Pursued by Shadows (19 page)

Feeling blind with the sharp point of his knife, he ran it down her throat until he met the obstruction of her shirt. He yanked down as hard as he could. The point scraped against her skin and a button tore off. “Turn around.” He gave her arm one more vicious upward shove and then let it go. Replacing the knife in its position against her neck, he swiveled her around slowly, turning her with his free hand.

He was a burly, broad-shouldered man with a thick head of glossy dark hair that accentuated the gray pallor of his skin. He looked strong enough to tear her apart; he looked mad from exhaustion or perhaps pain and illness, with his unshaven chin blue with stubble and his eyes burning dark as the pits of hell, but when Jane saw him she almost laughed in relief. She had never seen him before. He wasn't anyone of the figures that had been haunting her nightmares. He was just a person.

“Let's have a look at you,” he said. He pushed the point deep into the skin of the throat, very gently, so that it did not puncture. “Undo the rest of the buttons.” He nudged even deeper with the blade. She gagged. Jane undid the three remaining buttons and her shirt fell open.

“Jesus Christ,” he said, and wriggled his left hand out of his glove. He pushed the shirt back to inspect her. “You must have been wearing a bulletproof vest.”

A wave of hysterical laughter threatened to overwhelm her. He didn't care about her body, only her scars. Here she was, face to face with Lesley's mugger, and he hadn't noticed yet that his victims had been switched on him. At least that proved that Lesley had been followed and attacked to get the map, thought Jane wryly. She didn't have to believe in a set of massive coincidences.

“You haven't suffered at all, baby. What in hell were you doing in the hospital? Hiding?”

A flicker of movement on the periphery of Jane's vision made her look over and freeze, horrified. Lesley was edging very slowly out from under the duvet and lowering herself onto the floor, but the pounding of the rain covered the faint hiss of skin and cotton against the sheet. Through lowered eyelids Jane watched her sister reach under the bed and pull something out. Her suitcase. Even through the rumble of distant thunder she could hear the scrape of its smooth metal studs moving across the floor and the click of the lock giving way. It seemed impossible that he could fail to notice. Jane concentrated her eyes and mind on her feet. Don't look up, she screamed silently to herself. Not now, not ever.

With one somewhat awkward hand, he pulled out the belt from her jeans; the other hand continued to press the knife point deep into her throat. “Put your wrists together,” he said. She didn't move. He pressed the knife farther in and she felt a hideous urge to cough and claw at her throat. She crossed her wrists and glanced up.

Lesley was on her stomach, pressed against the baseboard of the north wall of the loft, pulling herself forward very delicately.

He backed her up against the stove again, settling his knee in her crotch and pushing hard to hold her still. He looped the belt around her wrists, tightened it hard, and then yanked the end over the sturdy curtain rod that divided kitchen from living room. For a second or two, he held the knife between his teeth and ripped off his other glove in order to thread the end of the belt through its loop again, pull up to the last hole, and slip the tongue into it. Her only contact with the floor now was her toes.

From beneath her hooded eyes, she could see that Lesley had crawled past the space Jane had left between the chesterfield and the wall when she had rearranged the furniture, and was crouched behind one of the dining room chairs. She looked like a colt trying to hide behind a sapling and Jane drew in a quick breath of annoyance and apprehension. Then her sister yanked something blank and silver from the hip pocket of her neatly tailored shorts and dove silently under the table. It seemed absolutely incomprehensible that he could not—did not—see her.

But he was concentrating on his plans for Jane. “That's better,” he said. “Now I can look at you.” He stood in front of her, deep in thought, knife in his hand. Then he ran it lightly down her chest between her breasts and stopped at the top button of her jeans. “That's in the way,” he said.

She could feel Lesley rushing toward her, rushing toward her own destruction at an ever-increasing speed. Jane could just catch a glimpse of her crouched underneath the round table, almost in the kitchen itself, right at her feet.

He reached out with his left hand and tried to undo the button. It was too stiff to budge. He switched the knife to his left hand and tried with his right. It still stuck. With a sigh of exasperation he put the knife down on the counter and reached for the button with both hands.

Lesley rose swiftly to her full height, her movements controlled and steady in spite of their speed. The kitchen light reflected a flash of silver as her arm whipped forward and suddenly Jane was distracted by another very rapid movement across the length of the room.

The man's head jerked up and his shoulders began to twist as soon as he heard the footsteps coming up the room; he wasn't quick enough, though, and the knife blade, razor-sharp and thin, plunged into the middle of his back and was jerked out again. As he started to topple, he reached convulsively for his own knife, and Amos yanked him back out of the way. Lesley's next downward thrust whistled emptily by him.

“Jesus Christ,” Amos said, grabbing the knife from the counter and with a single slashing movement cutting Jane's arms free.

Jane stood where she had been, shaking with rage and shock, and stared down at the body at her feet. Lesley had stepped back and then sat down, suddenly, on the floor. “What in hell happened?” asked Amos, his voice harsh with anger and his face white.

“He got in that door,” said Jane hoarsely.

“I know. As soon as I saw the ladder up to the deck, I figured that one out,” he snapped.

“I never heard him come in. It was the storm—he grabbed me. And Lesley crawled over. On her belly. Oh, God, it took her so long and I was so afraid that I'd look at her and he'd realize she was there. And then she . . .”

“I saw that. How in hell did he manage to miss her?”

“She was under the duvet, hiding from the storm. She's always been afraid of lightning. And besides, he wasn't looking for her. He didn't seem to know there were two of us.”

He looked down at the girl sitting, absolutely silent, on the floor, and at Jane, standing in the kitchen, tears streaming down her cheeks, and walked over to the telephone.

“What are you going to do?” asked Jane.

“Call the sheriff's department,” he said. His voice was grim.

“Oh, God, Amos, you can't do that,” said Jane. She walked over to the table and collapsed on a chair. “The police will—”

“Don't be stupid, Jane,” he said angrily. “What do you want me to do? Bury him in the garden? Because I'm not going to do it. It's time you and your crazy sister here started telling the truth, and got everything straightened out once and for all.”

Jane nodded, helpless with exhaustion.

When he hung up the phone again, Lesley was still sitting on the floor, deep in a world of her own contrivance. The knife was still tight in her fist, and blood from the dark-haired man was smeared on her hands, her bare legs, her shorts, her shirt. Amos walked over to her and held out his hand. “Why don't you give me that knife, Lesley?” he asked gently. He touched her hand, and then tried to pull the weapon out of her grasp by the hasp. She tightened her fingers and said nothing. “Shit!” he muttered in exasperation.

“What's wrong?” asked Jane, who at that point was beyond noticing the absurdity of the question.

“Nothing, really,” he said bitterly. “I just had one of those stupid gallant impulses that get me into trouble from time to time. It occurred to me that our local deputy might have less trouble with the idea of me defending you two against a vicious intruder than with Lesley creeping up and stabbing him in the back. But if I can't get the knife out of her hands, there isn't much point, is there? Besides we're better off with something closer to the truth.”

“What do you mean, closer to truth? You said—”

“No lies,” he interrupted. “Just a little editing. To start with,” he asked, pulling up a chair close to hers, “who is he?”

“I haven't the faintest idea,” said Jane. “I really don't. I swear I never saw him in my life before.”

“Well, I have. He's the man who was in town looking for you. Someone told me they'd seen him wandering around Harmon's place again today and so I figured I better come home and check. He's the one you said must have been your boyfriend. I take it he wasn't?”

“No—I just assumed from that description—I mean, who else would be chasing me down here?”

“Anyway, unless you've been bullshitting me all along, he couldn't be, could he? Your boyfriend's already been killed once.”

His voice was cold, controlled, with no hint of compassion or solidarity in it. Jane flinched, as if she had been stripped of her only warm covering. “How long had you been there?” asked Jane. “On the deck, listening?”

“How long had I been standing there? Not long. Long enough to see that knife kind of hovering around your belly button and not liking it much, so I just slipped around the curtains. I figured at the very least I could distract him—and besides, I'm probably better at hand to hand than he was. He didn't seem to be very good at this sort of thing, you know. If you hadn't been so panicked and worried about Lesley you probably would have extricated yourself from the situation without my help. He struck me as an enthusiastic amateur.” His expression was still frozen. “I thought your sister was just trying to hide under the table there and I figured I'd better get to him before he noticed her. But I wasn't quick enough.”

“It never occurred to me for a second that she meant to kill him,” said Jane. “I don't know what I thought she was trying to do, but—”

“She had to kill him,” said Amos, with great clarity. “She had no choice, in order to save herself when he went for her with his knife. The knife he brought with him, intending to use. The knife he dropped on the floor in the struggle and I picked up so I could cut you down.”

Jane stared at him, stupefied. “What are you talking about? He never even knew she was in the room.”

“Oh yes, he did,” said Amos firmly. “Because she screamed when she saw what was happening, remember? After all, she's very nervous, especially after what happened to her in New York. He went for her and tripped and in the struggle she picked up a knife from the counter and stabbed him in the back. You saw it, I saw it, and poor Lesley—well—she's too shocked by the whole terrible incident to recall any of it.”

“Your sister,” said the sad-faced deputy as he unwound Lesley's fingers from the knife.

“Yes,” said Jane. “She's been like this ever since it happened.”

“Shock, I expect,” he murmured, and handed the weapon carefully for bagging to the evidence technician who was working quietly around them.

“Funny-looking knife, though,” said the deputy.

Jane leaned over to look at it. “It's a boning knife,” she said, trying not to sound startled. “You use them to cut the bones out of chicken breasts and things like that.”

“Ah,” said the sergeant in charge, who had been deep in whispered conversation with Amos. “So that's where it came from. The kitchen.”

“I beg your pardon?”

He shook his head gravely. “A man who attacks a couple of women in a kitchen is asking for trouble. He shouldn't be surprised if he gets a knife in his ribs. A kitchen knife, I mean.” And he turned back to his conversation with Amos.

The deputy waited patiently throughout the interruption. “I need to write down some particulars. Can we start with you, miss?” More engines roared down the road and into the driveway, interrupting him again.

“I'll deal with these guys,” said the sergeant. “You get the rest.”

Amos had drifted across the room to gaze with apparent indifference at the lake and the clearing skies, but the taut muscles in his back and neck betrayed his intense concentration on the scene behind him. “I don't know his name,” Jane was saying, “but he's the man who killed my husband.” The word seemed to echo in the big room. Amos had asked for the truth, and now, by God, he was going to get it. All of it. “He said that Guy had stolen something valuable from him, and that he had tortured and killed him.”

“He actually said that?” asked the deputy. “He confessed to you that he had tortured and killed your husband?”

Jane paused to consider the question. “Maybe not in those actual words, but he certainly gave me that impression,” she said at last.

“Your impression,” said the deputy, clearly unimpressed. “Could you explain what gave you that impression?”

“Well—he said something about knowing how to force me to talk, and about it being the same thing that happened to Guy, or that he did to Guy. I know it doesn't sound very clear, but I was scared and I didn't know what he was talking about half the time. He also said,” she added, “that he knew I had what they were looking for. He didn't say how he knew, but I assumed my husband had admitted it under torture. How else would he know that if he hadn't been there?”

“Not exactly Mr. Nice Guy, your husband, was he?”

“He wasn't very good at withstanding pain.” Jane took a deep breath and looked steadily at the deputy. “I would guess that the Toronto police have more information about who this man is, and about me and my husband.” She turned to read Amos's face, but he had moved out of her line of sight. “I suggest that you call them,” she added bleakly. “They probably want to talk to me too.”

“So what it comes down to, then,” he said, sounding depressed, “is that your husband was killed and you took off with this property stolen from him, and you've been evading the authorities since then by moving in with Amos Cavanaugh here?” He looked at her with a touch of the contempt most people reserve for child molesters. “Feeding him some kind of line and using him as a cover to keep you out of trouble? Is there a warrant out on you? When I call Toronto, am I going to find out that they want you back there for his murder? And the corpse there on the floor, was he just trying to collect his half?”