No Legal Grounds (28 page)

“What are you doing out here, honey?”
Nicky was still in the car, talking to her out the window. She didn’t have any good choices. She could try running again,

but she’d never be able to keep away from the car. Any idea about confronting him physically again was ridiculous. He’d be more than ready for her.

Dad was back there and they were out here. She didn’t know if he was dead or what, but as long as she kept Nicky occupied, he wasn’t hurting her father. She could give her father some time, at least.

She backed away, saying nothing.
The car sat there, idling, headlights on her.
“See,” Nicky said, “if I have to come over there and get you I’m

Heather took another step backward, keeping it slow. Stretch this out as long as possible, she told herself.
“I got angry at my old man once, you know that? Did I tell you about that? He used to do bad things to me and my mom.”
It was sickening to listen to him.
“So don’t make me mad, little girl. Start walking over here. I’ll let you ride in the backseat.”
She started to wonder if she could avoid him until daylight. Maybe in the light of day she’d see something, or someone would see her. But the prospect was daunting.
“You better make your move right now, honey, because I’m really starting to get impatient.”
Could she stay on her feet that long? She was already exhausted, propped up only by jolts of adrenaline. Lack of food made her weak.
Yet . . . maybe. She remembered that game she used to play with Max when they were little, where he’d try to touch her, and she would dodge and weave. Her brother could only touch her when she let him.
This was like that game, only now the game was deadly. She would have to dodge and weave away from a car driven by a madman.
But if she had to, she would. She would buy Dad time.
She heard the car engine rev, the sound of tires spitting sand.
Then the headlights headed straight for her, fast.

But with her hands bound she could barely break her fall. Her face smashed into the ground. Her forehead hit a rock. She felt the gush of blood.

Behind her the car was spinning around. She could hear the tires and follow the trajectory of the lights.
She could not get up. Dazed, it was all she could do not to pass out. She was not going to do that. If she did, she was sure she’d never come out of it.
The smell of sand and blood stirred her thoughts. Max. He popped into her mind again. What would he think if he could see her now? His big sister, making a mess of her life? Max always needed someone to look out for him. She used to do that.
Max needed her. The same way she needed her father now. That was the thing about family. She wished she’d realized this a year ago.
Lights hit her again, and the sound of the car grew closer.
Get up.
She tried, struggling to her knees. Moving her body was like pushing cement bags.
The car engine was cut, but the lights stayed on her.
Her lungs fought for air.
Then she heard the sound of his steps, slowly coming near.
Maybe he had his gun out. Maybe this was it. She closed her eyes.
“Look at you,” Nicky said. “What a mess. What. A. Mess. This will not do. I’m very angry now. Very, very angry.”

He moved quickly as he could, dragging his left foot, through the first floor and to the door at the back. The door had a window. He looked through. Only darkness out there.

He found the bathroom. Like the rest of the house, it didn’t have much in it. A used bar of soap sat on the sink.
Sam grabbed it and ran it under some water. He pulled up his pant leg and rubbed the punctures in his calf with the soap. It ached and stung, but he kept up the motion in the hope that he was doing himself some good. Maybe it was a fool’s errand, but it was something to do.
His cell phone. Maybe it was still outside where he’d thrown it. He limped to the front door. There was no light for the porch. He got on his hands and knees and started feeling around for the phone.
Not there. At least not that he could see.
Back in the house, he decided to try upstairs. He didn’t know what else to do. There had to be a way to get a signal out to somebody.
It was a struggle to get to the top of the stairs, but he made it. He couldn’t help wondering at how bizarre the place was.
And the wires. What were they for?
The door to his right was open. The room was lit. He went in and saw a bed with iron posts. He got the distinct feeling that Heather had been imprisoned here. He didn’t allow himself to think that anything more had happened.
Determined to search the whole place now, he continued on to the only other door on the second floor. He opened it.
Darkness. He felt along the wall until he came to switch, and flicked it.
Red light from a single bulb in the middle of the room offered a bloodlike illumination. But he could make out a few items.
In the middle of the floor was a mattress with a rumpled blanket. Up against the far wall was a chest of drawers and next to that some shelving. Various items lined the shelves. Square items. A cage. Boxes.
Maybe one of those boxes had a weapon. Or something else that might be of immediate use. He hoped so, because he was starting to feel a fever coming on. How much time, how much life, did he have left?
Whatever it was, he had to use it to find his daughter.
In the crimson dimness Sam crossed the room, stepping around the mattress as if it were poisonous.
He observed that the boxes on the shelf were set in a pattern. The smaller boxes, shoeboxes Sam could now see, sat on the lower shelf. Four of them. Two larger boxes were set in the middle. The top box was the size of a small TV.
Sam saw some lettering on the side of the box, leaned over and read,
Toast-All Toast’r-Oven.

Nicky must be a regular domestic engineer, Sam thought bitterly. He opened the box and looked inside. There was something in it that was not a toaster oven. He couldn’t make it out in the shadows.

He picked up the box and carried it to the middle of the room, where he could hold it under the red light. He looked inside again.
His heart kicked his chest. He dropped the box.
The box hit his leg on the way down, tipped, spilled its contents.
Sam stepped back, unbelieving.

She tried to remember some of the things her mom and dad had told her about God. She’d hardly listened to them, learned how to tune them out when they got on her about the God business. She knew more than they did. They weren’t in tune at all with her life. She might as well have been a pod person who happened to land in the middle of this crazy family.

God was everywhere, right? Was he here in the trunk? Or had he turned his face away from her by now?
Her head vibrated as the car rolled along.
But then there was that thing her mother had told her, that it didn’t matter what you’d done, God would take you back. It was right after the first time she’d been caught drinking, when she was fourteen, and she cried. She cried because she got caught.
So there was Mom trying to explain it to her and Heather was practicing the tune-out, but that much stuck. If you wanted to go to God, he’d come running to you. That was it. Her mom said Jesus told a story about a son who left his father, but then came back and the father ran down the road to him.
That was a good story, Heather had to admit. She liked that one.
Now she hoped it was true.
Is it true, God? Are you there? Be there, be there.

It was a perfectly preserved human skull.
And it was true what the horror stories said. Skulls grin. Sam fought for breath as he looked at the hideous find. He

Sucking air outside the room, he thought for a moment he might be sick. He didn’t know if it was the skull or the snakebite. Whatever the cause, he doubled over and put his hands on his knees.

Who did that skull belong to? And was the next one in the box going to be his? Or his daughter’s?
For a moment he was paralyzed, poised over a dark abyss with nowhere to turn. Not one choice seemed prudent. Yet if he didn’t move somewhere, he was doomed.
Then he heard a car. It was coming on fast. If it was Nicky, he would check the pit. He would see that Sam was not there and then the element of surprise would be gone. If Sam could get downstairs, maybe he could grab something to hit him with, or even push him into the pit.
Sam’s left leg went out from under him.
Now he was practically crippled as well.
He heard the car engine cut in what he guessed was the front of the house. No time to do anything but find a place to hide.
If he could.

Heather sensed they were back at the house. Which meant Nicky would be going after her father. And there was nothing she could do. She kicked at the side of the car, as if that would do any good.

Sam stood behind the open door, holding the skull in his hand. It was the only weapon he could come up with. He would use it to smash in Nicky’s head.
He tried not to feel completely freaked by what was happening. He heard the screen door open, then slap closed.
“Sammy?”
Sam tried to keep from breathing. He thought any sound, even

a breath, would be picked up by the madman.
“Sammy, I don’t know how you did it. Good one, boy. You really
surprise me. Come on out and we’ll talk. You want your daughter
back, right?”
If she was even alive.
“I have to tell you, Sammy, you don’t want to hide from me.
This house is a very dangerous place.”
That went without saying.
“And I hope you haven’t . . .”
Nicky’s voice trailed off. And then Sam heard footsteps charging hard up the stairs.
He readied the skull. He’d left the red light on, hoping to draw
Nicky in.
The footsteps pounded to just outside the door.
And stopped.
A silence extended for a long, excruciating span.
Then a wicked laugh cut the air, a crazy man’s laugh, chilling
every inch of Sam’s spine.
Nicky Oberlin stepped through the door.
In the red light his face was a clown’s, contorted with perverted
pleasure.
In a split second Sam saw him raise his arm, and knew his hand
held a gun. Sam lunged forward and struck outward with the
skull.
At the same moment he heard the crack of the gun, Sam felt the
contact with Nicky’s head. Bone on bone. They both went down,
Sam on top.
He didn’t feel a burn, told himself he wasn’t hit.
He reached for Nicky’s wrist, didn’t find it, his hand flailing in
the gloom. He knew he had to disarm Nicky before anything else. Nicky seemed relaxed.
Sam found Nicky’s right arm with his left hand, adjusted his
grip to grab Nicky’s wrist. It was soft, fleshy.
Then Nicky laughed again, a maniacal squeal.
“I love you too, Sammy!”
Sam raised the skull for another blow.
Nicky’s own face seemed like a skull now as Sam looked into it.
The eyes were hollow, the teeth smiling grotesquely.
Sam thrust the skull downward. Nicky anticipated, rolled his
head left.
The skull slammed the floor.
Sam felt Nicky’s left arm around his neck. Pulling him down. “Bad Sammy,” Nicky grunted.
Sam caught a whiff of Nicky’s breath. It smelled like something
dead.
Nicky laughed again, then shot his head forward and hit Sam’s
chin. Stunned, Sam dropped the skull. But he quickly followed
with a right to Nicky’s face. Bad mistake. Felt like he broke his
hand. Stupid, he thought, even as he returned his attention to
Nicky’s gun.
“I love you too,” Nicky said, laughing again. Pain seemed to
please him. It was as if Nicky were a five-year-old who enjoyed
wrestling around and getting hurt. Only this five-year-old held a
weapon.
Sam raised Nicky’s wrist and slammed it into the floor. Nicky laughed.
Sam slammed it down again, and heard something metallic skitter away.
“Good one, Sam!” Nicky said, his cackling almost obscuring the
words.
With a sudden burst of energy Nicky threw his right leg over
Sam and turned him over. Now Nicky was on top, a chortling gargoyle, with all his weight on Sam.
“You hit me with Daddy,” Nicky said. “That’s funny. He hit me
enough when I was a kid.”
The skull. He was talking about the skull.
Sam felt his strength draining away. He had to get Nicky in
some kind of hold. But Nicky was now the strong one. He had completely immobilized Sam.
“You seem a little tired, Sammy. Did Geraldine get a little taste
of you?”
“Where is she?” Sam managed to say.
“Geraldine?”
“My daughter!”
“It doesn’t matter anymore, good buddy. I win! That’s all you
have to know.”
Nicky rolled off Sam, rolled like a beach ball across the floor. He was going for the gun.
Sam struggled to get to his feet. He only reached his knees. Then Nicky was standing against the wall, his laughter pouring
out of him, and was reaching up.
For what?
Nicky pulled. Pulled the wire, that out-of-place wire Sam had
noticed in the house.
He heard what sounded like a muffled explosion.
“I win, Sammy. I win everything!”
Sam was on all fours, unable to move, just looking at Nicky, who
was ambling slowly toward the doorway.
Then he pointed the gun at Sam and fired.