Drawn Into Darkness(85)

Stoat poked the knife tip harder into my back and growled, “You gotta have spare keys. Where’s your spare keys?”

With what I considered fairly convincing innocence I said, “It should be easier to find my purse.”

“Screw your fucking purse! I asked you, where’s the spare keys?”

He terrified me so much that I babbled convincingly, “I, um, sir, I don’t know!”

The sharp pressure against my back increased. “You dumb cow, think!”

As if I wasn’t thinking? I had thought enough to know that if he found my car keys, he would probably kill me.

I squeaked, “Um, maybe, um, they could be in one of the boxes I haven’t unpacked yet?”

Something slammed against my shoulders—his hard, constricting arm throwing me off-balance, jerking me back against him, as he switched his knife from my back to my throat. I felt the blade, razor-sharp, quivering there. Or maybe, as I vividly remembered his earlier lesson about the carotid and the windpipe and the jugular and so on, maybe I was the one quivering.

I felt his hot breath as he said, “Think harder, bitch.”

He didn’t say it, but I knew: I could tell him where the car keys were. Or I could die now instead of later.





TWENTY-FIVE





So depressed he didn’t feel as if he could move, Forrest stood beside his brother, both of them watching as Bernie Morales drove away. Somehow the friendly cop’s departure made him feel as if he’d been dumped to fend for himself, like an unwanted cat, a lost child—

I am not a child, he reminded himself, and he managed to speak, albeit vaguely. “Oh, well.”

“Yeah.” Quinn stirred, straightened, and turned to trudge toward the rental car. “I guess when we get back to the room, we’ll try to ferret some do-gooders out of the phone book, like he said.”

“You drive.” Forrest pulled the keys out of his pocket and tossed them to his brother, knowing Quinn would feel marginally better behind the wheel. He got into the Aveo’s passenger side. As Quinn started the little car, Forrest looked blankly out of his window. Flat landscape, bare lawn around the blue shack leading up to forest behind, weedy fields on each side, a few bushes with fluffy cluster blossoms, hard to tell what color in the sundown light, maybe rose or peach or white. Sunset clouds, all warm colors, reflecting in the windows of the chill blue house.

Quinn put the car in gear and pulled away.

Forrest felt himself jolt upright as if struck by a bolt of lightning. “Wait!”

“Huh?” Quinn hit the brakes.

Forrest said, “I saw something.”

“What?”

“Not sure. Maybe nothing. A shadow. A movement. In the house.”

“Are you sure?”

“I just said I’m not sure!” Surprised to find himself shouting, Forrest lowered the volume. “It’s hard to tell, but I was looking at the windows and something made me think there’s somebody in there.”

“You want to go back and look?”

This did not deserve an answer. Forrest got out of the car, closing the door as quietly as he could, and started to head around the side of the blue shack. He heard Quinn turn off the car and glanced over his shoulder to see his brother following him.

As soon as he rounded the shack’s corner and stepped into the backyard, Forrest saw a streamer of yellow police tape wafting in the evening breeze. An instant later he saw where it had come from. The X of tape that had sealed the back door was ripped aside. Someone had made entry.

He stopped to stare, blinking, frozen like a deer hit by headlights. Without needing to look, he knew his brother had halted by his side.

Close to his ear Quinn said softly, “Good call, Forrie.”

Forrest nodded. Then, as if the movement of his head had freed up his working parts, he edged forward for a better look. Quinn, ever and annoyingly the older brother, stepped past him to peer in, then whispered, “There’s a light on!”

“I can see that,” Forrest muttered, fixated on the roller blind pulled down in the window of the back bedroom where he and Quinn had found the sex toys. The light within illuminated the window blind like a movie screen, and Forrest had not watched a moment before a quick, slim shadow crossed it. Forrest felt his heart pounding.

“There’s somebody in there!” Quinn sounded breathless.

“Stoat?” Forrest whispered.

“I hope so! Let’s get him!”

“He has guns. We need cops.”

“No damn time!”

“We need something.” Although he managed to hold his voice to a whisper, Forrest felt himself panting from the sheer danger of the moment. “Get the jack handle out of the car.”