Alarums. Part 39

Just beyond the Cadillac, she stopped. She killed her headlights to darken her license plates - in case someone should notice Bodie abandoning the stolen car and getting into hers.

'Hurry, would you?' she muttered.

Finally, he climbed out. Pen leaned across the pa.s.senger seat, shouldering over the shotgun, and unlatched the door. She grabbed the barrel in time to keep the gun from falling out as he opened the door. Straightening up, she pulled it with her. The interior light was on, but just for a moment. Then the door b.u.mped shut and darkness came back.

Pen drove away with her headlights off. 'I thought you were going to stay in there all night,' she said.

'I had to find the registration. I'll try to call the owner when I get the chance, tell him where to find his car.' Then he told Pen how he had stolen it.

Pen listened, stunned.

'I didn't even think about it,' he said. 'All of a sudden, I was just doing it. The funny thing is, I don't even feel very guilty. I'm just glad I wasn't caught.'

Pen turned the corner and put on her headlights. 'Me, too.'

'I've never done anything like that before.' He sounded apologetic.

Pen reached over and squeezed his hand. 'If you think I'm going to hold it against youa I feel badly that you hurt the man, buta hey, the gallant knight can't come to the rescue if he ain't got a charger.'

'Only thing is,' he muttered, 'the damsel wasn't in distress.'a 'You didn't know that.'

'It's the thought that counts, right?'

She glanced at him. Her throat felt tight. 'The thought counts plenty. You better believe it.'

Bodie's fingers tightened around her hand.

Pen stopped for a traffic light at Pico. 'I guess I'll go surface streets,' she said. 'Either way, it'll take a while to reach Harrison 's.'

'Take the slowest route.'

'You don't mean that.'

'I know.'

The light changed. Driving through the intersection, she looked up the road and saw the hospital in the distance. She thought of her father lying in bed, kept alive by tubes. 'I didn't even go and see him today,' she said.

'We'll go tomorrow.'

We. The word made her feel good. 'You're not going back to Phoenix tonight?'

'It's a little late for that. Besides, things have changed. Things have changed, haven't they?'

'A lot,' Pen a.s.sured him.

'You're not going to let Melaniea?'

'She smashed you on the head. She might've killed you, doing a thing like that. She lost whatever claim she had.'

'I don't think she'll see it that way.'

'Tough.' Pen made a left onto Olympic, and picked up speed.

'What's the hurry?' Bodie asked.

'You got me,' Pen said, but she didn't slow down. 'Melanie's had about an hour to do whatever she wanted to do.'

'What do you think she is doing?'

'Who knows? I was absolutely certain she planned to murder you. I was wrong about that, thank G.o.d. Who knows? I just hope it's all over before we get there.'

'I don't want anything to happen to her.'

'I don't either, buta'

'It'll be our fault. We pushed her over the edge, Bodie. Whatever happens, we're responsible. You and me.'

'Don't forget she spent the afternoon in Harrison 's closet. That was before she caught us together.'

'Did you see the look on her face when she found us on the sofa?'

'I'm not saying she wasn't upset. But the fact that she didn't take the pills proves she planned to sneak out.'

'She thought I wanted to put her out so you and I could be alone.' Pen sped up to make it through a yellow light. 'Maybe she was right. I didn't consciously do it for that reason, buta maybe it was in the back of my mind.'

'Whatever our guilt may be,' Bodie said, 'we're doing our penance now. We could be back in your apartment. Instead, we're racing to the rescue.'

'Or to pick up the pieces.'

Harrison 's Mercedes stood in the driveway of his house. Joyce's Continental was no longer parked in front.

'Playing it smart,' Pen said as she drove slowly past the front of the house. 'For all they know, we've been to the police. Wouldn't look too good if Joyce spent the night with him.'

'So she went home,' Bodie said.

'And where's Melanie?'

Bodie shrugged. He had been checking both sides of the street for his van, but so far hadn't spotted it. 'Keep going,' he said. 'Maybe she left it in back.'

Pen turned, then turned again. She drove past Harrison 's block, then made another right, returned to his street and stopped at the corner. 'What do you think?'

'Don't ask me,' Bodie said. 'I've been wrong twice already.'

'She must've gone to Dad's.'

'The house? That'd be my guess, too. This is looking better and better. I figured we'd have a run-in with Harrison. Of course, he might've gone there with Joyce. In her car.'

'I doubt it,' Pen said. They probably split up.'

'Should we check his place?'

Shaking her head, Pen made a left turn on Harrison 's street, heading away. 'We're looking for Melanie,' she said.

She waited for a break in the traffic on 26th Street, then turned left.

'I just hopea'

'What?' she asked.

'Melanie might've already been to Harrison's. They might'vea gotten her. That could be why the van wasn't there. Maybe Harrison drove her away in it. Joyce would've followed in her car to pick him up after theya disposed of her.'

Pen glanced at him. In the dim gray light from the streetlamps, her eyes were wide, her lips twisted.

'It's just a possibility,' he said, wis.h.i.+ng he'd kept the theory to himself.

'If he's hurt Melaniea'

'We'll probably find her at your dad's house.'

Pen stopped for a red light at San Vicente. Leaning forward, she pressed her forehead against the top of the steering wheel.

Bodie reached over. He rubbed her back through the soft sweats.h.i.+rt. 'It'll be all right,' he said.

'Will it? Dad's in a coma. Melaniea G.o.d knows.' She turned her head. Her face was a mask of agony. 'It's all my fault.'

'It's Harrison's,' Bodie said.

A car horn beeped behind them.

The light had gone green, and the car ahead of them was moving into the intersection. Pen turned right onto San Vicente.

'I could have stopped it all,' she said. 'If I hadn't kept my mouth shut. I didn't want to hurt Dad. It would've been such a blow to him. He thought Harrison was such a terrific guy. But if I'd tolda maybe the b.a.s.t.a.r.d would be in prison right now, though I doubt it. Would've been tough convincing a jury I wasn't asking for it. But it might've changed everything. I should've told, d.a.m.n it.'

Bodie, breathless, stared at her. He felt as if he'd been kicked in the stomach. 'Asking for it?'

'Harrison raped me.'

'No.'

'I should've told.'

'Were youa hurt?'

She faced Bodie. She nodded. Tears were glistening in her eyes. They looked silver in the streetlights. 'I was battered up some,' she murmured.

'Did you fight him?'

'As much as I could,' she said, her voice shaking. 'He had me handcuffed.'

Bodie groaned.

'He worked on mea for a long time.' With the back of her wrist, she wiped tears off her cheek. 'I haven't been with a man since then.' Sniffing, she looked at Bodie. 'You'll be the first - if you still want me, now that you knowa'

'Oh, Pen.' He put a hand on her thigh and squeezed it gently through her sweatpants. Heat seemed to flow up his arm. 'I've never wanted anyone the way I want you.'

'It doesn't bother you thata?'

'I'd like to kill the b.a.s.t.a.r.d,' Bodie muttered.

'I never told anyone,' she said. 'I just pretended it never happened, and Harrison acted as if it really hadn't happened, and after a while it was almost as ifa'

'A way to live with it,' Bodie said.

'I should've told. Maybe none of this would've happened.' She rubbed a sleeve across her face.

Bodie stroked her leg as she slowed the car and turned left onto the narrow road leading to her father's house. He wished he could pull her into his arms and hold her tight and make all the pain go away - her pain and his own.

Harrison had raped her. Handcuffed her, beaten her up, f.u.c.ked her.

The sc.u.m.

The piece of s.h.i.+t.

'Bodie, you're hurting me.'

'I'm sorry.' He unclamped his fingers from Pen's thigh and wrapped them around the steel of the shotgun's barrel.

Then he looked along the roadside for his van. They drove slowly past a Ferrari, a Porsche, a Jaguar.

Pen stopped her car in front of the garage. 'She's not here. It must be like you said and they took her away in the van.'

'Drive on a little further.'

Pen steered around a bend in the road and there was Bodie's van, snug against a leafy hedge. Bodie felt his bowels tighten.

Pen s.h.i.+fted to reverse, twisted herself sideways, hooked an arm over the seatback, and looked out the rear window. She backed up slowly.

Bodie gazed at her.

It seemed important, somehow, to see what she looked like right now and to keep it for a memory and never lose it.

The dim silhouette of her face. The pale white of her eye and the silver trail of a tear leading down from its corner. The flow of soft hair. The way her lower lip was caught between her teeth. The curve of her jawline. The hollow of her throat. The way her b.r.e.a.s.t.s pushed out her sweats.h.i.+rt, forming soft mounds, the right higher than the left because her right arm was raised onto the seatback.

His gaze followed Pen's left arm to the steering wheel. The sleeve was drawn up above her slim wrist. Her hand, moving the wheel slightly from side to side, seemed small and fragile. He looked at the way her sweatpants were gathered over her lap, and how they draped her thighs. Then he looked again at her face.

So beautiful. All of her. And she's mine now.

I'll never let anything bad happen to her again, he thought, and felt a terrible hollow ache of loss because he knew it was an empty promise. The future would hurt them both, kill them both sooner or later no matter what.