by Patti Larsen
Another explosion, closer this time.
Yeah, right.
“Marie.” Peggy stopped her tapping feet.
“What have you done?” Fiona paled, licked her lips. “We’re on the wrong side of the bridge, you madwoman.” She glanced at the exit, inching toward it, but Peggy fired again, the bullet just missing from what I could tell, a puff of plaster exploding on the far wall from the impact.
“Why, I’ve set off your little plan early.” Peggy ignored all of us, focused on Fiona. “You’re blowing the mountain to high heaven, Marie. So that’s where I’m sending you.” She laughed. “Or, more likely, you’re going below, to the hot place. I’ll see you there.”
This time Fiona lunged for the door, but Peggy was faster, the next bullet blowing a giant hole in the panel, just below the handle. Fiona cried out, hand going to her cheek, where a chunk of flying wood had sliced her skin. Blood dripped from between her fingers, but she was still alive.
Maybe I’d get my supervillain oration after all.
That was, if the damned explosions would stop. At this rate, as the whole sofa shook, dust falling from the ceiling in response to the third, we’d all be dead under a massive slide of rock before Peggy could get out her litany of evil.
“Your guards were no match for me,” the old lady said. “Or Ruth. Turns out she’s very good with explosives, years spent working with that useless brother of hers in his construction business.” Yikes. “You made your last mistake, Marie. We’ll die together here. The last of the Sisterhood.” Another cackle. “Just the way it should be.”
“I’m not Marie Patterson, you old fool.” Fiona’s hand fell to her side, the blood flow continuing, a trail now making a stuttering line down the front of her blue dress. “Snap out of your insanity, for god’s sake. I’m not here for you. I’ll let you live if you just lower the gun.”
Maybe Peggy would have listened six months ago. But I could tell there was nothing left of the woman who I knew, not a shred of the old woman who used to spy on me over the fence at Petunia’s. No, she was long lost in the past. Unlike Martha French and her dear, dear heart, the Peggy who used to be carried darkness with her, and there was no going back for her.
“I know you didn’t want me,” she snarled, stalking toward Fiona with the gun leveled. “I know you and Iris conspired to keep me out of the Sisterhood.” Her finger twitched against the trigger, visible even from this distance. “I know you never thought I was good enough. Well, Marie. Am I good enough for you now?” She grinned, maniacal and insane, while the irony of her statement stirred a hysterical giggle empty of amusement. Close enough to Fiona’s own need from her father, wasn’t it, to feel like poetic justice? “We played in these passages, years ago, when we were all girls together. You would never have found them without me. But still you treated me like you never wanted me.” Were those tears on her old face? Peggy wiped at them with the cuff of her tattered brown cardigan, pale flowered dress dirty on the hem and were those cobwebs in her wispy hair? “I gave you a gift, I gave you my friendship. And you cast me off.” The gun slashed the air. “You cast us all off.” I already knew Peggy didn’t take rejection well. But she’d been her own mastermind, once upon a time. “You learned everything from me. Asked me how to build your empire when Teddy proved weak, the family fortune in trouble. I showed you everything, taught you all I knew. And this is how you treat me?” Rage flew from her lips in drops of spittle as she came within five feet of Fiona. So it had been Peggy who helped Marie begin Blackstone? And the budding criminal enterprise Fiona took over? If Marie’s family money was gone, if the family was in trouble, it would explain her descent into criminal activity before Fiona could even get her hands on the Patterson name. “I was the best of the Sisterhood and you rejected me.” The gun wavered at last, her old hand shaking as if with palsy, but only for a second. “I made my own empire, without you. And now you’ll die and everyone will know I was the leader.” She thumped her narrow chest with her free fist, the sound hollow and painful. “Me. Peggy Munroe. Not the all-mighty Marie Patterson.”
“I. Am. Not. Marie. Patterson.” Fiona’s Irish accent emerged. Panic rose in her. “Where are my men?” Not a question for Peggy, but one she seemed happy to answer with a giggle of glee.
“Waiting on the other side of the bridge,” she said. “Like you ordered them to.”
“I did no such…” Fiona’s fear was as real as mine, now. “It can’t end like this. I’ve prepared for every eventuality.”
So tempting to interrupt, fire off a Flemingism burn to end all burns. But did I dare risk distracting Peggy from her focus? None of my friends or family spoke up, so we all had to be thinking the same thing. Even as a fourth explosion made my ears ring, a shriek escaping me, while the entire house rocked from it.
Peggy’s attention flickered, confusion emerging, her hand shaking suddenly, gun descending as she looked around her. Fiona must have seen her moment of weakness and, in that instant, she wasn’t the only one on the move.
Dad. Crew. Fiona. Malcolm. All en route to the crazy old woman and the gun. At the exact instant the ceiling over the far wall fell in.
“Don’t!” Peggy’s roar of denial made it through the echoing sound of destruction, her focus back, unflinching despite the collapsing house. The men froze, Fiona stumbling to her knees while we coughed and choked on plaster dust. We had to get out of there, had to run, but not with an insane gunwoman standing in our way. I eyed the secret passage, still open, barely accessible now that the crown molding covered the floor in chunks. “The perfect ending, don’t you think? Taking you, Iris, Martha, me. Doreen will just have to rot in prison.” Another cough. I glanced at Vivian, realized who filled in the gap for her grandmother in Peggy’s foggy memory. “You know, Iris knew. She knew there was something wrong with you.” Was Peggy waking to the present? “She told me about the fire, sneaking up here and seeing you burning something that looked like a body. Where you buried the remains in an old tool chest.” Grandmother Iris had heard that from Martha, clearly did her best to protect her friend. Because it was obvious she never trusted the woman with the gun. Peggy coughed herself, weapon at the ready despite her slowly draining energy. I could see her failing, knew it was only a matter of moments before she lost control of the gun. Prepped myself to grab my mom and Daisy and Vivian and get the hell out of there. While the old woman went on. “How she used that old fool, Alistair, and his ridiculous treasure book to make a hunt. Not for gold though, Marie.” Peggy’s last cackle was sad, agonized. “It was a Marie Patterson hunt. Only no one wanted to play.” She exhaled deeply, sorrowfully. “And now, the game is over.” Her expression flatlined at last. I knew that expression. Held my breath for the curtain call. “So endeth the Sisterhood.”
She pulled the trigger.
As a massive explosion rocked the room.
***
Chapter Forty
I was sure that was it, we were dead, but somehow the rest of the ceiling held and we were still alive when, gasping and choking on the dust she’d created, Ruth Wilkins staggered through the secret door and into the room.
“We have to go!” She shouted like she’d been partially deafened and perhaps she had. She certainly looked like she’d come too close to an explosion, the side of her face peppered with little cuts, one hand cradled against her as if damaged by flying debris. Ruth had once been an imposing figure to be reckoned with but, as she’d been when I’d seen her last six months ago in my basement apartment at Petunia’s, she appeared reduced, shrunken. A broken woman who’d sold her soul to the insanity of the past Peggy Munroe couldn’t shed.
Ruth’s visible terror wasn’t helping my own fear level. I sat forward, Daisy’s hand in mine, Mom reaching for me as we moved in unison. Thinking what? We’d get to run when Peggy and her grandniece did, just like that? Were we all keen to obey the shouted words Ruth threw at Peggy? Um, yup. Let me out of there, right now.
“I’m not going anywhere.” Peggy did
n’t even turn to look at the woman who’d made her plan a reality. “None of us are. This is how it ends.”
Ruth’s shock told me, even now, she didn’t believe her great aunt had completely lost her mind. She spun in silence, her eyes meeting mine in a brief instant of panic, before she made it one step toward the exit that was the secret door.
In that same moment the ceiling gave way, crushing her beneath a large portion of the second floor.
Not that I got to witness her death, because with the collapse came a rush of dust, driving me to the floor for cover, Mom jerked down beside me, Daisy too, Vivian’s arms around my bestie as she ducked and covered. I looked up in time to see Crew struggling with Peggy for the gun, jerking it free from the old woman’s hands, just as Fiona, face a mask of utter rage, struck my husband on the back of the head with a chunk of plaster.
I don’t remember how I reached her. I have no idea how I made it across the room to my namesake before her hands even fell to her sides, the blunt instrument she’d used to bring Crew down dropping to the dust. I registered the blood on her cheek caked in white powder, the look in her green eyes as I hit her bodily from the side, carrying her into the door beside her, the cracking of wood as she struck just where the bullet Peggy fired earlier shattered beneath the handle. Sweat. More blood, more dust.
Dad, staggering, falling to the side as he stumbled over rubble, while Peggy resumed her control of the gun. I hit the floor with Fiona beneath me, flipping to my side, lying next to the woman I’d been named after as we stared up into the grinning face now peeking at us through the fog of plaster in the air.
A vague sense of déjà vu prodded. But there was no Petunia to interrupt the shot this time, no faithful pug to distract. My only saving grace in the final moment of my life was the wavering decision on Peggy’s face as she tried in her madness to decide: Marie or Iris?
The ground was shaking. I heard the rumble as I saw Peggy make her decision, felt the earth give way, the shock on the old woman’s face as the wall beside her—beside me, with Fiona between me and impending death—disintegrated, ceiling collapsing in time with the destruction—and enveloped the world in crushing darkness.
***
Chapter Forty One
I coughed into the black, chest tight, something heavy digging into my right leg. I tried to shift position, to free myself, and screamed from the instant pain.
“Fee.” Someone choked out my name, warm touch on my fingertips. I coughed a sob, feeling consciousness fade before it came back in a rush of agony. “Sweetheart, I’m here. Fee. I’m here.”
“Crew!” I wanted to hug him. Why couldn’t I hug him? I tried to reach him again, new levels of torment taking my breath.
“Fee, don’t try to move.” He sounded like he was crying, doing his best not to, but failing. “Please, my love. Stay still.”
So hard. I panted into the dark, biting my lower lip as hard as I could to keep from screaming. Pitch black and heavy, the air thick. I couldn’t breathe properly, panic seizing me, struggle at the verge of conscious thought.
“Fee.” There he was again, that touch, were those his fingertips on mine? I held to that barest connection like the embrace I couldn’t have, his voice and that spark of current between our two bodies something to cling to.
Enough to keep me from losing my mind.
“Fee.” Oh my god, that was Dad. “You’re okay?”
“Something’s on my leg.” I wanted to sob. “Dad, are you hurt?”
“I think my ribs are broken.” A soft cough, but that gravel voice never wavered. He sounded close. He’d been near me when everything went to hell. “Lu, she’s okay. She’s awake.”
“Fiona.” Mom’s voice was barely audible, but sounded like she was crying, too. “Oh, sweetie, be brave. It’s okay.”
Was she talking to me or herself?
“Day? Viv?” I couldn’t seem to speak above a harsh whisper anymore.
No one spoke. And panic returned.
“I’m here.” Malcolm. Okay, focus on Malcolm. “Siobhan.” He sniffed. More tears. Silence.
“Peggy and Fiona?” Something was pressed against my side and I realized from the give, it wasn’t part of the house. I’d been with my namesake. Was it her body next to me?
“Here.” She did nothing to disguise her Irish accent. “Though I hope the old lady died in the crush.”
“No such luck.” Peggy’s cackle reached us all. “Is this hell, Marie?”
Sure felt like it.
“There were sirens,” Dad said then. “They went quiet a few minutes ago. But I heard voices just before you woke up, Fee.”
Rescue. Now, to hold it together until they dug us out.
Took a while. Far too long, in my estimation. I have no idea how long, or how we survived, alternating between sobbing hysterically to release my stress and lying still and quiet and terrified of being trapped there forever. At least Vivian’s voice broke through, confirming she was okay, and then Daisy, my dear Day, safe with the mayor beyond where Mom lay trapped.
Safe. All of us safe. A miracle.
It was Mom’s idea to sing. She’d always had a lovely voice, a sweet alto. Why she picked a Christmas carol to start off, I had no idea. Maybe it was all she could think of. But as the familiar first notes and words escaped her, I latched onto the faint hope in the sound and did my best to keep up.
I lost track of how many we sang while we lay there in the dark under the weight of Patterson House, waiting to be found, rescued. When Mom faltered, Daisy started a new tune, then Vivian. Even Crew gave it a go leading one, though it was Malcolm’s dirty Irish song that made us all laugh and then weep and then sing again.
Light was a shock, bright and vivid, through cracks above me, voices calling out while we sang and hope blossomed. I wasn’t expecting the chunk above my face to shift, the sudden exposure to night sky and rescuers with powerful flashlights, nor the snuffling and excited tongue swipe of the giant black dog who licked at the endless flow of tears—now of gratitude—that streamed down my face.
Likely not for the last time, Moose, that most faithful of Newfoundlanders, had rescued me.
***
Turned out Ruth Wilkins might have watched her brother lay demo, but she hadn’t actually mastered the rulebook when it came to placement. Fortunately for us.
“You’re just lucky Peggy made her move the charges,” Liz said two days later while I sat, my leg propped up on three pillows, aching despite the painkillers from the gash where a chunk of rebar had punctured to the muscle. I was lucky it didn’t go all the way through, the ceiling and wall forming a pocket that protected not just me, but my loved ones, from the rockslide Ruth’s sloppy attempt at killing us created. “From what I saw, if she hadn’t, the setup the Blackstone mercs lined up would have brought down half the mountain.”
“Yeah, really lucky,” I said.
“You’re alive, aren’t you?” She winked at Crew who sat back in the chair he occupied next to me, arms crossed over his chest. He had a bandage over one eye, the only evidence he’d been in the room at all. If anyone was lucky, it was him.
“You said you dug her out of the rubble, too?” I reached out and touched Crew’s cheek, and he instantly unwound, taking my fingers in his, kissing them. He’d been incredibly attentive since we’d been allowed access to one another, hardly surprising. I never wanted to let him out of my sight ever again. “I thought she died.”
“That old mansion was well built,” Liz said. “Everyone made it out. Except the guard Peggy shot.”
Fair enough. The house couldn’t be blamed for Peggy’s aim.
I shivered as I remembered being pulled from the rubble, Moose’s soft fur under my hand, Liz at the vanguard of the team carefully excising us from the remains of Patterson House, Bill Saunders himself lifting me to safety while his big dog looked on. It didn’t take long, once they found us, to get us all out, though I refused to leave in the ambulance—hello, my old friend EMTs, yes it w
as me again—until everyone was found.
That meant I got to watch Fiona Doyle being led away in handcuffs, Peggy, too, though that old lady was tied to a stretcher and, ultimately, raved in delirium I stopped listening to the moment she was loaded into the back of a second ambulance.
Emile’s panicked arrival and subsequent hug and passionate kiss for my bestie was one-upped, that classic Hollywood ending they seemed to be wrapped up in punctuated by my darling Daisy firmly pushing her true love away from her and staring up into his pale eyes.
“Emile Ries,” she said in her clear voice, “I love you. Will you marry me?”
Jill appeared at my door, interrupting that gorgeous memory, small wave of greeting hesitant and expression taut with guilt. I gestured for her to join us, patting at the tears arisen by remembering the expression on Emile’s face, his enthusiastic agreement to Daisy’s proposal, how we’d all wept, even my stoic dad, for our happy ending that shouldn’t have been. I pulled her down on the bed next to me despite the pain her jostling generated, and proceeded to tell her and Liz—with Crew’s help—everything that happened.
Not that they didn’t know most of it. We’d all dumped so much on them that night, as the spotlights combed the wreckage and rescue crews did their best to ensure they pulled all of us out safely. It had been an odd moment, spotting Robert standing at the edge of the rubble, that sullen darkness on his face, staring at what used to be Patterson House. But satisfying, I have to say, to watch Vivian take Jill’s hand, blood from a cut on her cheek caked with dust and Grace Fiore suit torn and filthy but her expression set and determined, and lead her to Robert’s side.
