When She Left: A Thriller, page 21
“And they came to the place which the Lord had spake of, and Abraham laid the wood. And stretched his son upon the altar.”
“You don’t . . . ,” Melissa was saying, her face blurry tears. “You don’t.”
The gun swung wildly, and it took Ruby a moment to realize Eric had grabbed the other man’s arms. It was a hopeless fight. The bald man had been surprised but recovered quickly. He wrested the gun from Eric’s grasp, spun it in his hand, whipped Eric’s face with the handle.
Eric fell back to the floor, stunned. Melissa was breathing hard, scared breaths, animal breaths. Marley just watched.
The bald man pointed the gun at Eric.
“Do not lay a hand on the boy,” Ruby said, but she knew they wouldn’t listen to her.
Eric looked toward Ruby, and she gazed back, and she wondered if Eric knew, in this last moment of his life, what had happened to his mother. It was as if she and Eric had spoken some instinctual language, and the word “mother” was present between them, as real as if the word had been carved from stone. A scared look overtook Eric’s expression, his eyes wet, and he seemed like he wanted to say something. He tried to stand, but it was as if he’d forgotten how.
“And Abraham stretched forth his hand,” Ruby said, “and took the knife to slay his son.”
The Lord clapped.
Ruby looked to the stairs as Eric’s body slumped to the floor. Melissa was rushing up, a soul fleeing its body.
But Ruby knew there was no salvation waiting for her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
LUCKY
Lucky cheerfully parked his Jeep outside Steve Debko’s house, stared at the AR-7 next to him. Decided to leave it in the car.
He wouldn’t need a weapon for this.
He’d assumed Ruby had brought Jake and Melissa here, particularly once he’d heard Jake was injured. A local hospital would have been too dangerous, and Jake was probably too hurt to travel much farther.
He spotted Ruby’s car parked down the street, the same old, faded silver Corolla he remembered.
Lucky’s plan was to tell Ruby that she needed to leave—he was about to be questioned by the Winterses, and he’d have to give them some accurate information about her, enough to prove his loyalty. But he’d also help Ruby escape and leave bread crumbs for the Winterses to follow, although those crumbs would be scattered in different directions. His faith would be proved, Ruby and her son would be safe, and Lucky would be able to return to his waiting family.
A perfect plan.
The front door opened as Lucky approached.
His perfect plan shattered into a thousand pieces.
“Looks like you and I both knew the kids were here,” Marley said.
Lucky wasn’t sure how to respond. He tried not to stare at the silver-plated pistols holstered at Marley’s waist.
“Come inside,” Marley told him. “I have something to show you.”
Lucky numbly followed Marley inside Debko’s house. He hadn’t been here for years, not since he’d helped Ruby find this place, a property that sat in the town of Cabin John, abandoned, too deep in disrepair to be attractive to anyone.
A man was assembling a handgun in the kitchen. Lucky didn’t recognize him, but he had a different bearing than the men normally associated with the Winterses. Former or current cop. Maybe military.
“Lucky,” Marley said, “meet Spence.”
Spence didn’t acknowledge Lucky.
“How’d you find Ruby?” Lucky asked Marley.
“She called Frank,” Marley replied as he picked up his own gun, a chrome Beretta, and snapped in the clip. “Gave up the girl and Debko in exchange for her and her son.”
“Where’s Ruby now?”
“Gone with her son, but the girl escaped. Spence went looking for her. He’s going back out soon.”
Spence loaded his weapon with a snap.
“You knew Ruby, right?” Marley asked casually.
If Ruby had given up Melissa and Steve, Lucky wondered, had she also given him up? Had she betrayed him?
All this time Lucky had thought she’d left, that there was hope for him . . .
No one escapes.
He forced himself to stand still, fought the urge to lunge forward, to wrest the handgun free from Marley.
“I heard you two were tight,” Marley went on.
Lucky wasn’t sure how to respond. “This isn’t the kind of business where you make friends,” he said carefully.
Marley’s eyes glinted. “It is if you’re honest.”
Spence reached below the counter, brought up a shotgun. Pumped the slide backward and forward. Something about the two clicks always reminded Lucky of a pause, the wait for a third.
“Do you want to know who else Ruby gave up?” Marley asked.
He knows.
Lucky didn’t move.
“You didn’t bring a gun, did you?” Marley went on, instead of waiting for Lucky to answer. He tapped the handle of one of his pistols. “Strange to come here and not bring a weapon.”
Lucky was suddenly conscious of the closed pantry door behind him. He wondered if someone was inside, aiming a second shotgun at his back.
“Did you know Ruby helped Debko find this place?” Lucky couldn’t tell if these were real questions or if Marley was simply goading him. “Hid him here from us. She owed him a favor, and he wanted out.”
“Did she?” Lucky asked.
His throat was so dry it was difficult to speak.
“Like I told you, I always heard you and Ruby were close,” Marley said.
“What are you trying to say, Marley?”
Marley studied him with sharp eyes. Spence had finished with his weapons and was watching both men.
“I think,” Marley said, “you came here to warn Ruby.”
Nobody said anything for a moment.
“But you should have figured we were already here,” Marley went on. “Come on, Lucky. We know you and Ruby were tight. We figured she’d turn to you.”
Lucky couldn’t stop thinking about the closed door behind him. His back ached.
“What were you thinking?” Marley asked.
It was one motion.
Lucky bent and pulled the knife free from his ankle holster. Lifted his hand to bring the blade down on Spence.
Spence calmly stepped away.
Lucky’s knife cut air. Nothing else.
He could see, out of the corner of his eye, Marley aiming one of his handguns at him, Spence raising his. Lucky turned sideways in between them, trying to keep an eye on both men. His heart was a wild dog trapped in a cage.
He’d been wrong about everything.
He’d imagined that Renee was going to wait for him to return, accept that her murderous husband had turned a new corner. Their lives could resume.
He’d imagined that the Winterses would allow him to walk away, let Lucky carry their secrets as casually as a knapsack slung over his shoulder.
Now Lucky knew, intrinsically knew, that Renee had reached out to Marybeth the moment he’d driven away from the cabin. Told her everything. They’d already run off, probably contacted the cops.
And Lucky knew Marley was right. The Winterses had completely controlled him, tricked him, seen through everything he’d said and done. Used him in the hopes of finding Ruby.
Everyone had known he couldn’t be trusted.
“Sorry, Lucky,” Marley said. “At least you’ll go before your family will.”
Lucky’s world went dark.
He lay on the kitchen floor.
Had he been shot? Was he his soul, rising from his body?
There’d been no sound after the lights flicked off and the gunfire, the two explosions boxing Lucky’s ears after his desperate dive to the floor.
Shadows in the darkness. Someone saying something, Marley, his words becoming clearer.
“What happened to the lights? Who’s there?”
A door closed from somewhere distant. A shadow moved. Lucky squinted uselessly in the dark. The shadow moved into a square of light from the window, and Lucky saw Spence looking elsewhere.
It was as if Marley and Spence had forgotten about Lucky after the power in the house had gone out.
Or they thought he was dead.
Lucky remembered a story he’d heard about a runner, on the verge of finishing a marathon, exhausted and barely conscious, who’d been shot in the back of the head during the last mile. The runner had been so tired that he hadn’t even felt the bullet. He’d finished the race and then, when he realized the onlookers were staring at him as he crossed the finish line, touched the back of his head and felt blood.
Was he dying?
Lucky wanted to touch his head, his chest, search for a wound, but didn’t dare move.
Spence walked over to Lucky, peered down, stared hard in the dark. “He still has the knife.”
This time Lucky wasn’t too slow.
He felt Spence’s neck against his fist, the knife sunk to its handle.
Lucky rose, looking for Marley, but Marley was already rushing him, crashing into him. Marley climbed over Lucky, grabbed his ears.
The back of Lucky’s head was slammed onto the kitchen floor.
Silence. Darkness. Pain coming but not yet present.
Lucky’s body was moving independently of his dazed mind, still fighting. Trying to grab Marley’s hands as the back of his head was driven into the floor again.
Something slashed his chin, and then came the pain, and then came nausea. A glint of light showed the gun in Marley’s hand, lifted high, the handle wet from where it had whipped Lucky’s face.
But that meant, Lucky thought groggily, the other gun was still at Marley’s waist.
Lucky reached for it weakly, but Marley knocked Lucky’s hands to the side. Pulled his second gun free.
Pointed both down.
“Your daughter’s going to be first,” Marley told him. “While your wife watches.”
“Counterpoint,” a woman said.
Marley was suddenly illuminated by a beam of light boring into his chest. He squinted into it as something whistled over Lucky, something black and hard crashing into Marley’s right arm, that pistol skittering away.
Marley cried out, lifted the other pistol, and fired blindly into the light. The gunshot deafened Lucky, a quick exhale of orange light from the muzzle. Lucky saw a shadow by Marley’s side, and that second gun was suddenly lifted, like a parent pulling a helpless child, and Marley’s wrist was turned and his hand opened and the pistol bounced to the floor next to Lucky’s head.
A boot kicked it away.
Marley turned over, reached for the metal rod that had struck him, but another boot slammed down on his hand, flattened his fingers to the floor. A gloved hand reached down, picked up the metal, and Lucky saw it smash across Marley’s mouth, a tooth and blood flying away.
Marley listed to the side, fell out of the light.
A flashlight clicked on, beamed up and down Marley’s body, then Spence’s, then jerked over the room before settling on Lucky’s face.
He squinted past the light, saw only one person standing behind it.
And he realized who it was.
“You saved me?” he asked.
The harsh beam of light didn’t waver.
“It’s too late to save anyone.”
PART THREE
It is mine to avenge; I will repay. In due time their foot will slip; their day of disaster is near and their doom rushes upon them.
Deuteronomy 32:35
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
MELISSA
Melissa remembered a time when, as a child of nine, she’d been at a hotel with her mother, and Melissa had gone down to the lobby to buy a Coke. She’d returned to the elevator in the lobby, pressed the button for her floor, but a hand caught the doors before they closed.
A man entered.
Melissa had a disquieting feeling, the fear of being alone with a stranger. That feeling overwhelmed her when, after the elevator had begun to rise, he’d pressed the “Stop” button.
The elevator jerked and froze.
Melissa couldn’t speak. She just shrank into the corner.
The man stepped in front of her, her eyes level with his belt, and placed his hands on the wall. One on either side of her head.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
And then, by some automated function or remote access or miracle, the elevator lurched to a start. Began to rise again.
The man stepped away as the doors opened. A trio of people stepped on board. Melissa ran past them and raced down the hall. The man stayed behind.
She didn’t tell her mother what had happened. Never told anyone.
But she remembered it now, that feeling of helplessness. Her life at someone else’s whim, someone stronger than her, and more dangerous, and desiring to take something from her.
Someone driven by a force so strong Melissa felt she had no choice but to surrender.
Melissa stumbled away from Dr. Steve’s house and down the street, blindly panicked. She turned a corner and ducked behind the only other house on the road. She sank to the ground, between a brick wall and the bare branches of a shrub. Tried to corral her thoughts.
Ruby had betrayed her, given her and Dr. Steve up to save herself and Jake.
They’d murdered Eric.
Was Jake safe?
Ruby was with Jake and those two men from the Winterses, and she’d do everything she could to keep Jake safe. Melissa was confident of that . . . but then she remembered Ruby’s words: Do not lay a hand on the boy. A shiver rustled through her at the memory, the way the words came from somewhere ancient. And the men had blithely ignored her. The memory was madness.
Something caught her eye, a figure passing under a streetlamp. A man walking down the road, a hand plunged into his coat, the other shining a flashlight. One of the men from the basement.
Melissa pressed against the brick.
He looked in her direction.
Melissa had a fear that she was about to accidentally shake the shrub in front of her, slip from her knelt position, cough, something to arouse his attention.
But he turned and continued down the street, the flashlight’s beam swinging left to right.
Melissa exhaled.
Her panic had almost left her dazed. She wanted to run around the side of this house, knock on the front door, beg for safety, for an ambulance, for the police. She wondered if the neighbors had heard the shots, if the cops had already been called. But the two houses on this street were separated by long lawns and clumps of trees, and the street was quiet, and the house lights were dark. There was no sign anyone had heard anything. Or that anyone was even home.
A car passed.
Melissa assumed it was more men with the Winterses. Her stomach tightened at the idea. Those men deciding what to do with Jake, Ruby powerless to stop them. Men soon spider-webbing into the streets, flashlights in one hand and weapons in the other, lights and bullets finding Melissa wherever she hid.
She stayed crouched until her legs ached, scared to leave the safety of the shadows, finding fault with every idea that occurred to her. The only thing she could do was give herself up, hope that was enough to uphold whatever agreement Ruby had made to keep Jake safe.
Melissa rose, and she walked back to Dr. Steve’s house.
She felt numb inside, the distress of fate, weirdly reminded of the time she’d received that scholarship rejection, the way it seemed to reiterate that she would never obtain a bachelor’s degree. The same certainty in Chris’s voice when he assured Melissa that she was going to die. Living in a controlled world, meeting whatever end others wanted for her.
Ruby emerged from Dr. Steve’s house. Jake’s arm was over her shoulders, his feet dragging, stumbling sleepily.
Melissa’s heart surged.
Somehow Jake was with Ruby. And alive.
She watched Ruby struggle to sit Jake in her car, the taillights flicker on as the engine started, as they drove away.
Jake was safe, but Melissa knew she wasn’t.
She hurried from the house, kept walking next to a narrow, hilly street, nothing but shadows of trees on either side, scurrying deep into them whenever headlights appeared.
Movement gave Melissa strength, even if she wasn’t sure where she was going.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
LUCKY
Lucky watched the Vigilante finish tying up Marley in the kitchen.
“I didn’t think you were real,” Lucky said again. The Vigilante hadn’t responded to him the first time.
“Yea, verily.” The Vigilante flicked open an automatic baton, opened the door leading to the basement. “Want to see the rest of the house?”
Lucky did, and he stepped over Marley’s unconscious body and Spence’s corpse to follow her downstairs.
Lucky wondered if the Vigilante—a somehow mythic figure, discussed in hushed tones—was actually Melissa Cruz. The idea was a puzzle piece slipping neatly into place. The Vigilante had crippled the Winterses, and it made sense that the person who had done that had insider information about the crime family. And no one had ever suspected, or would have suspected, that it was a woman. Only her voice, and maybe her height, revealed her sex. A canvas mask with three vertical stripes down the front concealed her head, and she wore a black hooded sweatshirt, dark-gray jeans, and black boots. Gloves covered her hands.
If she suddenly disappeared, Lucky couldn’t have proved she’d even existed.
In the basement, the Vigilante knelt next to two bodies, executed sitting next to each other against a far wall. One was Dr. Steve Debko. The other was a young Asian man Lucky didn’t recognize. The left half of his head was gone.
“You know these two?” the Vigilante asked Lucky.
“One of them. Steve Debko.”
“Who was he?”
“A doctor,” Lucky explained. “My guess is he was treating Jake Smith. We were supposed to find him and his girlfriend.”
The baton rose, almost imperceptibly.
“We?” the Vigilante asked.
“I worked with the Winterses,” Lucky confessed. “I don’t anymore.”
