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  He was getting closer and she tried to pull away from the sound of his voice but whatever was binding her held fast. The chair went up on two legs and started to topple sideways but suddenly stopped before it hit the floor. She could feel the knuckles of the man’s large hands against her shoulder and her ribs as he righted the chair.

  “That won’t help, Angie. You’re not going anywhere.”

  She felt his hands leave the chair and then his fingers, strangely gentle, moving in her hair. The fabric dropped away from her eyes but she squeezed them tightly shut, hoping childishly that the bastard would stay behind her and she wouldn’t have to see him and she wouldn’t have to die.

  “Don’t be pathetic.” the man said. “The decision’s been made.”

  Something in her lizard brain wasn’t willing to admit the finality of it. From the sound of his voice the man was only a couple of feet away on her right side. She turned her head away to the left, trying to show him that she still hadn’t seen his face, that if he stayed where he was he had no need to kill her. She wanted to tell him that, make sure he knew. She wrenched her head violently to one side as she tried to work her tongue and her teeth into or around or through the tape, loosen it or tear it, anything she could do to free her voice because if she could do that and the flashlight didn’t move and the man didn’t move and everything else stayed dark none of the rest of it had to happen and she still had a chance.

  She could tell him she didn’t know who he was and didn’t want to know who he was, just let her walk out of here and she’d forget it ever happened and the man could just write this little abduction thing off as a bad idea, no harm, no foul, and she’d never tell a soul because she didn’t know or care who the hell this man was.

  She wasn’t able to get the damn tape off and finally she just gave up and kept her head down and her eyes closed. It was a faint hope because all he had to do was reach out and grasp her chin and lift her head and force her eyes open and then it would be over. At that moment his hand brushed her cheek and she jumped against the tape binding her to the chair and she heard him laugh, as if he’d been reading her thoughts, and she tucked her chin even lower into her chest but all he did was work his fingertips under the edge of the tape and then pull, an incredibly quick flick of his wrist that had the tape off before the pain even had time to register, but then it did and she bit back a scream and drove her chin and her eyes even farther down and away from wherever he was. She heard a low chuckle, felt his warm breath next to her ear. His voice was soft, almost gentle, but it carried the menace of a scream.

  “Tell me about Tommy.”

  “Who’s Tommy?” she nearly asked, but she bit off the words, tried to fight down the lacerating edges of panic. If she let the panic win she was lost.

  “Who are you?” she asked.

  “Nobody. Just like Tommy was.” The smallest hint of anger infiltrated his voice. “You don’t even remember, do you?”

  “I do remember,” she said quickly. “It was just a long time ago, that’s all. I liked him – he was nice.”

  She nearly added something inane like “How is he, anyway? Long time no see…” but the fog was lifting and something stopped her.

  “Yeah, he was. He was a good boy. Too good for you. Too good for all of you.”

  She couldn’t argue with that.

  • • •

  There had been four of them, part of a self-styled rat pack that did pretty much what they wanted, when they wanted. Like any rat pack there was a lot of ranking, a lot of infighting. Actually, Angie thought, only three of them really belonged. Angie, Karen and Greg had all gone through high school together, Karen and Greg pretty much a couple until a little over a year ago when Karen had announced her intention to move to Boston. Greg had been devastated when she’d made it clear that she was moving on her own, no room for Greg in her plans for the big bad city. As upset as he was, he hadn’t put up much of a fight. He was a small town boy and he would probably never leave Strothwood anyway. Instead his efforts were concentrated on trying to get Karen to stay where she was. Karen and Angie were close, best friends, and one night Karen confided in her, told her why she was leaving. She couldn’t see spending the rest of her life in that little town, and if she stayed with Greg that’s exactly what would happen.

  Angie feigned regret and understanding but said nothing of her own thoughts. She’d always been the third wheel, and she’d entertained fantasies of her own about Greg for a long time, fantasies that would never become reality with Karen in the picture. Angie was attractive, even beautiful, but Karen was spectacular. More importantly, Karen left the distinct impression that she didn’t care what happened after she left.

  Greg and Angie inevitably drifted together, Karen away in Boston and Angie patiently enduring seemingly endless conversations with Greg about Karen until finally the hormones kicked in and they ended up in bed. Over time the relationship had grown into a semblance of what Angie had always wanted.

  She knew that as much as she wished it otherwise it wasn’t that way with him. She was a surrogate, and when after a year of virtual silence Karen suddenly called to announce she was coming back home Angie dreaded her arrival. Angie could only wonder how much Greg knew about her return and when he’d known it. The sex had become desultory, mechanical, and now she understood that he’d been marking time, counting days. She was afraid to ask, afraid of what he might tell her.

  When Karen came back she blindsided both of them. She had a man of her own, someone she’d met in Boston. His name was Tommy, and Angie would always remember the sudden, unguarded look of disappointment on Greg’s face.

  Karen had known about she and Greg months before, the result of an awkward phone call that Angie had felt somehow obligated to make. Karen’s reaction had been no reaction at all, left Angie with the impression that what had happened between she and Greg had been predictable, expected, the behavior of rats in a maze. Angie was only somewhat reassured by Tommy’s presence. He was alarmingly handsome and unabashedly besotted with Karen, but Angie knew Karen in a way that he and Greg never could. She hadn’t brought Tommy back to Strothwood as much as he’d attached himself to her return. Karen had always, always, gotten her own way, and she was so accustomed to privilege that it never occurred to her that other people might have wishes of their own. Angie could see what was already happening between Greg and Karen, even if Tommy couldn’t or didn’t want to. Karen wanted Greg back. Angie knew it, Karen knew it, and Greg knew it. Tommy was oblivious.

  It had been another one of those nights, Angie seething in the front seat beside Greg with Karen and Tommy jammed together in the back of Greg’s new Camaro. Angie had just seen Greg glance in the rear view mirror, make eye contact with Karen. That was when they blew by a Strothwood police car at an intersection.

  One of Greg’s few talents was that he could talk himself out of virtually anything. It helped that he knew the cop, or rather that the cop knew his father. For that matter the cop knew the parents of everyone in the car except Tommy. Ordinarily that might have been enough for a free pass, but not this time.

  Angie never knew for sure how much or how little Karen knew about what happened next. Greg drove too fast most of the time, and not very well. The cops knew who he was and she’d seen him get away with some outrageous stuff behind the wheel, things that would get just about anyone else pulled over. On the rare occasions when he had been he’d invariably gotten himself out of it.

  Things were different this time. Greg liked weed as much as the rest of them, but after the initial convenience of it wore off he didn’t like getting it from Tommy. It was some kind of a rivalry thing, Karen decided. Greg had always pictured himself as the hippest guy in town, but with Tommy’s seemingly endless and effortless access to it even Greg felt himself threatened.

  Things went inexplicably bad all at once. The cop made them all get out of the car and stand at the curb while he searched the Camaro. That had never happened before and as soon as she an
d Greg exchanged glances Angie knew something was wrong. His cockiness had disappeared and for once he looked nervous and cowed.

  It didn’t take long, maybe less than two minutes, before the cop extricated himself from the back of the Camaro. He was holding an oversize clear plastic baggie and even from several feet away it was obvious what it contained. Greg started to say something but clamped his mouth shut when the cop ignored the rest of them and walked directly to Tommy, the baggie held up in front of him.

  “This yours?” he asked.

  “No, Officer.”

  Angie remembered how calm Tommy looked, much more so than the rest of them. She supposed he’d been through this kind of thing before. The one who really surprised her was Karen. Karen wasn’t afraid of anybody, never had been, and because of her father and his influence she’d never had to be. She knew she was better than anybody else, had been brought up that way, and Angie remembered looking over at her and waiting for an explosion that

  never came.

  • • •

  Angie wasn’t sure how long she’d talked, but she knew that as long as she talked she would stay alive. She’d kept rambling, one word spilling into the other so there wouldn’t be an opportunity for this man to go to the next step, whatever it was. Now she searched her memory or her imagination for something else to say but everything had gone suddenly blank.

  “What happened then?” the voice asked, and somehow she felt he already knew the answer.

  “He handcuffed him—Tommy—and put him in the cop car and we just let him do it.”

  “Why? Why did you let him do it?” There was an edge to the voice now.

  “I don’t know.” She felt like she was falling, long past the point where she could expect forgiveness or compassion. “We were kids, stupid kids. Nobody tried, not even Karen, not even for somebody who loved her the way that boy did. I mean, the look on his face every time he looked at her… all she would have had to do was snap her fingers and her old man would have hired the best lawyer in the state. That’s what I thought would happen, but she didn’t.”

  “So what happened to him?”

  The question was rhetorical, no curiosity in it. She was being led but it didn’t matter anymore.

  “What do you think?” she snapped. “They sent him away. I mean, it was just a bag of grass, for God’s sake. It’s legal now, some places. I forget what the sentence was, but it was crazy, years and years. I went to the courtroom once but the trial was a joke, even I could see it. As far as I know Karen or Greg never bothered to show up at all. Afterward I couldn’t look at either one of them. And maybe three or four weeks later they were back together and I was… excess baggage. Just like that boy.”

  53

  Frank had half expected to see a police car when he pulled up in front of the house but there was no sign of one, either in the driveway or nearby. The little Miata was parked in the driveway and the house itself was in darkness. Frank tried to remember how long ago Angie’s call had come in, told himself it couldn’t have been that long. Given the way she’d sounded on the phone, it was hard to imagine her simply turning off the lights and going to bed.

  He wasn’t left with many alternatives. They’d never gotten close to the stage where she’d given him a key, and he wouldn’t have asked for one. They were both grownups and he was leaving town. He fished out his cell phone and called her number again, got no answer. That was one option gone, and the remaining two left him with gilt-edged opportunities to make a fool of himself.

  Wouldn’t be the first time, he thought bitterly.

  It hadn’t been hard to get in, but Frank had made some noise doing it. If his instincts were right it was more important to go in fast than quiet. He paused and listened, realized that if he got this wrong he’d just given Cunningham one more length of rope to hang him with. There was still a better than fifty-fifty chance that Angie had only had a momentary scare or anxiety attack or something and was somehow asleep upstairs only a few minutes later. If that was the case the racket he’d just made would just scare the hell out of her all over again. Thankfully he couldn’t picture her as a gun owner, but if she was awake now she was probably dialing 911.

  That set up a whole range of possibilities involving the Strothwood P.D. that he didn’t want to think about. He shook those thoughts off, focused on finding his way through the darkened downstairs. The ground floor was huge, probably over three thousand square feet, and there wasn’t a light on anywhere that he could see. Clearing that space in the dark would take too long, so he decided to cut to the chase and apologize later.

  “Angie! It’s me – Frank!” he called, loud enough to be heard upstairs. “Are you okay?”

  He stood still and listened again, silently clicked off a full sixty seconds with no response and no sounds of movement. If there was actually a problem he was taking too fucking long to do something about it. He took out his cell phone and called Dispatch, hoped Lori was working that shift. She was, picked up right away.

  “Lori, it’s Frank.”

  “Hi,” she said after only the briefest of pauses. She didn’t waste time questioning his call, a call to a number which he wasn’t authorized to use anymore. Instead she just shut up and waited. He told her Angie’s address, that Angie had called him about a possible prowler, and that he was inside the house and there was no sign of her. He told her he was still there, that he was armed, and that he would be inside when officers arrived.

  “Tell them to come in hot,” he said, “the more noise the better.”

  He didn’t need to add and tell them not to blow my fucking head off. He put the phone away, wondering if he’d just made a huge mistake and lost a friend in the process. Lori was one of the few people left in the department in whom he had absolute trust. She hadn’t remonstrated with him, hadn’t asked unnecessary and time-consuming questions, and she wouldn’t check with Brent Williams or anybody else. She’d just do it, based on his word. If he was wrong Cunningham and Williams would make sure there were repercussions for her.

  That still didn’t mean the response would get here in time, or whether there was actually anything to bother getting here for. He put the doubt away along with the phone and told himself to concentrate on what he was doing.

  Something hit him hard from behind and he went down, the big revolver coming out of his hand and clattering on the hardwood floor. He fought the blackness and rolled feebly to one side, felt something tear at his shoulder and just behind it the glancing impact of a big man following it down and ending up on the floor beside him. Frank scrabbled for the gun, his fingers closing on it just as the gleaming arc of a blade plunged for his eyes. He jerked his head away, swung the heavy revolver like a club and heard the crack against bone as it connected but he didn’t know if it was enough and he felt himself float away into darkness.

  54

  Things were coming back to Frank in a slow-motion flurry of disjointed fragments. It came to him that he was lying on his back and that something had put him there but he couldn’t remember what it was. He wondered if he’d gone blind somehow, managed enough motor control to squeeze his eyelids shut and open them again. This time he thought he could see a hint of color, something in the periphery of his vision. His neck and his head hurt like hell, so at least he was feeling something. He gingerly turned sideways, trading the resultant spasm of pain for whatever reassurance he could get. His brain hadn’t caught up yet, and it took him a few seconds to realize that the bright traces of light bouncing around the room had an actual physical origin and weren’t just projecting from inside his skull. He risked moving his head another couple of inches, saw that the source was somewhere outside the window and that it was cycling between red and blue in a pattern that looked familiar even though he couldn’t place it.

  And then he could, suddenly aware that just because there was help outside it didn’t mean the help would come inside. Maybe they’d just go away, although now he thought he could hear something, something tha
t went beyond a loud knock on the door, something heavy hitting it hard once and harder the second time, this time with the sound of splintering wood. The noise was like a jet of cold water and it brought most of him back, brought him back to where he was although he still couldn’t understand why he was on the floor. He was just slowly rolling up onto his hands and knees when he saw the jerky movement of a flashlight beam in the darkness. It swiveled in his direction and then locked in on him. Somewhere on the same plane as that flashlight beam would be a gun muzzle with someone very nervous behind it. Even in his light-blind, murky return to consciousness Frank remembered all about semiautomatic pistols, light trigger pulls, and residual adrenaline. He froze stock still even before Kelly Randall’s command to do so died in her throat.

  “Not me, “he told her, very slowly and deliberately gesturing at the unconscious man on the floor. “Him.”

  Then he passed out again.

  55

  Brent’s first thought after the initial phone call had been that Stallings had finally gone too far. That didn’t last long, not after talking to Raycroft and Kelly Randall. It was worse than that. Brent knew that somehow he had to salvage something out of this. He was batting cleanup again.

  Angela Lowry had called 911 about a prowler and Strothwood P.D. had dropped the ball. At some point he’d have to talk to Randall and Charlie Raycroft about that, but this wasn’t the time. Right now he needed both of them. The perp was unconscious in a hospital bed, no ID on him yet, and Brent had put Raycroft on guard duty.

  Brent still wasn’t sure why he’d left Kelly Randall outside Angela Lowry’s hospital room. All he knew was that Angie had been held against her will, and that brought with it the real possibility that there’d been some kind of sexual assault. Standard to have a female officer present, even in Strothwood, but he’d just told Randall to wait outside and that he’d call for her if he needed her. Kelly had cocked an eyebrow at that but she hadn’t said anything, just taken up station in the hallway. Brent could have flattered himself that he’d had some kind of premonition but the reality was that he needed to do the interview alone in order to claim some kind of role in the investigation.