Keepsake

by Linda Barlow

  Her arms and legs tightly bound.

  Another piece of rope—a relatively short piece—would be tied in a slip-knot around her neck and secured to the headboard. When he began to torture her, the pain would make her struggle. It was a response she would have no control over. And as she struggled, the ligature around her neck would be pulled taut. Eventually she would strangle herself.

  She would know what was happening. She would understand. She would see that surviving depended on not reacting to the torture, and for a while he would allow her to think that she could control her reactions… could, perhaps, survive. Then slowly, inexorably, he would demonstrate that pain was her master. He would watch her hope change to panic, her panic to despair. And in the end, she would welcome death.

  The thought of her alone and vulnerable in the dark was unbearably exciting. He wanted to go in now, get started. Savor it. Make it last.

  Patience, he told himself.

  Killing time until killing time.

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Despite her weariness, April had difficulty falling asleep. She lay awake in the darkness for more than an hour, tossing and turning on the sagging, lumpy mattress. She heard little scratching sounds outside that might have either been branches brushing the walls of the cottage or perhaps the vermin which had inspired the call to the exterminators.

  She fell into a troubled sleep.

  And came awake sharply as a hand smoothly covered her mouth to prevent her from screaming and a powerful arm held her down on the bed.

  “Shh. It’s me,” said a familiar voice.

  Blackthorn!

  She felt a moment of pure panic.

  Somehow he had followed her. He had come to kill her, and this time she would not escape.

  “April, I know something spooked you, but you’re going to have to trust me.” His voice was clipped and she could hear no softness or sympathy there. He was on her bed, holding her down. His legs were straddling her thighs with only a musty sheet between them. “You have no choice. The killer’s outside.”

  She stared up at him in the darkness. She could only see a dim outline of his face and she couldn’t read his expression. He kept his hand over her mouth, taking no chances that she might scream.

  “I crawled in through one of the back windows. I’m reasonably certain he didn’t see me, but it was pure luck. Until I got here, I didn’t realize anybody else was following you.”

  She shook her head. I don’t believe you, she tried to convey. There was nobody outside. It wasn’t possible. His being here wasn’t possible. How had he found her?

  “You were wearing a wire,” he said as if he read her thought. “You didn’t know it, but ever since the day you took off rollerblading in Central Park, we’ve been monitoring you electronically. So far it’s worked pretty well.” He touched the silver necklace at her throat. “There’s a remote tracking device in your necklace. Another one is hidden in the briefcase that you take to the office every day. It was the first one that led me here. Thank God you kept it on when you decided to flee me.”

  Yes, she thought, she’d kept it on. That meant something, didn’t it?

  “When you got on the Amtrak train, I went to the airport. Was in Boston before you. Rented a car and simply followed, staying fifteen minutes behind you. Unless he also planted electronics on you—which I doubt—the killer was a lot tighter on your tail.”

  Again she shook her head. She writhed against his hands, not violently, but trying to let him know that she hated being restrained.

  “April, why did you leave like that? What frightened you? You were acting skittish all evening. Are you suspicious of me?”

  She nodded.

  “You think I’m in some way responsible? That I had something to do with Rina’s death?” He sounded completely baffled at the thought.

  If I had only been able to read the diskette, she thought. Then I’d know. There wouldn’t be this nagging doubt.

  “Well, whatever you believe, you’re going to have to trust me now, at least for a little while. He looked like he was getting ready to move… we don’t have much time.”

  Her eyes had adjusted to the darkness and she could see him better now. Why would he lie at this point in the game? She was completely at his mercy. He could do whatever he wanted, and get away with it.

  Tentatively, he lifted his hand from her mouth. “Just keep quiet, okay?”

  “Give me a reason to trust you, Rob,” she whispered.

  He considered. “Because you love me?”

  “That’s a lousy reason!”

  “How about because I love you.”

  She swallowed. Something in the pit of her stomach seemed to fall away. She closed her eyes. “If you’re going to kill me now, just do it and get it over with.”

  “What I’d like to do is slap some sense into you,” he said savagely. “You’d better have a damn good reason for this… that’s all I can say. Otherwise, when we get back to New York, I’m going to take you over to Isobelle’s place and borrow one of her whips. I can’t believe that you—” He cut himself off. There was a low sound at the door.

  Blackthorn abruptly pulled her off the bed and down to the floor. She saw him fumbling at his belt as he found and drew his weapon—a large snub-nose handgun. “Roll under the bed. Lie flat and cover your head with your arms.”

  She obeyed, lying on her belly and pulling her arms up so they were mostly covering her head. It didn’t prevent her from looking, however. The foot of the bed was turned toward the front of the cottage, and from underneath with the dust (and, doubtless, the cockroaches) she could see the bottom of the door.

  Blackthorn rearranged the pillows and blankets, then moved silently away from her into the kitchen area six feet away. She could see his legs, taking cover to the side of the refrigerator. His gun was directed at the cottage door. It had a flimsy lock.

  They heard the faintest squeak, then the door swung silently inward. It was difficult to see because of the darkness in the cottage and the stealth of the invader. April imagined herself asleep in bed, hearing nothing, seeing nothing, waking to the same horror that had nearly overtaken her in her bathroom less than two weeks ago.

  As she watched his shadow slink into the cottage, she was damp with sweat and her heart was slamming into the floor. All she could see were his legs as he moved towards them. He was wearing jeans and sneakers or running shoes similar to the ones he’d worn the first time he’d tried to kill her.

  He was closer now. Could he see the bed in the darkness? Could he see that although the covers were tousled, there was no one there?

  She wished Blackthorn weren’t so far away! She hoped—oh, God!—she hoped he would be quick, and if he had to shoot, accurate…

  “That’s far enough,” she heard Rob say. The place was flooded with light as he hit the switch in the kitchen wall. “Drop the knife and hit the floor.”

  Morrow whirled toward the sound, raising the knife, tightening his arm and shoulder for the throw. He was quick and fast with a knife, but the bullet was faster. He heard the crack before he felt the pain. In fact, there was no pain, simply an impact in his chest knocking him backwards, against the bed, grabbing and reaching, feeling things slip from his hands and the floor heaving upwards at his face.

  As he rolled onto his side, doubled up, he saw her face. There beside him on the floor. Her eyes staring into his, but not in agony or in supplication. Not acknowledging his power and surrendering to his will. No fear, even, nor anger. No, she was looking at him in worry… or concern.

  As his eyes closed he heard her voice. “Don’t die, dammit!” she cried.

  Why not? he wondered. Why should she, of all people, care if he died? She should be triumphant. She had defeated him for the second and final time.

  “Who hired you?” she demanded. Vaguely he felt her shaking his stiffening body. “Who paid you to kill my mother? Who sent you so persistently after me?”

  He was ready to tell her.
Why not? He felt no loyalty. She’d proved to be a worthy adversary. Let her have her revenge.

  He would have told her, if he could have spoken before the darkness closed…

  “You killed him,” April said.

  Blackthorn rolled the killer over, studied the wound, felt the throat for a pulse. “He’s alive. High chest, right side—he’s got a chance. Breathing’s steady. There’s no phone here, right? Run to the office and wake that old geezer. Smash the window if he doesn’t answer and dial 911.”

  “If he dies we won’t have a witness against the person who hired him.”

  “The bastard deserves to die,” he growled. “But, yeah, you’re right. Hurry. I know some first aid.”

  He felt her drop a quick kiss on the top of his head. “I don’t mean to criticize. He was going to throw that knife. You saved our lives.”

  Yeah, but at what price? “It’s never easy to shoot someone,” he said.

  She left, and he applied pressure to stop the bleeding in the creep’s chest. Didn’t look too bad, actually. The guy was probably out from the shock. He might come round at any time.

  He pulled the blanket off the bed and covered him, but not before a quick go-through of his pockets. Once the cops arrived, the place would be sealed as a crime scene and they’d all be hauled in to spend the rest of the night answering questions.

  He couldn’t find a gun. But the guy was carrying a fanny pack containing several lengths of rope—narrow and nasty. A cigarette lighter, but no cigarettes. A second knife, three industrial strength sewing needles, an awl, a pair of blunt-nose pliers, a roll of duct tape, a tightly folded clear-plastic raincoat, and a pair of surgical gloves.

  Blackthorn’s usually strong stomach rose as he considered what the killer had intended to do with these items. The raincoat and gloves, no doubt, were to protect him from the blood.

  He thought of April as he’d found her—peacefully stretched out in the bed. Jessie had died easily compared to what this asshole had had planned for April.

  He stumbled to the entrance to the cottage and threw up into the bushes just outside the door.

  He tried to think of Jessie, and how she had died… what she had said… how she had looked, but his mind was filled with April, her red hair, her laughing eyes, her smiling face. He could have lost her. Dammit, he wasn’t going to lose her.

  “I love you, April,” he said.

  Chapter Thirty-six

  “It might be withholding evidence,” April said, “but after all this trouble I was not going to turn this diskette over to the police without seeing what was on it myself!”

  “I don’t blame you,” Blackthorn said.

  “Now if we can just get to a computer.”

  “No problem. I have a laptop in my car.”

  She threw her arms around him and hugged him.

  But a few minutes later, sitting in the hotel room to which they’d retreated after a long session with the local police, he turned on the computer and hesitated before inserting the diskette into the disk drive. “Are you sure you want me to read it with you?”

  She nodded.

  “Think,” he told her. “You still don’t know who hired Morrow. Suppose it turns out to be me, after all. Maybe I shot him so he couldn’t expose me.”

  She made a face. “Look, I’m sorry. I just—I didn’t know whom to trust.” She had told him about the newspaper clipping that Christian had shown her, and how it had shaken her faith. He’d tried to explain to her how angry and bitter he’d been after Jessie’s death. He’d written the letter to the editor, yes, he’d said. That had been a particularly bad time, and he’d needed to find somebody—anybody—to blame. But later he and Rina had become friends.

  “And trusting’s hard for you,” he said.

  “It has been, yes.” She paused. “But sometimes you have to make a leap of faith.” She reached out and took his hand. “I trust you, Rob.”

  He kissed her gently on the mouth. “Since I’ve been with you, I’ve been alive again. And Jessie—well—I think I can finally accept her death and begin to let her go. I love you.”

  She could feel her heart open. “I love you, too.”

  The files were there. They were organized into chapters—“mylife.1, mylife.2,” etc. But the first file on the diskette was simply named “April.let.”

  With Rob’s help, she called it up on the screen and together they began reading:

  To my daughter:

  April, I am writing this more as an exercise, I think, than as an actual letter. I hope that we will see each other again and that I will be able to talk to you in person. I hope it will never be necessary for you to read this letter, or that if you do, you will already have understood… and forgiven me for the great wrong I have done you.

  It is so difficult to know what to say to you after so many years. Ironically, the more time passes, the more difficult it becomes. I have wanted so many times over the years to reach out to you. Yet at the same time I dread doing so because I am afraid you will respond to me in the only manner that I deserve.

  I know that there can be no excuse for the way I have treated you. Nevertheless, I feel compelled to explain.

  Perhaps this explanation is more for myself than for you; perhaps I will never even share it with you. Perhaps I am the one who must somehow learn to understand.

  And to forgive.

  Forgiving oneself is always the highest hurdle.

  I have come to believe that we make our own destiny. We are free human spirits who make the choices that lead us either to success or disaster. Or, in my case, both.

  One thing I have learned is to be rigorously honest with myself. I confess that I was never a good mother. Worse, to my mind—and it is difficult to write these words—that I never loved you enough. This is not your fault. I can’t imagine a more lovable child than you were during the years we were together. But I had not been brought up with love, and I certainly had no love or respect in those days for myself Where there is fear, there can be no room for love, and my heart and mind have been darkened by fear for much of my life.

  April, I never told you about our background—my original family, that is. It was not a past that I ever wanted to remember—a brutal drunken father who used to beat me on the slightest excuse, a sad-eyed mother who never came to my defense. I ran away from home—a ramshackle farm in Kansas—when I was seventeen. I guess I was following my mother’s advice. She’d attempted to run off with another man when I was fifteen. I still remember her saying to me, “It’s a man’s world, hon, and all a woman can ever do is find herself a good man. If the one you got ain’t no good, use your wiles and get one better.”

  She found herself a better man, but when she eloped with him, my father swore to track her down. This he did. There was a fight between the two men, and in what they later claimed was an accident, my mother was killed.

  All the brunt of my father’s anger and grief at her loss fell on my shoulders. The beatings and the verbal abuse escalated, and my existence had become unbearable. I often used to fantasize about hanging myself from a rafter in the barn.

  I’m not telling you this in order to try to extenuate my own behavior, but rather to emphasize something that I don’t think you ever understood. You wanted a family— longed for one, in fact. And I knew no way of explaining to you that sometimes a family represents the most vicious kind of intimacy. There is nothing sacred about the blood ties of a family. Our real families are the ones that we put together ourselves, with love and caring for one another.

  I know, also, that I never told you very much about your father. Let me tell you now that he was a gentle man, as different from my own father as anybody could imagine, and that I loved him. He was, however, married. He and his wife had taken me in when I arrived friendless in St. Louis after leaving home. She was an invalid, and I’m not proud of myself for trying to steal him away from her. But I was bitter when he told me that he had vowed to stay with her for better or for worse.
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  I ran away again, and he never knew about you, April. If he’d known I’m sure he would have wanted to see you, espcially since he and his wife had no children of their own. I was afraid, in fact, that if he saw you, he might try to take you away from me, and that was a thought I couldn’t bear.

  I was, of course, too young to be a mother

  I didn’t know what to do, or how.

  When you cried—which was all you seemed to do the first three months—it frightened me. Like all teenage mothers, I thought having a baby was like having a perfect, beautiful doll. I was unprepared for nursing, colic, fevers, sleepless nights.

  And I was always afraid those first few years that my father would somehow find me. In my dreams, he never ceased to pursue me, so I was always on the run.

  I was afraid that if he found me, I, too, would die.

  April looked up from the computer screen. As she reached for the glass of water on the bedside table, she realized that her hands were shaking. Whatever she had expected, it was not this stark recital of unpleasant facts.

  “You okay?” Rob said gently.

  “I never knew any of this.”

  He squeezed her hand. “It’s pretty intense.”

  She nodded. “Rina never told me anything of her personal history. My earliest memories were simply of moving from town to town while my mother indulged in new love affairs, often with some sort of authority figure in the community—the chief of police, the minister, the mayor. I never understood why this was happening; I took it as a matter of course. New curtains in the house… a new lover in Rina’s bed.”

  As she spoke she picked up the photograph of herself and Rina leaning against the trailer. She tried to look at her mother objectively—the natural blonde hair, the perfect, classic features, the tiny waist, the full breasts. Rina’s physical assets were the sort that were bound to attract the attention of red-blooded males everywhere, and she had exploited them relentlessly.

  As to why she had done this, it was clearer now. She’d been brought up by a violent domineering father, and her mother had contributed to the idea that a woman could not survive without a man. But if he wasn’t good enough—“Get one better.” If he proved to be difficult or violent—run.