“Whoever kills first in the morning will have first choice of the place he wants to live.”

  She wanted to scream, but she couldn’t, not with his hand clamped over her face, crushing her cheeks and nostrils together, cutting off her ability to breathe. Carlisle had grabbed her from behind. She felt his hot breath on the back of her neck.

  “Take the gun out of the holster,” he ordered, “nice and easy. Hold it by the handle with your thumb and forefinger. We’re going to walk over and put it down on the table, very carefully.”

  Where are Davy and Rita? she wondered. Where is Father John? If he was still out behind the house, he might come in and help. .

  The blade of the knife pressed against her skin. “I don’t want to cut you, baby. Blood’s real messy for what I have in mind, but I will if I have to. Don’t try me. The gun. Now!”

  Faint from lack of oxygen, she thought maybe that was all he intended-strangling her, but then he eased his pincerlike pressure, allowing her to gulp desperate mouthfuls of air.

  “The gun!” he repeated.

  She reached for it silently, cursing Brandon Walker as she did so. He had been right, damn him. She’d never had a chance to touch the gun, to say nothing of using it. All having the gun had done was to make her stupid, to give her a false sense of security.

  She removed the gun from its holster and held it as she’d been told. With Carlisle clutching her from behind, they glided from door to table like a pair of grotesque waltzing skaters.

  “That’s better,” he muttered once the.45 was resting on the tabletop. “Much better. Now turn around and let me look at you.”

  “Where’s Davy?” she asked, without turning. “What have you done with Davy and Rita?”

  His voice rose menacingly. “I gave you an order, goddamnit! Turn around.” He grabbed her by one shoulder and spun her toward him. The abrupt motion threw her slightly off balance. She almost fell, but he caught her by one wrist and held her upright. The knife seemed to have disappeared into thin air, but as soon as his powerful fingers closed around her wrist, Diana knew he didn’t need the knife. Not really. His hands alone were plenty strong enough.

  “Where’s Davy?” she asked again, trying to keep her voice steady, trying not to let it expose her rising terror.

  He grinned back at her. “Where’s Davy?” he mocked. “Where do you think he is? What will you give me if I show him to you? A kiss maybe? A piece of tail?”

  Carlisle’s tone was light and bantering, but Diana’s wrist ached from the punishing pressure of his fingers. She knew then, with a sinking heart, that strangling wasn’t it. Carlisle would never let her off that easy.

  Someone seeing the frozen tableau from outside the window might have thought the man and woman to be lovers standing face to face, might have imagined them holding hands and exchanging endearments in preparation for a romantic kiss. The man was smiling. Only a glimpse of the woman’s stricken face betrayed the reality of their desperate life-and-death struggle.

  “Let me go!” She started to add, “You’re hurting me,” but she didn’t. Life with Max Cooper had taught her better than that. In an uneven contest where defeat is inevitable, she had learned to show no reaction at all, to deny her tormentor his ultimate gratification-the perceptible proof of his victim’s pain.

  “You know you’re going to give me whatever I want, don’t you?” he leered at her, relentlessly pulling her closer. Steeling herself, she refused to shrink away from him, refused to cringe, but even as she struggled against him, she was beginning to fear the worst-Davy and Rita were dead. They had to be. If not, they would have given her some sign, some reason to hope.

  “One way or another,” Carlisle continued, “like it or not, I’m going to have you six ways to Sunday, little lady, so you could just as well get used to the idea, lay back and enjoy it, as they say. Now tell me, how’s it going to be, hard or easy?”

  She didn’t respond.

  “That was a joke,” he said, laughing. “Didn’t you get it?”

  By then, their lips were almost touching. For an answer, she brought her knee up and rammed it into his groin. Stunned, he doubled over, grabbing himself, groaning with pain. Momentarily, he let go of her hand, giving her the chance she needed. Dodging backward and to one side, Diana groped for the handle of the.45.

  The gun was a mere three feet away, but it could just as well have been three miles. She picked it up and used both hands to pull back the hammer, but before she could aim or pull the trigger, Carlisle tackled her, slamming her hard against the wall, knocking the wind from her lungs, forcing her hand up into the empty air overhead. The gun discharged with an earsplitting roar, blasting a hole in the stucco ceiling before he knocked it from her hand and sent it whirling across the room.

  “That’s going to cost you, bitch!” he snarled. “That cute trick is really going to cost you.”

  He came after her then in a blind heat of rage, tearing the clothes from her body, sending her sprawling. They crashed to the floor together with him on top, using Diana’s body to cushion his own fall. The back of her head bounced off the Mexican tile. A kaleidoscope of lights danced before her eyes. The room swirled around her while she drowned in a sea of despair. Davy’s dead, she thought. My son is dead. .

  By the time she could see again or breathe or move, resistance was useless. Carlisle was on her, inside her, pounding away.

  Davy was still trying to waken the priest when the root cellar was rocked by the roar of gunfire. Frightened, the boy cringed against the wall. No one had to tell him what the sound meant. That terrible man, that ohb, was out there with his mother, trying to kill her. Maybe he already had. Out in the living room, braced by Nana Dahd’s secret song, it had been easy to pretend to be brave, but now cowardly tears sprang to his eyes.

  “Don’t let him kill my mommy, Nana Dahd,” he sobbed. “Please don’t let him.”

  “Quiet!” Rita ordered.

  Davy was startled by the harshness in Nana Dahd’s voice. Never had she spoken to him so sharply. “Listen. Come help me with the medicine basket. I can’t get it out by myself.”

  Davy scrambled over the priest’s prone form. He felt around Rita’s body until he located the medicine basket still hidden beneath the ample folds of her dress. The basket was too large to slip out without first unfastening some of the buttons.

  “Hurry,” she urged as he struggled in the dark with the buttons and the slippery material. When the basket came free, it popped out and fell to the floor. “Find it,” Rita ordered. “Take off the lid and give me the owij.”

  Davy groped on the floor until he found the basket with its tight-fitting lid still securely closed. After some struggle, he finally pried open the lid and fumbled inside until his fingers closed around the awl.

  “Here it is,” he said.

  “Good. Put it in my good hand, then come close. Hold your hands steady and as far apart as you can.”

  “What are you going to do?” he asked.

  For an answer, she poked at the twine around his wrists with the sharp point of the awl, the same way she had poked it through thousands of strands of coiled cactus. Pulled taut, the twine cut sharply into Davy’s wrists. The child yelped with pain.

  “Quiet,” she commanded. “Don’t make a sound, Olhoni, no matter how much it hurts.” He bit his lip to stifle another cry.

  “Once we are free,” Rita continued, “we must stand on either side of the door and be absolutely silent. When the door opens, the ohb will be there. He will expect us to be tied up just as he left us. When he does not see us, he will step into the cellar. I will try to hit him with my cast or stab him with the owij. We will have only one chance. You must not wait to see what happens. Like I said in the song, you must run somewhere and hide.”

  “But what about you and my mother?” Davy whispered.

  “No matter what happens, you must stay hidden until morning, until someone you know comes to find you.”

  Looks At Nothing sat hunched forward in the speeding tow truck as though by merely peering blindly ahead through the windshield he could somehow remove all obstacles from their path. “How soon will we be there?” he asked.

  Fat Crack was driving flat out, red lights flashing. “Fifteen minutes,” he said, not daring to take his eyes from the road long enough to check his watch. “Ten if we’re lucky.”

  For a time, there was no sound in the cab other than the wind rushing through the open windows. “We will probably have to kill him, you know,” the old man said finally. “Before it’s over, one of us may kill the ohb. Have you ever killed before?”

  It was a startling question, asked in the same manner Looks At Nothing might have inquired about the weather, but this was no rhetorical question, and it demanded a serious answer. “No,” Fat Crack replied.

  “I have,” Looks At Nothing continued. “Long ago. When I worked in the mines in Ajo, I accidentally killed a man, another Indian. Afterward, there was no one to help me paint my face black, no one to bring me food and water for sixteen days. That is one of the reasons I’itoi took away my sight. If you are the one who kills the ohb, I will bring you food and water. If I do, will you bring it to me?”

  As a child, Fat Crack had heard stories of how ancient Papago warriors who killed in battle were forced to remain outside their villages, purifying themselves by eating very little and by praying for sixteen days until the souls of those they killed were finally quiet. This was 1975. He was driving a two-ton tow truck, not riding a horse. After-battle ceremonies should have been a thing of the past, but they were not. Looks At Nothing was absolutely serious, and Fat Crack could not bring himself to deny the medicine man’s request.

  “Yes, old man,” Fat Crack replied. “If you kill the ohb, I will bring food and water.”

  Louella Walker left Toby’s bedside long enough to use the rest room down the hall. When she returned, she touched Brandon’s shoulder. Although his eyes were wide open, he jumped as though wakened from a sound sleep. She nodded toward the door, and he followed her into the hallway.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “There’s a phone call for you at the nurses’ station.”

  He seemed dazed. “A phone call? For me?” he asked vaguely.

  She nodded. “Over there.”

  Watching him go to the phone made her heart ache. He looked much as his father had looked years earlier-the same impatient gestures, the same lean features. But Brandon was almost a stranger to her. She had expended so much energy and concentration denying what was happening to Toby that she had totally lost touch with her son.

  Putting down the phone, he turned back toward her with his face contorted by anger or grief, Louella couldn’t tell which. She wondered who had been on the phone. From his look, the news must have been as bad or worse than what was going on beyond the swinging door of her husband’s room.

  “Brandon,” she said, reaching out to him. “What’s wrong?”

  He pushed her hand aside and shook his head. “Nothing,” he said irritably. “It’s work.”

  “Don’t lie to me,” Louella flared. “It isn’t nothing. It must be important. I can see it in your face.”

  To her dismay, Brandon exploded in anger. “You’re right. It is important. Terribly important, but what the hell am I supposed to do? I can’t be in two goddamned places at once!”

  With her child of a husband far beyond help, Louella searched her heart for strength enough to once more be a mother to her child. “It’s all right, Brandon,” she said, giving his shoulder a reassuring pat. “You do what you have to. Your father and I will stay right here. We’ll be fine until you get back.”

  As Davy’s hands came free, Rita’s heart overflowed with thanks to Understanding Woman for giving her granddaughter the owij, for teaching Dancing Quail to be an expert with it. There was no tool Rita knew better, nothing she had held in her hands longer.

  At once she reached down and went to work on the twine binding Davy’s feet. It was important that he be totally free and capable of running, even if her own knots were still securely tied.

  Breathing shallowly, the priest lay still, while no sounds at all came from the rest of the house. The ominous silence filled the old woman with misgiving. She knew some of what had been done to Gina, and she hated to think what that ho’ok, that monster, might be doing to Diana. Whatever it was, at least Davy wouldn’t see, not if he followed her directions and did as he’d been told.

  The twine around Davy’s legs tugged free at last. Rita turned her attention on her own bindings. With one arm in a cast, it should have been much more difficult, but her craftsman’s fingers quickly learned the secrets of Andrew Carlisle’s crude knots, which melted apart beneath the probing point of her awl.

  With Davy quaking beside her, Rita began to pray. First she addressed I’itoi, asking that the boy and his mother both be granted strength and courage. Then she spoke to Father John’s God, asking that the priest be spared from dying there on the root-cellar floor. Finally, to comfort herself as much as the boy, she took up the refrain of her song, crooning softly in the darkness.

  “Remember what I say, Little Olhoni,

  You must run swiftly and not look back.

  That is the only way to help your mother.

  That is the only way to help me.

  Be like I’itoi, little Olhoni.

  Hide in a crack and do not come out.”

  “Get dressed,” he whispered in her ear, snapping her head back with a savage pull on her hair that loosened some of it from the roots. As tears sprang to her eyes, the ghost of an elusive memory fluttered briefly, but she couldn’t capture it. It required all her mental stamina to resist the temptation to cry out. Earlier, sinking his teeth deep into the tender flesh of her breast, he had elicited one involuntary gasp of pain. She had sensed his excited, eager response. She was grimly determined not to let it happen again.

  Carlisle let go of her hair, and she fell limply back to the bed. “I said move!”

  Diana had lost all sense of time. She might have been battling with him for minutes or hours or days. After his first, frenzied attack, he had dragged her from the living room to the bedroom, where he had assaulted her again. Survival instinct warned her to obey his commands, but her body refused. Bruised and bloodied, her flesh functioned at a level that was somehow beyond whatever further violation Andrew Carlisle could inflict.

  Davy’s dead. The words ran through her head like a broken record. Davy’s dead, and so is Rita. Grappling with catastrophe, Diana lost all will to carry on. Whatever happened to her no longer mattered.

  Carlisle grabbed one ankle and twisted it until Diana was forced onto her back. She lay naked on the bed while he feasted his eyes on her. He particularly admired the series of angry bruises around her swollen nipples. He congratulated himself for his self-restraint for being able to let go once he had fastened his teeth on her. He was saving the nipples for later.

  He enjoyed the look of wary watchfulness in her eyes. She must be wondering, dreading to learn what might come next. He regretted that he couldn’t get it up again right that minute, but there was plenty of time. He would show her that, hard-on or not, he was still full of surprises.

  Her gritty silence annoyed him. Diana Ladd was one tough cookie, but he knew she wouldn’t be able to deny him forever. He’d find her weakness eventually. In the face of his carefully focused efforts, she wouldn’t always keep quiet. When the agonized sounds finally escaped her lips, they would be music to his ears. You’ll come around, he thought, smiling down at her.

  Carlisle had begun the complicated process of subjugation. Having once established dominance, it was important to consolidate his control, to show Diana Ladd exactly who was boss.

  Stepping from the foot of the bed to the side of it, he reached down and yanked ruthlessly on the exposed mound of auburn pubic hair, pulling out a handful of the stiff, curly stuff. She winced and gritted her teeth, but again she refused to cry out. Damn her! She was deliberately spoiling his fun.

  He moved to the head of the bed and stood looking down at her, hoping that she’d shrink away from him and try to get away, but she lay beneath his gaze without moving, staring brazenly back at him, daring him to hit her.

  And so he did, slapping her hard across the face. He smiled at the rewarding droplet of blood that appeared almost instantly at the corner of her mouth. Maybe now he’d start getting through to her. He hit her three times in all-twice openhanded and once with the back of his hand. He didn’t have to put much effort into it. The blows were gratuitous, stinging slaps, administered mechanically and without emotion, calculated more to humiliate than hurt.

  Andrew Carlisle hit the woman primarily for effect and for his own amusement. He hit her because she dared stare back at him. He hit her because he could. It never occurred to him that hitting her was a tactical blunder. That thought never crossed his mind.

  Diana tasted blood in her mouth where a tooth had cut through her cheek. She focused on the salty taste, and that, combined with the teeth-rattling blows, shocked Diana out of her stunned lethargy and forced her to remember that other man who had once hit her like this, who had pulled her hair out by the roots. The sudden surge of memory galvanized her in a way Carlisle couldn’t possibly have foreseen or predicted. It rekindled the spark of her old anger, relit a raging fire that lost hope had almost extinguished.

  Without a word, she sat up.

  “Get dressed,” he ordered again, flinging a pair of shorts and a tank top in her direction. “Wear these, but no shoes. I like my serving women dressed but barefoot.”

  She stared blankly at the clothing. They weren’t what she’d been wearing before. Those, torn from her body in his initial fierce attack, still lay in a heap on the living-room floor.

  Carlisle leered at her from the doorway, savoring the marks he’d left on her sore and naked body, but she refused to turn away from him while she dressed. “Hey,” he said jokingly, “except for a few stretch marks here and there, you’ve got a pretty good bod. Anybody ever tell you that?”