“It’s not your fault, Jeremy. None of this is.”
“She took Rachel, didn’t she? Is she going to hurt her?”
“Jeremy, we don’t know anything for sure, but I’m going to find them both, I promise you that. Right now, though, I need you here. I need you to take care of your brother. And I need you to send someone out to the cabin to get Myrtle.”
Snowmobiles skidded to a halt, more than just two of them. Misty jumped off the back of one driven by Rosie and flung herself into Jeremy’s arms. “Are you okay? I was so scared when you weren’t in the room!”
“Rosie, get Misty and the boys back to the lodge.”
Rosie nodded and dismounted, and Mason jumped on the vacated snowmobile and took off, following the trail Marie had left. As he sped through the snow, Rachel’s words about death came back to him. About how your flaws were erased, how you got better on the other side. And he started praying with everything in him. Eric, if you can hear me, and if there’s any way you can help here, you’ve got to step up, bro. You’ve gotta stop her. Stop her, Eric. Redeem yourself. You fucking owe me. And God knows you owe Rachel.
* * *
Marie stopped the snowmobile, untied the tow rope and pulled me through the woods on the plastic sled. It shouldn’t have been easy for her, but she seemed to have developed some kind of super strength or something. I guess she figured the snowmobile tracks would be too easy to follow, or maybe she was taking me somewhere the snowmobile couldn’t go. I couldn’t see what was ahead of us, only behind, lying face up on the sled, unable to move my head. Dizziness swamped me again.
Breathe in. Breathe out. You dumbass, if you keep forgetting, you’re gonna die.
So I did. I breathed those almost-worthless whiffs of not nearly enough air, and I tried to breathe them faster, to make up in frequency for what they lacked in size.
But then I couldn’t anymore, because Marie sat on my chest and used her legs to propel the sled forward. It tilted sharply down, and I realized we were at the top of a hill, a steep one, and before I even had time to panic we were flying downward at dizzying speed. The dark spots returned, expanding to fill up more space in my eyes. I tried to inhale, but my lungs couldn’t fight her weight. I was going to die right there. My lungs screamed for air, but I couldn’t give them any.
We finally stopped and she rolled off me.
Breathe in! Quick!
I did, inhaling for all I was worth, but it amounted to a breath so small and so shallow that it didn’t even make a sound. I did it again and again and again, all the while wondering why I was fighting so hard to stay alive.
Because I fucking believe, that’s why! I believe! This is not the way my life is supposed to end. I did not get my eyesight back after twenty years only to die a few months later. And I did not meet Mason Brown just to put off being with him until it was too late. This isn’t how it’s supposed to work.
My own platitudes, all the words I’d ever written, played through my mind. You create your own experience according to what you believe. Okay, then, what do I believe?
I believe that I am not going out like this. I’m going to have a happy ending, dammit, and this isn’t it.
Do you really believe that, Rache, or are you just trying real hard to?
I mentally cussed out my inner bitch, but while I was at it I searched my soul, and I knew that I honestly did not believe Marie was going to cut out my eyes. I didn’t. That’s why I was fighting so hard to breathe. Because somewhere inside me I knew it wasn’t going to end this way.
And what about Marie, Pollyanna? What did she believe that led her to this?
Marie dragged me a little farther into the cover of some nearby pines. And then she finally stopped and sank to the ground, panting.
God, I wish I could pant like that. My lungs are starving. Breathe in, breathe in, breathe in, dammit!
“I have to put my family back together,” she said softly. It startled me, when I realized she was speaking to me. “Everything was taken away. Everything. And I know it was punishment.”
She moved closer, kneeling in the snow beside me, taking a backpack from her shoulders. “I knew what my husband was. What he was doing. I knew it. And I didn’t tell. I just… I kept his secrets. I let him do what he needed to do. I could see how it was with him. How tense and tight he’d get just before… And how relaxed and easy he’d be right after. He couldn’t help it. He wasn’t a monster.”
Not a monster? I would have laughed if I could have. He was a sick, twisted fuck, and apparently you two were a perfect match.
Breathe in. Breathe out.
“He took his own life. He wanted to stop so badly that he killed himself. And still the killing went on. I knew, you see. Mason didn’t tell me, but I knew. The people who got Eric’s organs went on killing.”
Not all of them. Only Terry Skullbones and Dr. Vosberg. No one else.
“I knew when I lost the baby that I was being punished. Eric wanted the killing to stop, and I could have turned him in, stopped him when he was alive, but I didn’t. He’d still be alive if I had, but I didn’t. He wanted me to stop the killing. And I knew…I knew the only way to do that was to take back the organs. Take them all back. And then I could join him in the afterlife.”
That is one warped and twisted theory, Marie.
Breathe, breathe, breathe.
She unzipped her backpack and took out a tiny blade, a glass jar with a lid and a bottle of what I thought was alcohol. Everything was surreal, fading in and out. I had the distinct impression that I kept leaving my body, floating above it and looking down at myself there on the sled under those strong-scented pines. I heard the way their needles whispered against each other in every breeze. Marie leaned closer to my face, kneeling beside me in the snow. “I might not be able to get them all, now that Mason is so close to figuring it out. But I can get his eyes, and maybe, if I’m smart and clever, a few more before they catch me. I’m sorry about this, Rachel. I like you. But I can’t take the risk that you’ll start murdering people like Eric did.”
I’m the one who stopped him, you crazy bitch!
I told my body to breathe, then tried to drag my focus away from the me on the ground. That me was looking pretty rough right now, eyes open but blank and dull, mouth open, still trying to grasp those tiny insignificant bits of air, nothing moving except my hair, and that only because the wind kept blowing it.
I tried to look away from Marie and what she was about to do, and realized that I was expanding, floating higher. I knew then that it was over, because there was no possible way I could fit back inside my body now. No way. I couldn’t believe I’d been wrong. That I really was going to die. It still didn’t seem possible.
And then I saw him. Eric Conroy Brown. Mason’s brother.
He was standing there, reaching out to me. The serial killer responsible for all of this. The one who’d killed my brother. That bastard.
But then I saw someone else, a little farther away. I frowned and inwardly whispered, Tommy?
Not the gaunt, addicted version in the photos we’d shown the police when he’d gone missing. But healthy, strong, and also utterly serene. He looked at Eric’s outstretched hands, and then he looked at me and nodded.
So I let the murderer take hold of my hands, although I didn’t really have hands anymore. I told myself this was just how I was experiencing this oxygen-deprived hallucination.
It’s real and you know it.
Yeah. I guess I do.
Then I looked down again at what I did not want to see. Marie was straddling my body now, holding the blade near my eyes. My eyes had fallen closed. I wondered if I was dead. But right at that instant I felt Eric’s nonexistent hands squeeze mine, and my eyes, the real ones, popped open. They were wide, and they were unfamiliar to me. Brown, not blue.
Marie shot off my body as if she’d taken a bullet in the chest, landing on her ass in the snow, the blade flying from her hand. Then she blinked wide-eyed at my dying body, and whispered, “Eric?”
I looked around for him, but he wasn’t there anymore. I saw my brother in the distance. He smiled and looked down again, so I did, too, and saw Mason’s snowmobile diving over the lip of that hill and speeding recklessly down it. At the bottom he simply let go and dove off the thing, lunging through the snow toward Marie and my body, following the trail the sled had left.
It wasn’t far. Way closer than it had felt when she’d been pulling me. And then he was there, leaning over my body, and I saw the way his shoulders were heaving, heard him saying my name. Then he pressed his mouth to mine and breathed air into my hungry lungs.
My brother waved goodbye, and whoosh! I felt as if I’d been sucked into a powerful vacuum. I opened my eyes. I was back in my body again.
Mason lifted his head. I looked out at him through my own eyes, which were still intact, still in my head and, I guessed, still blue. I reminded myself again to breathe, and it was a little bit easier this time. I needed more, but this was better.
Then something dark rose up behind him. Marie, with the scalpel poised above his back. I widened my eyes, and Mason read me, spun and caught her in the chest with an elbow. She doubled over, and he clocked her in the chin and knocked her on her ass.
He scooped me up off the sled and carried me back to the bottom of the hill where he’d left his snowmobile. We passed Lieutenant Mendosa on the way, and Mason said, “I’ve got to get her to a hospital. Marie’s back there. She has a scalpel. Use your weapon if you need to.”
“I’ll radio the chopper,” Mendosa said. Then he pointed. “Get her to the clearing—twenty yards that way.”
I rested my head against Mason’s chest and closed my eyes.
See? I was right. This wasn’t how it was supposed to end.
CHAPTER 18
Sunday, December 24
When I opened my eyes, Mason was sitting close to me, head down, eyes closed, holding my hand. I loved the way that felt, his big hand all wrapped around my smaller one. I know, that’s pretty sappy, but since I almost died I’m going to allow it, just this once. I told myself to squeeze his hand so he’d know I was okay and was a little surprised—and a whole lot relieved—when my body did what I told it to.
He looked up fast, right into my eyes. “Rachel?”
I wasn’t sure I’d be able to talk, but I tried it. Gave him what I hoped was a spunky smile and asked, “Who the hell else would it be?” Yikes. I sounded like a bullfrog with a cold. “So am I okay? How long have I been out? And where’s my dog?”
He relaxed just like I knew he would if I mouthed off at him. “Myrtle’s fine. She’s with the boys. You’ve been out overnight. And yes, you’re okay. You managed to snap the needle off in your neck. Didn’t get much of the drug into your body.”
“It was close, Mason. Way too close. Frankly, your family is getting to be a real pain in my ass.” I stopped kidding, went serious. “Where is she? And the boys, where are they, and—”
“Easy. Here, have a drink.” He was out of his chair, nervous and not knowing what to do with himself, how to act. But he held a big plastic tumbler with a straw in the top so I could take a sip.
I did. Water. Shit, I was hoping for vodka.
“Marie can’t hurt anyone else. She’s in jail, and she’s not getting out anytime soon. Not with what she’s done.”
“She’s sick, Mason. She needs a mental ward, not a prison sentence.”
I saw the surprise in his face when I said that. “What? You’re surprised I have a heart?”
“I know you have a heart,” he said. “I just figured you’d be leading the lynch mob.”
“Well, I’m not. So where are the boys?” I asked.
“They’re asleep in the waiting room with Angela. They…they don’t know everything yet. I couldn’t tell them yet that their mother murdered five people.” He closed his eyes.
Hell, he’d been through as much as I had. “Five?” I asked.
“The vet. She confessed to everything once we had her in custody. Even planting Jeremy’s jackknife at the scene. Said she didn’t really want to frame him. Just to distract me long enough to let her complete her…mission.”
Those kids. Those poor freaking kids.
“She was already falling apart by the time she killed Alan Douglas,” Mason went on. “I think there was a part of her that really did like the guy. She was torn, and that made her sloppy.” He looked anguished. “So how the hell do I tell Josh and Jeremy all that?”
I said, “Would it help if we told them together?”
He opened his eyes and nodded. “It would. I just don’t know what I can tell them. How much I should tell them.”
I scootched higher in the bed, sitting up a little, and he reached down to adjust the pillows behind me. “Tell them that their father’s death and then the baby being stillborn was too much for Marie. It broke her mind. She did some bad things, hurt people. But she’s not a bad person. She’s just going to have to stay in a hospital where she can get some help to get better, maybe for a very long time.” Because I didn’t think a woman who’d murdered five people and cut the organs out of three of them would ever be pronounced sane and turned loose on society. Then again, with our system, you never know.
“And tell them that in the meantime…” I tilted my head, watching his face, and I knew what he’d decided, just like that. “In the meantime, they get to move in with their uncle Mason. Right?”
He nodded at me, and I knew I was right. He’d already made that decision. “Yeah. I’m all they have, Rachel. And that means another delay for us. For our…relationship.”
“Our relationship, huh? You’re not overconfident or anything, are you?”
He smiled sadly at me, and I hated to see him looking so morose. “Look, neither of us was ready for anything serious before. I had to adjust to being a sighted, independent adult, and you were just an idiot.”
“Hey!”
“Don’t interrupt me, I’m on a roll. Now I’m getting adjusted. I may not be all the way there yet, but I’m getting there. You, however, are a brand-new father to two bouncing half-grown motherless boys. Your life is about to change radically. You need time to settle in. See how life is gonna play out. Find your new normal.”
He lowered his head. He looked so damn serious. Maybe even choked up.
“Mason, I’m not going anywhere.”
His head came up. “You’re not?”
“Hell, no, I’m not. What do you think? That I’d trust you to figure this out on your own? No way. At the very least you need me around to convey tips from Sandra and Jim, the best parents I know.”
“So…?”
“So…we try the whole relationship thing. We date. God, I hate that word. I help you out with the boys. You help me out with the dog. There’s no reason Myrt and I can’t be part of your new normal, is there?”
“No reason I can come up with.”
“Good.” I looked at him. He looked back at me. I said, “So are we going to kiss on it or something?”
His grin was broad, and I had a second to admire those damned killer dimples of his as he leaned in for a long, wet kiss.
When he sat up again he said, “Did you ever stop to think that we might never have found each other if all of this hadn’t happened the way it did? Your brother, my brother…”
“Me being blind so you could run me over with your car.”
“Yeah.”
I looked him square in the eye and said, “Yes. I’ve thought about it.”
“Think there’s anything to it? Fate? Predestination? Everything happening for a reason?”
I tipped
my head slightly, thinking. “I think maybe the bullshit I write isn’t quite 100 percent bullshit after all.”
He nodded, then got up and went over to the door, where he waved at someone out in the hall. A second later I heard running feet as Joshua came thundering into my room with Myrtle in his arms like an oversized baby. He brought her right to my bed, and she wriggled up beside me and licked my face, her whole butt wagging in joy.
I hugged her neck, basking in doggy love as Jeremy and Misty came in, arm in arm. I looked around the room, realizing the boys had become important to me. They’d become family to me. I might even love them a little.
Angela came in last of all, taking her time. When she got there, she met my eyes, came to my bedside and clasped my hand. “I’m very glad you’re all right, Rachel. In the past several hours I’ve seen firsthand how important you’ve become to this family.”
“Thanks, Angela. That means a lot to me.”
Myrtle patted Angela’s hand, her way of asking for some petting, and Angela complied. “How did you guys ever get a bulldog into a hospital?” I asked as I watched them.
“We threw your name around,” Misty confessed. “She’s not an official therapy dog, but in the end, they said they’d make an exception because it’s Christmas Eve.”
“It is, isn’t it?” I looked at the boys. They looked tired, haggard, worried, heartbroken. Then I looked at Mason. “I have to get out of here, Mason. We need to have Christmas. All of us together. It’s important.”
“I agree,” he said.
“Me, too,” Jeremy put in. Joshua sat on the edge of my bed, leaning in to hug Myrtle and me all at once.
I met Mason’s eyes, and I knew one thing for sure. Everything in life, even the bad stuff, happens for a reason. And that ragtag band of misfits around me in the room right then…they were one of the best reasons there could ever be.
Brown and de Luca Collection, Volume 1 Page 60
