Into the Storm (46 page)

She took a deep breath, exhaled hard.

Another. And another.

She wished her phone still worked. Even just looking at Jenk’s text messages would’ve helped. She wasn’t afraid when he was around. Or maybe she was. Maybe, though, when she was with him she was just too busy living her life—enjoying her life—to notice just how frightened she was.

I cant fnd shltr. Get it?

Jenk couldn’t find shelter the same way Lindsey couldn’t leave Tracy. Not couldn’t—
wouldn’t.
She got it. She did. But it was too late to tell him so.

Okay, no. That was defeatist thinking. She would tell him. It wasn’t too late. She had tentative plans with him. For this coming weekend, and for Christmas. Tentative could become definite—all she had to do was tell him yes.

And she would—as soon as she saw him again.

God, Lindsey was tired of living as if she didn’t have a future. She wanted a life that was more than going to work and then hiding in her apartment. This was, of course, a hell of a time to realize that—while on the verge of having all of her choices taken from her in a very permanent way by a man who wanted to add her hair to his nasty-ass collection.

But maybe this was what she’d needed to get her life back on track. Serial killer therapy. Fifty minutes trapped in a house with Richard Eulie. If she survived with her scalp still attached, she’d emerge empowered with the knowledge of what truly was important in life.

Making Mark Jenkins laugh.

Smiling back at him.

Watching his eyes soften as he looked at her, when he thought she didn’t notice.

His kisses, so sweet, turning to fire…

No way was she going to let Eulie hurt her. And double no way would she let him hurt Mark.

She was not going to lose him—not to some killer. She may have lived in fear of her mother dying, helpless to prevent things over which she had no control.

But this was completely different.

She knew what Eulie wanted—to look into her eyes and see her fear as she died. It was possible he would shoot her, but he wouldn’t shoot to kill, only to wound.

Getting shot would hurt, but she’d been shot before.

She’d let him look into her eyes, all right.

Eulie wanted her in the living room? She’d go into that living room. She had to get this fire out, and then she had to find Tracy.

But first, she’d give this bastard more than he’d ever bargained for.

Number Five was halfway up the stairs—she was so dizzy, each step was a seemingly insurmountable challenge.

It was so dark, it would just be so easy to close her eyes.

“Keep going,” Tracy called. Assuming that really was Tracy’s voice and not some hallucination.

She was floating in that place where time and space warped and bent. There was a noise—a siren wailing. It got louder as she climbed. Danger. It was dangerous to come up these stairs. If he knew, if he found out…

Number Four was there with her, then, with her horrible face, with the whimpers of pain she made behind that mouth that was sewn shut.

“Oh Lord, oh Lord…”

“Beth?”

He’d shown her some of the others—what he’d done to them. But he’d done it after they were dead, after she’d killed them.

Five knew he’d shown them to her as a reminder. This was why she finished them. This was why she obeyed him, why she always did what he said.

“Beth, are you still there?”

Beth. Her name was Beth, not Number Five.

“I’m still here,” she called back, her fingers finally closing on the light switch on the wall by the door.

But when she flipped it, nothing happened. No light. No change.

No salvation.

Beth started to cry. She collapsed against the door—which creaked opened. And there she was. In his kitchen.

The stove was on, flames leaping and jumping.

This was where he’d done it—where he’d killed Number Four and cut up all the others.

And there was the key—right where he’d said it was, hanging on the wall, where he’d said she’d never reach it.

She grabbed it and stumbled back downstairs.

Dave’s world had narrowed to one step and then one more step and then another step. Each time, he jarred his broken wrist. An inhale. An exhale. He breathed through the pain.

And sometimes he managed it by talking to Decker.

“The next time you give me that
you’re not a Navy SEAL
scornful look, I want you to remember this. That I carried you. All this way. Without complaining. And a few months from now? When you and Sophia are making your wedding plans? I want you to remember who made you make that phone call. Because even though you may not have said the words, you dialed the phone. And she’s going to mention that you called her, while she’s sitting by your hospital bed, running her fingers through your hair, and you can say
Yeah, you know, funny, right before we hit that tree, I’d just pulled my head out of my ass and realized that I was, like, twelve months behind schedule to ask you out to dinner. That’s one of the biggest problems about having my head up my ass. It’s too dark to see my watch or a calendar. But what do you say? I know this great restaurant in Coronado. It’s right on the water…”

Dave stopped talking to Deck, not because Decker wasn’t listening, but because a giant truck with a snowplow had appeared in the road in front of them.

It rumbled to a stop, and the driver climbed down from the cab—and morphed into Sophia.

Great. Dave kept walking. He wasn’t certain that a symptom of hypothermia was hallucinating, but hallucinating in general was never a good sign.

“Dave!” Sophia followed him. “Come on—let’s get Decker into the truck. Lopez—he’s a medic—he’s heading toward the Thornton place—you know, where Gillman’s jacket made the computer blip?”

She was real.

Sophia was real, and she tried to help him with Decker—by grabbing Dave’s broken wrist.

Son
of a bitch. He went down into the snow, and she realized that he’d left out certain details when they’d spoken on the phone, after the accident.

She was tight-lipped as they got Decker into the truck, as she helped Dave in, too. Then she climbed behind the wheel, put the truck in gear.

“Any other injuries?” she asked, as the plow ground forward, as Dave tried to crawl inside the dashboard heater. “You know, besides your obviously broken nose?”

His nose was broken? He looked into the mirror on the flip side of the sun visor. Yep. Broken.

“No,” he said, shivering so hard he could barely speak. “I’m okay.”

She was terribly upset—the sight of Decker unconscious was pretty rattling—but she was driving this monster like a total pro.

“Deck’s going to be okay, too,” he reassured her. “He’s going to be just fine.”

Sophia just shook her head, glared at the snow, and drove.

Izzy added running through deep snow in a blizzard to his list of crappy ways to spend a December afternoon.

Christmas shopping at a mall where the parking garage was being renovated and was therefore inaccessible would have been more fun. Yeah, death threats from other drivers trying to cram into the remaining parking lot, fender benders as cars played chicken to gain a suddenly available slot, twenty solid minutes of gridlock while people double-parked, shouts of
Fuck you, asshole!
Way to spread the glad tidings and holiday cheer.

Yeah, that definitely sucked. But this was ten times worse.

Jenkins was determined to set a new world record for the most consecutive seven-minute miles through blizzard conditions. Izzy was winded and lagging, and
he
wanted to get to the Thornton house very badly.

And Jenkie was the one who was leading the way. He was breaking through the crust on the snow, making it that much easier for the rest of them to follow.

Lopez was muttering in Spanish.

Gillman had actually zipped up his jacket and put on a hat.

Yeah, it was freaking
frio,
all right.

Jenk turned and shouted something back at them.

“What the fuck did he say?” Izzy asked.

“I think he said halfway there,” Gillman repeated.

“We’re way more than halfway,” Izzy said. Weren’t they? Please God.

“I think he said he smelled smoke,” Lopez said. Although how he could have heard Jenk with his hood up was a mystery.

But then Izzy smelled it, too. It was definitely smoke. Damn, that couldn’t be good. A fire, in this weather?

Ahead of them, Jenk was running even faster—pointing at something just ahead.

Izzy manufactured a second wind, and as he rounded the corner, he saw what Jenk had spotted.

Less than a quarter mile down the hill, there it sat. The biggest fucking haunted house in the world, with smoke pouring out of a first-floor window.

Lindsey froze in the hallway, certain she’d heard a noise from the kitchen—a noise that wasn’t the freaking annoying smoke alarm.

Push it away. She pushed it away—the endless high-pitched squealing—and concentrated on moving soundlessly down the hall.

The living room was large and cluttered with furniture. Shadows jumped around the room from the burning draperies, and smoke curled, not just around the high ceiling, but lower, too, making it hard to breathe.

And hard to see, too. Not just for her, but for him.

A window was open across the room. Was she supposed to believe Eulie had left—maybe made his escape? What did she look like? The queen of wishful thinking?

Still, she went toward it, because he so obviously wanted her to.

It was then that she heard him. Behind her. She spun to face him—as he hit her again with that powerful stream of water.

It was different this time. She was being hit directly, instead of getting the splashback, and it pushed her off her feet.

Shit! She got off a shot—a wild one—as she hit the floor. The water smashed at her, and she couldn’t keep her head from smacking the sturdy leg of a heavy oak chair, and she actually saw stars.

Her weapon left her right hand, and he used the water to push it farther from her. She crawled toward it on her belly and elbows, but it skittered away.

He hit her again in the head—it was like taking a punch from a professional boxer—and she heard herself cry out, heard Eulie laugh.

She struggled to reach her handgun, and once again he smacked her with the water—
whap!
—right in the head.

He didn’t do it if she didn’t move. Lindsey looked at the weapon. It was too far away. She’d never reach it in time.

Eulie, however, was coming closer.

And closer.

He held the pressure hose and its heavy tank at the ready, in case she tried once again to go for her gun.

But Lindsey didn’t need to. She had her backup, her even smaller .22, already in her left hand.

He finally came into range, and she blasted him, right in the face, and he fell, the water tank clattering beside him on the floor.

She twisted onto her stomach, sealing the deal with two more bullets, sent directly into his head.

“Hey!”

She spun to face the hallway, weapon up and ready—to find herself staring through the swirling smoke, into the barrel of a submachine gun, held by the abominable snowman.

“Lindsey!” The snowman knew her name. He had ice on his hat, on his jacket, in his hair, on his eyebrows. And three other snowmen were right behind him.

“Ryan Seacrest,” Lindsey said as she lowered her weapon. “I knew you’d come.”

Jenk laughed—it was either that or cry. It was just like Lindsey—soaking wet, shivering, and looking as if she’d been dragged through hell—to make not just a joke, but one that referred to the phone conversation she’d had with him and Izzy the night they’d babysat for Charlie Paoletti. The night Oz had gotten free.

The night he’d fallen in love with Lindsey but was too stupid to know it.

It was also clear, just as she’d pointed out that night, that she really hadn’t needed a team of Navy SEALs to save her.

She done just fine by herself.

“Let’s get this fire out,” Jenk ordered Izzy, Gillman, and Lopez, who leaped into action, pulling down the flaming drapes, opening windows.

Weapon still at ready, Jenk went over to the body. Eulie was definitely dead.

Lindsey was back on her feet. She’d picked up some kind of tank and hose and was using it to spray the flames. “Is he wearing body armor?” she asked.

“He is,” Jenk reported, taking his jacket off, shaking the snow from it. “Gillman.”

“Where’s Tracy?” Izzy asked.

“I haven’t found her yet,” Lindsey said, as Gillman took the tank from her. “She might be in the basement.” Jenk wrapped his jacket around her and she looked at him. “Mark, I haven’t heard her since I came inside.”

“Where’s the basement?” Izzy demanded.

“I think there’s a door in the kitchen,” Lindsey told him, starting to show him the way.

But Jenk held onto her. “Let him go.”

“It’s down that hall,” she said. “And Iz?” He was already gone, so she raised her voice. “Brace yourself.”

Izzy took a deep breath and his flashlight from his pack, and went into the darkness of the kitchen.

Only to be lunged at by a crazy woman with a knife.

“Ow! Shit!” The blade was incredibly sharp. He’d cut his hand just blocking the blow. “What the fuck…?”

“Izzy?”

He turned on his flashlight. “Trace?”

She was alive. She was bruised and dirty and scraped up pretty badly, but sweet, sweet Jesus, she was alive.

“We need to get out of here,” she whispered urgently. “I need some help with Beth. There’s this awful man, and he’s—”

“Dead,” Izzy told her, so damn glad to see her in one piece that he nearly burst into tears like a great big baby. “His name was Dick Eulie. Did you hear those gunshots? That was Lindsey, just saying no. Don’t ever piss her off.” He realized what she said. “Who’s Beth?”

Tracy pointed and there, curled up on the floor, was a woman who looked like she’d been raised by wolves. “She was his prisoner, for I don’t know how long. She’s injured—she’s very ill—she needs a hospital. Plus, he drugged her, and—”