‘No, they won’t. They’ll be looking for you and your lawyer friend and then, when they can’t find you, the whole thing will just fade away. You’ll be forgotten.’ Her face twisted into an ugly sneer. ‘One way or another, you die tonight. If you cooperate, it’ll be quick. If you don’t, I’ll make it slow.’
Brook had a feeling Jenna wanted it to be slow, and that any appeal to her better nature wasn’t going to work. She was too consumed by hatred for that.
They’d reached the house now, and Brook knew this was the end of the line. The whole gamut of emotions was running through her head again: fear, anger, relief that Paige was alive and unharmed, sadness because she’d never see her beautiful girl grow up.
King directed her to the edge of the treeline, off to the side of the house, and told her to stop.
Brook stopped. Waited. Wondering when the bullet would come.
And then she heard a voice call out, ‘Jenna. What’s going on? I can’t find Little Boots.’
Brook turned around. Jenna was standing five yards behind her, too far away to charge, her gun raised. But now she could also see a woman in her fifties, wearing an old-fashioned dress, hurrying down the steps at the front of the house and coming over.
‘Get back, Mom. I’m dealing with a complication. Little Boots is fine. She’s sleeping in the car. I’ll go get her in a minute.’
Her mother – Doris Barclay – was small and thin, with a long nose and birdlike features, and Brook realized there was something familiar about her.
Doris stopped next to Jenna, looking concerned. ‘Oh, Jenna,’ she said. ‘This is going too far. We don’t want anyone else hurt.’
‘This is the only way, Mom. I’ll bury her in the woods and, once she’s gone, it’ll all be over, and it’ll just be me, you and Little Boots. You go back in the house and leave everything to me, okay?’ Jenna gave her a mother a reassuring look.
Doris looked at Brook. There might have been sympathy in her eyes, it was hard to tell, but there was also a steely pragmatism there. She knew as well as her daughter that, now that Brook had found them, she had to die.
And that was when Brook realized that she bore striking similarities to the old woman in her dreams, with the hooked nose, beckoning from the forest. ‘I know you,’ she said, staring hard at Doris Barclay. ‘We’ve met before. When I was a child.’ Something lurched up from her subconscious, a memory suppressed since early childhood. ‘You tried to kidnap me,’ she said. ‘When I was very, very young. It was you.’
Doris said nothing. She stared at Brook with her narrow, beady eyes, before turning back to her daughter. ‘Make sure she’s the last one, baby,’ she said. ‘I don’t want you to become too hard.’
Brook almost laughed at that particular comment, but then, as Jenna turned to smile at her mom, she saw her chance and – knowing there wasn’t going to be another one – rushed forward, keeping her body low.
She hit Jenna full-on, sending her crashing to the ground as the gun went off once, then twice, temporarily deafening her. Brook landed on top of the other woman, managing to grab her gun arm at the elbow, pushing it back as the gun went off a third time. Jenna screamed in anger and drove her body upwards, knocking Brook off. But as she scrambled to her feet, Brook lashed out with her foot, striking Jenna on the shin before she could get her balance.
She stumbled and went down on her ass. At the same time Brook rolled over, jumped up and sprinted for the trees, noticing as she did so that Doris Barclay was lying motionless. She’d been hit.
Two more shots rang out – both close to her – but Brook had already reached the shelter of the treeline. Keeping her head down, she tore her way through the thick undergrowth, ignoring the pain as the branches scratched her skin. Behind her, she heard a blood-curdling scream as Jenna realized that her mother had been shot.
Brook hit a branch at head height and stumbled, falling onto the soft forest floor, her head spinning. She could hear Jenna crashing through the trees only yards behind her, cursing and yelling. Ignoring the shock, Brook crawled on her hands and knees behind a tree.
‘I will kill you, you bitch!’ hissed Jenna, very close now. ‘You can’t get away. You’re mine.’
Her footfalls became slower and quieter. She was only feet away. Any second now, she would see Brook and then it would all be over.
Next to Brook’s feet was a dead branch about three feet long and perhaps a couple of inches thick. She leaned over and grabbed it, rising slowly to her feet, holding it two-handed and behind her head, like a baseball bat.
And then, as she heard Jenna’s foot crunch on the dead leaves just on the other side of the tree, she swung the stick round with every bit of strength she possessed, striking the detective full in the face as she stepped into view. The stick broke in half, but Jenna fell backwards and the gun went spinning away, bouncing off a nearby tree and landing on the ground.
Brook still had hold of the bottom half of the stick and she hit Jenna again with it, three times in rapid succession, as she lay dazed on the ground. Then, throwing the stick away, she ran over, grabbed the gun and pointed it down at the woman who’d become her nemesis.
Jenna rolled onto her side, spat blood and glared defiantly up at Brook. Her nose was badly broken and she didn’t look like she could fight any more. ‘Go on, then,’ she whispered. ‘Do it. Kill me.’
Brook’s finger tightened on the trigger. This was the woman who’d murdered her parents, her husband and her friend Angie, along with plenty of others, and had done everything she could to destroy her life. She didn’t deserve to live. The world would be a far better place without her.
Anger seared through Brook. It was so damned tempting. Just pull the trigger… pull the trigger …
And she did.
The bullet ricocheted off the ground beside her head, and Jenna screamed, throwing up her hands reflexively to protect her face.
‘You’re not worth it,’ said Brook with a sigh and, still holding the gun, walked away from her.
Doris Barclay lay unmoving on the ground, bleeding from where she’d been shot in the head. Was she the woman from Brook’s recurring nightmares? Had she really tried to abduct her all those years ago – something that might have prompted her parents to move to the UK? She didn’t know. And she would probably never know now.
So she walked past Doris Barclay’s body, putting her and Jenna King and all the other traumas of her life behind her, calling 911 and telling them to get there as fast as they could.
On the walk back down the track she kept turning to see if Jenna had come after her, but the forest was quiet, and there was no one there.
When she got to Angie’s car, she stopped. Angie still sat motionless in the driver’s seat, gone now for ever, and Brook felt the tears welling up at the sheer waste of it all. All those lives lost, and for what? A petty, teenager-like desire for revenge, born of a misguided jealousy. Jenna King was her half-sister. They could have been friends. It could all have been so, so different.
But out of all the negatives, there was still one huge positive. Brook opened the back door of the car as quietly as she could, relieved to see that Paige was still asleep. With tears running down her face, Brook lifted her up, held her tightly and together they waited for the police to come.
Epilogue
Four months later
It was the end of summer and a cool, bright evening as Brook stood on the beach, watching Paige run along it with their new German-shepherd puppy, Scout. The two of them were playing a game they both liked, whereby Paige held a stick just above her head, and Scout had to jump for it and somehow wrestle it from her grip. At the moment Paige was still very good at keeping hold of the stick, but that wasn’t going to last much longer.
They’d got Scout just after it had all happened – partly for security, partly because they needed an addition to the family and something to take Paige’s mind off everything that had happened. In truth, she’d got through the whole ordeal remarkably w
ell. Thankfully, she hadn’t really understood what was going on and had thought she was simply staying with distant family members she didn’t know. It had been hard telling her that her daddy wasn’t coming back, that in the time she’d been away he’d hurt himself and gone to heaven, and that Rosa had had to leave and go home, too; and for a while Paige had been terribly upset, but Brook had supported her by being there every day, never leaving her side. She’d put her whole life on hold, had refused all interviews and had set about the task of adopting Paige, a process that had finally been completed the previous week. They were now a proper family again.
Brook, too, had been scarred by everything that had happened. For weeks afterwards she’d been plagued by her recurring nightmare of the old lady at the edge of the forest, along with other, fresher nightmares, taken from those terrible days back in May. She’d considered moving house and starting somewhere afresh with Paige. Her house had felt tainted after what had happened, and it didn’t help that it was only ten miles down the road from where Tony Reyes lived. But in the end she’d decided to stay put. Paige had always been happy there. She had her friends and her kindergarten, and her life had already been messed up enough. And Tony Reyes, from what Brook could gather by talking to the police, was keeping a very low profile after what had happened and wouldn’t be doing anything that might draw the attention of law enforcement.
And so Brook had fought through the pain and now finally, months later, she felt she was coming out the other side. Her new book, not surprisingly, was selling incredibly well, which meant they didn’t have to worry about money; and her agent, also not surprisingly, was pleading with her to consider writing an account of the events surrounding Paige’s abduction. But Brook was holding off. It was far too early. She’d make the decision after Jenna’s trial, which was set for November.
Jenna had been arrested at the scene that night, bent over the body of her mother. She’d tried to talk her way out of Angie’s murder, as well as all the other crimes she was responsible for, but there was way too much evidence against her for that to wash, and she’d now been charged with a total of four counts of homicide, including that of her fellow detective, Tyrone Giant, who, it seemed, had got too close to her. Either way, it was unlikely she’d be walking free anytime soon. Incredibly, Brook still didn’t feel any anger towards Jenna, even after all she’d done; just sadness that the whole thing had been so preventable, and regret that the woman who was her half-sister hadn’t chosen a different path and tried to forge some sort of relationship between the two of them.
But that was life. You can only deal with your own issues. Other people have to sort their own stuff.
The sun was beginning to set over the Pacific and there was a chill in the air as Paige ran back towards her now, her feet splashing through the edges of the surf, Scout in hot pursuit.
Brook smiled at them, feeling a wave of pure happiness. It was time to go home.
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Epub ISBN: 9781473535213
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Published by Century 2018
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Copyright © Simon Kernick 2018
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First published in Great Britain in 2018 by Century
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ISBN 9781780894492
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We Can See You Page 28
