THE MAN IN THE BLUE CAR PARKED IN THE SHADOWS DOWN THE ROAD WAS SPYING ON THE WOMAN HE PLANNED TO EXECUTE. HIS MORTALLY INJURED WIFE HAD DESCRIBED HER —YOUNG, WITH SHORT FAIR HAIR THAT CUPPED HER HEAD IN A RUFFLE—THIS WOMAN WHO HAD LOCKED THE DOOR IN HER FACE, REFUSING HER SANCTUARY FROM HER KILLER-RAPIST. AFTER HIS WIFE HAD DIED IN SURGERY, THE MAN IDENTIFIED HIS ENEMY AS MARY VAUGHAN. HE WAS WRONG. MARY HAD NOT EVEN HEARD OF THE TRAGEDY, AND SHE WAS NOT FLEEING FROM HIS REVENGE. SHE WAS TAKING HER EIGHTEEN-YEAR-OLD COUSIN JENNY ACTON TO JUAREZ FOR A FEW DAYS TO AVOID A POSSIBLE CONFRONTATION WITH JENNY’S UNSUITABLE AND VERY RESENTFUL FORMER FIANCE. UNFORTUNATELY WORD HAD BEEN LEAKED TO HIM THAT THE ACTONS HAD SENT THEIR DAUGHTER TO SANTA FE WHERE SHE WOULD BE WELL OUT OF HIS REACH. NOW JENNY’S MOTHER TELEPHONED FROM NEW YORK THAT THE HOT-TEMPERED EX-FIANCE MIGHT SUDDENLY DESCEND ON THEM.

ONCE ON THEIR WAY TO MEXICO, MARY WAS LIGHT-HEARTED WITH RELIEF. ALTHOUGH JENNY POINTED OUT THAT A BLUE CAR HAD BEEN FOLLOWING THEM FOR A LONG TIME, SHE WAS NOT WORRIED. IT WAS ONLY WHEN THEY REACHED THE HOTEL IN JUAREZ THAT ODD LITTLE HAPPENINGS AROUSED HER FEARS. SOON REAL DANGER FOLLOWED THESE CHILLING PORTENTS.

HERE IS AN ABSORBING NOVEL ABOUT A BEWILDERED WOMAN WHO DOES NOT KNOW WHO IS THREATENING HER LIFE OR WHY.

IN

COLD

PURSUIT

A NOVEL OF SUSPENSE

by Ursula Curtiss

DODD, MEAD & COMPANY  ∙  New York

Copyright © 1977 by Ursula Curtiss

All rights reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Curtiss, Ursula Reilly.

In cold pursuit.

I. Title.

PZ3.C94875In   [PS3503.U915]   813’.5’4   77-22447

ISBN 0-396-07466-9

1

SHE had named the stray cat Dietrich when she adopted him—one of the few things she had ever done over her husband’s objections—because of his long and shapely legs with their beautiful markings.

He did not look like an instrument of disaster, except possibly his own. He had none of the brooding mystery or even the coordination of other cats. He bumped into the furniture occasionally, recoiling in terror at his own clumsiness, and got readily marooned in trees although he was no longer a kitten. Dripping water fascinated him: he could often be found sitting in the sink, staring hopefully at the faucet. At times it seemed conceivable that he was another kind of creature entirely, dressed up, for purposes of acquiring a home, in a four-legged suit of tiger-striped fur.

But a gentle creature, not a decoy.

When he was not back from one of his undoubtedly problem-ridden patrols by after seven o’clock on that May evening, his mistress finished a row of knitting, put down the mass of yellow wool, and went to the door to call him. This was the one night a week when her husband worked late, and although he tolerated Dietrich he was not fond of having his long-awaited cocktail and dinner to the accompaniment of frequent cat-summonings. Moreover, the weather forecast said rain, and in this as in so many other respects Dietrich was lacking; he would not discover what was going on until he was soaked and shivering. It followed as the night the day that he was prone to bronchitis.

“Dietrich?” The outside light showed her briefly before she moved out of its circle on her way to becoming a statistic: a tallish woman in her early thirties, slender in jeans and shirt, with cropped dark hair lying in points around an amiable, open-featured face. “Dietrich?”

There was nothing to indicate another presence in the tree-lined driveway, nothing to suggest that the house had been watched last week and the week before—in fact, since shortly after they moved in— and an increasingly interested note made that on this particular evening the carport stayed empty much later than usual. And that there was a woman alone here.

“Diet—”

The hand clapping over her mouth from behind almost stopped her heart as well as her breath. She knew what this was even before the tightening of the wiry arm across her chest and the warning as to the consequences of screaming. She wrenched her head around and screamed anyway, into the light rustle of wind and the sound-absorbing trees, because noise was supposed to be the best deterrent.

It was an interrupted scream, because he hit her hard and she went sprawling backwards, her head driving against something sharp. For a few seconds the astonishing pain took up all her consciousness, and then she was aware of a pointed face close to hers —he had followed her down like a flash—and his rough, single-intentioned hands.

The familiar admonitions crackled through her brain like sparks of light. Every woman’s handbag contains an impromptu weapon. She had no handbag. Stamp on the assailant’s instep with a high heel, or kick sharply backward at the shins. She was wearing Indian moccasins, and she was in no position to kick. She got her wounded head up, seized one of the hands, bit down on the thumb as hard as she could.

Instantly, furiously, a knife appeared, calling to itself a dull dangerous shine even in the obscurity under the trees, but in order to get at it he had had to shift fractionally and she rolled away, caught at bark, staggered upright. Now she could kick, something warning her as she did so that she could not really hurt him but only enrage him further.

The warning was accurate. In the space between one second and the next she was fighting not against being raped but against being killed. She was strong and her reflexes were fast, but she was powerless against a knife, and in her terrified recognition that this was happening and could have only one outcome no matter how she fought, she felt the homing point of the blade in her chest scarcely more than the flashing stings around