Got Thrills? A Boxed Set (A McCray Collection) (48 page)

“Lyla!” Carla shouted. “What are you doing?”

The knife handle was slick in Kent’s hand as Lyla glared at her mother.

“What I should have done four years ago,” she said, stepping beside Kent.

“How dare you!” Carla hissed.

“Okay,” Kent said before she could build up a head of steam. “I have dealt with some major whack jobs, but you, Carla? You take the cake.”

Carla stepped to her left, blocking the exit. “Enjoy yourself while you can.”

Kent positioned Lyla behind him, stepping to his right, keeping out of range, waiting for his moment. Like he said, he should have screwed getting evidence and just gotten Lyla out of this house while the getting was good. But now, now he needed to keep Carla distracted and that butcher knife away from the two of them.

“How could you hate your daughter so much that you not only killed her proxies but make Lyla believe she had done it?”

Carla sneered as she stepped to the left. “You try carrying a parasite in your body for nine months.”

Stepping to the right, Kent met her sneer and raised her. “But you had to carry the baby in order to land the Sutton heir, didn’t you?”

“Had I known it would ruin my racing career,” The woman’s face contorted with the memory. Her eyes shone brighter than the knife’s blade. The crazy eyes always did. “I never would have poked those holes in the condom.”

She looked at Lyla, not as her daughter, but as a source of contempt. Kent tried to shield the girl, but her mother’s words were sharp enough to probably slice through the walls.

“Then to have everyone ooh and aah over how beautiful she was, and how fast she could run?” Carla’s eyes narrowed, “She stole them. She stole every good part of me.”

“Good thing,” Kent said. “ ’Cause you certainly weren’t putting them to much use.”

Okay, that might have been rattling the cage again a bit too far, as Carla’s cheeks flushed and her knuckles went white against her knife’s handle.

Kent had to do something, and do it quickly. He only needed to move a few more feet over and he could get Lyla out of the tunnel. The desire wasn’t exactly altruistic. He really could use Nicole and her gun right about now. Where was the detective? You would have thought after their last little adventure that Nicole would have taken “Navigating Convoluted Tunnels 101.”

But Carla and that knife were his primary concerns right now.

“So that was when you decided to kill Lyla? Once she started sprinting?”

“No,” Carla chuckled. That laugh that serial killers get when you don’t have any idea of how deeply their psychosis goes. “It was an accident, really…”

Her eyes lost focus as they flicked up and to the left. Kent let her access her memories. The chemical shift within the brain slowed reflex time and he could use that window.

One more step to the right. One step closer to freedom.

“I was driving home and saw that blonde hair, swishing back and forth as she walked…” Carla said, her voice trailing off. Then her features sharpened. “How many times had I told her not to walk home alone?” She shouted at Lyla. “How many times?”

Kent could feel the girl cringe behind him. He gave her hand a squeeze. They would get through this. Preferably with all of their body parts intact. Although that was not a given.

Carla moved another step. “But would Daddy’s little girl get in trouble? Would she miss even a single dessert for disobeying me? So I got out of the car and followed her. I only meant to startle her, scare her, so that she knew why I had the rule.”

The woman stopped and reversed course. No, no, no.

“Then what happened?” Kent asked, trying to get her feet to stop moving in the wrong direction.

A smile, cold and soulless, formed on her lips. She bit down playfully. “I guess I was a little angrier than I thought, and hit her a little harder than I thought.”

“You mean you thought it was me?” Lyla stepped out from behind Kent. “You thought you hit me?”

But instead of any sympathy or kindness, Carla’s eyes crackled with a mischief unchecked by sanity. “And it felt good. So good.”

Kent willed her with his mind to step to the left. Just keep going to the left.

When her feet moved again, it was to the right. Kent had no choice but to move to the left, away from the exit.

“But it wasn’t Lyla you killed. It was Tara,” Kent said trying to string her along. Maybe she would work her way around to the other side if he just kept her talking.

Where in the hell was Nicole, anyway? Seriously?

“Yes, it was. I got rid of the body down in the basement,” Carla said, flipping the butcher knife around in her hands. “I thought, this is it. I might as well kill Lyla, too, so I put a Valium in her juice box and waited.”

Another step to the right. Keep going, bitch, just keep going.

“But once she was unconscious…”

“You loved me too much to kill me?” Lyla asked, hope so clear in her voice. Kent’s heart went out to the girl. Even now, she tried to believe the best of her mother. That somewhere inside that armored chest of hers beat a heart.

Kent knew better.

Carla’s snorting was her answer.

“No, your mom realized that if she killed you, it would be over.” He looked at Carla. “And you didn’t want it to be over, did you? You liked how it felt for all that red to cover up all that blonde.”

A savage smile upon her lips, Carla answered, “To just pound and pound and pound until I couldn’t pound anymore. It felt like I did on the track. So free.”

And so psychotic, but Kent didn’t add that. He’d learned his lesson.

But Lyla’s lip trembled and tears streaked her face. “Free? You’ve been killing and killing and keeping me a prisoner with this guilt.”

“I know,” Carla answered ever so matter-of-factly. “That was just an added bonus.”

Kent felt Lyla’s intent before her movement. He tried to reach out and grab her, but the girl screamed, running straight at her mother. While he couldn’t blame her, he did need to stop her.

Carla raised the butcher knife, preparing to end what she had started so long ago, but Kent flipped his knife, caught it by the point, and then flung it at Carla. The blade sailed over Lyla and struck her mother in the shoulder, just hard enough to spin the butcher knife away from her daughter.

Kent surged forward, grabbing Lyla around the waist, and then hurling her toward the tunnel.

“Run!” he yelled. Kent didn’t have time to see if she obeyed as he turned back to Carla, whose look of surprise gave way to fury.

She pulled his knife from her shoulder and came at him with both blades. Kent whipped off his coat and wrapped it around his hand. What protection it would give against German-hardened knives, he wasn’t sure, but it was all he had.

Hiding in that closet for four hours, Kent developed the sense that the perpetrator lived within that house. It had to be. The stalking was too intimate. The picking off friends one by one too specific. But was it the father? Or the driver? Or the mother? Kent couldn’t be sure. Next time he was taking the kid and just keep running. Let somebody else figure out which one.

Carla came at him with every bit of energy that her Olympics-trained legs could give her, the stainless steel glittering in the flickering light. His flashlight. It was tiny, but size didn’t always matter, right?

Dodging one knife, Kent let the flashlight slip from his fingers, catching it by the thin wristband. As the second knife sliced through the air, Kent slung the flashlight forward, smacking Carla right between the eyes.

That had to sting.

She stumbled a step, but Kent took every advantage of it to catch her arm and crank it back. Her muscles betrayed her and dropped the knife. Kent caught it in midair and brought it back to bear, but the bitch was fast.

The butcher knife blade glanced off his arm, slicing a little fillet of Kent off. German engineering, man. He held onto the knife though, coming back around as Carla lurched forward, knocking her forehead into his.

Either he was getting osteoporosis, or that chick had one thick skull as their bones cracked together and Kent stumbled backward. His vision blurred as he tried to keep his feet. Carla, however, raised the butcher knife overhead and swung downward with all her might. Kent braced for the pain. Braced for the blood loss. With any hope, there would be an ambulance close by.

But the blow never landed. Instead, Carla teetered to the side as her body shook from a blow from behind. The woman tipped forward to reveal Lyla, board in hand. She hit her mother again, knocking her to her knees.

Kent struggled to rise, fighting off double vision and rolling nausea. “Lyla, no!”

Lyla struck Carla again, the knives dropping harmlessly to the ground, but Lyla didn’t stop. She raised the board again and again.

Finally, he gained his feet, wrapping his arms around Lyla, keeping them at her side so she couldn’t swing again.

“Whoa, there, Lizzie Borden.”

Lyla fought to break free as her mother lay motionless at their feet. “But doesn’t she deserve it?” she asked, the whites of her eyes bloodshot, and her blonde hair matted against her head. “Doesn’t she?”

“Of course she does,” Kent answered. “But do you?”

Lyla looked into his eyes. He knew that line she wanted to cross. He also knew what it felt like to have to live on the other side of it.

He let go of her and backed away an unsteady step. “It is your call.”

The girl held the board like a bat, gripping the raw wood as if it weren’t depositing a thousand splinters in her hand. She gazed defiantly, almost daring him to go back on his word. When he didn’t, a shudder passed through her body, and the board pitched out of her hand.

“Kent!” Nicole yelled as she ran into the tunnel. “Carla’s the killer!”

Lyla looked at Kent as Kent looked at Lyla, and they both chuckled.

“Um, yeah,” Kent said as he put pressure on his arm wound. “We kind of figured that out.”

Nicole knelt down to check Carla’s pulse. She was still alive. Others poured out of the passageway. Uniformed cops, EMTs, and Kent even thought he spotted a firefighter in there. Where were they two minutes ago? He could have at least used the ax.

His partner tried to herd Lyla away. “Come on, hon.”

But the girl turned back, hugging Kent, burying his face in her chest. He smoothed her sweaty hair, careful not to drip blood onto it as he guided her to the exit.

Nicole raised an eyebrow.

“What?” Kent asked. “I told you I was great with kids.”

# # # #

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.

Dark Lullaby

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

FIRST EDITION

Copyright 2012 by Carolyn McCray

All rights reserved

Kindle Edition

Cover art by:

Amalia Iuliana Chitulescu

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

The Rush

* * *

Chapter 1

The Rush

The silver Mercedes taxi came out of nowhere and almost ran Mia over, jolting her out of her thoughts. Literally. As she slammed a hand onto the offending car hood, her hand got zapped. The latest in hover car technology. They could now protect themselves from “abuse.” Right. Just a new way for taxis to be even more obnoxious. The driver just smiled as she shook out the sting. No use in getting upset. By the time she could think of a comeback, the driver was long gone, merging into the second tier of traffic, and even if he wasn’t, he was French. Very little chance he would take anything an American said seriously. Ah, Paris.

Mia was crossing the Quai des Tuileries, coming from the river Seine on the Pont Royal, headed toward the Musée du Louvre—arguably the most famous museum in the world. Also one of the few that had not kicked Mia out and politely asked her never to return.

She tossed a glance behind her, feeling as though eyes were on her back. It was a stupid instinct, of course. She was just a Ph.D. student, who the heck would be following her? Well, with what she had in her purse, fellow scientists might want to; however, most of them were more accustomed to white lab coats instead of trench coats. Even so, Mia hurried toward the Porte des Liones entrance situated along the far southwest corner of the museum.

Clasping her jade scorpion necklace to keep it from bouncing, Mia crossed the remainder of the street with a bit more caution, dancing between mothers with strollers, clearly on a play date missions, and the subdermal tattooed beatsters. She hadn’t had a chance to really use her martial arts training given her hectic schedule, so Mia took time to enjoy the solo sport of crowd dodging. Funny to think she’d originally fought her parents tooth and nail on going to the dojo, but they’d insisted; if she wished to… gasp… live abroad, she needed to know how to protect herself. Now she couldn’t imagine life without what her sensei called “thoughtful strength.”