Double Cross (32 page)
“C’mon, Mom, you’re not buying this, are you? The only reason they didn’t kill you as soon as they got you in the door was that they were trying to figure out what to do after I got loose! This is no time to lose your focus. It’s kind of important.”
She walked over to Stanley and handed him the throw pillow. Then she stayed there, standing beside his chair. “You always take that condescending tone with me, and I don’t appreciate it. I’m not crazy.”
She had picked one heck of a strange time to air the sort of mother-daughter grievance that would typically be hashed out while sitting cross-legged on a canopy bed. Even so, while absurd, the situation still screamed for diplomacy. I leaned forward with my elbows on my knees and softened my voice. “I know you’re not crazy. You’re my mother and I love you. It upsets me to see your husband—the only criminal in the room, by the way—trying to manipulate you. Can’t you see what he’s doing?”
Stanley put his hand on her arm. She pulled it away, which gave me hope. “We’ve got a home, Hillary, whether we have to move or not. And I want you to be there with me. That’s all I’ve ever wanted.” He was pressing precisely the right button and he knew it. “Don’t you wonder how I knew you would be here?”
An excellent question, which in the surprise of the moment hadn’t occurred to me.
“The microchip in your shoulder. Do you remember? I put it there so I would never lose you. I knew where you were tonight. Every minute you were gone I knew exactly where to find you, so I could bring you home. I’ll always bring you home.”
He was seducing her into a sort of hearth-and-home ether. If I allowed him to get her there, she might float blissfully for a long, long time. I had to nudge things back toward earth.
“Instead of thinking about the microchip in your shoulder, Mom, why don’t you feel the bump on your head? They knocked you out and threw you in the trunk of a car.” I pointed at Stanley. “And he hired them to do it.”
She narrowed her eyebrows and touched the back of her head. She took a step away from him. Maybe the rational side of her brain had not totally shut down.
Stanley pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped his forehead. “I hate to say this, Hil, but I think Taylor doesn’t want you to be happy.”
I wasn’t about to let him steal my momentum. I clasped my hands in front of me. “Listen, Mom, even if you believed he told them not to hurt you, you know for a fact that he hired someone to kill me. And what about Elise Hovden? He killed her, too. Didn’t you, Stan?”
Bringing Elise into the conversation turned out to be a tactical mistake. He stood up. “Okay, that’s enough! I’m about to solve my problem.” He took the throw pillow and wrapped it around the stubby barrel of the revolver, and for the first time I understood why he wanted it in the first place. The neighbors weren’t going to hear a thing.
He took a step forward.
Mom frowned. “What are you doing?”
He held the pillow tightly to the barrel and pointed the gun at my face. “It’s not quite as effective as a silencer, but it should be adequate to preserve the neighbors’ sleep.”
“Stanley, no!” Mom stepped toward us.
I had just locked my fingers around the arms of my chair when another voice came from the hallway next to the kitchen: “Don’t move!”
Our heads turned in unison. Kacey was standing next to the breakfast bar, her target pistol grasped in both hands and leveled at Stanley’s chest.
The muscles in my shoulders relaxed. I’d shot with Kacey enough to know that if Stanley moved, he was dead.
And Stanley did move. He spun and pointed his gun at Kacey. Before he could fire, she squeezed off a shot. I waited for him to drop.
But he didn’t.
He fired his revolver. Kacey dove behind the breakfast bar that separated the family room from the kitchen. Something clattered against the tile, and her pistol slid from behind the breakfast bar and banged against the baseboard under the picture window.
Stanley whirled and pointed his revolver at me. Sweat rolled down his cheeks. His eyes were wild, frantic. He edged backward toward the breakfast bar, his eyes moving back and forth between me and the gun on the floor. If Kacey crawled out from behind the breakfast bar to get it, he would kill her. If she didn’t get it, when he reached the other side of the breakfast bar, she would have no chance. He would execute her at point-blank range.
Mom, who was closer to the breakfast bar than Stanley, took a sideways step in that direction. Stanley pointed his gun at her. “Stay where you are, Hillary, or I’ll kill you, too.”
She froze.
He continued to ease across the room, moving his gun back and forth between the breakfast bar and me. He had already moved around the couch and end table, putting them between him and me.
Kacey was moments from dying. I forced myself to think. There was no time to zigzag; no time to make myself a difficult target. I would have to go in straight and low and fast. Maybe he would miss. After all, Kacey had just shown that shooting a human being is more difficult than hitting a target.
I was too experienced to kid myself. In all likelihood, in a few seconds I would be dead. But Kacey was back there alone, and she was ten times more worthy of life than I was. I glanced down at my mangled dress and cut-up feet. So, this was how I would die—filthy and cut up and charging across a North Dallas family room to try to save Kacey Mason. I smiled.
Simon was right. God did love me.
I put a hand on each armrest and flexed my knees. One final time I looked at Mom. She met my eyes. I could see she understood. I rocked back for leverage. Adrenaline surged into my chest and shoulders. As I hurled my body forward, Mom threw her arms in the air and screamed. It was precisely the diversion I needed. Stanley’s head jerked in her direction.
I covered the ten feet to the couch in three steps and drove my shoulder into the end table, like a football player hitting a tackling dummy. It hurtled toward Stanley’s legs.
The plan was good, but the distance was simply too great. Stanley spun and pointed the gun at my face. I dove to the side of the end table and reached for his ankles.
The gunshot exploded in my ear. Something slammed into the side of my head. As my body rolled sideways toward the baseboard, I wanted nothing more than to curl into a ball and go to sleep.
CHAPTER
THIRTY-SIX
WHEN I WOKE, DAD was bending over me, his dark eyes narrowed. “Taylor, are you all right?”
I was so happy to see him that I wanted to shout, but I couldn’t speak. I reached up to touch his face. But then it wasn’t Dad, it was Simon, and he grasped my arms in his hands and pulled me toward him. He held me close, in the way that I had fantasized about so often when he was alive.
I relaxed so totally, trusted Simon so completely, that my body became limp in his arms. He ran his hand over my cheek, and he looked into my eyes, and for the first time in my life I knew that I was worth something. For the first time in my life, I was good enough.
I wanted to shout. I had waited so long, tried so hard, just to be good enough. If this was heaven, I never wanted to leave.
What had I done to change things? I remembered Stanley, and the revolver, and Kacey. Had she lived? I had to know. I was here with Simon, and I wanted to stay, but Kacey was my sister—yes, she was my little sister—and I had to know. It was the most important thing—because I loved her more than I loved myself.
And I knew that I had found the secret.
CHAPTER
THIRTY-SEVEN
I OPENED MY EYES, and I was being held, but by Michael Harrison, not Simon. He had one hand behind my head. Just beyond him, staring down at me, was Kacey. Behind her was Mom.
My eyes moved right past Michael to Kacey. “You’re all right? Thank God.”
“And, thank Michael,” she said.
I turned my eyes back to Michael. The expression on his face was Dad’s expression, the concerned one. I had never focused before on how kind Michael’s eyes were. Perhaps I’d been looking past him too long.
“You look great,” he said. “Going out?”
I smiled. “You don’t look bad yourself. What happened?”
Michael nodded toward the breakfast bar. Stanley was sitting propped against it with his eyes closed and his hand over his side. His chest rose and fell in short, labored bursts. Beneath his fingers a wet circle seeped through his black shirt.
“Will he make it?” I said.
“He was lucky. After what he tried to do to you, I was aiming for his head. Sorry about your window.” I looked over my shoulder at a bullet hole surrounded by a spider web of cracks in the glass.
A pain near my eye snapped my head straight. I touched the spot. Something oozed between my fingers. “Shot again,” I said disgustedly.
Michael laughed. “Not this time. You tackled the corner of the end table with your forehead.”
“Michael saved us all.” Kacey’s face reddened. “I forgot to turn on the house alarm when I came home. Then I missed the shot. I don’t know how.”
I smiled again. “It’s okay. I’m glad you missed. You don’t need that weight on your life.” I lost the smile. “We’ll talk about the alarm later.”
I pushed myself up to sit. Michael kept my head cradled in his hand, and I was happy that it was there. It made me feel safe. I needed to feel safe for a while. “How did you know we’d be here?” I said.
He shrugged. “I didn’t. For some reason I thought I should come by and check on Kacey before I headed to Southlake. I saw the strange car in the driveway and then the blood on the pavement.”
I looked down at my feet. They were a mess. “I went for a jog.”
“Yeah, I can’t wait to hear about it. Anyway, I took a look around back and saw you through the windows.”
I frowned at Kacey. “You weren’t even supposed to be here. Don’t you ever study?”
She turned a palm up. “Some of the girls were finished with finals. They were loud, and it was hard to sleep at the sorority house.” She smiled. “Easier than here, though.”
Mom had not said a word. I looked at Stanley, then over at her. “I’m sorry, Mom.”
“You’ve not got a thing to be sorry about. You were right about Stan the man.” She scowled at him. “No worries, though. There are plenty of other fish in the sea.” She reached up and straightened her hair.
Despite her effort at nonchalance, I saw the fear in her eyes.
“You don’t have to worry, Mom. I won’t leave you.”
She squinted and turned her head away. When she turned back, her eyes were red. “You came back for me.”
I supposed that was her way of saying thank you, that something in the painful web of her past made her incapable of saying it directly. It was close enough. Pressure grew behind my eyes, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to choke it back. I blinked twice.
“Here it comes,” Michael said. “It was just a matter of time.” He dabbed at my eyes with the sleeve of his shirt.
I jabbed him in the side. “We’ve had a heck of a night.”
“It was a real fright,” Mom said.
Michael and Kacey turned to look at her.
Mom smiled sheepishly. “It rhy—”
I waved a hand in the air. “We know, Mom.”
CHAPTER
THIRTY-EIGHT
DUST ROSE IN A rust-colored cloud behind my rental car and hung there, suspended, as if debating whether to fight its way higher or give itself up to the inevitable fall. In an instant, a chilly West Texas wind made the choice for it, scattering it to the side of the road next to the campsite. I turned my eyes from the mirror and switched off the ignition. My heart pounded. I fought the urge to wheel the car around and drive straight back to the Lubbock airport.
I turned to Mom. “We’re here.”
She rolled down her window and inhaled. “The air is clean, isn’t it?”
She couldn’t have been more wrong. It was a filthy place. Not literally, of course, but in my mind it would always be the dirtiest place on earth. The spot where my life changed forever.
I opened the door and swung out my feet. My boots crunched in dry weeds and gravel.
Doesn’t it ever rain in this place?
I walked around the front of the car and waited for her.
Doesn’t it ever rain in this place?
I walked around the front of the car and waited for her.
“This way.” I headed down the rocky path to the circular clearing that served as the campsite. The fire pit in the middle, the precisely cut logs configured around it like dining room chairs—nothing had changed.
I walked to the back of the campsite, to the edge of the path that led down between piano-sized boulders to the lake where Dad and I had washed off after the long drive from Dallas. He warned me about rattlers, and there had been snakes—only they’d walked on two feet and carried shotguns.
Mom stood near the fire pit and pulled the collar of her ski jacket tight around her neck. “It’s cold up here. Nothing to block the wind.”
“I’ll build a fire.”
Other books
The Death of Bees by Lisa O'Donnell
The White Raven by Robert Low
Put Me Back Together by Lola Rooney
Draggah by Toby Neighbors
William Jarvis - Sky Valley 04 - Murderous Coffee Crumble by William Jarvis
Unknown by Unknown
Devil's Consort by Anne O'Brien
The Giant-Slayer by Iain Lawrence
Magic Below Stairs by Caroline Stevermer
The Fever Code by James Dashner