trembling on the edge of dematerialization.
He entered the room in a rush and seized the woman from behind, curling
his right arm around her neck and jerking her head back, so she-and the
two men-would understand at once that he could snap her neck in an
instant, whenever he chose. Even so, she slashed backward with one
foot, scraping the heel of her shoe down his shin, stomping on his foot,
all of which hurt like hell; it was some martial-art move, and he could
tell by the way she tried to counterbalance his grip and stance that she
had a lot of training in such things. So he jerked her head back again,
even harder, and flexed his biceps, which pinched her windpipe, hurting
her enough to make her realize that resistance was suicidal.
Fogarty watched from his chair, alarmed but not sufficiently to rise to
his feet, and the hush and came off the sofa with a gun in his hand, Mr.
Quick-Draw Artist, but Candy was not concerned about either of them. His
attention was on Frank, who had risen from his chair and appeared about
to blink out of there, off to Punaluu and Kyoto and a score of other
places.
“Don’t do it, Frank!” he said sharply.
“Don’t run away. It’s time we settled, time you paid for what you did
to our mother. You come to the house, accept God’s punishment, and end
it now, tonight. I’m going there with this bitch. She tried to help
you, I guess, so maybe you won’t want to see her suffer.” The hush and
was going to do something crazy; seeing Julie in Candy’s grip had
clearly unhinged him. He was searching for a shot, a way to get Candy
without getting her, and he might even risk firing at Candy’s head,
though Candy was half crouching behind the woman. Time to get out of
there.
“Come to the house,” he told Frank.
“You come into the kitchen, let me end it for you, and I’ll let her go.
I swear on our mother’s name, I’ll let her go. But if you don’t come in
fifteen minutes, I’ll put this bitch on the table, and I’ll have my
dinner, Frank. You want me to feed on her after she tried to help you,
Frank?” Candy thought he heard a gunshot just as he got out of the In
any event, it had been too late. He rematerialized in the kitchen of
the house on Pacific Hill Road, with Julie still locked in the crook of
his arm.
NO LONGER concerned about the danger of touching Frank, Bobby grabbed
handsful of his jacket and shoved him backward against the wide-louvered
shutters on the library window.
“You heard him, Frank. Don’t run. Don’t run this time, or I’ll hang on
to you and never let go, no matter where you take me, I swear to God,
you’ll wish you’d put your neck on Candy’s platter instead of mine.” He
slammed Frank against the shutters to make his point, and behind him he
heard Lawrence Fogarty’s soft, knowing laughter.
Registering the terror and confusion in his client’s eyes, Bobby
realized that his threats would not achieve the effect he desired. In
fact, threats would almost certainly frighten Frank into flight, even if
he wanted to help Julie. Worse, by stooping to violence as a first
resort, he was treating Frank not as a person but as meat, confirming
the depraved code by which the corrupt old physician had led his entire
life, and that was almost as intolerable as losing Julie.
He let go of Frank.
“I’m sorry. Listen, I’m sorry, I just got a little crazy.” He studied
the man’s eyes, searching for some indication that sufficient
intelligence remained in the damaged brain for the two of them to reach
an understanding. He saw fear, stark and terrible, and he saw a
loneliness that made him want to cry. He saw a lost look, too, not
unlike what he had sometimes seen in Thomas’s eyes when they had taken
him on an excursion from Cielo Vista,
“out in the world,” as he had said.
Aware that perhaps two minutes of Candy’s fifteen-minute deadline had