by Stacy Juba
Shooting pain ripped across her face and down her jaw. She shied sideways, flailing out with her legs, kicking despite her blurred vision.
"Cassidy!" Bo screamed.
His breath stinking of cheap champagne, Mitch hunched over her. The sharp tip of the knife nicked her throat.
Cassidy sucked in her breath, wondering if it would be her last. She and Bo were going to die.
"It's time to sink or swim," Mitch hissed.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Mitch loaded the gun and grinned down at Cassidy, a reptilian curve to his lips. "How do you call for SOS when only your killer can hear you?" he asked.
She staggered to her feet, the coppery metallic taste of blood in her mouth. Her head throbbed with waves of pain. She repelled the urge to spit as Mitch trained the gun on her chest.
"Why don't you take off and let us go?" Cassidy asked. "We won't tell the police and you can go home. Everything will be behind you."
Contempt spasmed across his pudgy face. "All you had to do was be interested. You think I'm an idiot. You think I'm nothing. You wanted to leave me, just like Olivia's mother."
"I don't think you're nothing," Cassidy said, the words nauseating her. "You're an intelligent person. You're smart enough to realize you should stop before the police connect you to four murders. Olivia needs you."
"I am somebody!" he bellowed as if he hadn't heard her. "Before you die, you'll see that. If I can't have you, no one will. No one."
Cassidy looked past him. Olivia cowered in the rear of the studio, dangling her stuffed panda upside down. Her blue eyes round, the little girl split her confused gaze between Bo trussed up in the chair and the pistol clenched in her father's hand.
The Glenn Miller CD had ended. Quiet filled the room.
"D...daddy?" she whispered.
"Go back where you were!" Mitch shouted without turning around.
"Daddy, are you playing a game?"
Whitening with rage, he shook the gun toward Cassidy. "It's not a game. Go in the other room, you little brat. Now."
Olivia dashed through the doorway, her scuffed loafers pounding against the floor.
"She never listens. She always wants something. Food, toys, playmates. I'm sick of her whining little voice. You were supposed to raise her." Mitch glowered at Cassidy, hatred rolling off him like a living entity.
Coils of fear undulated in her stomach. She'd driven him from love to rancor, from wooing her to blowing out her brains.
"It's all your fault," he snapped. "I promised her you'd be her mother. Now you've failed her. You've ruined everything. What am I supposed to do with her now?"
Frantic thoughts collided in her mind. Strategy, she needed a strategy.
"I can imagine how difficult it must be, being a single father with such a young child," Cassidy said. "You've done amazingly well, she's a beautiful little girl, but maybe it's time to let someone else take the responsibility. If you leave her here with us, I'll make sure she finds a good home. Don't kill us, Mitch. Witnessing that will scar her for life. Give her positive memories of her father."
Fury blazed in his wild eyes. With a sinking sensation, Cassidy knew he was beyond reasoning.
"She won't witness it. We're going upstairs. Once you're dead, I'll come back for your brother."
He circled around Cassidy and pushed her forward. The gun bumped her back so hard, she cringed.
As Bo watched like a waxen statue, panic gripped Cassidy. Her brother looked resigned to die. He couldn't give up now, when he'd have moments alone.
"Have Olivia untie you," she mouthed. "Save yourself."
He stared straight ahead with a dull expression. Frustration quickened her pulse and tensed her muscles. Before she could make a final silent plea, Mitch pushed her into the frigid corridor.
"Go straight to the end and upstairs," he ordered.
Cassidy limped down the buckling floorboards, her footfalls slow and deliberate. Bo needed time to escape, and no way would she race to her own demise.
"Faster," Mitch said.
Cassidy ground her teeth against a biting retort. She couldn't succumb to her temper, or he'd shoot her dead in the corridor. Bo would never have a chance. She had to draw this out as long as she could.
"I can't," Cassidy said. "I think I twisted my ankle when you threw me down."
She mounted the sagging staircase and clutched the railing. Grime filmed her hand as she labored up three creaking flights, each landing more water-logged than the last. With any luck, the stairs would collapse and they'd both die right here.
Fear clawed her heart as she reached the last rickety stair. They emerged into an open area in shambles. Ceiling tiles had collapsed under the rainwater pressure, exposing pipes and ductwork overhead and plaster chunks below. Black tar streaks and white patches of sealant blistered the walls.
Mitch directed her into an empty janitor's closet. A tic vibrating in his eye, he gestured at a metal ladder attached to the wall and raised off the floor.
Cassidy looked up at a hatch with rusty hinges on one side. A scuttle that must lead to the roof.
"Lower the ladder and open the hatch," he said.
As she hesitated, he jabbed her spine with the gun. Cassidy seized the bottom of the ladder, pulled it down and mounted the rungs.
A weird sense of deja vu struck her, reminding her of the day she had jumped the plank and ascended the ladder back to the Atlantic Devil. The day all this started.
At the top, she reached up and strained to turn the handle in the dimness. It didn't budge. Good. This could buy Bo a few minutes.
"Stop dilly-dallying," Mitch said. "What's taking so long?"
"It needs oiling. It's corroded."
"Try harder, or maybe you'd like your brother to watch you dawdle while I kill him." He gave the ladder an impatient shake.
"Okay, okay." Cassidy twisted the locking mechanism first one way, then the other, struggling to loosen it.
Her shoulder muscles burned. No one had used this entrance in months. Maybe even years.
With a groan, the handle moved clockwise and daylight shafted through a crack above. Cassidy cranked harder until the hatch flipped open. She crawled out onto the roof and blinked in the afternoon glare.
Cassidy stepped onto a black coal tar surface scoured with gravel specks and pebbles in uneven textures. She walked away from the scuttle, her sneakers sinking into a spongy section of roofing.
Dingy patina green and blackish pewter-colored vents protruded beside more modern PVC plastic ones. Lightning rods extended at corners and high-points, tied to a copper cable that snaked across the roof. Dried leaves and standing puddles the size of manhole covers ponded around cast iron roof drain domes.
Nothing useful to defend herself.
Through a hole in the weak surface, Cassidy saw down the crumbled wood beam supports and decrepit plaster into the room below. Panting, Mitch climbed out of the scuttle behind her. He glanced around at the disarray, a grin broadening his lips. A hint of petroleum rose from the tar and inflamed her upset stomach.
Smiling, Mitch pushed her toward a low brick parapet wall that ran along the outer edge of the roof, three feet above the surface. He stopped at a broken swivel chair that some workman had left behind, the back loose and the smelly cushion rain-softened.
"It's time to walk the plank. At the first corner, you'll jump."
Cassidy gulped. Strewn with dislodged pieces of limestone, the wall was about 18-inches wide. One wrong step and she'd fall 50-feet into the back parking lot.
Her hands fisted. She hadn't survived all these years to plunge off a friggin’ roof.
A giggle slipped out of his mouth, the off-kilter chortle disturbing in the silence. "Did you ever see those cartoons where the character falls and becomes as flat as a pancake? They always bounce back up. You won't."
She summoned her courage. If she had to die, she was going out fighting. "I'm not playing your game. You want me to walk your plank, you’ll have t
o come get me."
Grimacing, Mitch lunged at her and locked her in a stranglehold. Cassidy choked against the pressure on her neck and slashed her foot into his ankle. She squirmed, her windpipe tight as he dragged her backwards to the wall.
I’m going to die.
It seemed impossible to fathom. Cassidy had never given much thought to life after death, but now she prayed that she wouldn’t cease to exist.
She should have gone to church more. Told her mother and Glenn how much she loved them. Forgiven Zach. She shouldn’t have wasted so much time working rather than living.
Mitch lowered his hands to her waist and boosted her up onto the middle of the ledge. Gasping breaths of air, Cassidy wobbled. Don’t give up yet, she willed herself. Let’s keep the afterlife a mystery for awhile longer.
Blue sky and pavement dipped around her in a dizzying blur. She grabbed onto a rusted flagpole built into the parapet. It rocked, precarious.
Her heart nose-diving, Cassidy released the pole and steadied herself. She stretched out her arms at her sides and shuffled forward as if on a tightrope. Baby steps.
She didn't look down, didn't acknowledge Mitch, her gaze cemented on the wall beneath her sneakers. Cassidy crossed over a fragment of stone, exhaling as she maintained her balance.
The corner of the ledge neared.
Desperation surged through her frenzied thoughts. She had to get off this thing and attack him. If she didn't jump, the bullet would rip into her and it would be all over, anyway.
Cassidy seesawed, her concentration floundering. She adjusted her footing and ventured another step closer to death. Cassidy faltered again as a distant peal of sirens buzzed in her ringing ears. Was she dreaming?
Reacting spontaneously, Cassidy leaped off the wall with a gush of adrenaline and back onto the roof. As Mitch's finger inched toward the trigger, she hoisted the abandoned swivel chair off the ground and hurled it at him. The wheels cuffed him in his Pillsbury Doughboy chest.
Cursing, he stumbled backwards. The chair thudded sideways against the tar. Without thinking, Cassidy launched herself at his body.
Wrestling for the gun, they toppled to the roof. They rolled around, hands fastened in a death grip, the barrel stabbing straight in the air. Surrendering her hold, Cassidy socked a right hook into his nose and poked a finger into his eyes.
Mitch yelped in pain, dropping the pistol. Cassidy dove and snatched it off the tar. Pushing herself upright, she took steady aim. Blue and white strobes spangled off a trio of police cars in the parking lot.
Rubbing his eye, Mitch staggered to his feet. Red hot rage smoldered through her. He had murdered Reggie and Felicia. Almost killed her and Bo.
Cassidy pointed the gun. "You're a nutcase who can't hack it in the real world," she said in a trembling voice. "Normal people don't obsess over innocent strangers. Normal people don't kill to prove their sick puppy love, or when things don't go their way. Your arrest will be the luckiest thing that happens to Olivia. You're not fit to be a father."
"It's your fault," Mitch muttered, stroking his bleeding nose. "Reggie, Felicia, all of it is your fault."
"You're sick. Crazy. I hate you for everything you did. You're nuts to think you deserved me. All you deserve is a prison cell and a straitjacket."
She was ranting as the police charged onto the roof and surrounded Mitch with raised weapons. Someone murmured in her ear, told her to drop the gun, everything was okay. Officer DeCosta, the cop who had responded to her mother's burglary.
"Let me take that," he said gently.
Cassidy handed him the pistol. Two uniformed officers frisked Mitch and snapped him into handcuffs.
"Are you okay?" DeCosta asked.
Sharp awareness penetrated her ire. Sunlight heated the tar and a breeze stirred the trees across the way.
She was alive.
It was over.
Cassidy squinted into his face. "Now I am. How did you know we were here?"
"Your brother called from a cell phone. He's down in the cruiser, falling apart."
Her throat thickened at her surge of emotions. She wanted to crumple in a corner and sob out of sheer relief. "He was untied when you got here?"
"Untied and waiting for us outside with a little girl. Would you like to see him?"
Cassidy nodded, not trusting her voice.
"Come on, this building is treacherous," DeCosta said. "You shouldn't be here."
She almost laughed, his comment striking her as absurd. As if a condemned building had been her biggest danger. Keeping her mouth shut, she let him guide her by the elbow and steer her toward the scuttle.
Mitch's whining stopped her flat.
"I didn't do anything wrong," he told the officers. "I only loved her. Love isn't a crime."
The cops snorted. DeCosta nudged her shoulder. "Don't look back. Let's get you out of here."
Cassidy couldn't exit the building fast enough. They passed a couple of officers probing around the dance studio and muttering about sickos. Once outside, she spotted her brother and Olivia sharing the front passenger seat of a cruiser.
Bo flung open the door and raced toward her. "Cass!" he cried. "You're okay!"
She engulfed him in her arms and swept back his stiff moussed bangs. "I'm so sorry, Bo. I can't believe you had to go through that."
Grinning weakly, he squirmed away from her. "Do you think Mom and Dad will buy me some new video games?"
"If they don’t, I will. You sure you're all right?" She lifted his wrist, wincing at the chafing red welts.
"Yeah, I'm just mad he got me when I was walking to school. I started running, but he was too fast and he had a knife."
"There was nothing you could have done."
"After Olivia untied me, I didn't know whether I should come after you. I was afraid he was gonna kill you, but I didn't know how to stop him. I used your cell phone to call the police. Maybe I should've gone up there ... the cops might not have gotten here fast enough." Bo examined the pavement, a quiver spiraling through his wiry frame.
Cassidy bit her lip. Her brother would be recovering from this horror for weeks. Maybe months. So would she.
She resisted the impulse to embrace him again. Bo would consider one hug from his big sis degrading enough. "How could you go up there without a weapon? You did the right thing. It was our only chance."
DeCosta strode over and flashed the siblings a sympathetic glance. "Miss, Detective Pierce wants you to meet him at the station. I’m sure you’re shaken up. We can give you a ride and bring you back for your car later."
"No, it’s okay, I'll drive." Cassidy needed to pretend, for a few minutes, that everything was normal, that she hadn’t just cheated death. If she welled up, she’d rather it wasn’t in front of the cops. "Let me talk to the little girl for a minute. Bo, I'll be right back."
Olivia huddled in the police car, nose pressed to the glass. She twisted the panda in her lap, tugging a floppy ear.
Cassidy opened the door and Olivia flew toward her with outstretched arms. Surprised at the fierce hug, Cassidy murmured, "It’s okay. You’re such a brave girl. What you did for my brother took a lot of courage."
"Where's my daddy?" Olivia sat back, not releasing Cassidy’s hand, her voice barely a squeak.
"He did something wrong and the police are taking him to the station. Don't worry, they want to help you, honey. Do you know what happened to your mom?"
Tears glittered in the corners of Olivia’s eyes. "I...I...my daddy said she's not alive anymore."
Surprise, surprise. Cassidy would bet that Mitch had a hand in that. "Do you have any relatives? Do you remember your address?"
"My daddy said my grammy isn't alive, either. He said it was just the two of us."
Cassidy rubbed the little girl’s cold fingers. "Tell the police officers everything you remember, okay? I'm going to follow in my car, but I promise I'll stay with you at the station."
"All...all right."
She sopped Olivia's t
ears with a clean napkin from the dashboard, swept a limp blonde curl off her forehead and hugged her once more. Cassidy noticed the copy of A Little Princess on the seat. "Keep that. You deserve it."
Olivia sniffled. She didn't move as the officers bulldozed her father out from under the awning and dragged him toward the police cruiser. Cassidy brushed past Bo and DeCosta, and halted at the car. One of the cops shoved Mitch into the backseat.
"Hey, Mitch," Cassidy yelled. "How do you call for SOS when only the police can hear you?"
She pivoted on her heel and rejoined Bo.
As Cassidy drove down Stowell Street, her silent brother beside her, she passed first Alison, then Zach, their cars racing toward the mill. They must have heard reports over the police scanner. She thought she saw Zach turn his head, recognizing her Saturn. Cassidy hesitated, her foot inching toward the brake. After a second, she accelerated.
She couldn’t face Zach with her emotions frenzied and her knees teetering from the near-death experience. Cassidy didn’t know what she wanted, other than to leave the mill far behind. Everything else could wait.
She had lost the game show, but won the high stakes. It was time to cash her prize. Freedom.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Cassidy nibbled Monterey Jack nachos at her mother's kitchen table, too lethargic to pour herself another glass of Coke. As if sensing her fatigue, Detective Pierce silently reviewed his notes before he brought her up to date. Smoke mushroomed from the gas grill outside, carrying the scents of charcoal, hamburgers, hotdogs and onions through the screen door.
Since escaping Mitch forty-eight hours ago, Cassidy had been ravenous. Now she understood why her weight loss clients claimed food brought comfort.
She glanced out at her family gathered in the sunny backyard, taking advantage of New England’s unpredictable Indian summer. Bo and Glenn hurled a baseball back and forth. Her mother read a romance novel in a lawn chair, crumpled tissues at her side.
The nightmare was over, but the aftereffects remained. Bo slept with the light on, Cassidy had taken over the couch and their mother couldn't stop crying. Cassidy had also scheduled an appointment with a therapist. Thanks to her, two people were dead. That was tough to forget.
