But she wondered if even the gun would give her enough of an edge when the time arrived to go face-to-face with this man.
Of course a direct confrontation might never have to take place. Chyna intended to hide until they arrived at his house and then find out where the girl was being held. With that information, she would be able to go to the police, and they could nail this creep and free Ariel and—
And what?
And in saving the girl, she would save herself. From what, she was not sure. From a life of merely surviving? From the endless and fruitless struggle to understand?
Crazy, crazy, but there was no turning back now. And in her heart she knew that risking all was less crazy than living a life that had no higher goal than survival.
As if thrown forward by the hard knocking of her heart, Chyna reached the rear of the motor home. The closed door to the only bedroom.
Jesus.
She didn’t want to go in there. With Laura dead. The man in the closet. The sewing kit waiting to be used again.
Jesus.
But it was the best place to hide, so she opened the door and went in and closed the door behind her and eased to the left through the palpable darkness and put her back against the wall.
Maybe he wouldn’t drive straight home. He might stop at some point between here and there to come to the back of the motor home and have a look at his trophies.
Then she would kill him the instant that he stepped through the door. Empty the revolver into him. Take no chances.
With him dead, they might never find Ariel. Or they might find her only after she had perished of starvation, an excruciatingly painful way to die.
Nevertheless, if the killer entered this bedroom, Chyna wouldn’t rely on half measures. She would not attempt to wound him and keep him alive for police interrogation, not in this tight space with him looming over her and with so many ways that things could go wrong.
*
Lights off, windshield wipers off, Edgler Vess sits in the dead car by the side of the road. Thinking.
There are numerous ways that he can proceed from here. Life is always a laden buffet of treats, a vast smorgasbord groaning with infinite choices of sensations and experiences to thrill the heart—but never more so than now. He wishes to exploit the opportunity to the fullest possible extent, to extract from it the greatest possible excitement and the most poignant sensations, and he must, therefore, not act precipitously.
Luck had given him a glimpse of her in the rearview mirror: as fleet as a deer across the blacktop, hesitating at the open door of the motor home, and then up and inside and out of sight.
She must be the woman from the Honda. When she passed him earlier, he had looked down through the windshield of her car and had seen her red sweater.
In the accident, she might have received a hard blow to the head. Now perhaps she is dazed, confused, frightened. This would explain why she doesn’t approach him directly and ask for help or for a ride to the nearest service station. If her thoughts are addled, the irrational decision to become a stowaway aboard the motor home might seem perfectly reasonable to her.
She did not appear to be suffering from a head injury, however, or any injury at all. She hadn’t staggered or stumbled across the highway but had been swift and surefooted. At this distance and in the rearview mirror, Vess wouldn’t have been able to see blood even if she had been bleeding; but he knows intuitively that there was no blood.
The longer he considers the situation, the more it seems to him that the accident was staged.
But why?
If the motive had been robbery, she would have accosted him the moment that he stepped onto the highway.
Besides, he isn’t driving one of those elaborate three-hundred thousand-dollar land yachts that, by their very flashiness, advertise their contents to thieves. His vehicle is seventeen years old and, though well maintained, worth considerably less than fifty thousand bucks. It seems pointless to wreck a relatively new Honda for the purpose of looting the contents of an aging vehicle that promises no treasures.