Everything he’d done-it was their fault, entirely theirs. They had been the source of all his troubles and afflictions right from the start. They were the unhealed sore in his soul.
He reached the front door, turned the key in the lock. As he entered the house, he nodded in silent assent to his own thoughts, then went on nodding, nodding, the slight incline of his head repeated like a programmed routine.
It was right, so right, that he do this. There could be no hesitation, no doubt. Not this time.
Never could he be liberated from the torment that plagued him-never-until Erin and Annie Reilly were dead.
51
With a final twist of her wrists, Erin wrenched the coupling nut free.
As she separated the two halves of the sillcock, she heard the familiar rumble of the van’s engine.
Oliver had returned, as she’d known he would.
He wouldn’t expect her to be unchained. There was a chance she could take him by surprise.
Quickly she shrugged on her blouse and buttoned it. She tossed the bra and its unhooked strap into the cardboard box containing her provisions, then slid the box in front of the sillcock.
Footsteps overhead. The stairs drummed as he descended.
The sillcock’s detached spout would make a serviceable weapon. She tucked it into the waistband of her shorts behind her back.
Then she seated herself in the chair facing the door, one end of the chain still padlocked to her ankle, the loose end snaking behind the cardboard box, out of sight.
A key rattled in the lock. The door opened, and Oliver was there.
Yet not there, not really. She could see that.
His face was expressionless, a mask of slack flesh.
He stepped forward into the glow of the bare light bulb on the chain. The shadows lifted from his eyes, and she saw his dull, glazed stare.
Fugue state, she thought with a ripple of dread.
The pockets of his jacket were bulging-she glimpsed the checkered grip of the pistol, and the stun gun’s metallic gleam-but his hands held only a set of keys and a flashlight, switched off.
“ ’Evening, Doc.” His affectless monotone matched the emptiness of his eyes.
“Hello, Oliver.”
“I’ve come for you.” He moved nearer, then stopped behind the other chair. “She’s on to me. Your sister. She knows.”
He said it so simply that Erin needed a moment to grasp the significance of the words.
Annie knew.
She kept her own voice safely casual. “Does she?”
Oliver nodded. “Don’t know how she guessed. I must have slipped up somehow. But it doesn’t matter. It’s over.”
He was standing more than six feet away. Too far. He had to be within reach.
“We still have work to do,” she said, hoping to draw him closer.
“No more work. That’s done now.”
“We were making progress-”
“Uh-uh. I’m discontinuing therapy, Doc.” He stepped around the chair, advancing on her. “We’re going outside now. Out to the arroyo.”
“You don’t want to do that.”
“Oh, yes.” A yard away. Half a yard. “I do.”
He reached for his pocket. For the stun gun.
Now.
She twisted sideways, seized the chain, then shot upright, swinging it in a wide, looping arc.
Instinctively Oliver stepped back.
The loose end of the chain flashed past his face and found its target.
The light bulb shattered in a tinkling rain.
Darkness. Intense and absolute in the windowless room.
Even as the bulb exploded, Erin sidestepped away from the chair. A heartbeat later the wooden legs scraped noisily on concrete. Oliver had lunged blindly at the spot where she’d stood.
Her right hand fumbled behind her, prying the spout free of her waistband.
To her left, the flashlight snapped on, its pale beam dissecting the dark. The circle of light whipped toward her, sudden glare dazzling her vision.
She raised the spout and brought it down, knife-quick, aiming just behind the flash.
The pipe chopped Oliver’s wrist. Gasp of pain, and the flashlight fell free.
It struck the floor and rolled, its beam painting yellow spirals on the cellar walls. In the blurred half-light Erin saw Oliver again reaching for the stun gun.
She lashed out with the spout a second time.
Oliver sensed the attack, dodged to one side, then seized her right forearm, his grip painfully tight, squeezing a gasp out of her.
Involuntarily her fingers splayed. She had time to think that the pressure of his clutch had paralyzed her radial nerve, and then the spout dropped from her hand like a discarded toy. She heard it clatter on the floor.
No weapon. But she could still fight. Months of self-defense classes must have been good for something.
Don’t think. The voice in her mind belonged to Mr. Sanders, her tae kwon do instructor. Thinking is too slow. Let your reflexes take over.
Oliver, still holding her right arm, jerked her toward him. His face rushed at her, his eyes sparkling in the dimness.
Reaching across her body with her left hand, she grabbed the wrist of her captured arm, then snapped her upper body back and tore free of his grasp.
She retreated a step, and then his two hands closed over her throat.
Brief panic shook her-she couldn’t breathe — before habits more deeply ingrained than she’d suspected, habits that mimicked instinct, dictated the correct response.
She raised her arms fast, over Oliver’s forearms, then swung sharply to the right, bending at the waist. Her left elbow came up, and she whipped back to an upright posture, using the momentum of her upper body to drive the elbow savagely into Oliver’s jaw.
Stunned, he released her throat.
Her right hand wasn’t paralyzed anymore. She curled it in a tight fist, the first two knuckles projecting slightly, and directed a reverse punch at Oliver’s ribs, pivoting as she delivered the blow.
He gasped but didn’t go down. With her left hand she executed a crippling palm-heel strike to his groin.
Grunt of pain, and he staggered backward, then dropped to his knees.
She’d done it. She’d beaten him.
Erin spun away from him, her next moves fully formed in her mind. Simply get out of the room, bolt and chain the door, then lock the door at the top of the stairs also. He might be able to shoot his way out, but not before she’d fled the ranch.
These thoughts crowded her brain, borne on a cresting wave of triumph, as she lunged blindly for the door frame, found it, began to step through The chain fastened to her right leg was jerked taut.
She lost her balance, slammed down on hands and knees.
Oliver, still sprawled on the floor, gave the chain another tug. Erin slid on the smooth concrete, dragged closer to her adversary.
She rolled onto her side, bent her left leg at the knee, and aimed a punishing snap kick at Oliver’s head.
Crack of impact. She ripped the chain free of his grasp, then scrambled to her feet.
She hoped the kick would immobilize him, but no; he was rising, too, his recovery so rapid as to be almost instantaneous. He seemed impervious to pain. The thought flashed in her mind that the same neurological wiring that suppressed awareness of his deepest feelings might cut him off from unwanted bodily sensations as well.
For the moment she’d forfeited her chance to escape through the doorway. She had to put him on the floor again.
Turning to face him, she lashed out with another kick.
Her intention was to disable him with a fractured kneecap, but he stepped into the kick, catching the blow on the side of his calf, then locked her in a crushing bear hug.
Pain shot through her ribs. She smelled his breath, sour and close.
Proper defensive move-knee strike.