Queen (19 page)

He turned on the windshield wipers, increased his speed past the point of safety, and focused on the road through the snowfall. The dry, squeaky swipe of the wiper blades against frozen glass and falling snow were a taunting and repetitive reminder that he might be too late… too late… too late… too late…

When Cody drove away, Queen was left with a sense of foreboding, which she promptly told herself was nothing but her unhappiness over the fact that she couldn't bring herself to take a chance. To simply let go of her childhood fears and just love the man… to let whatever would come, come.

By early afternoon the snowfall had resumed to the point where it was often difficult to see past the front decking. She paced the house, going from busywork to doing nothing but standing silently at the windows and staring down the long empty driveway, hoping that the boys would make it home safely and that Cody would be right behind.

She kept telling herself she was being silly, that she was only feeling isolated because of the snow. But in her heart she knew that wasn't it. If she'd been home, her sisters would be laughing at her as they often did when Queen got one of her notions. Suddenly she wished for the sound of their voices teasing her into a different state of mind.

Television was not an option. The reception was bad, even on a clear day. In weather like this it was awful. Cody had promised for weeks to look into buying a satellite dish, but he'd let it slide, and installing one in this kind of weather would have been nearly impossible.

She turned on the radio in the kitchen and then promptly walked away, leaving it playing low enough to be nothing but background noise. She was not in the mood for songs about failed love affairs and no-good men. But the feeling of dread increased as the snow continued to fall.

Thoughts of the boys who would be coming home prompted her to go to the kitchen, where she soon lost herself in the act of baking cookies. For a time she forgot her nervous concerns until the sound of running footsteps on the front porch interrupted her work. She looked at the clock and knew that it was too early for the boys. It could only mean that Cody was home.

"Thank God!" she muttered, dusting the flour off her hands as she hurried toward the front door.

The smile of welcome died on her face with the force of the blow as the door was kicked inward. It flew back, taking her with it. She hit the floor and slid, her head striking the baseboard with a resounding thump, and knew that it wasn't Cody who'd come inside. She looked up, dazed by the blow to her head and the cold blast of air that followed behind the intruder.

The man loomed over her, a hulking shadow in baggy denim, his face half-hidden by a hooded parka pulled loosely over his head. Ice had frozen on his mustache and beard, and snow still clung to the shoulders of his coat and the cuffs of his pants.

"Aren't you going to ask me in?" he said, and then laughed, a deep, ugly sound that came out like a growl.

Queen screamed, struggling to get to her feet and away from him, then fell back when his boot connected with her belly. The scream died in the back of her throat as she struggled for breath instead. Pain shot upward, and the room turned black, and she wondered if she was on her way to spending eternity with Johnny.

Virgil Stratton hadn't planned on another break-in. But the stupid bastard at that house this morning didn't have half the stuff he needed to get where he was going. He'd gotten clothes and some staples and canned goods, but he needed guns… and ammunition.

His eyes narrowed and his mouth pursed so that it made the spider tattoo on his cheek look as if it were crawling. He stared at the tall redhead laid out at his feet and then came to a sudden decision. He reached down and squeezed her breast and then groaned as his groin burned and another kind of hunger began to build.

He'd been in the penitentiary for twelve years. It had been too damned long since the ass he'd had was female. Maybe he'd just take her with him. If they got far enough up the mountains before full winter set in, they'd never find him. By spring he'd be long gone into Canada. He nudged her body with the toe of his boot and then grinned. By spring she'd either be used up or fed up. It didn't matter to him. Either way he would be through with her.

"Ooooh."

Queen's groan was soft, but Virgil didn't miss the sound. He knelt on one knee, wrapped a huge, beefy fist in her hair, and yanked sharply. "Wake up, bitch! I need you to help me pack. We're going on our honeymoon."

His laughter was shrill and raucous, and it was the first thing Queen heard as she swam out of the dark miasma of pain in her head. Her stomach roiled and the bile clogged her throat, but somehow she managed to keep everything, including her panic, down. Sixth sense told her that staying alive meant cooperation. And Queen Houston had an overwhelming need to live.

She opened her eyes, stared up into a face filled with dissipated evil, and tried not to faint. His hand slid across her body, squeezing and pinching, groping at every curve and indentation. She shoved away and kicked at him.

He laughed. "That's good, bitch," he whispered, yanking her to her feet and thrusting his face into hers. "Fight me. Go ahead and fight me. That's the way old Virgil likes it. Hard and mean."

Queen's eyes were wild, her hands doubled into fists and her legs braced as she stood toe to toe and dared him to make another move.

His eyes narrowed at her defiance, and he had a moment's thought that she might be too much trouble to bother with, that he should just wring her damned neck, get what he needed, and be on his way.

"Just get what you want and get the hell out," Queen said, and knew that she was taking a risk by challenging him in this manner.

He grinned, her words an echo of what he'd just thought, and dumped the idea of killing her. It would be a waste of too much fun.

"What I want," he growled, grabbing her by the hair and yanking her off her feet, "is clothes and guns, some food and a fuck, and not necessarily in that order." He laughed again and pulled.

Tears shot to her eyes as he dragged her down the hall by her hair. But Queen would have died before crying. And then she knew that it could very well happen. This man was so crazy, she could be dead before a teardrop fell.

Within minutes the house was in shambles. He'd confiscated a shotgun from Cody's den and a handgun from a locked drawer in the desk. He'd cursed roundly about the lack of ammunition, other than the rounds already loaded in the guns. No matter how fiercely he threatened, there was no more to be found.

"I told you," Queen said, speaking calmly as if to a child, "I don't know a thing about guns. I'm only the housekeeper."

He backhanded her, slapping the words from her lips, and then snarled in her face, "Then you'll come with me. I need my house kept."

His breath was thick and rancid, and Queen tried not to gag at his innuendo. She closed her eyes against the fear and held her breath, unwilling to inhale any more of his malevolence.

"Open your eyes, bitch. We're ready to travel. Get your coat. When I bed you, I want hot and wet, not a frozen ass."

Queen grabbed her coat as he yanked her out the back door of the kitchen. For the first time in her life she wished she'd never left Cradle Creek. At least there she'd known who and where her enemies were.

The snow came down, soft and constant, blanketing her face and cooling the hot, swollen knot on her jaw, peppering her vision until she had to squinch her eyes to see where they were going.

She looked back once and saw their footsteps disappearing swiftly in the new-falling snow, and knew that even if help came, it would be too late. No one would be able to track them.

She thought of Cody. In that moment she lost her composure and struggled, trying to break away from Virgil Stratton's grasp. But he was too strong, and she lost her footing in the snow and fell. His boot slammed into the side of her ribs, and his curses filled the air.

"Get up, dammit!" he yelled as he pulled her to her feet. "And you by God better stay on your feet, because the next time I find you flat on your back, I'm gonna pump some sense into you—the old-fashioned way."

His ugly threat, accompanied by a high-pitched giggle and his hand angling toward her crotch, told her all she needed to know. There could be no more defiance. Not with him. All she could do now was pray for a miracle and hope that a time would come when she'd have a chance to break and run. Until then, she would have to be patient.

Cody's pulse accelerated as the roof of his home came into view. He steered the Blazer through a drift, braked as he swung into the yard, and exited the vehicle before the engine had stopped turning. The path he'd so diligently shoveled that morning was already filled. He looked up toward the house and whispered, "God, please let her be all right."

His heart hammered against his chest as he squinted through the falling snow, trying to tell himself that there would be a good reason for the fact that his front door was ajar. Fear lent strength to his legs and he started to run, staggering only once in the deep snow.

He raced up the steps and across the snow-covered decking, then stopped in midstride at the door to stare in shock at the splintered wood on the side of the facing and the black imprint of a boot centered across his front door. His fingers raked across the stain, as if that touch alone would tell him what happened. He paused only briefly and then bolted inside, to be met by the chaos Virgil Stratton had left behind him.

"Jesus!"

There was nothing else left to say, and from the looks of the place, it was already too late for prayers. Panic set in as he ran through the living room, stumbling over broken furniture, stepping on food that had been scattered throughout, and calling her name.

"Queen! Queen!"

But no one answered, and when Cody began to absorb the meaning of the silence and the condition of the house, he realized that he didn't want to find her at all, because if she was still there, she would be dead.

The kitchen was in shambles. He checked it only briefly before charging throughout the rest of his house, bolting up the stairs, shouting her name in frantic half breaths, searching for something he was afraid to find. Phones had been ripped from the walls, clothes from his closet strewn across the floor.

"You sonofabitch," Cody whispered. "I'll kill you for what you've done to her!" He began to shake from the overdose of adrenaline that had coursed through him.

He took the stairs down in three leaps and stood for a moment in the middle of the hallway, trying to get a sense of what to do next. Cold air funneled from left to right across his face. He shut the front door and then retraced his steps, suddenly aware that he might be able to trace their flight in another way.

A chilly draft still moved across his boot tops. Cody shook off the maybes that were making him crazy and started to search for the knowns. It was an old military trick he should have remembered earlier. Deal only in givens and leave the possibilities to others.

He turned, following the draft to its source, and was surprised to find himself back at the kitchen. He stopped in the doorway and looked around carefully, nearly missing the fact that the kitchen door leading to his backyard was standing slightly ajar.