The Hidden (14 page)

T W E N T Y - O N E

M
ACKLIN LET CLAIRE LOMAX
inside, shouldered the door shut behind her. And this time reached down to throw the bolt lock.

“Oh God, thank you.”

She stood trembling with her arms crossed over her breasts. She was wet through to the skin; the clothing she wore—a down jacket over some kind of shirt, a pair of Levi’s, and sneakers—were all drenched and streaming. The injuries to her face were worse than Shelby had described, probably the result of a second or even a third beating over the past two days. Her terror was as naked as any Macklin had ever witnessed.

“How long were you out there?”

“I climbed up just before Brian got here.” The words had a staccato sound because of the way her teeth were chattering. “If I hadn’t seen him before he saw me … I hid behind one of the sheds until I saw him leave.”

“Climbed up? You don’t mean from the beach?”

“Yes, the beach.”

“In this storm, with those big waves down there?”

“There wasn’t any other way. He had the front gates locked … I was afraid he’d catch me if I tried to get out there.”

“You could’ve been battered against the rocks, washed out to sea.”

“I almost was. A wave knocked me down, I lost the flashlight I had …” A tremor shook her, strong enough to create a rippling effect like an aftershock. “Never mind that now. We have to get away from here before he comes back.”

Macklin moved over to lean against the breakfast bar. He still felt pretty good, almost normal in fact, as if he hadn’t had a cardiac episode. Illusion. He’d had one, all right.

“We can’t do that,” he said.

“Why can’t we? You don’t understand, he’ll kill me if he finds me. He
will
, I’m not making that up—” She broke off, her gaze taking in the shadowy emptiness of the room. Most of the candles were out now, all except one on the counter beneath the bar top and another in the kitchen; the light from the waning fire tinged the murkiness with an eerie glow. “Where’s your wife?”

“Gone for help.”

“Help? In your car? Your car’s not here?”

“Outside somewhere, but the storm blew a tree down across the lane. There’s no way past it except on foot.”

She stared at him, disbelieving. “You mean we’re trapped?”

“Until Shelby gets back, yes.”

“No, no, no!” Claire’s head shook loosely from side to side like a bobble doll’s—an involuntary reflex that went on for several seconds. Then she made a little keening sound and said in desperate tones, “Have you got a gun?”

“No.”

“Not even a rifle?”

“Nothing like that.”

“Shit! He’ll shoot me if he comes back, don’t you understand that? He’ll shoot both of us!”

“He didn’t seem that crazy,” Macklin lied.

“But he is. You don’t know how crazy.”

She stumbled around the breakfast bar into the kitchen, began rummaging through drawers. He knew what she was after, saw two of them in her hand when she came back into the living room—butcher knives.

“Those won’t do any good against that automatic of his.”

“We have to have
something
…” She extended one of the knives, and when he didn’t take it she dropped it clattering onto the bar. She seemed to be seeing him clearly then for the first time, the blanket he held tight-wrapped around him; a frown put lines and ridges in her ravaged face. “You said Shelby went for help. Why? What happened?”

“I had a cardiac episode.”

“You … what?”

“Heart attack. Mild one, I hope, but—”

Laughter burst out of her, sudden and hysterical. Witch’s sounds to go with the witch’s face, like mad echoes of the storm outside. It lasted ten seconds or so, morphed abruptly into sobs that shook her whole body. She moved away from him, sank into one of the dinette chairs. Sat slumped there with the butcher knife in her lap, shaking and sobbing.

There was nothing he could do, no comfort he could give her. He said, “You’d better get out of those wet clothes. Shelby’s about your size—put on something of hers.”

Claire didn’t seem to hear him. Lost in the clutches of her fear.

He had to say it twice more before the words penetrated. “Go on. Take a candle into the bedroom, the one on the right. Her clothes are in the closet.”

Another tremor prodded her off the chair. He handed her the candle from the bar; she peered at it, peered at him. Illuminated by its flame, the whites of her eyes had the look of clabbered milk spiderwebbed with thin red veins.

When she’d gone to the bedroom, Macklin walked slowly across to the hearth. Among the set of black-iron fire tools was a heavy poker with a hooked protrusion at the end; he caught it up, hefted it. Not much of a weapon against a handgun, but better than a knife would be. He leaned forward gingerly to poke the fire, then brought the poker back to the bar and rested a hip on one of the stools. Still feeling okay. The last of the weakness in his legs had disappeared.

Claire seemed to have marshaled her defenses when she came back wearing one of Shelby’s sweaters and a pair of her jeans, the towel-dried blonde hair frizzed around her head like a fright wig. The terror in her eyes wasn’t quite as stark now.

She said in a scooped-out voice, “You don’t look like you’ve had a heart attack.”

“Maybe not, but that’s what happened.”

“But you’re only … what, forty?”

“Thirty-five. But age doesn’t have much to do with it,” Macklin said. “I have a blocked artery … need surgery after the holidays. Too much stress brought it on.”

Claire moved over by the fire. He told her to add another log from the dwindling supply in the woodpile; she did that, then stood off to one side, slumped and sag-shouldered with her arms hugging her breasts. Like a woman hanging from a nail.

“Everything happens at once,” she said. “Brian, the storm, lane blocked, medical emergency … it’s like a nightmare.”

Yeah, Macklin thought, only this is the real thing.

“I don’t want to die,” she said.

“You’re not going to die, not tonight.”

“He’s coming back.”

“I don’t think so.”

“He is. You don’t know him.”

“There’re dozens of places you could’ve gone, could’ve hidden. He can’t look everywhere in the dark. He won’t know you’re here.”

“He’ll know. He’ll be back.”

“If he does, we’ll be ready for him.”

“Stab him? Beat his head in with that poker?”

“If we can catch him by surprise.”

“I’m hurt, you’re sick, we won’t stand a chance. He’ll kill us.”

Macklin said, “No, he won’t,” making it sound definite. Then, “Why are you so sure he wants you dead?”

“He swore he’d do it if I told on him, tried to leave him. But I knew he was planning to do it anyway, no matter what I said or did. Tonight, tomorrow … that’s why he was keeping me prisoner. Working himself up to it. I could see it in his eyes. It’s the only way he can ever be sure.”

“Sure of what?”

She didn’t answer. He couldn’t be certain in the weak light but he thought her eyes were shut.

He stood, slowly walked to the couch. Leaned against it and asked again, “The only way he can ever be sure of what, Claire?”

“That he’ll be safe.”

“From what?”

“The police.” Whispering now.

“Why would the police want him?”

“For murder.”

“… Murder? Whose murder?”

“Gene,” she said. “He’s the one who killed Gene.”

T W E N T Y - T W O

T
HE SUDDENNESS OF THE
attack was alarming. Shelby’s first thought was that it must be the sheriff’s deputy, that he was protecting county property and would release her once he had her clear of the cruiser, but it didn’t happen that way. He twisted her sideways, kicked the door shut to cut off the dome light, and kept right on dragging her backward across the blacktop.

Storm-blurred voice in her ear: “Don’t fight me.”

The words had the opposite effect on her: They brought a rush of fear, and with it the instinctive responses taught by her self-defense training. She writhed in the strong grip, kicking backward and flailing with the flashlight.

One of the hands let go of her long enough to punch up on her wrist; the force of the blow ripped the torch loose, sent it up and away in a spinning arc that threw the cruiser into weird relief for an instant before it smashed into the roadbed and went out. Thick, unrelieved blackness closed in around her and the man who held her pinned against him.

Her fear ratcheted up a notch. She fought frantically, couldn’t break free. The blurred voice came again, harsh now, the same words, “Don’t fight me!” His breath was hot in her ear, the hard-muscled contours of his body straining against hers, the powerful hands still pulling her backward but also trying to turn her toward him. It was as if she were in a mad lover’s embrace, being drawn deeper into the roiling black, into a void, an abyss.

Shelby kicked backward again, missed his wide-spread legs the first time, connected the second. The heel-blow on his shin hurt him enough to make him relax his grip. Squirming, she drove an elbow into some soft part of him that brought a grunt and finally allowed her to tear free.

She ran.

He shouted something behind her, a command or threat that was lost in the gibbering wind.

Ran in a blind zigzag, sawing the air in front of her with both hands.

The slick, pine-needled surface of the lane was under her feet and then it wasn’t. Flowing stream of water, ankle deep, that slowed her down to a high-stepping slog. The shadow shape of a tree loomed in front of her; she dodged just in time to avoid running into it head on, a move that brought her out of the water and onto solid ground again. When she caught hold of the bole to thrust herself around it, the rough bark ripped a slit in her glove and scraped skin off her palm.

Behind her an arrow of light sliced the darkness. But it didn’t come anywhere near her and she almost welcomed it, for it drove away some of the claustrophobic panic and showed her where she was—at the edge of the woods on the inland side of the lane.

The pines grew close together here, the spaces between them crowded with ground cover, deadfalls. She plowed through the undergrowth, managed to sidestep another tree. Something unseen clutched at her foot like bony fingers, toppled her to one knee a second or two before the flash beam swept past overhead, close this time. He hadn’t seen her because the light kept seesawing back and forth, but he’d guessed her approximate location.

Shelby clawed at the nearest tree, regained her feet and stumbled ahead, the heavy resinous smell of the pines clogging her nostrils, her breath coming in ragged little gasps. Cold, wet, confused. Angry, too—furious.

Why would a deputy sheriff attack her, chase her? Why would
anybody
do something like this?

The wind was an ally now: He couldn’t hear the sounds she made over its whistles and whines. And he still couldn’t find her with the light. She kept moving, trying to stay close to the lane. Escape would be easier if she veered deeper into the woods; she could hide somewhere, under bushes, one of the deadfalls … he’d never find her, give up searching eventually and go away—

No. It’d be even easier to get lost in there. She could wander around for hours, the whole night, looking for a way out of the blackness with the nyctophobia-induced panic slowly suffocating her.

Her objective had to be the same as before: get away somehow and make it out to the highway. There’d be places to hide until a car came along that she could flag down. Help for her, help for Jay—

One sliding foot caught in a tangle of undergrowth, threw her down again … into a nest of ferns this time, the fronds brushing cold and wet across her face. Her right hand slid into something yielding that had a clammy, spongy feel against her scraped palm and made her recoil. Dead animal? But then she realized it had crumbled apart at her touch and knew what it was—one of a cluster of fat mushrooms or toadstools growing in the soggy earth under the ferns.

When she looked up, the light was bright and moving at right angles to where she lay. He was only a few yards away, walking along the flooded edge of the blacktop, probing for her in the timber.

Shelby crawled forward, deeper among the ferns, and then lay motionless. The rain-fuzzed light was ahead of her now, moving away, until all she could see of it were quick little flicks among the trees …

After a few seconds it brightened again: He’d turned and was coming back. But he didn’t find her this time, either. The beam slid on past, diminishing as he moved.

And then suddenly it was gone, switched off.

Utter blackness brought another surge of fear, like an electric shock on raw nerve endings. She had the same feeling of breathlessness Jay must have experienced earlier; it took an effort of will to keep from hyperventilating.

I won’t give into this, I won’t!

She shoved onto her knees, crawled until her hand touched the wet base of a tree. The trunk was thickly twined with some kind of vine … ivy, poison oak. She grasped handfuls of it, pulled herself upright and leaned against the wet leaves. The crying wind, rainwater plopping all around her—that was all she could hear except for the blood-beat in her ears.

Why had he shut off the flashlight?

Where was he, what was he doing in the dark?

Minutes passed … what seemed like minutes. She crouched against the tree, wet to the skin and shivering, her toes numb inside her sodden running shoes. Fighting to keep the phobic terror from overwhelming her. The lane … where was the lane? It had to be close on her right. But if she went out there into the open and he was nearby, she might stumble right into him—

The torch beam stabbed on again.

Shelby saw it dimly, nowhere close … no longer aimed into the woods, she thought. She sucked in a moist breath, groped around on the other side of the pine; nearly tripped again as she stumbled past another looming tree trunk. Where was the lane? She couldn’t be more than a few yards away from it …

Two more steps, and her foot splashed down into the runoff stream.

She waded through, felt the blacktop under her feet again. Out in the open again. The rain seemed to be slackening; the sting of the wind wasn’t as strong now. But she still couldn’t see anything except for the whitish shaft off to her right, pointed away from where she stood. Unless she’d lost her bearings completely he was back near where the cruiser was parked—

Another light, a
second
light cut through the darkness.

She blinked, blinked again. Definitely two flashlights now, one shaft bobbing up and down and side to side, the other stationary for a few seconds, then moving toward the other until they converged.
Two
men, both on the blacktop beyond the cruiser. Spectral shadow shapes, each pinned by the other’s light. Thirty or forty yards away, too far for Shelby to see their faces through the rain.

She edged out farther onto the lane, moving sideways, feeling her way along. Still a long way to the highway … too far to try walking or even crawling blind along the blacktop. But what else could she do?

The two figures remained motionless up there, outlined by each other’s torches. Talking, arguing—one of the lights kept moving in an agitated fashion. Their positions were such that she could no longer tell which was the newcomer, which was the one who’d been stalking her.

She couldn’t keep standing there. Move!

The estate fence, she thought.

It paralleled the lane for part of the remaining distance to the highway, she remembered, with only a few yards of separation on that side. Tall grass, an occasional tree, some shrubbery, otherwise nothing between fence and blacktop until the lane made a sharp inland bend. If she could get over there without being seen, she could pull herself along the boards … blind travel by the braille method.

The quickest way to the fence was a crab scuttle on all fours; if she tried to get there standing up she was liable to lose her footing, blunder into something, make noise that might carry over the diminishing wind. She dropped and began to crawl, weight on her forearms, hands brushing through the storm debris. Her cold fingers tingled, anticipating the end of the blacktop and the touch of the high, wet grass.

Sudden flare like a camera flash.

Faint popping noise.

One of the flashlight beams jerked skyward, pinwheeling, then dropped straight down and extended outward—an elongated yellow streak along the littered surface of the lane.

Gunshot! One of them shot the other!

Shock held Shelby rooted for two or three seconds. Urgency released her, propelled her forward, scrabbling at the lane now, her head turned toward the two figures. The one still standing swept his light over the motionless form of the other, over the pavement nearby; then the beam foreshortened as he bent or knelt, probably to make sure the one he’d shot was dead.

He took his victim’s torch, too: One bolt of light reappeared, followed by a second. Both swung around in Shelby’s direction, then steadied into wavering parallel lines.

Before either one found her she was off the lane and into the high grass, wiggling through it flat on her belly, her arms making awkward swimming motions in front of her. One sweeping hand encountered an obstruction; she detoured around it, but so close that part of whatever it was plucked at her raincoat, cut painfully into her cheek.

The flash beams separated, one probing the woods, the other swaying back and forth along the lane. Coming closer.

The fence, it couldn’t be much farther—

There! One hand touched it, then her forehead bumped solidly against one of the vertical stakes.

The nearest light flicked away from the blacktop, hunting through the grass not more than a few feet behind her.

She found a chink between two boards, used it to lift onto her feet. Hung there for a moment to steady herself. The direction she wanted to go was where the light was; she had no choice but to pull herself away from it. Three steps, four, and all at once she was out of the grass and onto pavement again. But she hadn’t lost the fence; one of her nails tore on the splintery wood—

No, not on wood … on a rounded projection of metal. Her gloved fingers traced over it, identified it.

Hinge, gate hinge.

The entrance gates. If she could get over them …

The one light was almost directly behind her.

She groped ahead of it to the joining of the two gate halves, searching for a foothold so she could make the climb. But in the next second she discovered she didn’t need a foothold, she didn’t need to climb—the halves were joined together but not locked.

She yanked them apart and plunged through.