Paradise County (48 page)
Oh, God, please don’t let him die, Neely prayed as she lay there shivering in the dark. But other than praying, there was nothing more she could think of to do.
Except wait for the monster to come back.
“Daddy,” she whimpered aloud. But this time there was no reply.
A
h, well, the predator thought. Things did not always go according to plan. But a little spontaneity was not necessarily a bad thing. It helped to keep life interesting.
So Cornelia was a fighter, was she? He mused as he drove along U.S. 60 in the bright light of a brand-new day, heading for his place of business. Pushed him out of the cell, locked the door with her chain—enterprising. Very enterprising. He had to give her that.
It actually made his opinion of her rise.
Taking her had been so easy—big surprised eyes staring at him from the top of the stairs, a grab of her wrist, a zap of the taser—that he had not expected her to put up a fight.
Expectations were a stumbling block on the road to success, he told himself. Expectations had fouled him up before. Charles Haywood—now, there was another case where his expectations and the reality of events had not meshed. And see what had happened? Haywood had ended up dead, thus bringing his daughters to Whistledown, thus leading to Cornelia in the cell.
And Eli, too. He was sorry about Eli, actually. If the boy had not come inside looking for Cornelia just as he’d been lugging her into the
kitchen, he would never have thought of taking him. He’d been fast, too, Eli had, turning and running out the back door and jumping into his truck. Good thing he had had his Glock on him as well as his taser. He’d had to shoot the boy through the windshield. What a mess. Glass everywhere, the boy bleeding and no doubt in pain.
He’d meant to put the boy out of his misery last night, right after he’d finished with Cassandra. She’d cried when he’d chained her to the wall, knowing what was coming. He had some wonderful pictures of that—and of the flames licking up her body to blaze around her face just before she died. She had screamed, as they all did.
If only he could exhibit his photographs, he was sure he’d win some major prize.
Death’s Heads, he could call them. Or something like that.
He’d meant to do Eli next. After finishing with Cassandra, he had been so hungry for new flesh, for fresh flesh, that he had decided to try Cornelia out first, to make her his. Then he had expected to clean up the mess that was Cassandra, and hang Eli up on the wall in her place.
Expectations again. Never have them, he warned himself.
He had nothing against the boy, no desire to harm him, and Joe was actually a pretty good guy.
It would take him a while to get over the loss of his son, but he would eventually get over it. A person could get over anything, he was firmly convinced.
Take himself as a case in point. His father took off before he was born. His mother, Jean—he could still remember her long blond hair; as a little kid he had liked to feel the soft, silken strands with his pudgy little hands—pretty Jean, who had been so sad, all the time, that she had eventually killed herself, and tried to kill him, by setting the house on fire as he slept.
He had awakened in time to run screaming from the inferno, his pajamas ablaze. Arriving firefighters had had to chase him. By the time they’d caught him, rolling him on the ground to put out the flames, he’d had third-degree burns over ninety percent of his body.
The only part that had been spared was his head and face.
Now,
that
was a trauma. He was sure anyone would agree. But he had recovered, and gone on to live a productive life.
Well, maybe he still had a few
issues,
as Sally Jessy would say.
But he was working them out.
The thought made him giggle.
All in all, he thought, smiling, it was shaping up to be a pretty good day.
Cornelia had confounded his expectations last night.
Tonight, he would confound hers.
She had wound a chain around the door, locked it in place, and contrived to get hold of the key.
Smart little girl. Resourceful little girl.
But not smart and resourceful enough.
He had a spare key.
T
hey were missing. Neely and Eli. It was almost midnight before Joe accepted that. Alex had arrived at that conclusion several hours earlier. But then, Neely had run away before.
“Eli wouldn’t just run away,” Joe was still insisting after he’d talked to his friend Tommy and filed a missing-persons report with the police and called every single person Eli knew and driven over miles of road to see if his son might possibly have had an accident. “It’s just not something he would do.”
Alex looked at him. They were in his living room. She, dressed in a white sweater and tan corduroy pants, her hair pulled back in a sleek ponytail at her nape, was curled up on the shabby tweed couch and he, in jeans and a plaid flannel shirt, was standing in front of her. Josh and Jenny, both wide-eyed at the commotion and upset at the absence of their brother, had been sent protesting to bed at eleven. Cary, who was almost as upset as Joe, had gone home just a few minutes before.
Alex was spending the night at Joe’s house by mutual agreement. Ostensibly, he was going to sleep on the couch and she was going to sleep in his bed. It had been his suggestion: he didn’t want her to spend the night at Whistledown alone, and she didn’t want to, either. Number
one, she didn’t want to leave him under the circumstances. And number two, there was something about that house… .
Bad things happened at that house. Alex remembered the breathing, the sense she always had that she wasn’t alone, the figure on the porch. Her father had died there; Neely had gone missing.
She shivered.
“I know, I know,” he said dispiritedly, crossing the room to push the closed front drapes aside and look out the window into the silent black night. “I didn’t think he’d smoke pot, either. God, if he’s not lying in a ditch somewhere, or otherwise incapacitated, I am going to kill him for putting me through this.”
Alex stood up and walked over to him, sliding her arms around his waist and resting her cheek against his back in wordless comfort.
“Why
would he run away? That’s what I don’t understand. Yes, he was in bad trouble with me and he knew it. But he’s not afraid of me. I swear he’s not afraid of me. I’ve never lifted a hand to the kid in my life. He wouldn’t be afraid to come home.”
“Joe.” Alex felt so sorry for him. He was going through hell, and it was obvious. She, on the other hand, was long inured to Neely’s antics. It wasn’t a stretch for her to picture Neely running away. Neely ran away from school or somewhere on the average of twice a year. “That friend of Neely’s—Cinda Hawkins, remember—and her boyfriend gave them a ride from the pep rally to the school. Eli’s truck is nowhere to be found. Neely was in trouble too. I was threatening to send her back to boarding school, remember; I’m sure Neely talked him into running away.”
She could practically hear Joe grind his teeth. “Your sister is a menace.”
She pressed her lips into his back. “I’m sorry. We’ve caused you so much trouble. I bet you wish you never saw a Haywood in your life.”
“No,” Joe said, turning around to cup her face with both hands and look down into her eyes, “I don’t exactly wish that.”
Then he bent his head and kissed her.
N
eely.” It was her father’s voice again, rousing her from an uneasy sleep. Since she’d been dreaming about him, hearing his voice wasn’t a surprise. In fact, it made her feel warm, it made her feel loved.
“Daddy?” She opened her eyes. It was dark, and she wasn’t alone. There was someone beside her—a body, faintly warm, that she couldn’t see. Where was she?
Oh God. Memory came rushing in.
“Neely. He’ll be coming back.”
“Daddy? Where are you?” She sat up, looking around in the dark. She
wasn’t
just imagining his voice. She was hearing it, she knew she was. The green dots were there again, as luminous as before, seeming to look at her. Reaching for the flashlight, fumbling, Neely found it, aimed, and turned it on.
Hannibal was staring at her through the bars, tail twitching.
“Hannibal. Oh, Hannibal!” The sight of the cat brought her plight home. Her lips quivered and tears sprang to her eyes. “Hannibal, how did you get here?”
But the cat looked over its shoulder, then turned tail and vanished into the darkness. Seconds later Neely understood why.
She could hear the approaching footsteps too.
Oh, God, he was coming back.
Panicking, she got to her feet, clutching the flashlight, crouching on the mattress. Eli was still alive, still breathing, but unconscious. He didn’t know anything about their ordeal—for an instant Neely almost envied him—and would be no help.
The monster was coming back, and she was on her own.
He couldn’t get in. She’d fixed the door so that he couldn’t get in.
Unless he had a second key.
Where the thought came from she didn’t know, but it widened her eyes and made her heart race with terror.
Of course he would have a second key. People always kept spare keys, didn’t they? He would have a key, and he would be bringing it with him—and he would be able to get in.
“Oh, God!” Neely sprang to her feet, sobbing with fear, her stomach cramping and her knees turning to jelly and her chest heaving as she fought to breathe.
She needed a weapon: a gun, a knife.
No, she needed to barricade the door.
She could see the beam of his flashlight approaching. Oh, God, she was running out of time.
The bed. It was the only thing she could use. The frame was metal, sturdy. It was a twin. It would be six feet long. The box spring. How wide was it?
It didn’t matter. It was all there was.
Desperation gave her strength. She put the flashlight down and shoved the bed frame against the steel bars. God, Eli and the mattress were in the way; she couldn’t quite get it positioned right.
The camp lantern was switched on. Neely didn’t even look around. Her back was against the cold stone wall; she was sitting on the floor, her feet wedged against the mattress with Eli’s dead weight on it, pushing it out of the way.
“Cornelia, what are you doing?” The perfectly normal-sounding voice made her break out in a cold sweat. The mattress moved, and she glanced at the monster, glanced his way because she couldn’t help herself, because he terrified her… .
“Bad girl, Cornelia! Bad girl!” He was rushing over to the cell, his hand fumbling for his pocket. A key. She’d known he would have an extra key. Even with the bed shoved against the door, there was still plenty of room for him to get it open. A good three feet of space still remained between the foot of the bed and the rear wall.
His hand came through the bars with another key, just as she’d known it would. This time, she saw, the key was attached to his wrist by a braided strap—and in his other hand, aimed toward her face, was a can of pepper spray.