My shoe rolled over something.
Glancing down, I plucked it up as I realized what it was.
A blue pin.
Just like the ones I’d found at the back of the motel and in front of my room.
Had Denver dropped it?
Had the raccoons gone through the trash again?
My stomach twisting with uncertainty, I pushed the darn thing into my pocket and walked down the porch steps.
Reaching my car, I turned the ignition on and pulled out of the car park. Though it was a misdemeanor, I grabbed my phone and called the local police station as I did.
Someone answered.
Thorne.
My stomach sank.
“Hello, who is this?”
“It’s Patti,” I forced myself to say, “now, listen to me – Annabelle is lying. I never asked any of those questions. I have nothing to do with these murders. You have to believe me.”
“Hold on, slow down, what are you talking about? Patti, is everything okay?”
“Annabelle. You can’t believe what she said. She is lying. She is trying to set me up. And as for that scrapbook at her house, I have nothing to do with it. She made me look at one of hers last night, and I’m sure my fingerprints are all over it, but she’s stitching me up.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Thorne breathed hard into the receiver, “you tell me what’s happening now. You okay?”
I got a sudden sinking feeling in my stomach that descended right down to my feet.
“Annabelle... she told Denver—”
“Annabelle has not come to the police. Patti, take a deep breath and you tell me exactly what is going on.”
I took a deep breath.
As I did, my mind caught up with me.
There’d been two murders in Wetlake. Both of rich men.
But both of men.
I’d spent the last two days thinking I was next, thinking that someone was clearly picking off the most successful graduates of Wetlake high.
Maybe I was wrong.
Maybe I’d picked up the wrong pattern.
Denver.
Denver was the next target.
I skidded as I swerved off the road.
“Patti, what’s going on?”
“Denver. Jesus Christ, she’s after Denver. He is the next target. Listen to me, Thorne, Annabelle came to Denver’s room this morning, she told him that she had just called the police to share information about me. She told him there was some kind of scrapbook with ghastly pictures of mine at her house, which I’d conveniently left there last night. She told him that the rest of the police didn’t have the time to go and look at it. She asked him to come back to her house.”
There was a long pause. “What were you doing in Denver’s room?”
“Really? That’s what you got from that? Your brother is in danger. If I’m right, Annabelle is the serial killer. Jesus, do something, send in the police.”
There was another long pause. “You keep yourself safe, okay? Drive into town, come to the station.”
I let out a long breath of relief.
“She lives in upper Wetlake,” Thorne said quickly, “we’ll send everything we can. Patti... I’m sorry.”
I smiled anxiously into the receiver.
He didn’t need to be sorry.
He just had to get to his brother before Annabelle did.
Chapter 18
I headed into Wetlake.
Or at least I tried to.
I kept using the GPS map, and it kept directing me to the strangest of places, until finally I said to hell with it and grabbed out the actual, proper, paper map that had come free with the car and that was stuffed neatly in the bottom of my handbag.
Unfolding it over the enormity that was my dashboard, I tried to figure out where I was and where I had to go.
Tracing my finger along the streets and dirt tracks, I suddenly stopped.
I saw the area designated Upper Wetlake.
I frowned.
Deeply.
That wasn’t where Annabelle’s house was.
Or rather, that wasn’t where she had taken me last night.
I was sure of it; it was in completely the opposite direction.
Shaking a little, I flicked my eyes up and surveyed the road before me.
It was vaguely familiar.
I’d driven it before.
Yesterday in fact, on the way up to Annabelle’s.
Shit.
I was close, wasn’t I?
But not to Upper Wetlake – I was in an area called Heatherton.
I started the car, grabbing the map roughly and throwing it onto the seat as I reached for my cellphone.
Dear god. Had I just sent them to the wrong place? Not knowingly, of course. But had I just made Thorne marshal every squad car in the district only to send them in completely the opposite direction?
Shaking, I started to drive, and I drew on every fragmented memory I had of the route up to Annabelle’s.
As I did, I called him back. He wasn’t there though. Someone else picked up the line. In a desperate, shaky voice, I told them what was happening and they told me to pull off to the side of the road, stop, and wait.
I couldn’t.
How long did Denver have?
Annabelle was many things, but she was quick.
And efficient.
I shuddered at that thought, a tear escaping my eye and trickling down my cheek.
Pushing it away, I swore hard.
I had to find the house.
The place she’d taken me to last night. Maybe she’d bought it without telling anyone in town, maybe she’d inherited it, or maybe she’d done something grisly to the real owner.
It didn’t matter.
I had to find it.
I was useless waiting on the side of the road.
Upper Wetlake was a full half an hour away from here.
Who knew what could happen in half an hour.
I was usually such a sensible girl, but right now, I was a desperate one too.
Forcing herself not to cry, whimper, or make a sound, I stiffened my back, pushed it hard into the seat, and I drove.
I took every road and every track until I started to remember.
Until I started to recognize.
The exact sway of the trees, the exact turn and angle of the road.
Then I saw it.
The dirt driveway that led up to her house.
I didn’t hesitate.
I drove up to it. But I didn’t drive up it.
Because while I was a desperate girl, I was still a sensible one.
Chapter 19
I got out of my car and left the door wide open, but I took the keys from the ignition.
I left my bag in the front seat but grabbed my phone and pocketed my keys.
Then I started to head up the long dirt driveway, quickly walking into the thick forest beside it and keeping low. As I did, I called the police station.
“I found the house,” I hissed without even saying hello or introducing myself, “I’ve left my car next to the driveway with the doors open. It’s a blue pickup truck.”
“Stay where you are,” the officer on the other end of the line snapped.
It was sensible advice. I wasn’t exactly a commando here. I didn’t know hand-to-hand combat, and my knowledge of hostage situations was on par with my knowledge of quantum field theory.
But I couldn’t stay here.
One fact kept repeating around my head: Annabelle was efficient.
Terribly, terribly efficient.
“Stay there...” the officer repeated, but her voice began to crackle with static.
I plucked my phone away from my ear and stared down at it. The reception bar had dropped to zero.
Fuck.
Seriously?
I just stood there wordlessly, staring at it.
My heartbeat thumped and rocketed through my body, my clenched teeth shaking with every th
ud.
Then I forced myself to pocket my phone and continue.
I tried not to make a sound, but my breath was choppy and sharp.
The house was on top of a steep hill, and when it came into view, I could have crumpled to my knees in total fear.
I didn’t though.
I kept on walking.
I locked my gaze on that three-story, ostensibly beautiful weatherboard house, and I kept moving forward.
Be alive, I begged him silently in my mind.
I couldn’t take walking into that house to find... what?
Annabelle standing over him with a knife in hand? Blood tracked through the once-pristine halls and rooms? A body – his body – under the white and pink roses by the fence?
I shook my head.
Now was no time for imagination.
It was time for action.
I slowed as I neared the house.
I was suddenly thankful that Annabelle had no pets.
If she’d owned a dog, at this point it would have barked its lungs out, revealing me to the world as I hunkered low against her fence.
I needed a weapon or something... right?
Or maybe what I needed was a distraction.
I was a sensible girl, after all, and I realized my chances of taking Annabelle on, one-on-one, were non-existent. She was unhinged, desperate, and had a row of glittering knives above her kitchen sink.
With my back still pressed hard into the white picket fence, I turned sharply on the spot and searched for something.
Anything.
She had a shed and a pile of wood stacked up in a shelter against the back of the house.
She also had gardening equipment strewn in front of the back door.
I was no MacGyver, but I headed over to them, pressing my fingers into the gravel as I crawled my way there.
This was categorically the most fraught experience of my life.
I had never and would never feel fear like this again.
This went beyond my own personal safety; the thought of what Annabelle could be doing to Denver wound around and around my mind, strangling it like a python.
I reached the gardening equipment.
My back bristled as I stared at the house. Keeping every move silent, I surveyed what was on the ground.
A rake, a spade, some gloves, a mower, and some gasoline.
I glanced at the gasoline then over to the woodpile.
Now that would be a distraction.
I hesitated.
Could I be making this up?
Did my imagination have the better of me?
Was Denver in Annabelle’s house right now having a cup of tea and chatting about me and definitely not being murdered? Or was he not even here? Had Annabelle taken him to her other house, the one in Upper Wetlake?
I doubted it; her car was parked just a few feet away from me.
I could hear noises in the house too.
Low, thudding ones.
She was here. But was Denver with her, and was he in the kind of mortal peril that would legally justify what I was about to do?
If I was wrong and I was about to set Annabelle’s whole woodpile on fire, then I was going to prison.
Then I heard it.
Someone screaming.
It was a male voice.
The scream was a long and tortured one.
The blood drained from my cheeks.
I grabbed up the gasoline can and started to dowse the woodpile with it.
When I was done, I searched desperately for a match.
Plunging into the shed, I practically trashed the place until I found a packet of old, wet matches.
Praying to God that one would work, I struck four until the fifth one lit.
Then I chucked it on the woodpile.
The fire spread with a great whoomph.
The back of the woodpile leaned onto the back of the house.
It wouldn’t take long for the house to catch fire.
And that would be one hell of a distraction.
Taking several steps back and staring open-mouthed as the woodpile crackled and spat, I turned on my foot and I ran.
Not to the back of the house, but to the front.
Before I did, I leaned down and I snatched up the rake.
It was hardly an ax and it wasn’t exactly a chainsaw, but it would do.
I reached the front of the house just as I heard the back door slam open and someone swear in disbelief.
I tried the handle to the front door.
It was locked. I ran around to where I knew the kitchen was, and without hesitation slammed the rake into the glass of the French doors.
It shattered.
I plunged in, my arm cutting against several of the ragged shards still lodged in the wooden frame.
By now I could hear the fire.
It was roaring.
I could also hear Annabelle screaming.
Jesus Christ, I hoped I was right about this. Denver had better be in here otherwise I had just set fire to Annabelle Shaw’s house. Annabelle, who was indisputably the nicest person in all of Wetlake.
I ran through the kitchen.
It was empty.
I ran into the corridor; it was empty too.
I made it into the lounge room.
There was blood.
Chapter 20
He was on the floor.
There was blood covering the side of his face from a deep gash in the back of his head.
I collapsed next to him.
My hands were shaking.
I couldn’t stop them from shaking.
In fact, my whole body convulsed with fear.
I couldn’t bear to whisper his name, yet he wouldn’t have been able to hear me over the crackle and burst of flame as the woodpile engulfed the back of the house.
Smoke seeped in from every crack and every corner, and I started to cough.
I leant down, clutching a hand to his shoulder.
I expected the worst.
I tried to turn him over.
That’s when he snapped up, swinging at me wildly.
Before his hand could connect to my face, he stopped.
For a brief moment, he looked into my eyes.
“Patti?”
“We have to get out of the house,” I screamed, and I caught him just as he flopped forward.
“What’s...” he mumbled, voice becoming indistinct as his head lolled onto my shoulder.
What’s going on?
Oh, that would take far too long to explain.
Instead, I tried to help him to his feet.
He was like a dead weight, but somehow I muscled him up and started dragging him towards the door.
Though he was bleary eyed, he wasn’t out cold. Thankfully he managed to support himself even slightly as I forced him to walk as fast as he could.
“Come on, come on,” I begged.
He groaned in reply.
As we moved painfully slowly, I kept snapping my head around, waiting for Annabelle to burst out of every room wielding a sparklingly clean knife as she did.
We reached the front door.
We made it out.
I headed across the opposite side of the garden, ensuring the bulk of the house hid us from the woodpile at the back.
“Come on, come on,” I repeated over and over again as quietly as I could.
The roar of the fire was incredible, and the heat was astounding.
Even from here, I could feel it sizzling through the air.
Everything crackled, hissed, and spat.
But the screaming had stopped.
Annabelle had shouted ever since she’d heard the fire, but now she was quiet.
I turned over my shoulder, surveying the grounds and house.
God... I hadn’t... killed her, had I?
Had one of the burning logs pinned her down? Had one of the beams in the house fallen on her?
“I should go back,” I said aloud as I realized I couldn
’t just leave her there.
Denver, with whatever little strength he had, grabbed my hand. “No,” he said firmly. “Wait for the police.”
I turned back around.
I continued to help him forward.
We reached the rim of the woods.
They plunged away sharply, leading down to a steep slope.
I started to help him down through the dense firs and pine trees, but suddenly he tripped, fell from my arms, and rolled a good eight feet before he managed to stop himself.
He looked back at me.
His bleary eyes drew wide. “Patti,” he screamed.
I heard something click from behind me.
Sharp footsteps.
Then something was pressed hard into my back.
“Stop,” someone said.
Annabelle.
“I will shoot your guts out all over these woods, you understand?” she hissed.
I nodded.
My hands were still by my sides, near my pockets.
I had all of three things in my pockets: a phone, my keys, and the blue pin I’d picked up outside Denver’s room.
“Put your hands up,” she hissed again.
As I brought my hand past my pocket, somehow I managed to grab the pin.
“Stop fumbling, put them up now.” She repositioned the gun until it was pointing into the back of my head.
I was no expert, but it felt like a shotgun, or at least something long and powerful.
“Leave her alone,” Denver tried.
“Shut up,” Annabelle snapped.
I held the pin in my hand, pressed against my palm with my thumb as I spread my other fingers wide in surrender.
“You had to get involved, didn’t you?” Annabelle shoved the gun hard into my head. “You offered me a nice distraction. While the cops thought I was going after you, they turned their backs on the real target. The same with dear old Nancy. But you coming here was a mistake.”
I didn’t say a word.
I waited.
Waited either for her to pull the trigger, or to give me a chance to do something.
“You dumb bitch. You had to stick your nose in. This wasn’t about you,” she croaked.
I didn’t want to say anything, but I had to. I had to buy time. Standing there silently would likely award me a bullet in the brain.
What I really needed was a chance.
“Why?” I stuttered.
Annabelle laughed. “You mean why did I do it? Country boredom,” she laughed again.
It wasn’t a nice laugh. Neither was it a happy one. It was short and puttering like a dying engine.
A Deadly Reunion Page 19
