyelids were so heavy that she could barely keep them open. It had been a while since either she or Dan had spoken; he, too, seemed tired and engrossed in thought.

“Here we are,” he said, after the Blazer had lurched through the tenth pothole in as many minutes.

Stifling a yawn, Katharine sat up, stretched a little, and looked around.

She saw instantly—because it was the only building in sight—that he was referring to a small, one-story log cabin with a rusty-looking metal roof supported by four narrow wooden posts that overhung a low-slung porch. It was set in a grassy clearing that, because of the position of the sun, was half sunny, half in shade, with the cabin being split down the middle between the two. Beside the single step leading up to the porch, a gnarled mountain laurel, its dark green foliage heavy with purple blooms, grew. There was an outbuilding that could have been a small garage a little way behind the house. The yard was overgrown and dotted with dandelions, and, like the house, gave off an air of general neglect. It was obvious at a glance that the place was infrequently used.

Looking at it, Katharine was irresistibly reminded of the movie
Deliverance.
She wouldn’t have been a bit surprised to hear distant strains of “Dueling Banjos.”

Gravel crunched beneath the tires as Dan turned into the driveway and stopped beside the house. He cut the engine and got out. She sat still for a moment, eyeing the cabin and its surroundings with caution.

He opened her door for her, and she got out.

“So where do you fish?” she asked a moment later as she stepped up onto the porch, which was made of wide planks that looked older than dirt. Dan was right behind her, the duffel bag slung over his shoulder, the groceries in their white plastic bags in his hands. The fact that there was not another residence in sight, that she had not, in fact, seen another dwelling since they had turned off the highway, loomed larger in her mind with every step she took. As far as she could tell, the cabin was completely isolated, which meant that she and Dan were on their own.

Not that she felt nervous about that or anything.

“The Shenandoah River runs about a half-mile back that way.” He nodded toward the left of the house. She looked, but all she could see were trees and more trees. She listened, but if the telltale gurgle of water was present, it was drowned out by other, competing, nature sounds. Besides the rustle of plastic and their own soft footsteps, all she heard were birds and bugs. “I keep a runabout on a trailer out in the garage. When I want to fish, I just hook it up and off I go.”

When Dan stepped past her to unlock the front door, which lacked a window and was, like the rest of the cabin, made of weathered wood, it swung open with a protesting creak.

Stepping into the house with some trepidation, Katharine was relieved to find herself in a clean and functional, if somewhat dusty, living room. The floor was scuffed hardwood with an oval braided rug in shades of tan and brown laid down on top of it. The walls were generic white. There was an orange tweed couch with a tan velour recliner beside it, both of which had seen better days. A dark wood table with a brass lamp on it sat between the two. A matching coffee table in front of the couch and an outdated TV (it had rabbit ears on top of it) on a metal stand in the far corner completed the décor. There were no pictures and no personal items. No knickknacks at all.

“Do you get out here much?” she asked, her gaze touching on a cobweb in a corner.

“Not as much as I’d like.” Dan shut the door, and gloom enveloped them. Katharine realized that the curtains—they were a limp white and hung behind the couch, which was placed in front of the big front window—were closed. “When I can.”

He walked past her, heading, she assumed, for the kitchen, which was separated from the living room by a half-wall. The top row of cabinets was visible from where she stood.

“Make yourself at home,” he said over his shoulder.

She did, by following him into the kitchen. Her head hurt, her legs felt wobbly, and she was so tired she could barely think, but still she thought it was a good idea to get the lay of the land, so to speak. The kitchen was small, ugly—green laminate counters atop mustard-yellow cabinets, harvest-gold refrigerator and stove that looked decades old, faux wood linoleum floor—and dark. He dropped the duffel bag on the floor, deposited the groceries on the small rectangular wooden table that, along with two chairs, took up most of the floor space in the middle of the room, then pulled open the thin white curtains above the sink.

The window was clearly protected from the direct light of the sun, because sunlight did not pour in, but the room was suddenly light enough so that she could see dust motes in the air.

“You know, maybe this wasn’t such a good idea,” Katharine said uneasily, glancing around. All thoughts of Dan as an unknown quantity aside, it had suddenly occurred to her just how very vulnerable they would be if they
had
been followed. This place looked about as sturdy as a Cracker Jack box. Whoever was after them could kick the door down with impunity. If that happened, there was no one around to help or hear.

Dan was putting milk and lunch meat in the refrigerator, which, she saw, except for a bottle of ketchup and some pickles, had been previously empty.

He flicked a glance at her and shook his head. “There you go with those trust issues of yours again. You’re safe here, I promise.”

“This has got nothing to do with trust issues. It’s just ... what happens if they find us?”

“Nobody’s going to find us.” He put the last of the perishables in the refrigerator and shut the door. “We weren’t followed, because I kept an eye out. That’s why I took the most backward route known to man: If anybody had been on our tail, I would have seen them. Anyway, there’s a security system—I usually don’t set it because it goes off every time there’s a thunderstorm, which is a pain in the ass to deal with from out of town—which is wired into the sheriff’s office. They’re closer than you think, and they’re usually here within just a few minutes after the thing goes off. Besides, I’ve got a gun.”

Her eyes widened. Her pulse kicked up a notch. A vision of the kind of big silver handgun she had become way too familiar with over the last twenty-four hours materialized in her mind.

“You’ve got a gun?”

“Yep.”

He moved, opened a drawer beside the stove, and reached inside. When his hand resurfaced, it was grasping a slender black pistol—she thought it might be a .22—that had clearly seen better days. It was not, by any stretch of the imagination, a government-issued weapon. The pride with which he looked at it was telling: No spook worthy of his name would be caught dead gloating over a gun like that.