Blind Pursuit (15 page)

A massive columnar shape materialized in her high beams. Saguaro cactus, huge, multi-armed like Shiva, armored in needles and leather-tough skin.

She had time for one more scream before the Ford slammed head-on into the saguaro at full speed.

26

The windshield exploded. The hood popped open as the Ford’s front end caved in. That hideous grinding noise was the sound of the van punching into the passenger side like a mailed fist.

Erin was conscious of none of it. Her sole awareness was of white, a field of white, endless white, expanding before her, swallowing her up with a lover’s sigh.

The airbag, erupting out of the steering wheel to cushion the collision’s impact.

It caught and held her. Dazed, she lay in its soft folds, a captured insect in a napkin.

A heartbeat later the bag automatically deflated. She fell back against the headrest, blinking at a whirl of stars.

She wasn’t dead. Didn’t think she was even hurt. The airbag had saved her.

Did the van have an airbag?

Her gaze ticked to the rearview mirror.

The van’s front end loomed impossibly close. A zigzag crack bisected the windshield. Behind the glass, movement. Her abductor, pulling himself upright.

He’d been thrown sideways in the crash, but he wasn’t dead, wasn’t even unconscious.

Why couldn’t he have cracked open his head on the dashboard, flown through the windshield, broken his neck? Something, anything, it didn’t matter what, just so he’d been stopped and she could be safe.

No time to dwell on that. He’d survived, and now he was groping on the floor of the van for some item he’d dropped.

The gun, of course.

Couldn’t miss her at this range.

She fumbled at the door handle, wrenched the door ajar, pulled herself out. Light-headedness made her stumble.

Loose desert soil sank under her boots. She staggered forward, slipping and sliding on scattered rocks strewn like ball bearings in her path.

Steam hissed from under the sedan’s folded hood. She nearly fell again, caught herself by grabbing the car’s front panel, then jerked her hands away. Hot.

Behind her, movement in the front seat of the van. He was leaning out the side window, the pistol in his hand.

Down
.

She flung herself on hands and knees at the front of the car, then froze, waiting tensely for the pistol’s report.

Nothing happened. She’d ducked in time. He couldn’t hit her with the wreckage of the car blocking his aim.

Gasping, she clambered over the saguaro, prone in the glare of the Ford’s one remaining headlight, its arms outstretched as if in a silent plea. The hundreds of spiny needles encrusting the fallen giant poked and jabbed her, spotting her legs with pinprick dabs of blood.

Then she was half running, half crawling toward the road, afraid to rise fully for fear of making herself a target, afraid to stay on all fours because her progress that way was too slow.

At the edge of the road she dared a backward glance, expecting to see the man with the gun racing after her out of the gloom.

Astonishingly, he was still in the van. She saw him pushing on the driver’s door with no response. The frame must have buckled slightly, wedging the door shut.

He gave up on trying to open it and began to slide over to the passenger side.

For the moment he was distracted, and she was probably out of his range.

Run
.

She sprinted across the empty road, toward the Exxon station two hundred yards ahead.

Whoever was in there must have heard the crash. Might be on the phone already, requesting an ambulance.

She didn’t need an ambulance. She needed cops.

“
Help!”
Her lungs strained to find the air necessary for a shout. “Police! Call the
police
!”

When she glanced over her shoulder once more, the van’s passenger door was swinging open.

Where was the attendant? How long did it take to phone 911, anyway? A man on the night shift ought to have a gun behind the counter, ought to be out here now, protecting her.

She reached the asphalt court of the service station. The office was straight ahead, separated from her by two floodlit fuel islands.

One of her boots trod on a cable near the full-service island. Inside the building, a bell rang.

She cut between two of the gas pumps, avoiding a tangle of hoses that threatened to trip her up. As she sprinted for the self-service island, she risked another look over her shoulder.

He was sprinting after her now, the gun in his hand. She glimpsed a flash of metal in the waistband of his pants—another pistol? How many guns did he have?

Across the second island. Glass door ahead, framing a lighted snack shop.

She nearly flew into the door, slammed her palms against the glass at the last second to stop herself, then grabbed the pull-bar and jerked it violently.

The door didn’t open.

Locked.

No, not again, not
another
locked door.

Her fists hammered the door. The ghost image of her reflection, caught in the glass and staring wild-eyed at her, was a mask of frenzy and terror and despair.

“Let me in, he’s going to kill me,
let me in!
”

But no one let her in, and abruptly she realized that no one would.

The station was closed. Despite appearances, it had been shut down for the night.

Through the glass she could see the self-contained world of the snack shop, invitingly safe and friendly. Candy carousels, magazine racks, maps and map books, microwave oven, coffee maker—everything neat and orderly and heartbreakingly normal, but not a human being on duty anywhere.

Nobody had heard the crash, and nobody had called for an ambulance, and nobody would open the door, because nobody was here. The lights had been left on by mistake or activated by some timer mechanism’s glitch.

The reason didn’t matter. What mattered was that she was alone, utterly alone, and her abductor had reached the edge of the service court.

She ran.

There was no place to go, nowhere to hide, but she ran anyway, thinking wildly that she could give him the slip somehow, duck into a rest room or huddle behind a trash bin—crazy thoughts, hopeless, everything was hopeless and she was certain to die.

She rounded the corner of the building, then stopped short, staring in amazement at what was simultaneously the most unexpected and the most obvious thing in the world.

A pay phone. Well, of course. Every gas station had one.

For a moment, shock made her stupid. She dug in her pants pockets for some change, knowing she didn’t have any. Then she remembered that a 911 call required no deposit.

She yanked the handset off the plungers, heard a dial tone—it worked, actually
worked
—then stabbed the push buttons with a shaking finger.

Even as she dialed, she wondered what the hell she was doing. Response time to her call would be a minimum of four minutes.

Ringing on the line.

True, the police couldn’t arrive fast enough to save her. But perhaps they didn’t have to. If she gave her name, said she’d been kidnapped, described the van and the approximate location of the ranch, then her abductor couldn’t hope to avoid identification and arrest.

A second ring. Still no answer.

Was he sufficiently rational to refrain from killing her merely because he couldn’t hope to get away with it? Only one way to find out.

Third ring.

“Come on, answer!”

Scuff of shoes nearby. He was closing in.

By all logic she should abandon the phone and run.

But she couldn’t hope to outdistance him, and somebody
had
to answer soon.

Fourth ring.

He turned the corner. His silhouetted figure, looming huge against the starry sky, expanded to fill up her world.

The pistol—at least she thought it was the pistol—came up fast, the muzzle thrust at her face.

She spun away, nearly dropping the phone, and a coolly dispassionate female voice spoke into her ear. “Pima County Emergency Services.”

“
I’ve been kidnapped, my name is—”

Agony in her neck. Blinding pain. Her mouth wouldn’t work. Her breath was frozen.

Shot. She’d been shot. Oh, Christ, he’d shot her in the neck—

Then she heard the sizzle of electricity, felt the pinch of metal, voltage singing in every muscle and nerve.

Not the pistol. The stun gun.

Her jaws clamped shut. The handset fell from her grasp.

A buzzing roar rose in her brain, and she was gone.

27

“Ma’am?”

The voice on the other end of the line repeated that word insistently.

“Ma’am? Are you there, ma’am? Hello?”

Gund ripped out the handset and cord, dropping both items on the ground.

He had to hurry. Every 911 call was instantly traced. No doubt a sheriff’s department cruiser was being dispatched to the area at this moment.

Erin lay unconscious at his feet. The Ultron had done its job. She would be out for ten to fifteen minutes, long enough to get her back to the ranch.

If he could get away at all.

He’d meant to kill her when she fled the ranch. The pistol shot fired at her car had targeted her head.

Even after the crash he would have shot her, had she not used the wrecked sedan as cover.

Now he was glad he hadn’t ended her life with a bullet. He knew another way, a better way, to punish her for disobedience.

A stitch jabbed at his ribs as he ran to his van. He reached it, then paused with a muttered curse.

The front tire on the passenger side was slowly going flat. A nail was imbedded in it. The bitch’s work.

With the hole largely plugged by the nail, the tire wasn’t losing air too fast. It should stay partially inflated for a few minutes longer.

It would have to. He had no time to change the tire now.

He climbed in through the passenger doorway, slid over to the driver’s seat. The door frame on the left side had been slightly bent in the collision; he would have to hammer the damn thing back into shape. Later.

Twist of the ignition key, and the engine let him hear its reassuring growl.

In reverse, he pulled free of the wrecked Ford, then parked directly in front of it. Removed the towing equipment from the van. Secured the bar and chains.

A noise down the road. Patrol car? No, only the wind. Next time it would be a cruiser, though.
Move
.

Shifting into low gear, he hauled the sedan out of the roadside ditch. The crushed saguaro lifted the car like some oversized speed bump.

Towing the Taurus, he drove to the side of the Exxon station, where Erin lay unmoving near the rained pay phone. The glare of his one remaining headlight washed over her as he pumped the brake pedal.

Out of the van, quickly. The motor idled, purring like a large somnolent animal, as he threw open the Astro’s side door, then hoisted Erin in his arms and dumped her roughly inside.

Time to go.

No, wait. An idea.

From his glove compartment he removed a black felt-tip marker. Spent a couple of seconds leaning over the phone, pen in hand.

Behind the wheel again. At the rear of the building he executed a wide U-turn, the captured Ford rattling and jouncing, and then he was back on Houghton Road, heading north, punching the accelerator pedal, speeding away from the scene.

* * *

Deputies Davis and Smoke arrived at the Exxon station at precisely eleven o’clock.

They found the lights on, a situation unusual but hardly unheard of. Foster Tuttle, the station’s owner, was getting on in years. He was known to be absent-minded about such details.

The pay phone had been torn apart. The handset and cord lay in the dirt.

Davis beamed his flashlight at the phone assembly and saw fresh graffiti scrawled over its metal casing.

COPS SUK ME.

He worked up a goodly mouthful of saliva with the help of the wad of Bubblicious he was chewing, then threw back his head and hawked a shining gob of spit into the night.

“Kids,” he said in disgust.

Deputy Smoke nodded. “Kids.”

For no particular reason Davis retrieved the handset. The armored cord dangled from his hand like a dead snake, the plating bright in the starlight.

“This damn town’s getting more like L.A. every damn day,” Davis muttered.

“More like.” Smoke had learned never to argue with his partner. Besides, it was true, what with the gangs and the drugs and the Mexicans.

“Every damn day,” Davis said for emphasis as they sauntered back to their car.

Before pulling away to resume patrol. Deputy Davis added another stick of Bubblicious to his growing wad, and Deputy Smoke got on the radio to report an act of vandalism and a phony 911 call.