Sara moved her arms out to her side, trying to keep her body moving so that she would not freeze. “Where is she, Jeb?”
He shook so hard the boat shuddered in the water, sending small wakes toward Sara. He whispered, “You need to save her, Sara. You need to save her.”
“Tell me or I’ll let you die, Jeb, I swear to God, I’ll let you drown out here.”
His eyes seemed to cloud and a slight smile came to his blue lips. He whispered, “ ‘It is finished,’ ” as his head dropped again, but this time he didn’t stop it. Sara watched as he let go of the boat, his head slipping underwater.
“No,” Sara screamed, lunging toward him. She grabbed the back of his shirt, trying to pull him up. Instinctively, he started to fight her, pulling her down instead of letting her pull him up. They struggled this way, Jeb grabbing her pants, her sweater, trying to use her as a ladder to climb back up for air. His fingernails raked across the cut in her arm, and Sara reflexively pulled away. Jeb was pushed back from her, the tips of his fingers brushing across the front of her sweater as he tried to find purchase.
Sara was pulled down as he climbed up. There was a solid thud as his head slammed against the boat. His mouth opened in surprise, then he slipped soundlessly back under the water. Behind him, a streak of bright red blood marked the bow of the boat. Sara tried to ignore the pressure in her lungs as she reached toward him, trying to pull him back up. There was just enough sunlight for her to see him sinking to the bottom. His mouth was open, his hands stretched out to her.
She surfaced, gasping for air, then ducked her head back underwater. She did this several times, searching for Jeb. When she finally found him, he was resting against a large boulder, his arms held out in front of him, eyes open as he stared at her. Sara put her hand to his wrist, checking to see if he was alive. She went up for air, treading water, her arms out to the side. Her teeth were chattering, but she counted out loud.
“One–one thousand,” she said through clicking teeth. “Two–one thousand.” Sara continued counting, furiously treading water. She was reminded of old games of Marco Polo, where either she or Tessa would tread water, their eyes closed, as they counted out the requisite number before searching each other out.
At fifty, she took a deep breath, then dove back down. Jeb was still there, his head back. She closed his eyes, then scooped him up under his arms. On the surface, she crooked her arm around his neck, using her other arm to swim. Holding him this way, she started toward the shore.
After what seemed like hours but was only a minute at most, Sara stopped, treading water so that she could catch her breath. The shore seemed farther away than it had before. Her legs felt disconnected from her body, even as she willed them to tread water. Jeb was literally deadweight, pulling her down. Her head dipped just below the surface, but she stopped herself, coughing out the lake, trying to clear her mind. It was so cold, and she felt so sleepy. She blinked her eyes, trying not to keep them closed too long. A small period of rest would be good. She would rest here, then drag him back to the shore.
Sara leaned her head back, trying to float on her back. Jeb made this impossible, and again she started to dip below the water. She would have to let Jeb go. Sara realized that. She just could not force herself to do it. Even as the weight of his body started to pull her down again, Sara could not let go.
A hand grabbed her, then an arm was around her waist. Sara was too weak to struggle, her brain too frozen to make sense of what was happening. For a split second she thought it was Jeb, but the force pulling her up to the surface was too strong. Her grip around Jeb loosened, and she opened her eyes, watching his body float back down to the bottom of the lake.
Her head broke the surface and her mouth opened wide as she gasped for air. Her lungs ached with each breath, her nose ran. Sara started to cough the kind of wracking coughs that could stop the heart. Water came out of her mouth, then bile, as she choked on the fresh air. She felt someone beating on her back, knocking the water out of her. Her head tilted down into the water again, but she was jerked back by her hair.
“Sara,” Jeffrey said, one hand around her jaw, the other holding her up by the arm. “Look at me,” he demanded. “Sara.”
Her body went limp, and she was conscious of the fact that Jeffrey was pulling her back toward the shore. His arm was hooked across her body, under her arms, as he did an awkward one-handed backstroke.
Sara put her hands over Jeffrey’s arm, leaned her head against his chest, and let him take her home.
29
Lena wanted Jeb. She wanted him to take the pain away from her. She wanted him to send her back to that place where Sibyl and their mother and father were. She wanted to be with her family. She did not care what price she had to pay; she wanted to be with them.
Blood trickled down the back of her throat in a steady stream, causing her to cough occasionally. He had been right about the throbbing pain in her mouth, but the Percodan made it bearable. She trusted Jeb that the bleeding would stop soon. She knew he was not finished with her yet. He would not let her choke to death on her own blood after all the trouble he had gone through to keep her here. Lena knew he had something more spectacular in mind for her.
When her mind wandered, she imagined herself being left in front of Nan Thomas’s house. For some reason, this pleased her. Hank would see what had been done to Lena. He would know what had been done to Sibyl. He would see what Sibyl had not been able to see. It seemed fitting.
A familiar noise came from downstairs, footsteps across the hard wooden floor. The steps were muffled as he walked across the carpet. Lena assumed this was in the living room. She did not know the layout of the house, but by listening to the distinct noises, making the connection between the hollow taps of his shoes on the floor as he walked around the house and the dull thud as he took off his shoes to come see her, she could generally tell where he was.
Only, this time there seemed to be a second set of footsteps.
“Lena?” She could barely make out his voice, but she knew instinctively that it was Jeffrey Tolliver. For just a second, she wondered what he was doing there.
Her mouth opened, but she did not say anything. She was upstairs in the attic. Maybe he would not think to look here. Maybe he would leave her alone. She could die here and no one would ever know what had been done to her.
“Lena?” another voice called. It was Sara Linton.
Her mouth was still open, but she could not speak.
For what seemed like hours, they walked around downstairs. She heard the heavy scrapes and bangs as furniture was moved around, closets searched. The muffled sounds of their voices sounded like a disjointed harmony to her ears. She actually smiled, thinking they sounded like they were banging pots and pans together. It wasn’t like Jeb could have hid her in the kitchen.
This thought struck her as funny. She started to laugh, an uncontrollable reaction that shook her chest, making her cough. Soon, she was laughing so hard that tears came to her eyes. Then, she was sobbing, her chest tightening with pain as her mind let her see everything that had happened to her in the last week. She saw Sibyl on the slab in the morgue. She saw Hank mourning the loss of his niece. She saw Nan Thomas, eyes red-rimmed and stricken. She saw Jeb on top of her, making love to her.
Her fingers curled in around the long nails securing her to the floor, her entire body seizing up at the knowledge of the physical assaults against her.
“Lena?” Jeffrey called, his voice stronger than it had been before. “Lena?”
She heard him moving closer, heard knocking in quick staccato, then a pause, then more knocking.
Sara said, “It’s a false panel.”
More knocking came, then the sound of their footsteps on the attic stairs. The door burst open, light cutting through the darkness. Lena squeezed her eyes shut, feeling like needles were pressing into her eyeballs.
“Oh my God,” Sara gasped. Then, “Get some towels. Sheets. Anything.”
Len
a slit her eyes open as Sara knelt in front of her. There was a coldness coming off Sara’s body, and she was wet.
“It’s okay,” Sara whispered, her hand on Lena’s forehead. “You’re going to be okay.”
Lena opened her eyes more, letting her pupils adjust to the light. She looked back at the door, searching for Jeb.
“He’s dead,” Sara said. “He can’t hurt you—” She stopped, but Lena knew what she was going to say. She heard the last word to Sara’s sentence in her mind if not her ears. He can’t hurt you anymore, she had started to say.
Lena allowed herself to look up at Sara. Something flashed in Sara’s eyes, and Lena knew that Sara somehow understood. Jeb was part of Lena now. He would be hurting her every day for the rest of her life.
Sunday
30
Jeffrey drove back from the hospital in Augusta feeling like a soldier returning from war. Lena would physically recover from her wounds, but he had no idea if she would ever recover from the emotional damage Jeb McGuire had wrought. Like Julia Matthews, Lena was not talking to anybody, not even her uncle Hank. Jeffrey did not know what to do for her, other than give her time.
Mary Ann Moon had called him exactly an hour and twenty minutes after they had talked. Sara’s patient’s name had been Sally Lee McGuire. Moon had taken the time to key the surname into a general search of the hospital staff. With a specific name, it only took a few seconds for Jeremy “Jeb” McGuire’s name to come up. He was doing his internship at the pharmacy on Grady’s third floor when Sara worked there. Sara would have no cause to meet him, but Jeb could have certainly made it a point to meet her.
Jeffrey would never forget the look on Lena’s face when he busted down the attic door. In his mind, he recalled the photographs of Sara whenever he thought of Lena lying there, nailed to Jeb’s attic floor. The room had been designed to be a dark box. Dull black paint covered everything, including the panels of plywood nailed over the windows. Chains through eye hooks had been screwed to the floor, and two sets of nail holes at both the top and bottom of the restraints showed where the victims had been crucified.
In the car, Jeffrey rubbed his eyes, trying not to think about everything he had seen since Sibyl Adams had been murdered. As he crossed the Grant County line, all he could think was that everything was different now. He would never look at the people in town, the people who were his friends and neighbors, with the same trusting eyes as he had this time last Sunday. He felt shell-shocked.
Turning into Sara’s driveway, Jeffrey was aware that her house, too, looked different to him. This was where Sara had fought Jeb. This is where Jeb had drowned. They had pulled his body out of the lake, but the memory of him would never be gone.
Jeffrey sat in his car, staring at the house. Sara had told him she needed time, but he wasn’t about to give it to her. He needed to explain what had been going through his mind. He needed to reassure himself as well as her that there was no way in hell he was going to stay out of her life.
The front door was open, but Jeffrey gave a knock before walking in. He could hear Paul Simon singing “Have a Good Time” on the stereo. The house was turned upside down. Boxes lined the hallway and books were off the shelves. He found Sara in the kitchen, holding a wrench. Dressed in a white sleeveless T-shirt and a pair of ratty gray sweatpants, he thought that she had never looked more beautiful in her life. She was looking down the drain when he knocked on the door jamb.
She turned, obviously not surprised to see him. “Is this your idea of giving me some time?” she asked.
He shrugged, tucking his hands into his pockets. She had a bright green Band-Aid covering the cut in her forehead and a white bandage around her arm where the glass had gone deep enough for sutures. How she had managed to survive what she did was a miracle to Jeffrey. Her strength of spirit amazed him.
The next song came on the stereo, “Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover.” Jeffrey tried to joke with her, saying, “It’s our song.”
Sara gave him a wary look before fumbling for the remote. Abruptly, the music stopped, the silence replacing the song filling the house. They both seemed to take a few seconds to adjust to the change.
She said, “What’re you doing here?”
Jeffrey opened his mouth, thinking that he should say something romantic, something to sweep her off her feet. He wanted to tell her that she was the most beautiful woman he had ever known, that he had never really known what it meant to be in love until he had met her. None of these things came, though, so he offered her information instead.
“I found the transcripts from your trial, Wright’s trial, in Jeb’s house.”
She crossed her arms. “That so?”
“He had newspaper clippings, photographs. That kind of thing.” He stopped, then, “I guess Jeb moved here to be close to you.”
She gave a condescending, “You think?”
He ignored the warning behind her tone. “There are some other attacks over in Pike County,” Jeffrey continued. He couldn’t stop himself, even though he could tell from her expression that he should just shut the hell up, that she did not want to know these things. The problem was that it was much easier to tell Sara the facts than for Jeffrey to come up with something on his own.
He continued. “The sheriff over there has four cases he’s trying to tie to Jeb. We’ll need to get some samples for the lab so he can do a cross-check with the DNA samples they took at the scene. Plus what we have from Julia Matthews.” He cleared his throat. “His body’s over at the morgue.”
“I’m not doing it,” Sara answered.
“We can get somebody from Augusta.”
“No,” Sara corrected. “You don’t understand. I’m going to hand in my resignation tomorrow.”
He could not think of anything to say but “Why?”
“Because I can’t do this anymore,” she said, indicating the space between them. “I can’t keep this up, Jeffrey. This is why we divorced.”
“We divorced because I made a stupid mistake.”
“No,” she said, stopping him. “We’re not going to have this same argument over and over again. This is why I’m resigning. I can’t keep putting myself through this. I can’t let you hang around the periphery of my life. I have to get on with it.”
“I love you,” he said, as if that made any difference. “I know I’m not good enough for you. I know I can’t begin to understand you and I do the wrong things and I say the wrong things and I should’ve been here with you instead of going to Atlanta after you told me about—after I read about—what happened.” He paused, then, “I know all that. And I still can’t stop loving you.” She did not answer, so he said, “Sara, I can’t not be with you. I need you.”
“Which me do you need?” she asked. “The one from before or the one who was raped?”
“They’re both the same person,” he countered. “I need them both. I love them both.” He stared at her, trying to find the right thing to say. “I don’t want to be without you.”
“You don’t have a choice.”
“Yes, I do,” he answered. “I don’t care what you say, Sara. I don’t care if you resign or you move out of town or you change your name, I’m still going to find you.”
“Like Jeb?”
Her words cut deep. Of all the things she could have said, this was the cruelest. She seemed to realize this, because she apologized quickly. “That wasn’t fair,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
“Is that what you think? That I’m like him?”
“No.” She shook her head side to side. “I know you’re not like him.”
He looked at the floor, still feeling wounded by her words. She could have screamed that she hated him and caused less pain.
“Jeff,” she said, walking toward him. She put her hand to his cheek and he took it, kissing the palm.
He said, “I don’t want to lose you, Sara.”
“You already have.”
“No,” he said, not accepting this. “I haven’
t. I know I haven’t because you wouldn’t be standing here right now. You would be back over there, telling me to leave.”
Sara did not contradict him, but she walked away, back toward the sink. “I’ve got work to do,” she mumbled, picking up the wrench.
“Are you moving?”
“Cleaning,” she said. “I started last night. I don’t know where anything is. I had to sleep on the sofa because so much shit’s on my bed.”
He tried to lighten things up. “At the very least, you’ll make your mama happy.”
She gave a humorless laugh, kneeling down in front of the sink. She covered the drain pipe with a towel, then locked the wrench over it. Putting her shoulder into it, she pushed the wrench. Jeffrey could tell it wouldn’t budge.
“Let me help,” he offered, taking off his coat. Before she could stop him, he was kneeling beside her, pushing the wrench. The pipe was old, and the fitting would not budge. He gave up, saying, “You’ll probably have to cut it off.”
“No I won’t,” she countered, gently pushing him out of the way. She braced her foot on the cabinet behind her and pushed with all of her might. The wrench turned slowly, Sara moving forward with it.
She flashed a smile of accomplishment. “See?”
“You’re amazing,” Jeffrey said, meaning it. He sat back on his heels, watching her take the pipe apart. “Is there anything you can’t do?”
“A long list of things,” she mumbled.
He ignored this, asking, “Was it clogged?”
“I dropped something down it,” she answered, digging around the P trap with her finger. She pulled something out, cupping it in her palm before he could see it.
“What?” he asked, reaching toward her hand.
She shook her head, keeping her hand fisted.
He smiled, more curious than ever. “What is it?” he repeated.
She sat up on her knees, holding her hands behind her back. Her brow furrowed in concentration for a moment, then she held her hands in front of her, fisted.