Vonnie didn’t believe that, of course. She was just trying to reach Taylor on a deep, subconscious level, and hoped mentioning her lost twin would do it. But it didn’t.
Her concern turning into real fear, Vonnie’s efforts grew more desperate. She grabbed both of Taylor’s arms and tried to pull her up. It was like pulling a bag of cement. Dead weight. She yelled in Taylor’s ear. She pinched the fleshy spot between her toes, careful not to brush off any of the stupid “earth”, which obviously wasn’t doing its damn job.
She might as well have been trying to awaken a coma patient. Taylor was as out of it as Sleeping Beauty—beautiful yes, but a cursed princess who breathed but never moved.
“Oh, my God, what are we gonna do?” she groaned.
Vonnie hadn’t been this scared since they’d escaped from that psycho’s basement a year and a half ago. She’d also never been as terrified of losing someone she loved, someone who was as close to a sister as she would ever have.
“Please, Tay, please come back,” she whispered again and again as time ticked by.
She sat on the bed for twenty minutes. Taylor’s body never moved, not when Vonnie tickled under her nose with a feather from the pillow, not when Vonnie screamed in her face.
“Enough,” she finally mumbled, knowing she was in over her head. She needed help.
Calling 911 was her first thought, but if Taylor were taken away by ambulance, the hospital would call her parents. The Kirbys would be hysterical with fear.
There was one other option she could try before reaching that last resort.
Scrambling over the side, she hopped to the floor. Taylor had left her phone on her desk, and she raced over and grabbed it. Hoping her friend had added the psychiatrist’s name to her contacts list, she scrolled down, searching for Isaac’s sister, Kate Lincoln.
“Yes!” Jabbing the call button, Vonnie whispered, “Please pick up. Please pick up.”
Her wish wasn’t granted. Instead, after five rings, a woman’s smooth voice apologized for not answering and asked if she would like to leave a message.
“This is Vonnie Jackson. Taylor’s friend. Taylor Kirby, I mean. We met a couple of weeks ago?” Babbling. Get it together. “I need your help. Taylor’s trying to find your brother, and she did something crazy. I can’t wake her up. Please, please call me when you get this!”
By the time she disconnected, Vonnie was in tears. Big fat droplets rolled down her face and fell to the floor. She felt more helpless than she had that last night in Mark Young’s dungeon, when Taylor had gone for help, leaving Vonnie alone to fight with their captor.
Striding back to the bed, she climbed up and straddled Taylor’s body. She grabbed her shoulders and shook hard. “You wake up now, damn it! Do you hear me, Taylor Kirby?” She sobbed. “You can’t bail on me, now. Not when you made me love you like you’re my twin.”
Beneath her hands, she felt the faintest movement, as though Taylor’s shoulders had shrugged. She leapt up and to the side, staring into Tay’s face.
The brow twitched. The head moved on the pillow. The lashes began to flutter.
She grabbed a still-limp hand and squeezed tight. “Come on, girl, wake up now.”
The hand squeezed back. The grip was light and weak, but it was deliberate. Taylor was telling her she was coming back, that she would be all right.
“Oh, thank you lord Jesus!” Vonnie bent and kissed her forehead, brushing Taylor’s dark hair back. Seeing the withering daisy-chain crown, she plucked it off and tossed it to the floor. She never wanted to lay eyes any of the soul-walking accoutrements again as long as she lived.
Taylor moaned and moved restlessly.
“Come on, Tay. You get back here now so I can tell you off for scaring me so bad.”
Taylor rustled again, and color returned to her cheeks. Her skin felt warmer to the touch. Her lips parted, and she drew a deep, slow breath, and then another one. Finally—finally—her lashes fluttered again, and she opened her eyes.
“I’m going to murder you,” Vonnie said, even as she burst into big, ugly sobs.
“Shh…shh.”
“Don’t you shh me. You scared me to death. You’ve been ‘gone’ for almost an hour.” Vonnie picked up the bell and threw it across the room. “This thing does not work.”
Taylor smiled up at her, a gentle, tender look on her face, which was very unlike her. Vonnie suspected she was still coming out of whatever dream state she had been in.
“Hi, Vonnie. It’s so good to see you.”
Vonnie brushed tears from her face. “Hi yourself, you butthead.”
Soft laughter followed. Taylor normally would have snapped back a sassy retort, but she was still in a strange mood. Slowly sitting up, she lifted her hands and stared at her own fingers. She turned them, studying front and back, then curled and straightened them. It was as if she couldn’t remember how they worked.
“Are you okay?”
Not responding, Taylor began to look around the room. She stared at the closet, at the movie posters above her dresser, and the classical art ones over Vonnie’s. A smile pulled at her mouth when she saw the framed picture of her little sisters, and she bit her lip and sniffed when she saw the one of her parents.
“I’m back. I’m really back,” she whispered. “It worked.”
Vonnie swallowed, not sure she wanted her friend to continue. She could walk out of the room right now and make herself believe forever that Taylor had simply gone into a deep hypnosis, a dream state, and nothing else had happened. She hadn’t changed. How could someone change from one hour of deep sleep?
She couldn’t make herself leave, though. Because something had happened. Something was still happening. Taylor had climbed up onto that bed the same bossy, sassy girl she’d always been. She’d awakened…different.
Taylor breathed deeply again, several times. Closing her eyes, she whispered, “Gardenias. My favorite.”
“Tulips are your favorite,” Vonnie said, edging away a little. “You didn’t get them today because you said you needed a stronger scent.”
Ignoring her, Taylor went on. “Do you have any Strawberry ice cream? I’ve missed ice cream so much. And pizza!”
They had pizza just about every other night of the week. The dining hall downstairs served tons of flavors of ice cream. Rocky Road was Taylor’s favorite. Not Strawberry.
She scooted a little farther, until her back hit the side rail of the bunk. “Are you okay?”
“I’ve never been better.” Taylor smiled and reached out to touch Vonnie’s cheek. “You look beautiful and happy. I’m so glad you’re all right.”
Completely freaked out by the touch, the tone, and the words, Vonnie launched herself over the rail. She landed on one foot and one knee, which cracked sharply.
“Oh, no, are you hurt?” Taylor peered down at her, like a kid looking over a balcony.
“What is wrong with you?” Vonnie asked, rubbing her knee as she got up on shaky legs.
“Not one thing.” The smile looked slightly more like Taylor. More happy, less…dreamy. “I’m great. God, it’s so nice to be here.”
“Bullshit. I know you, Taylor Kirby. This is not you.”
Her friend merely laughed and watched her with twinkling eyes. She looked as though she had a secret and was daring Vonnie to guess it.
A suspicion blossomed in Vonnie’s mind. A ridiculous suspicion. She shook her head, trying to force it away.
Taylor noticed. “Let yourself think about it. You know it’s true.”
“No.” Vonnie spun around. “No, no, no.”
She heard Taylor climb down the ladder. Her filmy white dress swished as she walked across the floor to stand behind her. A hand landed on Vonnie’s shoulder. “Yes.”
Vonnie’s rational, reasonable mind was breaking, splitting in half. Her world was orderly, explanatory, scientifically proven. What she was thinking…what Taylor was implying….
“I’m so sorry I wasn’t there that night,
Vonnie.”
She spun around, not sure where Taylor was going. “What are you talking about?”
“If it had been me, if she and I hadn’t switched places, I would have insisted on driving you home.”
“I don’t understand.”
“At the honors assembly. The night he took you. I should have been there for you. I was stupid, wanting to meet a boy, getting her to take my place so I could sneak away.”
The words hit her dead center, like a punch. All the air was sucked out of the room, and Vonnie felt like she was looking at one of those spinning wheels with the curving lines, going around and around, making her dizzy, making her queasy. “What are you saying?”
“You know what I’m saying.”
Vonnie feared she did. It was impossible. It was insane. It was beyond all rationality and rules of science and the natural order. But somehow, from the minute those eyes had opened and the brunette had said hello, Vonnie knew—she knew—she was not talking to Taylor Kirby.
She was talking to Taylor’s sister. Her twin. The dead one.
“Jenny?”
“Yes, it’s me.”
Vonnie stumbled back in shock and disbelief. The other girl grabbed her arm to steady her. They stared at each other for a long moment, and then a tender smile appeared again.
That loving, emotional expression did not belong on Taylor’s exuberant face. It had always belonged on her sweet-natured sister’s.
This was really happening.
“Ho-ly shit,” Vonnie mumbled. “This really is a Lois Duncan book.”
Jenny laughed. “Come on, Vonnie, let’s go get pizza and ice cream and catch up. I’ve been gone a long time, and I only have an hour.”
“What happens in an hour?” she muttered, wondering if she and not Taylor were lying on that bunk, lost in some weird, surreal dream.
“Then Taylor gets her body back.” She shrugged. “See? Not a Lois Duncan book at all. I’m not a body thief. She just…lent it to me.”
Vonnie must have been hit on the head. The top bunk had collapsed and she was in a coma, herself. It was the only sane explanation.
“See, I was dying for some ice cream.” Jenny bit her lip. “Sorry, bad wording.”
“Uh huh. Right. Ice cream.”
The other girl—Taylor, her best friend? Jenny, her best friend’s dead sister? A figment of Vonnie’s imagination? The product of a coma-induced dream?—laced her hand in Vonnie’s.
“It’ll all be okay, I promise.”
Vonnie wanted to believe that. Honestly, though, considering someone had inserted TNT in the logical part of her brain and lit a fuse, she didn’t know if she would ever be okay again.
Funny, though, as she walked with a happy, curious girl to the dining hall, Vonnie realized something about herself: She wanted to believe.
She wanted poor, lost Jenny Kirby to have her ice cream.
Kate begged Derek to call the police, but he resisted. Without concrete proof, they wouldn’t be able to explain how they knew a teacher had been murdered here.
And there was no body.
Derek had seen Sam Andrews die, but his remains had been moved after he’d been killed. The brush was smashed down in a person-wide line that disappeared into the swamp. He’d obviously been dragged away. There was blood on the ground, a lot of it, but Derek insisted that blood alone wasn’t enough.
“Look, they don’t even have a detective on the tiny force in the closest town. They might come out here, see this, and call it a gator attack on another animal.” He rubbed his eyes. “Savannah-Chatham? Sure. They’d do a thorough investigation. But it’s not their jurisdiction.”
“There has to be something else we can do.”
“There is. You can wait here while I check inside that building. After that, I’ll get you back to your car, you will get in it, and drive home.”
Not without him she wouldn’t. Considering his words had sounded like orders, she didn’t say that, but she had no intention of leaving him alone in this place tonight, with a murderer on the loose and a horror show waiting for Derek around every corner.
Obviously not noticing her obstinate expression, he bent to touch the thick, dark fluid spread in pools and puddles around a hollowed spot in the brush. “As I thought. It’s not congealed. This didn’t happen very long ago.”
God. They might have missed this murder by minutes.
“That means what I can do is follow that trail, find the remains.” His jaw tightened into a boulder. “And hopefully run into the bastard who killed that poor man.”
Dropping her voice lower, she gestured toward the building several yards ahead of them. “How do you know the murderer didn’t come back here after he moved him?”
He shook his head. “He’s a goddamn coward, preying on boys and English teachers. If he had been heading back this way, he would have heard us coming and taken off.”
She grabbed his arm. “You can’t know that. Let’s just call your friend Olivia’s husband. He’s a detective, right? And he knows what you can do? He’ll believe you.”
He covered her hand with his and squeezed lightly. “Liv’s in the hospital, remember?”
She pulled away, feeling foolish for forgetting. She tried to focus, to pull her brain back into working order. Her thoughts were jumbled and disjointed. Of course, heart-attack-inducing terror could do that to a person. Standing a few feet from where a brutal crime had just been committed was absolutely terrifying.
Taking a calming breath, Kate searched for another solution. She would do anything to keep Derek from going through another experience like the last one. Even if there was no physical danger, the mental one could be devastating.
She did not want him entering that building, whether the killer was in there or not. For Derek, it could be walking into a slaughterhouse. If the perpetrator had murdered a teacher in building 13, why wouldn’t he have done the same with the missing boys? How could Derek survive seeing something like that?
God, she hated picturing the crime he had only briefly described. She also hated that he’d felt compelled to watch. That he believed he’d been responsible.
Only the monster who’d done it had been responsible. No one else.
Now that she knew what had been done to that poor teacher, whose only crime was actually caring about his students, she was even more anxious for whoever was responsible to be caught. But not if it meant Derek put himself at risk by going into that shack alone.
She lifted a hand to her brow and swayed on her feet. He was at her side in an instant.
“Are you all right?”
“A little dizzy.” Although she said it hoping he would insist on taking her out to the road right now—and stay there, safe and sound—Kate wasn’t lying. She had gone through medical school; she’d seen corpses, she’d touched blood. Still, that human-shaped, hollowed-out place surrounded by gore was the closest she had ever come to a murder victim. Seeing ugly proof of what he had endured, her heart broke for Mr. Andrews. “Maybe you should take me to my car.”
Derek took both her arms in his hands and held her steady. The grip was not hard, but showed he was very serious. “Kate, I know what you’re trying to do, and I appreciate it. I will take you back there soon. I just need five minutes to go inside that building and make absolutely certain the sonofabitch didn’t double back and dump Mr. Andrews’ body there.”
She hadn’t considered that.
“If he did, we’ll go right away. I’ll call Gabe and ask him to send somebody he trusts up here. Then we’ll contact the local police and wait for them together. Deal?”
She couldn’t fault his logic. If he found what he was looking for, Derek could stay in her car with her until the cavalry arrived. It meant he would not try to leave her there, order her to go home, and then come back into this green hell alone in search of a brutally stabbed body and the person who’d wielded the knife.
“Deal,” she said, knowing he would hate her condition. “But I’m comin
g in with you.”
He dropped his hands. “Absolutely not.”
“I’m a doctor, Derek. I’ve seen bodies before.” She licked her lips. “They use this building to punish the boys, so there can’t be remains in there all the time. At the very most, it would be Mr. Andrews. Maybe there’s a chance he could be saved, and I might be able to do that.”
“He can’t.”
“You’re sure? Because of your vision? You don’t see anyone until they’re totally dead?”
He hesitated before answering, and then admitted, “It happened once. I saw Li…I saw someone who’d drowned, and had been resuscitated after she’d technically died. But that is not the case here. There’s no way Andrews could have survived this much blood loss.”
She glanced down, gauged the splashes, and conceded the point. “I’m still coming. You already noticed I have good eyesight.”
He blew out a slow breath, his glower probably frightening to little children, but it didn’t intimidate her.
“We can stand here and argue about it, or we can just get this over with.” She crossed her arms in front of her chest. “You’re not going alone. The sooner we get it done, the sooner we’ll get out of here.”
He saw the resolution on her face and muttered, “Damn.” And that was that.
Lifting the flashlight, Derek shone it on the narrow path that led back to the ugly building to which they were headed. Building 13.
“Have your phone handy?”
The phone. She last remembered having it in her hand, but patted her pockets, front and back, anyway. “I think I dropped it.” It must have been when she’d seen Derek fall to his knees and had run to help him.
“Shit.”
“It’s okay—I’ll stay close to you.”
“Don’t step away,” he insisted.
She moved in behind him, their bodies almost touching as they walked step by step toward the place they’d both heard so much about. They avoided the droplets of blood he pointed out with the beam of light.
Cold Image (Extrasensory Agents Book 4) Page 25
