He found a visitor spot several spaces down and parked his car. There was no hesitation of any kind as he reached under the passenger seat. He made no real attempts to conceal the knife as he got out of the car and walked directly to his ex-wife's door. When he raised his hand and knocked, he was smiling and weeping at the same time, and all the while, the wall of unending pain continued to throb in his head as if it were applauding him and urging him on.

  CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

  Despite Rachel’s growing excitement, there was also a growing sense of defeat that was trying to overcome everything. There was no movement on the search for Dickerson’s car and no results on the APB. She knew that to expect results in such a small window of time was a bit in heard of, but she felt that so much hinged on those things.

  Probably because you’re now hyper-aware that this is the last time you’re going to be part of a case, she thought.

  But that was yet another thought she knew she had to keep out of her mind. She was already too beginning to worry that she would not be back home in time for Paige to get off the bus. In the grand scheme of things, it seemed like a silly thing to worry about. But things were different now. Six weeks ago, Paige’s bus schedule would have been incredibly low on her list of things to care about. But right now, as Jack sped toward Pamela Dickerson 's address, it seemed to be the one thing her entire world was revolving around.

  It was actually a surreal feeling... to know that they could be this close to capturing their killer but somehow more worried about getting her daughter off the bus. In a strange way, it made her heart swell with love, and in a way, she didn't understand and was sure she would need to process much more in the future; it made her all the more certain that she did indeed want to go through with chemotherapy.

  It was exciting. It was encouraging. There was a nervous energy that began to buzz within her, and she had no idea where the charge was coming from—maybe from the absolute peace and certainty of her chemo decision or maybe in knowing that, finally, she was going to be capable of getting her priorities straight.

  Of course, it did seem rather contradictory to come to these conclusions while she was on a case she had no business being a part of.

  The nervous excitement that continued to swell inside of her had her reaching for her phone as Jack closed in on the address. With less than a mile remaining, Rachel pulled back up the pictures she had taken in Dickerson 's house. She had saved the most pertinent ones to their own folder, so it took her no time at all to find the image of the auto insurance document containing his license plate number. She kept it pulled up as Jack came barreling to the turn and made his way into the parking lot.

  He coasted along as they looked for Apartment 133. Rachel kept her eyes open for a car of the same make and model as what was listed on the insurance documents—a silver Ford Focus. She spotted one after just a few seconds, and it just happened to be at the same moment Jack angled their car into an available parking spot.

  Rachel read the license plate number on the car, and it was a match. She double-checked just to make sure, and when she saw that she made no mistake, she began to open the passenger side door before Jack had properly stopped the car.

  “That Focus… that’s him,” she said. “That’s Dickerson!”

  Jack cursed under his breath as he got out of the car and started rushing toward Apartment 133. Rachel noticed that there was a single moment when he hesitated and looked back at her. That old, familiar concern was still in his eyes, but he didn't say anything. Perhaps he understood the urgency of the moment or that it would be a waste of time and breath to even ask her to sit this one out. Whatever it was, she stayed a few steps behind him as he came to the sidewalk that ran in front of the apartments. Dickerson 's car was in a spot just three spaces away from Pamela 's apartment. As far as Rachel was concerned, that alone told the story of what was currently happening.

  Jack was knocking on the door as soon as Rachel caught up to him. Right away, there was a response—and it wasn’t a promising one.

  “Help! Please, someone! Help me!”

  It was a woman's voice, high-pitched and shrieking. Rachel was quite sure it was one of pure fear at the moment; she didn't detect any pain in it, though it was hard to tell for sure.

  Rachel had worked with Jack for so long that she automatically took a few steps back without being asked to do so. Jack also took a few steps back but immediately reclaimed them as he surged forward. He brought his leg up and delivered a ferocious kick to the door. The handle rattled, and the door itself gave just a bit, but that was all. He drew back to attack again, only to get the same results. For his third attempt, he backed up out into the parking lot, and when he did, he unholstered his Glock. All the while, a woman that Rachel assumed was Pamela Dickerson continued to scream and wail from inside.

  This time when Jack ran forward, he didn't raise his leg. He lowered his shoulder, and at the moment before he threw his entire weight into the attack, Rachel saw him grimace, fully anticipating the pain the collision would cause.

  He slammed into the door, shoulder first, and this time the door popped slightly free of the frame. In a slightly pained stumble, Jack strode back one last time and delivered another kick directly to the center of the door. This time it flew open without any resistance.

  Jack went inside. From the way he held his firearm out in front of him, it was clear he had done some damage to his shoulder. As she followed behind him, she realized that she might be making a foolish mistake. If they got inside and found Dickerson armed, there was very little she could do. Yes, she was decent at talking people down from tense situations, and she did have the commonalities between the two of them at her disposal. She hoped that would be enough. She hoped that being able to sympathize and identify with Dickerson might just help disarm him in more ways than one.

  She remained several steps behind Jack as he strafed through the entryway and into the living room. Rachel took the scene in from over Jack’s shoulder. There was a woman bleeding on a couch, her attacker standing over her in a semi-frozen state. There was a large knife in his hand, and it, like his hand, was streaked with blood. He had the blade situated directly over her heart, less than two inches from plunging it in.

  “Don’t move another muscle, Mr. Dickerson!” Jack asked. “Drop the knife now!”

  Dickerson didn’t move, and the smile that came across his face was menacing. Still, Rachel angled herself slowly around Jack, her eyes darting back and forth between James and Pamela Dickerson.

  “I’m going to see how bad it is,” Rachel whispered as she appeared on Jack’s left.

  He gave a tilt of the head in response, his full attention still on James Dickerson.

  “No," Dickerson said. On the couch below him, Pamela was gasping and letting out a pained whining noise. "You don't get it," he said, that smile still on his face. "If you found me, I take it you know who I am… and you know what's wrong with me. So if you think I give a damn about dying, you're sorely mistaken. So… you drop your gun and kick it over here to me. If you don't, I'll kill her."

  “And I’ll shoot,” Jack barked.

  “Didn’t you hear what I just said? I don’t care! So you do your job. You save her. You kick that gun over here.” He then set his eyes on Rachel. “You, too. If you have a gun, kick it over here!”

  “I’m not armed,” Rachel said, raising her hands up into the air. She then looked back to Jack and nodded, trying to communicate to him: Go ahead and drop it.

  She saw him think it over a moment, his eyes looking down to the bleeding woman on the couch. With his lips and brown drawn tight in frustration, Jack did what Dickerson was asking. He held the Glock out, the barrel tilted down, and then set it on the floor.

  “Kick it over,” Dickerson ordered.

  Jack did. And as it slid across the floor, Rachel took another step over to Pamela. There was a single cut mark along her stomach, tearing through her shirt. It was bleeding profusely, and her wide, alarmed eyes were wandering listlessly.

  “No!” Dickerson said. “You stay away!”

  “You just told my partner to save her,” Rachel said. “I need to see how bad it is. This is Pamela, right? Your ex-wife?”

  “Yes,” he hissed. And even in that single word, Rachel could see how sick he was… how weak. His face was so thin and colorless that it resembled a wax mold. His eyes looked sunken in as if they might very well fall into the sockets at the sign of a strong wind. It was probably taking an enormous reserve of energy for him to stand so statue-still with the blade of the knife still over Pamela’s heart.

  The entire situation was tense, and Rachel honestly didn’t see how anything she could say could make it worse. She thought she might be able to make it better, though. She’d hoped their similarities would be able to help out, and now she had her chance.

  "She didn't understand it when I told her you didn't want to undergo any treatments, did she?"

  Surprise flickered in his eyes, and for a moment, Rachel thought Dickerson was going to bring the knife away. But he seemed to regain his composure right away, his eyes now focused solely on Rachel.

  "No. No, she didn't. She said… she said she didn't want to stick around to watch me die. And then she left!”

  “And you were already sick, right? The tumor…”

  "Oh, don't you try to reason with me? You don't know… you don't know the pain and the loneliness. You don't—”

  “As a matter of fact, I do. Nine months ago, my doctor discovered a tumor in my brain. A glioblastoma.”

  “Bullshit!” he screamed.

  "No, it's true," she said. She said it quickly, afraid that in the rage coming out at his expletive, he'd plunge the knife down into Pamela's heart. "The first symptoms were strange things with my vision… sudden burst of light, little black stars. And then the dizziness. At first, it came and went, but it got worse with time. The doctor recommended chemotherapy treatments, and I didn't want it. I've been a federal agent for almost ten years. I have a daughter; I have a family. And I didn't want to go through the sickness and hassle of chemo just to get a few extra months… months that would be spent sick, weak, and drained."

  By the time she got to the end, Dickerson was nodding. “Your daughter… you have a husband?”

  “Had. He walked out when I refused to undergo any immediate treatments. He… he was murdered not long after that. And when he died, I had to accept that and know that he didn’t support my decision. So… yes, I do know what you're going through. I even thought I had beaten mine with a new and experimental drug but… no. It came back worse than before. I was asked to leave work six weeks ago, and now I—"

  “You… you better not be lying.”

  “She’s not,” Jack said. “I’ve had to watch her go through it all. She’s so damned strong, but to watch this slowly take her away… it’s been rough.”

  “I know you feel betrayed by her,” Rachel said, nodding to Pamela. Her eyes were starting to slowly close, and blood was quickly soaking into the couch and spilling to the floor. “But the tumor isn’t from her. She had nothing to do with it. She had—”

  “But she left!” he screamed. “Right when I needed her the most, she—”

  Rachel saw the knife trembling and took her chance. The left arm of the couch and Pamela's body were the only things between her and Dickerson. She leaped, her hands outstretched for Dickerson's arm. In mid-air, her left leg touched the arm of the couch, and that may have been what kept her from getting stabbed.

  She fell a bit short, but her right hand clamped down on Dickerson’s wrist as he drove the knife down. Rachel pushed up and away, trying to keep the knife from plunging in too deep as she fell. And when she did, she felt just how weak and fragile Dickerson was. There was some fight in him, but Rachel’s force easily overtook him.

  They both went falling to the floor. In her fall, Rachel’s legs tangled with Pamela’s, and Rachel went to the floor, slipping in the woman’s spilled blood. At the same time, she heard the knife clattering to the floor somewhere, bouncing on the wood. As she hit the floor, Rachel was vaguely aware of Jack rushing forward, scrambling for his gun. But at the same time, in a moment that she wondered might be the universe actually giving Dickerson a weird sort of break, he was scrambling to get to his feet. In his frantic urgency, his left foot struck out and slammed directly into Jack’s shoulder—the same one that had taken the brunt of the impact in knocking down the apartment door.

  Jack cried out and went falling backward. Rachel didn’t see the end result of this because she was too busy trying to get to her feet as well. She still held Dickerson’s right wrist, but as she slipped a bit in the blood on the floor, he managed to free himself.

  He was screaming in rage as he made a clumsy half-dive for the knife. As Rachel managed to get to her knees and look around to get acclimated, she saw that Jack was going for the knife, too.

  But it was clear that Dickerson was going to reach it first. Just as Rachel also went scrambling for it, she saw that it wasn’t the knife they were going for.

  It was Jack’s gun. And Dickerson already had his hand on it. Rachel scurried forward, hoping to tackle him as he drew the gun up in Jack’s direction. Her first hope was to knock Dickerson down before he could fire it.

  But as she surged forward, another of her dizzy spells hit her. This one came like a bolt of lightning, and every bit of her balance seemed to leave her body.

  The result was an awkward sprawl forward. Rather than striking him in the side and tackling him to the ground, she fell forward and barely grazed him.

  As she fell into the open space between Dickerson and Jack, she heard the gun go off.

  The sound of it made her head feel as if it had split open and let out a monstrous peal of thunder. But that was secondary to the pain that ripped through her side. She felt it right in the center of her body, a hot stabbing that seemed to be both dull and excruciating at the same time. The breath went out of her, and something inside of her set off every single internal alarm bell shed ever known.

  When she hit the ground, she thought rather dimly: Damn. I’ve been shot.

  The world started fading at an alarming rate. And in that quickly approaching darkness, she heard Jack roaring out in terror and rage. She heard the sounds of a struggle, then the weak cries of James Dickerson.

  After that, things came and went. Brief flickers of light, Jack’s face, odd noises.

  That darkness finally came, settling in like snow on a cold field. And as it swept her up, she felt Jack holding her hand, squeezing it gently and whispering something to her that went unheard. Her final thought, though, was of Paige. And a quick, fleeting sadness escorted her away into the black when she realized she wasn’t going to make it to the bus stop.

  CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT

  The man sitting across from her was Alex Lynch. He was smiling, and his hands were covered in blood. Rachel couldn’t move, could barely even think. Lynch’s eyes held her tight in their gaze, and he was frozen.

  “You really are trying to die, aren’t you?” he said.

  “I’m going to die anyway,” Rachel said.

  “True. But are you too impatient to wait for the tumor to do it? Jesus, you really are no better than this James Dickerson character, are you?”

  They were sitting in an interrogation room that was the size of a library. Their voices echoed, and even Rachel’s labored breaths seemed to echo on forever.

  It was the sort of dream that was so surreal that Rachel knew it was a dream even as she was having it. Of course, Alex Lynch wasn’t there. He was dead and gone, and…

  Wait. Maybe she was dead and gone, too. Maybe she was dead, and this was what waited for her on the other side. St. Peter or God wasn't going to judge her. Apparently, Alex Lynch got that job.

  She recalled the pain that had exploded through her body as James Dickerson had raised the gin; her body extended to knock him down, only to fall. That memory tore Alex Lynch and the cavernous interrogation room away. She tried opening her eyes but was unable to. But she heard voices, a familiar one and a deep, male voice she didn’t recognize.

  “…of how she’s doing?”

  This was Grandma Tate. She was sure of it. Grandma Tate was here. So where was Paige?

  “All I can tell you right now is that the surgery went well. Right now, Rachel just needs to rest.”

  “Can I see her?”

  “Not just yet. I’m sorry.”

  The voices were distant, behind walls or doors or worlds for all Rachel knew. Everything felt swimmy; everything felt shapeless and weird. She wondered if she might be on the threshold of death and, if so, maybe death wasn’t so bad. Was this what everyone was scared of?

  She was aware of a fading sort of weight coming over her, a heavy blanket that tore everything down. Sleep? Total unconsciousness? She didn’t know.

  What she did know was that she came to some time later. She was terrified, and this time, she did manage to open her eyes. The lights were too bright. Somewhere, a. machine was beeping and trilling like some sort of mechanical bird. She opened her mouth to shout but was only able to groan.

  After a while, someone came into the room—nothing more than a blurry shape that was distorted by the light. An angel? A doctor? A demon?

  “Mrs. Gift, it’s okay. You’re okay. You’re in the ho—”

  But that heavy blanket fell on her again, and this time, it took the pain under with her. She was scared that Alex Lynch might be waiting for her again, but in the end, there was only the darkness. And she was curious as to why it felt so comforting.

  ***

  Voices again. Soft, and both female.

  “You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” the first voice said. Again, she identified Grandma Tate’s voice without a problem.

 

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