Shattered

country, she had been nice. When he told her to stop nagging him about something, she had stopped at once. But now she was the bitch again, picking at him, trying to say his mind was going on him. Didn't she know that was impossible? It was his mind that had gotten him all the scholarships, years ago. It was his superb mind which had gotten him off that damn farm, away from the poverty and the Bible-thumping and his father's paddle. So he couldn't be losing his mind. She only said that to frighten him.
        He put the pistol barrel in her ear.
        But he could not pull the trigger.
        “I love you,” he told her, although she could not hear him. He sat down on the floor beside the couch, and he started to cry.
        He snapped back from a daydream and realized that he was undressing her. While his thoughts had been elsewhere, he had pulled off her thin blue sweater, and now he was fumbling at the catch on her jeans. He stopped what he was doing and looked at her. Naked to the waist, she looked like a little girl despite the firm lines of her breasts. She seemed defenseless and weak and in need of protection.
        This was not the way.
        Leland knew, suddenly, that if he just tied her up and put her on ice until he had dealt with Doyle and the boy, she would be all right. When they were dead, she would realize that Leland was all she had. And then they could be together.
        Lifting her as easily as he would have an infant, he carried her upstairs and put her on the bed in the master bedroom. He retrieved her sweater from the living-room floor and somehow slipped it onto her again.
        Fifteen minutes later he had tied her hands and feet with rope that he found on the junk heap in the guest bedroom, and he had used a length of adhesive tape to seal her mouth.
        He was sitting on the bed beside her, staring into her eyes, when they fluttered open and found him.
        “Don't be afraid,” he said.
        She cried out behind the gag.
        “I won't hurt you,” he said. “I love you.” He touched her long, fine hair. “In a little while everything will be okay. We'll be happy together, because we won't have anyone else in the world but each other.”
        

    Twenty-three
        
        “This is our street?” Colin asked as the Thunderbird labored up the steep lane toward a cluster of lights near the top.
        “That's right.”
        Beyond an aisle of well-shaped cherry trees, the darkness of Lincoln Park lay on their left. To the right, the land shelved down through more darkness to the city's lights and the glimmering necklace of the harbor and the bay bridge. It was a stunning sight, even at three o'clock in the morning.
        “This is some place,” the boy said.
        “You like it, huh?”
        “It beats Philadelphia.”
        Doyle laughed. “It sure does.”
        “That our house up there?” Colin asked, pointing toward the only lights ahead of them.
        “Yes. And almost three whole acres of land around it.” Coming home to the place for the first time now, he knew that it was worth every penny they had paid for it, though the price had initially seemed exorbitant. He thought of Courtney there, waiting. He remembered the tree outside the bedroom window, and he wondered if they would keep each other awake until dawn, when they could see the morning sun slanting down on the blue bay…
        “I hope Courtney isn't too mad about the lies we told her,” Colin said, still looking out across the edge of the city toward the dark ocean. “If she was, it would spoil this.”
        “She won't be angry,” Doyle said, knowing that she would be, just a little and for just a few minutes. “She'll be glad we're safe and sound.
        The house lights were close now, though the outline of the structure was hidden by a wall of deeply shadowed trees that rose behind it.
        Doyle slowed down, looking for the entrance to the driveway. He found it and turned in. Thousands of small oval stones crunched under the tires.
        He had to drive clear around to the side of the house before he saw the Chevrolet van parked by the garage.
        

    Twenty-four
        
        Doyle got out of the damaged car on the passenger's side, put one hand on Colin's thin shoulder. “You get back in there,” he said. “Stay here. If you see anyone but me come out of the house, leave the car and run to the neighbors. The nearest ones are