“Paul came back,” Liz said, the words breathy in the dark. “To the farmhouse. He wanted the lockbox.”
There was no statute of limitations on murder. Liz could imagine why Paul had been unable to part with, rid himself of, or destroy this last link to the tragedy that had befallen his best friend. But it was a crucial piece of evidence, and with the coach just released from prison, Paul must’ve been afraid to leave it guarded by only his mother and his merciless father, while he disappeared with the children.
Mary studied her. “He came back. But not for the lockbox. And he didn’t get into the house. Matthew wouldn’t let him inside.”
Liz placed her hand on the ledge beneath the driver’s side window. “What happened?”
Mary’s lips compressed. “Matthew would’ve broken Paul’s fingers if I hadn’t held him back. They scuffled by the entry.” She looked away momentarily. “Fought really. At one point, Paul threw a punch. Or maybe he was just trying to put his hand out, to use his fist as a wedge so Matthew couldn’t close the door. That was the damage you noticed.”
Tiny bits of rubber rimming flaked off beneath Liz’s fingers.
“I stepped in between and led everyone up to the bunker. I took them some sandwiches later,” Mary added.
While Liz had been delirious with fear, imagining her children kidnapped, or worse.
“Even that horrid man,” Mary said. “I don’t care how handsome he is, or that the children hung on his every word. He’s rotten to the core, and more the worse for my son that he couldn’t see it.”
The Shoemaker. Liz felt a cold bath of air all around her.
Mary twisted the ignition key, and the truck started to rattle.
“So why did Paul go to the farm?” Liz asked, her voice rising. “If it wasn’t for the lockbox, did he want something else? Something he needs out there, wherever he is?”
Mary took one last look through the lowered window. “Oh, Elizabeth, how I hope you get the chance to give Paul what Matthew wouldn’t.”
Liz felt her brows draw down.
“And I hope you get the chance to hold your beautiful children again.”
The pressure in Liz’s face was crushing.
Mary reached out and laid her hand on Liz’s cheek. The touch was gentle, but Liz felt a strength she hadn’t noticed before in Mary’s fingers.
Her mother-in-law shifted into Drive and the truck lurched forward. Mary’s final words carried through the night. “Paul came back to the farm that night to ask his father for forgiveness.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
Liz couldn’t believe the moon was still absent, concealed by shredded clouds, not even stars visible to offer pinpricks of light.
She could see so much better now.
Matthew’s note. Allgood’s thrumming rage. Even Ally’s statement about Grandpa getting mad, which in retrospect hinted at Mary’s ability to drive things.
Motivations appeared as if they’d been written in ink.
Her husband had always displayed a tendency to play God, believing he could change the whole world. Paul had caused a fate worse than death for his best friend. And in response, he acted to make fate behave differently, using his own hands to free Michael Brady from the prison of his body.
Liz walked back inside, weighty with exhaustion, and wondering what to do with her newfound knowledge. She trudged upstairs and undressed. The distance across the bedroom felt like it encompassed hectares of space. Liz less lay down than fell on the bed, emitting a relieved breath as the mattress rose to greet her.
It was funny. Just before in the driveway, Liz had been noting her newly acquired ability to see, an antenna, hair-fine and acute. But maybe she wasn’t as alert as all that. Either the distraction of the night’s events, or the profundity of the dark outside, had kept her from realizing until now that she wasn’t alone in the room.
There was nowhere to go.
If she stood up or even extended her arms, she might hit the person whose breaths were rising and falling somewhere in this room, like the surface of the sea.
The crazy thought came to her that it could be Paul. Returned for the pillow, come back to keep her from sharing what she knew.
But of course it was the Shoemaker, who had been here illicitly at least twice before. The knowledge settled as heavy as sand in her limbs, keeping her pinned to the mattress, teasing her with the temptation of hiding her head beneath the pillow like any terrified child.
She had a sense memory of the Shoemaker’s finger on her cut, the small pain he had caused her. How much worse would he do once their costumes were off, no pretense made of civility or reason?
She wanted to say that she knew he was here, but it would be insanity to call out. She retained enough of a hold—on something—to understand that if the Shoemaker didn’t realize she was aware of his presence, then there might still be a chance.
If she stayed still, would he leave? Or wait?
The passivity of the plan assailed her. This wasn’t who she was, not anymore.
It occurred to her to call Tim. Or 911. But once she made that call, she wouldn’t have the marginal advantage of silence, invisibility.
A small sigh escaped her.
Or had that sound been made by someone else?
The blast hit her eyes, a stinging spray. It called to mind a forest in flames. Liz envisioned leaping sparks, and then she could see no more. Something had engulfed her whole head, fiery and searing, rendering her blind. She couldn’t make out even darkness. Liz sat up in the bed, twisting and turning and tearing at her eyes. Her screams of agony filled the room before a voice severed them.
“Shut your mouth if you want to live,” it said.
Liz’s fingers dug into the sheets. She felt the fabric fray beneath them. It didn’t matter if the Shoemaker left her alive or not. She wasn’t going to survive. Nobody could live through such pain.
“Please,” she whimpered. “Do something—”
She took her hands from her eyes, and the onslaught of air ignited another blowtorch of agony. Liz fell back, howling, before remembering the command to be quiet.
The silence that followed was worse than any inklings she’d gotten of the Shoemaker’s presence. Where was he in the room right now? What was he going to do to her? Through a mummy wrap of pain, Liz made out the sound of footsteps. They stopped inches from where she lay.
That cool, distant voice. “You are to stop.”
Liz opened her mouth, causing a level of pain that surpassed anything she’d experienced. The motion required to form words creased the skin around her eyes, and whatever they had been scorched with began working its way deeper into the orbs. Why weren’t tears providing any relief? Could she not cry? Panic seized her whole body at the thought of Michael Brady, who had lost his ability to cry along with everything else.
The intruder leaned over her and said, “If you don’t stop, I’ll do something that will make you long for the level of pain you’re feeling right now.”
His breath felt like a blade in her eyes. Liz fought to make sense of his words.
Stop what? Looking for them? Had she been close when she and Tim had gone out to Wicket Road?
The answer was right here in this room. A bolt of fury seized her and she tried to rise. “I know you,” she spat out. “Tell me where they are, Shoemaker!”
It took a while for the fact of her aloneness to descend, along with the understanding that if he had been there to hear, the Shoemaker might very well have killed her.
Pain had become a constant, livid presence.
She dropped back on the bed. Minutes passed, hours, years, before she was finally able to sit up.
Liz used her hands to register obstacles before her as she made her way to the bathroom by memory. There, she flooded her face with water, the relief of it indescribable upon her ruined eyes. After a long time, she was able to see well enough to find her phone. She dialed 911, still mostly blind, fingers figuring out the right keys to press. She
asked dispatch for an ambulance. And then she broke into a sob and also asked for Tim.
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
Liz didn’t register much of the ambulance ride, nor her arrival at the hospital, or treatment there. An IV was inserted, and her eyes were flushed with some blissfully cool, unctuous fluid. Her head was wrapped in soft gauze, the fluorescents in the room kept low. She heard murmurs that the initial application of liquid had prevented any real damage; she’d done the right thing back home. Then a door banged open and painful light spilled across the room. Liz tried to sit up, but gentle hands eased her back down. It didn’t matter whether she could see or not. She knew who had arrived, and she stretched out her arms.
The mattress bowed as Tim leaned over the bed and gathered her to him.
“Hello, Chief,” someone said, a smile in the voice.
Liz could imagine the looks being exchanged, but she didn’t care. Tim’s arms around her felt like ramparts; his uniform smelled of pine and detergent and faintly of closed-in spaces.
Voices faded out, speaking at a distance.
“We’ve given her something,” a woman said.
“It’ll take her through?” That was Tim.
“At least till three a.m.,” the woman responded. “She won’t be awake for much longer now.” Then she spoke to Liz. “Can you tell us where your pain is on a scale of one to ten?”
“I’m all right,” Liz said softly. “It’s better.”
“Rest,” an unfamiliar male voice ordered.
Liz sensed a retreat from the room.
Tim returned to hold her, taking care not to touch any part of her face. “Jesus, Liz. I’m so sorry I wasn’t—”
“You have … nothing to be sorry for.”
Tim let go of her and she could hear him pacing around the room, anger apparent in his strides. Then he was back, conducting heat between them. She found his face with her fingers and felt the rasp of his beard.
“Shh,” she said, trying to still his roving hands.
“The goddamned school bus attacker is on suicide watch at the jail. We don’t have enough men to monitor him and I’ve been taking shifts.”
The drugs were a tide inside her now, rising up to take her away. “S’okay,” she said, slurry. “You wouldn’t have been at my house. Anyway.”
“Landry read me your statement.”
There was a gauzy world before her, beckoning her to lie down. She was already lying down. “Tim,” she said woozily.
“I’m here.” He gripped her hand. “So our guy is escalating. You’re positive it was him.”
“I’m sure.” Words slipped from her mouth. “That voice. I could never forget that …” Another loose stream of words, slippery as lozenges. “He’s washing me. Watching me.”
“The Shoemaker,” Tim said.
It was the last thing she heard that night.
Liz couldn’t tell through the gauze, but she had the sense that it was the middle of the night, or later even. Dawn. She’d slept all the way through.
She was also pretty sure she was alone.
On the bedside table, which swung on an arm to hold trays or meds, her cell phone was thrumming and turning.
That was what had awakened her.
Tim, she realized. He’d had to go—she had a faint memory of a prisoner who needed guarding—and was probably calling to check on her. It occurred to her that Tim would think to call the charge nurse so as to avoid disturbing her, but by then she was patting around for her cell by feel, finding the Send button with her finger.
“Hello?”
The voice on the other end arrowed straight into her heart.
“Mom.”
It was Reid.
He spoke in a low, hushed tone that nearly broke Liz apart. Her son sounded so much older now. Not weeks older than when he had been taken. But months. Or years.
“Oh my God, Reid, thank God you called.”
“It’s hard to get a signal here,” he said, still low. “I had to walk and walk.”
“I’m so—glad you did,” Liz said. Then she wondered whether she should be. Could walking away get Reid in trouble? He’d had to steal this phone; Ally had told her that. “You’re all right? And Ally? She is?”
The drugs they’d given her were wearing off, but Liz was still having trouble piecing words together. She wondered whether Reid could tell anything was wrong.
Her son hadn’t answered.
“Reid!” Liz lowered her voice so as to keep from alerting the nurse, not to mention anyone who might be close to Reid right now. The Shoemaker. Liz swallowed back a cry. If the Shoemaker was there after just being at her house, then they were nearby. Liz simply had to get Reid to tell her where.
“Mom?”
“Reid, yes, are you and Ally okay?”
There was a silence so lasting that Liz’s heart clenched. She had been mentally practicing for this ever since Ally had called, praying for a second opportunity. This time she wasn’t going to take the same pains at deception as she had with Ally. They hadn’t helped, and anyway Reid was older, more aware. But now Liz feared she had squandered her chance. The call was lost—signal spotty wherever they were—and she would never be able to talk straight, or pry out anything that Reid might know.
“Mom, something really bad happened.”
Relief crushed her before the meaning of his words hit.
“Oh baby, oh Reid, what do you mean? Are you—you’re not hurt, are you?”
The gauze wrappings felt like constrictors around her eyes. A memory of the pain she’d experienced—its lethal, searing hold—returned and Liz bit down on a scream, imagining Reid or Ally feeling anything like that.
“Mrs. Daniels?” A nurse opened the door a crack, peering into the room.
Liz waved her wildly away.
The nurse frowned. “You can’t have cell phones on in—”
“I have to take this call,” Liz hissed. “Get out of here—or I’ll call the police.”
Maybe it was seeing her with Tim last night. She heard the nurse retreat from the room.
Her son was still speaking in that ageless tone. “I’m okay. So’s Ally. But this lady—this lady got hurt pretty bad. Mommy, I think she got all the way hurt.”
It was one of Reid’s euphemisms, a term they’d come up with to cope with his fear of death. And in the rescinding of that strange, unnaturally mature voice, Liz found her son again, and a sob rolled up.
“Reid, is anyone else with you now? Daddy? Or … another man?”
“No,” her son said. “I’m all alone.”
Such emptiness, so much sorrow in her boy’s voice. Liz’s chest cracked; she felt something inside her let go. Behind the gauze, her vision darkened further, and she lay back on the bed.
“Reid,” she whispered. “I’m going to take care of this, do you hear me? Reid? Only I have to know where you are. Where are you, Reid? Can you tell me?”
“In the woods somewhere.” A pause. “There’s a falling-down house. And a barn.”
She clutched at the details, although she couldn’t see how they helped her.
“So it’s a farm?” she asked. “How did you get there? Did you drive?”
“We walked.”
Faint hope lit. They were getting somewhere, at least eliminating options.
“Walked. Okay. From where? From our house? Were you on a kind of twisty road?”
“I don’t know, Mom! I don’t think so. I’ve never seen this place before. I’ve never seen any of these places!”
Frustration, desperation hard on the heels of the hope. “Okay, Reid, calm down. Can you tell me anything at all? That you might remember seeing?”
“Just a lot of trees! Tons and tons of them. There wasn’t even a path, just brush and stuff. We had to bushwhack. Only, wait, first there were some gravestones.”
Her son spoke the word with ease. As frantic as she felt, Liz’s heart lifted at Reid’s obvious growth, the erosion of his childhood phobia despite the indes
cribable circumstances that had befallen him. And then her heart lifted even higher, soaring as if it might leave her body, because Reid had told her where they were.
Someone else spoke then. The flat, deceptively mild tone belonged to the Shoemaker. “Reid. Give me that,” he said.
Coldness clasped Liz. The phone shook in her suddenly quaking hand.
“Give you what?” Reid said.
It took Liz a moment to parse what must have happened. Reid had made the phone disappear without ending the call.
The Shoemaker spoke again, sliding Reid’s confidence out from under him, displaying his weakness like a specimen in a dish. “You want to be the doer, don’t you, Reid? The fixer, the taker. Those fingers of yours. It’s too bad you’re so scared. Fear will keep you from being all you’re meant to be.” A pause. “Now show me where you put that phone. Reid. Show me where you put it.”
“No!” Reid’s voice rose, high and frightened. “Go away! Get away from me!”
“I don’t think so,” the Shoemaker said. “You see, I knew where you had the phone all along.”
And the connection was cut.
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
Terror encased Liz like cement.
She had to get there. And get the children out.
At least now she knew where to go.
Liz had been right when she’d made the connection to Michael Brady; she had simply chosen the wrong woods. Paul and the children weren’t in the ones off Wicket Road, where the accident had taken place. Instead, they were in the impenetrable forest that barricaded Michael Brady’s memorial site.
Gravestones, Reid had said with casual aplomb, having no idea what he was giving her.
Liz should’ve figured it out back when Ally had called. Hadn’t her daughter said that Reid wasn’t scared of dead people anymore? A cemetery was one thing that could’ve led Ally to that conclusion.
She reached up, and despite her crest of panic, unwrapped the bindings with care. She couldn’t do anything if she were crazed with pain, or worse, drugged again.
Even the muted light bit her eyes as she raised gluey lids. She shut them instantly, then tried again, keeping them open for a longer spell this time, until convinced that she could see well enough to look down at her phone.
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