Blood Red

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  “I’m not—­”

  “I’d be insulted,” he goes on, cutting her off abruptly, “if I believed you.”

  “You don’t?”

  “Of course not.”

  There’s a subtle shift in her gaze as she stares at him. She tilts her head, studying him, and then shakes it. It’s obvious that she’s stalling, buying time by pretending not to know who he is, but that’s okay. He’s the one in control here.

  “My memory isn’t what it used to be,” she says. ­“People change.”

  “You have a point. I was just a boy the last time we saw each other. Now I’m a man. A real man.”

  He stretches a hand toward her. As if she senses that his intent is not to shake hands, but to caress her, she recoils quickly—­too quickly. That, too, is wrong. Her reflexes should be slowing already. Maybe she forgot to take her medication when she came in.

  If so, then she’s going to put up a fight. It could get messy.

  But that might be more fun, anyway.

  “What are you doing?” she asks him as he reaches into his pocket. “You need to keep your hands where I can see them.”

  He laughs, pulls out the razor, and snaps it open.

  Cold, wet, tired, hungry . . .

  That’s it. I’ve had enough.

  Mick has found no sign of Brianna along the paved trail by the river.

  He’s not giving up the search entirely, though. No way. She needs him.

  He’s just taking a short break. He needs to change his clothes, eat something, and rest for a little while in a warm, dry place.

  Luckily, home is right down the path. He heads in that direction.

  The first strike catches Noreen in the arm as she tries to get away from the intruder. The razor blade slices neatly through the sleeve of her blouse and into her flesh. Stunned, she looks down to see blood seeping over the white silk fabric. The stinging pain doesn’t hit her for a few seconds after that.

  Those seconds are spent realizing that the attack was meant for her sister. If she corrects his mistaken assumption that she’s Rowan, he might stop and flee.

  But he might not. He might continue to hurt her, and then go after Rowan, too.

  Rowan’s not as strong as Noreen. She won’t be able to fight him off. She’ll get hurt.

  I told her I’ll deal with this, and I will.

  There’s searing pain now in her right arm where he cut her, and he’s holding her left so tightly that she can’t wrench herself free. She lifts her leg and kicks him, hard, going for the groin.

  Not hard enough, not high enough.

  The razor flashes again.

  Suddenly, Noreen is afraid.

  What if he hurts her badly?

  What if . . .

  It’s easier to say good-­bye if you focus on what lies ahead instead of what lies behind you.

  Her mother hadn’t realized what lay ahead when she said those words years ago, before she got sick, before she died.

  For all her planning, maybe Noreen, too, is destined to—­

  She feels the blade slash into her side.

  No. Her kids. The girls, Sean . . .

  They need her. Nothing can happen to her. She won’t let it.

  She lifts her leg to kick him again and the blade catches it. More pain, more blood . . .

  “You son of a bitch!” As she goes down, she kicks him with the other leg.

  But then he’s on her again, and this time, the blade slashes into her throat.

  In the parking lot of the high school, Rowan unlocks the door of the minivan with shaking hands, then shoves the keys back into her pocket.

  This is crazy.

  She just revealed her deepest, darkest secret to Ron Calhoun, and what did he say?

  “I’m sure that doesn’t have anything to do with this.”

  That’s what he said, and she could see the disapproval in his eyes. “But we’ll look into it,” he added. “I promise.”

  Too little, too late.

  I shouldn’t have told him. Why did I tell him?

  Maybe he’s right.

  Maybe it’s a stretch to think that . . . what? What does she even think? That Rick Walker kidnapped Brianna Armbruster?

  What, exactly, would that accomplish in the grand scheme of things?

  Nothing. Absolutely nothing. It makes no sense. She’s just dizzy with stress and exhaustion, and that damned song is still looping through her head: I Would . . . Die 4 . . . U . . .

  As she climbs behind the wheel, she catches sight of the red snowflake still pinned to her lapel and lets out a frustrated cry. She strips off the coat and tosses it into the backseat.

  She needs to get home. Thoughts spinning, she quickly texts Noreen that she’s on her way. Rick must be there by now, but she just has to find Mick. Noreen can help her.

  Her keys . . . where are her keys?

  Why can’t she ever find her damned keys?

  She slams her fists against the steering wheel and leans her head back, eyes closed.

  Get a grip. You can’t fall apart now. Come on.

  Okay, her keys . . . keys . . .

  Pocket of her coat?

  She can’t reach it from here. She gets out of the car, opens the back door, kneels on the backseat to retrieve it . . . and finds Mick’s down jacket.

  Caught off guard, she grabs it and presses it to her face. She breathes in the faint scent of some kind of body spray he must have used the last time he wore it, probably trying to impress a girl: Brianna?

  Even so . . .

  I know my son. I might not know what he’s doing every moment of every day, but I know who he is.

  Determined to find him—­to help him—­she gets back behind the wheel, starts the engine, and grimly drives toward home.

  In the split second before Casey slashed Rowan’s throat, a single word escaped it.

  Why?

  Now, standing over her, watching her bleed all over her scuffed hardwood floor, he answers it.

  “Because you destroyed us! That’s why!”

  She doesn’t reply, of course. She’s too busy bleeding, moaning. Soon she’ll be unconscious. But on the off chance she can still hear him, he explains.

  “Before you came along, we were a family. My mom and Rick were so happy, and we were normal, and . . . and then you ruined everything. You and your stupid . . .” He kicks her in the head, the hair, with his work boot.

  She groans a little.

  She’s still alive. Good. She should hear this.

  “Nothing was ever the same after that. You moved, we moved, but it was like you infected us with some kind of virus. And my mom . . . she knew you were trying to take him away from us. She knew.”

  Years later—­on that lonely Thanksgiving weekend when it was just the two of them—­Mom tried to convince Casey that Rowan hadn’t caused the divorce. She acted as though she barely remembered Rowan.

  But he knew better.

  You couldn’t forget a woman like that.

  He never had. And he was certain, when Rick left his mother a few years ago, that Rick never had, either.

  On Monday night when Casey asked him about her, he admitted he’d seen Rowan again recently, but claimed it was innocent, and insisted that Mom’s death wasn’t her fault.

  “How can you say that? She killed herself on the same day that you . . . that you and Rowan . . .”

  “It had nothing to do with that. She was overwhelmed at work. The days were getting shorter and darker, winter was coming. Your mom always hated that time of year. And she’d just gone through a miserable holiday and a miserable weekend.”

  “So she killed herself?”

  “Come on. She struggled with depression all her life. And that date wasn’t just meaningful to me and Rowan. It was
meaningful to me and your mother. We met on November thirtieth.”

  That gave him pause. He’d never realized that.

  “So it was your anniversary?”

  “Not of our wedding, of the day we—­”

  “I know, I heard you. But then why would you choose that day to . . . to . . .”

  Rick sighed heavily. “Every year on November thirtieth, we . . . celebrated. At midnight.” He was slurring his words a bit by then. The medication was beginning to take hold. “We stayed up late, and we had champagne, and we . . . toasted. You get it.”

  Yeah. He got it. He’d seen it.

  “That year, your mother got home late from work, and she was in a pissy mood, and she fell asleep early. I tried to wake her up, you know, at midnight, but she got angry and I got angry and . . . you know. We went to bed angry and we woke up angry and then I . . .” He shrugged droop­ily. “I did something stupid. Casey, come on. It was fourteen years ago and—­”

  “Don’t call me Casey!”

  “All right, so what do you want me to call you . . . Kurt? Are you going by Kurt again now?”

  He shrugged. Might as well. One name had been given to him by the father who’d abandoned him, the other by the stepfather who’d promised he would stay and then ultimately did the exact same thing. And why?

  Because of her.

  “It was your fault!”

  He kicks Rowan again. She makes a whimpering sound, like a wounded animal.

  He kneels over her, grabbing hold of her hair to lift her head. Her throat is bleeding, but the cut isn’t deep enough. One more slash will put an end to her suffering, and to his.

  As long as she walks this earth, he won’t be free.

  She ruined Casey’s life, and she ruined his parents’ marriage, and she lured Rick away, and . . . and . . .

  And she had lured his biological father away, too. She must have. Who else, what else, could it have been? It was all part of her plan to destroy him, and he—­

  Someplace in the house, a door opens, closes. Footsteps.

  She’s here. She really came, just as he’d instructed her to.

  Detective Sullivan Leary.

  “Noreen?” a voice calls . . .

  A familiar voice . . . but it isn’t the one he heard on the phone a short time ago.

  It belongs to Rowan Mundy.

  Then who . . . He stares at the woman on the floor.

  “Noreen?” she calls. “Noreen?”

  Walking up the driveway, Mick sees his mother’s minivan parked alongside an unfamiliar car: a Mercedes SUV.

  Uh-­oh.

  He stops short, regarding it uneasily.

  Whatever it means, it can’t be good.

  As he stands there wondering whether he should leave again, he hears a shriek from inside the house.

  It’s his mother.

  He starts to run toward the scream, but a pair of strong hands close on his shoulders.

  “Stay right here,” a deep voice says, low in his ear. “Don’t move, and don’t make a sound.”

  Frozen in the archway, Rowan gapes in horror at the scene before her.

  Her sister is lying on the floor near the foot of the stairs, covered in blood. She’s alive, moaning. But a man is kneeling over her with a blade in his hand, pressed against her bloody neck.

  He looks up at her.

  Who the hell is he?

  Rick is supposed to be here, but he’s too young to be Rick; he doesn’t look like Rick at all, but there’s something about him . . .

  She gasps.

  Casey. Rick’s stepson. He was always a quiet kid, shy, kept to himself . . .

  Rick’s shadow. That’s what she used to call him.

  And now he’s here, and Rick is not, and her sister . . .

  Her sister . . .

  She finds her voice, shrieks, “What are you doing? What are you doing?”

  He scrambles to his feet, momentarily confused, caught off guard. “You . . . You’re . . . Your hair! What did you do to your hair?”

  She hurtles herself at him without stopping to think. They topple to the floor, rolling, grasping . . .

  The blade slices through the air, searching for its mark, but she won’t let it hit her, she won’t . . .

  In one violent motion, he lifts her off him and throws her down, flat on her back. He straddles her, and she sees the madness burning in his eyes as he glares down at her, sees him raise the hand that clutches the blade, sees it arc through the air toward her chest, her heart . . .

  Grasping that this moment is her last, she tilts her head back; she can’t bear to watch. Her eyes settle on the gallery of framed portraits above the stairs. They’re upside down, but she can see them: Braden, Katie, Mick, Jake . . .

  Her heart.

  Her heart, her soul, her life.

  I would die for you . . .

  She takes her last breath, but she won’t close her eyes. Fixated on the photo, she wants their smiling faces to be the last thing she sees on this earth.

  There’s a blast of sound, and then she can’t breathe, and there’s blood in her mouth.

  This is what it’s like to die, she realizes. It will be over soon, and then . . .

  It isn’t.

  Time goes on, and she can taste blood, smell it, but it isn’t her own. It’s Casey’s.

  He’s on top of her, crushing her, because . . . because . . .

  A muffled, far-­off voice shouts something that sounds like “Sully!”

  “I got him, Barnes!” a female voice shouts, closer and clearer. “We need the medics right away. Hurry! There are two females here, and one’s in really bad shape!”

  She hears a commotion, and then the dead weight is being lifted off Rowan, and she sees a redheaded woman standing over her.

  “Are you okay?” she asks, holstering a gun and leaning in. “Did he hurt you?”

  “My sister . . . please help my sister . . .”

  “It’s okay. Let me take a look at you. Take deep breaths. Just breathe.”

  Breathe. She breathes. She can breathe; she’s alive.

  Paramedics lunge through the door toward Noreen. One twists a tourniquet onto her arm; another takes her pulse; another crouches beside her, talking to her, telling her to hang on, hang on, hang on . . .

  There are cops now, too, swarming in, closing around the man on the floor. He’s bleeding from a gunshot wound to his chest.

  Rowan doesn’t give a damn whether he’s alive or dead; she only cares about her family. Dammit, dammit, he tried to hurt her family, tried to . . .

  “Noreen!” she calls. “Noreen!”

  The woman turns back toward Rowan. “Shh, she’s going to be all right.”

  “Are you . . . who are you?”

  “I’m Detective Leary. Here, can you sit up?” She stretches out a hand, and Rowan grasps it. The woman’s grip is warm and reassuring.

  “You’ve got to help me, Detective. Please. I need to find my son . . . He disappeared, and they think . . .” She pauses, closing her eyes just for a moment, trying to collect her thoughts.

  Mick. She has to find Mick.

  “Your son disappeared?” The detective is solemn, but there’s a little twinkle in her eye. “Can you describe him?”

  “He’s six-­two, lanky, with green eyes and red hair . . .”

  “Red hair? I’m kind of partial to that. Hmm, let me see what I can find out.” The detective steps closer to the door and calls, “Hey, Barnes? Can you come in here now? And bring your pal?”

  A moment later, a large black man steps through the front door, his arm around Mick.

  Rowan closes her eyes, this time in silent, thankful prayer. Then her boy is there, hugging her.

  “He got here just as we did,” Detective Leary tells
Rowan. “He heard you scream and he was running toward the house but my partner Detective Barnes here stopped him so that he wouldn’t get hurt.”

  “What happened?” Mick asks, over and over as the paramedics rush Noreen out the door on a stretcher. “What happened?”

  Rowan just shakes her head, spinning, spinning . . .

  She has a feeling that it will be a long time before she can answer that question.

  Right now—­as long as she has her boy back safely, and her sister is in good hands, there’s only one other thing that matters.

  On her feet at last, she steps away from the bedlam, through the doorway into her study.

  She dials Jake’s number. This time when it goes into voice mail, she’ll leave him a message. She’ll just say . . . she’ll say . . .

  What the hell are you going to say?

  But it doesn’t go into voice mail.

  “Jake? You answered. I’ve been . . . trying to call you.”

  “Yeah. I’ve been in a meeting, but now I’m out. I saw that you called a few times. Listen, I can’t talk about this right—­”

  “It’s not that. It’s something else. It’s . . .”

  “What?”

  She looks around, spinning on the Gravitron. Spinning, spinning, and it’s all a blur: Mick, the detectives, Casey, the blood . . .

  “Rowan?”

  “Can you come home? I . . .” Her voice cracks. Dammit.

  “I’m in Saratoga.”

  “I know, but . . . something happened, and . . .” She swallows a sob. “I need you, Jake.”

  “What happened? Is it Mick? Is he okay? Are you okay?” Concern nudges the anger from his voice.

  The spinning slows.

  Her gaze settles on a framed photo of herself and Jake on her desk. Arm in arm, smiling, wearing jeans and holding shovels: the day they planted the oak tree to replace the one felled by the storm.

  She hesitates.

  No more lies.

  “We’re . . . not exactly okay. Not right now. We just . . . we need you home. Please.”

  “What happened? What’s wrong?”

  “Please, Jake . . .” Her voice breaks. “Please just come home.”

  “Okay, I’m on my way.” Before he hangs up, Jake adds two last words: “Love you.”

  At last, the world stops spinning. The ground is solid beneath her feet once more.