Natural gas had no smell of its own, but the gas company added an odor ant as a warning agent in the event of a gas leak. Gas leaks could be dangerous, could be fatal. Any spark or open flame could ignite an explosion.
Open flame. The furnace pilot light.
She saw it then-exactly what Hickle had planned for her.
What she had to do was obvious. Open the windows, shut off the gas.
Simple, except she couldn't move. Every muscle in her body had gone slack. Her pulse was rapid and faint. Swooning ripples of dizziness ballooned through her head.
She tried to prop herself up, but her arms would not support her, and she collapsed, gasping. There was no air to breathe, only the swamp stench. Natural gas was an enemy of respiration. It inhibited the blood's ability to carry oxygen. The more she inhaled, the more labored and irregular her breathing would become. Her muscles, starved of oxygen, would lose all remaining strength. Her awareness would flicker and fade out.
Well, no. She doubted she would last that long. The explosion would kill her first.
"That's me," she groaned.
"Always looking on the bright side."
The longer she waited, the weaker she would get.
She had to take action now, had to raise the bedroom window, draw some air into this death trap. But she couldn't stand. All right, crawl.
The window was only six feet away. A baby could crawl that far.
She started to roll onto her belly. Something stopped her-a tug of resistance. Her left ankle had been fastened to a leg of the bureau by the chain and padlock from Hickle's bedroom closet. He'd anchored her in place so that even if she regained consciousness, she couldn't escape.
Nice touch, but the joke was on him. She knew the combination. Bending at the waist, she reached the padlock and lined up the numbers, then tugged on the shackle.
The padlock didn't open.
But it had to. Unless… Hickle had changed the combination.
Abby shut her eyes.
"I take it back, Raymond. Looks like the joke's on me."
The greatest danger, Hickle knew, was that the cops had read his license plate during the chase. If they had, his plate number and a description of his Volkswagen would already have been radioed to other CHP units and to LAPD and Santa Monica PD patrol cars. He could outrun one car but not a dozen.
He reached Ocean Avenue and turned north into heavy traffic, typical on a Friday night. Bikers and low-riders surrounded him. Rough crowd, the sort that drew a lot of cops on patrol. He scanned the sea of car roofs for a light bar Couldn't see one, but that didn't mean police units weren't out there-maybe behind him-maybe closing in.
Panic started his heart racing. He thought he might throw up.
The traffic thinned a little as he entered a better neighborhood. On his left was the park on the palisades, busy with tourists and teenagers. Hotels and restaurants and condominium towers rose on his right. It occurred to him that soon, even if things went exactly as planned, he would be either dead or in custody.
He would never again walk in a park or eat at a restaurant. He would not see the moon, which hovered over the ocean beyond the palisades, unless he saw it through the barred window of a cell.
But if he lived, he would see Kris in his memory. She would be with him every day, bloodied and torn, his victim, his sacrifice. Every time he closed his eyes, he would see her. He would give up the moon for that.
And if he didn't survive… With death came immortality. He would be remembered.
His name, his face, would be known. He, not Kris, would be on the covers of magazines. He, not Kris, would stare out at a world of television viewers from a million picture tubes. And who could say?
Maybe there was a life after this one, when all destinies were fulfilled. If so, he would be with her forever, as he deserved.
But only if he killed her first. To do that, he had to get to Malibu, and time was ticking down.
Ahead was the incline to the coast highway. He eased into the turn lane, then got stuck behind a line of cars at a red light. A minute of waiting followed. He was helpless. If a patrol unit spotted him now, there was nothing he could do except go down shooting.
Finally the stoplight cycled to a green arrow. He followed the traffic downhill, breathing hard, his chest heaving with strain. There was sweat on his face, sweat pasting his shirt to his armpits and his underpants to his crotch. He smelled bad. But he'd made it at least this far.
He pulled into the fast lane, racing between the pale cliffs and the sea. Fear of attracting attention competed with the need to make up lost time. Urgency won.
Hickle accelerated-sixty-five miles per hour, seventy, seventy-five-breaking the speed limit as he hugged the curving shoreline of Santa Monica Bay on his way to Malibu.
Okay, think, Abby Think.
Plan A had proven unsuccessful. Time to go to Plan B-if there was a Plan B, other than just lying here till the whole place went kaboom.
She shook her head, rejecting pessimism. There was always a Plan B, and if that failed, a Plan C and D and so on through the alphabet for as long as she lasted.
Never give up, that was the spirit.
Plan B was to try variant combinations based on Kris's birthdate-August 18, 1959. Abby moved the four cams to 0859, 1859, 5918, 5908. No luck.
How about Hickle's birthday? Travis had told her. It was October
7,1965.
The cams seemed to be getting slippery. No, it was her fingers that were slick with perspiration. She wiped her shaking hands on her blouse and spun the disks. 1007, 1065,0765, and reversals of all these sequences.
Nothing happened.
The gas odor was worse than before. Her stomach coiled. Nausea threatened.
All right/ Plan C. Kicking off her shoe, she tried to slip her foot. through the chain. No use. The circle of steel links dug like small teeth into the skin above her heel, gripping fiercely. Either the chain was too tight, or her darned foot was too big.
Something like panic welled up inside her. She pushed it down. Mustn't freak out. Freaking out was not a survival tactic.
Time for Plan D. So what was it? Well, she could pound the floor, scream for help. Trouble was, she didn't think she could get enough air into her lungs to force out a decent scream, and if she banged on the floor, the downstairs neighbors would either ignore the noise or call the cops. And the cops would take hours to respond to a low-priority call in this district, if they responded at all.
She didn't have hours. The gas was thick. Before long, it would reach the critical mass necessary to set off an explosion and a flash fire.
The temperature in a flash fire could hit 1300 degrees. That was hot enough to fry her up pretty good.
"Damn it, Abby." She blinked sweat out of her eyes.
"You're supposed to be smart, right? And highly trained, with all these advanced skills…"
Skills. She did have skills. Among them was the skill of picking locks.
She had no tools, but maybe she didn't need any.
She pulled the shackle taut, then fingered the cams.
The second one had tightened; it turned with difficulty.
That was the one to work on first. Carefully she dialed the cam through its ten-digit range. On 6 it loosened.
The second number in the combination was 6.
Her heart fluttered. Her vision was blurring in and out. Her general condition was not good, and the prognosis was poor. On the menu tonight, rotisserie Abby, served charred.
Quit it. She needed to concentrate. Easier said than done. Her head was squeezed in a vise of pain, and the bedroom had begun to imitate a carousel, and there was the stench of week-old diapers in her nose and mouth.
Maintaining pressure on the shackle, she tested the other three cams.
Now the first one resisted turning.