Death Notice (41 page)

She stayed hidden in the third room, trying to calm the pounding of her heart. When her pulse slowed to an acceptable rate, she scanned the room. It contained more wood. But instead of planks of pine, it was filled with boxes made of it.

Coffins.

A dozen of them sat evenly spaced on the floor. A matching lid covered each one. Unlike the coffins Kat had found George and Troy in, the lids weren’t nailed shut.

These were empty and unused and waiting to be filled.

As she backed away, Kat knocked into one of the coffins. She tumbled over it, taking the lid with her. It flipped off and clattered on top of her legs. Kat kicked it away while swinging the light in front of her until the beam stopped at the now-open coffin.

Someone was inside it.

Kat held back a yelp. Crawling to her knees, she shuffled to the coffin’s edge and peered inside.

It was Lucas Hatcher. His arms were crossed at his chest. Two pennies covered his eyes. In the middle of his forehead was a bullet hole.

Kat looked for, but couldn’t find, stitches in his lips or a gash at his neck. That mutilation, she realized with horror, had been reserved for Henry.

Nick clamped a hand over his mouth to keep from yelling. The pain was bad when he slid out of bed but manageable. Now, when he was forced to actually walk, it was excruciating.

He edged across the room, supporting himself with the metal pole his broken leg had hung from. His entire body silently screamed for him to stop. And his mouth would have screamed out loud if it wasn’t for his hand, which remained over his lips.

He finally removed his hand when he reached the door. Counting to three, he threw the door open. Harry-Gary stood a few feet away, his back turned. Nick didn’t waste a moment. He hobbled up to the nurse until he was right behind him.

“Harry?” he asked.

The nurse spun around, surprised.

“It’s Gary.”

“My mistake.”

While he spoke, Nick raised his right leg. His bones creaked inside the plaster cast. Pain spiked at the knee and shot through his entire body. Nick tried to ignore it. There’d be more pain to come in a second. Worse pain.

The cast was heavy, which made it hard to lift. But the pros outweighed the cons, especially when Nick slammed its weight into Gary’s groin.

Nick knew it hurt him more than it did Gary. But he was prepared for it. The nurse wasn’t, and the pain made him double over. Nick raised the cast again, striking Gary in the head. That was enough to knock him out for a little bit. Hopefully long enough for Nick to get out of that shithole they called a hospital.

Before doing that, Nick grabbed the pole. Still attached to it was the plastic sling, which he slipped over the nurse’s head until it was around his neck. Nick pushed the pole just inside the door, leaving the plastic band outside. When he closed the door, it held the sling in place, tightening it like a noose around Gary’s neck. Even if the nurse did wake up soon, he wouldn’t be able to move.

With Gary secured, Nick rifled through his pockets, finding a set of car keys.

“Thanks, Gary,” he said, patting him on the cheek. “I owe you a beer.”

Nick shuffled down the hall, exhilaration halving his pain. Determination dulled the rest. He needed to get to the exit at the end of the hall without anyone seeing him. After that, it was off to the parking lot, then the mill.

He hoped he wasn’t too late. He hoped that when he got there, Henry—and Kat herself—would still be alive.

Seeing the scalpel, Henry tried to scream behind his closed mouth. The vibration it created caused the pain to erupt once again across his lips, making him scream even more. Martin ignored the sound as he swiped the flat side of the scalpel across his scrubs, cleaning it.

He then placed it against the right side of Henry’s neck. Its razor-sharp blade scraped along his skin. Henry closed his eyes, waiting to feel it slice into his flesh.

That didn’t happen. Instead, Martin pulled the blade away.

“This is going to be tough on Deana,” he said. “I tried to warn you, Henry. I told you to stay away. But you didn’t, and now you’re going to break my sister’s heart.”

Martin pressed the scalpel to his neck again. This time it stayed there.

Henry cried out—a terrified whimper that rattled around
in his mouth. He attempted another scream, hoping the force of it would separate his lips. When that didn’t work, he tried opening his mouth. The jaws parted, straining against the thread coiled inside his lips. The thread tugged his skin—two dozen pinpoints of sheer agony.

Martin applied pressure to the scalpel. The blade began its descent into Henry’s flesh.

He opened his mouth wider, hoping he could part it enough to snap the thread that trembled inside his lips.

The scalpel broke through the barrier of Henry’s skin, sinking deeper into his neck. There was a flash of coldness as the blade entered his body. It was followed by a stomach-roiling tickle as Martin slid the scalpel down his neck, slicing it open.

Henry opened his mouth wider. The thread in his lips trembled like a plucked guitar string, the tension wearing it down, making it weak.

He closed his eyes. Summoning every ounce of energy left in his violated body, he screamed again.

Instead of breaking, the thread acted as its own scalpel, cutting through the rubbery flesh of his lips. It ripped through the bottom lip in a gush of blood and skin until his mouth parted.

The scream burst out, blasting into the open and echoing through the darkness. Meanwhile, blood gushed from his neck, spilling out of him in a crimson waterfall. It soaked the table and collected in puddles around his head and shoulders.

Henry grew dizzy. Whether it was from loss of blood or basic primal terror, he didn’t know. Weakness settled over his body. His vision clouded and his mind grew hazy. He could open his mouth again, but he knew that whatever words came out wouldn’t stop the inevitable. They wouldn’t clot the blood rushing from his neck.

“No,” he mumbled through lips that also bled. “No.”

Martin chastised him. “You shouldn’t have done that, Henry. It’ll only make it worse.”

He had released the scalpel and now held another tool. Henry strained to see what it was. When he did, he immediately regretted it.

It was a metal hook, which Martin placed next to Henry’s neck.

As blood still flowed out of the cut, Martin poked the hook into it. The feeling it produced was worse than the scalpel, worse than the needle and thread. It was an outright invasion of his body, causing Henry to shake violently as the hook dug around in his neck, searching for something to latch onto.

“I want the jugular vein first,” Martin said as he manipulated the hook. “I got that wrong the first time. But I think George still came out okay in the end.”

He increased the speed of his digging, the hook swiping blindly inside Henry’s neck. Each movement of it caused his head to jerk in a seizure of helplessness. He had no control over his body anymore. No control over anything. He was just a living cadaver, being raped by cold, hard steel.

When Martin snagged an artery, Henry felt it in his entire body. His head stopped twitching. His neck tightened. His throat constricted.

Martin tugged slightly and the artery tightened within Henry’s body. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t swallow. He tried, but his muscles were under attack, refusing to function. A croaking sound formed in the back of his throat, unable to be stopped. It gurgled up past his tongue and through his shredded lips.

“No,” he gasped.

As Martin continued to pull on the vein, Henry knew he
was going to die. His body was preparing for it, getting ready for the inevitable end. That’s what caused the twitching and the croaking. It was a rehearsal of the death rattle that was certain to come.

The vein was outside his body now. It exited with a slimy sucking noise that reminded Henry of earthworms in rain-soaked dirt.

Its exposure sent his body into shock. His heart, which had been pumping at warp speed for so long, suddenly slowed. His eyes went blank. Although Henry still had them open, he saw nothing but a cottony haze covering his pupils.

The croak burped out of his throat again, gradually extending itself until it was a guttural hiss.

His ears felt plugged. He barely heard Martin mumbling to himself.

“Now I cut the artery.”

Henry’s body revved up again in one last flash of energy before fading forever. His heart thrummed again. His hearing cleared. His eyes could suddenly see. He shifted them to Martin, who hovered over him. The hook was in his left hand. The scalpel was in his right. They were about to connect at his artery. When they did, he would be dead.

Martin took a deep breath as he placed the scalpel blade to his artery.

Henry understood with crystalline clarity that he had mere seconds left to try to save his life. Using his body, which was tied up and worn down, wasn’t possible. All he had were his wits—and his voice.

“No.”

When Henry spoke, he felt the artery moving through the gash in his neck. Each word made it bend like a plastic straw.

“Please. No.”

“I’m sorry,” Martin said. “I have to.”

“No, you don’t.”

The voice wasn’t Henry’s. It came from a darkened corner of the room. When it spoke again, Henry knew who it belonged to.

“You don’t have to do it, Martin,” Kat Campbell said. “You can stop this right now.”

Kat had followed the scream. That blast of noise, a bansheelike wail that cut through the darkness, led her to back into the hallway, down a precarious set of steps, and into the bowels of the mill. Rounding a corner, she saw Martin immediately.

His entire body was covered in the same type of scrubs she had worn in the embalming room. Gown. Apron. Gloves. Cap concealing the hair. Paper coverings over the shoes. It explained why they had never been able to lift a print or hair sample from anything he had contact with. There was nothing exposed that could have left any.

He stood in front of a table, blocking Kat’s view. To Martin’s right, she saw a pair of legs stretched out and tied up. Henry’s legs.

Martin held the scalpel in his right hand, guiding it toward an area of Henry’s body that Kat couldn’t see. That’s when she raised her Glock, pointed it at the back of Martin’s head and spoke.

When he didn’t move, Kat spoke again.

“I’m going to count to three. If you don’t put the scalpel down and back away, I’m going to kill you.”

She meant it. Arms outstretched, she felt the Glock heavy
in her grip. Her finger twitched against the trigger. She wasn’t a violent woman. Not by any means. But Martin’s actions had torn the town apart and haunted her dreams for months. He had gone after her son, and James would likely be scarred for the rest of his life because of it. So nothing would have pleased her more than to gun Martin down right then and there.

“One,” she said.

Martin raised his hands.

“Two.”

He placed the scalpel flat on the table.

“Three.”

He finally backed away, giving Kat a good look at Henry. Shirtless and bound to a plank of pine in four places, he was bleeding profusely but still alive.

With the gun still trained on Martin, she edged into the room.

“Keep your hands in the air and take ten steps away from him,” she said. “If you run, I will shoot you. If you take only nine steps, I will shoot you. Start moving.”

Martin moved backward while Kat counted his steps. For each one he took away from the table, she took one toward it. As she drew close to Henry, she saw that his neck had been sliced open. A wormlike vein stuck out of the wound. She reached the table and, without thinking, poked it back into his neck before clamping a hand over the gash. Blood squeezed between her fingers.

“You’re going to be okay,” she said, not knowing if that was the truth. “I’m going to get you out of here.”

Henry stared at her helplessly. There was gratefulness in his eyes. Panic, too. He knew it could be too late to save his life. He opened his mouth and Kat saw that his lips had been reduced to shreds of flesh. Thread slithered throughout the skin.