Chyna’s throat tightened with anguish, and she could barely speak: “It’s me.”
Laura’s eyelids sprang open, and her blue eyes rolled like those of a terrified horse, wide with disbelief. “All dead.”
“Ssshhh,” Chyna whispered.
“Blood. His hands.”
“Ssshhh. I’ll get you out of here.”
“Stank like blood. Jack’s dead. Nina. Everyone.”
Jack, her brother, whom Chyna had not met. Nina, her sister-in-law. Evidently the killer had been to the vineyard manager’s bungalow before coming to the main house. Four dead. There was no help to be found anywhere on the sprawling property.
Chyna glanced worriedly at the open door, then quickly rose to test the handcuffs on Laura’s wrists. Securely locked.
With fettered hands and fettered ankles linked by a chain, Laura was thoroughly hobbled. She wouldn’t be able to stand, let alone walk.
Chyna wasn’t strong enough to carry her.
She saw her reflection in the vanity mirror across the room, and she realized with a shock how nakedly her terror was revealed in her wrenched face.
Trying to look more composed for Laura’s sake, Chyna stopped beside the bed again and murmured almost as softly as her friend had been praying: “Is there a gun?”
“What?”
“A gun in the house?”
“No.”
“Nowhere in the house?”
“No, no.”
“Shit.”
“Jack.”
“What?”
“Has one.”
“A gun? At the bungalow?” Chyna asked.
“Jack has a gun.”
Chyna didn’t have time to get to the bungalow and back before the killer returned to Laura’s room. Anyway, more likely than not, he had already found the gun and confiscated it.
“Do you know who he is?”
“No.” Laura’s sky-blue eyes appeared to darken with despair. “Get out.”
“I’ll find a weapon.”
“Get out,” Laura whispered more urgently, cold sweat glistening on her brow.
“A knife,” Chyna said.
“Don’t die for me.” Then, sotto voce, tremulously but fiercely, fiercely she said: “Run, Chyna. Oh, God, please run!”
“I’ll be back.”
“Run.”
From outside, a sound arose. A truck engine. Approaching.
Astonished, Chyna shot to her feet. “Someone’s coming. Help’s coming.”
Laura’s bedroom was toward the front of the house. Chyna stepped to the nearer of two windows, which provided a view of the half-mile driveway leading in from the two-lane county road.
A quarter of a mile away, bright headlights pierced the night. Judging by the height of the lights from the ground, Chyna concluded that the truck was big.
How miraculous that anyone would show up at this hour, in this lonely place.
As a thrill of hope swept through Chyna, she realized that the killer would have heard the engine too. The man or men in the truck wouldn’t know what trouble they were getting into. When they stopped in front of the house, they would be dead men breathing.
“Hold on,” she said, touched Laura’s damp forehead to reassure her, and then crossed the room to the door, leaving her friend under the smug and somber gaze of Sigmund Freud.
The hallway was deserted.
Chyna hurried to the head of the curved stairs, hesitated to commit herself to the tenebrous lair below, but then realized that she had nowhere else to go. She went down as fast as she dared without the support of the handrail. Staying clear of the balustrade. Too exposed there. Close to the wall was better.
She quickly passed a series of large landscape paintings in ornate frames, which seemed almost to be windows on actual pastoral vistas. Earlier, they had been bright and cheerful scenes. Now they were ominous: goblin forests, black rivers, killing fields.
The foyer. An oval area rug on polished oak. Through a closed door to the right was Paul Templeton’s study. Through the archway on the left was the dark living room.
The killer could be anywhere.
Outside, the roar of the truck grew louder. It was almost to the house. The driver would be shot through the windshield the moment that he braked to a stop. Or gunned down when he stepped out from behind the steering wheel.
Chyna had to warn him, not solely for his sake but for her own, for Laura’s. He was their only hope.
Certain that the spider-eating intruder was nearby, she expected a savage attack and, abandoning caution, flew at the front door. The oval rug rucked beneath her feet, twisted, and nearly spun out from under her. She stumbled, reached out to break her fall, and slammed both palms flat against the front door.