The White Carnation

by Susanne Matthews

  Or what if someone was in the house? She’d noticed a lot of strangers in town, some looking more unkempt than others. There were plenty of family campers, but every now and then, she’d seen so-called gold prospectors combing the Larosa hills. Trudy, Mandy’s best friend Lily’s mother, had said they were harmless but to a girl like Nikki from San Francisco, dirty, half-starved men meant trouble. They could easily be junkies desperately needing a fix.

  She took a deep breath. She didn’t hear any other suspicious sounds. As Sam would say, she was letting her imagination run wild. Most likely it was one of Larosa’s minor quakes that had caused a glass to slip off the table. Just a few miles off the San Andreas Fault, the town was constantly trembling. She barely noticed the Earth’s slight shaking anymore.

  Even though she’d convinced herself nothing was amiss, Nikki tiptoed to the guest room, got down on all fours, and peeked under the bed. Mandy was asleep. The child slept like the dead once she was out. Nikki reached for the flashlight, turned it off, and used the bed to leverage her body upright again.

  She picked up the cell phone she’d left on the dresser earlier, made sure it was on in case Sam called, and dropped it into the right pocket of her pajama top. Carrying the flashlight, she slipped out of the room, closing the door softly behind her.

  Maybe getting a dog’s a good idea. It would keep the damn cat out of the house.

  Nikki stood still in the hallway and listened. The only thing she could hear was the sound of the television in the den. Someone was buying a vowel.

  She reached Danny’s room and opened the door. When she saw his bed was empty, she relaxed and shook her head in resignation. As much as it annoyed her to admit it, this time Sam was right. Her imagination did tend to look for boogeymen where there weren’t any. Clearly her eight-year-old and his bottomless pit of a stomach had decided to have another bedtime snack. No doubt he was the culprit. She left the room and placed the flashlight on the hall table where it usually sat in case of a power outage.

  “What did you break this time?” she called as she headed down the stairs. “I swear, you’re like a bull in a china shop.”

  The sound of the garage door opening indicated Sam’s arrival. Although the clinic was nearby, since he carried major opiate drugs back and forth, Sam always took his car to work. He’d enter the house through the garage, leaving his lab coat and shoes out there and washing his hands at the sink he’d had installed for that purpose.

  “Let’s get this cleaned up before your father comes in.” She turned the corner into the kitchen and stopped cold.

  The fridge door was open, the pitcher of orange juice shattered on the floor beside what was left of her crystal vase full of roses, the red petals vanishing in her son’s blood. So much blood! Danny lay there, his head at an awkward angle, his eyes open, looking into the face of death. A scream froze in her throat as arms grabbed her from behind, and the sting of the knife bit into her upper back.

  Her upper body was on fire. Danny! Mandy! She swallowed her cries and slid to the floor, trying to stop herself from placing the full weight of her body on her abdomen, her right hand slipping into her pocket and silently pressing nine-one-one on the phone. She kept her hand over the small screen to hide its glow. Breathing was agonizing.

  With what little strength she could muster, she pulled herself across the glass and juice-covered ceramic floor until she was close enough to touch her son’s lifeless hand, tears of pain and sorrow running down her cheeks. I’m so sorry, sweetheart. She reached out her left hand, stretching to touch his face but couldn’t manage it. She groaned.

  “What the hell? Leroy, I told you to kill her, not just cut her. She won’t bleed out from that wound. The boss said no survivors. There should be another kid in the house. Go and look upstairs. I’ll take care of this.”

  She tried to turn her head to look at the man speaking, see if she recognized him, but he placed his boot on her head, forcing her face into the blood-covered floor.

  “It’s nothing personal, Mrs. Hart. For some reason you need to suffer, or I’d cut your throat, too, and make it quick. Everyone has to die sometime, and today’s your day.”

  Something pierced her lower back, sending wave after wave of excruciating pain through her body, and her unborn daughter kicked in protest. Nikki fought to suppress the scream of agony for Mandy’s sake. Blackness edged around her.

  Please God, don’t let him look for her under the guest room bed. If she doesn’t wake up, she’ll be safe under there, won’t she? Sam! Oh God, Sam.

  As if the sound were coming from far away, she forced herself to open her eyes and turned her head to face the door. Heavy boots entered the kitchen. She looked up. Instead of Sam, a man dressed in camouflage pants and matching jacket—the kind of thing a hunter might wear—stepped into the room and closed the door behind him. He had blood on his blue, latex-gloved hands. Sam wouldn’t be able to save them.

  She forced her eyes to stay open and stared at the third man. He was bald, with thick, black eyebrows, and a diamond earring in his left ear. His face and head were badly scarred. His lips were thin, and he smiled cruelly.

  So this is what Satan looks like.

  The demon moved to the counter, grabbed her cooking shears, and rooted through the drawers until he found her plastic bags. He walked over and stared down at her. Hatred burned in the monster’s eyes. The man turned away, and walked back through the door leading into the garage.

  It was getting harder and harder to breathe. Nikki struggled against the intense pain, willing herself to stay awake, but she could feel life slowly slipping away from her. She wanted to scream, to rant at the injustice of it all. Thoughts of the child in her belly, the child who’d never nuzzle at her breast, filled her with sadness. Danny would never hit a grand slam. Mandy would never attend the sleepover. Tears of hopelessness trickled down her cheeks, and her eyes closed. The sound of the door opening roused her, and she forced her eyelids open once more.

  “Good job.” Another man closed the door to the garage and stepped farther into the kitchen. “Our employer is pleased.” He nodded his head at something on the wall behind her. “It’s what we were told to print. We probably should have written it at the clinic, too, but it’s too late to go back. Everything we need is in the safe in the den. The good doctor was most accommodating when we promised to spare his wife and children.” He laughed. “The man was a fool.”

  He spoke with an accent Nikki couldn’t place, and when he walked toward her, she closed her eyes, hoping he’d think her dead and leave her alone. A bone-chilling cold had invaded her body, increasing her agony, and it was almost impossible to keep from trembling. She prayed it would be over soon.

  The unmistakable crunch of someone taking a bite out of one of the apples she kept in a bowl on the counter echoed in the room. Unexpectedly, a boot caught her in the ribs, and flipped her over onto her back. Instinctively, she gripped the phone tighter. She swallowed a groan, kept her eyes closed, and held onto consciousness by the thinnest of threads. It was difficult to concentrate on what the men were saying.

  “Boss, there’s no one upstairs. The little girl’s room is empty, the bed made. She’s not here. I tossed the master bedroom while I was up there, picked up some jewelry and a little money. For a rich man, he didn’t live very high off the hog. Are you sure we got the right guy?”

  Joy filled her, and she fought not to react to the news. They hadn’t found Mandy. Her beautiful little girl would survive.

  The man Leroy had called “Boss” cursed. “Of course we have the right man, you moron. We were told to kill everyone in the house. Since she’s not here . . . The safe is in the den behind the family portrait. Rather fitting, don’t you think? Go and get what we came for.”

  Fading footsteps indicated the two men had left. Thinking herself alone, Nikki released the breath she’d been holding and moaned softly. Sudden pain in her hand forced her eyes open, and she yelped. The man’s boot crushed the fingers
of her left hand beneath it.

  “Not dead yet, I see. Too bad. This might hurt a bit, sweetheart, but orders are orders.”

  The pain in her hand eased slightly as he moved his foot and knelt down beside her. His lips twisted into a cruel smile. Nikki looked directly into the man’s eyes—gray eyes, cold and dead like a shark’s. He lifted what she was sure was a broken hand and tried to remove her diamond ring from her swollen finger. Excruciating pain filled her, and she saw black.

  When she opened her eyes again, she was lying on her right side, staring at a finger on the floor inches from her face. Its manicured nail seemed strangely familiar. Numbness warred with cold and pain. Why was she still conscious, why wasn’t she dead—dead like her husband, her son, and her unborn baby? The man still knelt beside her.

  “Still not dead? I admire a woman with stamina. The owner of this pretty little bauble wants it back. I’ll admit the bastard had taste. You’re certainly worth dying for. How about a last kiss, pretty one? A little blood doesn’t bother me.”

  He bent forward and took her mouth in a cruel, punishing kiss, biting her lip, forcing his tongue inside, and her stomach roiled, filling her mouth with bile.

  “Son of a bitch!” he cried, pulling away from her and spitting the offending liquid onto her face where it mixed with Danny’s blood and her tears. “You’ll pay for that!”

  With her right hand trapped under the weight of her body, she instinctively rolled herself into the fetal position, but the heavy boots found their targets—her abdomen, her chest, and her face. Agony filled her and one powerful blow flipped her onto her left side. Amid the sound of sirens in the distance, the world finally went black.

  To purchase this ebook and learn more about the author, click here.

  Praise for On His Watch:

  “This story was very moving and I applaud Nikki for not giving up and hanging on.”—Night Owl Reviews

  “Move over Alfred Hitchcock, this wonderful suspense/romance is a must read if you love action and romance all in an incredibly well-written bundle.”—Georgianna Simpson, The Reading Cafe

  “Her writing style is to die for ... Susanne Matthews manages to flawlessly balance mystery, violence, redemption and romance into one epic story that was entertaining and heartwarming. I can say with all honesty that this will not be my last Susanne Matthew's novel!”—Breathless Ink

  In the mood for more Crimson Romance?

  Check out Dangerous Decisions by B.B. Cruz at CrimsonRomance.com.