“Oh, shit,” he muttered, the thoughts of escape bringing into his mind the conversation he’d had with Navarre the day before at the breakfast table.
Today was Sunday. Easter Sunday.
The door opened and John saw an older man in a gray suit standing in the doorway. He was carrying a leather physician’s bag. “You’re up,” he said to John.
John said nothing in return, just remained quiet as the man set his bag on the floor, then bent over John and examined his head and ribs.
“I can’t give you any more pills,” he said, straightening. “I wish I could, but Mr. Navarre…”
John smiled grimly. “Right. He needs me lucid.”
“You’re lucky,” the doctor said. “That crash could have done more than crack a couple of your ribs.”
“I feel lucky,” John said, then added, “can you give me a hand, please?”
The doctor helped John sit, pulling gingerly on John’s proffered hand. The pain was hot and sharp, like someone had inserted a steak knife between two ribs and was trying to pry them apart. Finally, though, John was sitting.
“What time is it?” John asked.
“Quarter past ten,” the doctor answered, then set about ministering to John’s injuries. He cleaned the wounds on John’s face and hands, then wrapped them with fresh gauze. For John’s ribs and hip, he couldn’t do much. “Sit straight as you can,” the doctor said to John, then prodded at his rib cage. The flesh was tender but basically okay until the doctor pressed against an area just a few inches above his hip, then John sucked in breath and straightened.
“Not broken,” the doctor said softly. “Just nicked.”
“You can’t give me anything at all?” John said. “Not even Tylenol or something?”
The doctor shook his head apologetically. “And if I were you, I’d put any escape plans on hold for a while. There’s…quite the presence outside this door right now.”
John grinned. “That’s okay. I was planning on going out the window anyway.”
The doctor stood and pulled back a curtain, revealing wrought-iron bars outside the window. “Good luck with that.” He packed up his things and then left John to think about what the rest of the day might hold in store.
Chapter 26
Rose was driving again, and she felt like she had a couple of days before, sitting between the two sleeping Mexican children as the pick-up approached the outskirts of Charlotte. She felt like she was close, close once more to John Barron, the man who held some strange claim on her life that she couldn’t understand.
For a few brief hours, she had thought the Shaw woman might be able to furnish her with some answers—she seemed to have them, even if she was unwilling to surrender them to Rose—but then Rose had come back to the hotel to find her gone. In its own way, what the woman had done was impressive, really. She had taped Shaw tightly. Not a doubt had existed in her mind as she left last night that the Shaw woman would be there when she returned from her hunt. Instead, all she’d found on the bed was torn tape and a bloody, bent paperclip. How long had it taken to cut free of all that tape? Hours, Rose guessed.
For a while, Rose had considered going after her. She couldn’t have too significant a head-start, after all, and she had undoubtedly headed south, toward home. Rose knew she would likely find Mary Ann at a bus depot, or down the highway somewhere. But in the end, it just wasn’t worth the trouble. Rose had come here, to this netherworld of bumfuck Virginia, for a reason, and other than the meager wisdom Mary Ann may or may not have been able to furnish Rose with, there wasn’t a substantial reason to go after her. It was a loss, and Rose felt—knew—that letting the woman go was potentially a grave mistake, but nothing was turning out to be as easy as she would have hoped.
So she had left the hotel and headed west, her blood still singing from the kill she’d made last night, her skull almost vibrating with the nearly magnetic power yanking her toward her fate, toward, she now knew, John Barron. For a while, the blood-high she’d been riding had been enough to counteract the weakening effect of being up and around during the day, but now she realized that she might be in trouble. Her vision was by turns crystal clear and hazy, and sometimes, when she blinked, she saw not one but two scenes in front of her, as though she were seeing through two sets of eyes simultaneously.
In much the same way, her thoughts were only half her own. She kept catching snatches of thoughts and overheard conversations. Partly, that was why she couldn’t stop now—something was about to happen, she sensed from those overheard thoughts, and whatever it was, she couldn’t allow it to occur. So she allowed herself to be pulled forward by the magnet in her head, giving into it more fully than she’d ever done before. She wanted this all to end.
Where the power was pulling her was bizarre. Ahead, in the bright light of early afternoon, she saw a sign for FIVE FORKS, a town she’d never heard of before. Of course, it was a little late to ask for things to start making sense, so she followed along the winding, two-lane road, winding her way deeper and deeper into a nature preserve of some kind. She had to drive slowly and found herself blinking often and shaking her head to clear it, but several times she barely managed to avoid wrapping the car around a telephone pole, or crashing into the scant oncoming traffic.
Then she saw it, a pair of stone pillars flanking a black iron gate. Into the stone were carved the words, HELENA’S HOPE. Rose had to stop herself from pulling the Corolla over and getting out; that would have been too obvious. From the looks of the gate, this was a rich person’s house. No doubt there were cameras staring down at the little car even now. So she continued for another hundred yards, then pulled the car off the road and into the woods as far as she could go, about thirty yards. Not so far the car would be impossible to find if someone really looked, but far enough that no one driving by would be able to see it.
She got out of the car, making sure the revolver she’d stolen in Florida was tucked into the back of her jeans, and she stood still, listening, taking everything in. Her thoughts were growing more and more fuzzy, and she found herself needing to double and triple check her own impulses and instincts, which was unfamiliar and disquieting. She heard insects singing, the rustling of leaves and underbrush, and somewhere ahead, not too far off, she heard the sound of an engine. She began to move in that direction.
* * *
If she’d been asked to do so at this particular moment, there was no way Mary Ann could possibly have articulated what she was feeling. On the physical side, there was pain. The contortions she’d been forced to put her body through during her escape had been brutal, and they had left her wrists nearly useless from picking at the tape, the muscles of her ribcage fiery-sore from the effort of staying upright without the aid of her hands and feet for balancing. And then there was the exhaustion itself. How long had it been since she slept? A day and a half? At least. It was hard to make herself think back that far, because thinking of sleep made her think of…made her think of Doug.
And this, of course, was the worst part of it. Her physical state was a joke in comparison. In time, her body would heal. But the part of her that had been Doug Shaw’s wife, that had been the mother of his unborn children, that part would never recover, and she didn’t want it to.
After leaving the hotel room, she had hidden behind a dumpster to consider her options. It hadn’t taken long. She could have called the police—probably should have called the police, really. But if she had done that, they would have needed to take her into custody. They would say it was for her protection, and they would probably have been telling the truth, but holed up in their Podunk station, she would have felt helpless, impotent. Kneeling behind the dumpster, feeling water sinking into the knees of her jeans, blood warm on her fingertips where the paperclip had worn right through her skin in burning lines, she knew that impotent was the last thing in the world she wanted to be right now.
So she had opted for plan B. And that had almost gotten her killed.
Risin
g from her spot behind the dumpster, she’d seen a number of cars in the motel’s parking lot, at least a half dozen. If she’d been the heroine of an action movie, she would have broken one of their windows with a rock and then hotwired the engine. But she wasn’t a hero, not anything close to it. Confronted with a bundle of colored wires, she was confident of nothing save for the fact that she would quickly render a car undriveable. Shit, even if she did manage, by some cosmic coincidence, to get the fucking engine started, she had no doubt that a mile down the road she’d press on the brake as she approached a stoplight only to find the brake pedal squishy and unresponsive beneath her foot. Hotwiring a car was not an option. Which left her with the office.
From where she was standing, she could see that the lights in the office were still on, though she knew from the clock in the hotel room that it was well past five in the morning. Maybe the morning clerk gets here that early, she thought, to start the coffee, maybe to prepare a continental breakfast. She hoped the opposite was true, however, that the night clerk was still on duty. If so, maybe he’d be asleep on the job. There couldn’t be much to do in the middle of the night in a place like this.
Moving quickly, Mary Ann skirted the parking lot, staying out of the lights as best she could. Soon she was standing behind a tree, facing the office from about twenty feet away. She peered through the window and saw no one, only the bad orange and brown décor of a place that hadn’t been refurbished since sometime in the mid-70s, a beige counter, and an abandoned spinney chair in which the clerk should have been sitting. Beyond the counter, she could see the dark gap of an open door, but she couldn’t see into the room beyond. Could the clerk be in there? If so, why weren’t there lights on?
Because he’s asleep, she thought. Asleep on one of those rollaway cots they bring to your room when you’re too crowded.
Eyes frantically skipping from side to side, scanning every inch of the parking lot and the office, Mary Ann crept to the office door, took a steadying breath, and put her hand on the doorknob. She began to twist the knob, then stopped, her heart suddenly jagged in her chest.
The clerk isn’t at the desk because there’s a chime that tells him when someone comes through the door, the voice yelled at her. Don’t touch the door.
Mary Ann took her hand off the knob and looked up. Through the glass, she saw a string of silver bells hanging from red yarn. They were affixed to the top of the door, and if she had yanked open the door, as she had just been prepared to do, they would have jangled madly, letting anyone within hearing distance know someone was there.
Gently then, she thought. She put her hand back on the knob, turned it slowly, and eased the door open, her eyes locked on the bells, willing them to continue to dangle limply. When there was enough room for her to squeeze into the office, she slipped through the crack, then eased the door closed behind her. As the door fell back against the jam, there was the tiniest of tinkles from one of the bells as it knocked against the glass, then nothing but silence.
Standing now inside the front door, Mary Ann took in her surroundings.
No more than ten feet away, the counter stood chest high. Beyond that, the far wall of the office. A wooden cabinet hung open, room keys on display. Just to the left of the counter, the door she’d seen from outside. She listened for a moment, straining her ears for the softest of snores, for anything that might suggest the presence of another person, but all she heard was the insistent hum of an air conditioner.
Walking on tiptoes, Mary Ann moved to the counter and peered over it. And saw what she’d hoped to see. Behind the counter, on a little table pushed up against the wall, sat a wallet and keys.
A rush of hope rising in her chest, Mary Ann walked around the counter, grabbed the keys, closing her hand gently around them to make sure there was no clink of metal, and then turned to head back to the door. She was at the edge of the counter when she heard the sound, soft and wet, coming from the room beyond the darkened door.
She paused, half of her yelling at her to get out, get away, run! The other half needing to see whatever was inside that room. The second half won out, and she looked through the doorway.
It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the dim light, but then, as somehow she’d known she would, she saw the woman—Rose—kneeling beside a prone man, her head buried in the hollow between his shoulder and neck. She rocked back and forth as she fed, and through the horrible slurping sounds, Mary Ann could hear the sound of crying. Rose’s crying.
Kill her, the voice inside her head whispered urgently. She’s distracted. She’ll never even know you’re here until it’s too late.
But Mary Ann had a feeling that was wrong. First of all, there was nothing to kill her with. Bare hands weren’t going to be enough for this job. If she’d had a gun, that would have been one thing, but unarmed…
Her eyes never left the door until she was back outside of the office, then she pressed the unlock button on the clerk’s keychain, waited for the flash of headlights, and got into the car. Moments later, headlights off even in the darkness, she coasted slowly out of the motel parking lot.
* * *
That had been hours ago. Now the sun was up, and she was pulling off the road and into the woods where a moment ago Rose’s Corolla had disappeared. She saw the car up ahead and killed her own engine, then got out and started walking.
In the distance, she could hear the sound of an engine, maybe a high-powered lawnmower, maybe a wood-chipper. She thought of the sign she had passed just before turning off the winding country lane. HELENA’S HOPE. The sounds were coming from a house up ahead, Mary Ann thought. A wealthy person’s house, from the look of the gate and the landscaping she’d glimpsed.
She hoped the residents were ready for company.
Chapter 27
Lying on his stomach, hidden by trees and the dense underbrush, Phylum watched the dark haired beauty climb out of the Corolla and stand for a moment, seemingly considering the landscape all about her. Almost like an animal, a fox or a wolf, she turned her head from side to side, testing the wind, smelling, seeing. After a moment, she put her hand to the small of her back—feeling for the pistol Phylum knew was stashed there—and set off toward the house he had reconnoitered earlier. Quietly, he pushed to his feet and followed her.
It didn’t take long to see that there was something…off about his prey. This wasn’t the same woman he had encountered in Barron’s apartment. Although she showed no ill-effects from the round he’d placed in her back, or from the leap from Barron’s balcony, the woman walked uncertainly, almost clumsily, not like the predator he’d sensed that she was. Before she’d gone a hundred yards, the woman’s hands and arms were striped red from snapping branches, and she had tripped several times over fallen branches and vines. If Phylum hadn’t known better, he would have assumed he was following a drunk woman.
Which was why taking her was so easy.
Choosing his footing carefully, stepping on exposed dirt and rocks, not on the fallen leaves and twigs that littered the forest floor, Phylum approached the woman from behind and brought the butt-end of his Sig Sauer down on her head, hitting the exact spot he’d aimed for, close to the base of her skull. She went down as though her power had been cut and Phylum caught her before she hit the ground.
“I gotcha,” he whispered and looked down at her beautiful face. “Don’t worry, I gotcha.”
Less concerned now with making noise, Phylum carried the unconscious woman quickly back to his car and deposited her in the back seat. Given the force of the blow he’d delivered to the base of her skull, an area that assured maximum forceful impact between the brain and skull, he was fairly certain she’d be out for some time, but then again, this was the woman he’d shot dead in the back and then watched catapult off the side of a second-story balcony without breaking stride. Why take chances?
He taped her with the roll of duct tape he always kept in his trunk, working first on her wrists, then her ankles, and then, for good m
easure, her knees. When he was done, he grabbed a pair of stainless steel handcuffs from the trunk. He affixed one of the cuffs to her right wrist, the other to the convertible’s frame. If she had enough time to figure out a way to escape he had no doubt she’d be able to do so, but he wasn’t planning on being away long. Satisfied, he took one more look at the woman’s face and then closed the BMW’s door.
* * *
Mary Ann waited until the man was out of sight and then came out from behind the tree where she’d been hiding. She could hear the man moving away through the woods toward the house and she knew his mission had something to do with John, but this…this was where she needed to be.
As she approached the car, she peeked through the back window. Rose lay prone on the seat, her eyes still closed. The man had taped her thoroughly, and Mary Ann could see the silver loop of a handcuff attached to the car’s roll bar. At least for the time being, Rose was secured.
She moved to the trunk of the car, hoping the man had left it unlocked. She hadn’t heard him arm the alarm or the tell-tale click of a lock engaging, and to her satisfaction, the trunk opened when she depressed the button release. From the inside, she grabbed what she had seen as she hid behind the tree, then moved to the rear passenger-side door and tried the handle. It lifted with no resistance, and Mary Ann eased the door open. Rose never moved. Whatever the man had done to her, the woman was deeply unconscious. Mary Ann thought that was a shame.
The first blow was to Rose’s chest, and although Mary Ann could only raise the hunting knife so far before her clenched fists encountered the roof of the car, she still managed to muster enough force that she felt the blade slide cleanly through skin and muscle and cartilage.