The day was continuing to heat up. By the time he arrived at the ranch, thirty minutes from now, what would the temperature be?
Gund reversed away from the curb and pulled onto Craycroft Road, speeding south.
37
Erin was dying.
She knew it, in those rare moments when she knew anything.
Shortly after the sun reached its zenith, she’d noticed that chilly beads of sweat were no longer seeping from her hairline or rolling down her arms. Her skin, having lost its sheen of perspiration, was becoming flushed and dry, as dry as her parched mouth and burning eyes.
That was when she’d understood that she would not survive until evening. Would not survive even another two hours.
The sun had wheeled westward since then, into early afternoon. Must be one o’clock by now, or later. She had little time left.
Just as well. Death would bring release. Release from thirst and cramps and fevered thoughts.
No.
She rallied. For the thousandth time she strained her shoulders, chafing her bound wrists against the stake.
The rope was fraying. It had to split soon. Had to.
Then she sagged, giving up. She had long since lost all strength and muscular coordination. Even if the rope did break, her nerveless fingers could not undo the knot securing her ankles to the other stake, and her legs, knotted in cramps, could not carry her to shade.
She was finished.
Her pulse, ticking in her ears, was rapid but weak-a frantic flutter that signaled imminent collapse. Nausea bubbled in her stomach. Wracking shivers, like halfhearted convulsions, shook her without warning.
She wondered how she would die, exactly. Would there be a slow gray-out, a long slide into unconsciousness, deepening to coma, ending in death? Or staccato alterations of awareness and oblivion, culminating in a few final moments of wrenching agony as her heart failed?
It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. The death she imagined was only a dream. Her hours of exposure, her captivity in the cellar, her abduction-all of it, a dream.
She had never lived in Arizona, that place of barren land and unforgiving heat. Had never left Sierra Springs. There had been no reason to leave it. No fatal fire, no inexplicable craziness that possessed a loving father, no years of post-traumatic recovery, of unanswered questions and haunted sleep.
She was a young girl again, seven years old, playing in the green yard of the Reilly house, under a maple tree’s cooling umbrella of leaves. A swing hung from a low branch, and Erin climbed onto it, gripping the rusty chains. She kicked the ground away, and then she was flying, propelling herself to ever greater heights in wild, reckless swoops that carried her out of shadow and into the clear California sunlight.
Below, Annie yelled encouragement. Higher, Erin, higher!
Erin leaned back on the wooden seat, legs thrust out, warm air whistling past her as the chains creaked and her hair streamed like a comet’s tail, and she was laughing.
Laughing…
She tried to laugh and choked on the wadded cloth in her mouth. The effort required to stifle her gag reflex jerked her back to this moment.
The swing was gone, and Annie, and the green yard, and there was only heat and dust and pain.
What time was it? Two o’clock? Two-thirty?
No, not yet. But if she could hold out that long, until two-thirty or three, when the sun would be behind her, not shining quite so directly on her face…
Then she rolled her head to one side and pressed her right temple to her forearm, pinioned over her head. She felt the febrile heat radiating from, her own skin.
I’m radioactive, she thought with a giddy stab at humor. Erin Reilly, the human microwave.
Her last hope withered. No chance she could last until mid-afternoon. Another half hour, at most, was all she had.
Away again to Sierra Springs, the shaded yard. The swing described a final, reckless arc. Then her father, kind and sane, took her and Annie by the hand and led them upstairs to their bedroom. Night had fallen, although, strangely, it had been daytime only a moment earlier.
A moth beat against the window screen. Crickets chirruped in singsong choruses. Somewhere on the ground floor their mother hummed a soft, sad tune.
Albert Reilly tucked in Annie first, then moved to Erin’s bed and pulled the covers up to her neck. She smelled his masculine scent, comforting in the dark. His hands stroked her hair, her forehead. Large hands. Sensitive hands.
“Christ,” he whispered, “you’re feverish.”
That seemed an odd thing for her father to say. But she had no power left to question it.
Snug in her bed, Erin slept.
A shock of cool water on her face revived her. She blinked alert and found herself sprawled on a concrete floor, propped against a brick wall, both surfaces wonderfully cool.
The cellar. She was back in the cellar.
And the man swabbing her face with a damp washcloth, his features blurred and doubled, discolored by the red haze that hung over everything like a permanent filter…
Him.
He had returned for her. Had saved her life.
She licked her lips, then realized that her mouth wasn’t stoppered with a gag any longer, nor was it parched with thirst. Her tongue, running lightly over her gums, tasted salt.
He must have force-fed her a few sips of salt water. Standard remedy for dehydration.
The cloth moved lower, wetting her neck, her collarbone. At her cleavage he hesitated, as though debating whether or not to probe deeper. Then abruptly he rose upright and crossed the room to the sillcock in the wall.
A low hiss-flow of water from the tap. He held the cloth under the stream, then knelt by her again and began to scrub her legs.
She observed all this with blank detachment, feeling nothing except boundless relief at being indoors, and dangerous gratitude toward the man who’d brought her here.
The cloth was chilly against her ankles. Gooseflesh bumped up on her legs. She shivered.
“Cold?” he asked.
The brief, staccato chatter of her teeth was sufficient response.
“Better get you into bed.”
He carried her to the foam pad in the corner, deposited her gently on her side. Eyes shut, she felt him draw the cotton blanket over her, leaving only her head exposed.
“Sleep,” he whispered, and for a disoriented moment reality melded with hallucination, and he was her father, tucking her in at bedtime. “I’ll be back this evening. You’ll be all better by then. And we’ll continue our work.”
Yes, she thought dreamily. Our work. Got to continue… the work
…
It seemed vitally important that the work proceed, the most important thing in the world, though she no longer recalled just what sort of work it was or why it mattered.
Her breathing slowed and deepened, and she went away again-not to Sierra Springs this time, but to nowhere at all.
38
Annie was rearranging her display of gift baskets, not out of necessity but simply to take her mind off Erin, when the shop door jingled open at two-fifteen.
She turned, and a sudden smile dimpled her cheeks. “Jeez, Harold, look at you. You’re a mess.”
Gund paused in the doorway, gazing down at himself. His pants, badly rumpled, were soiled from knees to cuffs with blotches of tan desert dust.
He blinked as if embarrassed. “Yes… well… there was some damage to the chassis. I had to crawl under the van to check it out.”
“We’d better get you cleaned up or you’ll scare away the clientele.”
Briskly she rummaged in a drawer behind the counter until she found a large brush useful for cleaning clothes and smocks dirtied by potting soil.
“So what was the estimate?” she asked as she stepped to the middle of the room.