Shiver (18 page)

“It burns!”

It did, like airborne acid feathering across her skin, searing the inside of her nose, making her eyes water, making them sting . . .

“Hold your breath, baby!”

Coughing, gasping, Sam jammed the phone into her pocket, yanked out her gun, pointed it at the window, and shot the glass and the center of the wood strips, aiming right for the spot where the strips crossed:
bang, bang.
She used her last bullets, then kicked out the shards and decimated wooden supports with a desperate strength. Snatching up Tyler, whose eyes were shut and whose face was all puckered up like it got when he got ready to jump off the side of the pool in the summer, which she knew meant that he was holding his breath, she lifted him through the hole she had made into the blessedly fresh night air.

“Watch the glass,” she warned in an urgent undertone as
moonlight glinted off the debris from the window that was scattered beneath the honeysuckle bush. Even in this moment of extremis, she took care to set him down in a clear spot.

“Mom!” As his feet touched the ground his eyes popped open and he clung to her.

“Run, Tyler.”
She pulled free of his grip. “
Go.
Head for the truck. I’m coming.”

With one last look at her he turned, shoved his way through the honeysuckle branches, and took off, heading toward the street. The fence was in the way. God, would he have time to get through the gate before the monsters in the house figured out that their prey was getting away? His little bare feet flashed pale through the darkness; his pajamas gave off the faintest of neon glows. Something small and dark bobbed at his side. In the split second that it took Sam to recognize Ted, paw still clutched tightly in Tyler’s hand, she already had one foot braced on the windowsill. Eyes burning and watering so badly that things kept going in and out of focus, feeling like her skin was blistering everywhere that it was exposed, Sam took a split second to pulverize the shards that still clung to the sill and then scrambled out the window, taking in greedy gulps of the honeysuckle-scented air even before she hit the ground. Somewhere in the distance she heard a siren; closer at hand, the brittle snap of glass breaking under her boots and the rustling of the bush she’d landed in were overridden by the sound of her pulse thundering in her ears. Careful not to rub at her burning eyes—no stranger to pepper spray, she knew that would only make the effects worse—she cast a quick, involuntary glance
behind her, through the shattered window toward the bedroom door. Her vision shimmered and shifted, due to both the watery veil of stinging tears that obscured it and the menacing vapors that filled the room, but she could see the rocking chair, which was still in place, and the door, which was still shut. Wonder of wonders, they weren’t trying to break into the room. Maybe the knowledge that they had just filled it with pepper spray was keeping them at bay. Maybe they thought the two shots she had just fired at the window had been aimed at them. Or maybe—horrifying thought—they were already racing for the front door, to catch her and Tyler in the enclosed yard . . .

Terror formed a hard, cold knot in Sam’s chest as she, too, plunged through the honeysuckle and bolted for the street.

Bam! Bam!
The unmistakable sound of splintering wood behind her made her heart lurch. It sent panic shooting along her nerve endings, gave fresh wings to her feet.

“Party time, bitch.” The words, which unmistakably came from inside the room she had just left, had an oddly muffled, slurred quality.

“I don’t see her! Or the boy!” It was a different voice, filled with consternation, speaking a heartbeat later. It had the same odd muffled quality as the first.

“She’s got to be here. They’ve got to be here! Search! Check the—”

“They went out the window! Look! There she goes!”

A quick, fear-filled glance over her shoulder showed Sam a man in a dark hoodie leaning out Tyler’s shattered bedroom
window staring after her. If the moonlight hadn’t gleamed off the gun he was holding, she wasn’t even sure she would have spotted him through the darkness and the overarching honeysuckle. But it did, and she did, and her breath caught and her heart slammed against her chest wall and her stomach did a back flip. Only, his face was weird—eyes like a bug, dark and featureless lower down.

For a shocked instant that felt like a moment out of time, she went shivery with horror. What kind of men were these?

Then she realized: goggles and a bandanna. He was wearing that, or something similar, plus the hood pulled over his head and who knew what else to protect himself from the pepper spray. They both—all—however many of them there were, however many were in that room—must be swaddled in protective gear. That accounted for the distortion of their voices, for the fact that they had dared to enter the room so soon.

If the murderous asswipes turned and ran for the front door this minute, this second, they would be barely behind her as she raced for the gate, Sam calculated. If they just wanted her dead, they could shoot her—and Tyler—from the porch. It was a footrace now, and not one that she was sure she could win. Heart jackhammering, with all need for subterfuge past, Sam ran for her life, letting loose a scream that split the night as she tore around the corner of the house—

—just in time to see Tyler being lifted over the fence by a man on its other side. In the split second that it took her mind to process what she was seeing, blinking through the darkness
and the burning curtain of welling tears that kept her from seeing anything clearly, she tried to ascertain what was what. She registered that the man who had grabbed Tyler was wearing a suit, that another man in a suit was racing toward him, and that a black car with its doors open and engine running idled at the curb, double-parked, while Big Red sat waiting directly behind it, across the street.

Two more men stood behind the idling car, barely more than shadowy outlines at first glance, two-handing pistols that were braced on the car’s hood and aimed at her house. Sam didn’t care about them, just like she no longer cared about the men who at any second now should be bursting out her front door.

Every last molecule in her body was focused on saving her son.

“Tyler!” she shrieked, her feet seeming to turn heavy as lead as she tried for every bit of speed she could summon to reach her boy in time. But it was too late, the man in the suit was handing Tyler off to someone in the car, her kid was disappearing inside . . .

“Mom!” he cried, twisting to look back at her, Ted clutched to his chest, a small hand reaching out for her.

“Tyler!” Feeling as if her heart would explode, Sam screamed his name again. It was useless. Her son was already out of sight, thrust into the car. If it drove away now . . . but the first man in the suit, instead of disappearing into the car, too, as the other man did with Tyler, ran back to drag the gate open for her.

“
Move it,
Ms. Jones.” Sam’s vision was so blurry that she was seeing shapes rather than details, but she was sure she didn’t know him. Whoever he was, though, he knew her—or at
least her name. Tonight, in this waking nightmare that she was trapped in, it seemed that everybody did. It was horrifying, terrifying, because it meant that these men who were snatching her kid were doing it because of Marco, but then she’d known that from the first instant she’d spotted Tyler being lifted over the fence. Anyway, it didn’t matter now: whatever the cost, she was going after her child.

Darting past the suit guy at the gate, she yelled, “Give me back my son!” at him, and was surprised at the sound of her own voice: instead of being loud and demanding, it was hoarse and croaky. Her tongue and the tissues of her mouth felt bone dry. A hideous taste—she was guessing it was from the pepper spray—clung to the back of her throat. Swallowing didn’t help.

Reaching the car, she leaned down to look inside—both passenger-side doors were still open—and found herself being half lifted, half shoved into the backseat.

“No!”

Her empty, useless gun was snatched away from her. Hands grabbed and held her, trapping her inside the car, constraining her arms, her legs. She fought like a demon to get away.

“Let me go!”

“Mom!”

Tyler’s voice was drowned out as a cacophony of shouting voices filled the car. They made no sense to her in her panic. Amid the pitched battle she’d been plunged into, both doors slammed shut and the car took off, peeling rubber away from the curb. Through the tinted windows, she saw that her neighbors were not quite as deaf or indifferent as she had thought: a
light flicked on in the house next door; across the street, a man holding a baseball bat stepped out onto his porch, looking in the direction of her house. At the far the end of the block, as the car bearing her and Tyler away raced toward the opposite corner then took it on what felt like two wheels, she caught the merest glimpse of the brilliant red and blue flashing lights of a police cruiser lighting up the night as it zoomed onto her street.

She wanted to scream at it,
Where were you thirty seconds ago?
But that would have been a waste of breath.

“Tyler!” Her desperate gaze locked onto her son. They were holding his head out the window now, doing something to him. She couldn’t tell exactly what, but they seemed to be pouring something in his face, something that splattered in a stream down the side of the car. He squirmed like a fish on a hook, his hands restrained by a dark-jacketed arm clamping his arms to his side, his head jerking as little pained cries emerged from his throat: “Ah, ah, ah!”

“Let go of me!” Throwing elbows and kicking, Sam got away from the arms imprisoning her and practically swam across the backseat—three men were crammed into it shoulder to shoulder—as she fought to reach him. “Tyler!”

“Watch the leg!” The voice, the words, scratched the surface of her panic, but she was so frightened for her son that they didn’t really register.

“Lady! Calm the hell down!” Hands tried to pin her again, then as she sank her teeth into the nearest stuffed suit sleeve just as quickly let her go. “Ow! Damn it! She bit me!”

“Let me
go
!”

“Sam, stop!” It was a roar, uttered as arms once again locked around hers, clamping them to her body.

“Tyler!” The man who was holding him pulled him back inside the window. Blinking furiously in an effort to clear her vision, struggling for all she was worth, she strained to get to him, to see if he’d been hurt.

“Mom, I’m okay!” Her son was rubbing vigorously at his eyes with something—something white. A rag? “You let my mom go!” He directed a fierce frown at the men holding her.

“We’re going to. Just as soon as—”

“Get your hands off me!” Pinned but undaunted, Sam twisted and bucked ferociously in an effort to get loose, then, having freed a leg, slammed a knee into the nearest rib cage.

“Ow! Damn it! Sam, stop fighting, it’s me!”

“
Mom!
You let her go!”

Blurry as her vision still was, Sam saw that Tyler’s hair dripped liquid and his face was shiny wet, but otherwise he did indeed seem okay. The worst of her panic began to subside. Now sitting in the lap of the man who’d held him out the window, Tyler shook his head like a wet dog, splattering drops everywhere, including a few that felt cool and soothing as they hit her face. The good news was, he didn’t seem to be hurt or even particularly afraid. As Sam realized that, the terrified haze that had held her in thrall slowly started to dissipate. Calming down enough to realize that fighting was a waste of effort, because there was going to be no escaping the car even if she did get free of the men holding her, she felt her heart, which had been beating a thousand miles a minute, settle into mere pound
ing, and she managed to catch her breath. At the same time she began to take in her surroundings, and saw that the entire driver’s side of the car was dented inward and the guy holding Tyler looked vaguely familiar.

“Sam, damn it, I’ve got you! Look at me.”

That’s when she recognized the voice: Marco. Blinking wildly, she managed to clear her distorted vision enough to make sure. It was him, all right, wedged in the middle of the three men in the backseat. She had scrambled across him unknowing. Now, in her quest to reach Tyler, she was practically lying across his lap. His arms imprisoned hers, and he was holding her clamped against his chest. She realized that he was taking care to keep her elevated, and off his wounded leg. For the first time since she’d been thrown into the car she went completely still, blinking up at him.

Marco frowned down at her. Their eyes met, and the fight went out of her like air escaping from a balloon. Going limp with relief, she sagged in his hold. Truth was, she didn’t think she had ever been so glad to see anyone in her life.

She felt suddenly, ridiculously (because after all, what did she really know about Marco, or any of them, except what Marco had told her?) safe. But then, safe was probably a comparative thing. As in, compared to what she and Tyler had just escaped.

And Mrs. Menifee hadn’t.

The words practically tripped over each other as she rushed to get them out.

“Our neighbor. She was baby-sitting Tyler. She’s back there in the house, with those men you warned me about. They were waiting for me when I got home. Mrs. Menifee’s hurt or . . .” Her voice trailed off. She did not want to complete the horrible thought while Tyler was within earshot. The thing was, she strongly suspected Mrs. Menifee might be dead. Even knowing what she knew for sure about what had been done to Mrs. Menifee made her heartsick.