by Lisa Jackson
His fear was rising with each passing minute. Was this Charlie’s work? He decided he would call the TCSD. If the reason she hadn’t phoned back was something easily explained, like maybe there was some problem with her phone, so be it.
He was reaching for the phone he was recharging on the kitchen counter when it blooped, alerting him that he had a text. He snatched it up and saw in relief that the text was from Savannah.
At the bluff. Hurry.
Immediately he texted back: Where’s Charlie? Did u see him?
Followed him here.
“Goddamnit,” Hale muttered, half out of relief, half out of fear.
Quickly, he texted back: Wait for me. Don’t do anything.
“Jesus.” He stuffed the phone in his pocket and ran for the door.
“What did she say?” Victoria asked, staring after him with wide, scared eyes.
“She’s okay. I know where she is. Just stay with Declan. I’ll be back soon.”
Charlie waved the cell phone at Savannah and chuckled. “Lover boy’s coming to save his lady fair. How does it feel to steal your sister’s husband? That your thing?”
Savannah quaked all over. The small smile that curved Charlie’s hard lips was evil in its intent.
Hale, please don’t come. Call Lang. Don’t come on your own.
Hale backed the TrailBlazer out of the garage, his brain churning. Something wrong there. Why had she decided to go to Bancroft Bluff instead of the house? Some new clue that had turned her back to the scene of the Donatellas’ murders?
He’d gone straight back rather than run into Victoria’s Toyota, which was parked in the turnaround. Now he stood on the brakes, thinking. He threw the car into park, and jumped out, running forward to the stretch of concrete driveway near the garage, seeing something on the ground.
Blood. A spray of it.
Whose? Savannah’s?
Hale jumped back in his SUV. Deception Bay and Bancroft Bluff were twenty minutes away without traffic.
He grabbed his phone and put in a call to the TCSD. “This is Hale St. Cloud,” he bit out when a female operator answered for the station. “I need to speak to Langdon Stone or Detective Clausen.” He couldn’t remember Clausen’s first name.
“If this is an emergency, call nine-one-one,” the voice responded.
“I need to speak to one of the detectives,” he said, wondering if maybe he should call 9-1-1.
But a few moments later a male voice said, “Mr. St. Cloud, this is Detective Clausen. How can I help you?”
“Just got a text from Savannah. She asked me to come to Bancroft Bluff. I’m on my way, but as I left my house, I saw some blood on the concrete driveway. Savannah was supposed to be at my house, but she didn’t show. . . .”
“You think something happened to her?” Clausen asked quickly.
“I don’t know.” He was relieved that the detective was taking him seriously.
“I’ll run up there and see what’s happening. Was thinking of going there, anyway. We got a homeless man that can’t seem to stay away from one of your houses, Mr. St. Cloud.”
Maybe the detective wasn’t taking him as seriously as he’d thought. “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes,” Hale said, if the slowpoke in front of him would get his bucket of bolts off the road.
“Give me your cell number. I’ll call you,” Clausen said. Hale gave it to him, but Clausen hung up before Hale could ask him for his in return.
Savannah tested the bonds on her left arm; they seemed a tad looser than those on her right, and this was on the side away from Charlie. She had to free herself. Had to find a way to warn Hale. “You look into their souls before they die,” she said, seeking to get him talking again. He’d gone silent, lost in some world of his own.
“Shhh . . .” He said then, “Bitch. I won’t play her game, but she won’t give up.”
It took Savvy a moment to realize he wasn’t talking about her. She was so cold, it was hard to think.
But now his attention returned to her. “It’s like the best sex ever, and then it’s so much more.”
“That’s why you killed them? To look into their souls?” She had several fingers almost free.
“I killed my mother first,” he admitted. “Mary. On the island. I put the knife right here.” He pressed on his own chest, just beneath the breastbone. “And then I slid it up, underneath the ribs.” His voice was almost reverent.
Two fingers were free. “You killed the Donatellas with a gun.”
“It was what we had.” And then he dug into her messenger bag and pulled out her gun. He’d obviously stashed it there while she was unconscious. He held it loosely in his hand. “Did you know your sister had a gun, too?” Savvy wouldn’t respond as she thought of the one Victoria had found. “Kristina had to hide it,” he explained, “or she would have been aiding and abetting. She was standing right there.” He pointed toward the front window, and a light flashed through the crack in the drapes. “He’s here . . . ,” he said gleefully.
As he turned around, Savvy tried to shake the rope from her left wrist. She needed her hand free. She needed to warn Hale. She needed out. She was screaming inside but finally she wrenched her left hand free of the bindings.
Quickly, she reached around to her right wrist, tugging on the stubborn rope. Please, please!
Charlie threw open the door, and Savannah screamed with everything she had.
Bang!
The sound of the point-blank shot stunned Savannah. She ripped at the rope on her right hand. Yanking and pulling. Cold tears on her face.
Charlie stumbled backward as a body hit him hard. They rolled on the floor as Savannah twisted upward, pulling at the ropes that were wrapped around her ankles and in one long loop around the granite top. She half jumped, half fell off the island, and her muscles locked up. She was too cold. Too frozen.
In horror she watched as Charlie disentangled himself from the pile of arms and legs, covered in blood.
Fred Clausen lay on the floor, gazing blankly toward the ceiling, and Charlie hunkered over him, staring hard into the man’s eyes, as if the secrets of the universe lay there.
Savannah broke and ran stiffly for the back door.
Hale made the turn into the housing development, aware how dark and forlorn all the empty houses seemed. There was no light in the area apart from the brilliant moonlight that had broken through a few drifting clouds.
Clausen hadn’t phoned him back, and since Hale couldn’t call him, he didn’t know if the detective had shown up yet.
But as soon as he got around the first curve, he saw the black-and-yellow TCSD vehicle.
And right beside it, Savannah’s rental.
“Okay . . . ,” he said aloud, assessing the situation.
A dark figure ran across the road in front of him, disappearing into bushes on the far side of the Donatella house. Immediately, Hale was on alert. He looked around the vehicle. His tools were in the back.
Pulling to a stop in front of the Pembertons’, he got out, feeling a brisk, cold wind numb his face. He went to the back of the TrailBlazer, opened the hatch. The light came on, and he felt completely exposed. Quickly, he snapped open the toolbox and grabbed a wrench. Then he shut the hatch and remote-locked the car.
Where was Savannah?
She ran along the headland, the rim of which was a jagged edge of crumbling dirt. Her bare feet ran over sharp sticks and gravel buried in the dirt, and she was certain they were bleeding.
Hale was walking into a trap. She had to draw Charlie away. If he caught her, he would kill her. He would find her and drag her back to the house and rape her and shove a knife into her chest.
And he would watch her soul depart. He would feed off it.
She heard him stumbling after her. It was dark. Neither one of them could see.
Faintly, her ears picked up the sound of an approaching engine. Oh, no! Hale.
She slowed down, listening for her pursuer, but he was turning back. Hea
ding to meet Hale!
She waited, breathing hard, shaking all over.
And suddenly he was right in front of her, reaching for her.
Automatically, she stepped backward, into air.
He grabbed for her arm, and she slipped down, her body scraping against the edge of the headland, loose sand and dirt spinning downward toward the sea.
“Shit,” Charlie gritted, looking behind himself.
There was a light from a car. Hale’s car.
Savvy yanked her arm free and clung to a twisting root sticking out the side of the headland. Cold, naked, and scared, she was too vulnerable to fight. All she could do was scream. “Hale! Look out! Hale!”
And then Charlie was gone, and she was hanging on the root, her arms weakening, her lower limbs feeling like lead.
He heard Savannah scream his name.
Immediately he ran in that direction, then saw the dark figure streak into the Donatella house through the open front door. Was that where she was? He ran after the figure, the wrench tight in his right hand.
Inside the house, he heard the strike of a match, and he raised the wrench, intent on crushing in Charlie’s skull. But the man who’d tossed the match onto the newspapers and wood and debris in the hearth looked wrong somehow, and he hesitated.
“Jesus loves me, this I know,” he sang in a trembling voice.
“Where’s Savannah?” Hale demanded.
The man cocked his head, concentrating. Then his attention went to the licking flames, and he warmed his palms. “My house is all boarded up,” he said. “The Donatellas won’t mind.”
“What?” Hale had been looking around the room, searching for a sign of Savannah, but his attention snapped back.
“We need a fire.”
The sound of a cry. Over the crackling and spitting flames. Hale turned back toward the door. “Savvy?” he called.
Something to his right. A flicker in the corner of his eye. Hale ducked automatically and felt a knife slice through the sleeve of his jacket and pierce his skin. He whipped around with the wrench, connecting with flesh. His attacker yowled and stabbed at him again. Hale caught a glimpse of the blade in the moonlight and grabbed for the man’s arm.
He was shocked to see the man had a gun in his other hand and he was raising it to Hale’s face.
Bang!
Savannah heard the shot and cried out in fear. She scrabbled for a hold in the dirt. Failed. Her fingers frantically pawed at the headland until she connected with something hard in the sandy muck. A boulder. Buried far enough back to offer some stability. A handhold. Another one.
Carefully, she dragged her body up over the boulder to the headland, her limbs violently shaking. She got a knee atop the ground and cried out in relief. Then she was staggering forward. Safe from falling.
There were three figures inside the house; she could see them through a window. Hale was alive! Thank God!
But three . . . ? Had Clausen somehow survived?
She stumbled forward, her knees giving out, her brain unable to command her legs.
There was smoke coming from the chimney. More smoke inside the house.
She found her way to the back door, aware that she had no weapon, that she was as vulnerable as she could ever be.
In the red light from the fire, she saw Hale and Charlie at a standoff. Charlie had a palm up to the bright flames, as if warding them off, and he held a knife in his other hand. Hale held a wrench. Her gun was nowhere to be seen, but at least the shot hadn’t hit Hale.
And there, standing near Clausen’s body, unbelievably, was Mickey. She’d thought the warbling of “Jesus Loves Me” had been in her head.
“Hale,” she whispered through a raw throat.
Hale glanced up just as Charlie charged him, running at him with the knife. Hale moved back, but Mickey, by accident or design, tripped Charlie, sending him sprawling face-first into the fire.
The wail that rose to the heavens was inhuman and caused Savannah to grab the island granite countertop to keep from collapsing.
Hale jumped forward toward Savannah. Mickey moved at the same moment, accidentally blocking him.
Savvy said, “Watch him! Watch him!” as Charlie writhed and screamed on the floor. His movement tangled up Mickey’s feet. The homeless man went down, grabbing at Hale, who managed to stay upright.
The smell of cooked flesh permeated the air, making Savannah gag. Where was the knife?
Then Hale was there, holding on to her. “Savannah,” he said in a voice that broke.
“I’m okay.”
He stripped off his jacket. “You’re freezing.” “Detective,” Mickey said weakly. They both looked over.
Charlie had dragged himself to Clausen and was pulling his gun free of its holster, still sobbing.
Hale lunged to the right, taking Savannah with him.
Bang. Bang. Bang!
The rapid-fire shots were aimed where they’d been standing. Glass shattered on the microwave oven behind them. Hale covered her with his body.
And then there was silence.
Hale lifted his head and looked over. Mickey was lying on the floor, his arms crossed over his chest. Clausen’s body was beside him, his holster empty.
There was no sign of Charlie.
Hale started to go after him, but Savvy said, “No. He has Clausen’s gun. He can’t get far. . . .”
She lifted a trembling arm to him, and he sank down beside her. “My God, Savannah,” he said.
She wanted to say, “I love you,” but it came out as a trembling “Thank you for finding me.”
And he did what she’d been dreaming about for days. He leaned down and kissed her. She wound her fingers in his dark hair and kissed him back, hard. We have to go, she thought. Before Charlie comes back.
“Come on,” Hale said, as if reading her thoughts, helping her to her feet and guiding her arms into the sleeves of his jacket.
She clung to him and looked down at Mickey, feeling a weight on her heart at the sight of Clausen’s dead body and Mickey’s still form, while Hale reached into his pocket for his cell phone to call the cavalry.
“Nine-one-one, what is the nature of your emergency?” the dispatcher’s tinny voice sounded from Hale’s cell.
Before he could respond, Mickey drew a breath and sang lustily, “Jesus loves me! This I know, cuz the Bible tells me so. . . .”
Three days later Savannah sat curled on Hale’s den couch, snuggling her baby boy to her breast. Hale was seated beside her, and they were both sober and quiet. The memorial service had been at the venue Astrid Carmichael had suggested, and it had been a solemn and poignant affair. Savannah had taken baby Declan with her while Hale addressed the crowd with kind words about Kristina, which made Savvy tear up and feel sorry for her sister all over again. She’d been one of Charlie’s most tortured victims.
And Charlie was a ghost. She could scarcely credit it. In the wounded state he’d been in? With those terrible burns on the side of his face? How had he slipped through the sheriff’s department’s net? Someone had to have given him help and shelter.
Meanwhile, Lang and Sheriff O’Halloran and everyone else in the department were angry and determined to find the psychotic monster who’d taken out one of their own. Savannah hadn’t been back to work since Charlie/Declan Jr./Henry had kidnapped her and killed Clausen, but she’d seen Lang and she knew his dark mood reflected everyone’s feelings. The memorial service for Fred Clausen was scheduled for the following week.
Lang had also told Savannah that the DNA test had come back from the blood sample on the knife Catherine had given her. Savvy hadn’t taken the news to Catherine yet, mainly because there wasn’t much to say, anyway. Only one type of blood was discovered, and it belonged to a female, so it was probably Mary Rutledge Beeman’s. For now, an exhumation of the body was on hold, but when Charlie/ Henry/Declan Jr. was caught, they might need to search for corroborating evidence, naming him the killer.
Hale turned to look
at Savannah. “How’re we doing?” he asked.
“We’re okay,” she said.
Then they both gazed down into baby Declan’s sleeping face. She pressed a kiss to his clean little brow and said a prayer for Kristina.
The Toyota bumped along the highway, causing Charlie, who lay burned and broken in the passenger seat of Victoria Phelan’s car, to moan involuntarily. They were traversing along the top of the state, toward I-5, which would take them north into Washington State.
“Where should we go?” Victoria said, fretting. “Canada? They’ll be looking for you.”
He closed his eyes, shutting her out. It was lucky she was so easy to control. He’d lost some of his powers. A lot of them, actually. He thought back to how easily he’d manipulated her into hiding Kristina’s gun and calling Savannah, how much she’d been panting for him, how she would have done anything to have him, and now she was questioning him . . . ? Well, it just plain hurt, almost worse than his injuries.
“We gotta go east, across Washington. Maybe to Idaho,” he told her.
“Y’think?”
“Yes,” he said through his teeth.
Victoria had hidden him the past few days, bringing salve and bandages and food to the motel room she’d rented after Hale St. Cloud had let her go. The timing was perfect. No one paid any attention to her after she handed over the gun she’d “found,” the one he’d given her to hide. Luckily, she’d gotten the money from her broken contract, and they were set for a while. But he was going to have to get rid of her soon. She was a liability. Didn’t they all become one eventually?
Killing her would help. Just thinking of how he’d felt while looking into that dying detective’s eyes . . . It helped ease the pain of his burns and the deep fury he felt over losing Savannah Dunbar. What a clusterfuck. That homeless dude showing up.