Free Beware by Richard Laymon

the fingers holding her face.
    Dukane went to her.
    He snapped a handcuff around her left wrist and dragged her across the floor. He cuffed her to the tennis player.
    Then he searched for a telephone and called the police.

CHAPTER ELEVEN
    Lacey was awakened by maids giggling and chattering in the hallway. They spoke Spanish, a language she had picked up as a child in Oasis. She grinned as she listened.
    Two of the women had gone on a double-date to the drive-in, last night. Infuriated by their drunken boyfriends, they’d insisted on sitting together. The boyfriends climbed out of the car and went stumbling away, at which point the girls grandly drove off.
    Lacey wondered who owned the car.
    She flung the sheet aside, and groaned as she sat up. All over her body, her muscles ached with stiffness. She felt better than before, though. Waking up in the hotel room yesterday morning, she’d felt like the loser in a scrimmage with the Dallas Cowboys. Today, by comparison, was great.
    Getting off the bed, she hobbled into the bathroom. She studied herself in the full-length mirror. Though her hair was a mess, her face had lost its haggard, haunted look. The bruises mottling her body had turned a sickly, greenish yellow. Hard ridges of scab had formed on her scratches.
    “Won’t be posing for a centerfold,” she muttered. “But not bad.”
    She took a shower in the huge, glass-sided stall, then dried herself and got dressed in the same baggy clothes Alfred had bought on Thursday.
    This was Saturday.
    Escape day. Thursday and Friday, she’d been afraid to leave her room. She’d sat around reading paperbacks from the hotel gift shop, watching television, smoking, indulging herself in incredibly expensive food and wine from room ser vice. After two days of it, she was ready to get out. More than ready.
    She intended to buy several items, but the sun felt wonderful so she left her car in the hotel parking lot and walked. Three blocks away, in a sporting goods store just off Stone, she found most of what she wanted: a web belt to hold up her corduroys, a tank top and gym shorts, a one-piece bathing suit, suntan oil, a pocket knife, and a sheath knife with a sixinch blade. After purchasing the items, she shut herself into a dressing room and changed into the shorts and top.
    She wandered the downtown area, enjoying the feel of the sun, pleased but slightly nervous with the stares of passing men.
    Near noon, she entered a hardware store. She bought a spray can of “aluminum”-colored paint. She ate lunch at a McDonald’s, then returned to her hotel.
    She put on the swimsuit. With its high neckline, it concealed the worst of her injuries. Scratches andbruises showed on her thighs, her shoulders, her arms. But that couldn’t be helped. She was determined to use the pool, no matter how she looked. Turning, she studied her back. The suit left it bare almost to the rump. Her back, at least, looked reasonably unmarred.
    She emptied her handbag on the bed, and filled it with what she needed: suntan oil, an Ed McBain paperback, the can of spray paint and her sheath knife. With a bath towel draping her shoulders, she left the room.
    The pool, in the hotel’s center courtyard, was nearly deserted: a young man was swimming lengths in a steady crawl; a deeply tanned woman lay facedown on a lounge with the top of her black bikini untied; and a middle-aged couple sat beneath an umbrella, sipping Bloody Marys. Lacey spread her towel on a lounge far from the others, and sat down.
    She slicked herself with coconut oil, breathing deeply of its aroma, a rich sweet fragrance that reminded her of other, better times.
    Of Will Rogers State Park, near Pacific Palisades where she stayed with Tom and his family that week in spring, six years ago. Her se nior year at Stanford. They spent every day at the beach, swimming far out, body surfing, walking the shoreline, or just stretching out on their towels. Tom would trickle coconut oil onto her back. His