Perfect Touch (26 page)

B
ARTON STEPPED OUT
of the shadows, his red hair wild from the wind and studded with snow. “Since you were too selfish to show
Muse
to my mother, I thought I'd see it for myself.”

Sara didn't know what was wrong, but she knew something was. Barton was flushed with more than the cold outside. His glance skittered from place to place, never quite fixing anywhere.

Drugs?
she wondered.
Alcohol?

Both?

One of his hands was bruised across the back. The other was in his pocket.

And then it wasn't.

The instant she saw the gun, she punched the call button and shoved the phone into her back pocket.

“What are you doing?” he demanded.

“With the painting? You can see for yourself. It's right here.”

Muffled words came from her back pocket. “
911 operator. What is your emergency?
”

She prayed he didn't hear.

“Why do you have a gun, Barton Vermilion?” she asked, speaking loudly and very clearly. “Is it some new fashion statement?”

He looked at her like she was crazy.

“A gun, Barton Vermilion? Really? What kind of pistol is it? It looks small. Is your gun a .22? Point that gun somewhere else. This is an art gallery in downtown Jackson, not a shooting gallery.”

Muffled words came from her back pocket. She coughed loudly to cover them.

Can the operator hear me?

Does he or she understand?

“Shut up!” Barton shouted. “You talk too much! Just like my mother, yammering and yammering and never getting anything done. Well, I'm in charge now. It's my ass that's going to get kissed from now on.”

The only response that occurred to Sara would likely get her shot, so she asked loudly, “What do you want, Barton Vermilion? Why are you pointing a gun at me in an art gallery in downtown Jackson?”

Come on, operator,
she thought frantically.
You have a name and a location and the type of emergency. What the hell else do you need?

The muffled voice came louder, asking her questions she couldn't answer without getting shot.

“I said to SHUT UP,” Barton shouted. “I know my name and where I am and—Shit, were you talking to someone before I came in? Where's your phone?”

“I left it in my room,” she lied.

Jay, where are you? Barton's skittering, pale eyes are looking more than a little crazy.

“Come here,” he said, glancing around jerkily. “Now. Make it quick.”

Her back pocket was silent.

Is that good or bad or does it matter at all?
Sara thought.

She followed Barton's directions, but she was looking for anything she could use as a weapon. The discarded boards with nails sticking out appealed to her, but she didn't see a way to get her hands on one without getting shot.

The claw hammer. It's on the table only a few feet from Barton.

Has he noticed it?

“Barton, why are you doing this? Why are you threatening—”

“Shut up and get over here or I'll shoot you right now!”

She began walking toward him. Slowly. She made sure that her steps took her close to the table and the butt of a hammer sticking out from beneath the sheet.

“Faster or I'll shoot you.”

“I hurt my foot running from a helicopter,” she lied. “I can't do fast.”

“So that was why Jay was wheeling you around. Stupid bastards,” he said, shaking his head jerkily. “Charge me fifty big ones and end up getting killed. Waste all those bullets and they didn't even nick Rambo after they killed the Solvangs just because they got bored waiting for you, what a nasty mess that was and all because my dear mother was too stupid to win a court case from a hick judge because if we'd had the damned
Muse
we'd have been safe and nobody would have ever known, but that's okay now because I'll burn the bitch after I burn you.”

Sara couldn't make sense of his ravings, except for a few words she'd understood very clearly. Her heart staggered, then raced.

Barton sent the helicopter after Jay.

Louder and louder with each second, the thought ricocheted around her mind.

And following it was the certainty that Barton had had some kind of psychotic break.

I'm alone with a madman holding a pistol.

She inched closer to the claw hammer.

Jay, hurry. I could use a little help here.

“It's Jay's fault,” Barton said, watching her through eyes that were almost entirely pupil.

Sara jerked, wondering if she had spoken her thoughts aloud.

“All of this is his fault,” Barton said, waving the pistol around. “He wouldn't give me what was mine so what am I supposed to do, kiss his ass for another seven years and then take a DNA test with his blood?”

Barton answered his own ravings with a stream of profanity that assured him he was a man, as good as any other man, especially Jay.

Warily Sara eyed Barton as she inched forward. She was almost within reach of the claw hammer. One more step . . .

Her right hand snapped out and wrapped around the butt of the claw hammer. The top of it caught on the sheet, dragging it behind like a big flag as she swung the unwieldy tangle at Barton.

“What are you—Oof!” He gasped as the hammer thudded into his gut.

The sheeted billowed up and over him like a cloud, then deflated, blinding him.

She thought of trying for his gun, then did the sensible thing and ran to the back door, yanking tables and chairs askew behind her to slow down his pursuit.

“I'm going to kill you!” Barton screamed as he fought the sheet shrouding him.

You'll have to catch me first,
she thought grimly.

She skidded to a stop, thumped against the back door, and yanked the handle. It moved, but the door didn't open.

The bolt. He locked it behind him.

She clawed at the bolt until it opened. A second later she hurled herself out the door, skidded on fresh snow, spun, and fell on her butt so hard her phone bounced out of her pocket and skated away into the shadows. She scrambled to her feet, got traction, and ran.

The night air broke around her like shards of ice, slicing straight through her light cotton shirt. Snow was intermittent, the latest storm coming apart and fraying into patches of stars.

At first Sara barely felt the cold. She was too busy sprinting down the alley and praying that she wouldn't slip on other hidden patches of ice. She thought she was heading back to the café, then realized she had turned the wrong way after she came out of her fall.

The soup place is behind me. Are any other businesses open down this way?

No lights showed in the alley in front of her and she knew Barton wasn't very far behind her. She had heard the sound of tables and chairs crashing around in the gallery, the slap of his leather soles, and his cursing when he finally fought his way clear to the alley.

Maybe he'll break his neck on the ice.

She heard the sound of him falling and smiled. But she didn't count on him staying down.

Moments later she reached the end of the alley, turned left, ran down one block, and then another and another, sensing her pursuer every step of the way. The buildings around her were dark. She had run to a part of Jackson where tourists rarely came and the businesses closed at five. There was no place to hide.

And Barton was still behind her.

He wasn't cursing anymore, but his shoes made plenty of noise. They had an odd metallic sound now that they hadn't had in the gallery.

He must have put on some skid-proof grippers after he fell.

She wished she had some for herself. Her boots were better than heels, but they didn't have metal teeth. Skidding on a glaze of ice halfway through another block, she ran by a doorway with a single yellow security light above it. Her shadow went crazy and long in it.

Everything glittered with fresh snow.

The next block across the street was dark except for a few powerful construction lights at the center, slicing night into crazy pieces. The half-formed skeleton of a building loomed ahead. Piles of materials—or dirt-covered snow—were heaped randomly, along with construction debris and sheets of ice where shallow puddles had been. Trenches for plumbing and drainage ditches to protect the worksite cut through the construction area, making a weird kind of obstacle course.

Maybe I can hide somewhere.

And freeze to death.

She had no illusions about how long she would last when she stopped moving and sweat froze on her skin, leaching heat from her body.

Beyond the construction site rose a new three-story apartment structure. The lights surrounding it were silent cries of welcome. The building couldn't be more than a block or two away.

Somebody will be there.

The sound of Barton's hoarse breaths coming closer told Sara that she didn't have time to skirt the construction zone. The cold was already working on her body. Her breath came out in bursts of white warmth and came in with searing cold. She ignored that and the burning in her neck where the stitches were stabbing in protest of her fall.

Ignoring the numbing cold eating her alive was harder, but she didn't have a choice.

She ran toward the apartment building like it was home. She managed to avoid most of the obstacles in the construction zone until she came to a dark area where dirt and snow were heaped up on either side of a large drainage ditch.

Can't jump it,
she realized.
Can't trust the moonlight for judging distance.

The sound of Barton's breathing was closer.

Why haven't his damn grips come off?
she thought in despair.
In Chicago, they fell off my shoes all the time.

Sara scrambled up the berm and over the top. Keeping her footing on the downward slope was impossible. She half slid, half rolled into the ditch. What looked like snow at the bottom was a thin skim of ice over running water. She fell hard on her left side into the ditch. The running water was only a few inches deep and it was the coldest thing she had ever felt.

Wherever she was wet, her skin registered the flash chill for only an instant before going numb. At the edge of numbness, she felt burning where cold mixed with the warmth of life. The cold was winning. Above her was only a patch of darkness lit with the Cheshire grin of the quarter moon.

Snow spun down from the sky in graceful silence.

“Shit!” Barton screamed.

His curse and the sound of his fall focused Sara. Awkwardly she forced herself to her feet. Her left ankle was numb, but it reluctantly responded to her demands. The only warm part of her body was a spot on her neck.

The stitches. Bleeding again.

It means I'm still alive. Move!

Scrambling, clawing, she pulled herself out of the ditch and over the heaped-up dirt and snow. Now the gold lights of the apartment seemed too far away, impossible to reach with her half-numb body.

But there was nowhere else to go.

“She left about twenty minutes ago,” the waitress said.

Jay looked at the almost empty restaurant and then at the swinging door leading to the kitchen. Without a word he went toward that door, his long legs eating up the distance.

“Sir, you can't—”

He was already through the door. Ignoring the startled looks, he strode through the kitchen and out the back door into the alley. The first thing he noticed was that the gallery door was partly open. He started to call out to Sara, but hard-learned lessons ordered him to go across the alley fast and silent, gun in hand.

He went through the gallery the same way, quick and hard. The upended tables and chairs turned his mouth into a grim line. No one was here now, but she had been here earlier.

The only good news was that he didn't see any blood or spent shells.

She couldn't leave
Muse
alone,
he thought savagely,
and I couldn't give her five minutes with the damn painting before I hustled her into the café so I could talk to Liza.

If he could have done it again, he would have given Sara as much time as she wanted. But Afghanistan had taught him that do-overs were a fool's wish.

The claw hammer and sheet tangled on the floor made him pause.
But it was
Muse
that made him stop. The eyes watched him in mute condemnation.

Jay went out into the alley and called Sara's name.

Nothing answered but an echo.

He really hadn't expected anything else. He grabbed his belt flashlight and switched it on. He moved the hard, surprisingly bright beam around the alley, looking for signs of a struggle or blood or anything other than emptiness.

A rectangular gleam caught his eye.

He bent down and picked up a cell phone and recognized the case.

Sara.

He thumbed to recent calls and his heart staggered when he saw 911. He pocketed her phone and reached for his own. A single number speed-dialed Sheriff Cooke. As the phone rang, Jay swept the flashlight's beam methodically over the alley, searching for tracks in the fall of fresh snow. The temperature and icy flakes of snow bit into exposed skin.

“Cooke,” the sheriff said.

“This is Jay. Do you have Barton yet?”

“No. His place was empty and his car was gone. Black BMW coupe according to his registration. I put out a BOLO.”

Jay pushed aside his emotions and spoke in clipped phrases. “Sara's missing. I'm in back of Susie's Kitchen, which is right across the alley from an empty gallery where we're storing Custer's paintings. Sara wasn't in the café and she isn't in the gallery. I found her phone in the alley. The last number she called was 911.”

“Hold.”

While Jay waited, he carefully went over the alley, searching for tracks that were recent enough to break the newly fallen snow and sleet.
He saw a place farther away from the gallery where someone had skidded and fallen, and before that a print in the snow left by a leather-soled shoe that could have belonged to a woman or a small man.