unprotected, windswept pavement to track him by his tire prints.
She drove as close to the castle as she could get, halted by a long row
of ticket booths and crowd-control stanchions of poured concrete.
They looked like massive barricades on a heavily defended beach to
prevent enemy tanks from being put ashore.
When Hatch slammed down the handset, Lindsey was not sure what to make
of his end of the conversation, which had alternated between pleading
and angry insistence. She didn’t know whether the cops were coming or
not, but her sense of urgency was so great, she didn’t want to take time
to ask him about it She just wanted to move, move. She threw the car
into park the moment it braked to a full stop, didn’t even bother to
switch off the engine or the headlights. She liked the headlights, a
little something against the cloying night. She flung open her door,
ready to go in on foot.
But he shook his head, no, and picked up his Browning from the floor at
his feet.
“What?” she demanded.
“He went in by car somehow, somewhere. I think I’ll find the creep
quicker if we stay on his trail, go in the way he went in, let myself
open to this bond between us. Besides, the place is so damned huge,
we’ll get around it faster in a car.”
She got behind the wheel again, popped the Mitsubishi into gear, and
said, “Where?”
He hesitated only a second, perhaps a fraction of a second, but it
seemed that any number of small helpless girls could have been
slaughtered in that interlude before he said, “Left, go left, along the
fence.”
2
Vassago parked the car by the lagoon, cut the engine, got out, and went
around to the girls side. Opening her door, he said, “Here we are,
angel.
An amusement park, just like I promised you. Isn’t it fun? Aren’t you
amused?”
He swung her around on her seat to bring her legs out of the car. He
took his switchblade from his jacket pocket, snapped the well-honed
knife out of the handle, and showed it to her.
Even with the thinnest moon, and although her eyes were not as sensitive
as his, she saw the blade. He saw her see it, and he was thrilled by
the quickening of terror in her face and eyes.
“I’m going to free your legs so you can walk,” he told her, turning the
blade slowly, slowly, so a quicksilver glimmer trickled liquidly along
the cuttingedge. “If you’re stupid enough to kick me, if you think you
can catch my head maybe and knock me silly long enough to get away, then
you’re silly, angel. It won’t work, and then I’ll have to cut you to
teach you a lesson. Do you hear me, precious? Do you understand?”
She emitted a muffled sound through the wadded scarf in her mouth, and
the tone of it was an acknowledgement of his power.
“Good,” he said. “Good girl. So wise. You’ll make a fine Jesus, won’t
you? A really fine little Jesus.”
He cut the cords binding her ankles, then helped her out of the car.
She was unsteady, probably because her muscles had cramped during the
trip, but he did not intend to let her dawdle. seizing her by one arm,
leaving her wrists bound in front of her and the gag in place, he pulled
her around the front of the car to the retaining wall of the funhouse
lagoon.
The retaining wall was two feet high on the outside, twice that on the
inside where the water once had been. He helped Regina over it, onto
the dry concrete floor of the broad lagoon. She hated to let him touch
her, even though he still wore gloves, because she could feel his
coldness through the gloves, or thought she could, his coldness and damp
skin, which made her want to scream. She knew already that she couldn’t
scream, not with the gag in her mouth. If she tried to scream she only
choked on it and had trouble breathing, so she had to let him help her
over the wall. Even when he didn’t touch her bare hand with his gloved