In the bedroom, Summer stood back from the door, her heart pounding.
This wasn’t happening. Where was James? What happened to James?
I’m James
She couldn’t think. Her mind was racing, but she couldn’t think. She was stuck on the man who said he was James when he wasn’t. She was stuck on what he said—God it was so creepy—“Have you ever been to Six Flags over Texas?” Like he thought if he offered that to her everything would be all right, like she was some little kid, and the idea of going anywhere with that ugly, balding, little worm—
Creepy, the way he looked at her.
He was probably her parents’ age.
This couldn’t be happening. This couldn’t be.
She became aware of the dress in her hands. It was like a little girl’s dress. She was way too old for it—why’d he want her to wear that? But when he handed it to her, she just took it.
Why didn’t I fight? Why didn’t I scream? Why didn’t I try to escape?
Instead, she just accepted the dress—maybe she even said “thanks.” What was wrong with her? How could she have gotten herself into this mess?
Because she knew this was something very bad. She knew enough about sex—three of her friends weren’t virgins anymore, and they had told her everything—she knew what this guy wanted.
He was old. He was ugly. The thought of doing it with him made her sick to her stomach. But here she was, in this smothering little room all alone. Her mom didn’t know where she was. Her dad …
He was a cop, but he lived in Bisbee. Of course they’d start looking for her, but how would they find her here? She had a pager in her purse, but what good would that do? He’d just turn it off. She wished her mom had gotten her a cell phone. She said to wait until her birthday. Now I probably won’t have a thirteenth birthday.
She had seen enough on TV to know that she was in deep trouble. He would probably rape her. And kill her.
Adrenaline poured through her, a muscular current of fear. Her hands and legs shook.
Get hold of yourself. You’re not dead yet.
Maybe, maybe if she cooperated, put on the dress, tried to talk with him. Get him to see her as a human being. Make friends with him. Maybe she could get to his phone, or his computer, or something.
She needed to be smart. Observant, like her dad was. He didn’t miss a thing. She remembered when they went to restaurants, he always sat with his back to the wall, scanning the room constantly, always aware. She needed to be like that. Careful and smart.
She’d put the dress on. She’d try to get Dale to talk to her, to make friends with her.
Suddenly, she had something to do. She imagined herself as her dad. He was always in control. He’d be looking for her. He was a cop—he’d know how to find her. But in the meantime, she would picture herself as him. She would act like him, and think like him.
Musicman waited for her to come out. He’d seen this before, the girl going into his bedroom and locking the door, as if she could really escape that way, when in reality she was only putting off the inevitable. One of them—the girl in Colorado—had stayed in the room a day and a half. But she had been so hungry and thirsty, she finally opened the door.
The bedroom door lock that came with the Pace Arrow didn’t really work, but he knew it gave them a sense of security. They felt they could get away from him, and that put them at ease. What she probably didn’t notice was the hasp on the outside of the door. He could padlock it, but he didn’t. Let her think she had the upper hand.
The bedroom was soundproofed. The lace curtains in the bedroom windows looked nice from the outside but they hid the fact that they weren’t real windows—not anymore. He had boarded them up. She had locked herself in there, in that soundproofed room, and she could just think about it.
44
Laura massaged her back and stretched her legs. The cabin was dim; hardly anyone else on the plane. Nothing between her and her guilt over the killing in, an itch she could not scratch. Your fault. You didn’t trust your instincts. You knew there was a problem with Oliver, but you ignored it.
A police officer dead, lives that would never be the same.
Apalachicola
She kept seeing Chief Redbone’s face. The sense of failure she saw in his eyes.
Frank Entwistle used to call her—jokingly—the gunslinger. As in:The gunslinger come to town to help the townspeople chase out the bad elements. Like Wyatt Earp. But this time, she’d brought only devastation and death before slinking off into the night like a coward. She was going home to her little house in Vail—but what would Linda Descartes do tonight?
“This is getting you nowhere,” she muttered.
She needed to concentrate on what was happening now—Summer Holland’s abduction.
Her conversation with Victor had been brief. Summer Holland disappeared from a McDonalds in Tucson. She’d lied about who she was meeting. And Buddy had been insistent. He needed to meet with Laura face-to-face.
He knew something.
Laura saw Dale Lundy in her mind. His pale, almost feminine face. The soft, wet eyes that had no soul behind them. The Victorian-style room where he sewed with his mother. The photos of Misty de Seroux.
The 12-gauge shotgun nestled in a homemade plywood box on the underside of the trapdoor.
She closed her eyes, trying to think. Could it be Lundy? How many kidnappers could there be, operating in that relatively small part of the world?
Suddenly, lights started dancing in the corner of her eye. She opened both eyes and stared at the seat back in front of her, expecting them to go away. But the lights kept on blinking.
Pulsing on and off at the corner of her right eye.
A thin edge of panic poked its way under her heart. She remembered the same thing happening at the Jonquil Motel the night she found the matchbook.
Her hand on the doorknob, the strangeness she felt.
Laura looked down at her hand. Again it looked funny, but she couldn’t figure out why. The one side of her eye—it was like her vision was bleary from being underwater.
She got up and walked to the back of the plane, heading for the restroom, pushing down the beginnings of panic. Halfway down the aisle, the flashing lights went away.
She blinked. Nothing there—she could see fine.
Walking back to her seat, she thought: It’s got to be stress. After what happened in Apalachicola, she had a right to be stressed out.
Musicman had just dozed off when he heard the door to the bedroom creak. He sat up on the couch and glanced at his watch: almost two in the morning. He’d taken care of his needs twice since she had disappeared into his bedroom, but it hadn’t taken the edge off. He felt like one long nerve.
In the light seeping in from under the shades from the sodium arc light above the trailer court, he saw her edge into the hallway.
She wore the dress—he almost lost it right there.
He made sure to hide the sock he’d used as he fantasized about her, then turned on the light.
She looked like a burglar, caught red-handed.
Talk to her gently. “I’m glad to see you,” he said.
She looked at him, and he rang like a tuning fork.
He was not expecting his reaction. Usually, seeing the girls in the dresses acted as an inhibitor, cooling his jets, so to speak.
But she was even more alluring, more exciting, in the dress. It was the juxtaposition of her innate beauty that had a definite sexual quality to it and the way the dress tried to hide it. It did hide those tanned legs, the breasts, the curve of her ass, but it had just the opposite effect than he’d expected.