Walking After Midnight Page 4

  From somewhere out of sight came the slam of a car door. Whoever was driving the vehicle had gotten out.

  Let them find me, she prayed as the bra was stripped from her and her arms were dragged ruthlessly behind her back. Please, please let them find me.

  Glancing down, Summer was made ill by the sight of her bare breasts gleaming palely in the moonlight. It brought home the reality of her danger as nothing else had. This man could strip her, rape her, kill her, at will. She was at his mercy—unless she did something. But what? What could she do that would not hasten her own grisly end?

  The distant crunch of footsteps told her that her potential savior was on foot now, presumably walking through the parking lot. Toward them? But he didn’t know they were there. In all likelihood, he was headed toward the mortuary’s front door. Who could it be? Mike Chaney? An ambulance crew with another corpse? A cop making a routine check on the building? Who knew?

  Please … she prayed again, so shaken that she could not even put the rest of her request into words. But God knew what she meant. Please save me. Please.

  Her captor was tying her wrists together with her bra. He was using both hands, which meant that wherever the scalpel was, he wasn’t holding it just at that instant. If she was ever going to do it, now was the moment to scream, while the scalpel was not at the ready and there was someone nearby to hear.

  But suppose the someone could not, or would not, help? Suppose it was a woman, or worse, a woman with kids in the car, who by her screaming would be exposed to the madman’s menace too? Or a rank coward who would hear her scream but cut and run instead of coming to her aid?

  Summer hesitated. He finished securing her wrists with a brutal yank that tested the efficacy of his handiwork. Her wrists ached already, and her hands tingled from the beginning effects of lack of circulation. Experimentally, she wriggled her fingers, tried to move her hands. The bra—why, oh why had she opted for the indestructability of an eighteen-hour garment instead of the flimsy nylon lingerie she had once preferred?—dug deep into her flesh. The sturdy elastic bound her as securely as a pair of handcuffs.

  His hands were on her shoulders, forcing her to her knees.

  On the other hand, suppose she didn’t scream. What then?

  That prospect was the clincher.

  Even as she sank to the grassy verge that framed the building, her mouth opened. The die was cast: she had no real choice. Drawing in a lungful of air, she prepared to shatter his eardrums and her own. Her very life might well hang on this one scream.

  Before she could get out so much as a peep, her own blouse was thrust between her teeth. Stunned, Summer choked, gagged, and tried to spit it out, to no avail. The wadded nylon reached so far down her throat that she thought she might vomit.

  She couldn’t vomit. She would choke to death for sure if she did. What she had to do was breathe through her nose. Breathe. Breathe.

  He did something more to her wrists, then tilted her chin up so that she was forced to look at him. The scalpel was clenched pirate-like between his teeth, she saw. The slit that was his eye glittered ferally. His distorted mouth was twisted into a hideous grimace that might, on a normal person, have been a jeering smile. As if he found her terror funny.

  It occurred to Summer then that there was a strong possibility he was not even sane. Suddenly she was very, very glad she hadn’t screamed.

  5

  “I’ll be back,” he said, holding her gaze. The Terminator himself couldn’t have made the threat sound more terrifying. In fact, Summer decided that she would rather by far be facing Arnold Schwarzenegger at his most menacing than the man who loomed over her in real life.

  He released her jaw, stepped away, and vanished around the corner of the building.

  Summer wasted no more than a pair of heartbeats staring after him. Then she tried to get to her feet.

  Her wrists were tied to something—she glanced around to be certain: a faucet. A plain old faucet jutting out of the side of the building. He had somehow twisted her bra so that it not only bound her wrists but tethered her tightly to the faucet, too.

  Damn him. Damn him. She was not going to be able to get away.

  Frantically she pulled and yanked and twisted, fighting to be free. This was her chance to escape. All she had to do was get free of the faucet, and run, and run, and run.

  The nylon in her mouth impeded her breathing. She was struggling so hard that her overworked lungs screamed for more oxygen. Saliva poured into her mouth in a useless effort to combat the cloying dryness from having a mouth crammed full of cloth. Some ran down her throat. Trying not to cough, or gag, sucking in great rushes of air through her nose, Summer deliberately slowed her desperate efforts. She was trying too hard. That had to be it. How difficult could it be to break free of a bra and a faucet, for goodness’ sake?

  Summer scooted on her rump as far away from the faucet as she could and used all her strength to try to yank her hands after her. Her hope was that the bra would break. She yanked again. And again. And again. The bra didn’t break, but her wrists felt like they might. What was the damned bra made out of, she wondered semihysterically, some kind of industrial strength space elastic?

  Just her luck.

  Silently she cursed the space age.

  Wriggling her fingers, twisting her wrists, she forced her hands into impossible contortions as she fought to be free. Using the faucet as a tool, she sawed the bra back and forth over it, disregarding the rough edges that scraped her wrists. Nothing worked. Despairing, beyond caring if she hurt herself, she yanked once more with all her strength. And, miracle of miracles, she finally felt something give. Something—a strap, a knot—had slipped or broken. The bonds were definitely looser. A few more yanks and she might be free.

  Sweating, praying, Summer gave a mighty heaven—and glanced up to find the madman coming around the side of the building toward her. There was no mistaking his identity. Even through the darkness, she recognized him instandy. Part of it was his distinctive gait, and part of it was pure instinct.

  As his presence registered on her consciousness, she froze, then gave up the fight. Oh, God, she had only needed a few minutes more. Just a few minutes more, and she would have been free.

  In the brief time he’d been gone, he seemed to have acquired clothes. Flip-flops, cutoff jeans, and a tight black T-shirt with some kind of writing on the front that she couldn’t quite read through the darkness. Something about a dog?

  Not that it mattered. He was back, and she was still tethered. She’d blown what was probably her best chance to escape. She was at his mercy again.

  Defeated, Summer slumped, letting her head loll forward until her chin brushed her chest. A lamb for his slaughter, that was what she was. The worst part of it was, at that instant she didn’t even particularly care.

  The distinctive smell of him—kerosene and body odor—made her stomach heave as he moved around behind her. He did something to the bindings on her wrists, and suddenly they were free. Whatever he did was so quick, so easy, that it didn’t seem possible she could have struggled as hard as she had without achieving the same results, Summer thought resentfully as she brought her bruised and tingling hands forward to rub them. He reached down to pull the blouse from her mouth. The moist membranes seemed to have adhered to the nylon, and she could almost feel them rip as the wadded cloth was abruptly removed.

  Her jaws ached in the aftermath of its going. Her tongue felt dry and swollen. As she moved her mouth, testing to be sure it still worked, she discovered that her lips were numb. She swallowed once, twice. It didn’t seem to help. Nothing seemed to help.

  Behind her, she heard a squeak and then the rush of water. At the sound, saliva flooded her mouth. She glanced back to discover that he was sluicing his face with water from the faucet. She craved the taste of it like an alcoholic might liquor. Partially turning, reaching out an unsteady hand, she caught some in her palm, raised it to her mouth, and swallowed. The icy liquid felt wonderfu
l to her dry throat and tongue. She reached for more, only to have him turn the water off.

  How could she have forgotten? She was helpless, defenseless, at his mercy. He could even decide how much and when she would drink. Her chin sank to her chest again in an attitude of total despair. Dully she watched her mangled bra and blouse land in a bundled heap on her knees, then roll to the grass, where they spilled apart.

  “Get dressed. Hurry.”

  Summer, still wallowing in the psychic quagmire of defeat, didn’t move. When she didn’t instantly respond, he grabbed her hair, jerked her head back, and waved the scalpel in front of her face.

  “Did you hear me? I said hurry.”

  The sight of the scalpel frightened her, and fright reawakened her survival instinct. The will to live pumped with renewed force through her veins. She reached out, fumbling for her clothes, and he let go of her hair. Still he loomed over her threateningly. She could feel him watching her as she pulled on her bra—one shoulder strap was broken—and clipped it together between her breasts after several abortive tries. Sliding her arms into the damp, wrinkled mess of her blouse, she managed to fasten three of its buttons despite fingers that shook. As she tried to fit the fourth into its hole he cursed suddenly and grabbed her upper arm in a viselike grip. Summer gasped as with ruthless strength she was hauled to her feet.

  When she was standing, he shoved his face into hers. His one visible eye glittered. His breath stank. She cringed.

  “You are about one minute away from having your throat slit. Don’t think you can pull some kind of delaying crap on me. If you slow me down, I’ll kill you. I swear I will. Now get your ass moving. Go.”

  Acute terror can last only so long, Summer discovered as he pushed her in front of him back around the corner of the building toward where a white paneled van now waited beside her car. Despite her growing certainty that it wasn’t a matter of if but of when he would cut her throat, the edge of her fear had dulled to the point where it was more like a chronic, manageable ache than an immediate, stabbing pain. Numb best described how she felt as she was forced toward the van’s passenger-side door—until she saw the body.

  A man lay on the pavement not far from the mortuary’s front door. He was sprawled on his stomach, one arm stretched in a kind of pathetic appeal above his head. He was naked, motionless—and his head rested in a dark, sticky pool of liquid that Summer had no trouble guessing was blood.

  “You killed him!” she gasped before she thought.

  “And if you don’t mind your p’s and q’s, you’ll be next,” growled the voice in her ear. Head swiveling to stare at the body even as she was forced up and into the passenger side of the van, Summer shivered as her terror reawakened with all its earlier force. The icy frisson that exploded along her nerve endings felt almost familiar. Had there ever been a time when she was not afraid for her life?

  “Scoot over.”

  He was sliding in behind her, crowding her out of the seat nearest the door and into the driver’s seat. The van’s interior was black vinyl, and it had only the two bucket seats. The space in the back was given over to cargo. By the small overhead light that came on automatically as they entered, it was possible to see that quilted gray furniture blankets lay over whatever the van carried.

  The passenger-side door clicked shut, and the light went off. Summer was left alone in the smelly darkness with her captor, who casually draped his left arm along the back of her seat. The scalpel was in the fist that rested just below her left ear.

  “Behave yourself, you hear?” The tip of the scalpel toyed with her earlobe while Summer stopped breathing. “Hear?”

  “Yes.”

  The arm around her shoulders was removed, and the scalpel went with it. Her breath escaped in an audible hiss as he settled back in his seat, the scalpel now held in his right fist, which rested negligently on his bare right knee. The threat had been withdrawn—for the moment. But his gaze never left her as he massaged his left thigh, seemingly trying to dig his fingers deep into muscles that pained him.

  Summer wondered how long it would be before she ended up like the man on the pavement. Bile rose in her throat.

  “Drive,” her captor said, and handed her a set of keys.

  Summer took them without a word. Fortunately there were only four keys on the simple metal ring, and from the GM logo on the longest it was pretty obvious which one fit the ignition. Gripping the steering wheel with one hand, she bent, squinted, and tried to insert the key into the lock.

  Her hands were trembling so badly that she couldn’t quite do it. Casting fearful little sidelong glances at the man beside her, she jabbed at the ignition a second time, then a third, in vain. Panic assailed her as he quit massaging his leg. He leaned toward her; she could not prevent herself from looking at him. Just inches away, menace gleamed at her from the bloodshot slit that was his eye.

  “Get us the hell out of here now.”

  His tone galvanized her. Summer willed her hands to steadiness and thrust the key at the ignition again. Thank God, this time it slid home. He sank back in his seat. Taking a great swallow of air, she started the van, shifted the automatic transmission into reverse, and stepped on the gas.

  The van squealed backward with such force that she was almost unseated. Her instinctive reaction was to slam on the brake, which she did, throwing both of them backward, then forward. Her chest crashed into the steering wheel. Grimacing, rubbing her breastbone, she eased away from the hard plastic ring. That hurt. She reached for her seat belt, then thought better of it. Her seat belt would only slow her down should a chance of escape present itself.

  “Damn it, don’t do that again.” Recovering his own balance, his right hand pressed against the dashboard for support, her captor glared at her. The scalpel winked at her from his left fist. If luck had been smiling on her, the jolt should have caused him to inflict a mortal wound on himself with the weapon he used to threaten her. But then luck, at least her luck, was never that good.

  “I didn’t mean to do it,” she said, and took another deep breath to steady her nerves before shifting into drive.

  As her fingers curled around the handle that operated the automatic transmission Summer just happened to glance out the passenger-side window beyond him. She was shocked to see the mortuary’s front door burst open and three men spill out into the spreading fan of light cast by the front hall’s chandelier. For an instant she gaped. There were no other cars in sight. Where had the men come from? They had not been inside the mortuary when she was taken hostage and forced outside, she was sure of that, so there remained only one possibility: Even while she thought she was lying through her teeth to her captor, there must really have been men out back.

  Who were they? Would they help her? Should she try a scream now?

  Alerted by something in her expression, her captor’s head swung around. Like hers, his gaze fixed on the tableau being enacted before their eyes. The men spotted the shape on the pavement and ran toward it. Even as they reached it, it was clear from their body language that this was not the corpse they sought. They stopped, almost bumping into each other, for a moment of milling confusion. One of them glanced up and caught sight of the van, which, thanks to Summer’s rocket-speed reverse and frantic braking, was now idling motionless some two hundred feet away. He elbowed his pals, who also glanced up. Their faces were pale, featureless ovals in the moonlight.

  “There he is!”

  “He’s getting away!”

  “Get him!”

  The almost simultaneous jumble of shouts came as the trio glimpsed her captor through the window. Open-mouthed at the incongruousness of it, Summer witnessed the headlong charge of clean-cut, respectable-looking middle-aged white men in suits—pulling pistols from holsters beneath their jackets as they ran.

  “Hightail it!” her captor yelled. Not waiting for her response, he kicked his left leg across the intervening space and tromped down hard on her foot—and the gas.

  Losing h
er grip on the wheel, Summer was thrown back in her seat as the van shot across the parking lot like a missile.

  Firecrackers applauded. Something slapped into the side of the van. Once, twice, three times, with the sound of a hand smacking into flesh. What on earth …? A bullet. A hail of bullets, to be precise. Of course. The sharp pops belonged not to firecrackers but to gunfire. Her mind might be functioning a little slowly just at present, but it still functioned.

  Having finally deduced that she faced a new source of mortal danger, Summer ducked, throwing her arms up to protect her head.

  “Goddamn it, woman! Get your damned hands on the wheel! I can’t bleeping see!” He straddled the space between the seats, balancing on the edges of both, his left foot still smashing her foot and the gas pedal beneath it to the floor. His hands were on the wheel, and his head was cocked to one side as he peered desperately through the darkness at the road.

  Too stunned to respond even to her captor’s tooth-rat-ding roar, Summer continued to cower. Seconds later she was thrown hard against the door as, cursing like a juvenile delinquent on a bad night, he yanked the wheel hard. As her shoulder slammed into the door, her single coherent thought was, Please God, let it be locked!

  Apparently it was, because it held.

  Grabbing for the far edge of her seat and encountering his leg instead, Summer grabbed hold and clung like a two-year-old confronted with a strange day-care center as the van took the turn on what felt like two wheels. Then they were streaking along the narrow black-topped lane that led away from the mortuary through the cemetery and up to the main highway.

  “Get your hands off my leg, get ’em on the wheel and steer!

  This time the command got through to her, either because she feared for her life if he continued to drive, or because his bellow was right in her ear. Her bruised and terrorized body sprang into action independent of her mind and she straightened, releasing his leg. He didn’t move, though he relinquished the wheel as she grabbed it. His left arm moved to hug the back of her seat. Her shoulder butted into his side as she drove.