Blind Pursuit Read Online Free

Dealing with irrationality was her daily business. There ought to be some way for her to get through.
    Then she remembered his eyes, so blue, so cold.
    Well, she could try, anyway. If he let her talk at all.
    And if for some reason he untied her? What then?
    She would have to fight.
    The idea was not entirely desperate. Three years ago she’d taken a class in tae kwon do, the Korean form of karate, as part of a training program designed to help therapists defend themselves against violent patients.
    She was by no means a martial-arts expert—she’d earned only a yellow belt, qualifying her as barely more than a beginner—but if she could deliver a snap kick to her abductor’s kneecap or a palm-heel strike to his throat, she might be able to drop him to the ground long enough to flee.
    In practice sessions, at least, she’d done well enough. Annie, a suitably impressed spectator, had dubbed her Erin-san, the Irish Ninja. But then, what could you expect from a woman who’d named her cat Stink?
    Annie ...
    The voice over the intercom. Annie’s voice.
    Oh, God, did he have her, too?
    Erin wished she hadn’t been gagged. Wished she could call out Annie’s name, learn if her sister was somewhere nearby. Perhaps trussed and silenced as she herself was, sharing the nightmare.
    Would he have wanted them both? Why? They had no enemies. It didn’t make sense.
    Who was he, anyway? She’d seen his face only briefly; it had seemed utterly unfamiliar. That thick red beard and shock of carrot-top hair ...
    But perhaps the beard was a disguise. If so, he could be nearly anybody. One of her patients, even.
    Any therapist could become a target. That was why she’d been careful to keep an unlisted address, and why she’d chosen to live in a security building.
    Three of her current patients had shown occasional violent tendencies. Nothing like this, though. And none of the three had those chilly blue eyes.
    Well, maybe he was someone she’d treated years ago, during her internship at a psychology clinic downtown. Or one of the numberless transients she’d met while doing pro bono work at the local shelters—sad, lost men whose faces she never would remember, because they were all alike.
    Her speculations led nowhere. His identity was unguessable, and without knowing who he was, she couldn’t know his intention in abducting her. But on that point she had to assume the worst.
    Had to assume he meant to kill her.
    Twisting her wrists, she tried to loosen the cord that secured them. The bristly scrape of the binding against her skin told her that he had tied her hands with rope. Thick, stiff rope lashed around her wrists in multiple coils, python-snug.
    She had seen a calf trussed once at a rodeo, its hooves bound with a cowboy’s lasso. Though she had pitied the bleating animal, she had never imagined one day sharing its fate.
    Even its ultimate fate? To be led to slaughter, to sag under a butcher’s saw?
    The sticky stuff sealing her lips was tape. If she could lift her hands to her face, she could untape her mouth, then chew at the rope on her wrists until possibly the knot came undone.
    But her arms wouldn’t move. They were pinned to her right thigh by another loop of rope, knotted so tightly it threatened to cut off the circulation in her leg. She was unable to work it loose.
    Bending at the waist, she tried to bring her head closer to her hands, close enough that she could at least raise the blindfold.
    No use. She would have to be a contortionist to do it.
    Never had she been so vulnerable, so completely powerless. Even in her parents’ house on that August night twenty-three years ago, she’d been able to take action, fight for survival.
    The noise in her throat was a choked moan.
    Erin prayed that her sister wasn’t with her. Prayed that the voice over the intercom had been only a trick, and Annie was safe at home.
    She wanted one of them, at least, to survive this night.