Below her, the killer sank slowly into the silt, maybe unconscious, maybe dead.
Leave him there, a hard voice said in her mind.
But she couldn’t. She needed the gear on his belt.
Anyway, that was the reason she gave herself as she crammed the Glock in the waistband of her pants and submerged.
She grabbed him by the neck of his nylon jacket. He was impossibly heavy, a hundred sixty pounds of inert mass.
It was a hard struggle to haul him to the surface, harder still to kick for the shore with her burden in tow.
The beach wasn’t more than ten yards away, but her vision was graying out, her heart skipping beats by the time she reached it.
Staggering, gasping, she dragged the man onto the sand and rolled him on his back.
Exhaustion dropped her to her knees. She leaned over him, staring into his face.
He was so young. A teenager. Seventeen Not even.
With a shaking hand she felt his left carotid artery. Pulse faint but regular. Her ear to his lips, she heard no whisper of breath.
She’d been trained in CPR but had never expected to use it under circumstances like these. Part of her rebelled against the idea.
But she couldn’t let him die. Though he would have killed her and laughed about it, he was a person, wasn’t he He mattered to somebody.
Pinching his nostrils, she tilted his head to face the sky. His airway should be open; still, he wouldn’t breathe.
She pressed her mouth to his, blew air into his lungs. His chest lifted but didn’t deflate. She fed him another breath, and this time his chest heaved as air hissed out of his mouth in a splutter of droplets.
He coughed, eyelids fluttering. Awake.
Intent on keeping him alive, she hadn’t stopped to consider that he was still a threat.
She reached for the Glock, but before she could grab it, his right hand closed over the chain of her handcuffs and snapped both arms forward, holding them uselessly outstretched.
For a frozen moment he stared up at her. “You saved my life,” he rasped in a voice like sandpaper.
Mutely she nodded.
He bared an evil smile. “Big mistake.”
With his left hand he plucked the Glock from her waistband.
Nobody had ever taught her the proper defensive move for this situation. Instinct guided her as she ducked under the gun and thrust her upper body forward.
The crown of her head caught him hard on the chin. His jaws clacked. The Glock cast up a white puff of sand as it fell, and for the second time in five minutes, she felt him go limp.
Was he really out or just stunned Get the gun, get the gun.
She scrabbled blindly for the pistol, recovered it, cycled the slide manually as she rolled on the sand, kicking clear of him in case he went for her with his knife or his fists.
When she looked up, she saw he hadn’t moved. Unconscious-or faking
Rainbows dazzled her, filling her field of vision, pulsing in sync with the ache in her head. She blinked the colors away and looked more closely at the young man in black.
Blood leaked from his mouth. His eyelids twitched.
Out. Really out.
And she had the gun, and she was safe.
“Congratulations, Officer Robinson.” Her sudden hoarse whisper was startling in the stillness. “You’ve just made your first arrest.”
A laugh hiccupped out of her, and then she lowered her head and her stomach flipped and she was sick on the sand.
Death had been close, very close. She’d nearly ended up like Wald. Nearly said goodbye to the world. Nearly.
Nausea subsided into shudders, racking her body like fever chills. Her teeth chattered, and her shoulders shook.
Trish sat on the beach and hugged herself as best she could, her chained wrists crossed over her heart.
24
“I say we break down the doors.”
Philip Danforth dabbed his split lip with a monogrammed handkerchief. A thread of light filtered through a hairline crack between the closet doors, striping his face. The reek of his sweat was acrid and close.
“That’s absurd,” Charles answered evenly.
“What’s absurd about it If we use our combined strength, we can blow them right off the hinges.”
“Do you have any idea how much noise that would make”
“To hell with the noise.”
“Just wait a minute, Phil.”
“Don’t call me Phil.”
“Philip. Sorry. Listen to me.”
Charles was using his courtroom voice. He had found that juries were more readily persuaded by quiet self-assurance than by inflamed rhetoric. The jury in this case was a panel of two: Judy and Barbara. He would never get through to Philip, but one person alone couldn’t smash open the closet.
“We can’t just say to hell with the noise,” Charles went on in his reasonable way, wishing the close confines didn’t require him to stand so close to Philip, nearly nose to nose. “Five armed men are out there.”
“Woman.” Barbara spoke as if every word were the first note of a scream. “One of them is a woman.”
“All right.” Charles showed no annoyance at the interruption. Never alienate the jury. “Four armed men and one armed woman. If we break out, they’ll hear us and come running.”
“For all we know,” Philip snapped, spraying Charles with a mist of spittle, “they may have left the house by now.”
“With Ally” Barbara sat down suddenly on a wicker hamper. It creaked.
“Philip,” Judy said in quiet reproach.
“Well, no.” Philip softened. “Not with Ally. I just meant they could be gone.”
“But they’re not.” Charles tapped an ear. “Listen.”
From the living room came faint noises: shatter of glass or porcelain, thuds of overturned furniture.
“What are they doing” Judy whispered.
Charles shrugged. “Wrecking the place, it sounds like.”
The low groan came from Barbara.
Philip stared hard at the doors, as if willing them to open, then turned to Charles, about to embark on another line of argument. Before he could, a new sound froze him.
The quick tread of approaching footsteps.
“Maybe they’ve brought Ally.” Barbara’s whisper was as solemn as a prayer.
Rattle of a chain. Flood of light. The bifold doors opened to reveal two ski-masked figures, the gray-eyed man and his female companion, both with guns drawn.
The man spoke. “Mr. Kent, we need your help with the safe.”
Charles blinked. “The safe”
A gloved hand closed over his arm and yanked him forward.
“Where’s my daughter” Barbara screamed.
The closet doors slammed in her face.
Thrust into the brighter light and fresher air of the bedroom’s glare, Charles was momentarily disoriented. He watched, dazed, as the two doorknobs were chained and padlocked.
Then the killers ushered him out of the room, down the hall.
He passed Ally’s bedroom. Through the doorway he saw his daughter seated in her desk chair, wrists bound to the tubular armrest with torn bedding. Her eyes met his.
“Daddy …” She hadn’t called him by that name in years.
The man behind him yanked the door shut. Charles whirled, an angry question riding on his lips, but it died when he looked into those cold gray eyes.
Out of the hallway. Crossing the threshold of the dining area.
Charles stopped short, staring.
He had expected some damage, but this …
The dining table had been upended and broken.
The chandelier cut loose to crash in pieces.
Every painting torn off the walls and savaged, the expensive frames splintered.
Love seat, twin sofas, matching armchairs-slashed, the leather upholstery curling in ribbons to expose gobs of foam stuffing.
In the dining area stood the man who had shot Officer Wald. His mask was off, his suntanned and stubbly face sweaty in the peculiar half-light of the one standing lamp still unbroken.