Out of Touch, page 18
Her whole body hurt from head to foot. Her elbows and knees felt badly bruised, and she was disoriented from hitting her head. She moved her limbs and was relieved to find that nothing seemed to be broken.
She realized she’d just tumbled down a flight of stairs.
But what had come before that and where was she now?
Dylan heard a distant and familiar sound. It was little more than a whisper, and for a few seconds she wasn’t sure whether it might be purely imaginary.
Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock.
She remembered that sound. It was real, and it was ticking behind a closed door at the top of the stairs above her. Her former mentor had tricked her, trapped her in a basement. She had been a fool to follow his orders, to believe that doing so would save the woman who was in his grasp.
She had fallen and he had slammed that door shut behind her, cutting off all light.
But just now something else had happened.
Someone had spoken to her out of the darkness.
Or had that been her imagination?
She could see nothing at all, but now she heard a new sound. Someone or something was moving about somewhere nearby.
Then the voice spoke again.
“Who are you?”
She wasn’t alone in this basement.
“I—I’m Dylan,” she stammered, realizing she wasn’t really telling her companion anything meaningful. “Who are you?”
The other person groaned painfully.
“Uh, I’m Lyle. I guess I … fell down here. Like you did. But I think maybe I was knocked out cold from the fall for a while. I’m just now coming around …”
His voice faded.
Dylan painfully managed to pull herself up into a sitting position. Her first assessment had been right. She didn’t seem to have broken any bones. But her mind was riddled with confusion.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
“I—I fell.”
“No, I mean what are you doing in this house?”
“Uh …”
A silence fell as Dylan’s unseen companion apparently struggled to think of the answer to her question.
“I came here … to see Claire Cameron,” he said at last.
Dylan couldn’t help gasping aloud.
“Why?” she asked.
“Uh, well, I had a good reason.”
She thought he might be having memory problems, just as she was.
Then he blurted, “I’ve been doing research. That’s it … I was doing research for a book I’m writing about her stepson. Have you heard of the Puppet Master?”
“Yes, Dr. Charles Cameron.”
“Right. I’m working on a book about him. Claire and I have been corresponding for quite some time now. She’s been very helpful in my research, but we’d never met in person. She told me she was coming here for a visit from Florida, and I agreed to meet her here. But when I got here … well, a man got hold of me and pushed me down these stairs and …”
The voice fell silent, and the man named Lyle groaned.
“I guess the same thing must have happened to you,” he finally said. “Do you know who that man upstairs was?”
“It was Dr. Cameron.”
“My God! I thought maybe it was, but I didn’t get a good look at him, and I couldn’t believe it. But what about Claire? Is she here too? Is she safe?”
Dylan said nothing. She could only hope Dr. Cameron had kept his promise about letting Claire live if Dylan walked through that door. But he had lied about so many things. For all she really knew, Claire Cameron was dead by now.
Lyle groaned again, and she heard him moving about on the floor.
“I … can’t get up. I think I sprained my ankle. No, maybe I broke it. Could you come over here and help me?”
Dylan got to her feet and stood for a moment to steady herself.
“Where?”
“I’m right over here.”
Carefully, she stepped toward his voice in the still-total darkness. She reached out to him.
“Here’s my hand,” she said.
But instead of taking her by the hand, the man struck at her with surprising agility.
As she reflexively drew away, Dylan felt something scratch across her abdomen. She realized her blouse had been grazed by the blade of a knife.
He’d been faking his mental fogginess and supposed injury.
And now he was trying to kill her.
She backed up fast and encountered a wall behind her. He’d caught her off guard, and she was frightened and shaky. She barely breathed, determined to make no sound.
Dylan focused her attention on her hearing, but also tried to draw on other senses. She’d read that humans have a slight and little-used sense of space, based on such things as smell and sensations of air on their skin. She hoped she could draw on those sensations.
She could hear her attacker shuffling around not too far away, searching for her.
He broke into a sardonic laugh.
“Hey, you’re a nimble one, aren’t you? Well, I’ll catch you before long. I’ve checked out this space and it’s not all that big.”
Carefully and quietly, with her fingers tracing along the wall, she inched away from her assailant’s awkward footsteps. He seemed to be stomping in circles, hoping to encounter her. Then he stopped and spoke again.
“Say, I think I recognize your voice. And your name too—Dylan. Are you Dylan First?”
The man sounded pleasantly surprised.
“Yes, I’m sure it’s you. I don’t suppose you remember me—people don’t tend to remember me. But I sure do remember you.”
She heard a burst of movement as Lyle took another swing with his knife. He was farther away from her than before. But she knew that sooner or later one of his thrusts could land home, even if just by accident.
As her brain searched for a course of action, she realized that she actually did recognize the name. She even remembered hearing that voice before.
Lyle Butler.
“You were in Dr. Cameron’s class,” she said.
“Right. We were classmates. But you were his favorite student, weren’t you? A real pampered pet of his. And now here we are, the two of us, together! Small world, huh?”
She remembered him as a homely man with a pockmarked face, a sloping forehead, a receding chin, and a rather fawning, servile personality. She’d seen that he was desperate to please Dr. Cameron, who never seemed to even know his name.
She also remembered hearing that he’d flunked that class.
Now Dylan had a clearer idea of who her opponent was. From what she remembered about Lyle Butler, he must be highly suggestible.
She kept listening for the movements. Every time he drew closer, she dodged away as silently as she could, moving at angles away from her assailant’s location.
“So,” she said slowly, “I don’t guess you came here to interview Claire Cameron.”
“Nope.”
“You’re really here to murder her.”
“You guessed right.”
Dylan let out a grim, cackling laugh. She adjusted her voice to sound hard and cold.
“Well—so am I!” she told him.
Dylan heard a gasp and the shuffling sound came to a stop.
She spoke harshly.
“I guess Dr. Cameron played a fast one on both of us, huh? I was worried that maybe he’d hauled off and killed Claire himself already. But noooo! He’d never do such a thing. He still expects one of us to do that.”
There was at least a germ of truth in what she was saying. Dr. Cameron had tricked them both into coming down here for a battle to the death, like a pair of gladiators.
And now the fight was on. A blind battle against a man with a knife seemed terribly one-sided. But she knew that this one was not too smart, and she had resources of her own to draw on.
With a grim chuckle, she said, “And he’s waiting to see which one of us survives to carry out the deed. Which of our knives is going to draw blood first, I wonder?”
Her opponent made no reply, and Dylan heard no sound of movement.
Where was he now?
She began to move about more audibly, as if she’d turned the tables and was now stalking him.
There!
Dylan made a feinting lunge toward the slight sound just ahead of her, making sure not to really reach him. Nevertheless, she heard him gasp again and step back.
Good.
He thinks maybe I really do have a knife.
Even if he’s not sure of it, it doesn’t matter.
She’d exploited his suggestibility by planting the idea of a knife in his brain. And if she played her cards right, an imaginary knife could be a more effective weapon against him than a real one. He’d be as concerned about evading her as attacking her.
They were circling each other warily now.
“Tell me, Lyle—how did you wind up doing in that class we took from Dr. Cameron? Oh, no need to tell me, I remember. You flunked big time. You flunked so badly it was a joke to everybody in the class. Well, pal, you’re about to flunk again.”
She made a bold and noisy lunge that brought her well within arm’s length of him.
Instead of striking back at her, he retreated.
This is working.
She could hear his panting breath right there in front of her. As quietly as she could manage, she edged around to one side of him.
He didn’t seem to have changed his position. She could sense a slight motion, as though he was waving the knife around.
Could she actually strike without being cut?
She threw herself forward, hitting him full force with the whole of her body.
The two of them crashed blindly to the floor. Dylan heard his knife rattle away after it flew out of his hand.
He’s unarmed now.
And he wasn’t likely to find that knife in this darkness. But as she grappled and writhed against him on the floor, he gripped her tighter in his arms. She remembered how bulky he was.
Stronger than me.
Mental gamesmanship had suddenly given way to brute physical force.
And I can’t beat him that way.
She wriggled with all her strength and dexterity and managed to slip out of his grip. She hunched her body away from his and kicked out sharply. Judging from his noisy gasp, her heel must have landed squarely in the middle of his chest.
Dylan scrambled to her feet.
Which way are the stairs?
She’d long since lost any sense of orientation in the room. She darted around in a widening circle until she stubbed her toe against the bottom step.
They’re here!
Using her hands and feet, she began to frantically clamber up those steps. But as she neared the top, she felt an iron grip on one of her ankles.
He had caught up with her.
She fell flat on her face, her chin banging hard against the steps.
In spite of the darkness, she saw a swirl of stars.
Before her assailant could drag her downward, she managed to kick out again. This time she was pretty sure the blow connected with his face.
She heard him tumbling down the steps until he crashed against the floor.
Then she heard absolutely nothing …
… or at least nothing except the metronome still beating on the other side of the door.
She clambered up the remaining steps and grabbed the door handle. To her relief, it wasn’t locked and swung open.
Even the dim light of the corridor seemed blindingly bright after the time she’d spent in total darkness, but she saw no movement there.
She turned and looked behind her. The shaft of light that poured down into the basement showed Lyle Butler’s limp body—whether unconscious or dead, she didn’t know.
Dylan whirled back to see the corridor again.
Claire Cameron was slumped over in her chair where she’d been seated before.
But where was Dr. Cameron?
He was nowhere to be seen.
Dylan slammed the basement door shut and turned the key that was in the lock. She staggered to the table and saw that Claire was still breathing.
She was alive, as Dr. Cameron had promised.
Something on the table next to the beating metronome caught her eye. It looked like a digital voice recorder. Beside it was a piece of paper with a handwritten note:
Dylan—
Listen.
Before she could pick up the device, she heard a familiar voice call out.
“Dylan!”
Mike Flynn had burst into the corridor, with U.S. Marshals right behind him.
CHAPTER THIRTY TWO
A short time later, Dylan and Mike were sitting in his car at the bottom of the ruined stone steps that led to the Cameron mansion. They were watching a team of paramedics making their way down those steps, hauling a gurney.
Dylan remembered what Dr. Cameron had promised when he’d demanded that she go through the door at the end of the corridor.
“At the very least, it will result in saving this woman’s life.”
She also remembered him saying that he believed in keeping his promises.
He kept that one, thank God, she thought.
Claire Cameron was still foggy from his sedative, but very much alive and on her way to a hospital now.
But Dylan also remembered that her former mentor had betrayed the promise he’d made to her about her miscarriage.
“It will always be our secret.”
And although he’d made no promises to her about what she’d find behind that door in the house up on the hill, he had put her very life at serious risk. Had that just been for his own entertainment?
She told herself she must never trust Dr. Cameron under any circumstances ever again.
But maybe I won’t have to.
Dr. Cameron had slipped away during Dylan’s ordeal in the basement, and before Mike and the marshals had arrived. Police and marshals were already out looking for him, but …
God knows where he is by now.
“Are you ready to listen to this?” Mike asked.
He was holding the voice recorder that had been lying on the table with a terse and cryptic note:
Dylan—
Listen.
She gulped down a knot of anxiety. She couldn’t bring herself to reply.
“It’s OK,” he said with a comforting squeeze of her hand. “Take a few minutes. Breathe a little. You’ve been through a really rough ordeal.”
She hadn’t listened to that message yet. And she dreaded what it might turn out to say.
Most of all, she dreaded hearing it with Mike right here beside her.
But we both have to hear it.
As an FBI agent working on the case, Mike simply had to listen too.
She followed his suggestion and breathed in and out, long and slowly.
As she did, she watched the U.S. Marshals leading a handcuffed Lyle Butler down the steps toward their waiting vehicle. Lyle had survived his fall down the stairs, but he was about to be charged with two murders and one attempted murder. Dylan had no doubt that he’d be convicted. For the sake of justice, it was a good thing he’d been captured alive.
I’m alive too, she reminded herself.
Somehow, she’d found the wits and physical strength to survive a battle in pitch-black darkness with a homicidal maniac armed with a knife. She wouldn’t believe it had really happened, except that she ached all over from her ordeal. Her knees and elbows were especially sore, but the paramedics had decided that she was in no need of hospitalization.
I guess I’m tougher than I realized.
And I’m also more …
She couldn’t find the word she was looking for.
Daring?
Reckless?
She didn’t much like either of those terms.
As she continued gathering up her nerve to listen to the message, she realized she had some questions for Mike.
“How did you find me?” she asked Mike. “Did you know I was in danger?”
“Well, I got a bad feeling after we’d parted last time,” he said with a smile. “And when I couldn’t reach you by phone, I got worried and …”
He chuckled slyly.
“I got nosy. I called the tech guys in Quantico and got them to use GPS to track down the location of your cellphone. And you definitely weren’t on a bus headed back to Arlington. Then we saw where you were. We’d been keeping a loose check on Claire Cameron just in case our fugitive went to her. It seemed likely that you were getting yourself into trouble, so I came here with the marshals.”
“I’m glad you did,” Dylan said.
Mike’s smile disappeared and he looked at her disapprovingly.
“Not in time to help. And I had no idea how much trouble you were in. You should have called me and told me what you were doing.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
Mike shrugged and said, “Then again, I’m sure Cameron would have killed all of you right away if he had the slightest suspicion you’d alerted anyone in law enforcement.”
“Probably,” Dylan agreed.
“I guess it was a tough decision for you. I can understand.”
While Dylan appreciated Mike’s effort to understand her motives, she wasn’t sure she understood them herself. She remembered what Dr. Cameron had told her about alerting the police or the FBI.
“You decide for yourself what you want to do.”
She shivered a little at the memory of those words.
He gave me a choice.
I chose not to contact Mike.
I chose to come here alone.
Her need to confront her one-time mentor face-to-face alone had gotten the better of her judgment.
What does that say about me?
Would the message Dr. Cameron had left help her understand it better?
“Go ahead,” she said to Mike. “Play it.”
Mike pushed the button, and she heard a familiar voice.
“Hello, Dylan—and congratulations on your victory over your former fellow classmate. I’m sure that Lyle Butler got the comeuppance he truly deserved. Please take note that I’m leaving this message in complete confidence that you have prevailed in your struggle against him. I never doubted you for a single second. If I hadn’t been sure you’d emerge victorious, I’d never have put you at such risk. I care too much about you for that.”
