Free Blind Pursuit by Michael Prescott

street name, Broadway, said to have been the inspiration of a visiting New Yorker at the turn of the century.
    Though big-city magic was absent here, so were the worst excesses of urban blight. A few transients slept in El Presidio Park, and some spidery graffiti clung to alleyways and street signs, but otherwise downtown remained remarkably orderly and clean.
    Whitewashed walls gleamed in the strong sunlight. Patches of grass made squares and crescents of green. Mulberry trees sighed, lovesick, in a gentle breath of breeze.
    Annie barely noticed any of it. Her mind replayed the phone conversation, hunting among Marie’s words for some overlooked clue, finding none.
    This was bad. Really bad.
    Erin was in trouble. Might be injured.
    Even ... dead.
    Ugly thought. A shiver skipped over her shoulders.
    “No way,” she said firmly, drawing a stare from a vendor at a sandwich cart.
    Erin couldn’t be dead. Annie refused to so much as consider the possibility.
    People died all the time, but not her sister.

 
     
     

     
     
     

     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    15
     
    The radio came on when her car started, a blast of Billy Ray Cyrus exploding from the speakers.
    Annie punched the on-off button, silencing Billy Ray, and swung the red Miata out of its parking space. At the exit-ramp gatehouse, money and a receipt changed hands, and then she was on the street, hooking north on Church Avenue and east on Sixth Street, heading for Erin’s apartment complex at Broadway and Pantano.
    The little sports car was fun to drive, but Annie was too agitated to have any fun now as she cut from lane to lane, bypassing slower traffic, running yellow lights. Normally she didn’t drive like a maniac—well, not this much of a maniac, anyway—but the apprehension that had been building in her for the past twelve hours had reached fever pitch. She had to know if Erin was all right.
    Tension set her teeth on edge. She rolled down the window to feel the rush of air on her face.
    At Campbell she cut over to Broadway. Vermilion blooms of mariposo lily and purple owl clover blurred past on the landscaped median strip. Despite worry and preoccupation, she greeted the spring blossoms with a smile.
    The sight of flowers always pleased her. Flowers, she often thought, had saved her life.
    For weeks after that night in 1973, she had been lost, disoriented, a seven-year-old girl with the face of a shell-shocked soldier. The flowers in Lydia’s garden had brought her back. Watering them, plucking weeds, tending to each bud as if it were her precious child, she had found a way to ground herself, to reconnect with reality.
    Her sister had spent her teenage years educating herself in the mind’s darker recesses, struggling to understand madness and evil. Annie had never wanted to understand. She had wanted only to escape life’s horror. In gardens and nurseries and florists’ shops, she did.
    It took her years to realize that she loved flowers less for their beauty than for the simple fact that they could not hurt her.
    Even a tame dog could bite. A kitten could scratch. A loving father ...
    But flowers were safe, always.
    Almost in Erin’s neighborhood now. The older, more crowded part of town was receding, replaced by newer shopping plazas on larger lots. Developments of tract homes and condos occupied curving mazes of side streets with ersatz Spanish names. The mountains slouched on all horizons, their outlines sharp against a sky scudded with shredded-cotton clouds.
    Pantano Fountains, Erin’s place, glided into view. Annie parked outside the lobby and walked briskly to the front door.
    She fingered the intercom, buzzed Erin’s apartment. No reply.
    Fumbling in her purse, she found the set of duplicate keys Erin had given her. Opened the door, entered the lobby.
    The manager was on duty in her glass-walled office, talking on the phone, her words muted by the glass. A white-haired lady with a proud, lined face; Annie had met her several times when