Dead Silence (37 page)

“Chels,” she said timidly, hating that she was virtually blind now. For all she knew, the killer was standing directly in front of her.

Ahead of her, she heard voices, low and unintelligible voices. He was talking, but who was talking back? Was it Chelsea?

She took another step and noticed something else, a strange sound, like the trickling of water. But not a faucet, not steady and driven by man-made devices.

No, this sounded more like a stream. Like the soft cascading waters of a mountain stream.

Right here, in this crumbling old house.

Violet knew what it was. It was another imprint, of course.

He was a violent killer, and it made sense that he carried more than one.

She tried to find the other, the one she knew from the lake house—the old coffee grounds—but she couldn’t amid all the tangible smells that competed for her senses.

She heard more noises. Banging and thumping. They were moving away from her, making her feel braver so she stepped again, her hands out in front of her to keep from walking into walls. “Chelsea!” she called again, this time louder, bolder.

As the sounds moved farther, so did Violet. She knew they were upstairs now, she could hear them above her, but she had no idea where the stairs were. She fumbled around, feeling her way along walls, and straining to see through the narrow openings created between the imprints. But those glimpses were too brief, not giving her eyes enough time to adjust to the blackness.

Her fingers brushed over something sharp, a spike that seemed to be sticking up from the floor itself. Beside it, there was another one, equally jagged. She struggled to make sense of them in her mind as she took another step.

But her foot caught on something and she careened forward, barely having enough time to process the fact that she was falling right toward one of those stakes.

“Jesus, Vi,” Jay cursed as he caught her from behind. “What the hell are you doing? That thing almost impaled you.”

“They’re upstairs,” she answered, ignoring his lecture.

His voice dropped. “And you just thought you’d sneak up there while I wasn’t looking? Can you even see, Violet?” She felt a whoosh of air under her nose and she knew he was waving his hand in front of her face.

“Stop that!” she insisted, brushing his hand away, but as her hand passed through the air, she knew she’d missed, that her timing had been off.

His words were challenging now. “Violet, this is a bad idea. We can’t just storm this guy. What if he’s armed? We already know he’s dangerous.”

She reached for his hands, and finding them, implored him. “That’s right, Jay,” she whispered. “He’s dangerous. And he’s up there
with Chelsea
. We can’t just leave her there, can we? Who knows what he’s doing to her. What if he
is
armed? Maybe we can stop him before he . . .” She didn’t finish, she couldn’t. Jay hadn’t seen what she had.

The pause was short, much shorter than she’d expected. “You’re right. We can’t just leave her. You wait here, I’m doing this alone.”

It didn’t matter what he said, though. Because what she was really listening to was where his feet hit the stairs.

She followed almost immediately, never really intending to stay behind. He could be pissed at her later. For now, she had a friend to save.

“You never listen,” Jay grumbled quietly, but he didn’t stop, and she could sense the determination coming off him in every step he took. He was less cautious now, less worried about each creak beneath their feet.

Suddenly it seemed he wanted to find Chelsea as badly as she did.

He kept Violet behind him, which was good, because she needed to use him as her guide. Him and the imprints only she could sense.

The water sound grew clearer, stronger. It drew her as surely as the flashing kaleidoscope that blocked her view.

But as they reached the top of the stairs, Violet knew something was wrong.

Terribly, terribly wrong.

The imprints split there. Right there at the landing.

One imprint—the colors—pulling her one way. The rushing water pulling her the other.

She heard Jay then, above the babbling sound of water. “Which way?”

Vacillating, she turned her head in each direction, trying to make sense of it all.

How could there be two imprints, leading her in two different directions?

“I—I don’t know.” Her words hit the air at the same time they both heard it. The moan. Low and muffled and almost imperceptible, but there all the same.

“This way,” Jay said, dragging Violet along. Dragging her toward the sound of the stream.

SILENCE IS GOLDEN

THEY WERE PRACTICALLY RIGHT OUTSIDE THE door now. Right on top of him.

He glanced around, trying to figure a way out, but he was trapped. If only she’d be quiet. If only she’d lie there and be still.

He thought about dosing her again, but there was no time. Besides, he’d given the rest of his stash to Kisha right before hiding her in the attic.

Better, he’d told her, if they split up. Abercrombie and the girl were looking for him and Colton’s girl, not for her. He’d told her to stay there, no matter what happened, no matter what she heard, until she was sure it was safe to come out again. She could stay quiet as long as she wasn’t dope sick.

Colton’s girl whipped her head to the side, but was still unaware of anything around her. She’d passed out halfway up the stairs.

He heard their voices. And even farther away, much farther, he heard sirens.

And then she moaned.

Damn!
Damn, damn, damn!
He dropped to his knees and covered her mouth with his hand but it was already too late. He could hear their footsteps now too, and it was only a matter of seconds before they busted down the door. Before they found their way inside.

Before they caught him.

He bent forward, pressing a gentle kiss on the girl’s cheek. “I’m sorry,” he said almost sadly as he released the blade on the knife in his hand.

And then plunged it into her gut.

CHAPTER 21

WHEN JAY HIT THE DOOR WITH HIS SHOULDER, it didn’t splinter beneath his weight or anything quite so dramatic. The handle, which was probably old and in disrepair anyway, fell apart on impact, and the door shot open, banging against the wall on the other side. The crashing noise filled the house, echoing off the walls.

The sound of rushing water was stronger in here, as was the urine smell. Violet recoiled, again covering her face. She could see fragments of the space around her, tiny pieces of the room: an old bureau with a cracked mirror, its jagged shards catching bits of light from outside and reflecting it around them; a window with dingy-looking curtains billowing in on either side of it; a mound in the center of the floor that could only be one thing.

“Chelsea,” Violet whimpered, falling to her knees at the same time she caught a glimpse of another person—the killer—emerging from the darkened corner. Above his head there was something glowing, a blur of light that Violet couldn’t make out . . . he was moving far too quickly now.

“Jay,” she tried to warn, but it wasn’t necessary.

Whoever he was, he was already launching himself toward the open window, throwing himself over the sill just as Jay was about to reach him. And with him went both the trickling of water
and
the stench of old urine.

Two of his imprints.

“We did it,” Violet breathed. “We found her.” Outside, the shrill sound of sirens came closer, and she no longer cared about anything except that she’d found Chelsea.

And then, before she could stop him, before she could even shout his name, she watched as Jay, too, hurled himself over the window’s ledge.

She started to get up, to go to the window to see if he was okay. To see if he’d landed safely, but a hand stopped her. Chelsea’s hand.

Relief rippled within her and spread outward.

“It’s okay, Chels, I’m here now. I’m here.”

She heard it then, a wheezing sound, and she felt frantically for Chelsea’s face, her hands stroking her friend’s cheeks. “It’s okay,” she repeated, but this time she was no longer sure. Something was wrong.

She kept going, her hands searching the girl beneath her as the sirens outside grew nearer and nearer. When her hands reached Chelsea’s belly, she felt something warm and sticky and wet.

Her first instinct was to draw away. She didn’t want to touch it. Not this. Not Chelsea’s blood.

But that moment passed quickly, and then Violet was screaming as she heard the commotion below her, just outside the window.
“Help! We need help in here!”

She pressed her hands as hard as she could to the wound, it was all she could remember from the abbreviated first aid course they’d had in PE. She thought that maybe she should do something more, but she wasn’t sure what that something might be.

And then Chelsea went still beneath her.

Not the kind of still that happens when someone falls asleep, when you continue to feel their breaths, when you know their blood is coursing within them.

No, this was a different kind of still. The kind that Violet had only seen in death.

She heard footsteps that seemed too far away. Voices that were disjointed and sounded nonsensical to her ears.

Nothing made sense. Nothing was real.

Hands pulled her off Chelsea and she struggled against them, fighting to stay with her, fighting to remain at her friend’s side so she could save her. So she could protect her. To stop whatever was happening.

But when she first saw the smoke coming up from Chelsea, from her hair, her skin, her mouth, as insubstantial and wraithlike as the air itself, she realized . . . she knew . . .

She was too late.

Heat . . . smoke . . .

This was Chelsea’s echo she was witnessing.

“No!” She heard someone screaming. “No, no, no, no . . .” It went on and on and on . . .

She didn’t realize it was her until they were dragging her from the room so the paramedics could work in peace. Behind her she heard the sound of the electrical paddles charging, and then voices and scuffling, followed by more machines. She heard all of those things repeated more than once. More times than she could count.

She huddled on the floor in the hallway unable to catch her breath, unable to do anything but pray, and she wasn’t even sure she was doing that right. After either a minute or forever, she had no idea which, a man’s face appeared in front of her. She had no idea who he was, and frankly, she didn’t care. He asked her question after question, none of which she could answer:

Did she know what her friend had taken?

Did she know how to reach Chelsea’s parents?

Was
she
injured? Had
she
taken anything?

She couldn’t talk, she couldn’t think.

Was there anyone else in the house besides the two girls?

Somewhere, in the back of Violet’s mind, something clicked, as if a switch had been flipped. That one—that question—meant something to her.

It took her a minute to work through it, to make the words make sense, but when they did, Violet stared back at him and nodded.

“Someone’s in here? Who?” the man asked, signaling to someone behind him, and she saw his uniform then and realized she was talking to a cop. “Where? Can you tell me where?”

She nodded again, reaching up to wipe her eyes and realizing that’s what was bothering her. There was still another imprint in the house. The colors were still swirling and spinning and blurring her eyesight.

She pointed up.

Another officer joined the first one, and they exchanged a glance. “Upstairs? But we’re on the second floor,” he told her, and she nodded once more.

“He wasn’t alone,” she said at last, her voice rasping as she hoped she made sense. She tried to look past them, to see through the slits in her vision. “An attic, maybe? There.” She pointed now, finding it in the ceiling. “The opening.”