The Biker (Nightmare Hall) by Diane Hoh Page B

rushing river far below, and wondered if the water was icy-cold. The nights were still a little cool. Maybe the river hadn’t warmed up yet. Not that it made any difference. If the ramshackle wooden walkway beneath her opened up suddenly and she plummeted to the river below, she’d drown no matter what the water temperature was. She wasn’t a good enough swimmer to fight that vicious current.
    Clutching the decrepit wooden railing with one hand, the other hand forging a path through the darkness with the flashlight, Echo kept going, walking as lightly as possible.
    The bridge seemed miles long.
    Finally, she reached the end and rushed off the bridge to stand at the foot of a steep, wooded slope. Shivering in her denim jacket, she glanced around. The hill was a black mound rising up in front of her, covered with towering pine trees, smaller leaf-bearing trees, and thick underbrush. This was unfamiliar territory even in daylight. She felt as if she’d been set down in the middle of a strange planet. And she had no idea which direction to take. Left? Right? Straight up?
    Deciding on straight up, she played the flashlight beam ahead of her as she climbed, pushing aside underbrush, her feet sliding occasionally in soft, pine-needled earth. The first cave was much too small to hide anything as huge as the motorcycle. The second was larger, but dark and empty.
    When she became tired and discouraged, she focused her thoughts on the two innocent students in the red Miata, and kept going. She imagined the raw terror they must have felt when that car sailed off the edge of the cliff, and that thought forced her feet onward and upward. Someone had to stop Pruitt!
    Hating him with a raw, blistering passion, she slipped and slid and climbed some more and slid again, scraping one hand on a sharp rock, slicing a finger on a thorny bush, and losing several strands of her hair to a prickly pine bough. Still she kept going. When she lost her balance and tumbled sideways, landing at the mouth of another cave, it took her several moments to get her bearings and pull herself upright to wave the flashlight around her.
    And there it was.
    Black as night, black as death, the motorcycle stood smack in the middle of the low-ceilinged, stone-walled cave.
    The motorcycle wasn’t the only thing in the cave.
    Echo glanced around her at what appeared to be a mini-garage. The motorcycle was surrounded by a large collection of tools, neatly arranged on makeshift “shelves” of flat rocks piled on top of one another. Besides the tools, there were cans of gasoline, piles of jeans and sweatshirts carefully folded and lying on the rock, plus objects that Echo assumed were motorcycle spare parts, and, atop a pile of books in the corner, a handful of newspaper clippings, no doubt Pruitt’s press notices about the biker attacks. What an ego!
    There were other books, a portable tape player, bags of snack food, and cans of soda. But it was the motorcycle Echo was most interested in.
    She had found it. Here it was, standing right in front of her. Now all she had to do was figure out how to identify it as Pruitt’s, and then she could leave, call the police, and direct them to the cave. She wouldn’t even have to give her name, wouldn’t have to be connected with the discovery at all.
    If Pruitt gave her name to the police, she’d stonewall it. Lie. He had no proof that she was the one who had joined him on that devastating ride to Johnny’s Place. She hadn’t known what he was going to do, so she wasn’t guilty of anything except stupidity. If you went to jail for stupidity, there’d be no room in the prisons for real criminals.
    Worst case scenario … she’d admit the truth, if she had to. And beg for mercy.
    The important thing was, Pruitt would be put away where he couldn’t hurt anyone else. Including her.
    Before she began looking for something to link Pruitt to the bike, Echo grabbed a large knife with a wickedly sharp blade from the makeshift