I held the jacket to my face and smelled it. It had the unmistakable fragrance of her perfume—pretty horrid, but it was Mom. I felt my eyes filling and wiped at them with my hand. Leaving her jacket for me was motherly, wasn’t it? I chose to believe that it was.
I looked up the road. The taillights were still easily visible. I had no illusions that I could catch them, or even track them for long, but at least I might be able to see if they turned off the main road before I lost them. That would help the police. Of course, getting the police out here would take a long time, even if I had a phone and could call them right then. I had no idea where I was. How could I expect the police to help in any time frame that would matter to whether Mom lived or died?
I looked at Mom’s jacket and then at my bare feet. The jacket could help, but not in the way she probably imagined when she threw it out of the car. I sat down in the middle of the road and tore the jacket down the middle seam. Then I wrapped one half around each foot, tied each half off, and stood up. Not exactly Adidas, but not bad.
I took a few quick steps and reached down to make some adjustments to cover the pressure points. After a few more tentative steps, I started to jog. My legs and hip ached, but by the time I’d gone a couple hundred yards, things began to loosen up. Even my head began to feel better with the movement. I was desperately thirsty, but that would have to wait. I tried to think about something else.
Within a few minutes the car’s taillights, which were very far down the road now, brightened. I moved over to the ditch and crouched, ready to bolt back into the field if they turned around. Instead, they made a right turn and headed at a ninety-degree angle to the road I was on. I stood next to the ditch and squinted into the night. They traveled half a mile or so and turned left, moving away from me for a few seconds. Then the taillights went dark. They had stopped.
There was still not another car in sight. From the narrowness of the road and the roughness of the asphalt, I gathered I was not exactly on Main Street, even by rural Texas standards. This late at night there was no telling when another car might come by. I kept my eye on the spot where the taillights vanished and made a mental note of a row of tall trees, probably a windbreak, just beyond. It wouldn’t be easy to find the spot, and I didn’t want to waste time trying to locate them when I got in the vicinity. Just as I was about to start jogging again, a yellow light came on near the car. It appeared to be a light from a house or a building of some sort. They had moved indoors.
I took a deep breath and set out down the middle of the road at an easy pace that I thought my feet could handle. The air was cooling, but the jog would warm me quickly. Assuming that the place where they stopped was a mile-and-a-half or so away, I figured I could reach them in less than twenty minutes if my feet held out.
As I fell into a rhythm I chuckled when I thought what a picture I would make if a car did come down the road. A long-legged woman in a shredded, muddy dress, with a cocktail jacket for shoes. Just out for a jog on a country road at who-knows-what-time in the morning. No one was likely to pick up this hitchhiker.
Nevertheless, I desperately hoped for a pickup to come by—preferably one with a good old boy and a shotgun in the cab. I was going to save my mother or die trying. And if no one came along to help, I was just going to have to improvise.
CHAPTER
THIRTY-TWO
BY THE TIME I reached their car, my footwear had shredded, and I was running barefoot in the grass on the side of the road. Mom’s jacket had served its purpose, though. My feet were in reasonably good shape, although they stung like crazy where my stride had brought me down on burrs.
When I got within a couple hundred yards, I stopped, wiped the sweat from my face with what was left of my tattered dress, and surveyed the area. The car was parked in front of a relatively new, two-story log cabin with an elevated porch that appeared to run all the way around the building. The backyard sloped away, so the porch was just a few feet above the ground in the front, but looked to be ten feet or so off the ground in the back. I figured that the back of the house must have a walkout basement, with the floor of the porch forming the roof of the walkout.
From the size of the cabin, I guessed we were on a high-end hunting lease, which explained why the road had been so empty. The house was lit up as if they were throwing a holiday party. I couldn’t see anyone through the windows, and I had no idea whether they had met others there.
Keeping my distance, I moved around the side to the back. The porch extended farther from the house in the back, creating a large deck on which sat a huge double-winged gas grill that I could see from the slope when I stood on tiptoe. I wondered if there might be a propane tank I could use somehow.
As I suspected, the basement of the house walked out onto a concrete patio beneath the deck. The windows in the basement were dark. That could be the most opportune spot if I needed to break in. I continued around the back, staying twenty yards clear of the deck, until I rounded the corner and moved back up the hill on the opposite side of the house.
The terrain sloped upward so steeply that when I neared the front of the house I could easily step up onto the porch and swing myself over the cedar rail if I wanted to. Four rustic rocking chairs sat in a row on the porch on that side of the house. A dozen or so western items hung from the outside wall as decorations. There were horseshoes and steer skulls, and near the back corner two things that particularly caught my eye: old-fashioned, steel-jawed traps with jagged shark-like teeth that could clamp onto a leg or foot and do serious damage.
When I reached the top of the slope, I turned the corner, dropped to my knees, and crawled along the porch line in the front of the house. Here the porch was only a few feet off the ground. The earth was slightly muddy, but by that time I could have rolled in a pig sty and it wouldn’t have made much difference. I had a shredded dress and shredded legs, and grass or straw clung to virtually everything else. I stopped for a second, sat, and rubbed mud on my face and neck. If I was going to sneak around, I might as well be as hard to spot as possible. Besides, if these guys saw me the psychological effect couldn’t hurt. They were sure to think I was a lunatic.
When I got to the front window, I peeked over the edge of the porch. The big guy was standing with his back angled to the window. He was talking on a cell phone. The side of his face was flushed, but I couldn’t tell if he was angry or drunk or just ruddy. In his hand was a 9mm pistol, which he waved in the air as he spoke. I crawled back around the corner and sat with my back to one of three log posts that held up the front of the porch.
It was time to formulate a plan. They weren’t going to sit in this house forever, knowing that I was loose and might bring help. On the other hand, they were likely worried about police cars and SWAT teams. It would never occur to them that I was crazy enough to arrive on my own.
I analyzed the information I had. In the house were at least two men. One had a gun, and it was a safe bet the other must, also. Both were considerably larger than I was, but the skinny one didn’t look too imposing. In an ideal world he would be the one I tangled with, if necessary. On the other hand, I had to avoid getting close to the giant or I was likely to die—and so was Mom.
I assumed Mom was still alive. We were in open country, and a loud sound would travel for miles. If they’d already killed her, I’d have heard the shot. In trying to rescue her, though, I faced two huge disadvantages: I had no idea where she was in the house and no idea of the floor plan.
It was time to face facts. My chances of pulling this off alone were slim, but I had no way to call for help. Even if I did, Mom might be dead by the time it arrived. I thought about the jacket she threw out of the trunk for me. I was not going to leave her here to die alone.
I peeked over the porch at the traps on the wall. They were the only halfway decent weapons available. The trick was to come up with a plan that would allow me to take advantage of them.
I studied the traps in the indirect yellow light coming through the window near the back of the porch. The larger of the two must have had an eight-inch jaw spread—probably designed for coyote. Those jagged teeth were as illegal as a hand grenade. Before I could figure out how to use the trap, I had to get it in my hands. I ran my fingers around in the dirt beneath the porch until they closed around a stone about the size of a tennis ball. If I was going up on the porch, I at least wanted some sort of a weapon to buy a few seconds if I got surprised.
I grabbed the porch rail and pulled myself up and over. My bare feet hardly made a sound when they came down on the wood plank floor. I edged along the wall toward the back corner of the house until I came to the first of two windows. It was dark and small and appeared to look out from a bathroom or laundry room. I took a quick look and confirmed that it was a slender bathroom with a tub and shower. I continued past it and reached the traps, which were only a few feet from the second window.
The light from the window illuminated the traps. Each hung from a metal hook and was tethered to the wall at the bottom by a leather strap tied around a thick nail. I untied the strap on the larger trap and lifted it from its hook. Its weight surprised me as I eased if off the wall. The first thing was to determine whether it worked. The porch wasn’t the best place for that. I eased back toward the front of the house to a point where the porch was low enough that I could swing myself back over the rail to the ground.
My feet squished into the mud as I landed. I sat with my back to the porch post and laid the trap on the ground. On each side of the circular trap was a stabilizer leg that stuck out about four inches. The legs could be spiked to the ground to hold the trap in place. In the center of the trap was a metal trip plate. When the trap was in the open, loaded position, any pressure applied to the trip plate would spring it, slamming the jaws shut.
The jaw spread was large enough to break a man’s ankle in an instant, if I could just figure a way to lure someone into it. I grabbed the jaws and pressed my weight down on them to load it. It clicked into the locked position. Now, would it snap shut? I wanted to test it, but those heavy metal teeth would echo like a gunshot when they snapped. I would have to trust that it would work.
Holding the trap by one of the stabilizing legs, I pulled myself up over the rail again and edged down the porch. When I reached the last window on that side, I peeked through the glass. It was the kitchen. Skinny Man was sitting at the table, facing away from a huge window that overlooked the back porch. From my angle I was looking at his profile. He was alone in the room, smoking a cigarette. Just behind him and to his right was the door to the back deck. On the table in front of him was a beer can—and a Beretta 9mm semiautomatic. I needed that gun.
I flattened my back against the wall. There was little time to think. Dad used to tell me that sometimes the best battle plans were the simple ones born of opportunity. On the other side of the wall I was leaning against was a pistol. It was a weapon I desperately needed, and it was sitting on a table in front of a guy I thought I could take. That was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up.
I ducked beneath the glass and moved around the back corner of the house, where I slid along the wall until I was next to the picture window. Skinny Man’s back was no more than five feet from me. I scanned the kitchen through the window. A door led from the kitchen to a narrow hallway that seemed to open onto the family room in the front.
The only thing separating Skinny Man and me was a fraction of an inch of glass. The question was, what was the best way to get through that glass? The back door was almost certainly locked, and it was several steps away from him. I couldn’t give him time to pick up that gun.
I lifted the trap by one of its legs and waggled it like a softball bat. With its heft, one good shot to the head would neutralize Skinny Man, at least for a moment. I looked at the picture window, then down at the trap. I leaned back against the wall. My eye caught a wrought iron deck chair about ten feet away.
I looked through the window again. Skinny Man took a sip of beer, then a deep drag on his cigarette. He tilted his head back and blew smoke toward the ceiling. I leaned the trap against the wall and stepped lightly across the deck to the chair. Picking it up was not that easy with one hand in a splint, but I was happy that it was good and heavy.
I took a deep breath and exhaled. Holding the chair waist high, I ran toward the picture window. When I got within a few feet, I pivoted, swung the chair behind me, and slung it at the back of Skinny Man’s head.
The glass exploded over him. The chair grazed his shoulder and crashed to the floor. I picked up the trap, hopped over the window sill, and uncoiled my best softball swing.
Skinny Man felt for the gun but it clattered to the floor. He threw his chair back and spun toward me, but he was too slow. My swing was true. His timing was unfortunate. The trap crashed into his head, and the trip plate crushed his nose. A coyote’s foot could not have sprung the trap more efficiently.
The jaws snapped shut. The teeth crunched into his jaw.
He let out a bestial howl and clawed at the jagged metal. He shook his head, trying to fling it off his face. Each time he slung his head from side to side, blood flew across the room in a stream.