Superstition (59 page)

As for the half a million dollars? He was going to go look in the cave, and if it was there, he was going to do the right thing and turn it in.

Probably.

Grinning to himself, Joe walked across the yard and got in the Lincoln beside Nicky. Then he started the car and pulled away from the curb.

Good-bye, paradise; hello, Jersey.

It definitely worked for him.

Read on for a preview of
Karen Robard’s next novel

VANISHED

Available now from G. P. Putnam’s Sons

S
ARAH MASON HAD ALWAYS THOUGHT that when Death finally came calling for her, he would be better-looking. You know, sort of like Brad Pitt in
Meet Joe Black
. The kind of guy you actually wouldn’t mind taking off with. The jerk wearing the cheap plastic skeleton-face Halloween mask was maybe twenty, around five eight and scrawny, a dark-complected Caucasian with long, greasy black hair, a single fat silver hoop earring, and a fuzzy goatee poking out from under the mask. His high-tops were white, his oversized Hornets T-shirt was red, and his denim shorts were long and so baggy that they threatened to go indecent with any too-sudden move. In other words, tonight Death was definitely not heartthrob material. He wasn’t even borderline impressive.

Then again, the gun he was pointing at her was big and bad. So big and bad that, Sarah realized as her shocked brain resumed minimal functioning, she’d quit breathing the moment she’d set eyes on it.

“You! Lady! Get over by the cash register!”

No doubt about it. The mask might hide his mouth, but he was yelling at
her,
aiming that big black gun at
her,
his movements agitated, jerky. She could see his eyes through the egg-shaped holes in the plastic. They were shiny black, the kind of shiny black that usually indicated pupils dilated from drug use, and they darted nervously around the convenience store aisle where he had her trapped.

She stood stock-still, unable to move. Caught in that state of suspended animation in which the horrible event that was occurring seemed, for the first few seconds, no more real than a bad dream, Sarah continued to stare numbly at him.

I don’t believe this. I just came out for dog food. . . .

“Move!”
he screamed when she didn’t.

Her heart leaped. Her mind raced. She swallowed convulsively.

“Yes. Yes, okay.”

Jolted back into horrible reality by the sheer volume of his shout, Sarah hugged the big blue bag of Kibbles ’n Bits—the urgent lack of which had brought her to this, her neighborhood Quik-Pik, at shortly after eleven p.m.—close to her chest, and moved.

“Hurry up! Hurry up!” He was practically waving the gun at her in his agitation, shifting from foot to foot, his too-shiny eyes roaming all over the place.

“It’s okay.” She drew on every day of her four years of experience in dealing with criminal types as an Assistant District Attorney for Beaufort County, South Carolina, to keep her voice even. As acting head of the Major Crimes Unit, she ordinarily ate penny-ante thugs like this for breakfast. But this wasn’t a courtroom, and his future wasn’t at stake here: Hers was. What she wanted to do,
needed
to do, was forge a human connection between the two of them. It was a basic tenet of the Women Against Rape class she helped teach: Make the perpetrator see you as a person and you’re less likely to be harmed. “Just stay cool.”

“I
am
cool. Don’t you be tellin’ me to stay cool. Who you to be like,
stay cool
?” His voice went shrill with indignation.

Okay, wrong thing to say.

“Get yo’ ass over to that cash register.” He bounced up and down on the balls of his feet, thrusting the gun toward her like a foil, and Sarah instinctively braced in anticipation of it going off.
“Now.”

Sarah gave up on the whole
try to make a connection with the criminal
concept, quickened her pace, and lowered her eyes while she thought desperately, trying to come up with an angle, some way to get out of this mess. She’d managed to call 911 on her cell phone as soon as she’d realized that a robbery was going down at the front of the store. That was the good news. At the time, dog food in hand, she’d been fleeing toward what she presumed was the back exit, heading toward the hall that led to the restrooms and beyond. Before she’d had a chance to say a word in response to the operator’s brisk 911, this guy had come charging out of the ladies’ restroom and down the hall and she had been forced to change her path and thrust the still-connected—she hoped—cell phone into her purse. Where it remained.

Since it was her cell, though, even if the operator didn’t just automatically disconnect the silent call, even if the operator followed through, the address that would come up was her home. There was no way to connect the call to this location at all.

That was the bad news.

Even worse news was that even if the cops realized what was going down, if they knew it was her, they probably wouldn’t come anyway. Just at that moment, she was pretty sure she was riding the number-one spot on their least-favorite-persons list.

“Dumb bitch,” the robber said, the words just barely muffled by the mask.

Sarah’s hackles rose instinctively.
Bitch
was one of those words that pushed her buttons, even though she’d been called one often enough that she should by all rights have gotten over it by now.
Don’t answer,
she cautioned herself. She was almost even with him by this time, close enough to smell his acrid scent. Apparently, either he didn’t believe in showers or nerves were causing him to experience a serious case of deodorant failure. Whatever, he reeked. The aisle was only about three feet wide. She was going to have to put herself within a few inches of him to get past. Goose bumps raced over her skin at the prospect. Of course, they could have been caused by the frigid breath of the cold cases to her left hitting her arms and legs, which were bare because she was wearing shorts and a tank top in deference to the ninety-degree heat outside, but she didn’t think so. She was pretty sure that prickly feeling she was experiencing was pure, galloping fear.

Which, in a weird kind of way, was actually a positive. She’d thought she’d lost her fear of death sometime during the past seven hellish years. In fact, deep in the dark of night when things got really bad, she could have sworn she was looking forward to it. It was probably the whole getting-shot bit that was freaking her out now, which was perfectly understandable. Nobody in their right mind wanted to take a bullet. Especially over a quick run to the store for dog food.

“What, you got shit for brains or something? I said
move
.” Skeleton Boy glared at her. He was bobbing impatiently, making coins or keys or something metallic in his pocket jingle.

“Yes, okay.” Sarah kept her voice soothing as she ostentatiously picked up the pace. Her flip-flops made quick little slapping sounds against the hard, smooth floor. It was interesting to realize that the closer she got to him, to that uneasy gun, the harder her heart pounded. However her mind felt about it, her body clearly wasn’t okay with the prospect of imminent death. She was breathing fast, she could feel herself breaking out in a cold sweat, and her stomach was tying itself in knots. Even her knees felt weak.

What did it say about her life that being scared to death almost qualified as a good thing?

“You okay back there, man?” the second robber, the one at the front of the store, called. “What you doing?”

“Yeah,” Skeleton Boy answered. “Everything’s under control.” His gaze swung back to Sarah. His voice dropped. “I’m warning you: Don’t fuck with me.
Run
.”

The look in his eyes turned deadly as he pointed the gun at her. Sarah got the impression that now his machismo was at stake, and obediently broke into a ragged little trot.
Street Survival 101: Never mess with a punk’s self-image.
Averting her gaze, she hunched her shoulders, making herself as small as possible. She deliberately didn’t look at him, didn’t make eye contact. And because she didn’t, because she kept her eyes lowered as she slogged past him, she spotted the little girl hiding beneath the round table piled high with packaged doughnuts at the end of the aisle.

There was a white plastic skirt covering the table, but the skirt was on crooked. On this side it lacked a good eight inches to reach the floor. The child was lying on her side and had curled up into as small a ball as possible, but Sarah could plainly see two tan, thin, and dirty legs pulled up tight against her chest; a pair of equally tan, thin, and dirty arms wrapped around the legs; a bright yellow T-shirt and blue shorts; bare feet; and a small face half-hidden by a tangled fall of long, coffee-colored hair. The little girl was looking right at her, her eyes huge and dark and afraid.

Sarah blinked. Her breathing faltered. Her eyes connected with the girl’s terrified gaze for a pregnant instant that seemed to stretch into a pulse-pounding eternity. Her heart started banging in her chest—and then she recovered her wits enough to jerk her eyes up and away. He might follow her gaze. . . .

Please, God, don’t let him see the child.

“Get the damned drawer
open,
” the other robber—she thought there were only two—shouted at the woman behind the counter.

“Yes, sir.”

The cash drawer popped open with a rattle and a
ping
just as Sarah emerged from the end of the aisle. She could see the pair of them now, the woman behind the counter looking down at the still-quivering cash drawer, the robber on the other side of it with his gun trained on her. The cashier was about sixty, short, plump, and grandmotherly, her salt-and-pepper hair curling around her face, her red uniform top hugging matronly breasts. Her mouth was trembling as she looked fearfully at the robber.

“Put it in here.” He thrust a flimsy white plastic grocery bag at her. She shook visibly as she complied, scooping money from the cash register into the bag with quick, clumsy movements. This guy was taller and chunkier than Skeleton Boy, and seemed calmer, too. At least his gun wasn’t bobbing and weaving all over the place and he wasn’t jingling like a set of wind chimes in a gale. He had the same dark complexion and greasy-looking black hair, and she wondered briefly if maybe the pair were brothers. This guy’s hair was tied back in a ponytail to reveal a raised white scar on the side of his neck. Diamond studs, six or more in decreasing size, marched single file up the whole outside of his ear. No goatee, or at least none that she could see beneath his gray plastic wolfman mask. His black T-shirt had the sleeves torn off, revealing a tattoo on his left biceps. Sarah squinted. It looked like some kind of bird—an eagle maybe? Whatever it was, she would definitely recognize it if she saw it again.

Tonight’s goal number one: survive to identify that tattoo for a jury.

“Did you look everywhere? Is she it?” Wolfman demanded urgently as he glanced their way. Sarah took care not to meet cold, dark eyes that revealed none of the nerves Skeleton Boy was obviously feeling. This guy was the bad guy, the one who called the shots, she realized.
He
was the leader. And if push came to shove, probably the killer. The thought made her shiver.

“Yeah,” Skeleton Boy answered.

“You sure?”

“Hell, yeah, I’m sure. Why do you always got to treat me like I’m some kind of goddamned retard?

“I was just askin’.”

“Well, stop asking and let’s get this over with.”

Through the big glass windows that fronted the store, Sarah could see that the gas pumps were deserted. Except for her blue Sentra, the parking lot was deserted. The intersection in front of the Quik-Pik was deserted. Beyond the halogen glow of the parking lot, the night was black and still. She and the cashier—and the little girl under the table—were on their own. Through the big, round security mirrors that flanked the checkout station, she watched Skeleton Boy coming up close behind her. He shot nervous glances out at the parking lot, jingled the change in his pocket, and shuffled a nervous rhythm. His gun shook slightly as he pointed it at her back.

At the idea that a bullet could smash into her flesh at any moment, Sarah’s heart stuttered. However she might feel about Death in the abstract, tonight, here in this over-air-conditioned Quik-Pik, she realized that she definitely did not want to die.

“That all you got?” Wolfman practically went over the counter as the cashier, tears running down her cheeks now, tried to hand him the partly filled grocery bag, which he thrust roughly back at her in a gesture of fierce rejection. “Lift that drawer up. That’s where you keep the big bills. Think I don’t know that? Don’t you be trying to pull something on me.” His gaze shifted from the cashier to a spot over Sarah’s left shoulder: Skeleton Boy. “You look in the restrooms?”

“I told you.
Yeah.
”

“Okay, okay, just making sure.”

Sarah felt something prod her in the small of her back just as the cashier lifted the now-empty black plastic cash drawer out of the register. A glance up at the mirror conformed her worst fear. Skeleton Boy was right behind her—and the mouth of his big, black gun was now pressed firmly against her spine. It was all she could do not to flinch and pull away, but she was afraid that any unexpected movement on her part might make his unsteady trigger finger contract. With a tremendous effort of will she stayed perfectly still, gritting her teeth while cold sweat washed over her in waves. The mirror told her that she looked parchment-pale, big-eyed, haggard, and basically scared to death. Her tightly compressed lips were thin and bloodless; her short, layered black hair, still damp from the shower she’d taken at the gym just before heading home, was slicked close to her head so that her eyes and strong cheekbones seemed to dominate her face; and her back was hunched like an old woman’s as she clutched the ten-pound bag of dog food to her too-thin frame with both arms. She was only thirty-one but she looked older, years older, she realized with a sense of shock. Put the blame on color-leaching fear or the complete absence of makeup or the ghastly lighting all she wanted, but the truth was that she barely recognized the gaunt-cheeked, hollowed-eyed, haunted-looking woman staring desperately back at her through the mirror.