Then an explanation occurred to her, terrible in its plausibility.
“Is it Ally Is she …” She couldn’t finish the question, wasn’t certain what horror she imagined: rape or torture or murder, or all three.
Finally Charles roused himself, a man climbing out of a deep sleep.
“No,” he said in a dusty voice. “Not Ally. Ally’s fine.” He nodded. “She’s fine. I saw her. She’s fine.”
“Where is she”
“Her bedroom.” Still nodding, nodding. “She’s comfortable. She’s fine.”
“Then … what happened”
“I opened the safe. That’s all.”
“But why do you look so … so …”
“I’m okay,” Charles said. “Really.”
Barbara exchanged a baffled glance with Judy, whose hand was absently stroking the spot between her collar bones where the crucifix had hung.
Like a patient father leading a small child, Philip ushered Charles to the wicker hamper. “Why don’t you rest your feet”
The hamper had creaked when Barbara sat on it earlier. But it registered Charles’s weight not at all, as if he weren’t really there, as if only his image inhabited the closet.
“That better” Philip asked.
“Much,” Charles said without visible reaction. “Much better.”
The flashlight was trembling. Barbara bit her lip. “Oh, Charles.”
Distantly she was surprised to hear herself speak her husband’s name with a tenderness she hadn’t felt in years.
31
Ally stared at Trish Robinson as she crossed the bedroom. Her attention was held by Trish’s eyes, electric blue, gleaming with an intensity that was almost scary.
They were the eyes of a jungle animal, grimly determined, hypervigilant, focused exclusively on the immediate moment. Eyes that could stare death in the face.
Maybe they already had.
Then her focus shifted to Trish’s hair-a wet mop-and her uniform-soaked through.
“The lake …” Ally whispered.
“What”
“That’s where Cain said he put you.”
“Temporarily.”
“You got away” The question was hushed, almost awed.
Shrug. “I’m here, aren’t I”
Trish holstered her gun and leaned over the chair, tugging at the knotted sheets. Her hands were shaking, her fingers clumsy, and Ally saw for the first time how scared she was-weak with fear but doing her best not to show it.
The fear made her more human, more real, not an apparition in a dream.
“You know martial arts” Ally asked. “Is that how you did it”
“They call me the dragon lady.”
“No, seriously.”
“Seriously-I just got lucky, okay”
Lucky. No way. She’d been fighting. Maybe not with kung fu and tae kwan do, but it had been a battle, all right. Ally noted the abrasions on her wrists and knuckles, the cuts and bruises on her bare forearms.
But how could she have fought anybody She was still handcuffed, her arm movements severely restricted.
Handcuffed …
“Hey, didn’t they cuff your hands behind your back”
“I moonlight as a contortionist.” She gave up trying to loosen the stubborn knots and unsheathed a knife.
Cops didn’t carry knives on their belts, did they No, wait. Ally had seen Tyler remove Trish’s belt before slinging her over his shoulder. The equipment she was wearing-it belonged to one of the bad guys.
Ally didn’t think any of them would have given up his gear voluntarily.
“How come you know Cain’s name” Trish asked, cutting into her thoughts.
“Oh. I-uh-I know all about him.” The mention of Cain made her heart speed up. “I’ve seen his face. He’s ugly.”
“Big surprise.”
“He wants to kill me.”
“What he wants and what he’ll get are two different things.”
Though Trish tried to say it with cool nonchalance. Ally could hear the strain stretching her voice taut, could see the tic of a muscle in her cheek that gave the lie to her smile.
The knife blade sliced neatly through the binding, and Ally was free.
She stood on wobbly legs and took a step toward the door. Suddenly her only impulse was to be out of this room, this place where she’d been certain she would die.
“Not that way.” The urgent whisper came from behind her. “Help me with this.”
But Trish didn’t need any help. She had already unlatched one of the window screens and pushed it out of the frame by the time Ally reached her side.
She might be handcuffed and hurt and scared, maybe even as scared as Ally herself, but she sure knew how to keep her cool.
“You first,” Trish said.
Ally began climbing out. “What are you, Wonder Woman or something”
“That’s me.” The cuffs flashed. “Dig my Amazon bracelets.”
Despite urgency and danger. Ally almost smiled.
In the hall-footsteps.
Heavy and quick.
Ally froze, halfway out the window, the blood leaving her face. She breathed one word.
“Him.”
32
At the door of Ally’s bedroom, Cain paused to strip off his mask.
The girl had been so eager to see his face. Now she would have the pleasure of seeing it again in the final moment of her life.
He’d told Charles his daughter wouldn’t suffer. It was true. There was no time for a drawn-out encounter of the sort he preferred. He would simply enter the room, thrust the gun under Ally’s chin, and make spatter-art out of her brains. A no-frills hit, slick and professional.
He wadded the mask in his back pocket, then shut his eyes and drew a slow breath, feeling the smooth expansion of his rib cage, the beat of blood in the arteries of his wrists and the veins of his neck.
This was always his way before a kill. In the stillness before violence, he liked to take a moment to sink deep into the awareness of himself, his body, the autonomic functions of his heart and lungs. Though he was not a philosophical man, he found a certain wonder in the knowledge that another human being, as alive as he was, soon would be dead by his hand. No breath, no heartbeat, no movement, no life.
Bodies in motion. Bodies at rest. That was all there was in the universe, or so he’d heard. Tonight a body in motion would be set at rest, that was all-permanently at rest. And the universe would go on, indifferent and aloof.
Ready now, he grasped the doorknob.
It wouldn’t turn.
Locked.
Fear held Ally immobilized, one leg over the windowsill, the other foot planted in her bedroom.
“Shoot him,” she hissed at Trish. “Through the door.”
Trish shook her head. “The others will hear. Can’t get them all.”
The doorknob rattled.
“Go,” Trish breathed.
Ally’s paralysis broke. Twist of her upper body, and she slipped through the window and dropped onto the flower bed bordering the house. She crushed some of her mom’s geraniums and was distantly sorry about it.
Trish climbed after her, drawing the gun.
For a bewildered moment Cain stared at the door, unable to comprehend how it could be locked.
Ally was tied up, wasn’t she
Wasn’t she
Ally streaked across the yard through a tunnel of shadows. The grounds of the estate seemed enormous, bigger than three football fields. She had never imagined the yard was so large.
Trish, directly ahead, glanced back, her face pallid in the starlight, wet ribbons of hair lacing her forehead and cheeks like cracks in a marble bust.
On her right, the pool area blurred past: smear of white concrete, smell of chlorine.
The garden lay directly ahead. Trish led her into it, through high stalks of gladiolus and foxglove and pink cadmium, the plants trampled, the beautiful blooms crushed like so much wastepaper.