Rose’s eyes shot open, and in them Mary Ann saw a fearful questioning. She felt her own mouth twist into a snarl.
“This is for Doug,” she said, and then pulled the knife free and brought it down again. And again.
And again.
Chapter 28
A male nurse and one of Navarre’s thugs came for John later that morning. The nurse pushed a wheelchair ahead of him, and when he stopped the contraption in front of the bed on which John had been sitting, John followed the path of least resistance and sat down in it.
For the last several hours, John had run through the various possible outcomes of the situation. Depressingly, there were only two. The first was that he tried to escape again and Navarre’s people picked him up before he’d gotten more than a hundred feet outside the house. Even more likely, before he got out of this room. His last attempt hadn’t been much of a rousing success, and in his current physical condition, John doubted he could do more than hobble pathetically anyhow. So that was option one.
Option two offered the same end result—John held captive and forced to heal a rich man he didn’t know or care about—but it was easier. Much easier. In the end, easy—even an easy that came with weeks of bedbound illness—won out.
The nurse wheeled him out of the room and down hallways whose walls gleamed bright white in the April morning sunshine. Through each window, John could see the green of grass and trees. He could imagine the smell of the air. On property that required as much upkeep as this place apparently did, John had no doubt that, were he standing outside, he would smell musky, damp mulch and the deeper odor of fertilizer run heavily through with manure.
The thought triggered memories of his childhood on the farm in Pennsylvania. He remembered Two Bucks, the old palomino his father used to keep around the place for John to ride when he was a kid. John remembered how he had loved to brush the old horse, working burrs and stray twigs from his mane and tail. Back then, in the simplicity of his childhood life, John had even enjoyed the mundane task of shoveling Two Bucks’ stall and laying new straw down.
Of course, those days were long gone. Nothing was simple anymore. Everything carried a weight, a consequence.
A sudden grief squeezed John’s heart in its grip as a memory of Connie replaced the image of the old horse. Here was Connie in Boston, in the place she had been born, and which she had loved so well. The place where she had wanted him to stay with her. The place he had left her, without anything approximating an explanation. And now she was in Pennsylvania, waiting for him with her sick child, a girl who might only have days to live. He had told her he would arrive today, but from the looks of things, there was no way that would happen. He had a feeling he was going to be stuck here for a very long time.
The nurse came to a door and knocked. It was opened from within by a man wearing a black suit, his hair slicked back from a preposterously large forehead.
“He’s ready,” Forehead muttered, opening the door wide enough for the wheelchair to pass through.
As the nurse pushed him into the room, John saw Navarre propped up in a king-sized bed that occupied most of the far wall. Nailed above Navarre’s head was a wooden cross six feet tall, an agonized Christ nailed to its transverse arms.
“A little dramatic, no?” John said.
Navarre raised the oxygen mask to his lips and sucked deeply, then said, “Perhaps, but you never know. Not on a day like this.”
John nodded. “Good point. Be a shame if I made you all better and then it fell on you, though. I hope your holy decorator used good hardware.” He smiled at Navarre, shocked at the reproach he was feeling.
Navarre gestured at the nurse behind John and the man guided the chair over to the bed. “What happens now?” Navarre asked.
John feigned surprise. “Oh, I thought you knew. I’ll need a gallon of gasoline and a match. You have to be on fire for this to work.”
That made Navarre laugh, but he only got out one pained chuckle before the laugh deteriorated into labored coughing. The nurse moved to him and held his arm, steadying the old man as he hacked into his cupped hands, moaning in pain between snatched, shallow breaths. When he managed to get his breathing back under control, he sat back heavily in the bed, eyes rolling up to the ceiling. In spite of himself, John found himself pitying the man.
Navarre’s head lolled to the side and his eyes locked on John. “What I wouldn’t give to be able to laugh again without needing a nurse here in case my lungs decide to shut down once and for all.” Tears ran down Navarre’s cheeks and John could see him struggling to hold back his emotions.
“Okay,” John whispered, approaching the bed. He sat down in the chair that had been pulled up there and leaned toward the old man, hissing in a breath at the pain in his ribs. “If I try to help you—if I do whatever I can, and I’m still not sure that’s anything—will you let me go?”
“What do you have to go back to?” Navarre said. “You have to know that you’re better off here. Safer, too. If you understand what you are, and what else is out there, looking for you, you know that I’m right. If you stay here, you’ll never want for anything. You will be protected.”
John shook his head. “What would you be thinking right now if you were in my position? I’m a man, not a pet. I’m a teacher. I have parents, people I love, people I’m responsible for. People I need to try to be responsible for. If you keep me here, I’ll keep trying to escape. I won’t stop, no matter what you do to me. You wouldn’t stop, either, and you know it.”
“If you heal me,” Navarre said, “if you make me healthy again, I’ll release you. On one condition. That you come back here if I get sick again. If you agree, don’t think this is something you’ll be able to back out of. You won’t.”
John was nodding, a feeling of hope warming him for the first time since he had almost managed to escape the day before, since Curt had blindsided him in the van. “Okay,” he said. “I will. I give you my word.”
“Okay then,” Navarre said, his face pale and sweaty, his breath whistling through in his throat. “It is agreed. When you have recovered, you’re free to go. My men will take you home.”
“No.” John shook his head. “I have to go somewhere else—”
There was a concussive blast from somewhere in the house, and John felt the floor tremble beneath his feet. A moment later, an alarm blared outside the room.
Chapter 29
Having reviewed all possible strategies for attack, Phylum decided that sometimes there was something to be said for simplicity, so he opted for the front door. Of course, that was easier said than done.
He assumed that somewhere inside the castle-like house there was a room full of monitors displaying various shots of the compound. The trick was to figure out what areas a security consultant in charge of setting up such a camera system might deem most vulnerable. Because having too many cameras on a system was inefficient—who could monitor two hundred views and not miss something?—Phylum knew that there would only be twenty, maybe thirty, to cover the entire grounds, and some of those would have to be dedicated to the interior of the house. That left a finite number to cover the exterior.
Some of those, he knew, would be posted at the entrance to the long, oak-lined driveway, probably in one of the tree-limbs overhanging the HELENA’S HOPE sign. One or two more likely provided views of the drive itself as it made its way toward the house. If Phylum had been the one in charge of setting up security for the house, he would have posted four panoramic cameras on the roof, one pointing in each direction. The house was surrounded by sprawling fields of uninterrupted grass, so any interloper making a break for the house from the woods would be spotted immediately. In addition to the unseen cameras, there were two security guards making periodic rounds of the property’s periphery, skirting the edge of the forest.
In short, the security set-up for the house was good. But Phylum was better.
Patiently, he waited for the guard to pass by, emerged from the spot where he’d been hid
ing behind a tree, and wrapped his arms around the man from behind. With one hand he grasped the man’s left shoulder, with the other he cradled the man’s chin, and then he jerked in opposite directions, snapping the guard’s neck. He dragged the man into the woods, took his jacket and ballcap, and quickly emerged, strolling leisurely in the same direction the man had been walking.
Gradually, he redirected toward the circular turn-around just outside the front door of the house, still moving slowly, inconspicuously. He took his hand out of his pocket. In it was a grenade. Never breaking stride, he pulled the pin and tossed the grenade toward the door, the way a paperboy might toss a newspaper.
The device hit the marble stoop and bounced twice, then rolled to a stop in front of the door. When it exploded, the door blew inward, as did a good portion of the masonry surrounding it. Phylum drew his pistol and entered the house through the hole he’d created.
While the security system around the house may have been competently installed, the security operatives themselves were panicked. They came at Phylum in a full frontal assault—there was no strategy to the attack whatsoever. All he had to do was take cover behind a marble pillar in the foyer and wait for them to come. And come they did, one after another. Less than a minute after he tossed the first grenade, Phylum had dispatched four guards. He pulled the pin on another grenade and tossed it down the hallway.
This explosion did much more damage than the first. Fragments of marble flew like razor-sharp projectiles, slicing through doors and paintings and curtains. Phylum heard an agonized scream and spared a small smile.
Gun raised, he moved deeper into the house.
* * *
When the first explosion shook the house, the reaction inside the room where John had been brought to heal Navarre was urgent and immediate. All but one of Navarre’s bodyguards left the room at a dead run. The other drew a pistol from a shoulder-holster and pointed the gun at the door, his left hand cupped under the right to steady the weapon.
In rapid succession there was a series of shots, and John knew he was hearing the uneven rat-a-tat of semi-automatic pistol fire. There was no pattern to the shots, just a random clatter. And then, over the course of a minute or so, the shots began to die down—not all at once, which would have been good news, but gradually, as if one by one, the shooters were being dispatched. There was one final crack of gunfire, and then, for a moment, silence.
That silence was shattered seconds later by the sound of something small and hard skittering over marble. John immediately understood.
“Oh, shit,” he said to himself, then shouted, “get down, there’s going to be an—”
The explosion came from just outside the room and it was deafening. Bits of wall and floor rocketed through the small room and punched holes in everything. John was saved only by the fact that he had thrown himself flat on the ground. He heard the one bodyguard who had stayed behind cry out in pain, and then, somewhere in the back of his consciousness, he heard another sound. The sound of glass shattering.
Still stunned from the explosion, his hip and injured ribs screaming holy hell, John lifted his head and looked through the smoke at the outward-facing wall. The window there had disappeared completely, blown from its frame by the blast. Without so much as a look back, John leapt to his feet and vaulted through the window and onto the grass outside, moaning softly to himself from the pain, hearing the crunch of broken glass beneath his feet as he landed and then broke into an unstable, weaving run.
He had barely cleared the corner of the immense house when he heard the pops of two gunshots behind him. For a second—he seemed unable to stop himself—he skidded to a stop. Navarre and his bodyguard. Dead. There was no doubt. But this was also not the time to think about it.
Ahead, John saw the turn-around and the cluster of cars. This time, he found keys laying on the seat of the first one he tried, a black Escalade. He turned the key, threw the vehicle into drive, and slammed his foot down on the gas.
From behind him there was another volley of shots and John heard bullets slapping into the back of the truck, but the Escalade was picking up speed and then it was out of pistol range. When he reached the gate at the end of the drive, he never slowed. The wrought-iron gave before the tank-like force of the truck and then, with one more jerk of the wheel that guided him onto the road, he was gone.
Chapter 30
Rose had almost managed to work her wrist free of the handcuff, using her own blood as a lubricant, when the man—the one who had attacked her in the woods and knocked her out, she assumed—pulled open the door of the car. She was weak, more so than she had ever been, and had already passed out twice for brief periods since waking to find Mary Ann crouching above her, driving the knife into Rose’s body over and over again. The pain had been like nothing she’d ever experienced before. In the past, there had been times when her victims had managed to defend themselves, whether with a knife or a gun or, once, a baseball bat, but those were situations she’d always managed to cut short. Maybe she’d taken a slash to the arm, or a blow to the ribs—most recently, of course, there had been the bullet in her back—but never had she found herself on this side of the equation, lying helplessly as she was brutalized.
But even as Mary Ann had plunged the knife down again and again, a part of Rose’s mind, the portion where her basic sense of humanity lived, had understood why the woman was taking her revenge. The man she killed in Shaw’s home, Doug, had been Mary Ann’s love, her partner in life, the father of children neither of them would ever have now. Rose had destroyed that possibility, just as she had done so many times before. She was a monster, a murdering monster, and Mary Ann deserved her revenge.
Her insides were on fire, her abdomen and chest a bloody mess of torn flesh and muscle, but the pain wasn’t the worst of it. The worst was that Rose was still deteriorating, not getting better. There were simply too many wounds for her body to heal itself as it normally would. She had resigned herself, over the past twenty minutes, to the truth—that she could very well die. In a way, it was calming to know that this sad excuse for an existence might nearly be over. But she was damned if she would die taped and handcuffed in the back of this blood-smelling car. All she had wanted to do was drag herself into the woods, into a creek bed or beneath a tree, and close her eyes until it was over.
But now he was here, and maybe, maybe there was a chance. He was bending over her, the look on his face not one of shock, but of perplexity. He’d had plans for her, no doubt, and now those plans were going to have to change. He looked unhappy about it.
“Help,” she whispered. Mary Ann had sliced her up nice and good. Rose doubted if there was an organ in her body that wasn’t punctured or lacerated in one place or another. She’d have been dead before the woman left had she been normal.
The man leaned over her. “Come again?” he said.
“Blood.”
He nodded. “A lot of it,” he said. “Someone really doesn’t like you.”
She tried to shake her head but it only lolled to the side and stayed there. “Drink. Blood.”
He looked down at her, considering what he thought he had heard her say. “You want blood to drink?”
“Yes,” she tried to say, but then a wave of black swept over her, and as hard as she tried to fight against the tide, it took her away.
* * *
When she next came to awareness, the car was moving. She was still in the back seat, and beneath her she could feel the sticky coldness of congealed blood.
She realized that something had changed. She felt…stronger. Not much, but a little. Wincing at the agony the motion caused, she turned her head to the side and saw the man. He was sitting in the driver’s seat, his hands on the wheel. Around one of his hands was wrapped a hank of bloodstained fabric. For the briefest of moments, Rose understood what he had done and wondered why. Then she was gone again, swimming in the darkness.
* * *
“Wake up,” the voice said, and Rose ope
ned her eyes.
She was sitting on the ground, her back against the car. The man squatted in front of her, an unconscious woman at his feet. She wore expensive clothing, pinstriped slacks and a white blouse. There was a trickle of blood on her temple, where Rose assumed the man had hit her. Her respiration was shallow.
“Can you?” the man asked.
Rose tried to speak and managed, “Think so.” She fell onto her side and shimmied painfully toward the unconscious woman. When she was close enough, she cradled the woman’s head in her hand and tore out her throat with her teeth.
And then she drank until she could drink no more.
Chapter 31
John killed the engine and opened the door of the Escalade. There were two other cars in the driveway, an old Ford pickup and a Toyota Prius. In front of him, the stone farmhouse was dark. The only light came from the crescent moon overhead.
Slowly, he crossed the dooryard, gravel crunching under his feet. As he reached the porch, the door swung open and he saw first the barrel of a shotgun and then the man holding it.
“Dad,” he said.
Tim Barron lowered the shotgun and came toward his son, saying, “I don’t believe it.”
* * *
“Connie?” John asked as he and his father walked into the kitchen.
His father held a finger to his lips. “Upstairs, asleep. She’s only been getting a couple hours a night with Katie the way she is. Let’s not wake her up just now, okay?”
John nodded and opened his arms as his mother stepped toward him for a hug. “Hi, Mom,” he said.
“Hi, sweetie,” his mother said back, her voice muffled in his neck. When she let him go, there were tears in her eyes.
“I’m in trouble,” John said. He sat at the kitchen table. His mother sat next to him, and his father was making himself busy putting together a pot of coffee.