Read Online Destroyer Angel: An Anna Pigeon Novel (Anna Pigeon Mysteries) by Nevada Barr - Free Book Online Page A

time came to shoot Heath, Elizabeth could not be trusted not to throw herself in the line of fire and take the bullet for her. Her daughter had a selfless streak that time and inexperienced mothering hadn’t been able to eradicate.
    The only escape Heath could envision depended on getting Elizabeth out of camp while there was still enough darkness to cloak her. Anna would find her. They would take Anna’s canoe downriver and get help. On her own, Anna would never leave. With Elizabeth’s well-being to consider, she’d have to.
    Help had better come fast, to save even Leah and Katie. Kidnapping was often simply murder postponed.
    The bearded thug staggered up from the canoe with a loaded cooler. The thugs attacked the food like ravening beasts, ripping into plastic containers of potato salad, bread, cornflakes, and milk cartons. Tops were popped off canned chili and stew. Jimmy didn’t bother with a spoon, the dirt on his fingers apparently providing added zest. As they were pillaged, paper plates, plastic wrap, bottles, tins, cups, and napkins were tossed aside or into the fire.
    Anna would be appalled.
    The dude ate sparingly and without sitting down.
    Sean dragged Katie down by his side. Kneeling, her face hidden behind the screen of blond hair, her hands tied together on her knees, she sat immobile while she was treated to a monologue about the quality of the food. Leah did not look at Sean or her daughter. Sitting, knees up under her chin, bound arms around them, she looked like a side of beef trussed for slaughter. Her face expressionless, she stared at Heath’s wheelchair. Remembering Katie’s crack about being loved only if she had titanium parts, Heath wondered what kind of relationship Leah had with her daughter. What inspired a thirteen-year-old girl to call her mother by her first name?
    “Save the sleeping bags,” the dude ordered when he’d finished. “Salvage food for tomorrow. Burn the rest.”
    Sean licked his fingers in a parody of seduction. When he’d done, he stood and unbuckled his belt. Nausea threatened to make Heath’s supper come up as he took Katie’s pale bird-boned hands in his paw and drew them toward his crotch.
    “Hey!” Heath shouted. She’d not meant to, didn’t want to draw attention to herself and, therefore, Elizabeth. It just happened. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
    “See-cure-itty,” Sean drawled, showing teeth the size of BBs. He drew his belt between Katie’s arms and rebuckled it, attaching her to his waist. “You want to get free, all you gotta do is open my pants,” he said.
    “As if,” Katie snapped. Sean laughed. Leah did nothing.
    The fabric of the first two tents went up in a colorful column of chemical flame. Poles shrank and grew distorted, like bones aging on fast-forward. Small, startling explosions rocked the air as tubes and bottles of whatever the women felt they couldn’t live without exploded.
    “Five sleeping bags, Dude,” said Jimmy as he crawled, ferretlike, from the last tent.
    The dude, standing with the pistol loose at his side, eyes raking the campground and the woods with the professional dispassion of a Secret Service bodyguard, turned his stare on Leah.
    Leah said nothing. Her eyes, unfocused, remained fixed on the wheelchair. On climbs, Heath had seen that vague look in the eyes of climbers who panicked and mentally opted out of the adventure. Abdicating, it was called. When people abdicated responsibility for themselves, they became the responsibility of the rest of the party. A burden that could not be trusted.
    “Five bags,” the dude repeated.
    “My back,” Heath said. The dude didn’t like looking at her; she’d figured that out. Now he stared at the point in the middle of her forehead where the third eye is rumored to reside as if weighing her veracity against some internal measure, the way the ancient Egyptians were said to have their hearts weighed against a feather when they died.
    People who