Into the Fire

by Anne Stuart

  “It wasn’t?”

  He shook his head. Someone opened the door to the carriage house, and Jamie wondered if she’d have time to scream, to warn him. She’d die for it, like the girl in that old poem about the highwayman, but maybe it would be worth it.

  “It was me he wanted,” Nate said simply. “Me he loved. He just couldn’t figure it out, so he went for the person closest to me. If he couldn’t accept the fact that he loved me, he could fool himself into thinking he loved my cousin, the nearest thing to me.”

  “I wasn’t near to you. Not by blood, not by nature. I’m adopted, remember?”

  A frown crossed his face. “Don’t confuse me. He only wanted you because he couldn’t deal with his feelings for me.” His voice was getting shrill, and his grip on the gun tightened. As if he hadn’t quite managed to convince himself.

  “All right,” she said in a soothing voice. “But why don’t you put the gun down? You don’t really want to shoot anyone, do you?”

  Nate smiled, his good humor restored. “Of course I do, precious. I’ve never shot anyone before. I usually use a knife, though I’m not above taking advantage of whatever’s available. I want to see what it’s like to use a gun.”

  Someone was coming up the stairs, making no effort to cover the sound of his footsteps. It was a strange noise, a clicking, dragging noise, as if some huge monster was crawling up the stairs, moving closer and closer. But the monster wasn’t the mysterious creature on the stairs, the true monster was sitting a few feet away from her, raising the shotgun as the door slowly opened.

  “Come in, Aunt Isobel,” Nate said sweetly. “I thought you might put in an appearance.”

  Jamie had opened her mouth to scream a warning, no matter what the consequences, but she sank back in sudden relief as her mother filled the doorway. She was supported by her two canes, hunched over in pain, and it must have taken a tremendous effort for her to get this far. She hadn’t left the house without her nurse in five years.

  “Nate,” she said, her voice soft, not the usual strident demand that Jamie was used to. “Dear boy…”

  “Aren’t you going to say something to your daughter, Aunt Isobel?”

  Her eyes slid over Jamie’s figure, then back to Nate’s. “You need to get away from here. I’ve brought money. You can just walk away—no one needs to know you’re still alive. You should have told me. But it’s not too late. You can start life over.”

  Nate’s sweet smile was chilling, and he still held the gun loosely in his lap. “But Jamie would know. You don’t think she’d keep quiet about it, do you?”

  Her mother’s glance was brief and dismissing. “Jamie will do what I tell her to.”

  Nate looked over at her, a smug look on his bony face. “You see, Jamie? You’ll always come in second. Won’t she, Aunt Isobel?”

  “Dear boy…” her mother began, but the flash of light was shocking, followed by an explosion of sound. And Isobel Kincaid pitched forward, her canes rolling across the floor as blood spread out beneath her.

  “You know,” Nate said calmly, “I think I like shooting people.” And he turned the gun toward Jamie.

  22

  Someone was screaming, a wild, keening sound. Jamie had surged to her feet as her mother pitched forward, and she realized belatedly that she was the one who was screaming.

  “Shut up!” Nate shrieked at her, and he swung the gun at her, slamming her in the head with the butt of the weapon.

  It felt as if her head exploded, but before she could do more than stagger back under the force of the blow he hit her again, and this time she fell, the floor hard and unforgiving as she went sprawling, her eyes unfocused, her head spinning. She blinked past the tears of shock and pain, and found herself staring at the body of her mother. The blood had spread from beneath her, so that it touched Jamie’s fingertips, and she managed to scramble backward in panic, before Nate could slam her with the gun again. She couldn’t stop him from shooting her, but she could keep him from bludgeoning her to death. Or at least make it damned hard.

  He was looking down at the gun with a pleased expression. “I like using it that way, too,” he said. “There’s a nice crunch of skin and bones when it hits. Imagine a whole world that I’d never fully appreciated.”

  She was beyond talking. Her hands were covered with her mother’s blood, and she rubbed them on her jeans. Her face felt numb, swollen, her mouth wasn’t working right. She touched her lip with her tongue and tasted her own blood.

  “What are you going to do?” she finally asked, her voice muffled.

  Nate tilted his head to one side, like a curious robin, as he considered the possibilities. “Well, I may have been a bit hasty. We can’t stay here now—the fun’s gone, and she’s made quite a mess, hasn’t she? She’d hate that, wouldn’t she? She was always so fastidious, so prim and proper. To lie facedown in a pool of blood would strike her as impolite.”

  “Is she dead?”

  Nate shrugged. “I have no idea. If she’s not dead yet she will be soon enough. Get up, Jamie. Stop cowering—it doesn’t become a Kincaid, even a mongrel one. Aunt Isobel wouldn’t appreciate it.”

  She managed to push herself up off the floor. Her head was still ringing from the force of his blows, and she couldn’t see clearly. “Are you going to shoot me?”

  “I’m waiting for Dillon before I decide. I’m kind of hoping I’ll talk him into killing you himself, but that’s probably an unreasonable fantasy on my part.”

  “Why would he want to kill me?” she asked, bewildered.

  “He lost eighteen months of his life to you. He’s spent years thinking about you, and Killer isn’t the kind of man who likes to be vulnerable. He’s finally managed to fuck you—he might just be ready to finish you off. Hate’s the other side of the coin, you know, and Dillon hates you. You know that, don’t you? Deep inside, Dillon despises you, wants you dead. That’s why he sent you away, alone. He knew you’d end up here, knew what I could do to you. He wanted me to take care of loose ends, so we can be together.”

  She just looked at him. “You’re insane,” she said finally, and then realized it probably wasn’t the smartest thing for her to say.

  It didn’t matter. He just laughed. “By some people’s standards, I suppose. By your pathetically bourgeois standards. I like to think of myself as a visionary. Someone who does what needs to be done.” He gestured with the shotgun. “Come along, precious. We have a date with destiny.”

  She wasn’t sure she could stand, much less walk, but she didn’t have any choice. She moved ahead of him, feeling the occasional prod of the gun barrel, and made her way around her mother’s body to the narrow stairs. At any moment she expected him to shoot her, but he seemed content with using the gun as a cattle prod.

  The moon had risen on the frosty landscape. Isobel’s aging Mercedes was parked by the garage, the motor still running. She must have found another route in.

  “She still has that old car,” Nate mused. “Which car did you come in? Not the Volvo, I assume. You’d be too squeamish to drive a hearse. I know—he would have sent you off in the Cadillac. What poetic justice! He did, didn’t he?”

  “Go to hell.”

  “I wonder which one I’ll take with me when I leave,” he said in that dreamy voice. “The Cadillac has fond memories, but I’ve always liked Mercedes almost as much as Audis. I suppose it’ll depend on what Dillon shows up in.”

  “He’s not coming.”

  He shoved the gun barrel harder into her back, and she groaned in pain. “Of course he will. He’ll come for you, and he’ll come for me. It just depends who he’s going to end with.”

  He caught her arm and dragged her over to the Mercedes. He opened the door to turn off the engine, and the air was filled with the familiar scent of Isobel’s perfume, Chanel No. 5.

  “How could you have killed her?” Jamie demanded brokenly.

  “I don’t see why you care. She would have sacrificed you for me any day of the week
. You were always second choice, your entire life. She didn’t care about you.”

  She turned to look at him, at the shotgun now pointed at her own chest. “But I still cared about her,” she said simply.

  “More fool you, then,” he said. “Come on.” He grabbed her arm and started dragging her across the ground, toward the rubble of the old mansion, the broken towers stark against the night sky.

  Someone had boarded up the entrance, but he smashed through the flimsy wooden barricade, dragging her over the shattered wood, up the sharply angled staircase. She was still dizzy, and something had caught her jeans, tearing them. She could feel the warmth of blood on her shin, but she didn’t have time to think about it, she could only follow Nate’s scarecrow figure, his birdlike hand a manacle on her wrist.

  Their sudden reemergence into the night air caught her by surprise. The last bit of tower was gone, leaving the area exposed to the wind and the weather, and snow had drifted against one of the partial walls.

  “Now, isn’t this nice? We’ll be able to see Dillon’s headlights from far away, and there’s nice fresh air. We needed to get away from Aunt Isobel, you know. Dead bodies start to smell after a while.”

  She didn’t bother arguing, or asking him how he knew that. She didn’t need to.

  “It’s cold,” she said instead.

  “It is, isn’t it?” he agreed, his voice rich with satisfaction. “Get on your knees, Jamie.”

  She’d been leaning against the broken wall, but at his words she straightened.

  “Come on, Jamie. You did it for Killer, you can do it for me,” he said, reaching for his zipper.

  “You can shoot me right here,” she said flatly. “Because I’m not touching you.”

  He laughed, unoffended. “You’re awfully picky. I thought you might have developed a taste for it. Never mind, though. You’re not my type. Hold out your arms.”

  She still didn’t move. He put the shotgun down, and she wondered if she was any match for him. He was taller than she was, but he was nothing but skin and bones in an oversize scarecrow’s clothes. He should be weak, helpless.

  But he wasn’t. She’d felt the determined strength in him as he’d dragged her up the stairs. He had the benefit of insanity on his side, and that made up for a lot.

  He began wrapping a thin, plastic cord around her wrists, pulling it tightly. “You might like this, precious,” he cooed. “I’m going to tie you up so you can’t move.” He pulled the thin cord around her waist, up over her shoulder, a complicated configuration. He shoved her on the ground, but he seemed to have lost interest in his earlier, obscene suggestion. The rope was very thin and very tight, wrapped around her ankles and knees, elbows and wrists, until it ended up tight around her throat, so tight that she didn’t think she’d be able to speak. Or maybe even breathe.

  He stepped back to admire his handiwork, reaching for the shotgun. “You’ve probably noticed how tight that is, precious. If you struggle, or try to call out and warn Dillon, you’ll strangle yourself. It’ll crush your larynx and you’ll choke to death on your own blood. Trust me, the gun will be much more merciful.”

  “Trust you?” she echoed in nothing more than a strained whisper. “You don’t know anything about trust. Or mercy.”

  His smile was macabre as he approached her trussed-up figure, and he gave a short tug on the cord, one that cut off her air completely before he released it.

  “Actually I know all about trust and mercy, Jamie,” he said, sitting back on his heels. “I just don’t have much use for them. Isn’t that right, Killer?”

  She hadn’t heard him, hadn’t seen him, but he loomed over Nate’s figure in the night air, more like a ghost than Nate ever was.

  “Trust and mercy?” he echoed, his voice cold and harsh on the night air. “Not really your style, is it?”

  Nate ran his hand over Jamie’s front, touching her breasts, and it was all she could do not to squirm. Any movement made the ropes tighten dangerously. He ran his hand down her stomach, between her legs, and then looked over his shoulder at Dillon.

  “If you come any closer she’ll die,” he said casually. And in the moonlight she could see the glint of the knife. “I liked the gun, and making you strangle on your blood appeals to me, but when it comes right down to it, knives are always my weapon of choice. If you try anything, Killer, I’ll cut her throat, and you’ll just have to watch her bleed to death. We’re too far from a hospital to give her even the smallest chance of surviving.”

  “So I won’t try anything,” Dillon said, his voice just as emotionless. “What do you want, Nate?”

  “Was she worth the wait, Killer? She’s been your obsession for most of your life. The real thing must have been quite a letdown.”

  “What do you want me to tell you? That she’s lousy in bed? That I couldn’t get rid of her fast enough? That you were right, she’s nothing but a pain in the ass? Okay, I’m telling you that. It doesn’t mean she deserves to die.”

  Just what she wanted to hear, Jamie thought, staring up at him past Nate’s hunched shoulders. She could feel tears sting her eyes and she wanted to laugh. She was about to die at her cousin’s brutal hands and she was worried about what Dillon thought of her. She was as crazy as Nate.

  “You could tell me that,” Nate murmured, stroking the side of her neck with the blade of his knife. He turned back to look at him. “Is it true?”

  Dillon didn’t answer the question. “What do you want from me, Nate?” he asked again. And he leaned forward and put the barrel of the handgun against Nate’s temple.

  Nate just smiled. “Who can move faster?” he said in a singsong voice. “Can you blow my brains out before I cut her throat? I don’t think so. Which means we’re at an impasse. Now, put that gun down before I slip and do something I’m not ready to do. Step back.”

  Dillon didn’t move, and Nate ran the knife against her throat, deeper, so that she could feel the warmth of blood trickle down her shoulder.

  “Step back,” Nate said again, pleasantly.

  Dillon moved back, against the far wall. “Very good,” Nate said. “Now, put the gun down on the floor and kick it toward me.”

  She heard the clunk of metal on the rubble-strewn floor, the sound of it slid in their direction. Nate didn’t bother to turn his head.

  “I’ll ask you one last time, Nate. What do you want from me?”

  Nate lifted his head, and his mad, beautiful eyes were shiny with tears. “I want you to love me,” he said, and plunged the knife toward her throat.

  She rolled away from him, the knife glancing across her shoulder, and for the second time that night gunfire shattered the night. Whatever Dillon had dropped on the ground, it hadn’t been the gun.

  Nate rose, the knife still clutched tightly in his hand. “Just love me,” he said in a whisper, as the bloody hole in his chest spread. The knife clattered to the ground and he pitched backward, toppling over the edge of broken wall, still clutching the end of rope that bound her.

  She was dying. Choking to death, as he’d told her she would, as the ropes dragged her up against the wall, and she tried to make a sound, but nothing came out but a choked gasp.

  And then the ropes loosened, and she could breathe again. Dillon was slicing through the cord with the knife that was still wet with her blood, his face totally blank.

  She wanted him to hold her. She needed his arms around her, she needed to bury her face against his chest and sob. But his words came back to haunt her, and she lay very still as he sliced through the thin plastic cord.

  “Is he dead?” The words came out on a strangled gust of air, and the pain was excruciating.

  Dillon rose, glancing over the side of the tower. “Very,” he said in a cool voice. He didn’t reach down to touch her, didn’t do anything but stand over her, waiting. But she didn’t know what he was waiting for.

  “My mother…’ she said. “He shot my mother….”

  “Where is she?”

  �
��In the carriage house. Upstairs. I’m not sure if she’s dead.” The words were hardly distinguishable, but he seemed to understand.

  “I’ll check on her,” he said. He was wearing a jeans jacket that had seen better days, and at the last minute he shrugged out of it, tossing it at her. “You look cold,” he said.

  Nothing compared to his icy demeanor. She could hear sirens in the background, getting louder and louder, and knew the police were coming, knew and felt nothing but panic.

  She pushed herself up off the floor, trying to catch her labored breath. “You have to get out of here,” she said. “The police…”

  He seemed unfazed, and she realized he must have heard the sirens before she did. “I’ll check on your mother,” he said again.

  “And then run. Nobody has to know you were here—I’ll come up with something.”

  He shook his head in what could have been refusal, could have been disbelief. And then he walked out of her life without another word.

  23

  Jamie moved home for Christmas. They’d kept her in the hospital overnight, stitched up her various cuts and slashes, watched her for signs of a concussion, sent her back to Rhode Island with a police escort, including Detective Drummond, who spent the entire time questioning her and giving nothing in return but a thoughtful “hmm.” She didn’t tell him a damned thing, pleading shock and an unlikely amnesia, and after a while they stopped trying. She’d hoped she could protect Dillon, but she knew it was too late for that. She wasn’t going to tell them anything to make it worse. The source of evil was gone—Dillon deserved to be left alone.

  At least he’d gotten far enough away. He wouldn’t have gone back to the garage—they’d find him there. No, he’d probably disappeared, created a new life for himself. When she saw him again, if she ever did, he’d be sixty years old and unrecognizable.

  And who the hell was she kidding? The way he was going he’d be lucky to reach thirty-five.

  Her mother stayed behind in the hospital for another two weeks, then returned home with the fanfare reserved for a duchess. She’d lost a lot of blood, but by sheer luck Nate’s bullet had missed any vital organs, and when Isobel returned it was as if nothing had happened. Gracious, elegant and ruthlessly proper, she refused to even talk about Nate. And there was no way of ever knowing if she’d made the extreme effort of getting in her car and driving to Connecticut to save Jamie. Or Nate.