by Linda Ladd
“There you are, Emma. Feel better now? Or should I call you Goldie?”
Mariah smiled when she said that, hoping to cheer her up. Emma smiled and walked into the kitchen and leaned back against the counter. “That was so long ago, but I thought you’d remember our old passwords. We were such good friends back then. BFFs, remember.”
“I knew it was you the minute I got that matchbook.”
Emma nodded again and just stood there, silent, her hands tucked in the front pocket of Mariah’s brown hoodie. “I knew you’d come and help me, if you could,” she said then.
“I’m just glad we found you and got you out,” Mariah told her, stirring the soup. She looked at the bruise on the smaller girl’s eye. It looked worse now, darker, uglier, more painful. “Did he do that to you tonight?”
Emma nodded, but she kept glancing around the kitchen. She was even tinier than Mariah remembered. Hadn’t grown much since they had graduated from high school. An easy victim for a man twice her size who wished to abuse her. “Try not to worry. Will’s going to get Ryan out of that house. He’s good at what he does.”
“I know. I’m just so grateful to both of you.” After saying that, Emma just stood and stared at her.
“How about something to eat? A bowl of soup, maybe. I’ve got chicken noodle already hot on the stove. You’ll feel better if you eat something. Warm up your insides, too.” Mariah turned around and opened the refrigerator door. “But I’ve also got some deli ham, if you like that, and some fresh fruit. Grapes and strawberries. I could make you a sandwich, if you like. Grilled cheese, something like that?”
Emma didn’t answer, so Mariah glanced back over her shoulder as she reached inside for the package of ham. Emma was standing right behind her now, very close, but Mariah’s eyes shot upward and fastened on Emma’s right hand, now held up high over her head. She had a steak knife clutched in her fist. Stunned, Mariah watched Emma jerk the knife down hard at her chest.
Lunging away from the sharp blade, Mariah wasn’t fast enough to evade it completely. It felt like somebody had punched her in the back of the shoulder. She screamed and scrabbled away until the counter stopped her, and then Emma was right on top of her again, plunging the knife down again. Mariah felt the knife puncture into her flesh this time as it sliced into her upper arm. She held up her hands, trying grab the knife and protect herself, but Emma had already jerked it out and thrust it down again. The tip of the blade hit hard and lodged in her scapula, and Mariah screamed in agony.
Then the knife was pulled down and out of her bone and quickly back up for the next blow. That’s when Mariah knew she had to fight for her life, and she rolled to one side and grabbed Emma’s arm. She managed to grab the blade, but it sliced open both of her palms as she pushed Emma back away from her. But then Emma went into an absolute frenzy of stabbing, yelling curses, screaming, missing more than she hit, and Mariah grabbed the smaller woman but couldn’t get traction because Emma had gone completely crazy, stabbing at her over and over, getting her in the shoulder again and then the arm and then a stab that plunged deep into her left side.
After that, Mariah went down, sliding to the floor, holding her side, bleeding heavily. She tried to fight for the knife, but she was already losing a lot of blood. Her strength ebbed quickly, and she began to go weak and sick to her stomach. She finally just gave up and didn’t resist or grab at the knife anymore, just closed her eyes and waited to die. The knife came down again, down into her stomach, and she could only groan in agony. Emma stopped her attack and fell to her knees beside Mariah, panting hard. Mariah tried to play dead.
That’s when Emma leaned down close to her ear and whispered to her, very softly, “I’m not going to keep stabbing you, Cinder. I could, I guess, but I owe you a little bit of gratitude for coming up here and getting me out of that hell I was living in. So, I’m just going to let you bleed out instead. See, I’m not as much of a monster as you probably think. That’s not such a hard way to die. Bleeding to death. After all, we’ve been friends, and just forever, too. BFFs for years and years. So bye-bye, now, Cinder, darling, you won’t suffer long now. You just go on to sleep, and sleep tight and don’t let the bedbugs bite. Remember how we used to always say that?”
Mariah didn’t move, didn’t open her eyes. After a few seconds, Emma pushed herself to her feet and walked away. Mariah tried to move, knowing her own weapon was in her purse, but it was up on the counter and she didn’t have that much strength left. She pulled herself into a fetal position and tried to stop the bleeding by pressing her sweatshirt up into the wounds. Across the kitchen, in the living room, she heard Emma calling somebody on the landline.
“Come get me, baby,” Emma was saying now. Then she gave directions to the safe house. “Don’t worry, Novak’s not going to cause us any more trouble. But come quick, because he’s coming back here any minute, and we don’t want to have to deal with him right now. So hurry, please, hurry.”
After that, Mariah just lay there, unable to move anymore. The bleeding slowed some but not much. Emma hung up, and then she came back into the kitchen and stopped right beside Mariah. Mariah felt her muscles go tense but she didn’t move, didn’t open her eyes. After a moment, Emma stepped over Mariah’s legs and opened the refrigerator door again and pulled out a handful of grapes. Then she moved into the living room and warmed herself by the fireplace as she ate them. Soon after that, Mariah Murray lost consciousness, lying in a pool of her own blood, the refrigerator door still open beside her, a warm fire crackling merrily in the grate. She kept her eyes shut and let herself sink slowly into the deep black clouds, letting them envelop her, only glad when the pain stopped and she didn’t hurt anymore.
Chapter Twenty-five
The redheaded detective drove Novak back to the compound and let him out beside his truck, which was still parked in the cliff house’s driveway. They didn’t say a word all the way; neither one of them. They found the place deserted. Everybody gone. Nobody knew where. Nobody knew why. Novak’s problem was that the detective waited for him to climb into his truck and then she followed him back out of the compound. The rain was still coming down but not as hard. The air had grown colder. He drove down past the Shoot Club and turned south on Bear Creek Road. So did Detective Latham. She stayed behind him about thirty yards back, but he finally lost her inside the streets of Sikeston. It took him longer than he had time for.
She and Richard Lay were not dirty cops, or he wouldn’t be free this soon and driving around in his own truck. They were good at their jobs, and pretty much went by the book.
Once he was sure that he was free of the police tail, he took a few more evasion maneuvers, just in case he’d miscalculated, and then he slammed down the accelerator and drove hard for Mariah’s safe house. A steady drizzle drenched the windshield, but the major storm was long gone, probably roaring its way up through Chattanooga about now. He kept checking his rearview mirror, but no one was behind him.
Most of the people of Sikeston were still abed. It was not them that he was worried about at the moment. He had a feeling that Emma could tell him exactly what had happened at the cliff house earlier that night, and then he was going to take her in to meet Sergeant Lay so they could pick up her poor, traumatized little kid, still sitting all alone in a deserted police station and waiting for Child Protective Services to come pick him up and place him in a house full of complete strangers.
When he finally made it back to the safe house, the front door was standing wide open. Mariah’s rental car had been parked out front when he had left. It was gone. That could not be good. He skidded to a stop and pulled out his weapon. He jumped out of the truck, watched and listened for movement inside the house for a second or two, and then ran up the steps and across the porch. He stopped at the door and pressed himself against the wall.
Inside, it remained deathly quiet, only one lamp burning now, in the far corner of the living room. The fire had almost burned itself out. Just a few glowing coals and one
half-burnt log. He moved just inside the door, and then made his way slowly through the big living room. The rest of the house lay silent and in complete darkness. No sounds at all. No lights. He moved up behind the kitchen counter and hit the light switch. Then his heart nearly stopped when he saw what was on the floor at his feet. Mariah was lying curled up on her side, in a tight fetal position, not moving. The refrigerator door was open beside her, and a large pool of blood had gathered underneath her. He knelt down beside her but kept an eye on the hallway door. He felt sure the house was empty. Nobody showed up. Still no noise; no signs of life. He felt for a pulse in her neck, didn’t feel one at first. Feeling sick inside, he picked up her wrist. Then he felt it. Very faint, very slow. She was not going to last long. He had to do something and do it quick.
The sweatshirt she had on was sort of wadded in against her side, soaked through with blood, crimson with it, heavy with it. He could see short tears in the fabric, and he knew what they were. He’d seen knife attacks before. He lifted up the sweatshirt and winced at the punctures, the narrow slits still slowly oozing blood. Her torso was painted red with it. Oh God, she’d been stabbed repeatedly. In the side and shoulder and stomach. He jerked out his cell phone, hit 911, told them how to get there, how bad it was, and that she didn’t have much time to live. Hung up when they asked his name.
Then he examined her injuries up close, pretty much horrified at the extent of them. Most were the same, all small, narrow puncture wounds. How deep, he couldn’t tell. He hoped to God they weren’t too deep. A few slashes, too, as if Mariah had evaded the knife and caused the blade to slash her in horizontal strokes. Then he saw the weapon. It was on the floor beside her, an ivory-handled steak knife with a five-inch blade, taken out of the kitchen block. It still dripped with Mariah’s blood. He picked up Mariah’s right hand. The palm was shredded with defensive wounds, slashed up and bleeding. He took off for the bathroom, couldn’t find anything but towels to wrap around her body. Oh, God, he had to stop the bleeding or at least slow it down if she was to survive.
Novak ran outside, leapt down the steps, got to the truck’s tool box, and pulled out the silver duct tape. He tore strips with his teeth as he ran back inside, heart pounding with urgency, and then he knelt and tried to pull together the edges of most of the stab wounds with the tape. It didn’t work so well, she was losing way too much blood. It was everywhere, all over her and him and the floor, and some of the tape didn’t stick so well, but it was better than nothing. Then he wrapped the towels around her waist and shoulder and wound the tape tightly around the towels, round and round, securing both as tightly as he could. Then he picked up her lifeless body and ran for the truck. She didn’t have time to wait for the ambulance to get there. She was going to die if he didn’t get her to an ER.
Novak knew where the hospital was in Sikeston. Locating it was one of the first things he cased out when he had a job in an unknown place. An old habit. He’d done it all over the world. Just in case. That personal quirk had served him well more than once. This time he had to get there fast. He gunned the motor, slinging wet gravel everywhere as he turned and headed back out to the highway. He had to get her there in time. He had to get her there before she died. She was in critical condition. He roared ahead and met the ambulance halfway to the hospital, out on the highway in the middle of nowhere, and skidded to a sideways stop in front of it, jumped out and watched helplessly as the EMTs got her on a gurney, and then up into the back of the ambulance, hooking up IVs and examining her wounds. It took the guys about three minutes to assess the damage, and then they sped off with her, siren blaring.
Shaken to his core, Novak ran back to his truck, got inside, and followed them the rest of the way. They were going at a high rate of speed. Mariah’s blood was all over the seat beside him. It was all over his clothes and his face and his hands, tightening his skin where it had begun to dry. The strong metallic stink of it turned his stomach. He felt ill inside. His heart was still pounding, flooding adrenaline throughout his entire system, and his ears were ringing with some kind of reactionary high level of stress. He wanted to know who did this to her, dammit. Who did this inhuman, horrific thing to Mariah. He wanted to know who came and hurt her and who took Emma away with them. And why. And he was going to find out and then he was going to find them and then they were going to pay for what they’d done.
Once the ambulance reached the Sikeston Medical Center, the ER doctors immediately flew her out by helicopter to Emory University Hospital down in Atlanta. The medical chopper took off within ten minutes of the emergency room personnel getting their first glimpse of her butchered body. They worked valiantly to stanch the blood loss and transfuse her, and then he watched them load her aboard the waiting medical helicopter. They had already called in the cops concerning a criminal stabbing, and Novak had to get out of there before Richard Lay and Dolly Parton showed up and nabbed him again. So he took off at a run to the parking lot, watched the helo rise slowly into the air, and then take off and bank south for Atlanta. That’s when he started the engine and put his blood-spattered truck in gear and headed for the highway.
Once outside of Sikeston, he drove about as fast as he had ever driven in his life. Because he didn’t hold out much hope for Mariah’s chances. Not for very long, anyway. She had been lying there in her own blood for God only knew how long before he found her. She hadn’t bled out, but she had lost a lot of blood. A whole lot of it. He could not believe that much blood had drained out of her slender body and she still could be breathing and holding on. The immediate transfusions would help her, but Novak had a sick feeling that it was going to be too little, too late.
Once he got to Atlanta, he located the hospital on his phone’s GPS. It was just off North Decatur Road near Emory University campus, and he was told at the emergency room that she was still alive, still in surgery, and would probably be there for a long time. He was directed to the waiting room outside the surgery theater and asked to fill out a sheaf of papers about his sister-in-law’s personal statistics and medical history. He found that he didn’t know much that he could write down. He just knew that she was probably going to die, and it was his fault for not being there to protect her from whoever had attacked her in such a brutal way. He hadn’t been able to save Emma, either. God only knew who had her and what they planned to do with her. But he couldn’t worry about Emma right now.
The nurse who returned for the admittance forms brought Novak a large cup of black coffee and two glazed donuts, courtesy of the nurses’ station. She looked down at him with kind but sorrowful eyes that told him without saying a word that Mariah probably wouldn’t make it through the operation. But she told him in her low and pleasant Atlanta drawl that maybe he should think about praying, and that if he was a religious man, the hospital’s prayer chapel was just down the hall. Then she handed him a large Ziploc bag containing the personal effects they’d found on Mariah’s body when they’d cut off her clothes at the Sikeston ER. Lastly, she placed a consoling hand on his shoulder and squeezed it reassuringly and told him not to give up hope, that they were still working on Mariah, and that the surgeons were very good, the absolute best ones the hospital had to offer. Then she said that she’d keep him apprised of Mariah’s condition as often as she could. She looked as if she knew what was coming down the pike and pitied him because of it, as if she already knew that he was soon to be bereaved and weeping. That’s what he believed, too. Down deep.
Novak sat there for a long time and tried to calm himself down. He couldn’t do it, so he started pacing around the waiting room, stopping only to stare out the big plate glass window now and then. Outside, he could see a parking lot. Behind it was a wide boulevard with lots of cars moving up and down its length. Maybe the change of shifts at the hospital. Some going home, some coming in. He didn’t grow any calmer until he made himself sit still and garner control over his thoughts and measure his breathing down into a nice steady cadence. He’d pretty much perfected breathing te
chniques engendered by stress during training. It usually worked. This time his resolve had some serious cracks. Cracks that were getting wider by the minute. This time it was his wife’s sister. This time he blamed himself.
An hour passed. Then two more. Later that morning, when Mariah was still in surgery, her bloodstained cell phone began to buzz and vibrate inside the Ziploc bag. Novak dug through her stuff. A silver watch with a black face and a small emerald ring and the big diamond dinner ring he’d noticed before, and a red leather wallet, and the white iPhone. He grabbed it. The screen said J. M. He punched onto the call, didn’t say anything, listened. A male voice said, “Mariah? What the hell’s going on? Why haven’t you checked in? We’re still waiting for you to show up with the girl.” The guy sounded angry, impatient. Novak had never heard the voice before.
“Who is this?” Novak said tightly.
Silence for a couple of beats. Then the guy said, “Where’s Mariah? Why do you have her phone?”
“Who is this?”
The line went dead. Frowning, Novak tried to pull up GPS on the caller but couldn’t get it to work. Who the hell was J. M.? What had Mariah been into now? Was that what got her nearly stabbed to death? Good God, the whole thing just kept getting worse.
Before the call, he had begun to think that the most likely scenario for the attack had been somebody wanting to get to Emma. Maybe some of Barrett’s men, sent out to find her before Wilson had ended up floating dead in his own swimming pool. He had a lot of loyal followers who would have done that. Maybe Mariah had tried to protect Emma from them and had paid the ultimate price for it. No, she wasn’t dead yet. He couldn’t think that way. He wanted to know who stabbed her, go after them, but he didn’t know where to start. And he didn’t want to leave Mariah alone at the hospital. She was going to have to wake up and tell him what had gone down after he’d left Emma with her. If she ever woke up. He had to wait and hope that she’d pull through. It wasn’t easy.
