Charlie went pale and he staggered slightly.
“What is it, Charlie?”
“LuAnn once told me something Jackson had told her. A rule he lived by.”
“What was it?” Riggs demanded.
“If you want to hide something, put it out in plain sight because no one would see it.”
Now it was Riggs’s turn to go pale as the truth hit him. “Lisa’s at the house.”
“And so is Jackson.”
They raced to the car.
As the sedan flew down the road Riggs picked up the portable phone. He dialed the police and then the local FBI. He was shocked to hear Masters’s voice come on the line.
“He’s here, George. Crane’s at Wicken’s Hunt. Bring everything you got.” Riggs heard the phone drop to the desk and footsteps running off. Then he clicked off the phone and floored the car.
As the door swung open, LuAnn darted into the room. Smack in the center was a chair and in that chair was Lisa, slumped over, exhausted. The next sound LuAnn heard was the labored ticking of that clock, that wonderful, beautiful clock. She closed the door behind her and ran to her daughter, hugged her. Her face dissolved into a big smile when her daughter’s eyes met her mother’s.
And then a loop of thick cord was around LuAnn’s neck, was pulled tight, and LuAnn’s breath was suddenly gone; her gun fell to the floor.
Lisa screamed and screamed in agonizing silence, the tape still tightly across her mouth. She kicked at her chair, trying to topple it over, trying to reach her mother, help her in some way before this man killed her.
Jackson was fully behind LuAnn now. He had watched from the darkness next to the dresser as LuAnn had sailed toward Lisa, oblivious to his presence in the room. Then he had struck. The cord had a piece of wood attached to it and Jackson was winding it tighter and tighter. LuAnn’s face was turning blue, her senses were slipping away as the cord dug deeply into the skin of her neck. She tried to punch him but it was too awkward, her fists flailed helplessly, sapping away what remaining strength she had. She kicked at him, but he was too quick and dodged those blows as well. She dug at the rope with her strong fingers but it was so imbedded in her skin that there was no space left to get a grip.
He whispered into her ear. “Tick-tock, LuAnn. Tick-tock of the little clock. Like a magnet, it led you right to me. I held the phone right next to it so you couldn’t help but hear it. I told you I find out everything about someone I do business with. I visited your trailer in good old Rikersville. I listened to the rather unique sounds of that timepiece several times. And then seeing it on the wall of the bedroom the night I first visited you. Your little, cheap family heirloom.” He laughed. “I would have loved to have seen your face when you thought you had outsmarted me. Was it a happy face, LuAnn? Was it?”
Jackson’s smile deepened as he felt her giving way, her vaunted strength almost gone. “Now don’t forget your daughter. There she is.” He hit a light switch and swung her around violently so that she could see Lisa reaching for her. “She’ll watch you die, LuAnn. And then it will be her turn. You cost me a family member. Someone I loved. How does it feel to be responsible for her death?” He yanked on the cord harder and harder. “Die, LuAnn. Just give in to it. Close your eyes and just stop breathing. Just do it. It’s so easy. Just do it. Do it for me. You know you want to,” he hissed.
LuAnn’s eyes were close to erupting out of their sockets now, her lungs almost dead. She felt like she was deep under water; she would give anything to take one breath, just one long drink of air. As LuAnn listened to those taunting words she was swept back to a graveyard, to a plot of dirt, to a small brass marker in the ground many years ago. Exactly where she was heading. Do it for Big Daddy, LuAnn. It’s so easy. Come and see Big Daddy. You know you want to.
From the corner of her blood-filled right eye she could barely see Lisa silently screaming for her mother, reaching for her across a chasm that was barely seconds from becoming eternal. At that very moment and from a place so deep that LuAnn never even knew she possessed it, there came a rush of strength so unbelievably powerful that it almost knocked her over. With a shriek, LuAnn jerked upright and then bent forward, lifting an astonished Jackson completely off the floor in the process. She clamped her arms around his legs so that she was carrying him piggyback style. Then she exploded backward, her legs pumping like a long jumper about to erupt into flight until she slammed Jackson violently into the heavy dresser against the wall. The sharp wooden edge caught him dead on the spine.
He screamed in pain but hung on to the cord. LuAnn reached up and dug her fingernails right into the recent wound on his hand — the one from the fight at the cottage — tearing the cut wide open. Jackson screamed again and this time he let go of the cord. Feeling the rope go lax, LuAnn whipped her torso forward and Jackson went flying over her shoulders and crashing into a mirror hanging on the wall.
LuAnn staggered drunkenly around in the middle of the room sucking in huge amounts of air. She reached up to her throat and pulled off the cord. Then her eyes settled dead center on the man.
Jackson grabbed at his injured back and struggled to stand up. It was too little too late, as with a guttural scream LuAnn pounced. She flattened him to the floor and pinned him there. Her legs clamped against his, immobilizing them. Her hands encircled his throat and now his face started to turn blue. The grip he felt against his throat was ten times as strong as the one he had battled on the cottage porch. He looked into her blood-filled eyes, red with burst capillaries from her near strangling, and he knew there was no way he could ever break her choke hold. His hands groped the floor as she continued to squeeze the life out of him. A series of visions proceeded across his mind, but there was no rush of strength to accompany it. His body started to go limp. His eyes rolled in their sockets, his neck constricted to the breaking point under the ever increasing pressure. His fingers finally closed around a bit of glass from the shattered mirror and held. He swung it upward, catching her in the arm and cutting through her clothing and into her skin. She didn’t release her grip. He cut her again and then again but to no avail. She was beyond pain; she would simply not let go.
Finally, with the last bit of strength he had left, his fingers felt under her arm and he pressed as hard as he could. Suddenly, LuAnn’s arms went dead as Jackson found the pressure point and her grip was abruptly broken. In an instant he had pushed her off and sprinted across the room, gasping for breath.
LuAnn watched in horror as he grabbed Lisa’s chair and dragged it across the room to the window. She got to her feet, flying toward them. She knew exactly what he was going to do, but damn if she was going to let him do it. He was lifting the chair and Lisa with it, and LuAnn dove for it, her hand closing around her daughter’s leg as the chair smashed against the window that overlooked the brick patio almost thirty feet below. LuAnn and Lisa crashed to the floor amid the shattered glass.
Jackson tried to snatch up her gun but LuAnn was one step ahead of him. LuAnn’s leg flew up and caught Jackson, who had strayed a little too close, directly in the crotch. He bent down, groaning. She jumped up and landed a powerful right hand squarely against Jackson’s chin. He went down to the floor.
In the distance they all heard the police sirens coming. Jackson swore under his breath, picked himself up, and, clutching his privates, raced through the doorway.
LuAnn let him go, slamming and locking the door behind him. Screaming and crying in relief, she gently pulled off the tape and undid the ropes holding Lisa. Mother and daughter held each other tightly. LuAnn clutched at Lisa’s body, she pushed her face in Lisa’s hair, her nose drank in every wonderful smell of her little girl. Then LuAnn stood and picked up her gun and fired two shots out the window.