by Lisa Gardner
“Sheriff, Sheriff, please help. That Yankee detective went crazy. She shot me.”
Kimberly ignored the woman, picking up the fire poker that lay at Franny’s side. She made out blood and a blond hair.
She turned to Sheriff Smithers, pointing to the single hair in the room’s dim light. His expression was equally grim.
“Franny,” said the sheriff sternly. “What did you do?”
“Why, nothing at all. I was just standing down here, waiting for your return, and the detective, I swear she went a mite wild—”
“Bill Benson’s dead.”
“I shot him myself,” Kimberly volunteered.
Franny paled. Her lower lip quivered.
The sheriff shook his head. “You did this, Franny. You and Bill. Why?”
The woman looked up. “I’m just a mom, Sheriff, doing whatever it takes to protect my son.”
“Told you so,” Kimberly informed the sheriff.
Just as bang, bang, bang. Gunshots. From the hallway.
“You got her,” Kimberly ordered the sheriff. Then she was sprinting out of the room, .22 in hand.
CHAPTER 46
D.D.
D.D. HAD BEEN STANDING. SHE remembered that much. She’d been upright, holding her firearm at her left side, with her bruised right arm tight against her torso.
The hallway was dark, but she could hear plenty. A scuffling sound she bet was Bonita, hobbling ahead. Followed by harder, angrier footsteps stalking in her wake.
Then her flashlight had found its target. A huge shadowy figure that looked as wide as a cement truck and as tall as a grizzly bear. A demon—Bonita had been exactly right. Something less man, more beast. D.D. had widened her stance, issued her first warning. Then the monster had turned and charged her.
She’d fired her weapon. A good officer reacts on instinct. But she had no memory of aiming before she was slammed against the hard stone floor, the air leaving her body in a giant whoosh, as the flashlight rolled free, and her firearm . . . Was she holding it, not holding it?
No time to think before a large serrated blade flashed down toward her chest. She twisted enough to take the first strike in her shoulder, the blade skittering across her bone. Then the knife jerked up, spraying blood, her blood, before preparing for a fresh descent. D.D. brought up her left hand to beat at him, fingers digging for his eyeballs, the soft part of his throat. He was straddling her body, pinning her in place. She couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe.
The knife flashed down.
A gun fired. Not D.D.’s but from somewhere behind her. Sheetrock exploded on the wall. The second round sprayed stone chips in her face.
Abruptly, the demon man sprang to his feet. Except he had both hands wrapped around D.D.’s shirt, dragging her up with him as if she were no more than a doll, her feet dangling inches off the floor. He held her directly in front him. A human shield.
“I will kill her first,” the beast whispered in her ear. She knew he meant Bonita. “The way I should have killed her, in the desert years ago. Her mother thought she could get away, as well. But they never do. I always win in the end.”
“This isn’t over yet,” D.D. gritted out. Pain radiated from every line of her body. Her arm, her head, her back, her bloody shoulder.
“You’re right, because when I’m done with her, I’m going to find you again. And your friend, as well.” He jerked his head to whomever stood behind her—Kimberly, Flora, someone who cared.
D.D. tried to open her mouth. She wanted to yell, “Shoot him,” even if it meant the damn bullet had to travel through her body first. Just shoot the beast and put him down like the mad dog he was.
Except then she was flying through the air. The brute had tossed her down the hall, where she slammed into her rescuer and both tumbled to the floor.
“Are you all right?” Kimberly asked breathlessly, trying to untangle from D.D.’s splayed form.
“Thank you for breaking my fall.”
“Jesus, D.D., you’re covered in blood.”
“Knife wound. Shoulder. Mostly bone.”
“What?”
“Shut up. He’s going after Bonita. She’s upstairs, I think. Move!”
“I’ve got him.”
“Not if I get there first.” D.D. heaved herself up, swayed once, then snatched her sidearm off the floor.
Oh yeah, she hurt. But she was pissed off even more. That demon son of a bitch . . .
Now, she really was going to kill him.
CHAPTER 47
FLORA
IN THE TUNNEL, FLORA REGISTERED the sound of gunshots. She paused, gritting her teeth through the sea of nausea. “That doesn’t sound good.”
“Maybe that means Kimberly and the sheriff have already caught him.”
More shots. One two.
“Then what’s that sound, the monster getting away?”
Keith didn’t have an answer.
“We need a plan,” Flora said.
“You need a doctor.”
“Plenty of time to rest when I’m dead. What happens if we go right up here?”
“We roam around in the dark forever until years from now someone finds our skeletons?”
“That’s the spirit. Got your compass app?”
Heavy sigh. “You’re going to be the death of me.”
“It’s okay. No one wants to live forever.”
“I love you, Flora Dane.”
“I love you too, geek boy. Let’s get going.”
CHAPTER 48
THE BAD MAN PAUSES INSIDE the doorway. I retreat slowly, putting as much of the prep table between us as I can. The space is now filling with steam as I’d hoped, the dishwasher chugging through its cycle, empty dish rack rolling through boiling hot spray before arriving at the end, then wrapping down and around to do it all over again.
He eyes the dishwasher, then me.
“Hoping to escape in a cloud of smoke?”
He smiles again. I can’t answer back and he knows it.
“Do you miss it? Being able to talk? Tell people things? Including what I did to your stupid mama so many years ago?”
I don’t move, just watch as he steps farther into the room. I’ve had years to study him, view him in action. I know he’s as powerful as he looks. I know he can take down fleeing girls in a single leap. I know he smiles so broadly when he uses that knife, there can be flecks of blood in his teeth.
“Your mother was a whore. She ever tell you that?”
Three steps into the room. At the edge of the prep table now. Soon, my back will be pressed against the giant range. I’m trying to think, through my own pounding heartbeat, if there’s some way I can use that.
“Maid service, my ass. She could never make enough money to support you cleaning sheets. Dancing between them, however . . . She did it for you. So her daughter could have something more than rice and beans for dinner.”
I decide the range is a bad idea. If he leaps now and pins me against it, he’ll use those gas burners on me.
I need to get to the dishwasher. But for me to slide left, he must move right. I’ll have to move closer to him before I can drop back.
No time like the present.
I lift the soaking mop head. It’s heavy and my arms shudder with the strain.
He laughs. “Gonna fend me off with a mop?”
I snap it in the air before him. Bleach sprays out. Maybe my mother lends a guiding hand, because some droplets nail him in the eyes. He yelps, jumping back, and I slide quickly into the steam of the dishwasher while I have the chance.
“You little shit! I’m not just going to kill you, I’m going to take my time with it. Cops are dead, you know. Neither put up a fight. Now your mom, she was interesting. Bitch had started intercepting girls on the way to my office, waving them off. Sometimes she even gave them m
oney to board another bus, get out of there. She thought she could save them from her fate.
“I couldn’t let that continue, of course. The defiance. The disruption of my inventory. In my line of work, freshness of goods matters.”
He wipes at his eyes with his free hand. They appear red and swollen, but he doesn’t seem bothered. A man who has inflicted so much pain, maybe he likes it himself. Maybe, after all these years, he doesn’t feel it anymore.
The room starts to stir. He can’t sense it, but I can. His words, his voice, his presence—he’s making them angry. Reminding them of how easily he destroyed them.
The mist swirls around the dishwasher, seeking substance. I feel a silvery presence at my shoulder. My mamita. She is sad. Because he told me the truth? It wasn’t anything I hadn’t figured out these past years. This man, his line of work, the days we had meat on the table.
She is my mamita. I am her chiquita. I don’t care about the rest. The Bad Man is evil. And the rest of us suffered for it.
As if listening, the room grows heavy. The house has opinions, too. Not that the Bad Man understands. Like so many, he ignores what he can’t comprehend.
“Shooting you was one of the best things I ever did,” he gloats now. “Gave me an excuse to bail on that godforsaken desert and come home once and for all. I needed the local doc to patch you up. There’s good money in young girls, you know. But unfortunately, the bullet did too much damage to your face, lowered the value. Once he diagnosed you as mute, however, I convinced Martha to take you in. What could be better than a servant who can never talk back? I moved my operation to the mountains and business exploded, especially after I found some other ‘specialty’ suppliers who were only too happy to help. We’ve had a great run for over a decade now. If that damn hiker had never gone off trail . . .”
I tilt my head, listening despite myself. I don’t know this story. The whole of it. I only know the bits and pieces myself and the others have lived. My curiosity allows him to close the gap between us without me realizing it.
His flash of smile in the steamy air is the only warning I get.
He pounces. Instinctively, I swing up the mop. I can’t see where I hit. Enough to earn a startled oomph, then he’s on the move again.
I jab the air with the mop. I twirl it to spray more bleach. I target his groin, knees, any point of weakness, while the dishwasher’s steam builds thickly, and the house groans its distress, and I feel my mother’s spirit suddenly snap around me, as if she would hold me tight.
He grabs the wooden handle. I try to tug back. He jerks the mop toward him. I have no choice but to release my only weapon, or be tossed against him.
He steps through the steam, and there’s no mistaking the triumph in his face. He brings up his bloody blade, waving it almost lazily. A click, somewhere to the side. It sounds familiar, but I can’t place it.
Whap.
Something nails him from behind. I can’t see what in the mist. But he jumps to the left, glancing quickly behind him.
Whap.
The mop handle whacks him in the shoulder, moved by hands that aren’t my own.
“What the fuck?” he growls at me. “What are you doing?”
I can’t answer, of course. I can’t tell him that his rage and wickedness trapped them here. They died hating him. They died screaming and begging for mercy. Until their souls were doomed to haunt him, or maybe his presence haunts them. I’ve never been sure. But he has harmed and killed and hated. And now, he is joined with them, all of his victims, and they’ve waited a long time for this moment.
Across the kitchen the gas range flares on. All six burners raging hot. A low shadow darts through the mist, shockingly close.
The Bad Man leaps back from the stove, closer to the dishwasher.
I understand what I must do next.
I feel power. I feel peace. I’m not a towering inferno of rage or vengeance.
I am a daughter, a sister, a friend.
I’m a girl who doesn’t want anyone to suffer anymore.
Cabinets shake. Pots rattle. Glass suddenly sweeps off a distant shelf and shatters to the ground. The mist seems to come alive. Shadows, crouching black forms, here, there, everywhere.
The Bad Man backs up again, deeper into the boiling mist. He’s forgotten about his knife. He doesn’t know how to fight what he can’t see. But he feels the threat now. I can see it in the growing rage and horror on his face.
He thought he could destroy us. He thought he could snuff out our lives as carelessly and callously as he wanted. He thought he could get away with anything, because who was to stop a man as wicked as him?
He thought wrong.
My mother strokes my cheek. Soothing. Encouraging.
The shadow darting by again. An oomph as something lashes out against the Bad Man’s legs. He howls in frustration.
Then, it’s all very simple.
I step toward the Bad Man. I pick up the mop at his feet.
The backs of his legs are pressed against the churning conveyor belt, as he stabs the mist with his knife, slashes at the thick steam.
“Now.” I hear the voice as clear as day.
And I follow its command, lifting the heavy mop all the way up, till the head is level with his chest.
* * *
—
AT THE LAST MINUTE, THE Bad Man turns the blade toward me.
As the kitchen door slams open, the FBI agent races through, D.D. lurching in behind her, covered in blood.
“Bonita, duck!”
I understand that they want to shoot him but I’m in their way. I should step back, let them do their jobs. But this isn’t about them. This is about me and my sisters and my mother.
Because I can feel them, even if no one else does. I can see them, even if no one else wants to. And I know them, my sisters in pain.
Together, we shove the mop head into the Bad Man’s chest. Together, we drive him back with superhuman strength until he topples onto the conveyor belt, and the sanitizing cycle once more kicks to life.
“No, no, no!” he tries to scream.
But we hold the mop. We pin him against the rolling dish rack as others lift his feet, helping him along. His face disappears into the spray of boiling water. We listen to him scream and scream. We don’t let go.
I keep my grip until he is so deep inside the scorching spray, the mop can’t reach him anymore.
Then I let it clatter to the floor.
* * *
—
THE GIRLS SIGH THEIR GRATITUDE.
The house shudders back into silence.
Kimberly finally steps forward. She snaps off the machine, looking at me in concern as the steam clears.
D.D.: “Are you okay? Bonita, nod, something!”
“Great job!” Flora’s voice, from the side entrance. The click I had heard earlier had been the door opening. And the shadow in the mist? Definitely not Flora, who looked like she could barely stand. On the other hand, Keith was covered in a sheen of sweat and appeared pleased with himself.
“How the hell did you beat us here?” Kimberly wanted to know.
“Took a shortcut. Who knew?”
“Sorry,” Keith tells me. “I’m not a knife or gun kind of guy. But I knew Special Agent Quincy and the sheriff were on their way here. I figured if I could keep the monster man distracted, buy us some time . . . Except, then you took care of everything. Brilliantly, I might add.”
I don’t deny him his moment of triumph. Keith can take the credit, but I know he wasn’t the only one distracting the Bad Man. Just as I know I wasn’t the only one who finally shoved him into a spray of boiling water. There are others here who needed their revenge. And we are all happy they finally got it.
D.D. steps forward. I still haven’t moved. Now she uses her left hand to brush back my hair, peer
at my face.
I finally meet her gaze, smiling tentatively. D.D. looks terrible, blood on her face, her shoulder, her hands. Then there’s Flora, who can barely stand up and appears to have part of her skull cracked open. These are tough women, though. Both of them appear satisfied.
“You did good, Bonita. You did good,” D.D. tells me.
“With some help from my man,” Flora says proudly, pointing at Keith, who promptly blushes.
I smile again. I let them think what they want to think. While around me, I feel the soft caress of my mother’s spirit enfold me in a final embrace. Her silvery shadow gathers in the upper left-hand corner of the kitchen, now joined by purple, then green, then orange. Dozens of colors. Dozens of lost souls finally moving on.
They will wait for me, and watch over me. As I will always wait and watch for them.
A last kiss on my cheek. I feel it like the brush of butterfly wings. Mamita and chiquita. Together again.
Then, D.D.’s arm wraps around my shoulders. She half hugs me, half uses me to hold herself up. I welcome both as I listen to the grumbles and laughter of my new family, easing into the aftermath.
I close my eyes.
I send my love to my mother. I promise her I will live, I will love, I will find a way to be happy.
Then, I let her go.
EPILOGUE
BONITA
HER NAME IS FLORA DANE. Once, she knew a bad man, too. He kidnapped her and hurt her and tried to break her. But she held strong. She survived him. She rebuilt her life. She found people to love, people who love her.
She is not surviving anymore, she explains to me. She is thriving.
And she is going to teach me how to do it, too.
During the day, a new lady comes to visit me. Her name is JoAnn Kelly and she knows the magic of speech. She works with lips and tongues and how to make them do what you want. She is teaching me noises. Puh, puh, puh. Hah, hah, hah.
