Kaylie turned away from the door and stumbled to the bed and fell on it, her fist jammed in her mouth, her whole body shaking as she contracted into a fetal curl.
This wasn’t happening. None of it was real. It couldn’t be. Cray and Nurse Cunningham and this room and the bed with rubber sheets and the steel toilet in the corner — all of it — this cramped and dismal universe she inhabited alone — it was a fake conjured by her mind, a cell that existed in imagination only, and if she concentrated hard enough, if she wished very hard, like a child wishing for a visit from Santa, then maybe it would all go away and she would be free.
But she knew she could never be free, not really. There was no exit from this nightmare, no escape from Cray… except the one he himself had pointed out.
She lifted her head, blinking at the harsh overhead bulb in its wire cage, and then slowly her gaze traveled to the air vent in the ceiling, the grille fastened to the frame.
For a long time she stared at it while a thought took shape, a thought floating in space, offered for her inspection and approval.
Kaylie sat very still, contemplating that thought.
For once the voices were gone. There was silence inside her and around her, the hurricane’s serene eye, and in that calm place she was herself again, at least for the moment.
She saw her situation plainly.
And she knew that there was only one way out. One plan that could work. One chance, and one hope.
Strip the sheet from the bed, then tie a knot…
A slipknot.
With a trembling hand she touched the rubber sheet. It was smooth and cool between her thumb and forefinger.
How would it feel, wrapped around her neck and drawn taut as she dangled, dangled…?
“No,” she murmured, “I can’t.”
But she had to.
If she didn’t, Cray would come, and he would kill her.
Could she give him that final victory? After everything he had done to her, could she allow him the obscene triumph of taking her life by his own hand?
This new thought of hers was the only alternative, her only choice.
If she dared to do it.
If she had the will.
The strength.
Time for you to go, Kaylie, said a voice that seemed oddly familiar, not at all threatening — a gentle, persuasive voice. It took her a moment to realize that it was her own.
Slowly she nodded.
“Yes,” she whispered. “It’s time for me to go.”
All right, then. Do it.
Now — quickly — before the nurse returned for the day’s last injection.
Kaylie rose from the bed with a sleepwalker’s unselfconscious grace and, moving fast but with no sense of strain, began to strip the top sheet from the bed.
“Yes,” she was saying in a quiet monotone. “Yes, it’s time. It’s time. It’s time, at last, for me to go.”
Shepherd found Anson McMillan in an unfenced desert lot at the rear of his house, an ax in his hands, logs of mesquite scattered on the ground.
The sun was low over the Pinaleno range, the sky burning with fever. Shepherd had expected to find Kaylie’s father-in-law indoors, perhaps fixing a leisurely dinner or nursing a beer in a frosted glass — not splitting mesquite cords while his lank gray hair dripped with sweat.
He watched the ax rise, then drop in a gleaming arc to bisect another dark brown trunk. Then he took a step forward and lifted his hand in a wave.
“Mr. McMillan?”
The older man wrenched the ax head free of the wood before looking up with unhurried curiosity. His face was square and tan, bristling with a silver mat of beard. He stood for a moment, the ax half-raised like a weapon, and then he remembered courtesy and lowered it to his side.
“That’s me,” he said, his soft, growling baritone traveling easily across the few yards of prickly pear and agave that separated him from his visitor. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“I’m Detective Roy Shepherd, Tucson police.”
“ Tucson?” McMillan digested this. “You helped arrest her, didn’t you?”
Shepherd almost asked how he knew, then recalled that the local paper had given the story extensive coverage. Though he had not granted any interviews, his name had been mentioned.
“I did,” he answered. “Now I’ve come to talk with you about her.”
McMillan let the ax fall. He wiped his hands on a flap of his denim shirt. “What for?” he asked.
“Undersheriff Wheelihan tells me you’re concerned about Kaylie. I’d like to know why.”
“It’s a long way to come, just to chat about a girl who’s already locked up. You city cops must have a lot of time on your hands.”
Shepherd took this with a smile. “Could be. It looks like you’re putting your time to good use, anyway. Laying up firewood for the winter?”
“Hell, no.” McMillan surprised him by looking at the cut logs in disgust. “I hardly ever start a fire. Got good electric heat. I’m doing this”—his shoulders slumped—“just because I need to work it off somehow.”
“Work what off?”
“The frustration. My damn lawyer says it’ll be a couple of days before he gets me in to see her. A couple of days… Somehow I think that might be too long.”
“Too long for what?”
“I’m not even sure. It’s just a feeling I have. A bad feeling. And dammit, there’s nothing I can do.”
“There’s one thing.”
“Yeah. I can talk to you. Right?”