Sleep With The Lights On

by Maggie Shayne

  Mason sent the same question to the boys with his eyes. Josh shook his head no, then said, “I’ll go check downstairs!” and was thundering away before he finished speaking.

  Jeremy looked worried. “I saw her down by the dock earlier. Didn’t want to bother her.”

  “When?”

  “When Mom made those sandwiches. What time was that, Mom?”

  “Noonish.” Marie looked concerned.

  Mason didn’t say anything else, just crossed to the patio doors, and went out and down the back steps. He crossed the grass in long strides that came faster as his gut wound tighter. Something was wrong. Every cop instinct he had was telling him so.

  The rowboat’s gone.

  He saw it before he got to the dock, the slightly green-tinted water with sunlight flashing from every minuscule crest where the boxy fishing boat should have been. Why would she take the boat out? He knew that she’d wanted to talk to him—had been trying to get him alone all day—but it had been impossible with the family all over him.

  Bullshit. You didn’t want to get her alone because you were afraid she wanted to talk about the sex last night, not to mention you want to do it again so bad you can taste it.

  “I’m gonna take the canoe and go out after her.”

  “Do you really think that’s necessary?” Marie tipped her blond curls sideways.

  “I doubt she’s ever even been in a boat, Marie. And you know I have reason to believe she’s in danger. That’s why I brought her up here. And why I wanted the rest of you up here with us. I was afraid it wasn’t safe at home, but now I’m not so sure it’s safe here, either.”

  Jeremy came out the back door with Mason’s fleece-lined denim jacket over his arm, jogged down the steps to the ground and sprinted the remaining distance. He was wearing a parka and a knit hat, and he shoved Mason’s jacket at him.

  “Thanks, kid.”

  “I’m coming with you. If she’s in trouble I—”

  “I need you here, Jer. I need somebody to watch the family. Keep them safe. Get ’em inside, lock the place up and stay put until I find out what the hell is going on here. Anyone shows up here, and I mean anyone, you call nine-one-one. I mean it.”

  Jeremy backed up a step, and Mason knew it was pure fear that pushed him. “What’s going on?”

  “I don’t know yet. Just do what I said, okay? I’m counting on you. I’ll be back as soon as I can. Go on now. Go.”

  Jeremy nodded, backing off the dock, wide-eyed, and finally turned to his mother, saying, “You heard him. Let’s get inside.”

  Mason sighed in relief, zipped up his jacket and eased into the canoe. He’d gone a half mile before he looked down and saw the knit hat sticking out of one coat pocket, the gloves sticking out of another. “Nice, Jeremy. Maybe you are growing up after all.” He laid the paddle down long enough to pull on the hat. Then he was pushing hard, quickly stroking the paddle through the calm, deep water, then switching to the other side, then back again. Falling into the mindless rhythm, he tried not to let his thoughts wander too far afield.

  She’s fine. She got bored and decided to go for a row. That’s all. There’s nothing bad going on here. David isn’t the killer. He came here because he’s a jealous loon, not to take her out to—

  Stop it. Just stop it already.

  “Ah, shit.” The rowboat was up ahead, and there was no one in it. One of the oars was floating up near the stern, knocking gently against the metal, over and over.

  He paddled up beside her, looked inside. The life jacket was there, lying on the floor, dammit, along with the fishing box and rod that were left aboard from April to Halloween every year.

  Then he saw something else in the water, something floating, white and bloated, with a rope writhing snakelike by its side. What was it?

  “Shit!” It was a hand.

  Not hers, not hers, not hers.

  Of course it’s not hers. Look at it. It’s been here awhile.

  The rope. It had been tied down.

  Shit, is this where he dumped them?

  Did he dump her, too?

  “Rachel!” He tore off the coat and hat, and dived into liquid ice. Fighting past the paralyzing cold, he stroked downward and found them. The garden of bodies, in various stages of decomposition. But not her. He didn’t see her.

  And then he had to surface, gasping, stiff with cold almost to the point where his muscles would no longer respond to his commands. He dragged himself back into the canoe, no easy task. He’d done it a hundred times, of course. As kids he and Eric would row out here together to swim and raise hell.

  And this is what it meant to him? This?

  But he’d never gone swimming in water this cold.

  He was lucky. The sun was at its warmest, and it had been in the upper fifties when he’d left. He wouldn’t freeze to death. Not right away, anyway.

  He peeled off his wet shirt and put on his dry jacket, zipping it all the way to his chin with shaking fingers. He wrung out his hair and pulled on the hat, put on the gloves and picked up the paddle.

  Something else caught his eye out in the water, too far away to see. He paddled nearer. A boat cushion.

  Not one of ours.

  There was another boat out here!

  Okay, okay, that meant she might still be alive. He pulled the boat cushion aboard, then paddled directly toward the shore, because that was what made sense to do. If you’d snatched a fighting, feisty woman like Rachel off her boat and onto yours, that was what you would want to do. Get off the water as fast as possible, before she drowned you both.

  Mason pulled out his cell phone, praying there would be a whisper of a signal. There was service at the lake house, but out on the water it was iffy. He needed to report this. Bodies in the lake. Rachel missing. But not a single bar showed. He pulled up the text message screen and didn’t have to consider who to contact. Jeremy’s phone was never turned off and never far from his hand. And sometimes texting worked even if there were no bars showing. He typed a quick message. Call 911. Bodies in lake. Rach missing, prob abducted. Suspect David Gray.

  His finger hovered over the send button. He hated to send such a dramatic text to his nephew. But he had no choice. Rachel’s life was on the line, and Jeremy was his best bet at making contact. He hit the button and watched a narrow blue line creep across the screen as the message started to go.

  “Come on, come on.”

  The blue line stopped just before it reached the end, and it didn’t start up again.

  “Dammit!” He jammed the phone back into his pocket, furious at himself for wasting precious seconds, then grabbed the paddle and headed toward the forested shore again. Twenty feet out he turned the canoe and followed the shoreline in the shallows, aiming for silence but pushing for speed as his eyes scanned the woods in search of anything—any sign of her or the other boat.

  After what seemed like an hour but he knew had been more like ten minutes, he glimpsed smoke and the shape of a cabin in the woods.

  As he drew closer, he saw a boat. Someone had dragged it up onto shore and left it between two clumps of brush, deliberately trying to camouflage its presence.

  Has to be Gray. He said he was camping up here.

  Mason bent low to avoid creating a big silhouette and catching anyone’s eye, and let the canoe drift past the boat, then he sat up again and stroked to shore.

  * * *

  Why the hell does my head hurt so much?

  I squeezed my eyes shut tighter against the throbbing pain and automatically went to press my hand to the spot where it hurt, but my hand wouldn’t move. My arm wouldn’t move.

  What the hell?

  I opened my eyes. I was in a room. A house. A log cabin. On the floor in a corner with my hands tied behind my back and what I guessed was a strip of duct tape over my mouth and wrapped around the back of my head. And there was a man pacing back and forth in front of me.

  About that time the memories came back to my addled and probably concuss
ed brain. The ice-cold water, the bodies, including the newly dumped one, and the sudden realization just as I came up for air that the killer had to be there waiting.

  Then being yanked onto the boat, dropped onto my back and bashed in the head with something.

  Oar, my inner genius guessed.

  He turned my way, and I quickly closed my eyes again, all the while working on the duct tape with my tongue, pushing it away from my lips, poking behind it, and panicking about what would happen if I developed a stuffy nose.

  “She’s a woman,” he said to no one. He shook his fist. “She’s not what you want.”

  “She knows. She has to die.” It was a deeper voice, a meaner one, and I opened my eyelids the merest slit, trying to see who the speaker was, but he was turned away and I couldn’t.

  “I don’t want to,” said the almost familiar voice. It wasn’t clicking into place, because I’d expected it to be David’s. And it wasn’t.

  “I don’t give two shits what you want,” said the other voice, the completely different one. Except there was only one man and that voice was coming from the same set of lips.

  Whoever he was, he was batshit crazy.

  “Kill her now, before she wakes—unless you don’t have what it takes. In that case, just let me...for heaven’s sakes.” He laughed. It was low and dark, very brief. Clearly he found his rhyme scheme clever.

  Rhyming! Oh, God, it’s him. He’s here, somehow! “I don’t. I don’t have what it takes. Not a woman. Not her.”

  Wait, that voice...I almost had it now.

  “Fine. Stop fighting me, then, and let me do my job.”

  “This isn’t what I wanted. I’m leaving, I’m done.” He reached for the door, just as someone kicked it open.

  Mason!

  He sprang into the room, gun drawn, as the lunatic fell backward onto the floor, but the creep just rolled and scrambled over to me, looking right into my face in the split second before he pulled me in front of him and put a knife to my throat.

  Dr. Vosberg?

  Mason stood there, pointing his gun at the guy. It was hard to see him, silhouetted against the light spilling through the wide-open door behind him. Was I the only one to notice that the gun, like Mason himself, had water dripping from it? Would it even fire?

  “Dr. Vosberg?” he said. “What the hell?”

  “It’s not me! It’s not me! It’s the damn heart I got. It’s evil, it’s taking me over!”

  Mason’s eyes shifted to mine, and I shrugged.

  “You had a heart transplant?” Mason asked.

  “Was on the waiting list for a year.” His hand was shaking. “That’s when I did the research, wrote the book. But it was only two months ago, a little over, when I got the heart.”

  “Okay. Okay.” Mason was keeping his tone calm, soothing. “Just let her go and we’ll talk about it. This isn’t what you want to do.”

  I felt the doc stiffen behind me. And then the shaking stopped and his grip on me became brutal, the blade pressing close, maybe even cutting a little. His voice changed again, deeper, crueler, and he said, “Hello, little brother.”

  Mason blinked. Clearly the greeting shook him. “You’re not my brother,” he said.

  “Yes, I am. The only part of him that’s still alive, anyway. He called me the rat. But I’m no rat. I’m a man.”

  “You’re not a man. You’re a fucking sickness.” Mason advanced a single step.

  That resulted in the knife blade slicing into my skin. Maybe it was only a little, but it felt like a lot, and I whimpered from behind my tape as I felt warm blood trickling down my neck.

  “Okay, okay. Easy.” Mason held up his hands, one of them still holding the gun.

  “Drop it, or I’ll cut her jugular and you can watch her bleed out on the floor.”

  “Dr. Vosberg—Raymond, listen to me.”

  “The doctor is out right now. Would you like to make an appointment?” He laughed again, and the knife jiggled against my neck, cutting deeper every time. Then he stopped laughing and practically growled, “Mason better drop the gun, or brother’s knife will have some fun.” His tone was low and ice-cold.

  Mason dropped the gun.

  “Kick it this way.”

  He used one foot to push the gun carefully our way. I tugged at whatever bound my hands behind me, but it was useless. Shit.

  The Eric-possessed shrink reached out with his own foot to drag the gun closer, and then he let go of me with one hand so he could pick it up. The knife was still at my throat, but when he bent and twisted, it moved away a little.

  Enough.

  I jerked backward hard, bashing my head into his, then threw my entire weight sideways, away from the knife. I landed on top of the gun, and by the time I did, Mason was on the guy. They were a giant tangle, and then I heard a grunt as Mason staggered backward, one hand on his belly.

  Oh, God, blood was oozing from around it.

  I jumped to my feet and plowed into the doc headfirst, driving him backward until he bashed into the wall.

  He dropped the knife but grabbed me by the throat a second later and started squeezing. That just about decided it. I couldn’t breathe at all, and he was squeezing still tighter. Black spots started blocking out my vision.

  Then I heard an explosion, and the hands around my neck eased. The eyes staring into mine widened, and Dr. Vosberg slowly sank to the floor.

  I turned to look behind me.

  Jeremy was standing in the middle of the room. The door was still open behind him, the gun still smoking in his hands.

  And Mason was still on the floor bleeding.

  I ran to Jeremy, turned my back to him. “Untie me.” When he didn’t move immediately I shouted, “Fucking untie me, Jeremy!”

  He did. Turned out my bonds were tape, not rope, and he picked up the killer’s knife and cut through them.

  I removed the tape and dropped to my knees beside Mason. “Jeremy, we need help. Is anyone else coming? Are you alone?” I pressed my hands to the wound in Mason’s belly, trying to slow the damned blood down. “Fuck, Mason, you’re bleeding like a stuck hog.”

  “Sorry, I’ll try to quit that.”

  I shot him a look. The first time I’d looked at his face since he’d busted in here. It was twisted up into a tight grimace. But his eyes stayed fixed on mine. The little wrinkles at the corners made my heart hurt.

  “Jeremy,” I said again, not looking away. “Come on. Your uncle’s bleeding out here. Snap out of it!”

  He finally moved. I heard him come closer, felt him set the gun down. “The police are coming. I didn’t want to wait. I brought the kayak.”

  “It’s a good thing you did,” I told him.

  “Check on Vosberg,” Mason said. “Make sure he’s dead.”

  I took Jeremy’s hands, pressed them to the wound. “Keep pressure on it.” Then I crawled over to the good doctor, who was only a few feet away. Still kneeling, I leaned over him. He’d fallen on his back, but he wasn’t dead. “Jeremy?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You still got that gun?”

  “It’s right here.”

  “If this asshole tries anything, shoot him again.”

  Vosberg’s lips pulled into a smile, a sick one. His eyes opened, wider than I would have thought they were able to. “No need for that. I’m done.”

  Dr. V stared at me. Only it wasn’t Dr. V, I was sure of it. There was a stranger looking out at me through his eyes. He coughed. I angled my gaze to his chest, where bubbling red foam was spreading, then back to his face again. “I knew you were going to catch on,” he said. “It was only a matter of time. Framing you didn’t work, thanks to my little bro—”

  “Shut up!” I glanced behind me at Jeremy. He didn’t need to hear what the bastard was going to say.

  “You might think I’m dead and gone,” the monster speaking through Dr. Vosberg went on. “But part of me lives on and on.” His smile broadened. “Parts of me, that is.”

  The
light went out then. I saw it. It just left. His eyes went from a living gaze to a pair of lifeless marbles. His jaw went slack. The bloody foam stopped bubbling. Just like that.

  The cops came busting in, and that was it.

  The nightmare was over. At least, I hoped it was.

  Epilogue

  My brother’s body was recovered, along with the other victims of the Wraith. The crimes were placed at the feet of Dr. Raymond Vosberg, a man whose wild ideas had been published, making it easy to believe he was completely insane. Terry Cobb, a patient of Vosberg’s, had been written off as a copycat, maybe even a protégé, who’d killed once and then realized he couldn’t live with being a murderer. David, it turned out, was just an overly possessive, jealous jerk, but otherwise harmless.

  We’d buried Tommy that afternoon in a beautiful spot overlooking the reservoir, and I liked to think he’d found some kind of peace. The funeral was over, and everyone had gone back to my place for comfort food. Everyone but me. I was still standing near the grave, with the shiny casket all flower-strewn on its stand above a thinly disguised hole in the ground. Myrtle was sleeping on my feet. She was wearing her pink plush jacket, and I was huddling into my long wool coat. The leaves were mostly gone, trees bare, and the breeze was brisk.

  I felt him before I saw him. Mason. He walked up to stand beside me, his hands in his coat pockets.

  “I thought you’d left,” I said.

  “You thought wrong.” He slid an arm around my shoulders. Friendly, supportive. Also warm and strong. “You okay?” he asked.

  “Yeah. Yeah, actually, I am. How about you?”

  “A little sore still.” He put a hand on his belly, where he’d been stabbed, as he said it. “But it’s healing fast.”

  “Good.” I drew a breath, sighed it out again. “You believe there’s an afterlife, Mason?”

  “Hard not to, after what we witnessed, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah. Yeah it is.” I blinked, and looked up at him. “I’d like to think Tommy’s found some peace.”

  “It feels peaceful here. Maybe that’s a sign that you’re right.”

  “I hope so.” I turned around, and he did, too, and we started walking slowly toward our cars, the only two left in the cemetery. “What did you decide to tell the family?” I asked. When I’d visited him in the hospital, he’d still been wrestling with that question.