Superstition (13 page)

6

I
T SEEMED TO NICKY that she had been suspended in space for an incredibly long time, although in reality it could not have been more than a split second. The world seemed to slow down around her. Her senses seemed to heighten. The scent of pine needles, faint before, was suddenly as strong as if a bottle of Pine-Sol had been opened directly under her nose. The sounds of the night seemed to intensify, as if the birds and insects and wind had chosen that precise moment to reach their crescendo. The intense blackness of the pavement seemed to rush up at her, yet her eyes were so keen that even through the darkness they could discern each tiny, individual jet crystal in the macadam. She was aware of the blood racing through her veins, of the dryness of her throat and mouth, of the thudding of her heart.

Most of all, she had this overwhelming sense of danger, of evil, of a terrifying dark
presence. . . .

Her knees crashed painfully into the driveway. Her palms skidded over the rough asphalt. She screamed, a pitiful, choked sound, as something huge and heavy came down on top of her, flattening her, driving the air from her lungs and cutting off her scream almost before it left her throat.

She’d been caught, brought down, she realized to her horror. Unbelievably, against all the rules of nightmares, the phantom monster had succeeded in claiming its prey.

I’m going to die,
she thought with a flash of icy clarity. Then her forehead smacked the pavement hard, and her world went black.

SMOKING HAD MANY DISADVANTAGES, Joe reflected as he stepped out onto the patio to light up. It was expensive; it was politically incorrect; it was bad for his health. But it was also, as he had found on many previous occasions, useful. Now it provided him with an excuse to follow Nicky Sullivan outside.

The look she had shot him over her shoulder just before she’d left the kitchen had been an unmistakable mixture of dislike and contempt. He wasn’t used to having women look at him like that; he was a lot more accustomed to “come hither” than “get lost.” But, as he had just discovered, “get lost” definitely had its charms. It had, in fact, brought him out onto the patio on this dark and breezy night to further his acquaintance with her.

But she wasn’t there.

Which was probably just as well, he reflected as he walked to the edge of the patio and took a deep, revivifying drag on his Marlboro Light. Beautiful redheads who hated him might be a whole new category of female, but exploring it further was almost certainly a bad idea.

Number one, he hadn’t had a woman—not so much as a kiss, a date, even a conversation with one that wasn’t either casual or business-related—since his life got nuked, so starting small, say, with a woman who actually seemed to like him and was going to be around for a while, seemed a reasonable thing to do. Women were undoubtedly a lot like bicycles: Once you learned how to ride, you never really forgot. But all his experience of women had been before, when he’d been a cocky, badass babe-magnet who’d perfected “love ’em and leave ’em” until his particular version of it had approached the level of art. Now it was after, and he was broken: fragile and tentative and unsure of the world and his place in it in a way he had never been before.

He’d experienced his share of extreme emotion, and it had left him with a distaste for it. Finding out that he had a heart after all had taught him something else, too: that hearts, even hardened stainless-steel ones like his used to be, could be broken.

All he’d wanted since he had started to heal was to keep himself in the calm and steady place that he’d finally managed to achieve. He’d had his fill—and more than his fill—of turbulence, of heat, of danger. If, as someone had accused him long ago, he once had been an excitement junkie, he was over it.

Which brought him to point number two: Nicky Sullivan had piqued his interest more strongly than any woman had since he’d woken up to discover to his dismay that his life had an after. She was a redhead, which in his estimation was always a plus. Add to that the fact that she had a killer bod and a beautiful face, and that put her squarely on his A-list. Then she’d glared at him; she’d yelled at him; she’d stood nose to nose with him and called his bluff.

And won.

The show she’d been so determined to get on the air was a joke: He’d watched with interest as the supposedly great psychic Leonora James had walked through the house, claiming there were no ghosts present, while Brian, who Joe knew for a fact was certifiably dead, paced along beside her; then, later, she’d
pretended
to see a ghost in the bedroom while Brian had practically done the frug in front of her to get her to notice him. Okay, it was possible that Brian hadn’t really been there at all; maybe he didn’t exist anymore outside of Joe’s head. And, okay, probably most television of that sort was a joke. He could live with that. But the kicker was that even after that joke of a show was over, Nicky, who had just finished assisting in the perpetration of a fraud that undoubtedly had an audience of millions, had continued to regard
him
with disdain.

In short, he thought wryly as he took another drag on his cigarette, she was his kind of woman: a challenge. A gorgeous, sexy, redheaded challenge.

Which was downright scary when he thought about it, as he now had a few minutes of leisure time to do. Because that was the kind of woman he would have been attracted to before—the kind that had no place in his life now.

When he got around to looking again—and if he was that attracted to Nicky Sullivan, it was probably time to start checking out the local chicks—what he wanted was the girl next door; Mom and Pop and apple pie; sweet, wholesome, uncomplicated.

He’d experienced enough emotional highs and lows to last him forever. All he wanted from here on out was a calm and peaceful life.

That being the case, he was going to finish his cigarette and go back inside. Just because Nicky Sullivan was a challenge didn’t mean he had to take it up.

Never trouble trouble till trouble troubles you, as his foster mom had been fond of saying. Words to live by.

Taking a final drag on his cigarette, Joe dropped the butt, crushing it under his heel. He glanced up, noted the heavy cover of charcoal-gray clouds that was rolling in from the sea to systematically blot out the few stars that still twinkled in the midnight-blue sky, and guessed there would be rain before morning. Then he bent to pick up his discarded butt.

That’s when he heard it: a high-pitched squeal, almost instantly cut off. Something about it made him straighten, the butt forgotten, and frown into the night. He waited, listened, strained his eyes trying to see something past the light spilling from the windows. Nothing. Silence. Black-velvet darkness.

The cry had probably come from an animal that had fallen prey to some nocturnal hunter. What else could it have been?

FOR SOME UNKNOWABLE expanse of time, Nicky drifted in and out of consciousness, not quite sure of what had happened or where she was or anything except that she hurt. Pain brought her slowly back to awareness. Her head throbbed; her hands and knees stung; she ached all over, she realized, and then realized, too, finally, that if she was in pain, she had to be alive.

Alive:
It was as she remembered how unlikely and wonderful that was that she opened her eyes.

At first, all she saw was darkness. Her vision was blurry, and she blinked, trying to clear it, trying to focus. It didn’t help. The darkness swirled around her; a stabbing pain shot through her head. She felt dizzy, nauseated. Closing her eyes again, she lay perfectly still to try to get it under control. There was a roaring in her ears that rendered her effectively deaf: She could hear nothing beyond it. Breathing deeply, trying to get her bearings, she inhaled the scent of damp earth, and pine, and—something else. Something that she couldn’t quite define, although she knew she had smelled it before. Something earthy and pungent that her subconscious mind recognized even if her conscious mind did not.

It was something vaguely recognizable yet alien and frightening enough that just breathing it in sent a prickle of unease rippling over her skin.

She was afraid, Nicky realized, and that knowledge scared her even more.

Afraid of what?

As soon as the question popped into her mind, memory returned in a tidal wave of horror. She’d been chased, caught, brought down.

By what? By whom? The jumbled image her subconscious came up with was of something leaping at her from behind. A man? She wasn’t sure, but she thought so. She hadn’t been able to see a thing, but all her senses other than sight told her that it had been human.

Where is he? Is he close by? Is he watching me at this very moment, waiting for me to wake up?

Nicky’s eyes popped open. At the thought, panic gripped her even as she warned herself not to move. Her heart began to thud. Her pulse slid into overdrive. Her muscles tensed as every nerve ending she possessed prepared for instant flight.

Wait.

She took a slow, careful, soundless breath.
If
he was nearby,
if
he was watching, she did not want to give away the fact that she was awake. Before she did anything, even so much as lift her head, even so much as try to move her arms or her legs, she needed to know where she was, where he was, and if she was injured or hampered in some way that might prevent her from getting to safety.

The darkness no longer swirled around her, but it was still there, still impenetrable. Her right hand was splayed out flat not far from her face—she could feel her own breath feathering across her knuckles—but it was so dark that she couldn’t see it. Her other hand was trapped beneath her body. It tingled slightly, as if it had gone to sleep. She didn’t dare move to try to ease it out from beneath her. The good news was, she didn’t seem to be bound in any way. The bad news was, she ached all over.

She was lying on her stomach on an uneven surface. Some kind of hard ridge ran beneath her hipbones, and a small, sharp object jabbed into her left shoulder. Her head was turned to one side, and what lay beneath her cheek and outflung right hand felt cool, faintly damp, and a little prickly.

Pine needles?

Her fingers pressed down experimentally, testing what was beneath them: pine needles. Their scent was suddenly acute.

Her memory returned in its entirety, and with it came a realization: She was in all probability outside the Old Taylor Place, lying under the low-hanging branches of the cluster of pines at the curve of the driveway.

But she had fallen on the pavement. How had she gotten under the trees?

She’d been out cold. She hadn’t crawled to where she was lying. Someone had to have dragged or carried her there.

He
had to have dragged or carried her there.

Is he still here?

The thought made her blood run cold.

Any second now, he might do whatever he means to do to me. Rape me . . . kill me . . .

She was breathing too fast, she realized. If he heard it, would he guess that she was aware? Without moving, unable to see in the dead darkness beneath the pines, Nicky tried to slow her breathing down to the steady, untroubled pattern of unconsciousness, tried to focus her senses, tried to listen for something that would tell her if he was near, tried to
feel
another presence. It was hard when her head was throbbing, when her blood was pounding in her ears, when her heart was racing so that the frenzied beat of her own pulse was all that she could hear, but she tried—and she got the hideous sense that
she was not alone.

If she screamed, someone in the house might very well hear. If she screamed and he was close, he would be on top of her before the sound escaped her throat.

She wasn’t even sure she
could
scream. Her throat was so dry. Her mouth was dry, too.

What if she tried to scream, but the only sound that came out was a strangled croak?

Forget screaming. Her best bet, her only bet, was to run for it, to gather up every bit of strength she could possibly muster and catapult herself out from under the trees, then race like a greyhound toward the house.

But could she even run?

Her ears were ringing. Her head pounded. When she tried to focus her eyes, she got nauseated. Her legs, her hands, her whole body felt achy and bruised. She was hurt, though how badly she couldn’t be sure. Too badly to run for it?

The alternative was to lie where she was and simply wait. But for what? Nicky was as sure as she had ever been that she didn’t want to find out.

Then she made a terrible discovery: Over the din in her ears, over the racing of her pulse, over the panicked thud of her heart, she was almost sure
she could hear someone else breathing.

He was there. He was close. She could feel him. On her right, down near her hipbone. He seemed to be sitting, or crouching, although she couldn’t be sure because she couldn’t see him.

But she could hear him breathing.

And she could hear something else, too—a strange sawing sound that made no sense. She couldn’t imagine what it was, but it was weird enough and spooky enough to make the hairs stand up on the back of her neck.

Oh, God, oh, God . . .

She heard the rustle of branches, felt something nudge her hip. The breathing—harsh, uneven breathing—came closer. He was turning toward her.

He was crouched beside her now, leaning over her. . . .

Terror washed over her like an icy wave. Her heart gave a great leap, then seemed to lodge in her throat. Her stomach knotted.

Don’t move.

“Nicky,” he muttered, and touched her hair, stroking it.

A scream exploded into her throat, where it remained trapped and silent. Her skin crawled. Her head spun. Her pulse surged until it was as loud as thunder in her ears. She felt like she might be going to pass out. . . .