“I love you,” he told her, although she could not hear him. He sat down
on the floor beside the couch, and he started to cry. He snapped back
from a daydream and realized that he was undressing her.
While his thoughts had been elsewhere, he had pulled off her thin blue
sweater, and now he was fumbling at the catch on her jeans. He stopped
what he was doing and looked at her. Naked to the waist, she looked
like a little girl despite the firm lines of her breasts. She seemed
defenseless and weak and in need of protection.
This was not the way.
Leland knew, suddenly, that if he just tied her up and put her on ice
until he had dealt with Doyle and the boy, she would be all right.
When they were dead, she would realize that Leland was all she had.
And then they could be together.
Lifting her as easily as he would have an infant, he carried her
upstairs and put her on the bed in the master bedroom. He retrieved her
sweater from the living-room floor and somehow slipped it onto her
again.
Fifteen minutes later he had tied her hands and feet with rope that he
found on the junk heap in the guest bedroom, and he had used a length of
adhesive tape to seal her mouth.
He was sitting on the bed beside her, staring into her eyes, when they
fluttered open and found him.
“Don’t be afraid,” he said.
She cried out behind the gag.
“I won’t hurt you,” he said. “I love you.”
He touched her long, fine hair. “In a little while everything will be
okay. We’ll be happy together, because we won’t have anyone else in the
world but each other.”
Twenty-three “This is our street?” Colin asked as the Thunderbird
labored up the steep lane toward a cluster of lights near the top.
“That’s right.”
Beyond an aisle of well-shaped cherry trees, the darkness of Lincoln
Park lay on their left. To the right, the land shelved down through
more darkness to the city’s lights and the glimmering necklace of the
harbor and the bay bridge. It was a stunning sight, even at three
o’clock in the morning.
“This is some place,” the boy said.
“You like it, huh?”
“It beats Philadelphia.”
Doyle laughed. “It sure does.”
“That our house up there?” Colin asked, pointing toward the only lights
ahead of them.
“Yes. And a real nice lot with plenty of big trees.” Coming home to
the place for the first time now, he knew that it was worth every penny
they had paid for it, though the price had initially seemed exorbitant.
He thought of Courtney there, waiting. He remembered the tree outside
the bedroom window, and he wondered if they would keep each other awake
until dawn, when they could see the morning sun slanting down on the
blue bay . . .
“I hope Courtney isn’t too mad about the lies we told her,” Colin said,
still looking out across the edge of the city toward the dark ocean. “If
she was, it would spoil this.”
“She won’t be angry,” Doyle said, knowing that she would be, just a
little and for just a few minutes. “She’ll be glad we’re safe and
sound.
The house lights were close now, though the outline of the structure was
hidden by a wall of deeply shadowed trees that rose behind it.
Doyle slowed down, looking for the entrance to the driveway. He found
it and turned in. Thousands of small oval stones crunched under the
tires.
He had to drive clear around to the side of the house before he saw the
Chevrolet van parked by the garage.
Twenty-four Doyle got out of the damaged car on the passenger’s side,
put one hand on Colin’s thin shoulder. “You get back in there,” he
said. “Stay here. If you see anyone but me come out of the house,
leave the car and run to the neighbors. The nearest ones are downhill.”
“Shouldn’t we call the cops and-”
“There isn’t time for that.
He’s inside with Courtney.” Alex felt his stomach twist, and he thought