Got Thrills? A Boxed Set (A McCray Collection) (26 page)

“Tsk, tsk, tsk,” Evan chided. “Guess all the men in your life leave you, Cec. Too bad.”

“Not me, you sophomoric freak.”

Evan looked Michael up and down. “You don’t count. You can’t even stand up on your own, let alone run away. But, give you time….”

Cecilia felt light-headed, and not in the good way. Fear had overrun her. All the running and crying and trying to stay alive had sapped her soul.

Tears streamed down her face. “Just get this over with, will you?”

“Oh, not so fast, my dear,” Evan cooed, as he stepped closer. “I have a nice little cave picked out for you so that I can take the next three days to really enjoy myself.”

Cecilia knew that Evan meant each and every word. That if he got ahold of her, she too would become an unwilling martyr. She didn’t want to be mourned. She wanted to live. Michael tensed beside her. He too must have known that the end was near.

“Never!” he said, as he charged forward.

Evan easily evaded Michael’s unsteady attack and stabbed him through the belly. Michael stumbled back to Cecilia, the sword sticking through his side. “Okay, that
really
hurt.”

Was it the way Evan laughed, the warm blood on her hands, or God himself who gave Cecilia the strength to strike out? With all the fury she had bundled inside of her, at her mother, at even her father, Cecilia backhanded Evan.

The boy’s head snapped around as he went sprawling backward. She looked down on Evan, shaking, not believing what she had done.

“Take the sword,” Michael urged.

“I can’t!”

Michael grabbed her hands and put them around the hilt. “You can.”

As Evan rose, wiping the blood from the side of his mouth, Cecilia closed her eyes and pulled. The blade slid out from Michael’s body as if it were butter. Michael crumpled to the ground. Dear God, was he even still alive?

Evan tackled her from the side before she could check. Cecilia elbowed him in the side, but he grabbed for the sword. They rolled down the hill until they splashed into a gulley. Cecilia scrambled up, holding the sword with both hands as Evan taunted her.

“Cecilia, you know that you want your death to be a masterpiece.”

“You know what?” Cecilia said, digging her heel into the dirt. “I am getting really tired of boys telling me what
I
want.”

Pushing off her back leg, she lunged forward as hard as she could. Evan tried to evade her, but he slipped in the puddle. He looked so surprised when the sword went straight into his belly. All the way to the hilt.

They stood there for a moment, nose to nose. Her fingers trembled on the handle, but Cecilia did not let go.

Then Evan smiled. “If I die, you die with me.”

He lashed out and latched his fingers around her neck. He squeezed until she couldn’t breathe. Choking, Cecilia shoved the sword in deeper but Evan just laughed, as if the pain delighted him. Cecilia let go of the sword and clawed at his hands, but they were like a vise. A crazed, high, demented vise.

The world pulsed before her. Then, like a shade being drawn, her vision blurred at the edges, until she could only see a pinpoint before her.

Evan whispered into her ear, “I always win, bitch.”

Then a shot rang out, and blood spattered from Evan’s forehead. His finger gripped tighter for a fleeting moment, then went slack. Cecilia shoved him off of her as she slumped to the ground.

As Cecilia wheezed in air, Michael crawled toward her, but Jeremy was the first one at her side.

“Cec!” he cried dropping to his knees. “Are you okay?”

“I thought you’d… I thought…” she tried to croak out.

I’d leave you in the lurch? No way! I knew we needed some firepower.”

Paxton walked up, but stopped to nudge Evan with his foot.

“Is he dead?” Cecilia asked.

“Will be,” her uncle answered. Then he shot Evan in the head.

“Um…” Jeremy said. “Not that I am complaining, but isn’t that going to be difficult to explain to your supervisors?”

But her uncle only shrugged. “Like I care right now.”

Cecilia didn’t care either as she hugged Michael, Jeremy, and then Paxton as he joined them. Cecilia was going to keep hugging them until she finally felt warm again.

CHAPTER 12

All Hallow’s Eve

The rain was finally letting up as the EMTs loaded Michael onto the gurney. The ambulance met them on the dock. It had taken Paxton firing off about a dozen red emergency flares that they found in the boathouse, but the yacht finally came back for them.

White, yellow, red, and blue lights greeted them as they docked. Now, when they probably needed them the least, everyone showed up for the party.

Cecilia couldn’t complain, though. She liked having several dozen people swarming around. She squeezed Michael’s hand as they rolled him toward the waiting ambulance.

“All right, Miss. This is as far as you can go,” the EMT said.

Cecilia turned to her uncle. “Please? Can’t I go with him?”

But Paxton put his hand on her shoulder. “They’ll take good care of him, Cec.”

Michael squeezed her hand back. “Go. I’m going to be tied up for a while. You know, surgery and all.”

“Oh, Michael,” Cecilia nearly sobbed. “I—”

But he put his finger to her lips. “A kiss is all I ask for.”

Cecilia brushed his face with the back of her hand as she leaned over. Their lips, his cool, hers warm, met. She didn’t even mind the tickling of his goatee. She pulled back a bit.

“Don’t leave me.”

He kissed her again, and then whispered, “I didn’t back there. I won’t, ever.”

She wanted to press her lips his again, but the EMT rolled him away. Paxton pulled her back. “They say he’s going to be okay. Just, you know, a couple hundred stitches richer.”

Cecilia allowed her uncle’s arms to enclose her as she leaned against him. She had never thought of Paxton as her rock, but right now he was. Cecilia watched as hundreds of teens and their parents were reunited. Cries of joy mingled with cries of sorrow, as sad parents searched the crowd for their children—in vain.

So many had lost so much. But as Jeremy rushed forward to join in the embrace, Cecilia realized she had gained so much as well.

* * *

Paxton fished the key from his pocket and opened the front door. He wasn’t quite sure what kind of reception Susan was going to give him, but he didn’t care. Paxton let Cecilia and Jeremy in first, and then gently closed the door behind them. They all walked into the kitchen to find Susan pouring herself a drink.

“Where have you been?” she slurred. “I’ve been worried sick about you!”

“For what?” Jeremy countered. “The whole ten minutes you’ve been conscious?”

“Jeremy!” Paxton barked. “I’ll handle this.”

Susan went to stand, but nearly spilled the whole bottle of wine. Cecilia rushed over to her mother.

“Jeremy, don’t make this any harder—”

“Oh, no!” Jeremy stated. “Not after everything we’ve just been through! I can’t take this—”

“You won’t have to,” Paxton stated firmly. He guided Cecilia away from her mother, and then herded both kids toward the staircase. “You two go to bed. I’ve got this.”

“Uncle Pax, you don’t understand,” Cecilia said. “She’s going to need—”

But Paxton cut her off. “I know what she needs.”

Did he ever. The kids didn’t know it, but he had grown up in far worse circumstances. Both he and Susan had. He knew all too well what an unreformed drunk needed. “Now. Go. To. Bed.”

They both looked at him as though he were crazy. “Scram!” he added, sending them scurrying up the stairs.

Paxton turned to his sister, who was still trying to pour that glass of wine. He took the bottle away from her.

“Give me that!” she slurred, but Paxton set the bottle on the counter and sat down next to his sister.

“Susan, we need to talk.”

His sister snorted. “I don’t need any of your sanctimonious lectures, Pax.”

“You are right. You don’t. So I am just going to tell you how it is going to be. Either I move in here, or the kids move in with me.”

And the possibly half-starved cockatiel, but he would cross that bridge when he came to it.

“So we are in our knight-in-shining-armor mode,” Susan sneered. “I am sure it will pass by the morning.”

Paxton took his sister’s hand. “I’m not joking, Susan. You are going to get some help, and I am taking charge of the kids.”

She snatched her hand back. “You don’t have the right.”

He leaned back in the kitchen chair. “You don’t think that, as a detective, that I can’t get temporary custody of the kids? If you do, then you are drunker than I thought.”

Tears sprang to his sister’s eyes. “I’m as bad as Dad, aren’t I?”

“No,” Paxton answered. “No, Susan, but you are pretty messed up, and those kids deserve better. From both of us.”

He got up as Susan sobbed, and held her. Paxton was as much to blame as Susan. He had seen her teeter after her husband’s death. He had seen the signs, but he pulled back into himself. A part of him refused to live that life again.

Paxton knew that none of this was going to be easy—for any of them. He had seen their father try to give up the bottle more times than he could count. But after the island?

Nothing seemed quite so daunting anymore.

* * *

Cecilia put her arm around her brother as they sat just out of sight on the stairs.

“You know what?” she asked Jeremy.

“What?”

“I think we are going to be okay.”

Her brother hugged her back. “Maybe, but not until I dump everything Dahmer in my life!”

They both jumped up and ran into his room. The Dahmer shrine took on a whole new creepy level. It felt so very good to tear down all those stupid posters and stomp on the CDs.

Nearly frenzied, she and Jeremy purged the room of anything black and sinister. Finally, they stood in a barely recognizable room. The walls were a light blue, except, of course, where the paint stuck to the tape, revealing white underneath.

“So? How are you going to decorate now?” Cecilia asked her brother.

“I was thinking about old-school Pokemon.” Jeremy said, and then he tilted his head. “And I’m gonna start listening to the Carpenters.”

“You
and
me, Jeremy,” Cecilia agreed. “You and me both.”

# # # #

Copyright

This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, places, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

All Hallow’s Eve

An
Off Our Meds Project
/published by arrangement with the author

FIRST EDITION

Copyright 2011 by Carolyn McCray

All rights reserved

Kindle Edition

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Any inquiries can be made to:

3524 South Star Lake Rd

Auburn, WA 98001

Email

Rook

* * *

PROLOGUE

Location: Congo Region, Africa

General Samuel Houghlin watched out of the helicopter’s window as the craft bobbed and weaved, trying to stay out of the heated firefight below. The force of the helo’s blades allowed brief glimpses of the battle and bent double the leaves of the jungle’s trees. The army’s dark green uniforms and the guerrillas’ camouflage blended in with the tangled vegetation. Only the bright red smears of blood made it possible to see which way the fight was tipping.

Not their way, that was for sure.

Houghlin remembered an old sergeant’s warning when he took command here years ago. “Africa is a harsh mistress.”

How right the grizzled old man’s predictions were. Sympathies within the local governments were about as fickle as the governments themselves. With each coup, citizens got a whole new set of would-be dictators, or worse, the politicians calling themselves “reformers.”

Which was exactly how they landed in this incredibly untenable position. A rebel had declared himself king—and had enough fighters to put that claim to the test. Somehow, his forces had swept nearly fifty miles to the west within days, as the army proved ineffective to stop him. And that put this horrific fight just steps from an American archaeological dig.

Houghlin had no real authority here. He was an advisor only. With two Somalian pirate hostage situations off the coast and rioting in Cape Town, the soonest an American extraction team could get here was in forty-eight hours.

He had strongly urged the government to send a squad to extract the archaeologist, but it looked like Houghlin had just sealed these soldiers’ fates. The rebels had taken this evacuation mission as some sort of recon force and had dealt them a swift blow.

“Sir, we have got to pull out,” Emmeret, his assistant, stated as a bullet pinged off the helo’s metal rotor. “We just have to hope the team can stay holed up until reinforcements arrive.”