Moving swiftly toward the parking lot, he surveyed its contents with detached assessment. Like many hospital parking lots, this one was almost half full of unattended cars. Like taking candy from a baby, he thought, and for the hell of it selected a candy red Corvette to hot wire. He deserved some pleasure out of this godawful day.
II
Saturday, October 3, 12:45
A.M.
Clara Winston yawned. It was late, past her usual bedtime of eleven
P.M.,
and she was dead tired. She had stayed up to finish some last minute editing on her newest book. A
Summer Kiss
was one of her better efforts, she thought. Light, frothy, romantic, with believable characters. She didn’t want to be immodest, but she thought that it was really very good. As she ran her eyes over the last page of her ninth romance, she felt that indefinable tingle that always accompanied the completion of another book. Now she had a few months of leisure coming. …
Setting the proofs aside, she turned off the light and headed down the stairs. Puff, the gigantic ball of gray fur that ruled her with a rod of iron, greeted her at the foot of the stairs and weaved meowing about her ankles as she walked down the hall toward the bathroom of the small, two-story former carriage house that she had converted into her personal residence some four years before. Even with a mother as loving as Clara’s was, one needed one’s privacy,
and there was no way to dislodge her mother from the big house that had been in the Jolty family for generations. Not that she would want to, anyway. Emily Jolly Winston Crawleigh Hays Seidel
was
Jollymead. A dyed-in-the-wool Southern belle who at age fifty-two had gone through four husbands and was working on landing number five, her mother was the last of a vanishing breed. Clara loved her dearly, but she could not live in the same house with her Not unless she wanted to go insane. Besides, as she’d told her mother four years before, she needed privacy to work. Emily had been unconvinced—in her view Clara didn’t need to work, she should instead direct her energies toward finding a suitable husband—but Clara had been adamant, and in the end she had won out. The carriage house was hers. Compared to the fading magnificence of the porticoed big house it was small and insignificant and even a little shabby, but Clara loved it anyway. She had converted the entire upstairs into an office. Keeping the two sides of her life separate had seemed a good idea. Downstairs she lived, slept, and ate. Upstairs she worked.
“You just ate an entire can of seafood dinner!” Clara protested at the bathroom door, determined to ignore Puff’s protestations of starvation. The greedy monster yowled, pressing against her insistently. Clara sighed. “Look at Amy and Iris! You don’t see them begging for seconds!”
The two cream and gray Siamese cats she referred to, a gift from her aunt on Clara’s twenty-ninth birthday, were sitting side by side on the braided kitchen rug, daintily washing themselves after their evening meal. Puff spared their slender shapes not so much as a glance. Instead he sank his needle sharp teeth into Clara’s pink terry mule, as if to chide her for comparing his majestic Persian girth with their Oriental slenderness.
“Youch! Stop it, Puff!” Clara glared down at him, shoved him aside with her leg, marched into the bathroom and locked the door. Living alone as she did, locking the bathroom door would seem an unnecessary precaution. But not if she hoped for a moment’s peace. That dratted cat could open any door that was not securely locked. To keep him out, every cabinet had to have a childproof catch on it. She’d even had to slide a ruler through the twin handles of the side by side refrigerator after he’d learned to open that. Come to think of it, maybe she should have left the refrigerator alone. For a while there, he hadn’t been yowling at her every time he felt the need of sustenance in addition to his daily (gigantic) meal. He’d been opening the refrigerator and helping himself, once even knocking a carton of milk over so he and Iris and Amy could have a drink.
The cat was a menace, no doubt about it, Clara told herself as she tied a scarf around her head to keep her shoulder-length, baby fine blonde hair out of her face. Rubbing a thick white cleansing cream into her skin, she grimaced at her reflection. Puff had been with her for ten years now, and for all his many faults she loved him dearly. But since the vet had told her to put him on a diet … Clara rinsed the cream off with warm water and followed it with a splash of cold to close her pores. She just wished the vet could try putting Puff on a diet. Be firm, she silently mimicked the instructions she’d been given. The man obviously had no conception of the lengths to which Puff would go to get what he considered a decent meal.
“Yowl!”
Clara sighed. Now he would howl until she came out. She’d ignored the rattling of the door as he’d tried to jimmy it open with his paw, but his yowling was something else. The deep throated cry was as grating as fingernails across a
blackboard. But she would ignore that, too. Fixing her eyes firmly on her reflection, she smoothed moisturizing cream into the soft white skin of her face and neck. Her complexion was her one real claim to beauty, and she took care of it. Good skin made up for a lot of beauty failings, she thought, looking resignedly at her overlong nose, mismatched lips and pointy chin. The proper use of cosmetics camouflaged the rest. Her ordinary blue eyes took on a lovely sparkle when carefully framed by tangerine eyeshadow, charcoal-brown liner and deep brown mascara. And her straggly eyebrows acquired elan when cunningly filled in with a taupe pencil. In fact, when she had the time and motivation to effect the transformation, she could be quite an attractive woman. But when she was just schlepping around. …
“Yowl!”
Clara grimaced and turned away from her reflection, knowing that she could ignore the howling no longer without going mad.
“All right, Puff!” Gritting her teeth with exasperation, she retied the belt of the pink terry robe so that it was cinched even more firmly about her middle, opened the door and marched toward the kitchen. Puff, the maddening creature, purred like a motor as he followed sedately behind. He was getting his way again, and Clara had to shake her head at herself. It was a good thing she didn’t have any children, she thought as she extracted the milk from the refrigerator and poured a modest amount into Puff’s bowl. She couldn’t even control a too-fat cat!
With his motor running at high speed, Puff settled himself in front of his dish and attacked the milk with greedy laps. Amy and Iris, Clara was glad to see as she returned the milk to the refrigerator and shut the door, were already curled up
on the rug together, fast asleep. If only Puff were as well mannered as they.
A sharp knock sounded at the kitchen door. Clara started, and turned to stare. Who on earth would be knocking on her door at this time of night, so far out in the country? Her mother had left on a Caribbean cruise with her latest conquest two days before. Mrs. Mullins, the woman who kept house for her mother, was away too. The antebellum tobacco farm that was Jollymead was located along a narrow road that wound through the horse country of Virginia without ever going anywhere in particular. There was nearly half a mile between Jollymead and its nearest neighbor. So who could be—
The knock sounded again, louder this time, impatient. Amy and Iris sat up, staring at the door. Puff even looked up briefly before returning his attention to his milk.
Clara crossed to the door, hesitated, then pulled the blue gingham curtain aside so that she could look out. A man’s face stared back at her. A strange man, with short blond hair, looking at her expressionlessly through the glass. A man in a beige raincoat, who was holding something in his hand.
“Miss Winston? Claire Winston?”
The words were muffled, coming from the other side of the door, but Clara had no trouble recognizing her nom de plume. As Claire Winston, she was a fairly well-known author of romances, and since she had started putting her address in the backs of her books so that fans would know where to write her she had received a few impromptu visits as well as letters. But this man didn’t look like a romance fan—not by any stretch of the imagination. A spurt of fright caused her to drop the curtain and back hurriedly toward the
kitchen phone. As much as she hated to bother Mitch so late at night, she wanted the sheriff out there in a hurry.
Glass shattered; shards flew across the kitchen to land with a clatter on the lovingly restored brick floor. A black-gloved hand shot through the top half of the door, groping for the knob below. Gasping at the horror of it—she didn’t have enough breath to scream—Clara dropped the phone and ran for the bedroom, which had a sturdy, lockable door, another phone, and a can of mace. The cats scattered as she did. There was a tremendous crash as the door was flung back on its hinges. Her heart was pounding so fiercely that she could feel each panicked beat. She was going to make it, she was going to make it, she was go—
She stumbled over something and fell to her knees just a foot short of her bedroom. Even as she crawled frantically forward, nails digging into the plush mauve carpet, a protesting yowl told her what the something had been. Curse you, Puff! she swore silently just as a hand closed painfully over the back of her neck and hauled her to her feet.
She screamed—ear splittingly. Only to have the sound cut off by a slap so vicious that it sent her head snapping back and weakened her knees. Silenced, stunned, terrified, barely aware of the taste of blood on her tongue from a cut lip, she was forced into her bedroom by a grimly silent monster in the shape of a man who was twisting her arm behind her back as though he meant to break it. The pain shot through her body like hot swords, but even worse than the physical agony was the mental. Who was he? What did he want with her? Oh, God, was he a rapist? A killer? What could she do?
She thought about trying to kick backwards at him, then thought again. She was not even sure she could kick that far
in her present bent position, and even if her foot made contact with his leg she doubted that it would hurt him. Her slippers were soft terrycloth. In retaliation for the attempt, he might very well break her arm. He pushed her through the bedroom door, his grip on her arm tightening brutally as he forced her to her knees beside the bed. Tears formed in her eyes and clogged her throat. She was in so much pain. …
“Search the house. Everywhere,” he said over his shoulder in a cold hard voice with the faintest hint of an accent that she couldn’t, in her agony, quite place. It was then that she realized he was not alone. Crashes of overturning furniture told her that his confederates were tearing her home apart.
“You will tell me where he is and I will let you go.” Her captor was leaning over her, holding her arm in a vice grip. Bright shafts of agony shot along her nerve endings. Then he slackened his grip a degree, leaving her almost gasping in relief.
“Who—who?” The word was a squeak, but Clara was surprised she could talk at all. Her arm was twisted so viciously that she cried out.
“The Magic Dragon. Where is he?”
“The magic dragon?” Was the man insane? Oh, God, this couldn’t be happening. It was the stuff of her worst nightmares. Half sobbing, she rested her head against the soft plush covering the floor. He was going to kill her, she knew it. There was a cold viciousness about the way he deliberately caused her pain. She would die—and she wouldn’t even know why, or the identity of her killer. Clara was afraid to look at the man’s face, afraid of what he would do to her if she tried to get a glimpse of his features.
“Yes, the Magic Dragon!” He wrenched her arm again,
then slackened his grip as she cried out. “Do not play games with me! Where is he?”
“The magic dragon?” Clara thought frantically, but she had not the least idea of what he was talking about. “Uh, what magic dragon?”
Clara screamed as he twisted her arm with methodical ferocity. He would break it for sure if she didn’t tell him—what? The pain was so excruciating that she couldn’t even think clearly.
“The Magic Dragon! The Magic Dragon!
This
Magic Dragon!” He extracted something from his pocket and thrust it in front of her eyes. Clara saw that it was a copy of her latest book,
The Magic Dragon,
Her hero had been a secret agent who had used the song title as a code name. But what did her book have to do with anything?
“I’m sorry, but I don’t understand what you want.” She tried to speak clearly and reasonably, hoping that some of her reason would rub off on the maniac who was breaking her arm.
“I want to know where the Magic Dragon is!” he said in a voice more terrifying than a roar. “This Magic Dragon!” He opened the book to the title page, holding it in front of her eyes so that she could read the dedication. “With love to the real Magic Dragon, who inspired this book—and me” she’d written.
“This Magic Dragon!” he hissed. “Where is he? You will tell me
now
!”
“Uh, under the bed,” Clara whispered, closing her eyes. If he was going to kill her, she didn’t want to watch him do it.
“Under the…” His voice trailed off. His grip tightened on her arm and she braced herself as he twisted it with slow relish. Searing pain shot from her shoulder blade through
her midsection and back up again. Clara whimpered, utterly defeated. “I want the truth, and I want it now! Where is the Magic Dragon?”
“He’s under the bed. I swear it,” Clara whispered, the pain nauseating her. His grip tightened for a moment, and then he was releasing her, pushing her away so that she fell onto the carpet before pulling herself up on her hands and knees. Her arm ached so that it would not hold her weight, and Clara cradled it against her body as she clambered warily around to face him. He was on his knees too, she saw, and she also saw that he was holding an ugly black pistol. Her heartbeat speeded up and she could scarcely hear anything over its drumbeat.
“Make a move and I kill you,” he said between his teeth. Looking into icy blue eyes that glared at her from a face that would have been palely handsome if it had not been on the other end of a gun, Clara knew that he meant what he said. She also realized that, whatever this lunatic wanted, he was going to kill her sooner or later, whether he got it or not. Her fate was there in his eyes.
Somehow she managed to shake her head. But already his attention was shifting from her. She had to do something, now, she thought as he lifted the dotted swiss bed ruffle and scanned the space beneath the bed. Clara watched him, afraid to move. She had to do something, but what could she possibly do against a tall, vicious maniac with a gun?