After a few seconds I realized that I wasn’t seeing only lightning. There was another light, a pulsing light, I realized. This one had hints of blue and red.
My heart soared with hope and I took a step toward the light. I stopped myself from running out into the open at the last second, though. That wouldn’t be wise. Not yet. I had to let them come closer. Everyone knows that when you think the cavalry is here to save you, that’s when the killer comes out of nowhere and sticks you from behind.
I glanced over my shoulder nervously. It would be nearly impossible for someone to have gotten behind me -- this wasn’t a horror movie, after all, and he wasn’t Jason Voorhees -- but I had to look.
After a few seconds, I turned back to the light. The rain had picked up, now dropping in a steady rhythm. I could hear it pattering on the pavement, which made it hard to listen for approaching footsteps or the all-clear from the cavalry.
“Eliot is really going to kill me for this,” I muttered. “I should have left a note. He would have found me already.”
Great. Now I was talking to myself.
I heard the unmistakable sound of a car door slamming shut.
“Avery!”
I had never been so glad to hear Jake’s voice. I opened my mouth to answer and then snapped it shut. It wasn’t safe yet. I inched back in the direction I had come from. I had to get closer to him. Jake equaled safety. I was sure of that.
“Avery Shaw!”
I moved a few more feet, keeping my eyes peeled for hints of movement.
“Avery, I swear to God, I am going to wring your neck myself if you don’t answer me.” Jake sounded desperate. “For the love of all that is holy, answer me!”
I made my decision quickly. Actually, I didn’t think -- I just moved. I ran. I ran faster than I thought possible, especially impressive for an occasional closet-smoker who abhors exercise.
I burst past the last building and pounded onto the street, the rubber soles of my Hulk shoes giving me strength. Jake’s car was parked about twenty feet away. He was out of the vehicle, weapon drawn, and he swung it on me when he heard me running.
Relief washed over his face when he finally recognized me. It was quickly replaced with anger as he moved away from the car and toward me. “Are you trying to kill me?”
A loud bang echoed through the night. It took me a second to register that it was a gunshot and not thunder. I glanced down at my chest, expecting to see a hole that hadn’t registered pain yet because I was surely in shock. There was nothing there, though.
I looked back to Jake, a relieved smile on my face. It was gone in an instant, though, when I saw the color spreading over his white shirt, the same shirt that had been under his suit jacket at the funeral this morning.
Jake’s face contorted in pain and he dropped to his knees next to his car. “Run,” he gasped. “Run.”
He collapsed in a heap and everything in my world tilted.
Thirty-Four
No, no, no, no, no. This isn’t happening. This is just a dream, a really bad and crummy dream, but a dream nonetheless. I want to wake up now.
A huge flash of lightning split the sky and the thunder roared as it joined the chase. That wasn’t the reason for my sudden deafness, though. No, that was due to the fact that my heart was pounding so hard and fast that blood was rushing through my body and pooling in my ears.
Jake.
I thought I said his name out loud, but no sound escaped. I cleared my throat and tried again. “Jake.” There was still no movement. “Jake!”
The spell I was caught in broke and I ran toward him. A warning echoed in the back of my brain, telling me that it wasn’t safe and not to break cover, but I ignored it. I slid to the ground next to Jake, ripping my yoga pants and skinning my knees on the concrete, but I barely noticed.
“Jake.”
I rolled Jake over so that his back was resting against my thigh and his lifeless face looked to the sky. I ran my hands over his chest, ripping the white shirt open so I could get a look at his wound. Seeing the gaping hole, I choked back the scream building in my throat.
Now wasn’t the time to freak out.
“Jake,” I hissed. “Wake up.”
He didn’t stir.
“Jake, if you die on me, I’ll never forgive you,” I tried again. “I will not go to your funeral and every time someone mentions you I’ll say that you had hands like a woman and you could only last thirty seconds in bed. You don’t want that. Trust me, you don’t want that. So open your eyes right now,” I broke off sobbing. “Please wake up and tell me what to do.”
I saw a hint of movement under Jake’s eyelids. Finally, he wrenched them open and looked at me, taking a moment to focus. “What are you still doing here?” he rasped.
“You’ve been shot,” I said. I removed my hoodie without thinking and pressed it to the wound on his chest. “I’m not going to leave you.”
“You should have,” Jake said. “You’re a sitting duck out here.”
“Well, that’s your fault. I was perfectly safe hiding at the sewage plant -- and I don’t ever want to hear a joke about it,” I said, forcing myself to remain calm as I chattered away. If I fell apart now, I might not be able to pick up the pieces in time to save myself if the killer made his presence known. “I don’t think you got hit in the heart or anything, so that’s a small favor.”
“My heart is on the left side,” Jake said. “And I came here looking for you. Marvin called and demanded to talk to me. My secretary tried to put him off but he freaked out, screaming about porn and computers and a bunch of nonsense.”
Jake’s voice was quiet but strong. He wasn’t slipping away from me; he wasn’t going to die on my lap. If I had to will him to survive, I would. “His computer froze because he was looking at porn so I had to come and help him reboot. That’s when things went to hell.”
I tried to cover Jake’s face from the rain by positioning myself above his face. After a second, I realized moisture was still falling on his face, only it was coming from me. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t stop the tears.
“You need to leave me and go, Avery,” Jake said. “You need to hide. It’s probably already too late. You need to go.”
“I need to get you in the car is what I need to do,” I countered, an idea forming in my head. “If I can get you in the backseat I can drive straight to the hospital. Your deputies can handle things from here.”
“Leave me,” Jake ordered.
“I’m not leaving you.”
“You won’t get away if you don’t.”
“I don’t care,” I said. “I’m not leaving you.”
“Avery … .”
“No! You can either help me or work against me, but I’m not leaving you.”
“I’m going to kill you when this is all over with,” Jake said, but he didn’t argue further. He leaned forward to give me a chance to get to my feet behind him. Jake grimaced as I hooked my arms under his and fought to hoist him up. He tried to help as much as he could, but he didn’t have the strength. “It’s no good.”
“Shut your mouth,” I ordered, trying again and finally managing to gain some traction. I propped his body against the car with my hip -- I knew those suckers were going to come in handy at some point -- and pulled the back door of the car open. “Get in there.”
No one is going to mistake me for Florence Nightingale, but I managed to pile Jake’s body into the seat. He grunted in pain several times, and I grunted in tandem because he weighed a ton and I’m really out of shape, but I hauled him mostly inside of the car. His pale face told me I was running out of time, though, so I couldn’t exactly enjoy my victory for very long.
“I’ll get us to the hospital,” I said, moving to slam the door.
Before I could close the door, Jake’s eyes softened as they met mine in the dim light. He opened his mouth to say something, but something over my shoulder caught his attention. I swung around, expecting to find a knife at my throat. In
stead, I found a lone figure standing about eight feet away -- a gun in one hand, a knife in the other.
“Oh, seriously? You have the worst timing ever. Go away. Shoo! Come back tomorrow. No one wants to deal with you today.” I’m not good under pressure.
I positioned my body to take up most of the open space between the two sides of the door frame. I was trying to keep Jake out of sight as much as possible.
“You think I’m going to just let you go? After all the trouble I’ve gone through to make you mine? You’re my soul mate. I can’t just let you go.” The figure finally spoke, his voice low and purposely disguised.
“Zack Fortin? I fricking knew it. I knew it! I told you it wasn’t Riley.” I glanced down at Jake to make sure he was still conscious. His eyes found mine. He was trying to tell me something without actually saying it out loud, a fruitless endeavor. It’s not as though I was a mind reader.
“How did you know it was me?” Zack pushed the black hood from his face, revealing his features for the first time. For a second -- just a second -- he looked like the helpless nerd I had met at speed dating. I knew that was a mask, though. His real face was something much more terrible.
“You have a habit of dropping your R’s sometimes,” I replied.
Zack looked mortified.
“Not all the time,” I said. “It might be endearing if you weren’t a psychopath.”
“I think you’re mistaking my intentions,” Zack said, lifting the back of his hoodie and shoving the handgun into the waistband of his pants. I couldn’t help but hope he had forgotten to slide the safety on and it would accidentally go off and shoot him in the ass. Zack then held his hands up, palms to the sky, as an offering of apology. “I think you’re confused.”
If he was trying to talk me into dropping my guard it wasn’t going to work. “Does that work for you? That whole helpless schoolboy thing? Is that how you talk women into believing you’re a good guy so you can get them alone?”
Zack pushed his hair out of his eyes and frowned. “I’m just here to help you,” Zack said. “I heard a noise and came to help. I found the hoodie and gun in the middle of the street and just picked them up.”
Give me a break. “What about the knife?”
“That too.”
“So, you were running around in a thunderstorm without a coat. You hear a gunshot, run to help, find a hoodie, knife and gun in the middle of the street and decide to put that hoodie on, cover your face, and hide your identity? Sounds perfectly plausible.”
Zack frowned. “I don’t know why you won’t believe me.”
“Because you’re a liar,” I said. “You’re not even a good one.”
Zack’s face, so innocent seconds before, switched to maniacal. “I fooled you, didn’t I?”
“Not really,” I said. “You’ve been on our suspect list for days.”
“Our suspect list?” Zack raised his eyebrows. “Would that be you and your steroid-abusing boy toy? I mean, what do you see in that guy? Is it the muscles, because if it’s just the muscles, I’m going to be really disappointed. I thought you were a woman of substance.”
“I’m more shallow than a teacup,” I replied. “I’m fine with it.”
“And yet you feigned interest in me the night we met, listening to my stories and pretending that what I said mattered,” Zack said. “Why is that? Are you a liar like every other woman?”
“Because I knew there was a killer at speed dating and I was trying to find him,” I replied. “Since I was using an alias, I was trying to keep from saying too much about myself. The first rule of a good lie is to keep it simple, otherwise it will blow up in your face.”
“You must lie a lot,” Zack said, narrowing his eyes. “You must lie an awful lot.”
“Every day,” I admitted. I really had no idea what I was babbling. I needed to keep Zack engaged so he wouldn’t kill me, but Jake was running out of time.
“You lie every day?” Zack asked. “And you admit it?”
“Of course,” I said. “For example, every morning when I’m late for work I tell my boss that I overslept or that I had car trouble or that construction held me up. He pretends he believes me because arguing with me has all the appeal of beating one’s head against a brick wall. I know he knows I’m lying. I just figure saying that I’m inherently lazy and like cuddling with my hot boyfriend makes me look like an ass.”
“Everyone lies to their boss,” Zack scoffed.
“Probably,” I agreed. “That’s just my first lie of the day, though. By the time I get to my desk I’ve usually lied to at least three people in the building because I’m so self-absorbed. They always say it’s good to see me and I always say it right back, even though, the truth is, it’s never good to see them and I wish they would ignore me in the morning because I just don’t want to talk to them.
“Then I lie to my friend Erin when she tells me that she thinks she’s found ‘The One,’” I continued. “I don’t tell her that I’m fairly certain that guy she insists on seeing is stealing money from her wallet and is never going to amount to anything. You know why? Because she doesn’t want to hear it. She says she wants the truth but she really doesn’t want the truth. If I told her what I was really thinking, she’d never talk to me again.
“Then, later in the afternoon, I almost always lie to my friend, Marvin,” I plowed on. “He’s a good guy and he always makes me laugh, but he’s also a glass-half-empty guy. When he reads a story about cellphones causing brain tumors I tell him that won’t happen to him. When he reads a story about power lines causing impotence I tell him that’s only for guys who live in Detroit. When he tells me that he read a story that says that some seventy-five percent of men are premature ejaculators I always agree with him so I don’t hurt his feelings. I know that’s not true, but I like to make him feel better.
“Then, usually around lunch, I lie to my best friend, Carly,” I ranted. “She calls me to complain about her husband on a regular basis. She wants me to tell her that everything is going to be all right and that she’s right, Kyle does eat like a two-year-old trying to gum a steak. I don’t’ believe any of that, though. I believe that if Carly doesn’t calm down she’s going to chase Kyle away in ten years and then she’s really going to be bitter. I don’t tell her that, though, because that would make her freak out. So, instead, I nod and listen and pretend everything she’s telling me is exactly right.
“These are all lies I tell by one in the afternoon,” I said, “and usually before I’ve even gone out on a story. The lies I tell people to get what I want when I’m covering something are profound. This week, for example, I lied to a nurse and told her I was Jake’s secretary so she would give me Tad Ludington’s room number. Yeah, the Tad Ludington you ran off the road. I’m guessing you did that to impress me? Well, it didn’t work. If you want to impress me, get him booted out of office. Don’t try to run him off the road like some demented pansy.”
“I knew it,” Jake grumbled from behind me, but I ignored him.
I was on a roll now. Zack looked more bewildered than impressed.
“You want to talk about lies? I used to tell my mother that I was out convening with nature because the Blessed Virgin told me to when she caught me jumping in and out of my bedroom window when I was a teenager,” I said. “I was actually convening in the back seat of a car with Jake here. When my mom asked me whether I sent out thank-you notes for my Catholic confirmation I told her I had -- and I’m pretty sure that’s a mortal since in the eyes of the Catholics. When she asked what happened to the wine in the cupboard when I was fourteen I told her it evaporated, even though I drank it with a friend. We both had cotton-mouth from the pot we had just smoked.”
I paused to catch my breath.
“Do you ever shut up?” Zack exploded.
“Of course,” I replied.
“Is that another lie?”
“Yup. I just can’t stop.”
“Well, you’d better try,” Zack seethed. “I’
m not going to listen to this drivel for another second.”
“Really? Good, because now I have some questions for you.”
Some people talk because they’re nervous. I was talking because I had no idea what else to do.
“Is this your Scooby-Doo moment?” Zack asked, his lips curved into a smirk.
“More like Trixie Belden,” I countered.”
“Who?”
“Read a book,” I said. “She was the cooler Nancy Drew.” I heard the rasp in Jake’s breath and knew I had to hurry. “Anyway, I want to know why you did it.”
“You want to know why I did it.” Zack laughed. “Do you want to hear that I was abused as a child and my mother molested me in a closet? Will that make you feel better?”
“No,” I said. “That doesn’t even have a hint of truth in it.”
Zack looked surprised by my slap down of his explanation. “Excuse me?”
“You’re not a psychopath because your mom made you do it,” I said. “You’re one of those guys who’s unnaturally attached to your mom, like you want to have sex with her, what is that called?” I turned to Jake. He was barely hanging on.
“An Oedipus Complex,” Jake said, fighting to keep his eyes open.
“Right, an Oedipus Complex,” I continued. “So, because you want to have sex with your mom -- I bet all your victims look like her, don’t they? -- you chase these women down and stab them when they don’t return your obviously obnoxious feelings. In essence, you kill because you’re a loser. Am I right?”
“I do not want to have sex with my mom!” Zack exploded.
“That’s a lie, Zack,” I pushed him. “I can tell.”
“You, bitch!” He was moving toward me now, the knife twitching in his hand.
This was what I had been going for when I started in on his mother. “Zack?”
“What?” He pulled up short, his face contorted with rage.
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