Almost Dead

by Lisa Jackson

  Stealthily, nervous sweat drenching her body, Cissy followed Jack inside.

  The feds and the crime unit techs had crawled all over Diedre Lawson’s apartment. They’d discovered items connecting her to the crimes, shells for a .38, various disguises and wigs that had hairs that were certain to match those found at Cherise Favier’s home. There were notes and a computer—a laptop—that had already been taken as evidence.

  But no Diedre.

  No baby.

  Paterno walked outside and popped an antacid as the rain poured from the sky. The feds had been so certain they’d caught her that they’d pulled their van from the street in front of Jack and Cissy Holt’s house.

  But she wasn’t here.

  There was already a BOLF on Diedre’s car and her picture was being circulated to the media, but he was disappointed that they hadn’t nailed her.

  Pulling out his cell, he listened impatiently to his messages, hearing a few he dismissed, then, lastly, a call from Jack Holt. “Holy crap,” he said and rounded up Quinn.

  “What’s up?”

  “We’d better get our asses up to Sausalito. Jack Holt’s decided to be John Wayne.” He quickly explained what he knew. “We’ll call for backup if it turns out to be something more than a wild-goose chase.”

  She didn’t argue, just got behind the wheel of her Jetta, and, as Paterno slid inside and pulled the door shut, she circled in a quick one-eighty and sped north.

  The minute Cissy stepped into the foyer, she heard the muffled sound of a baby’s cry. Over the rattle of rain on the windowpanes, the scream of the wind around the house, her own heartbeat thudding in her ears, she was certain she heard her child.

  Her knees nearly gave way, and she motioned to Jack to climb the stairs that swept to the second floor above this wide foyer. The house was cold and dark inside, and though she had flitting little memories of playing here as a small child, they seemed in black and white, faded with the passage of time. There had been lush parties here once, and if she thought really hard she could imagine the ghosts of guests long gone, the tiny tinkle of glasses and laughter long forgotten.

  But that was fleeting. A millisecond memory, for now Cissy was focused solely on finding B.J.

  Behind Jack, she slowly mounted the stairs.

  Near the second-floor landing, Jack stopped and tensed. He glanced at Cissy. The sound of a baby crying was closer. Nodding toward the big doors before him, he took the final steps. Biting her lip, Cissy opened the multi-bladed tool to its longest knife, wanting to force herself into the room. It was killing her to wait. She could hear the distinctive sounds of her baby crying, louder and louder, hiccupping and sobbing.

  At least he’s alive!

  “Mom-mee!” he cried. “Mom-mee!”

  Cissy tried to rush past Jack, but he held her back and she felt it too, that this was too easy. Where was Diedre? Motioning for Cissy to step aside, Jack tried the door, slowly edging it open.

  Over his shoulder, she saw the silhouette of her son. Standing at the edge of a playpen in the darkened room and crying, his body thrown in relief by a dim fire. “Mom–mee!” he yelled unmoving. She couldn’t see him clearly, but she knew he was upset.

  “Oh baby,” she cried, rushing past Jack into the darkness. “Baby, I’m here.”

  Jack tried to grab her, but it was too late. She flew into the room and tripped, landing on the floor and staring into the dead eyes of Jack’s father, Jonathan!

  Cissy screamed, scooting backward as Jack entered the room. He paused at the sight of Jonathan Holt’s blood-soaked body, his pale skin, his lifeless eyes.

  “Dear God,” Cissy whispered, terrified, as she scrambled to her feet.

  Diedre had killed Jonathan and left him in the same room with her baby!

  Jack’s stunned gaze lifted from his father as Diedre stepped from behind the open door on the landing, her gun trained on him. “Drop it!” she ordered. Jack didn’t comply. “Drop it or I’ll kill the kid! You, too. Let go of your knife,” she said. Unlike Jack, Cissy dropped the Pomeroy utility weapon. Diedre trained her gun on Beej.

  “No!” Cissy screamed, still far enough away from Beej not to be able to console him, not to see his little features, only to hear his sobs. It was so dark in here. “Jack, don’t let her do this!” she ordered but felt something was wrong. Off. Jack tossed the gun onto the bed, then knelt at his father’s side to feel for a pulse as the loose shutter banged loudly. Bam! Bam! Bam!

  “He’s dead.” Diedre said it without inflection.

  “This is what you do to people you love?”

  “He didn’t care about me,” she said and slid a glance at the corpse. “He tried to tell me my mother was dead.”

  “She is. You killed her,” Cissy said and through an open doorway heard the rush of the sea, smelled the salt in the air.

  “No…that’s a lie. She’s not dead, not yet…. She’s got to look like she did all the killings.” Diedre said, but her face changed as if she weren’t certain of what she was saying. In that moment, Cissy rushed toward the playpen to reach for her son, to hold him. She picked him up and let out an agonized scream. It wasn’t her son at all! It was a lifesized doll propped against the side of the pen, hiding a baby monitor which was emitting her son’s terrified cries.

  “You bitch!” She whirled on Diedre. “Where’s my B.J.? Where is he!”

  “The only Amhurst heir, beside you and that half-brother of yours in Oregon? Don’t worry about B.J.”

  “Tell me where he is!”

  “Ciss…” Jack warned.

  But Cissy was livid and didn’t care that Diedre had aimed the gun straight at her heart. She wanted her kid, damn it.

  “Step back!” Jack yelled, just as they heard the wail of sirens, faintly crying over the lash of the wind and the pound of the rain.

  “You called the police?” Diedre demanded, stunned and furious, her voice rising over the wind and the crying of the baby.

  “Yes! Yes, we called them!” Cissy suddenly threw the doll at Diedre. Oh God where was he?

  Diedre caught the rag doll handily.

  Jack rushed her.

  With a wicked smile, Diedre turned, aimed, and fired straight at Jack, the muzzle of the .38 spitting fire.

  “No!” Cissy screamed. “Oh God, don’t! No, nooo!”

  Too late.

  Jack stumbled backward. His face drained of color as he looked at her.

  In a gasp of pain, he crumpled onto the floorboards.

  “Jack!” Cissy dropped to the floor beside him and grabbed his head, forcing him to stare up at her. “Oh no, no, no…” She couldn’t lose him! She couldn’t! Quicksilver images of their life together flashed behind her eyes—their meeting at the boring party, his quick wit, the way he stared into her eyes when he made love to her, his joy at the birth of B.J., his pain when she’d insisted on divorcing him.

  Now he was bleeding. Vainly, she tried to staunch the flow, to keep him alive, but it was impossible. Blood oozed upward between her fingers. There was just so much, so damned much. “I love you, Jack. Oh, God, how I love you. You can’t die. You can’t.”

  “Oh, how pathetic,” Diedre said from her position in the doorway. Looming over them, gun in hand, she clucked her tongue. “I guess you’ve forgotten. A month ago you were going to divorce him.”

  Ignoring the taunt, Cissy felt for Jack’s pulse, her sticky fingers touching his throat as she willed him to look at her, to hang on. The police were on their way. She’d heard the sirens. Fighting panic, her own choking fear, she willed her husband to focus on her. “Jack, don’t you die on me, do you hear me? Don’t you die! Look at me. Jack! Damn it, you look at me!”

  “Don’t die,” Diedre mocked in a little-girl voice that irritated the hell out of Cissy. “Look at me, Jack! Jesus, Cissy, do you hear yourself?”

  Blood was spreading over the floor, and still the baby was crying, calling for her. Her whole life was crumbling, all because of this hideous woman she’d
thought was her friend. “Shut up!” Cissy turned to her husband. “Hang in there, you can do it.”

  “Too late,” Diedre said.

  Cissy ignored her, desperately trying to halt the flow as Jack lost consciousness.

  “He’s gone.”

  “I said, SHUT UP!” Cissy snapped. She had no time for this.

  “I heard you, but you don’t get it, do you? He’s dying and you’re next. All of you are going to die. You’re going to join Gran, isn’t that the stupid name you gave Eugenia? You’re going to die as easily as she did, or that moron Rory, or Cherise—that one was a surprise to both of us. She saw me, you know, right after I scared you at the mansion. Couldn’t let her get away with that.”

  “Go to hell.”

  “Funny, that’s where I think you’re going, sister.”

  Cissy worked desperately to save Jack. “Sister?” she repeated, praying for the sound of the police breaking into the house. “You’re not my sister.”

  “Same blood.”

  “You’re a monster. You killed everyone related to you including your own mother. Why was that? Spring her from prison just to kill her? Because she gave you up? Is that it? Because she couldn’t love you?” Don’t antagonize her, a part of her brain warned, but Cissy couldn’t stop herself. Her nerves were frayed, her heart dying already at the thought of losing Jack, adrenaline pumping furiously through her system while B.J. wailed.

  “I—didn’t…”

  “What?” Cissy demanded, looking up to see a bit of confusion on Diedre’s face, a moment of hesitation. Diedre’s eyes clouded for a second. “Marla…No, I didn’t…” She raised the gun and aimed at Cissy.

  This was it, Cissy realized. They were all going to die and poor B.J…. Oh, God, if that bitch harmed one hair on his head, she’d…She saw the knife. The one she’d dropped on the floor. Only inches from Jack’s body.

  “You did, Diedre, you killed your own mother,” Cissy stated harshly.

  “No!” Diedre was shaking her head, as if to clear her mind…

  What was Cissy saying? That she’d killed Marla? Oh God, was that possible? Diedre couldn’t remember, couldn’t think, the roar in her head was deafening, the pain so tortuous that she gritted her teeth, had trouble holding onto the gun. Jonathan had said the same thing, and then there was the video, and she remembered, oh, God, she remembered pulling the trigger on that bitch who had given her up and borne another daughter. A daughter she’d kept. A daughter she’d loved and nurtured in…in this very house…this mansion…. No…that wasn’t right…it was the Cahill mansion where Cissy had grown up, the privileged daughter…wasn’t it?

  “She loved me,” she said now and felt what?…Tears? Oh God, tears were running from her eyes.

  Cissy didn’t wait. Without thinking she picked up the knife and rolled to the balls of her feet. Spinning low, gathering force, she slung the knife underhand straight at Diedre.

  Diedre shrieked.

  The slim blade slammed into her gut, sending her backward through the door. Shocked, her eyes suddenly clear, the gun in her hand wobbling slightly, Diedre fired.

  White-hot pain exploded in Cissy’s side. She spun to the floor, could barely breathe. Blood flowed from the hole in her torso, hot and wet, but she didn’t care. She had to stop this madwoman before the bitch killed B.J., who was still sobbing.

  Diedre stumbled onto the balcony. The fingers of both her hands grabbed at the knife in her abdomen. With a horrid sucking sound, she pulled the weapon free. Blood oozed from the blade as she stared dully at her wound.

  Cissy struggled to her feet. Before Diedre knew what hit her, Cissy hurled herself toward her maniac of a half-sister. Together they fell against the fancy railing. Diedre’s back pressed into the heavy metal. The knife fell from her hand, slipping through the wrought iron, and falling two floors to clatter uselessly in the foyer.

  Where the hell were the police?

  Despite the blood running from her abdomen, Diedre fought wildly. She grabbed hold of Cissy’s wrist, twisted her arm so that she heard tendons popping. Blinding pain ripped through her. “You’re going to die, Cissy,” she hissed. “And you’re going to die tonight, and that little boy of yours, he’s going to be with me.”

  “Leave B.J. out of this!”

  “He’s what it was all about. Jonathan planned his conception long before you even thought of it.” She pushed harder, and pain screamed through Cissy’s shoulder.

  “The police are on their way.”

  “Too late for you and they won’t hurt me as long as I have him…”

  “It’s over, Diedre. Give it up! Your plan failed. You can’t get the money now.”

  “But I can get rid of you, and that’s worth it.” She gave Cissy’s arm another hard wrench. “You didn’t even know how lucky you were. Neither will your kid.”

  Charged with injustice and fury, Cissy wouldn’t let her win. Couldn’t.

  But Diedre was strong and determined.

  With a violent twist, Diedre flipped them both around, and Cissy, bleeding, was bent over the wrought-iron railing. She sensed the century-old bolts give a little. She was weakening, and Diedre was stronger. Diedre, eyes glowing with victory, pushed hard and bowed Cissy over the railing so far that Cissy thought her back would break. The pain in her side burned hot, and she grabbed at anything she could, the top of the rail, Diedre’s hair, her neck.

  “Die, you pampered little freak,” Diedre snarled. Cissy felt her body giving up, her strength failing. Twenty feet below was the hard floor. With an effort, she wound one hand on the rail and held, knowing that if she was pushed any harder she’d do a back flip and fall, to land with a bone-breaking thud. Like Gran.

  Pain screamed up her spine, and she was certain it would snap.

  Agony tore through her muscles. She felt ligaments pop, tendons tear, and all the while her baby was crying. Oh God, please help me, please…Jack…I love you…B.J., darling baby… The room spun, her brain swam. She flailed with one arm while holding on for dear life with the other.

  Her shoulder shrieked with the pressure, and blackness played at the edge of her consciousness. Don’t let go. Whatever you do, don’t let go!

  But she couldn’t think, couldn’t fight any longer. The sweet bliss of unconsciousness threatened to pull her under. All she could hear were her frightened baby’s cries and the pounding of her own heart.

  It’s over, she thought. The railing shifted beneath her, and the hellish pain in her spine forced her to let go. As her grip loosened and she started to give up, she saw something big and dark and looming behind Diedre. His face was twisted into a mask of hate. Blood smeared his skin.

  In those last moments of awareness, Cissy saw Jack blast the gun. Diedre’s body jerked. She shrieked and fell hard against Cissy, grappling with her, both of them careening for the stairs.

  Cissy tried to scream, but it was too late. Diedre’s weight pushed her down. They spun down the stairs, screaming, Diedre’s body hitting the railing, Cissy’s tumbling after her.

  Cissy tried to call Jack’s name, but then she was lost to darkness.

  Bayside Hospital

  San Francisco, California

  Room 316

  Friday, February 13

  NOW

  What’s this? A priest? Murmuring prayers over me, pleading for my soul? Oh, no…Please, Father, listen to me…. I’m not dead, I’m not even sure I’m dying…. There are other voices, whispers…. I’ve heard their voices before, and they’re saying their good-byes…. Who are they? People who care about me? People who love me? They think I’m dying. Oh, no, no, no…They come in and they sob, they cry and touch me, whoever they are. Familiar voices offering prayers for my soul.

  Then there is silence, only the sound of the machines monitoring my responses…the damned machines that don’t show the fear that makes my heart pound or the ventilator that doesn’t register when I draw in a horrified breath…. I hear someone moving through the room, and a series of cl
icks…. Oh God, they’re turning off a machine. The ventilator? No…Oh no…I feel a weight…it’s hard to breathe…impossible, oh, please do not do this…stop!…Help me! Please! Dear Jesus, help me! I can’t hear anything anymore, nor smell. For the love of Christ, I can’t breathe…I…can’t…

  Epilogue

  San Francisco

  May 14

  Cissy opened her eyes and fought the headache that had been with her since the night at the Amhurst mansion, the night she nearly died. Had it not been for Paterno and the EMTs, she probably wouldn’t have made it. Nor would her husband or child.

  As it was, they were safe.

  She rolled slowly out of bed and stretched, feeling pain in her back. It might be with her the rest of her life; then again, she was making a “remarkable” recovery.

  Slipping out of the covers, she hobbled into the baby’s room. No longer on crutches or a cane, she fought the pain and was able to walk on her own.

  “Hey there, big guy,” she said as she found her son standing in his crib.

  “Big guy!” B.J. said, raising his little arms to be picked up.

  With difficulty she lifted B.J. into her arms and kissed his head. Oh God, she loved this child, and to think that she’d almost lost him. In the aftermath of the battle with Diedre, the police had found B.J. safe, if frightened out of his little mind. Between Jannelle, Deborah, and Rosa, the baby had been cared for and brought to the hospital daily while Cissy recovered.

  “Let’s go wake up Dad,” she said.

  “Dad-dee wake!”

  “Not yet, but he will be.” She let B.J. down to do the honors and watched as he ran into the other room. Coco, who had been curled in her bed in the corner, stretched and followed after him.

  Life was nearly normal.

  Nearly.

  There were still reminders—issues to be discussed, decisions to be made. Jonathan had been laid to rest and Diedre allowed to die when they’d finally pulled the plug.