The Sleeping Doll

her.
    Scan, scan, scan . . .
    She glanced behind them from time to time, checking out the open doorway, thinking Pell could easily have circled around and be waiting for them.
    Then Kellogg called, “Clear.”
    And inside, thank God, no bodies. Kellogg, though, pointed out bloodstains, fresh ones on the sill of an open window in the bedroom Rebecca had been using. Dance noticed some on the carpet too.
    She looked outside, saw more blood and footprints in the dirt beneath it. She told Kellogg this and added, “Think we have to assume they got away and he’s after them.”
    The FBI agent said, “I’ll go. Why don’t you wait here for the backup?”
    “No,” she said automatically; there was no debate. “The reunion was my idea. And I’m not letting them die. I owe them that.”
    He hesitated. “All right.”
    They ran to the back door. Inhaling deeply, she flung it open; with Kellogg behind her, Dance sprinted outside, expecting at any moment to hear the crack of a gunshot and feel the numbing slap of a bullet.
    •    •    •
    He hurt me.
    My Daniel hurt me.
    Why?
    The pain in Linda’s heart was nearly as bad as the pain in her side. The good Christian within her had forgiven Daniel for the past. She was ready to forgive him for the present.
    Yet he’d shot me.
    She wanted to lie down. Let Jesus cloak them, let Jesus save them. She whispered this to Sam, but maybe she didn’t. Maybe it was in her imagination.
    Samantha said nothing. She kept them jogging, Linda in agony, along the twisty paths of the beautiful yet stern park.
    Paul, Harry, Lisa . . . the names of the foster children reeled through her mind.
    No, that was last year. They were gone now. She had others now.
    What were their names?
    Why don’t I have a family?
    Because God our Father has another plan for me, that’s why.
    Because Samantha betrayed me.
    Mad thoughts, rolling through her mind like the nearby sea cycled over the bony rocks.
    “It hurts.”
    “Keep going,” was Sam’s whisper. “Kathryn and that FBI agent’ll be here any minute.”
    “He shot me. Daniel shot me.”
    Her vision crinkled. She was going to faint. Then what’ll the Mouse do? Lug my 162 pounds over her shoulder?
    No, she’ll betray me like she did before.
    Samantha, my Judas.
    Through the sound of the troubled waves, the wind hissing through the slippery pines and cypress, Linda heard Daniel Pell behind them. The snap of a branch occasionally, a rustle of leaves. They hurried on. Until the root of a scrub oak caught her foot and she went down hard, her wound burning with pain. She screamed.
    “Shhhhh.”
    “It hurts.”
    Sam’s voice, shaking with fear. “Come on, get up, Linda. Please!”
    “I can’t.”
    More footfalls. He was closer now.
    But then it occurred to Linda that maybe the sounds were the police. Kathryn and that cute FBI agent.
    She winced in agony as she turned to look.
    But, no, it wasn’t the police. She could see, fifty feet away, Daniel Pell. He spotted them. He slowed, caught his breath and continued forward.
    Linda turned to Samantha.
    But the woman was no longer there.
    Sam had left her yet again, just like she’d done years ago.
    Abandoned her to those terrible nights in Daniel Pell’s bedroom.
    Abandoned then, abandoned now.

Chapter 54
    “My lovely, my Linda.”
    He approached slowly.
    She winced at the pain. “Daniel, listen to me. It’s not too late. God will forgive you. Turn yourself in.”
    He laughed, as if this were a joke of some sort. “God,” he repeated. “God forgives me. . . . Rebecca told me you’d gone religious.”
    “You’re going to kill me.”
    “Where’s Sam?”
    “Please! You don’t need to do this. You can change.”
    “Change? Oh, Linda, people don’t change. Never, never, never. Why, you’re still the same person you were when I found you, all red-eyed and lumpy, under that tree in Golden Gate Park, a runaway.”
    Linda felt her vision turning to black sand and yellow lights. The pain ebbed as she nearly fainted. When she floated back to the surface, he was leaning forward with his knife. “I’m sorry, baby. I’ve got to do it this way.” An absurd but genuine apology. “But I’ll be fast. I know what I’m doing. You won’t feel much.”
    “Our Father . . .”
    He pushed her head to the side so that her neck was exposed. She tried to resist but she couldn’t. The fog was burned away completely now and as he moved the blade toward her throat, it