11

Cray was ten miles west of the motel, driving down a two-lane strip of blacktop through the flat, unforgiving desert, when he decided it was time for a real conversation.

He reached over to the woman in the passenger seat who called herself Elizabeth Palmer, and loosened the washcloth that had stoppered her mouth.

“Penny for your thoughts,” he said.

She coughed weakly and repeatedly, a typical reaction to the strain of being gagged. He waited for her to recover her composure, feeling no impatience.

His rage had cooled. He had no reason to be angry now. She was going to die, and first she would know terror and then pain.

It was all he could have asked for, all he had wanted throughout the past twelve years.

When her spate of coughing was finished, she raised her head, turning her blindfolded face toward him, as if she could see through the opaque fabric.

He thought she might start screaming, or plead for mercy, or thrash in her seat the way some of them did. But to her credit she seemed almost calm. He kept thinking of her as the teenager she had been, but she was older now, and the years had made her stronger.

A long moment passed, filled with the hum of the engine and the beat of the tires on the rutted road.

“Where are we going?” she asked finally.

He was disappointed. The question was too obvious.

“Is that the first thing you say to me,” he chided softly, “after all these years?”

“What should I say?”

“How much you’ve missed me. I’ve missed you. I’m so very glad to see you again. Really. You do believe that, don’t you?”

“Yes. I do.”

Her voice was as he remembered it. A soft, girlish voice, strikingly innocent. He had spent many hours in conversation with her, in the days when they had been bound together so intimately, and he had always been intrigued by the childlike quality she projected. He hadn’t expected it to last.

“Little Kaylie,” he breathed, “back from the dead. At least, I thought you might be dead. So much time had passed, and you had disappeared so utterly. As if you had vanished into some Bermuda Triangle, leaving no trace.”

She made a ragged throat-clearing noise. “You thought I’d been killed?”

“To be honest, I wondered if you’d killed yourself. You have definite suicidal tendencies.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Then why have you been following me?”

She said nothing.

Another desolate mile sped by. The dashboard’s glow lit his gloved hands on the wheel, her face in profile. The car’s interior was a bubble of light, and around it in all directions lay a great and brooding darkness.

He wondered if Elizabeth Palmer, whose name when he had known her had been quite different, was thinking of that darkness and of the destiny that would soon make her part of it forever.

“You didn’t answer me,” she said. “Where are we going?”                           

“Not much farther.”

“Where?”

“There’s a dirt road a few miles ahead. It dead-ends in the desert. Must have served a ranch once, or perhaps a ranch was planned for that site but never built. In any case, nothing’s there now. We’ll have privacy, you and I.”

“Why not the White Mountains?”

“I’d prefer to take you there, I really would. There, or to some destination even more remote. Sadly, the hour is late. Daybreak’s coming. We don’t have as much time as I’d like.”

“Time for what?”

“Aren’t you the inquisitive one. Brimful of questions. You know what they say about curiosity and the cat.”

“Time for what?” she repeated, her voice low and toneless.

“You’ll see. It’s a kind of game I play. But much more than a game.”

“What game?”

“Patience.”

He was proud of her. She had not done the usual stupid things. She hadn’t tried kicking at him, or twisting wildly in her seat to grope for the door handle in a hopeless attempt to throw herself from the car. She hadn’t cried, not even silently.

Best of all, she hadn’t retreated into a comatose state and left him with a mere simulacrum of a woman.

He hated it when they did that. He wanted alertness, vitality, the animal instincts healthy and strong. He wanted a taut and quivering hare to chase.

This one would do nicely. He should have expected no less.

“Exactly how long have you been after me?” he asked her.

“Twenty-seven days.”

“Watching me, waiting for me to make a careless error?”

“Yes.”

“To catch me in the act.”

“Yes.”

“Bold of you. But I suppose, given the dictates of your conscience, you felt you had no choice. You couldn’t go to the police.”

“No. I couldn’t.”

“You might have phoned in an anonymous tip, of course. But on a case this highly publicized, the authorities must get hundreds of crank calls. And there are so many people who might carry a grudge against a man in my position. Disturbed people angling for revenge ...”

“I know.”

“They wouldn’t have believed you.”

“Of course not.”

“So you had to do it all yourself, with no help from anyone.”

“I’m used to it.”

“Poor Kaylie. Poor dear child.”

She didn’t answer.

He saw that she was gathering herself, her head lowered, lips pursed. That was good. She didn’t yet know what sport he planned for her, but she knew that all her resources would be required, and she was marshaling them for this last, doomed effort. He respected her for it.

A saguaro cactus rose on the roadside, then fell back in a long, slow windshield-wiper motion. The cactus was a tall one. It might be a hundred years old. Cray wondered how many small, meaningless deaths it had witnessed in the nightly dance of predator and prey.

He looked again at his passenger, saw the ripple of her throat as she swallowed the taste of fear. The freckles on her cheeks stood out against the paleness of her skin.

She was pretty. Oddly, he had never noticed it before, not when he’d known her, not when he’d looked at her photograph and wondered if she was still alive and if he would ever have revenge.

He found it strange to think of men kissing her mouth, whispering endearments, bringing pleasure to her. There was one man he knew of, but had there been many others?

Well, there would be no more.

“I like your hair,” Cray said. “You’re much better as a blonde. You weren’t the redhead type. You lacked the requisite personality.”

“How can you say that,” she whispered, “when you never knew me?”

“But I did know you. I knew you intimately. I knew your secrets. I knew your mind. I still do.”

“I wasn’t myself then. You didn’t know me.”

Cray considered his response as he slowed the Lexus, turning the wheel. A dirt road swung into the windshield.

“Perhaps you’re right,” he allowed at last. “But I’ll get to know you tonight, won’t I?”

The road was a narrow, rutted track bordered by swarms of prickly pear and jumping cholla. Cray’s high beams played over floury swirls of dust as the Lexus rolled forward.

“Oh, yes, Kaylie,” he said. “You’ll be surprised how well I’ll know you before we’re done.”