The phone onHammarfield's desk started to shrill. Lee barely heard it. Hammarfield stared at him nervously. "Answer it," Lee said.
Hammarfield did. A strange expression filtered over his features. He handed the receiver to Lee.
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Lee grasped it and brought it to his ear.
"Lee? Lee?"
"Yes?"
"It's Andrew. Listen. Tony Asp just called here. He wanted to know why we didn't tell him about working today. I said we weren't. Then he told me that he'd seen Bryn's car parked on the roadside near the oldFultonplace--"
Lee dropped the phone onHammarfield's desk. "Call the police," he told Hammarfield hoarsely. "Tell them to get out to the oldFultonplace as quickly as possible."
Bryn had managed to work her hands free. She waited until Mike Winfeld had stepped out of the driver's seat to spit out the gag and tear at the bonds on her legs. Luckily the knots hadn't been tied well.
And she had been given the strength and energy of the instinct for survival.
When he opened her door she was ready. She kicked out at him with a forceful fury that sent him staggering backward. In that split second she jumped out of the car and ran.
The length of the old dirt driveway stretched before her. But she was a good runner. Her legs were strong from dancing, and it was for her life that she ran. Her lungs burned, and her breath came in increasingly painful gasps, but she kept running.
Winfeld was behind her, but she was gaining distance on him with every passing second.If she could just make the road...
Winfeld shouted something; she couldn't make out the words. But then she realized that he was shouting to the other man, his accomplice, the "fan" who had wanted to purchase thephotos.
He was standing at the end of the driveway. He had parked her van in a clump of trees and was now coming for her. She was trapped between the two of them.
Bryn veered off the driveway, into the grass and overgrown foliage. Nettles and vines grasped at her, slowing her down. She kept running, but the distance was beginning to tell on her. She could barely breathe; pain was shooting through her legs, knifing at her belly.
She ran into a grove of old oaks. Where the hell was she? Where was the road?If she could just get to the road...
She stopped for a minute. There was silence all around her. And then she heard it.The sound of a car on the nearby highway. It was to her left.
She started to run again, then gasped and came crashing down to the ground as Mike Winfeld stepped suddenly from the shelter of an oak and tackled her to the ground. He wasn't messing around with her this time. He knotted his hand into a fist and sent it crashing against her face. She didn't feel any pain; the world instantly dimmed, then faded away completely.
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The door to theFultonplace was partly open. Twilight was falling, and it looked like the perfect haunted mansion.
Lee jerked his car to a halt before the graceful Georgian columns. His bow and the quiver of arrows were beside him; he grabbed them instinctively, fitting the quiver over his shoulder as he began to race to the front door. He threw it fully open.
It took his eyes a minute to grow accustomed to the darkness within. And then he saw Winfeld, halfway up the long curving stairway with Bryn tossed over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes.
Winfeld saw him. "Get him!" he shouted.
Lee cursed softly. He hadn't seen the other man in the darkened foyer.The man who jumped him with a switchblade.
He was able to bring his arm crashing up against the other man's arm, the one with the knife. The switchblade went flying across the room to be lost in shadows. Lee struggled only briefly with his opponent; the man was no contender in a real fight. Lee gave him a right hook that sent him sprawling to the floor.
But when he looked up again, Winfeld had reached the upper landing with Bryn. He was moving precariously toward the railing. Lee could never reach her in time....
He looked quickly to the floor for his fallen bow, grabbed an arrow from the quiver at his back and strung it. "Winfeld!" he shouted.
Mike Winfeld paused, looking down at him.' 'Drop it, Condor. Or I'll throw her over."
Lee held as still as granite. "That's what you're planning on doing anyway, isn't it? Set her down, Winfeld. It only takes a second for an arrow to fly. If there's one scratch on her, I'll not only scalp you, I'll skin you alive."
Winfeld paused uncertainly. Lee realized that he wanted to kill theman, that he wanted to rip him apart piece by piece. His feelings were purely barbaric, purely savage.
Were they normal, he wondered vaguely. Because they were also tempered by something civilized. He wasn't God, and he wasn't a jury.