As soon as he had a grip on the key, she backed away hastily and reclaimed the pistol, aiming it at him.
There was just enough play in the cuffs for him to angle one hand down and the other up. With amazing dexterity, he fit the key into the tiny hole and turned it. The bracelet on his left wrist came free. In a matter of seconds he had the other bracelet off.
Then, in one fluid motion, he vaulted off the bed and yanked the pistol out of Lilly’s hands. It happened before she could blink, insufficient time for her brain to process that she should pull the trigger. She wheeled around and tried to run from him, but he hooked his arm around her waist, bringing her up short and trapping her right arm against her side. He lifted her off the floor and held her against his chest.
“Stop it!” he ordered when she began screaming.
“I knew,” she wheezed hysterically. “I knew. You’re him.” She thrust her free elbow against his rib cage and sank her nails into the back of his hand.
“Son of a bitch!” Ungracefully hauling her into the living room, he pushed her onto the sofa, then raised his hand to his mouth and sucked at the blood flowing from the deep scratches.
Lilly perched on the edge of the sofa only long enough to gasp several breaths, then launched herself at him again, flailing at his head. But the shortage of oxygen had affe
cted her coordination. Her arms felt heavy and rubbery. She tried to connect her fists with his head, but the attempts were futile. Most of her blows fell short, went wide, or landed with negligible impact.
When he took her by the shoulders and pushed her back onto the sofa, she was helpless to do anything except fall heavily into the back cushions. He crammed the pistol into the waistband of his jeans and swiped his bleeding hand against his leg. The angry-looking scratches immediately leaked as much blood as he had wiped away.
His breathlessness was almost as bad as hers. He was noisily inhaling great drafts of air and rapidly blinking as though to stave off dizziness. His upper torso was angled forward from the waist. The blow she’d given his sore ribs had made standing upright impossible.
Good, she thought. I hope you’re suffering terrible pain. She would have gloated out loud, but she didn’t have enough breath.
But she looked up at him defiantly. If he was going to kill her now, she wanted to be looking him in the eye. She wanted him to take her defiance into hell with him and remember it for eternity.
He seemed on the verge of saying something but, without a word, went to the door and opened it. Within seconds he was back with an armload of firewood, which he dumped onto the hearth. He knelt down and stirred the coals to re-ignite the logs already on the grate.
This mystified her. “You aren’t . . . going to . . . kill me?”
“No,” he said brusquely as he came to his feet. He motioned at the logs he’d just carried in. “As they dry out, add them to the fire. They’ll last you a couple of hours.”
Only then did she realize his intention. He didn’t need to kill her. All he had to do was abandon her, leave her in the throes of a fatal asthma attack, and let the bothersome matter of Lilly Martin resolve itself. Why chalk up another murder on his roster of crimes when he didn’t need to?
To cover the ones he’d already committed, he had the presence of mind to retrieve the evidence against him from the bedroom. He replaced the handcuffs and ribbon in his backpack. As he zipped them into separate compartments, he avoided looking at her. Was he feeling a twinge of guilt?
Because by not killing her, he was condemning her to her worst fear. While she’d been debating whether or not to release him, one scenario she hadn’t considered was that he would abandon her to live through her nightmare before succumbing to it. Her heart constricted. “You promised—”
“I know what I promised,” he said, cruelly cutting her off.
He pulled on his coat and worked the watch cap down over his head. He draped the stadium blanket over the cap and folded the ends of it across his chest before zipping it inside his coat. He wound the wool scarf around his neck and the lower half of his face, then pulled on his gloves. Last, he picked up his backpack and slung it over his shoulder. Every motion caused him to grimace and gasp in pain. Nevertheless he moved with haste, purpose.
As he walked toward the door, she was tempted to call him back, beg him to shoot her now. It would be a swift and painless death, not the prolonged and terrifying one facing her. She was more frightened of the fear and dread of dying than she was of death itself.
But she had too much pride to beg him for anything, nor would her survival instinct concede a voluntary death. So she watched him walk away, leaving her to struggle for each breath until she could struggle no longer, leaving her to die alone.
When he reached the door, he paused with his hand on the knob and turned only his head. Above the scarf, his eyes connected with hers, but only for an instant, no longer.
He opened the door. A swirl of snow engulfed him. Then it vanished as quickly as he.
• • •
Lilly’s cell phone rang twice before the connection was lost, which was more tormenting to Dutch than if it hadn’t rung at all. The aborted call increased his frustration, which was already strained to the breaking point.
The anteroom of police department headquarters was more crowded than he remembered it being since he was hired as chief. The feebs were there. Agent Wise was solemnly—did that guy ever crack a smile?—introducing Begley to Millicent Gunn’s parents. Mrs. Gunn looked scrawnier today than she had yesterday.
Wes, for reasons unbeknownst to Dutch, had been there when they arrived and was drinking coffee and chatting with the officer manning the desk. He was head of the city council, but since when was a police investigation any business of his?
Harris had followed them from the hospital in his squad car. He was starstruck by Wise and Begley, trailing them like a puppy, stumbling over his own big feet in his eagerness to assist. Why wasn’t he out on patrol, where he was supposed to be? And why wasn’t he, Dutch, ordering Harris back to his unit and onto the streets, where he could be of some use, instead of in here, further crowding the place, getting in everybody’s way?
For some reason, Dutch didn’t have the wherewithal to correct the young officer. It didn’t seem worth the effort it would take to issue an order and put any level of authority behind it. He felt oddly detached from what was going on around him, and he wondered not only at what point he had lost control but when he had ceased to care.