Ultimate Thriller Box Set - Crouch Blake - Страница 161

“Go ahead, open it.”

She tore off the wrapping, feeling queasy. When did he get her a present?

“Could you be a little more careful?” Dale said. “We can use that paper again.”

She did as she was told, gently parting the wrapping where the Scotch tape was until it revealed her gift: A Lucite photo cube.

“Well? Do you like it?”

“It’s great,” she said, trying to sound enthusiastic.

“That’s for our trip. Here, let me put it away so we don’t get food on it." He cleared the paper and put the cube away up in a top cupboard. He removed the bow from the wrapping paper and smoothed the paper out, folded it neatly, and put both the paper and the bow in a kitchen drawer. Then he sat down at the dinette table to watch her eat.

The idea of eating anything made her want to gag, but she smiled and bit into the sandwich. It tasted like cardboard. She chewed and chewed, trying to make the food small enough to swallow, and kept smiling. That seemed to please him. He acted like he had a crush on her—like he was shy or something. He reminded her of Justin Teeters in fifth period, who, whenever he saw her, got this look on his face that was really comic. She’d say “hi” and he couldn’t even answer back.

In that way, Dale was just like Justin. She knew he wanted to do it with her, but she also knew that he was holding back. Because he was shy?

Was he just like Justin, only older? She closed her eyes, imagined that her power was bigger than herself. That she was bigger and bigger, and Dale was smaller and smaller.

When she opened her eyes, he was looking at her. Staring. “How is it?” he asked.

“Mmmm. Really good.”

“I bought ice cream for dessert. I know it’s almost breakfast time, but hey, we can do anything we want.”

Like a little kid. Jeez.

“Would you like some?”

She swallowed more of the cardboard. “Sure.”

“I got Neopolitan,” he said shyly. “That way you can choose what you want—chocolate, vanilla, or strawberry.”

“Cool.”

“You look so much better in that dress.”

That reminded her. “What did you do with my clothes?”

“They’re gone. Never you worry about that. You won’t have to see them again.”

She almost said she liked them, but bit her tongue. Humor him. Humor him until you can find a way to get out of here.

She set the sandwich down, sipped some Coke. Looked at him, memorizing his face. That way, her dad would be able to track him down after she escaped.

How she was going to escape, she didn’t know. But the more time she spent with him, the better she felt about her chances. He was kind of pathetic. She almost felt sorry for him. Sorry and grateful that he wasn’t the kind of kidnapper she’d seen on the Discovery channel, the ones who murdered their victims. She couldn’t see him murdering anybody.

“You like the sandwich?” he asked again.

“Oh yeah. I just don’t eat a lot. I’m on a diet.”

He frowned. “You don’t need to diet. Why do girls do that? You should be healthy, enjoy your life, not diet. I told Misty that.”

“Who’s Misty?" Get him talking.

“She was my first girlfriend.”

“I bet she was pretty.”

“Oh, she was.”

“How come you aren’t still with her?”

“We grew apart.”

“I’m sorry … I don’t know why she’d want to leave someone as nice as you. I mean, you’re really pretty cool.”

He stood up abruptly. “If you’re not going to finish that, I’ll throw it away.”

She’d made him mad.

He shoved the picnic plates into the garbage. He wouldn’t look at her, but she could tell he was angry by the way his shoulders hunched, the way he slammed around.

Finally he turned to face her. “Why do you have to be so sly?”

His face was dark red, his eyes like marbles. Suddenly he looked dangerous.

Her heart sped up. What was he mad about?

“Flattery will get you nowhere,” he said.

“I just meant—“

“I know what you meant. You think you can wrap me around your little finger? Well, that’s not going to happen.” He stepped forward, his hands clenching and unclenching. “That makes me so mad.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it. Honest.”

“I think you’d better go to your room, young lady.”

“Okay." She slipped out from behind the dinette table, had to pass right by him to get to the bedroom. She tried not to touch him at all, but her dress brushed against his thigh.

His hands came out and he whipped her around to face him. Bands of steel around her upper arms, nails digging in. His hands were trembling. His head was trembling.

His face was so close. It blotted out everything. His mouth was working, and his eyes—

His eyes were dark, like holes. Like there wasn’t anything there behind them. Just black space. She opened her mouth to say she was sorry, but nothing came out.

He shook her, once, hard, and slammed her against the stove. The edge of the stove whacked into her elbow, the shock running up her arm to her chin. She groaned.

He continued to stare at her. Eyes like holes. She was distracted by the pain in her elbow. Her funny bone.

Then she saw something else way down deep in his eyes. Pain? It was shiny, slick, desperate. He turned around and walked away from her. “Best get to your room,” he said without looking at her.

She bolted for the room and locked the door.

A few minutes later she heard something bang against the doorjamb, then the sound of a padlock clicking shut.

47

Victor, Laura, Buddy, and Jerry Grimes set up a task force, calling their contacts at other law enforcement agencies—the FBI; US Customs; her own DPS Highway Patrol; US Border Patrol; and the sheriffs in all Arizona counties, the Tucson, South Tucson, Marana, Oro Valley, and Green Valley police departments. Laura contacted the detectives she knew with these agencies. Every agency was faxed a picture of a 1987 Fleetwood Pace Arrow, the headshot of Lundy, both names, and his license plate number. They also contacted law enforcement in New Mexico, California, and Mexico.

Anybody and everybody to help them out.

Buddy asked, “What about media?”

Laura was torn about that. “We have no idea if he’s still in Tucson, but if he is, we don’t want him to run.”

“I think we should keep it to law enforcement,” Victor said.

Laura agreed.

Buddy wanted the Amber Alert.

“It’s too fucking late for that,” Victor snapped.

Charlie Specter, a DPS intelligence analyst, started entering what data they had on Lundy in the Rapid Start system. Rapid Start was a computer program developed by the FBI for just this kind of situation. He would enter the data as information came in from various law enforcement entities—one man in charge of everything.

“Too bad we don’t have his computer,” Charlie said to Laura. “I guess he’s had it with him all this time.”

“Is there any way to track his movements on the Internet?” she asked. Just then her mobile rang. She excused herself, walking away so she could hear.

The caller was Barry Fruchtendler. She rummaged through her overloaded circuits and pulled up the name—the cop who worked the Julie Marr case—and told him she’d have to get back to him later. He gave her his number in Montana and she wrote it down. As she flipped the phone closed, she tried to recapture her line of thought. “What if we had his e-mail address?” she asked Charlie.

“That depends. If he’s gone wireless …" He shrugged. “Worth a shot, though.”

“How would that work?”

“If he’s on the road, he’ll need one of the big servers he can access by an 800 number. All he needs is a phone jack, and he can keep up on his correspondence, no matter where he is.”

Laura was puzzled. “The motor home wouldn’t have a phone jack, would it?”

“Nope, but there are plenty of places he can go. Cyber cafes, any place he could get his hands on a phone line. Which would give us a great way to find out where he is. Once you have his e-mail account, you could subpoena his Internet server and have them intercept his e-mails. Trick is to let the e-mails go through so he doesn’t notice anything unusual, but a copy comes here to us." He saw Laura’s puzzled expression. “When an e-mail goes out, it has to go some place to wait before it’s sent on—kind of a like a clearinghouse. When you log on, you ask for your e-mail and that’s when the server sends it.”