Michaels pounded along the shore, getting closer to the person hanging in the tree: A woman with tousled blonde hair and a desperately frightened look on her face. The wind of the chopper blades sent ripples through her already impossibly messy hair.
“Barter!” Michaels yelled as he jogged along the shore to her. “Are you all right?”
“Do I look goddamn alright?” she yelled back over the whipping sounds of propeller blades and the blasts of mist lifted from the lake and slapped at her face. Both her arms clutched the tree that jutted from the side of the cliff. “I’ve been hanging on to this tree for a whole damn day.”
He clambered across the base of the cliff to under where she was standing and then made his way up under her. When he got to where she was and he slid his arms around her waist.
“Careful there,” she seethed, then added, “I broke my leg on the way down.”
“Grab onto me,” he shouted. “I got you.”
She hesitated for a moment before releasing the tree and throwing her arms around his neck. Their eyes met for a flicker before she quickly looked away. Michaels held her back with one hand and the other swept under her legs, careful to not hurt her existing injury. She pinched her eyes closed and murmured a prayer as he steadied himself to step backward down the precarious cliff.
When his feet found the solid ground of the shore again, he bolted toward the chopper with Barter in his arms, where Mulaka was waiting with blankets. They swept her up inside and wrapped her soggy body in the thick layers of wool.
Michaels put on his headset and signaled Mulaka to get head back when Barter’s eyes caught his again.
“You’re a good cop, Allan Michaels,” she said, in a tone far softer than he’d ever heard from the loudmouthed woman. “You did good.”
“Don’t you worry, Constable Barter” He tried to hide the choked feeling that stuck in his throat. Now was not the time to look like a sissy. “We’ll get you back to town and you’ll be on your feet in no time flat.”
“No,” she said. “Glenda threw me from that cliff. She’s a dangerous woman. She intends to kill the rest. We need to go save them. Mia Floyd is in terrible danger. Leo and Nate too.”
The helicopter lifted from the ground and tilted to the right to head back to town.
“But you’re soaking wet, Constable Barter,” Michaels insisted. “If we don’t get you to a hospital right away you could die from hypothermia. We can send help for them after we get to town.”
“I don’t care about myself,” she barked, and then collapsed into a coughing fit. After regaining her composure, she breathlessly added, “Those people are not dying on my watch.”
Michaels knew Barter was not one to negotiate during a fit of stubbornness. He glanced at Mulaka, who only shrugged at him.
“I’m sorry, Constable Barter,” Michaels returned his eyes to her, finding a firmness in himself that he had never known before. “With all due respect, I don’t believe you are in the state of mind to be making these types of decisions right now. You will certainly die if we don’t get you help right now. So, I’m taking you back to the hospital. And that is final.”
*************
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Mia stared at the cabin in the darkness before her. So many memories flooded her mind. Visions of eating wild berry jam with her grandfather were now replaced with the image she saw before her. Where there had once been a Norman Rockwell cozy painting was now a collapsing mess. The walls were gaping slats of rotten wood that bled moss out of every crevice. The once proud roof now sagged and hunched like a guilty conscience.
She walked toward it, her feet padding against the soft moss. She was so mesmerized by what she saw that she almost forgot Glenda was hunting her. It really had become a monstrosity through no fault of its own. She had always known this cabin was here, but hadn’t given it much thought until the dreams began haunting her.
The cabin was derelict. Sad, really. And not a single sign of Brendan anywhere. She chewed back the urge to collapse inward.
She plodded up to the doorway of the cabin and looked inside. It was empty, save for a mossy lump splayed on the ground in the corner. Her eyes squinted to study it.
She walked over very slowly. Scared, almost. It was something unearthly. Like a long sack of mud draped in various shades of moss and soil. She crept closer to it and bent down to. Touched it. That was when her fingertips hit bone.
She yanked her hand back.
A collection of ribs, piled like jewels, dipped in and out of the earth, entrenched in scarves of moss and baby beige mushrooms. Atop the filthy white cluster rose a small skull.
The skeleton was the size of a child’s.
A child the age Brendan would have been when he disappeared.
Her hands clasped at her mouth as she fell to her knees, gaping at the creamy white skull. She wanted to caress its eyes to see what Brendan had seen in his last moment, but she didn’t dare touch it. A painfully dry sob crept her throat.
Everything she had strived for, running through the forest with a note in her pocket, was to come to this moment? She refused to believe it could be true.
“See something you like?” a voice pierced behind her and Mia bolted to her feet and spun to see Glenda gripping a blood-encrusted blade behind her. She glared at Mia.
“What have you done?” Mia’s cries were not only directed at the blood on Glenda’s weapon but also at the long-decayed corpse that lay at her feet. She repeated the words with an agony that burned deep inside of her, “What have you done?”
“I believe that is obvious, is it not?”
“But he was my son.”
“Your son.” Glenda raised an impeccably chiseled eyebrow and snorted. “That’s all you ever cared about. But what your other goddamn son? The one you practically chucked in the trash the day he was born.”
"Why would you say that?” Mia said.
Glenda slid one elegant step toward Mia, her fixated eyes fixated, gleaming. “You’re the one who had dreams he would be here. It’s all you ever talked about for a whole year. Instead of being a productive person and actually cleaning your house, you obsessed about your dreams. So, I’ve just fulfilled your dreams for you by taking him here. By tricking you to come to the forest and find him. Do you think it was a coincidence that my fan happened to be leading a hike right to the cabin where you thought your son would be? I believe you owe me your thanks for this enormous gesture of love, not your judgment.”
“You killed my son,” Mia said. Still unable to believe it. This cheerful young girl she’d brought into her home and opened her heart to. The only person she had trusted. She couldn’t understand the person she was looking at now.
“Why is not important. What’s important is that you can see he is dead. No more dreams, no more fantasies of meeting him again someday. If that’s not closure, baby girl, I have no idea what is.”
“What is wrong with you, Glenda?" Mia cried.
“What’s wrong with me?” Glenda purred and squatted down on a rock. “What’s wrong is that you gave me up for adoption. I was adopted by a nasty old woman who just happened to own a marijuana farm, if you can believe something so vile. She even had a guard grizzly bear for said farm. You know, exactly like the one we saw chasing us.” Glenda’s face darkened bitterly at the memories. “My life was hell, Mia. And it was your fault.”
“I’m sorry…” Mia found herself saying, not even sure why she would be apologizing.
“You’re sorry?” Glenda stopped pacing and slid her gaze to Mia in such a sinister manner it made Mia step back and hit her heel against the soft mush of the body. Mia squatted in front of the door, protecting it. “How the hell can you stand there and tell me you’re sorry when you’re the one who gave me this fate?”
“I-I-I don’t understand,” Mia said. She wanted to bolt through the door, run down the path to get to Leo, where she could be safe. Or as least as safe as she could expect to be in this situation. But Glenda
firmly hunched before it, and there was no way of getting past her without being stabbed in an eyeball.
“You thought you could just give me away when I was born without another word?” Glenda said. “Did you think I would not come find you and make you pay for that?” She took three strides toward Mia. “I tried being your friend for four years, to give you a chance to be the mother to me you never were, and all day long it was just Brendan this, Brendan that. You made me sick with your pathetic whining. And the last straw was when you announced you were giving your house away to some random cat charity and not to the only living child you have in the world.”
“That's impossible,” Mia shook her head, confusion swarming her, consuming her. “The child I gave up for adoption….no…He was a boy…” The memory of the baby in her arms flickered painfully before her eyes. Then her eyes widened as she remembered the estrogen pills they had found in Glenda’s purse. God. Her eyes grazed Glenda. How could she have been so stupid and not seen it? It was so obvious now.
Glenda’s face flushed with an unhealthy shade of purple and she lunged at Mia with her blade. She swiped at her cheek, slashing her. “You’re so caught up in your own world you can’t see the reality right in front of your face?”
Mia ran to the far corner of the cabin and spun around, clutching the walls, “Back off, Glenda. I don’t want any problems with you.”
“Fight me, you weak bitch!” Glenda screamed. “Look at how you cower. You can’t make any decision in your life, including the decision to abort me instead of waiting all this time so that I could come back and kill you.”
Glenda arced the knife above her wild red hair and smiled deliriously at Mia, before slamming it into her heart. Mia screamed. Just before making contact again, Glenda’s forearm was grabbed by a hand from behind. She spun to look at who blocked her.
“Put the knife down.” Leo spoke the words firmly, easily. “Now.” Mia wanted to scream in gratitude. She thought he had run off without her. She nearly fell to her knees in weak relief.
Glenda ignored his instruction and veered the knife to his face, rage brimming in her eyes. Leo’s other hand lurched up to stop it, his hands clamping fiercely on her wrists. Glenda yelped and pulled back from him. She fell to the ground on her back and clambered away from him like a terrified crab. Leo grabbed a jagged stone and marched toward her, with clearly the intention to smash her skull in.
“Leo, don’t do it!” Mia cried.
He ignored her and slammed a boot down on Glenda’s shoulder, pinning her to the earth. He gripped the stone with both hands above his head, and seethed down at her as she smirked cheekily up at him.
“And why not?” he asked.
“Because she’s your…” Mia started.
“She’s my what?” Leo lowered the stone, still pinning Glenda down with his boot. He looked over at Mia, demanding she finish the statement.
“Yeah, that’s right, don’t do it, Leo,” a raspy voice curdled the air behind them. An elderly old lady wearing nothing but a flowery bathrobe and slouchy light brown suede boots held a pistol pointed at his face with one hand and a messy stack of papers in the other.
“Unless you want to kill your own son, that is,” she said, and then added with a shrug, “well, technically, she’s your daughter. If you want to get all politically correct on me. But to me it doesn’t matter. A brat is a brat, no matter the gender.”
“Excuse me?” Leo dropped the rock and stared at the woman. The chiseled lines in his facial expressions contorted from anger to fear. “You are mistaken. This is not my daughter.” He marched toward Jessica and reached down to take her gun. “I don’t have any daughter. I had one son with Mia, and another son who is deceased.”
“Clearly, you’re mistaken,” the old lady smirked. “Perhaps someone poked a hole in one of your condoms.”
“What?” Leo demanded. “Who are you?”
“Why, I’m Jessica, of course. Who else would I be?” She sneered. “But a bitch like you can call me Mother Bitch.” She lifted the gun and aimed it at his face. “Bye.”
Jessica pulled the trigger.
“God damn it.” She scowled as the gun jammed. She dropped it to her thighs to quickly unjam it.
Leo reached down and with one expert move he snatched it from her hands and pointed it back at her.
“Any more weapons?” Leo barked at Jessica as he held her in place with his aim.
“Kill him, mother!” Glenda scrambled up from the floor and shouted to Jessica. “Get the back-up weapon.”
“Girl, settle down. We’ll get to that in a second,” Jessica soothed her and turned her attention back to Mia and Leo. “As delightful as it’s been chasing you up this damn mountain in my bathrobe,” she said, “Glenda and I actually came here on specific business. We have a proposition to make.”
She clutched a pile of papers in her fist, and nodded to Mia. “You have a house you don’t particularly care for, given the squalid condition it’s in, and we have what you could call an alternative lifestyle farm that’s falling apart thanks to the Canadian government making marijuana legal. No one’s too interested in buying crops from a criminal. So I thought in light of our mutual need, we’d strike a deal.”
“A deal?” Mia’s heart thundered, her hands shook. She looked at the skeletal body at her feet. Leo came to her and put a protective arm around her shoulder, as he held the gun pointed at Glenda and Jessica. Mia continued, “You killed my son and now you want me to make a deal with you?”
“Oh, yeah. That.” Jessica radiated. Proud, practically. “I was meaning to show you that later, only if you refused my deal. To show you the consequences of those who disagree with me. But then you sneaked on in the cabin ahead of me. Oops. Guess that part of the plan got a little effed up, huh?”
“You sick bitch,” Mia said. Disgust and rage boiled through her veins. “He was my son.”
Leo glared at Jessica, “What do you want from Mia? What do you want from us?”
Jessica grinned as though she was ready for this moment all her life. She thrust the pile of papers in her hand at Glenda, who obediently took the stack to Mia.
“Sign over your house to its rightful owner, Glenda. Your child.” Jessica grinned. “Think of it as a way to apologize to her for giving her up for adoption and making her grow up with someone horrible like me.”
“Never,” Mia took the papers and chucked them back at Jessica. They floated up and showered down like an array of giant confetti at the world’s worst party.
“Funny how you’re so quick to reject my offer. After how she’s dealt with your whiny bullshit for the last four years and been pretty much the only person who’s stuck by you through thick and thin.”
“That’s enough,” Leo barked. “You need to leave now. We’re done here.”
“Glenda was the son you abandoned and practically flushed down the shit tubes so you could have a better life in Italy.”
“It wasn’t like that.” And it really wasn’t. Mia had struggled through years of depression after giving away her son. It was why she held so tightly to the next one. But she could never, would never, explain that to this deranged old woman standing her before her, challenging her on the very essence of her ability to love as a mother.
“Did you hear me? You need to take your documents.” Leo grabbed the scatter of yellow, green, pink and white papers from the damp, mossy earth and chucked them back at Jessica. “And get the fuck out of here.”
“Or else what?” Jessica smiled. “You gonna to beat me up, big guy?”
“Just leave, Jessica,” he repeated.
Jessica dragged her gaze over to Mia. “So I take it there’s no business deal?”
“Absolutely not.” Mia glared.
“Suit yourself,” she casually stepped to one side, revealing the magnificent beast behind her. The grizzly held its head down low, saliva slurping from its nostrils. Its fierce eyes looked up and gripped on Leo and Mia.
“Meet Walter. With o
ne just one secret command,” Jessica warned, “he will slaughter both of you. Want to know what that secret command is?”
The pulsing sounds of a helicopter churned above them. Mia looked upward through the slats of the roof. It would pass by without rescuing them as long as they were stuck in this cabin. They could push past Jessica and run to flag it down. But there was no way they could push past a giant, angry bear blocking the doorway.
“Care to sign those papers now, Mia?” Jessica crossed her arms atop her bathrobe as a terrible grin splayed her wrinkled cheeks.
“I will never sign your papers,” Mia breathed the words steadily.
Jessica nodded at her. “Come, daughter,” she called to Glenda. “We’ll let Walter kill them now and then leave their corpses to rot alongside Brendan’s. That way they can all be a happy family for all eternity.”
“That’s a really sweet image, mother.” Glenda smiled.
“I have a tender side sometimes,” Jessica said.
Glenda looked briefly sadly at Mia. Sorry to do this. I mean, you weren’t so bad, I guess. I’ll miss you.” She stepped out of the cabin with Jessica.
The bear paused and blinked at the door as if not exactly sure he knew what he was doing there.
“Pizza, Walter!” Jessica giggled with delight and then explained, “That’s the secret command for him to kill. Kind of cute, huh?”
Walter obeyed and stepped through the cabin door toward Mia and Leo.
A massive paw swung at Leo first, barely missing him. Leo sprang backward, clutching Mia and bringing her into the opposite corner of the cabin. Trapped, with only a jammed gun to protect them, Leo thrust his body in front of Mia’s and hollered at the grizzly to back off. The bear snorted sloppily and took one more step toward them onto the skeletal child, flattening it into the wet, mossy earth.
“No!” Mia screamed. It was be the first time she’d ever raised her voice since they’d been ambushed by Jessica and her entourage. “You stupid bear,” she shrieked.
Kiss Her Goodbye: Thriller/Romance with a shocking twist Page 19