Maybe this was a safety feature to prevent kids from tumbling out into traffic. Or maybe the crazy bastard had modified the door lock to enhance security, to make it more difficult for a burglar or casual intruder to stumble upon any lip-sewn or shackled cadavers that might just happen to be aboard. Can't be too careful when you have dead bodies stacked in the bedroom. Prudence requires certain security measures.
The motor home pulled forward through the intersection and began to pick up speed again.
She should have known that escape wouldn't be easy. Nothing was easy. Ever.
She sat down, leaning against the breakfast-nook paneling, still facing the door, thinking furiously.
Earlier, on her way back through the vehicle from the driver's seat, she'd seen a door on the other side, toward the front, behind the copilot's chair. Most motor homes had two doors, but this was a rare older model with three. She was reluctant to go forward to escape, however, and for the same reason that she didn't want to attack him: He might see her coming, rock her off her feet, and shoot her before she could get up.
All right, she had one advantage. He didn't know that she was aboard.
If she couldn't just open a door and jump out, if she was going to have to kill him, she could lie in wait here past the dining nook, surprise the bastard, gut him, step over him, and leave by the front. Just minutes ago she had been ready to kill him, and she could make herself be ready again.
The engine vibrations rose through the floor, half numbing her butt. Total numbing would have been welcome; the carpet soon proved to be inadequate padding, and her tailbone began to ache. She shifted her weight from cheek to cheek, leaned forward and then leaned back; nothing provided more than a few seconds of relief. The ache spread to the small of her back, and mild discomfort escalated into serious pain.
Twenty minutes, half an hour, forty minutes, an hour, longer, she endured the agony by striving to imagine all the ways that her escape might unfold once the motor home stopped and the killer got out from behind the wheel. Concentrating. Thinking it through. Planning for myriad eventualities. Finally, however, she couldn't think about anything but the pain.
The motor home was cool, and down in the step well, there was no heat at all. The engine and road vibrations penetrated her shoes, beating relentlessly on her heels and soles. She flexed her toes, afraid that her cold, achy feet and stiffening calf muscles would develop cramps and hobble her when the time came for action.
With a strange hilarity unnervingly close to despair, she thought, Forget about grief. Forget about justice. Right now just give me a comfortable chair to pamper my ass, just let me sit for a while until my feet are warm again, and later you can have my life if you want it.
The prolonged inactivity not only took a physical toll but soon began to depress her. Back at the house when she'd first heard the intruder, before he had even come to the guest room, Chyna had known that safety lay in movement. Now emotional safety lay in movement, distraction. But circumstances required her to be still and wait. She had too much time to think-and too many disturbing thoughts on which to dwell.
She worked herself into such a state of distress that tears welled-which was when she realized that she was not suffering unduly from butt ache or back pain or the cold throbbing in her feet. The real pain was in her heart, the anguish that she had been forced to repress since she'd found Paul and Sarah, since she'd detected the vague ammoniacal scent of semen in Laura's bedroom and had seen the dimly gleaming links of the shackling chain. Her physical pain was only a lame excuse for tears.
If she dared weep in self-pity, however, then a flood would come for Paul, for Sarah, for Laura, for the whole sorry damn screwed-up human race, and in useless resentment at the fact that hard-won hope so often spiraled into nightmare. She would bury her face in her hands, uselessly wailing the question that had been asked of God more often than any other: Why, why, why, why, why?
Surrendering to tears would be so easy, satisfying. These were selfish tears of defeat; they would not only purge the heart of grief but also wash out the need to care about anyone, anything. Blessed relief could be hers if she simply admitted that the long struggle to understand wasn't worth the pain of experience. Her sobbing would bring the motor home to a sudden halt, and the driver would come back to find her huddled at the step well. He would club her, drag her into the bedroom, rape her beside the body of her friend; there would be terror beyond anything that she had ever known before, but it would be brief. And this time it would be final. He would free her forever from the need to ask why, from the torment of repeatedly falling through the fragile floor of hope into this too familiar desolation.
For a long time, maybe even since the stormy night of her eighth birthday and the frenzied palmetto beetle, she'd known that being a victim was often a choice people made. As a child, she hadn't been able to put this insight into words, and she hadn't known why so many people chose suffering; when older, she had recognized their self-hatred, masochism, weakness.
Not all or even most suffering is at the hands of fate; it befalls us at our invitation.
She'd always chosen not to be victimized, to resist and fight back, to hold on to hope and dignity and faith in the future. But victimhood was seductive, a release from responsibility and caring: Fear would be transmuted into weary resignation; failure would no longer generate guilt but, instead, would spawn a comforting self-pity.
Now she trembled on an emotional high wire, not sure whether she would be able to keep her balance or would allow herself to fail and fall.
The motor home slowed again. They were angling to the right. Slowing. Maybe pulling off the highway and stopping.
She tried the door. She knew that it was locked, but she quietly worked the lever-action handle anyway, because she wasn't capable, after all, of simply giving up.
As they climbed a slight incline, their speed continued to drop.
Wincing at the pain in her calves and thighs as she moved, yet relieved to be off her butt, she rose just far enough to look across the dining nook.
The back of the killer's head was the most hateful thing that Chyna had ever seen, and it aroused fresh anger in her. The brain beneath that curve of bone hummed with vicious fantasies. It was infuriating that he should be alive and Laura dead. That he should be sitting here so smug, so content with all his memories of blood, recalling the pleas for mercy that must be like music to him. That he should ever see a sunset again and take pleasure from it, or taste a peach, or smell a flower. To Chyna, the back of this man's skull seemed like the smooth chitinous helmet of an insect, and she believed that if she ever touched him, he would be as cold as a squirming beetle under her hand.
Beyond the driver, beyond the windshield, at the top of the low rise toward which they were headed, a structure appeared, indistinct and unidentifiable. A few tall sodium-vapor arc lamps cast a sour, sulfurous light.
She squatted below the back of the dining nook again.
She picked up the knife.
They had reached the top of the rise. They were on level ground once more. Steadily slowing.
Turning around, facing away from the exit, she eased into the step well. Left foot on the lower step, right foot on the higher. Back pressed to the locked door, crouching in shadows beyond the reach of the nook lamp, she was ready to launch herself up and at him if he came back through the motor home and gave her a chance.
With a final sigh of air brakes, the vehicle stopped.
Wherever they were, people might be nearby. People who could help her.