She reached the door, slid her hand around the doorknob, took a deep breath, and turned it.
A long bolt of lightning cut across the sky, followed by a deafening clap of thunder. At the same instant, the blanket was blown off the window and rain started coming in. The combination of these events finally woke Riggs. He sat up, disoriented for a moment, and then looked around. He saw the open window, the wind and rain coming through. He glanced over at Charlie, who was still sleeping. Then it hit him.
He staggered up. “LuAnn? LuAnn?” His cries roused Charlie.
“What the hell?” he said.
In a minute they had searched the small cottage.
“She’s not here,” he screamed to Charlie.
They both raced outside. The car was still there. Riggs looked around bewildered.
“LuAnn,” Charlie screamed over the sounds of the storm.
Riggs looked over at the shed. The doors were open. It hit him. He raced over and looked in the empty shed. He looked down at the mud in front of the shed. Even in the darkness, he could make out the hoof prints. He followed the tracks to the edge of the woods. Charlie ran up beside him.
“Joy was in the shed,” he told Charlie. “It looks like she’s gone back to the house.”
“Why would she do that?”
Riggs thought hard for a minute. “Were you surprised she agreed to finally calling the FBI tomorrow?”
“Yes,” Charlie said, “but I was too damn tired and too relieved to think much about it.”
“Why would she go to the house?” Riggs repeated Charlie’s question. “The FBI is guarding the place. What would be there that she’d take that sort of risk?”
Charlie went pale and he staggered slightly.
“What is it, Charlie?”
“LuAnn once told me something Jackson had told her. A rule he lived by.”
“What was it?” Riggs demanded.
“If you want to hide something, put it out in plain sight because no one would see it.”
Now it was Riggs’s turn to go pale as the truth hit him. “Lisa’s at the house.”
“And so is Jackson.”
They raced to the car.
As the sedan flew down the road Riggs picked up the portable phone. He dialed the police and then the local FBI. He was shocked to hear Masters’s voice come on the line.
“He’s here, George. Crane’s at Wicken’s Hunt. Bring everything you got.” Riggs heard the phone drop to the desk and footsteps running off. Then he clicked off the phone and floored the car.
As the door swung open, LuAnn darted into the room. Smack in the center was a chair and in that chair was Lisa, slumped over, exhausted. The next sound LuAnn heard was the labored ticking of that clock, that wonderful, beautiful clock. She closed the door behind her and ran to her daughter, hugged her. Her face dissolved into a big smile when her daughter’s eyes met her mother’s.
And then a loop of thick cord was around LuAnn’s neck, was pulled tight, and LuAnn’s breath was suddenly gone; her gun fell to the floor.
Lisa screamed and screamed in agonizing silence, the tape still tightly across her mouth. She kicked at her chair, trying to topple it over, trying to reach her mother, help her in some way before this man killed her.
Jackson was fully behind LuAnn now. He had watched from the darkness next to the dresser as LuAnn had sailed toward Lisa, oblivious to his presence in the room. Then he had struck. The cord had a piece of wood attached to it and Jackson was winding it tighter and tighter. LuAnn’s face was turning blue, her senses were slipping away as the cord dug deeply into the skin of her neck. She tried to punch him but it was too awkward, her fists flailed helplessly, sapping away what remaining strength she had. She kicked at him, but he was too quick and dodged those blows as well. She dug at the rope with her strong fingers but it was so imbedded in her skin that there was no space left to get a grip.
He whispered into her ear. “Tick-tock, LuAnn. Tick-tock of the little clock. Like a magnet, it led you right to me. I held the phone right next to it so you couldn’t help but hear it. I told you I find out everything about someone I do business with. I visited your trailer in good old Rikersville. I listened to the rather unique sounds of that timepiece several times. And then seeing it on the wall of the bedroom the night I first visited you. Your little, cheap family heirloom.” He laughed. “I would have loved to have seen your face when you thought you had outsmarted me. Was it a happy face, LuAnn? Was it?”