Spellbinder (31 page)

Could he see her, in the darkness?

Could she get to the ladder, climb it, get the shotgun? Peter had showed her how to use it—made her learn. With her thumb she must push the safety catch forward. The gun was then ready to fire, one barrel at a time. But could she do it? Could she pull the trigger, and watch him die?

As the lamp went out, she heard his footsteps coming closer in the sudden darkness. Now she felt him beside her—felt his hand grip her shoulder. Suddenly he began shaking her, like a cat shaking a rat.

“Get to the door,” he said. “Open it. Then do what I tell you.” He hurled her toward the door. She stumbled, fell to one knee. Pain seared her back, between the shoulder blades. It was the rifle barrel: a hard, cruel blow. She stifled a scream. Damn him, she wouldn’t give him the pleasure of hearing her scream.

At the door, she felt him come close beside her, once more felt his brutal grip on her shoulder.

“Open the door,” he whispered. “Open the door, and then get out on the porch—and stand there. I want you to pretend that you heard something, and you’re looking around, to see what it was. Leave the door open. I’ll be right behind you, with this gun in your back. So don’t do anything silly. You understand?” As he said it, the fingers sunk into her shoulder. Involuntarily, she tried to pull away. She felt him release her shoulder—

—then felt a crash against her head. Ears ringing, suddenly sick, she was struggling to stand straight. He’d hit her with his fist, high on her head.

“
Understand?
”

With great effort she nodded. Braced against the doorframe, she was shaking her head numbly from side to side.

“Then
do
it. And remember, leave the door open.”

She was turning the knob, pulling the door toward her. The night air was sharp and cold. Over the ridge beyond the road, a half moon was sharp and bright in a cloudless night sky. With the moon framed by two pine trees that grew close to the cabin, it was a picture-postcard vista.

“Outside. Go out on the porch. But don’t go near the stairs. There. That’s far enough. Remember, this rifle’s aimed right at your back. Now stand still. Pretend you’re looking around.”

Straight ahead, the graveled driveway ran down toward the gate, invisible in the darkness. But if there were a car in the driveway—or even on the access road beyond the gate—she would see it, reflecting the moonlight.

What—who—had made the sound she heard? If Peter were here—somewhere—she would see his truck.

Could it be the police? The FBI?

During the long, terrible time she’d spent chained to the stove, she’d constructed a best-case scenario. When her father got Carson’s call, he would have instructed Flournoy to call the FBI. Agents in San Francisco would go to her apartment, and find the note she’d left Peter, saying that she’d gone to the cabin, looking for him. They would discover the cabin’s location—somehow. They would phone other agents in Mendocino, who would come to the cabin and surround it. They would call out for Carson to surrender.

Or else they would wait for their chance, hidden in the woods nearby. They would—

“All right. Come back inside.” Carson was whispering. “Act natural, now,” he warned. “Don’t do anything silly.”

She turned back to face the open doorway. Inside the room, invisible to anyone looking at them from concealment, he was crouched behind the rifle, aimed full at her torso.

“Come inside. Close the door.”

Slowly, with infinite reluctance, she closed the door. As the latch clicked, she realized that she should have run—
could
have run. She’d been less than two feet from the three stairs that led down from the porch to the ground. She could have thrown herself down the stairs, rolled under the porch, found protection from his rifle’s bullets. And then she could have waited.

Waited for what?

For her phantom rescuers?

“Who’s out there?” In the darkness, he was standing close beside her. The faint light from the windows revealed the dull gleam of his rifle barrel, inches from her midsection.

“There’s no one out there. It was probably a raccoon that you heard.”

“That was no raccoon. Not to make a sound that loud.”

“The porch is old. The boards are rotten.”

“It was no raccoon.”

She didn’t reply.

“We’re getting out of here. Now. Right now. Come here. Come over here, goddammit.”

With her eyes accustomed to the darkness, she saw him lay the rifle across the armchair, saw him draw the hunting knife, gesturing with the knife toward the table, where he’d thrown the chains.

“Get over here.”

Moving slowly and warily toward the table, she saw him step to her left side, then behind her.

Now hold still. Don’t move, or I’ll cut you.

She felt him gather the collar of her shirt, in back, then heard a rip of cloth.

“Wh—?”

“Shut up. Stand
still
.” With his hand twisted in the collar, he jerked her first to the right, then to the left. With the collar tight across her throat, she choked.

“Then stand still,” he breathed.

Obediently she let her body go slack. Looking aside, she saw him take a long length of chain from the table, then felt him insert the chain into the rip he’d made in her shirt, just beneath the collar, in back. Now he moved close to her, crushing the full length of his body against hers. His left arm circled her body across the breasts, drawing her crudely closer. She heard him chuckle: a thick sound, deep in his throat, obscenely intimate.

“Feel that?” He breathed. “
Feel
it?”

In the cleft of her buttocks, she felt the pressure of his penis: a hard, brutal thrust—one thrust, two thrusts, three.

“You like that, don’t you?”

“No,” she answered. “No, I don’t.”

As she spoke, she felt him release her with his left hand—felt him working at her throat, circling her neck with the chain, reinserting the end of the chain through the tear in her shirt. Now he heard a click. The padlock had snapped shut, making a loop of steel chain around her neck.

“It’s like a dancing bear,” he whispered, at the same time jerking the chain. “I pull—you dance. And if you don’t behave, I keep jerking until you do. See?”

“Wh-what’s the—the reason for all this?”

“The reason for it,” he said, “is that we’re leaving. We’re going to lock the front door, and then we’re going to get in the car. My car, not yours. You’re going to drive. I’ll be in the back seat, with the rifle and the knife. I’ll be down between the seats, where nobody’ll be able to see me. And that’s how we’re getting out of here—with you driving, and me holding on to your chain. But nobody’ll know about the chain, because they won’t be able to see it.”

“You’ve forgotten the gate. One of us has to get out of the car to unlock the gate.”

“I haven’t forgotten the gate,” he whispered. He sheathed the knife, picked up the rifle and took hold of the chain. “You’ll open the gate, and I’ll be inside the car with the rifle aimed right at your head. Then you’ll get back inside the car, like a good girl. Otherwise, you’ll be shot.
Right?
” He jerked at the chain: a cruel, sudden slash at her throat, momentarily choking her.

“And then” he said, his voice dropping once more to a low, obscene note. “And then, when we get where we’re going, we’ll get down to some serious business, you and me. I think I’ll let you take your clothes off, but I’ll leave the chain around your neck. How do you think you’ll like that?”

She realized that, if she tried to answer, she would lose control of her voice. If he forced her to answer, damn him, she would break down in tears.

So, silently, she turned toward the door, as if to cooperate. Anything was better than crying.

C
ROUCHED DOWN ON HIS
haunches, Mitchell was staring-up the driveway toward the darkened house. “All right,” he said finally, “I’ll tell Flournoy to drive into town, and call the sheriff. But, dammit, I wish you’d seen him, not just heard him.”

“Jesus Christ—” Angrily, he shook his head. “I was lucky to get out with my ass. Don’t you
see
that?”

“All right,” Mitchell repeated stolidly. “You and Calloway stay here. I’ll get back over the fence, and tell Flournoy. Here—” He handed over the shotgun. “Hold that.”

“Is it on safety?”

“There’s no safety. But the hammer is down. There’s a shell in the chamber, though. So be careful. Don’t pull the hammer back.”

“Right.” Sitting on his heels, he took the shotgun, resting the butt on the ground between his legs, with the muzzle pointing up at the sky. Waywardly, the feel of the gun in his hands evoked memories of childhood hunting trips, with his father. The feeling was the same—the gun between his hunkered-down thighs, the long, silent waiting in the woods, listening to the small, mysterious sounds of the animals. Over the years since his father’s death, he’d come to realize that the memory of the times they’d spent together in the woods was the most poignant, the most profound of all his father-and-son recollections. His father had taken a deep, quiet pride in his talent for shooting, and tracking, and reading animal signs. Yet, in his late teens, when he’d told his father that he couldn’t kill any more, his father had understood.

A few feet away, Mitchell was whispering to Calloway. Nodding, Calloway looked toward the cabin. Now Mitchell turned and began walking slowly toward the fence, and the sedan. Carefully placing each foot lightly on the ground before he committed his full weight, Mitchell moved soundlessly among the trees. Gone.

“
Hssst.
”

It was Calloway, urgently gesturing toward the cabin. The cabin door was swinging open. Denise was coming through the door, closely followed by another figure—a man. An antagonist. An enemy.

James Carson.

It was true, then. She’d been kidnapped. She was in danger—mortal danger. He could see fear—mortal fear—in every rigid, limb-locked line of her body.

As the two stood motionless on the porch, he saw moonlight glinting on a long, ominous shape that swung at Carson’s side: a rifle, or a shotgun.

Calloway was close beside him. Whispering: “There they are. You see them?”

“You’d better go tell Mitchell. Tell him to get back here. Tell him it’s Carson—with a gun.”

“You tell Mitchell. I’m staying here.”

“No, goddammit. You go. Tell him to put his car across the road, before he comes back. There’s only one way out of here. If you block the road, they can’t leave. Then the two of you come back.”

“But, Christ, he’ll still
have
her,” Calloway protested, “even if the road’s blocked. And, besides, it doesn’t look to me like they’re going anywhere. They’re just standing there, like she did before, when she came out alone. Just looking around.”

“He’s with her now, though. This is different. They’re going to get in the car and leave.”

“How’d you know?” Calloway asked truculently.

“I just know. I feel it.”

“Bullshit.”

“You’re wasting time. If Flournoy leaves with the car, we’re screwed. We won’t be able to stop them.”

“But—”

“
Do
it—” He shoved at the other man’s shoulder, hard. “
Do
it, before Flournoy leaves for Mendocino.”

Angrily, Calloway turned away, following Mitchell’s path through the dark, silent trees. Unlike Mitchell, Calloway moved noisily, clumsily.

Would Mitchell do it—block the road? Or had Flournoy already left for town? If he’d already left, then—

On the cabin porch, the two figures were moving. Slowly, infinitely reluctant, Denise was descending the three stairs from the porch to the ground. Carson was close behind her. And—yes—they were going to the cars—to the strange car, Carson’s. He was opening the door of the Chevrolet, getting into the car—in back. Now Denise was slipping into the driver’s seat. The car’s interior light revealed her face, pale and frightened. The driver’s door thudded shut; the light went off. The engine’s starter began to grind. Finally, reluctantly, the engine caught.

He looked at the gate. Had they snapped the lock? He couldn’t see. But, whether or not the gate was locked, it would still be necessary for either Denise or Carson to get out of the car, swing the gate open, hook the gate to the stump beside the driveway and then get back into the car and drive out onto the access road. The stump to which the gate must be hooked was less than ten feet from where he now crouched, still holding the shotgun.

If Carson got out of the car, he would have his chance.

But if Denise got out of the car—what could he do?

Alone—without help—what could he do?

Quickly, he glanced back over his shoulder, in the direction of Mitchell’s car. Did Mitchell know that they’d gotten in the car—that they’d started the engine? No, he couldn’t know. Not unless he’d heard the engine start.

Had
Mitchell heard it start?

He didn’t know—couldn’t be sure. And, now—suddenly—there was no time to warn him.

On the wooden stock of the shotgun, his hands were trembling. At the pit of his stomach, a sudden sick, empty trembling had begun.

Now the Chevrolet was backing away from the small graveled parking area—moving forward—backing up again. With two cars parked in the cramped space, it was always difficult to get out. Finally, on the third pass, the Chevrolet was in position, ready to come down the driveway to the gate.

And—still—he was alone.

The car was coming without headlights, its engine idling, coasting down the gentle incline toward the gate.

The gate
—

He must move toward the gate, must take a position close beside the stump that stopped the gate. Quickly. Silently. Holding the shotgun clear of the waist-high brush, bent double, he moved to his left, toward a small stand of manzanita. The manzanita grew a little higher than his head, thick enough to conceal him. The car was closer now, less than twenty-five feet away. If Carson looked carefully, he might be discovered.

But now he was among the manzanita. Standing motionless, he would be invisible. He heard brakes squeak, saw the Chevrolet stop with enough room to swing the gate open. The driver’s door was coming open. Denise was swinging her legs out of the car. Inside the car, the overhead light came on. James Carson was crouched in the back seat, with only his head visible above the line of the windows. His hair was dark, his face pale and narrow. He was saying something, but the words were lost in the low, muttering sound of the idling engine. Still sitting motionless behind the wheel, Denise was staring straight ahead—straight toward the stand of manzanita. Now she was out of the car. In the back seat, the rifle barrel came vertically up, then horizontally down, across the front seat—aimed at Denise as she rounded the front of the car, walking slowly, woodenly toward the gate. As she reached the gate, Carson reached across the front seat to close the driver’s door, switching off the light inside. Murderers craved the dark.