The police station’s too far away to head for on foot, especially if the guy who destroyed her windshield has called for help. She had good luck against two of these guys. Against four or five? She’d need more than this impossible strength.
There’s only one place she can go right now. Home. If more bikers are on the way, better to face them from behind her security system, with her guns and with some chance of repairing her phone line. Besides, maybe they’ll never find her house.
In the emergency kit in her Escape she finds a flashlight.
On the other side of the wrecked car she finds the Beretta.
Home is the only place she can go, she realizes.
A few minutes after she reaches the road, her flashlight beam finds the other biker’s legs. Once she runs it up his body, she sees his waist is twisted at a grotesque angle from the rest of him, his head a mound of gore. No way did he manage to call for help. The desert’s ghostly quiet.
She starts in the direction of her house. After a few seconds, she begins to run. She’s afraid too much exertion might flush from her system whatever insane combination of hormones is giving her this strength. But she’d rather take that risk than meet more bikers out here in the dark.
9
As the door descends behind her, Charlotte uses the keypad inside the garage to search her security system’s recent history.
Somehow Jason managed to crack her code. The proof’s right in front of her.
SYSTEM ENTRY 5:36 p.m.
Automatic reengagement happened three minutes after.
Next comes her arrival, two hours later, followed by her departure twenty minutes after that.
Twenty minutes. Jason’s attack, overpowering him, binding him—was that really all it took?
She draws her Beretta. The metal depresses under her grip before she softens her hand.
Bedrooms, closets, bathrooms—all empty.
Not the kitchen.
Jason’s still trussed up like a pig, but he’s managed to squirm away from the debris left by their struggle in the living room. Exhaustion or pain from his injuries has overtaken him. He’s rag-doll limp. But he’s definitely alive. When he sees her coming down the hallway, his eyes widen, then narrow when he realizes she’s alone.
Something uncurls in her at the sight of him. Something hungry and feral and ready to strike.
When she’s a few steps away from him, he whines into the duct tape across his mouth, starts wiggling backward in a desperate attempt to escape. He seems to be remembering what she’s capable of. It’s good to be reminded, because there were a few moments during the strange, silent trek back to her house when she thought her night so far might have been one giant hallucination.
And what causes hallucinations?
Drugs.
Drugs like the one she’s on now, the one Dylan gave her.
But Jason’s fear is too real to be a hallucination. If this truly is all some giant drug reaction, it sure as hell isn’t the kind they warn you about on TV commercials.
She reminds herself what she came here to do. A phone. I need a phone.
She checks to make sure the base station for her phone system is in its usual spot, on a table in the hallway, just by the entrance to the kitchen. It is. There’s even a handset in the cradle. But when she traces the cord down to the outlet, she sees that it’s dangling inches from a new hole in the wall.
Jason removed the entire socket. Even if she could find it, she’d need a technician to plug it back in and rewire it. He didn’t just cut the cord. He didn’t just unplug the phone. He made sure there was no way she could easily reconnect if a struggle went in her favor. And if the landline’s out, that means no using the alarm’s panic button to summon Scarlet PD, who are forty minutes away at best. She checks the outlet in her bedroom. It’s in the exact same condition.
Her pulse roars in her ears.
She’s afraid again, but for entirely different reasons. What scares her now is that the pathetic sounds Jason’s making when she returns to the kitchen don’t inspire revulsion, much less pity. Instead they seem like information. The way a caribou’s limp is information to a hungry wolf.
Is this the drug, too? she thinks. Is it giving me more than just strength? Is it silencing my soul, removing my remorse? Or does remorse always leave once you have the power to indulge your worst instincts with impunity?
As gently as she can, she grips him by one shoulder and pulls him away from the cabinet until he’s lying flat on the floor.
She gazes into his eyes. Studies the fear there.
She’s savoring it. There’s no other word for it. And he can see this, and it terrifies him more.
For the first time in months, she tries to summon memories of her grandmother. Her grief made the effort too painful before. But in this moment, it’s Luanne’s voice she needs more than any other. She needs some of the wisdom the woman acquired during the years she spent not knowing what had become of her daughter and granddaughter. Without Luanne’s moral clarity, Charlotte might do something terrible. Something that can’t be reversed. Something that will haunt her long after she finds a way to understand just what the fuck is happening to her body right now.
When we hurt people just to punish them, Luanne used to say, we create a darkness that will live on long after our reasons for giving birth to it have faded.
A phone, she reminds herself. What I need is a phone. I don’t need to see Jason Briffel suffer. I just need a goddamn phone.
In each hand, she gently grips the tops of his front pockets. Then, with almost no effort, she peels the flaps away from their stitching until both pockets have been butterflied. As the stitches rip, tears sprout from Jason’s eyes. There’s nothing painful about the process; it’s the sound of it, she figures. Maybe it makes him imagine his flesh being flayed from his bones.
Poor baby.
His key ring slides out from one opened pocket. The chunky fob for a Honda hits the floor with a light thud. But no cell phone.
She reaches for the tape across his mouth, pokes through the middle of it with one thumb. A tiny gesture, but it makes a pop like smacking gum. Suddenly Jason’s breath starts whistling through the fresh hole. Slowly and carefully dragging both index fingers in opposite directions, she turns the hole into a slit. Under normal circumstances this would have required a knife. Right now she barely has to exert any pressure at all.
Where’s your phone, asshole? she wants to say. But what comes out of her mouth is, “What were you going to do to me, Jason?”
“Please . . .”
“Please, what? What did you come here for?”
His phone, she thinks. Just get his phone.
“I told you,” he whispers. “I came to set you free.”
“With rope and duct tape and my guns? You really believe that? You really think I’ll be your Abigail? That I’ll find you women to rape and then murder them for you?”
“Why is it so hard for you to see that people care about you, Trina?”
“That is not my fucking name anymore, you sick, crazy shit.” At first she thinks he’s crying out because he’s afraid, or because she’s brought her nose to his and rage quaked in every syllable she just snarled. Then she feels something crunch in her hand. It’s his right shoulder. She grabbed it without realizing it. She’s broken it.
The sounds he makes now are more barking dog than sniveling child.
Her hand feels hot. Shame clogs her throat. Before she can stop herself, she’s skittering backward until she slams into the wall behind her. For a second she thinks she paralyzed herself. Then she realizes the back of her skull punched into the wall on impact. It takes her a few seconds to pull it free. When she steps forward, plaster chips tumble down her back.
Why? How could she watch what happened to those bikers as if it were just a movie but the sound of Jason’s agony threatens to send her into a panic?
What brought her remorse back now?
Maybe it’s because Jaso
n isn’t holding a sawed-off shotgun and calling her a cunt. Yes, he came to do her harm, but he’s not capable of it right now, and she just broke his shoulder in the blink of an eye. Without meaning to. And that means it wasn’t self-defense.
It was torture. And how will torture save her from this night? What will it do other than take her back to the Bannings’ farm in her mind?
So her soul isn’t dead. Whatever’s happening inside her body, she’s still human. She can feel shame and revulsion even moments after savoring his fear. This is a good thing, she realizes.
Then, for the first time, she notices the slender gold chain around Jason’s neck. Inside the tiny medallion attached are the stylized, painterly outlines of several flames. Flames for Burning Girl, she thinks. It’s a goddamn token celebrating the fact that together she and Abigail Banning burned the belongings of a dozen raped and murdered women, and this fucker wears it on his neck. To see her. Suddenly his agonized wails don’t make her feel so ashamed anymore.
“Where’s your phone?” she asks.
He answers with sobs.
Slowly, she lifts one foot and hovers it over the center of his chest. It’s justified, she thinks. It’s justified because she needs information. She needs help.
“Where is your goddamn cell phone?”
“M-my car. I-it’s in my car. In the a-a-a-arroyo.”
About fifteen minutes later, after grabbing a holster for her Beretta and attaching it to her hip, her flashlight beam finds the edge of the arroyo, then glints off a windshield at its bottom. She hits the key fob. Headlights flash and a car horn bleats—a combo that seems both absurd and somehow hopeless out here in the desolate darkness. It’s a Honda Civic, black, the doors caked in sand from days of desert driving.
She’s about to descend the slope when she hears a sound like buzz saws approaching through the night. They’re coming from the north, from the direction of Fisher Pit. On the horizon, headlights widen like bioluminescent fish emerging from the deep.
Motorcycles, eight of them in all.
There’s no chance these new bikers can see her way out here; the house sits between her and the highway. Still, she doesn’t want to risk being spotted, so she gets down on all fours and slides backward until most of her body is hidden. She can still see across the cactus-studded earth.
One after the other, the bikers zip past the house, headed south, toward the scene of bloodshed she’d left behind earlier. Did one of those guys manage to get off a distress call before he became cheeseburger? Or is the rest of their crew checking in on schedule? What will they do once they find those bodies? Fan out in search of anyone in the area? Will that bring them to her door?
There’s not much inside Jason’s car, but she does find a cell phone sitting inside the cup holder next to the gearshift. He probably left it because he didn’t want to run the risk of it ringing or buzzing or lighting up while he was lying in wait for her. It’s a cheap disposable. It’s got plenty of juice.
She turns it over in her hands slowly and delicately, as if it were made of crystal. After several deep breaths, she starts searching its menu options with the gentlest of button presses.
The contact book is empty. So’s the call history. There’s only one text thread, and it’s between Jason and an unidentified phone number.
The day before, Jason texted: Hi Savior, it’s J. New phone. Leaving now.
The response: E-mail when you reach Flagstaff.
Jason: Can’t e-mail. Switched to a disposable phone. Only text and call.
The response: Smart. Text when you reach Flagstaff. No calls.
He’d done exactly that at about eleven o’clock the night before.
Then, that morning, he’d texted again.
Getting ready for the last leg. All good?
The response: Everything’s good. Will let you know if her schedule changes.
Her heart hammers. So whoever this Savior person is, they’ve been watching her throughout the day. Longer than that, if they knew she was out here.
Where were they now? Why hadn’t they come to Jason’s rescue?
The next text turns her stomach. It’s from Jason.
Code is 1986474. Thanks for the tips.
What could that even mean, thanks for the tips, aside from the fact whoever this fucker is, he’s got the alarm code to her house now, too?
Call the police, she tells herself. But just thinking these words reminds her of her one trip to the Scarlet police station to register her alarm system: two deputies, a dispatch officer, and a weary-looking sheriff, none of whom seemed ready for a short jog, much less a biker gun battle.
And whoever’s helping Jason, their phone number’s right here.
If they come out now, maybe she’ll be able to deal with them as effectively as she’s dealt with Jason. Whoever they are, they’ve lost the element of surprise.
Jason texted once more. I hope I’ll make you proud.
“Jesus,” she whispers.
Proud. What could Jason have planned to do to her in her own house that would make this monster proud?
Later, around evening time, the Savior texted, She’s on her way back.
The text was sent at almost the exact time she left Dylan. She scans her memory for any lurkers outside his office. The bikers, maybe. Were the bikers a part of Jason’s plan? Did that even make sense?
She dials the number.
There’s an answer after three rings.
“I said no calls.”
The breath doesn’t leave her; instead it’s as if the air inside her lungs simply ceases to exist. Like the last breath she took was some childish idea she was foolish to put faith in. She wants to say his name, but now she wonders if it even is his name. If anything he’s told her about himself is true. If a single word he shared in that cramped second-floor office that smelled of coffee from the AA meetings downstairs was anything more than a prelude to this night.
“You’re the Savior,” she hears herself say.
“Charley?”
“You told Jason where I lived. You helped him break into my house.”
“Charley, I need you to listen to—”
“Go to hell.”
“I need you to tell me how you’re feeling.”
“Are you kidding? Are you fucking kidding me? You’re gonna try to be my therapist now?”
Cool as ice, Dylan says, “No. I want you to describe what you’re feeling physically. I don’t know if you’ve been injured, but my guess is that if you’re alive, you haven’t been. So please, Charley, tell me how you’re—”
“You drugged me. You gave me a goddamn Valium and sent me home to be raped in my own house by that sick fuck.”
“No. No, Charley. I didn’t. That’s not what Zypraxon does.”
“Who are you?”
“Just take a deep breath and tell me what you’ve done, Charley. Tell me if you can believe what you’ve done with your own two hands.”
At first she thinks he’s accusing her of something, but there’s wonder in his tone, as if the fact that they’re talking to each other at all in this moment is a magical thing. Nothing about him sounds guilty or even hostile. Instead he sounds animated by a higher purpose.
He knows. He knows that she’s capable of crushing metal in one hand, that she can throw a grown man several feet in the air. That she can snap bone without meaning to.
“What did you give me?” she asks. “What the fuck are these pills?”
“A miracle. You on Zypraxon is a miracle. I saw what you did to those two bikers, Charley. You’re the first person it’s ever worked on.” Those two bikers. How long has he been following her? “Trust me. I didn’t want it to happen this way, but—”
“You helped Jason find me and break into my house. What was the point of our sessions? Just to figure out what kind of security I had?”
“You needed a trigger. Charley. Please. Listen to me. I’ll take care of Jason, and I’ll explain everything. But you have to trust me.
This is bigger than you.”
“A trigger? What the hell does that mean? Are you completely insane? What did you give me?”
“I took the power you try to derive from your guns and your security system and your walls, and I put it in your bare hands. I put it in your bones. That’s what I gave you, Charlotte Rowe.” There’s a confidence she’s never heard in his voice before. “That’s what Zypraxon is. It literally converts your fear into strength. Into survival. That’s what you did tonight, Charley. You survived. And no matter what happened with Jason inside that house, you have nothing to be ashamed of. There is never shame in surviving.”
She’s still searching for a response when she hears a strangely familiar sound. Familiar because she heard it only minutes before, but now it’s coming through the phone at her ear. The bikers.
“Shit,” Dylan whispers. He sounds annoyed. Irritated. He doesn’t sound like a normal man would if a gang of outlaw bikers were suddenly bearing down on him as he stood over the gory corpses of their slain brethren. “Charley, I know it’s hard to trust me right now, but believe me when I say this was not my plan. Our biker friends are . . . an added complication I didn’t expect. But I need you to listen to me, and I need you to do what I say.”
“Go to hell,” she whispers.
“You’re angry. I understand.” His condescension infuriates her. She has to remind herself to keep her hand relaxed so she doesn’t crush her only connection to him. “But know this. You’re not going to the police, and you’re not going to the FBI, and you’re not going to Rolling Stone magazine. The people I work for will make sure they never believe what you say and never act on it if they do. And you don’t need their help, so why bother?”
“You’re threatening me?”
“How many are there, Charley? The bikers. This new crew. They must have driven by your place first. How many are there?”
“A lot.”
“OK. One more thing. Do not under any circumstances give Zypraxon to anyone else.”
“What? Why?”
“Because you’re the first person to take it and live.”
Bone Music Page 7
