* * *
Shock covered Richard like a wet blanket. And though he teetered on the edge of consciousness, his mind raced wildly...
He cursed himself for his failure. He’d had a chance at the crazy fucker and he’d blown it, and now Jenny was out there alone with him, barefoot and defenseless. And those eyes. The way the man stood over him and casually kicked the shotgun aside, then shot him in the other leg. “We’ll play more later,” he said, and then left him, ignoring his pleas to spare Jenny’s life. He thought about dying here, bleeding out at the foot of the stairs.
And that head kept staring at him...
There was a sound at the top of the stairs now and Richard turned toward it, some morbid part of him wanting to face the instrument of his death. It stood there squat and hooded and Richard uttered a madman’s cackle that spiraled into a scream.
“Richard?”
It was Kim.
Richard blacked out.
* * *
Jenny fled blindly into the woods, wet boughs pawing at her body, pine needles spiking the soles of her feet. It was pitch dark but Jenny ran at a dead tear, her mind a gunning engine with a single imperative: to get away.
Something struck her shin and she fell in a tangle of limbs and sopping housecoat, the paring knife twirling from her grasp. She skidded down a muddy incline and came to rest in a puddle of rainwater. Lightning flashed—and there was Jack at the crest of the slope, his smile a slash of ivory, the silenced pistol hanging in his grip. Jenny’s fingers skittered in search of the knife, but found only dead leaves and withered ferns, and when the storm lit the night again she screamed, certain Jack would kill her.
But now there was no sign of him.
Jenny held her breath, trying to hear through the drumming rain, to see through the impenetrable darkness. The wind gusted through the trees, creaking limbs and thrashing branches, and it seemed that Jack crept toward her from a dozen different directions. The tension bombarded her senses, swamping her bloodstream with adrenaline, and Jenny rose to flee—but something snagged the tail of her housecoat, holding on tight. She bunched the fabric in both hands and pulled with everything she had, but it wouldn’t give. Cursing, she slid out of the garment and bolted in her flimsy nightie. She managed two long strides before slamming face-first into a tree. The coarse bark struck her forehead...then the night and its thronging sounds receded down a long black shaft.
Jenny slumped unconscious to the forest floor.
* * *
“Richard.”
The voice was urgent, insistent, but he no longer cared. It was warm and safe where he was.
“Richard.”
Something cold touched his forehead. He tried to sit up, but a hand pressed him down.
He opened his eyes and Kim was there, sitting next to him on her haunches, the hood of her raincoat pulled back now. He clutched weakly at her arm. Even speech seemed an effort.
“Kim...your mom...you’ve got to...”
“Keep that ice pack on your forehead if you can,” Kim said. Her eyes were opaque. “I’ve placed tourniquets on your legs, leather belts from your closet. You should loosen them from time to time. The phones are dead. Try not to fall asleep.” She looked toward the back of the house. “I’m going to see if I can find her.”
“Kim, no,” Richard said. “Don’t do that. None of us stand a chance unless you go for help. Go out the front way, to the Muldoons’ farm. Do you think you could drive the truck?”
“He did something to it.”
“Then you’ll have to walk. It’s less than a mile by the fields. Don’t take the road. You’ve met Albert before, he’ll remember you. He’ll help. Get the police. It’ll be light soon. If your mother’s still alive, that will be her only chance.”
She gave no hint she heard him, just kept staring toward the back of the house. Richard tugged on her arm.
“Kim, do you understand?”
She looked down at him and nodded.
“Okay, sweetheart. Now pass me that gun.” He pointed to the shotgun Jack had kicked across the floor. Kim picked it up and handed it to him. Richard checked the breech to make sure it was still loaded. “Now go, honey, and hurry. I’ll be fine right here.”
“I hate him,” Kim said.
“I do, too. Please hurry.”
Kim pulled up her hood and went out the door.
* * *
The cruiser’s radio squelched static. “We got it. A rural route number in Carp. Mary’s on the computer right now. She’ll have it narrowed in a couple minutes.”
Fransen said, “Good, I’m on my way. Let’s hit him with everything we’ve got.”
* * *
She was so cold, every muscle tense, bunched in spasm. Her head throbbed from her collision with the tree, and now that she was conscious again the need to flee had regained its initial urgency—but she knew that if she opened her eyes, Jack would be standing over her, waiting for her to see him. Then he would kill her. She was locked into this terrible moment.
She lay there a while longer, playing possum, attempting both to read her surroundings and to conceal her awareness. The storm had blown itself out, only the occasional, distant rumble now, and Jenny wondered how long she’d been out; she could see dim light through her eyelids. In the errant gusts, raindrops pattered from the saturated canopy overhead. Songbirds had commenced their morning rounds. It sounded calm and prosaic, and Jenny could get no sense of Jack’s presence.
But he was sly. So sly.
Her mind wanted to rush out over some looming edge.
Face him. You have no other choice.
She opened her eyes. Above her rose the trees, converging columns in the shifting mist. No sign of Jack. She rose to her haunches and peeled the wet nightie down over her breasts. Then she scanned her surroundings.
Still no sign of him.
She got to her feet, hope rising in a seductive tide. She must have given him the slip—
“Before I came to see you,” Jack said, and Jenny’s eyes raced through a full circumference, finding nothing, “I paid a visit to Nina and the twins. I promised Will that I would. Tell me, my love, are they still feeding Kimberly through a tube?”
Jenny looked behind her and up.
And there, ten feet above her in the fork of a tree, crouched Jack...shirtless, magnificent, a coiled predator in this ancient cathedral of the hunter.
Jenny ran, barely hearing the impact as he dropped to the forest floor behind her.
* * *
Clinging to the newel post, Richard got his feet under him. His left leg, the worst one, buckled under his weight and he fell, jamming his fingers between the floor and the stock of the shotgun. Lightheaded, he labored to his feet again.
His mind kept serving up graphic scenarios of Jenny and Jack in the woods and he could bear this helplessness no longer. He figured if he could splint the legs somehow, he could go out there and track them down, get another shot at that psycho son of a whore. He was no good to anyone lying here. Maybe he could—
Richard’s legs gave out again and he went down in a wretched heap.
“You fucker,” he said, climbing the newel post again, using the gun as a crutch. “I’m going to kill you. I’m going to kill...you...”
* * *
Terror snapped at Jenny’s heels as she ran, and she wanted to surrender to it. She had nothing left. The damp air had turned to fire, searing her lungs. Her heart felt on the verge of rupture. But something Jack had said made her want to go on.
...are they still feeding Kimberly through a tube?
He didn’t know. He’d slaughtered everyone else she cared about, but he didn’t know about Kim. She had to keep him away from the house.
Jenny stopped, whirling to face him...but he wasn’t there.
“Come on, you coward,” she shouted into the woods. “Here I am.”
In the trees to her left something coughed. In the same instant the air by her left ear compressed and something raked thro
ugh the wet tangle of her hair. She felt its heat against her cheek.
“God damn,” Jack said, materializing out of the fog. “I missed.”
He fired again, the silenced pistol flicking its tongue of fire, and Jenny’s nightie twitched between her spread legs.
“We’re not through running yet,” he said. He stopped twenty feet away from her on a smooth platform of rock.
“I am,” Jenny said, breathing hard. “I’m done running, Jack.”
“I think not.”
The pistol spat and a strip of flesh on Jenny’s shoulder vaporized, leaving a shallow furrow. Jenny cried out and snatched at the pain.
But she didn’t run.
Still smiling, Jack raised the gun again, more deliberately this time, aiming it at the bridge of Jenny’s nose, so that she had to look straight down its narrow throat. She tried to hold her ground, but it was impossible. To do so was to defy every instinct she possessed, and she just couldn’t do it.
Whimpering, Jenny turned to run.
Behind her the gun spat and Jenny screamed. A foot in front of her a clump of dead leaves sprang up as the slug plowed into the forest floor. Jenny froze, dehumanized, her brief, empowering fury demolished.
She turned to face him, shaking uncontrollably, barely able to keep her feet. The gun was still aimed at her head and Jenny knew this was the instant of her death. She closed her eyes and prayed God would forgive her and somehow Kim would be spared.
She heard the gunshot, unbaffled now, and tensed for the impact that didn’t come; it was replaced by an enraged bellow.
“Leave her alone.”
Jenny opened her eyes and saw Kim standing on a rise behind Jack with a gun in her hand, its stubby barrel smoking. Now Kim was firing again, even as Jack spun, bringing his own weapon to bear. Kim’s shot went wild, as the first one had, spanging off the rocks at Jack’s feet in a gout of sparks, but then Jack was falling, the silenced pistol spinning from his grip as he reached for his shattered ankle. The ricochet had torn it open. Jenny saw a silvery tag of tendon before Jack’s hands encircled the wound and he cried out in agony.
Then another shot rang out, and Jenny saw that Kim was still firing, advancing on Jack with the pistol clamped grimly in both hands. Framed in the lazy oval of the slicker’s hood, her face was an animate sculpture of anguish and fury.
“Leave her alone,” she screamed and put a bullet in Jack’s spine.
She stood over him now, the gun aimed at his head. Coarse tremors ran through Jack’s body. His gaze fell beseechingly on Jenny.
“LEAVE HER A—”
Jenny shouted, “Kim, no,” and ran toward her shattered family. “Honey, don’t do it...”
She reached the platform of rock, Jack lying stricken at her feet, and put her hands over Kim’s, trying to coax the gun free. Kim’s arms were like iron bars, the gun welded in her grasp. Jenny could hardly believe the child’s strength.
“Kim, please, give me the gun.”
Something boiled in Kim’s eyes, flint hard and implacable, and Jenny was certain she’d pull the trigger...
Then her gaze met Jenny’s and that savage strength simply dropped out of her. She let her mother take the gun and stepped away.
Jenny picked up the silenced Glock and tucked it under her arm.
“Jenny,” Jack said. “My legs...”
“I know,” Jenny said. “Don’t worry, Jack. It’s almost over now.” She looked at Kim and said, “Which way is the path?” Kim pointed. “All right, I want you to go to the path and wait for me there.”
Kim looked at her sadly. “But, Mom...”
“Just do it, Kim. Please.”
Kim stared at her a moment, that hardness coming back into her eyes, then she turned and walked into the bush, pulling her hood up.
When Kim was out of sight, Jenny released the magazine from the Colt and thumbed out the last few rounds, tossing them as far as she could into the bush. There was a single round in the chamber now, and Jenny left it where it was.
Trembling with shock, Jack said, “The little. bitch must have got me in the spine. My legs, I can’t feel them...”
Jenny said, “She’s not a bitch,” and pressed the Colt into Jack’s hand. “You’re paralyzed, Jack. If you survive, you’re going to prison for the rest of your life. You’ll be defenseless. Do you know what they do to child killers in federal prison?”
Standing at his feet, she aimed the Glock at his face, her finger on the trigger. “There’s a lesson here, Jack. I hope you can pick up on it. I hope you can accomplish that much.”
Then she turned her back on him and started away.
Behind her, Jack raised the pistol, aiming it at her back.
* * *
When the shot cracked the still air Kim gasped and started running, cursing herself for leaving her mother alone with him. It was the Colt, she recognized its sharp report.
An exposed root caught her toe and she fell, skidding down a wet grade, scraping the palms of her hands. She got up and heard someone moving toward her through the trees. She picked up a stout branch, ready to fight...and saw her mother step out of the bush onto the path, shivering, naked under the thin nightie, Jack’s gun in her hand. When she saw Kim she did her best to smile. Kim dropped the branch and ran to her in tears. “Oh, Mom, I thought he...”
“Shh,” Jenny said, holding her daughter in her arms. “It’s over now, baby. It’s over.”
“Is he...?”
“He’s gone, sweetheart. He took his own life.”
Kim looked into her mother’s eyes. “Why did you stop me back there? He could have killed you.”
“Because I didn’t want this on your conscience.”
Kim was quiet a moment, thoughtful, then she said, “We better get back. Richard needs our help.”
Tears swam in Jenny’s eyes. “Richard?”
Kim nodded. “He’s going to be all right, I think.”
They’d gone only a few yards when a voice said, “Freeze,” and Jenny saw five men in SWAT gear converging on them with their weapons raised. She could hear a helicopter now, swooping by in the distance.
“The gun, Mrs. Fallon,” one of the men said. “Drop it.”
Jenny tossed the gun into a clump of dead ferns. Until that moment she hadn’t realized she still had it. The nearest officer stepped up and retrieved it. The others scanned the bush.
“My name’s Baker,” the man said. “Are you all right, ma’am?”
“Yes. We’re fine.”
“Your forehead is bleeding.”
“I’m fine.”
Baker nodded. “Where is he?”
Jenny pointed. “Back there. He’s dead.”
Two members of the team broke off and ran toward Jack’s body. Baker touched Jenny’s arm.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s get you back to the house.”
* * *
Richard had already been taken by ambulance from the scene, but Fransen told them the paramedics said he was going to be fine.
“What about Nina and the boys?” Jenny said. She sat on the porch steps with Kim, huddled under a rain jacket one of the SWAT guys had given her. Mercifully, someone had taken Peach and her tiny casket away. “He said he went to Nina’s.”
“They’re fine,” Fransen said. “The boys were on a sleep-over and Nina was at the movies with her mother. Just dumb luck they were out.” He butted his cigarette on one of the stone steps. “Her sister didn’t make out so well, though, I’m afraid.”
Jenny held Fransen’s gaze, then turned to Kim. “Honey, go inside and put on some dry clothes. I’ll be along in a minute.”
When Kim was gone, Jenny returned her attention to Fransen. “I want to put this behind me, Detective. As quickly as I can. In order to do that, I need to know what he did to Claudia.”
“Mrs. Fallon, I don’t think—”
“It’s Jenny. Please, call me Jenny.” She looked into Fransen’s eyes. “I don’t want to read about this in the tablo
ids or see it on TV. I want to hear it now, from you. All of it. I can deal with it now. Please, Detective Fransen.”
Fransen nodded. “He tortured her, Jenny. Broke her fingers, pulled out some of her teeth, hacked off one of her ears with a pair of scissors. When that didn’t do it, he used her soldering iron on her. Burned about sixty holes into her, then used it on her eyes. But she didn’t tell him where they were. The kids were only a block away. The ballsy dame didn’t tell him. So he doused her with gasoline and lit a match.”
“Thank you,” Jenny said, shivering, unable even now to fathom that the horrors he was describing were inflicted by the man whose bed she had shared for so many years. “I knew Claudia,” she said. “She was a wonderful person. She loved her family very much.”
Jenny tried to stand but faltered. Fransen lent her a hand. She said, “Can someone take us to the hospital? We’d like to be there for Richard.”
“Get dressed,” Fransen said. “I’ll take you there myself.”
Epilogue
FALL, JENNY THOUGHT, A CHILL darting through her. She sat in a rocker on the back porch, watching the men close the pool. What a ball they’d had in that thing. It was hard to believe a year had passed since Jack’s death.
The baby kicked her under the ribs. It hurt.
“You’re ready, little man. Aren’t you.” She glanced at her watch and began to rock. “Your daddy and big sister should be home any minute now.”
During her last ultrasound the technician asked her if she wanted to know the baby’s sex and Jenny said yes. Richard agreed. They went out afterwards and blew a king’s ransom on goodies for the nursery. The only sticking point for Jenny was that she had no idea what to call him. She and Jack had pored over books full of baby names, and somehow, perhaps because of the repeated disappointments of those days, the process had lost it’s joy for her. She explained this to Richard, who solved the dilemma with customary efficiency.
“We’ll call him Stephen, then.”
“Why Stephen?” Jenny said.
“Because it’s a strong name. Hard to tease a kid over. Because the only kid in grade school who could draw better than me was a Stephen, and I thought he was some cool. Because I can think of a dozen other accomplished people named Stephen. How do you feel about it?”
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