The Connor ranch never had been a large-scale operation, even when Lincoln’s parents had run the place. By the time Lincoln himself took possession of the title, most of the acreage had been sold off; what little remained had been adequate only for the pasturage of a half dozen horses, mostly elderly animals maintained at the expense of good-hearted owners.
The developer who’d purchased the ranch and acres of adjacent land in 1968 had meant to convert the property into housing tracts, but his ambitious plans had fallen through. The Connor homestead and the land around it, remote and unwanted, had been forgotten. When Erin and Annie found the ranch in 1985, it lay in forlorn disrepair, unoccupied for seventeen years.
Well, it was occupied now. Her abductor had bought it. Bought it and taken down the sign.
But why? What would he want with it? What could this place possibly mean to him?
Nothing, obviously-unless he’d lived here himself.
But no one had lived here in years, in decades. No one had lived here since Lydia, Lincoln, and…
“Oliver,” she breathed.
The thought was dazzling like a blow. She groped for the chair and sank into it.
The man holding her captive couldn’t be Oliver Ryan Connor.
Oliver was dead.
Wasn’t he? Wasn’t he?
Eyes shut, lips pursed, Erin tried to recall what little she had ever known about Lydia’s son.
Most of what she’d heard had been local gossip, circulated in school. The murder-suicide had been a noteworthy local news item in 1968, and even in the mid-’70s, when Erin and Annie were growing up in Lydia’s house, it had not been forgotten. Other kids their age had heard the details from older siblings, and when they learned the two girls were living with Lydia Connor, they had talked.
From them, and later in more detail from the library’s newspaper archives, Erin had learned how Lincoln Connor had tracked down his son, shot him, and turned the gun on himself.
That was the official version, at least, the one accepted by everybody. But suppose it wasn’t the truth. Suppose Oliver hadn’t died in that clearing of Prescott National Forest, but somehow had duped the authorities into believing otherwise.
Suppose he’d changed his identity, relocated to the Great Lakes region, only to find that his first episode of homicidal violence wasn’t enough, that the same compulsion to kill would rise in him periodically, when his fingers would tingle and his ears would chime.
The aura phase. First stage of a seizure, perhaps an epileptic fugue state…
“Of course,” Erin murmured.
He was Oliver. He must be.
Because she, too, was an epileptic. For both of them to suffer from variants of the same affliction could not be a coincidence.
Having studied epilepsy to better understand her own condition, she knew how rare it was. Less than one percent of the general population exhibited the syndrome. But among children of epileptics, the percentage ran as high as six percent. And when both parents had epilepsy, the percentage of affected children rose to twenty-five percent, clearly demonstrating the affliction’s hereditary component.
Among the Morgans, only Lydia had shown any epileptic tendencies-occasional petit-mal seizures with retrograde amnesia. Presumably either Rose Morgan or her husband, Joseph, Erin’s maternal grandparents, had carried a genetic predisposition toward seizures without exhibiting identifiable symptoms.
Both Lydia and Maureen must have inherited the trait, though Maureen never had shown any evidence of it. The syndrome had been passed on from Maureen to Erin, and from Lydia to Oliver.
“We’re family,” she whispered, blinking at the thought. “He and I-the same background. Same blood…”
And if he had bought the ranch of his childhood, kidnapped his cousin-his foster sister, in fact-then he must want something from her, something more than therapy.
She couldn’t guess what it was. Perhaps he himself didn’t know.
But whatever it was he wanted, she would find out soon enough. When she did, she would understand him.
And then, almost certainly, she would die.
40
Annie said good night to Harold Gund at six-thirty. She lingered in her shop, turning off the lights, until she heard the growl of his van’s motor out front.
Peeking through the blinds, she watched the Chevy back away from the curb and swing toward the shopping center’s Craycroft Road exit. The brake lights flared as the van stopped at the end of a short line of cars waiting for a break in the traffic.
She left the shop and ran to her Miata. Sliding behind the wheel, she saw the Chevy reach the head of the line and pull onto Craycroft, heading south.
She followed. A red light snared her almost instantly, and she was afraid she’d lost her quarry. But on the long, straight downhill run she caught sight of the van again, well ahead of her.
The sun hung low, westering above a spread of green treetops, as she passed over the Rillito River into city limits. At times throughout the summer monsoon season, the Rillito would be a foaming watercourse, but now it was only a dry, sandy channel, grim and barren, a gash in the landscape.
Gund’s van was still in sight, though harder to track on this more level stretch of road. Annie dared to pull closer. Greater population density here, lots of intersecting streets, more chances for him to pull off.
Gund drove carefully, violating no laws. A good driver, it appeared. Annie wondered again how his van had been damaged.
Fender-bender, he’d said. She didn’t think so.
As Speedway approached, the Chevy Astro eased into the turn lane, left signal winking. Luckily two other cars followed suit, providing a buffer between the van and Annie’s Miata.
She made it through the intersection as the green arrow cycled to yellow, then cut her speed, dropping back slightly for safety. After a brief inner debate she switched on her headlights; keeping them off in the gathering dusk would only make her car more conspicuous.
The day’s end had begun to bring relief from the unseasonable heat. The air rushing through the dashboard vents and the open window on the driver’s side was mild enough to feel almost comfortable against her face.
Gund’s van proceeded at a steady pace despite the crush of vehicles. Illuminated islands of strip malls glided past. A city bus groaned to a stop in the right lane, flashers pulsing.
One thing was clearly apparent. Gund was not going home-not directly, anyhow. She knew his address; it was noted on his employment application, which she’d reviewed in the privacy of her office earlier that evening. He lived west of Craycroft, near downtown. Now he was traveling east.
Erin’s place wasn’t far from here. Was it possible he meant to cut over to Broadway, revisit her apartment?
If he pulled into Erin’s apartment complex, Annie would find a phone and call Walker.
But Gund didn’t cut over. He continued east, past Pantano, heading out of town.
The sun was an orange smear in her rearview mirror, a spread of blinding candescence settling slowly below the humped backs of the mountains. Then it was gone, leaving the range outlined in fire, the western sky blushing pink. Ahead, the sky was the deep, somber blue of encroaching night, and the first stars gleamed like droplets of quicksilver.
As the edge of town drew near, traffic finally began to thin. Annie wasn’t sure if that was a good development or not. On the one hand, she found it easier to keep the van in sight. On the other hand, Gund would find it easier to see her.
As a precaution she fell farther back, keeping the Chevy just within view. Its taillights burned against the dark.
At Houghton Road, Gund hooked south.