He knew all along that he’d have her right where he wanted her when the time came.
Knew her better than she knew herself.
So distracted was she by his other maneuvering that she didn’t think to question the letter from the cruise line. She accepted it as authentic.
The night she called him, directly, to confirm, it was all he could do not to burst out laughing right then and there on the telephone.
He controlled himself then.
And so he will now, until it’s over, though laughter is already beginning to bubble inside him as he stands face to face with her at last, seeing the look of sheer dread and shock on her beautiful face.
He moves toward her.
“What’s the matter, Lucinda? Didn’t you know that I always get the last laugh?”
“Do you want some more coffee?” Erma asks Neal, sitting beside him on the couch in their living room.
“No, thanks.” He checks his cell phone for the thousandth time, as if he could possibly have missed a call. “If I have any more coffee, I think I’ll be sick.”
“Do you want to try to get some sleep?”
Neal shakes his head. “I don’t think I can.”
Erma rests a hand on his shoulder. “You don’t know that Lucinda isn’t out there somewhere, waiting it out. It would be just like her to take matters into her own hands.”
“I wish I could buy that she’d just take off without telling us.”
“You don’t?”
Neal shrugs.
Something he heard Lucinda say a while back has been echoing through his thoughts for days now, since she vanished.
“A secret isn’t a secret unless you’re the only one who knows.”
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”
About to make a run for the door behind her, Lucinda sees the gun in his hand and goes absolutely still.
“Move a muscle, and I’ll shoot you dead.”
“No, you won’t.”
“What?” His cold, dead eyes gleam with interest. “You don’t believe you’re about to die? Why do you think I’m here, then? To share the view?”
He laughs.
Her blood runs cold. She knows that sound. She’s heard it for months now, echoing through her thoughts, through her nightmares.
Keep him talking.
“You’re not going to shoot me. That’s not what you do, Eugene.”
The laughter subsides. “So we’re on a first name basis, are we?”
“Absolutely. Call me Lucinda. Unless you’d prefer Scarlet.”
The black eyes narrow.
“You don’t want to use a gun,” she tells him, noting the sliver of sun just barely visible above the water behind him. “That wouldn’t be any fun. You want to stab me. I know you have a knife.”
“You think you know everything. Guess what? You don’t.”
And neither do you.
Keeping her voice, her gaze, her hand steady, she eggs him on. “Oh, I think I do. I know things about you that nobody else on earth knows.”
“Like what?”
“I know that you’re the Night Watchman. I know that you watched your father die at your feet when you were a child. I know that you killed your own mother. And Ricky Parker. And Andrew Stockman.”
Only at the last name does he raise an eyebrow.
It was a guess on her part, but clearly a good one.
“He died during the uprising. Dozens of inmates did. You don’t know anything.”
“Really? I think you seized the opportunity to kill him yourself and make it look that way.”
It’s a hunch she’s had ever since Cam told her about Stockman. Judging by Eugene’s expression, she’s on the right track.
“Why would I kill that nobody?” he asks in disdain.
This is your chance to learn the truth for Cam.
But when this is over, will you even be alive to tell her?
Over his shoulder, she sees the sun slipping dangerously close to the horizon.
Keep him talking.
“Maybe you killed him because you felt threatened by him, Eugene. He was bigger and stronger and smarter than you.”
“That’s a joke! He was a peon. He bragged about all those girls he’d killed, every detail, went on and on about them all day, all night, talking like he was so bold.”
“He was bold. Brave, too. Lucky. Not like you. He got away with it.”
“That shows how smart you are,” he scoffs. “You know why he went after them? Because they wouldn’t give someone like him the time of day. So you know what he did? He made them all look like suicides. Didn’t even have the guts to own it.”
“Not like you.”
“Damn right.”
The last rays of the sun have all but disappeared.
“I bet you told him how to do things the right way.”
“Hell, yes, I told him.”
And then you realized he knew too much.
So you killed him.
Suddenly, Fox follows her gaze, over his shoulder.
Sunset.
“It’s time, Lucinda.”
He moves toward her.
She forces herself to stand her ground, seeing the knife that’s replaced the gun in his hand—and the lipstick.
“It’s time for you to die.”
Back in Philadelphia, Vic learned that being FBI doesn’t mean you’re granted immediate access to the ship’s manifest.
By the time he’d landed in Alaska, Annabelle had confirmed that Lucinda is, indeed, a passenger on the Norwegian Star.
“What about Eugene Fox?”
“That’s anyone’s guess,” Annabelle replied. “Who knows what name he’s traveling under?”
Even now that Vic is here on the ship, having gained the necessary clearance to board in Skagway before they set sail an hour ago, there’s a hell of a lot of red tape involved in getting to Lucinda. He had expected to reach her well before sunset.
It didn’t happen.
As he races up the wide staircase toward Deck 11 with the head of security by his side, Vic looks at his watch.
It’s 10:24.
Lucinda remains motionless until the last possible second.
Then she makes her move, lunging right toward him, not away.
Caught off guard, he instinctively raises the knife.
So many times, in her visions of the women murdered by the Night Watchman, Lucinda’s ears have been assaulted by the dull, sickening sound of a blade thudding into human flesh.
Now she hears it for real; feels the blood spatter over her; sees her hands red with blood.
It’s too late.
“Where is it? Where’s her cabin?” Vic demands, taking the last flight two steps at a time.
“That way,” the security guard pants. “To the left.”
Vic races toward it, praying that it’s not too late.
Eugene Fox staggers back, looking bewildered. Glancing down, he sees the steak knife’s blade protruding from his chest.
He looks up at Lucinda, raises the gun, aims it at her, pulls the trigger.
Nothing happens.
“Maybe I don’t know everything,” Lucinda tells him. “But I knew there was no way you could have gotten a real gun on board this ship. And like I said, I know that isn’t how you operate.”
A sound comes out of him.
For a moment, she thinks it’s a sob or a cry of pain.
Then she sees the look on his face and realizes that he’s laughing—even as he collapses on the floor of her cabin.
The sound seems to chase her as she dashes out into the hall, looking for help.
Incredibly, help appears.
Lucinda stops short in disbelief. “Vic?”
“Lucinda, are you hurt?”
She follows his gaze, looks at her hands. “No, this is his—he came at me, and I stabbed him. He’s in my room.”
Vic doesn’t ask who she’s talking about.
“All right, stay here. You, too,” he instr
ucts the security guard who’s caught up with him.
Vic moves stealthily past her and stands with his back against the wall, gun poised, beside the open doorway.
After a few moments, he peers around the corner into the room.
He takes in the scene for a moment, then crosses the threshold.
Heart pounding, Lucinda waits outside her room with the guard, expecting Eugene Fox to emerge bleeding from his chest wound, like something out of a horror movie.
A minute passes.
Another.
Just when she can no longer take it, Vic calls her name, tells her to come in.
Fox must be dead.
Thank God.
Lucinda walks into the room to see Vic standing just inside the door, facing the open balcony doors.
“He’s gone.”
“What? He can’t be gone!” Lucinda looks around wildly. “He was right—”
She sees the bloody steak knife, lying on the floor where she left him.
Sees the trail of blood from there to the balcony.
Sees, beyond the drapes billowing in the sea breeze, against the backdrop of the twilight sky, the railing smeared with red.
Epilogue
Vic can hear Kitty vacuuming the living room as he sits down at his desk.
“Will the noise bother you?” she asked when he announced he was going to go work on the book.
“The only thing that could bother me right now,” he told her, “would be my being anywhere other than here with you.”
She smiled. “It’s good to have you home.”
“It’s good to be home.”
He boots up the computer and opens the document he left behind weeks ago, when he went off to try to alter the ending in real life.
Now, facing the final chapter again, he thinks about Eugene Fox, the man who seemed to fall off the face of the earth, only to resurface and begin killing again.
What if…?
No.
Still…
“You don’t really believe the Night Watchman survived…do you?” he asked Lucinda on the phone last night.
“No,” she said. “I don’t.”
“Because you’re a psychic?”
“Because I can’t let myself believe he’s out there somewhere,” she said firmly. “I refuse to go through life always looking over my shoulder. It’s time to move on.”
Yes, it is.
Scrolling to the last chapter, Vic thinks of the ending he’d wanted to write. The one in which he, Vic Shattuck, brought the Night Watchman to justice at last.
He thought it would have made a great final scene for the movie.
His agent thinks that what happened in real life will make a better one.
“This way, it’s open-ended. The guy is stabbed in the chest, staggers to the railing, and falls overboard, lost at sea. Or is he?” she added ominously.
“Oh, come on. You don’t really think anyone’s going to believe the Night Watchman survived the fall into the ocean, do you?”
“His body still hasn’t been found.”
“That doesn’t mean he’s still alive out there somewhere.”
“No. But it leaves one helluva good opening for a sequel.”
“Well, you’ll have to find someone else to write it,” Vic told her. “Because I’m going to be busy.”
“Doing what?”
He grinned. “A whole lot of nothing.”
“You’ve been so quiet tonight,” Randy tells Lucinda as they walk the beach hand in hand beneath the light of a waning moon. “Don’t tell me you’ve lost your voice again.”
Lucinda smiles. “Not this time.”
“I guess you’ve just said all there is to say, then.”
“I guess so.” She squeezes his hand. “Except one thing.”
“Yeah? What’s that?”
“Remember a few weeks ago, when I was in Seattle and we were on the phone and you told me something you’d been waiting to say for a long time—but you didn’t give me a chance to respond?”
“I remember.”
“Can I respond now?”
“That would be good. That would be really good.”
They stop walking. She looks up at him.
“I love you, Randy. I’ve always loved you. I just didn’t know it, or maybe I just didn’t know how to say it, or maybe the time wasn’t right—it was too late, or too soon…”
“Not anymore.”
“No, not anymore.”
He kisses her. “Stay with me, Lucinda.”
He doesn’t say tonight.
He doesn’t mean tonight.
She knows that.
Knows, too, that there are no guarantees.
“I’ll stay,” she says softly, and the tide comes in, washing over their bare feet as they head back.
That night, climbing into bed beside Randy, she turns off the bedside lamp.
“You’re not afraid of the dark anymore?” he asks, surprised.
“I’m not afraid of anything anymore.”
Lucinda falls asleep in Randy’s arms, dreaming again about the wooden jigsaw puzzle.
Only this time, all the pieces are there.
As she fits the last piece into place, she sees the complete picture at last.
It’s Lucinda herself, smiling, as behind her, the sun rises over the Atlantic.
ZEBRA BOOKS are published by
Kensington Publishing Corp.
119 West 40th Street
New York, NY 10018
Copyright © 2009 by Wendy Corsi Staub
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.
Zebra and the Z logo Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.
ISBN: 1-4201-1128-0
Dead Before Dark Page 42
