You killed all those women just to see if I’d recognize your face? She willed herself not to cry out in horror, to moan with repulsion that this man, this man who claimed to be her flesh and blood, could be capable of such twisted reasoning, of such terrible acts.
“Pretty clever, don’t you think? I really thought you’d catch on, Kendra,” he said with the same enthusiasm as some others might discuss the plot of the latest mystery novel. “I thought you’d figure it out. Frankly, I was disappointed that you never did. I admit the disguises lately would have made it difficult, but your drawings, right from the start, were too good and I was afraid someone would recognize me, maybe I’d get caught before you caught on.” He sighed again. “I was really disappointed when you didn’t recognize me.”
“How could I have recognized you? I haven’t seen you in ten years, and then, you were a child! Why would I have even thought . . .” Her mind whirled at the sheer insanity of it all. “You were dead. Everyone believed you were dead.”
“I thought blood would know blood.” He hissed, and she jumped at his vehemence.
He stubbed out his cigarette and immediately lit another.
“Well, I’m back now, Kendra, and I’ll stay as long as I damn well please.”
Kendra sat stock-still, watching the face of the man fill with quiet rage as he spoke. There was nothing about him that was familiar to Kendra. Not the rage, not the evil, not the cold eyes, not the man who could conceive of murdering good and innocent women and feel nothing.
Her parents had both been gentle and kind souls, and had filled their home with love and laughter. How could such a pair have spawned such a monster?
“Yes,” she said, “you’re back now.”
“Home.” He dared her to challenge him.
“Yes.” She stood on weak legs and turned back to the stove, forcing a calm she didn’t feel, wondering how she was going to escape from here. “Home.”
“I thought you’d see it my way,” he said smugly. “Now, what’s happening with my pancakes?”
“Just a few minutes.” She turned on the burner under the frying pan to heat it, adding milk sloppily to the mix she’d measured out in the bowl, her mind frozen.
Her stomach lurched as the smell of the pancake batter reached her nostrils.
“Why those women?” she asked sadly, her voice quivering. “Why women who’d leave behind so much? Women who gave so much . . . who loved so much.”
“I don’t feel like talking about them now. Right now, I want my pancakes and I want my coffee,” he said sullenly, pointing out, “You forgot my coffee.”
I’ve been a bit distracted, her whirling mind wanted to scream. But she held on to her composure as she filled the pot with water and measured coffee into the pot, wondering how to gain advantage long enough to get away. To get to her car.
Her purse, car keys inside, were in the front hallway. What excuse could she make to get it?
Or maybe a weapon . . . what could she use as a weapon? There were knives, yes, in the drawer, but could he not turn a knife on her? She was strong and in good shape, but he appeared to be as well, and had the advantage of height and weight. He could overpower her easily.
He pointed to the frying pan. “The pan is starting to smoke.”
She poured batter into the pan without measuring.
“How did you meet Father Tim?” he asked. A normal question, the kind a sibling would ask after a long separation. As if there had been no talk of dead women or abused children.
Kendra’s stomach turned again. This can’t be happening. It can’t be happening.
“Through Selena.”
Focusing her attention on the lone pancake in the frying pan, watching the bubbles rise in the batter, she thought back on days long ago when she stood in front of the stove at the house in Princeton, listening to Ian’s chatter about school and that day’s soccer or baseball practice. Ian had loved to play soccer.
“Where did you live?” she asked, the thought occurring to her. There’d been so much so fast, she’d hardly had time to think.
“On the streets.”
“Where?”
“San Francisco, mostly. That summer, me and Zach were watching TV one night and there was a documentary about these runaways who lived together out there, like a family. It looked so cool, the way they helped each other, like a real family.”
“You had a real family.” She turned to him with a frown. “Why wasn’t that good enough?”
“We talked about that, Kenny,” he said calmly. “I don’t want to talk about that again.”
The first real stirrings of anger began to push aside the fear, ever so slightly, within her.
“You put us—her and me—through hell.” She turned on him with a growl. “She never stopped weeping for you. There wasn’t a day that passed that she didn’t mourn for you. Don’t tell me you don’t want to talk about it.”
His reaction was swift. In less than a blink, he had her by her wrists.
“You’re breaking my heart,” he snarled. “Don’t make me break your arms.”
They locked eyes, and he held her still, for another moment. The fury in his eyes was terrifying. Whatever demon drove him was very close to the surface.
“I don’t want to hurt you, Kenny.” He dropped her hands. “Do not make me hurt you.”
He backed up, slowly, his breath coming in ragged spurts as he visibly struggled to regain his composure.
“Turn that over,” he said, pointing to the pancake. “It’s going to burn. You know I don’t like burned pancakes.”
He sat down again, lit another cigarette. For a time, the only sound was the ticking of the clock on the wall and the soft rustle of the evening breeze through the large maple tree outside. She turned the pancake onto a plate and offered it to him without speaking.
He pushed the plate back to her, saying, “Keep it warm while you make more. I want a whole stack. And get yourself a plate. I want you to eat with me.”
“I’m not hungry.” The thought of putting food into her mouth made her blanch. How could anyone eat in the presence of such a monster?
“I said, I want you to eat with me.”
She poured more batter into the pan and got out a second plate, wondering how late Adam’s plane would be. What were the chances he’d arrive soon?
“There. That’s better.” He relaxed a bit, resting his arms on the table. “And what’s doing with my coffee? Boy, some hostess you are.” He chuckled as if sharing a joke.
Kendra opened the cupboard and took out a mug.
“You’ll have some, too.”
She took down a second mug and placed it next to the first on the counter.
“I take sugar, no cream.”
She reached for the sugar bowl and placed it on the table.
“Aw, you’re mad at me now, aren’t you?” His slender fingers toyed with the pack of matches. “I didn’t mean to make you mad, Kenny. Don’t you have things you don’t want to talk about sometimes?”
Her eyes narrowed.
“I don’t know who you are, I swear I don’t,” she told him.
“She has eyes, but does not see,” he mused.
“Who are you?” she demanded.
“I’ll have that coffee now.” His smile faded and his mouth straightened into a hard line. “And so will you.”
She grabbed a mug in each hand. The heat bled through the sides of the mugs into her fingers, and at that second, she knew she might not get a better chance. Reacting before she’d fully thought it through, with a quick twist of her wrists, she tossed the scalding coffee into his eyes.
His scream was angry, surprised, confused. And lethal.
“You bitch!” he roared, coming at her blindly.
No time to search for car keys, she shoved past him and raced down the back steps for the barn and the canoe that rested against the outer wall. As quickly as she could, she dragged the canoe into the water and pushed off, half running alongside the vessel
to get as far from the house as possible. Paddling furiously, Kendra made her way toward the lake, her heart pounding painfully in her chest, sobs ripping from her throat. Once she made it to the other side, she could reach the emergency phone in the parking lot where the day-trippers left their cars while they explored the Pines.
But first she would have to make it through the narrow waterways in the dark. Though well acquainted with the creeks, Kendra had never navigated these passages at night. She paddled swiftly, and several times the paddle threatened to slip from her shaking hands. She could not slow down, but she could, she told herself, calm down. She should have paid more attention when she first started out, but the panic was so fresh and the fear so great that she’d paddled mindlessly, escape her only goal. Now that that had been accomplished, she needed to be rational, calculated, if she was to find her way in the dark.
The canoe glided through the shallow channels, but to what destination she was no longer certain. She rested the paddle across the canoe and drifted just slightly, enough to know she was headed downstream. But which stream? And in which direction?
The cedar grew thick here, the trees standing tall right down to the water’s edge. Gnarled roots reached like twisted fingers into the stream from either side, and the treetops met thirty feet over her head in a dense web of branches. She could be in one of two or three places. Without light, it simply wasn’t possible to tell. She began to paddle again, thinking that perhaps this might not have been such a great idea after all. But what options had she had? Her car keys were in the foyer, which would have required her to pass the chair the man—she could not bring herself to think of him as Ian—was sitting in. Without access to a weapon that could not be turned against her, the hot liquid had seemed her only choice. But she knew that scalding his face could only be counted on to disable him for the briefest of time, time that had allowed her to escape from the house and from the man.
“Not many choices,” she muttered softly as she searched in the dark for something that appeared familiar.
She paddled straight ahead until she emerged from the overhead canopy. Clouds that had drifted past the moon now eased aside, and the faintest bit of moonlight spread through the trees, here where the tall cedars were replaced by pigmy and pitch pines and a lone catalpa tree, last year’s long pods still hanging here and there from its branches. Kendra relaxed. She knew the tree—some of the older locals used to call it Webb’s Pub, for the still buried nearby where years ago a man named Jonathan Webb made moonshine out of wild blueberries. It wasn’t where she wanted to be by over a mile, but at least she knew where she was now. Through the night she heard the familiar cry of the whippoorwills, and the sound soothed her.
The channel at this point being too narrow and the current being strong, Kendra got out of the canoe and manually turned it around. She’d have to backtrack half a mile or so, then bear to the left to get to the lake. But it was okay now. She let out a deep breath that she’d been holding forever, but could not allow herself to relax. He could be anywhere, she reminded herself. Surely he would have attempted to follow her. How successful he’d be at finding her would depend on how well he’d come to know these waterways.
A chill ran up her spine and she hunched down just a bit, and paddled just a little faster. The short scraggly trees cast dense shadows across the water, and she thought of a movie she’d seen when she was younger, where the trees moved. Several times she thought she saw movement beyond the pines that grew along the water’s edge.
“Shit, I am spooking myself,” she said aloud.
She paddled on to the place where a pin oak, struck by lightning the summer before, had cracked in half, and she let out a sigh of relief. The lake was three-quarters of a mile to the left. She could make it. She would make it.
As she made her way into the turn, her nose caught a whiff of something.
“Smoke,” she whispered, looking into the night on every side to see where the smoke was coming from, but as yet there was no sign of flames.
Fires were so common here, but there’d been no storm tonight to set one off. There could be campers, but they were unusual in the middle of the week, this time of the year. She sat stock-still, her eyes combing the darkness for light where there should be no light, and movement where all should be still. There was nothing.
She heard him only a split second before he leapt at her from the right, from the bank of the stream and the stand of thick laurel where he’d waited while she puzzled over the scent of smoke.
“You bitch,” he cursed as the canoe tipped from side to side. “You think I’d let you get away with that?”
He’d landed slightly behind her, and straddled the side of the canoe. Kendra tried to turn quickly to swing at him with the paddle, but he grabbed hold of it and wrestled with her a long minute for its control. She slid from the canoe as it was forced on its side and slapped her head as she fell. Dazed, she sought purchase on the sandy bottom of the stream. She felt his hands, strong and angry, grab the back of her head and force it underwater. Turning her head slightly, she bit into the only part of him she could reach, the soft skin at his ankle.
Howling, he let go of her, and she rose from beneath the surface long enough to gasp a breath before being dunked back under again. She fought and sputtered, her flailing arms trying to reach him, but her struggle only served to deplete her strength.
She felt as if they’d been fighting forever, but eventually her will begin to wane, her energy flowing from her like blood from a deep wound. Inside her head she heard a horrific buzz, and saw great bursts of pearlescent light. The fight forgotten, she turned to it, was drawn into it, her hands floating weightlessly in the tea-colored water.
Chapter
Twenty-two
It was dark and still and the air smelled of rotting wood. Coughing and tossing up water, Kendra lay facedown on the ground, desperate to take that first breath. Her back hunched as her lungs spasmed. She couldn’t see five inches from her face. She hadn’t been really certain whether she was waking in this world or the next until something crawled across her arm and she flinched.
The night, deep and quiet, pressed around her and she shivered, cold and alone, in an unknown place. The first fingers of fear began to wrap around her as pain, raw and silent, rippled across the back of her head. Brain fuzzy and limbs numb, she struggled to focus, to orient herself to time and location, to remember where she had been before the world had crashed down upon her.
Hadn’t she been on her way to another place, a place of light?
Whatever had brought her back, into the dark, she was not, at that moment, particularly happy about it.
“Well, I’d say we were just about even now,” a voice said, and she opened her eyes, trying to focus.
Not so alone, after all.
“Why didn’t you kill me?”
“Because I’m not done with you yet.”
He sat six feet away from her, his back leaning against the side of the burned-out shell of a barn that had been lost to fire sixty years ago.
“McMillan’s,” she rasped, her throat sore and raw, though she could not remember quite why. That she had recognized the locale, however, gave her a tinge of satisfaction.
“What?”
“McMillan’s barn.”
“Oh, right, McMillan’s barn,” he said sarcastically. “As if it matters.”
“What do you want from me?” She shivered in the cool air of dawn. Her clothes and hair, she realized, were wet and damp, her jeans clinging to her legs like soggy plastic wrap.
“Nothing, not anymore. All that talk about how much you care about family, it was just bullshit. The first chance you got, you tried to hurt me.” His voice was indignant. “You did hurt me. My eyes still burn. My face is burned. That wasn’t nice, Kendra.” He got down on one knee and growled into her face. “That . . . was . . . not . . . nice.”
She turned her head, and with his hand, he turned it back again.
“Do no
t look away from me when I am speaking to you.”
She looked up and blinked, still trying to focus. There were two of him, she was pretty sure. Both had angry red blotches where the coffee had scalded his skin.
Good. She hoped it hurt like hell.
She blinked again, and there was only one.
She tried to sit up a little more, but the pain shot through her head and she leaned back upon the ground again.
“Have a little headache, do we?” he asked.
“I’m cold,” she said, ignoring the question.
“Tough. This little outing was your idea.”
“Where’s the smoke coming from?” she asked weakly.
“It’s your house, stupid.” He laughed and for a moment, pleasure lit up his eyes. “You left the burner on under the frying pan. Careless of you.”
“Oh, my God . . .” She tried to sit up and he shoved her back with one hand. “We’ve got to—”
“No, we don’t. Besides, it’s only what you deserve,” he hissed at her. “It’s what you get for hurting me. I wasn’t going to hurt you, Kendra. I only wanted what was mine.”
“What do you mean, what was yours?”
“You owed it to me, all of you did.”
“What are you talking about?” Her teeth were beginning to chatter as the cold continued to seep through her wet clothes and spread like thin ribbons throughout her body.
“Half of everything should be mine.”
“You mean Dad’s estate?” Her cheeks too numb to smile, she tried unsuccessfully to force a laugh. “Well, that might take some doing. Mom had you declared dead after seven years.”
“It figures, doesn’t it? Bitch.” He stood up and started to pace, his hands moving restlessly. “Well, then, I’ll just have to have myself declared alive again.”
Until Dark Page 27
