Frantic now, she flailed about wildly, searching for a door or cubbyhole, any sort of hiding place.
With a gasp she blundered into something wooden and rickety.
A ladder.
Propped almost vertically, leading upward to the loft.
If she could get up there, hide in shadows…
Her best chance. She didn’t hesitate. Already her boots were planted on the lower rungs, and she was gripping the side rails, climbing fast, oblivious of the wood splinters chewing her palms, ignoring the sway of the ladder as it wobbled under her, precariously balanced.
Halfway up. Not far to go. She set her foot on another rung Crack.
Rotten with age, the rung collapsed.
She plunged down, the impact of her descent shattering the next rung in line, and the next, and the next.
Her fists closed over the side rails and broke her fall. She dangled briefly, then found an unbroken rung and stood on it, straining for breath.
She had not screamed. That was something, at least.
But she was still trapped, still hopelessly exposed, and now the ladder was unusable. She couldn’t reach the loft.
An eddy of wind. Brightening glow behind her.
The barn door, opening.
He was here.
She dropped to the ground, hoping the brief storm of dust stirred up by the wind could cover the soft thud of her fall.
Crouching low, she gazed toward the front of the barn.
In the doorway he was silhouetted against a gray sweep of desert and a sprinkling of stars. A large, stoop-shouldered figure in long pants and a short-sleeve shirt, his head oddly bulbous, curvilinear as a bullet.
He hadn’t seen her yet. She was cut off from him by his van and her car and yards of distance; the light from outside hadn’t touched the farthest reaches of the barn.
Sinking to all fours, she scrambled behind the front end of her Ford and huddled there.
His shoes crackled on the dirt floor as he advanced inside.
“Burn you, bitch.” His voice was a sleepwalker’s slurred monotone. “Pour the gas down your lying throat. Choke you with it before I light the match.”
The low chuckling noises that followed were not any human form of laughter.
Soundlessly she stretched out on her stomach and wriggled under the Ford.
The driver’s door of the van canted open. The Chevy rocked on its springs as he swung inside. He climbed out a moment later, and a strong white light winked on, dispelling the barn’s shadows.
Flashlight. Must have gotten it out of the glove compartment.
The beam swept over the car, then explored its interior. She pressed herself snug against the ground, terrified that he would examine the underside of the vehicle next.
He studied the car a moment longer, then directed the beam upward at the hayloft.
Safe for the moment. But would he notice the broken ladder? Her footprints in the dirt?
Apparently not. The flashlight beam passed over the ladder without pausing, the beam seeking out the doorway of a small room at the rear of the barn. A tack room, long unused, empty save for a built-in sink. Had she found that room and tried to hide in it, she would be dead now.
Next, the horse stalls. The flash probed them one by one, looking for any uninvited occupant.
Finally he seemed satisfied. The beam was angling toward the floor at his feet when a gust of wind blew the main door shut.
The sharp slam, like an amplified handclap, startled him.
He dropped the flash.
It hit the ground, intact, the beam shining directly at her from ten feet away.
She stared, paralyzed, into the cone of light. Fear closed her throat. She couldn’t breathe.
“Hell,” he muttered.
He took a sideways step to pick up the flash, and kicked it accidentally.
It rolled-God, no-it rolled under the car.
He would have to see her now. The flashlight lay between the Ford’s front wheels, less than a yard from her head. She was impaled in its beam.
Past the haze of light, her abductor grunted as he got down on his knees.
Erin felt wetness in her eyes and a sick, feverish trembling in her lower body. The nightmare was back, more real than ever.
She hoped, despite what he’d said, that he wouldn’t burn her. Death by fire was her worst fear, had been since childhood.
The gun would be better. Easier.
His hand reached for the flash.
He had to see her now. Couldn’t miss her.
Except… he wasn’t looking.
He hadn’t bothered to lie prostrate and poke his head under the chassis. He was still kneeling, groping blindly.
His fingers brushed the flashlight’s metal casing. The flash rolled again, and for a heart-twisting second Erin was sure it would roll out of his reach, and he would have no choice but to belly-crawl after it.
Then he clamped a firm hand on the flash, pulled it toward him, and rose to his feet.
Rattle, slam, and he was out of the barn, intent on hunting her in the night.
Erin pressed her face to her forearm and lay very still as tension sighed out of her in a hissing stream.
Close one.
Very close.
25
Gund still had no idea how the bitch managed to free herself from the cellar, and he didn’t much care. All he knew, all that mattered to him, was that he would track her down, and then she would pay.
He had never been so angry. She’d left him. Wrong of her to do that, so very wrong, unforgivably wrong.
He could have killed her last night, but had he? No. She was special to him-still was, despite her betrayal-and he had treated her accordingly. He’d cleaned up the cellar room, stocked it with food and other necessities, even gone to the trouble of installing a foam pad so she could sleep in comfort. He hadn’t chained her to the wall, as he easily could have. Hadn’t shackled her feet or manacled her hands.
Right from the start he’d been good to her. He’d treated her with consideration and respect. And this was how she’d responded, the ungrateful little whore, the goddamned filth.
His breath came hard, partly from the exertion of frantic activity but mostly from sheer, towering rage.
The good thing was that she couldn’t have gone far. He’d been away for less than a half hour, and it must have taken time for her to defeat the two locked doors.
He was guessing she had left the house only moments before his return.
Her car keys were in his pocket, so unless she could hot-wire an ignition, the Taurus was useless to her. Penned in by barbed wire, she had two options-to hide on the grounds of the ranch, or to circle behind the house in search of another way out.
Pausing at the side of the barn, he beamed his flash into the grain bin and fuel shed. Both were empty.
The flashlight guided him as he loped across yards of scorched, bristly grass. A flattened, S-shaped thing-a dead gopher snake-was briefly visible amid a patch of purple weeds.
Behind the house was a utility shed. He looked inside. Nothing.
He didn’t expect her to hide, anyway. She would run. And he knew where she was likeliest to go.
Two hundred feet beyond the shed, his property ended in a line of barbed wire, silver in the starlight. Just before the fence was an arroyo.
The wide, dry streambed, carved by seasonal flash floods, ran west to Houghton Road, with no gates or fences along the way. Though Erin couldn’t know the wash’s destination, she was sure to see that it offered the only means of exit from the ranch, and like any local resident, she would know that arroyos were the natural roadways of the desert, ideal for easy hiking.
He sprinted for the wash, certain the flashlight would reveal her footprints.
Once he picked up her trail, all he need do was track her, a coyote stalking prey.
Erin groped in the dirt by the ladder, hunting among the scatter of broken rungs until she found a nail.