Deadly Messengers (42 page)

The other voice came again:
Kendall, you must stop.

Suddenly, she realized, this voice wasn’t in her head. Not like the warm, good voice. This voice came from behind her. She turned in its direction.

Confusion engulfed her mind. Should she finish the mission first and then follow this voice?
Which one came first?

Panic gripped her mind, a wild fury turning what had been clear, into shadows and valleys of doubt.

Kendall. Stop. This is not you. There’s a drug. In your system. KENDALL, put down the gun.”

But she already had her plan. She needed to finish the mission.

She followed the direction of the voice and turned to see the man. She recognized him. He meant something to her. His name was deep in her memory, but she couldn’t find it. His words, they didn’t make sense. They seemed wrong. Her mind felt torn apart.

She wanted to fire the gun. She wanted to give these people their peace. She wanted to see her mother. She wanted to deliver the message. She wanted to follow the voice.

Kill anyone who will stop you.

Straight and true
was what she knew.

“Kendall. It’s me. Lance O’Grady. Come on, remember.”

The man held a gun. He would stop her. That’s all she knew. That’s what she remembered.

Feelings coursed through her. Anger. Fear. Frustration Another, deeper emotion, alien to her—desire.
Who was he?

Then she understood.

It came to her like a clear and beautiful sunrise, so bright she closed her eyes at the pure thought. He was there to receive her peace, to help her deliver the message. If Tall Boy was number one, the old man McKinley was number two, that would make the man with the gun number three.

“KENDALL. IT’S ME. LANCE O’GRADY. Remember? Listen to me carefully. Shortly a police will arrive. Then I can’t help you. Put down the gun. This isn’t you. It’s the drug.”

His gun remained on her. Kendall watched curiously as rivulets of sweat trickled down his face. The droplets looked too big as though he were an actor on a large screen, part of a slow-motion film.

“You don’t want this, Kendall.”

She did, though. She really
did
want this. Her mission was not over. More needed to be done. One more, after him.

Kendall twisted her neck, easing the long tendons left, and then right. The ache had returned, along with the throb at the base of her skull.

This man’s fault. His words filled her head, confusing her. They’d merged with the good voice and now turmoil reigned inside her brain. What she had known for sure was diluted and fuzzy.

You need to hurry. Deliver the message.

Delivering the message was all that mattered. Her time was almost done. This man had taken her focus from what she was sent here to do. Soon there would be nobody left to make the four. The mission would fail. Then what of her mother?

Who was this man?

She stared at the gun he aimed at her, her mind faltering at her next move. He held up a hand, signaling her to wait. Surely, he knew she couldn’t stop. Surely, he wasn’t a friend.

“Listen to me, please. You’re Kendall Jennings. You write articles. You don’t kill people. Put down the gun. Please, Kendall, I don’t want to do what I must if you don’t put down the gun.”

Kendall studied his face looking for a sign or a clue as to what to do. Doug McKinley was gone, but the good, strong voice remained, only faded and indistinct as though fed through cotton balls. Something in this man’s words, something in the tone of those words, made her pause. She checked through her memories. What was he to her?
What?

His eyes stared into hers, dark and piercing, and something else.
Afraid? Desperate?

“Something you need to know, Kendall. Okay?”

His gun was still on her, but his face had softened, his jawline relaxing, though his shoulders remained tense.

“You and I need to work out something. There’s something between us. In the coffee shop, remember? I know you felt it. Your hand, my hand, when we touched. Think, Kendall. Remember?”

The murky bubble in her mind felt as though it were bending and reshaping. A memory was attempting to pry its way out. She felt drawn to him, as though he was a magnet and she, metal. His eyes so warm, so brown.

Yes, she did know him. She felt a touch. From him. Feelings for him. A tingle on the back of her hand. Yes, something there. It wasn’t clear, though. As much as she prodded at the memory, she couldn’t fit that feeling in with the mission. The pieces seemed misaligned.

He moved toward her, cautious, one slow step following the other until only a few yards separated them. His gun still aimed at her. His head tilted to the side and he smiled. A hand reached for her.

She thought it through.

Another messenger, perhaps? Or did he want to stop her?

Kill anyone who will stop you.

His eyes: they were brown, deep brown. She had a sense of those eyes looking at her before today, before the mission.

An idea swam toward her conscious mind, like a shark swimming through the murk of a storm-whipped ocean. Suddenly she understood who he was. He was the man who would deliver her. He wasn’t part of the message. This man was her test, the final assessment of her capacity to change the world, to win her mother back.

A light flicker became a beam of certainty, indecision gone.

Straight and true
her only choice.

The gun in her hand felt warm again, reminding her of destiny.

She raised her arm and took aim.

“Kendall. No, please.”

Somehow, she found her voice. For the first time since this began, she heard herself. This showed her commitment, how much she deserved the reward. She wanted him to understand her, understand the message, so she’d fought to find her voice.

When it came her voice didn’t sound like her own.

“I must deliver the message.”

“No, Kendall, you
must
put down the gun. Please. The drug’s talking. That’s him. That’s McKinley’s warped ideas in your head.
Listen, to
my voice.
Follow
my voice. Put. Down. The. Gun.”

Kill anyone who will stop you. If you’re stopped, deliver yourself.

He
would stop her. She saw that now. She needed to pull the trigger. She needed to finish the mission. She was born to deliver the message.

But something was staying her finger.

She pushed with her mind, willed her hand to move, to stretch the muscles, for the tendons to pull back her finger. Another mind was inside her, stopping her, taking control of her body. She wanted to scream. She wanted to do what needed to be done.

She ignored the man and turned her focus on the gun in her hand. What to do next?

Deliver your own message, Kendall.

Yes, that she could do.

Her arm moved even before she thought to move it. The action, the most certain thing she’d ever done. This was
her
message. Delivered perfectly, she would have her mother again and the world would be changed forever.

She brought the gun toward her head. A smile moved her lips as she stared into his eyes, the one who would stop her. She liked his eyes. Eyes that suddenly looked stripped bare and afraid.

His gun was on her, still. His palm rose flat in the air toward her, as she pushed the gun into her temple; the barrel felt hard and round against her skin. The smile now stretched across her face.

It would be a beautiful message.

“Oh, my God. Kendall. Stop! I don’t want to—”

An explosion in her ear. A searing pain in her head. So sharp. As though thunder had exploded inside her skull. Where was the blackness? Where was her peace?

Fear burst in her mind.

Where was she? What had she done?

A screaming, unbearable pain filled her body. Then falling … falling … falling. Forever.

The floor reached up to her. As though with hands, it pulled her downward, faster and faster. She fell into the feeling, and, as she did, suddenly she was no longer falling but afloat, amid beautiful, iridescent colored lights. Here was her destiny. Somewhere here, her mother waited. She wanted to live in the lights, forever, more than she’d ever wanted anything.

The good, warm voice came one last time:
You are the messenger. You will deliver peace.

Then she was alone, completely alone, in the darkness. Her final thoughts were not of her mother or of herself or of anything or anyone in her life. As she touched the light, was welcomed by its gloriously warm embrace, it was a simple thought that engulfed her. She thought of her message and, with all her heart, she hoped she’d delivered it right.

KENDALL WOULD NEVER GROW ACCUSTOMED to the bright lights of television studios and rooms used for interviews. They reminded her of the bright colored lights, the only thing she’d remembered from that day.

When she’d awoken, she’d sobbed uncontrollably after realizing her mother wasn’t there, that she was still gone. For some reason, she felt even more bereft than she had when her mother was first murdered. It felt as though a second chance had been stolen from her.

A girl with a black-and-white-spotted bandanna about her head and bold, ruby lipstick painted on her full lips stood in Kendall’s personal space holding a makeup puff. She powdered Kendall’s face meticulously like she was painting a work of art.

Sixty Minutes’
host Dana Masters sat across from Kendall, glancing down at the pad on her lap, then back at the ceiling. Each time, she mouthed words, and then looked back down again, to practice another question. Most of the journalists who’d interviewed her seemed to do the same thing. Nothing in television journalism was impromptu, she’d learned.

Two cameramen and a boom mic operator stood patiently by for the veteran journalist to give the go-ahead. At the back of the hired hotel suite, the producer and an assistant producer, a man in jeans and a torn t-shirt—who’d taken casual dress to the next level—stood holding clipboards and quietly talking.

Dana Masters suddenly stopped mouthing and memorizing as though a silent whistle had been blown to ready competitors for a race. She looked around the room, nodded to her team, and said, “Are we set to go?”

A chorus of “yes” echoed back like a roll call.

Dana looked over to Kendall and nodded.

“And you, Kendall? Are you ready?”

Kendall bit her lip and nodded. She was never ready, had never become comfortable with the interviews.

She had no memory of that day. No memory of the events in the restaurant. She could, though, talk to the motivation behind how they could occur.

The memory of how it felt to awaken in a hospital to discover she had killed two people and had tried to kill others would never leave her. The disbelief came first, the shock and the shame, later. Even though it was repeatedly explained to her she was never in control and had never formed any intent to hurt anyone, the guilt still filled her nightmares.

The thought a killer lived inside her sometimes clawed at her very sanity. Even if a drug had drawn out that killer, she wondered why she had no power to stop.
If she’d just been stronger? Maybe?

The assistant snapped a clapperboard between the few feet separating Kendall and Dana’s chairs. Dana was like a wind up doll, snapping to attention, talking, welcoming Kendall, and thanking her for agreeing to be interviewed.

“Kendall, over the past year, you’ve become a well-known advocate for greater investigation into the correlation between anti-depressants and violence. Some people have suggested you are probably the
last
person who should spearhead such a push, considering your involvement in the injury and death at the Burger Boy’s Restaurant, as well as the death of Detective Trip Lindsay.”

The large lights perched on their tripod stands felt mid-summer hot, reminding her of one of the few things she did remember from that day … the warmth inside her body and her mind.

Kendall cleared her throat, a nervous response she’d developed in the past few months, although she was getting it under control. She was always nervous at the start of interviews.