That was all they had heard. The branch crackling against the glass. Not Dexter.
But Rachel had been so confident that she’d sensed him nearby. Could she have been mistaken?
Joshua squinted outside again.
One branch fell. But we heard glass shatter twice, didn’t we?
It was hard to be sure. The noisy wind was conspiring against them.
He backed away from the window. Logic provided a comforting explanation. Intuition, however, offered another, much more disturbing possibility.
Resolve hardening his face, Joshua cocked the hammer of the .357 and flung open the front door.
Cold wind gusted inside and struck him like a many-armed beast. But there was no attack from Dexter.
Silvery moonlight illuminated the porch. Checking both ways, Joshua went down the steps. At the bottom, his shoe crunched on the blend of glass slivers and leaves.
He kicked aside the offending branch. Then he swung around, and looked up, knowing what he was going to see, and dreading it.
The dormer window, which led to the attic, was broken.
* * *
On the threshold of her meditation room, Rachel played the flashlight beam around. All clear.
She locked the door, leaned against it.
Her heart hammered. There was a chair beside the doorway, which she used sometimes during her meditations. She brought levered the top of the seat back underneath the door knob, a little extra reinforcement. Better.
Beyond the white cone of her flashlight, the room was tomb-dark. During their preparations, they had drawn the Venetian blinds on the big window that gave the panoramic ocean view.
She decided to open the blinds. It would make her feel better, to be able to observe the ceaselessly rumbling tides.
She pulled the lift cord, raising the blinds to the top of the windowpane. Pale moonlight fell inside. On the beach below, the waves, lashed by strong winds, crashed violently on the shore, as if some gigantic sea creature were thrashing to the surface to devour her.
Disturbed, she was about to close the blinds again, preferring the comfort of the flashlight to this sight, when she heard a sound behind her. Like creaking metal hinges.
In the far corner of the room, there was a rectangular ceiling panel that granted entry to the attic. As she watched, it opened slowly, a set of retractable wooden stairs lowering from the attic to the floor, like the widening jaws of an immense beast.
He’s already in the house, oh, Jesus . . .
A sharp stench assailed her nostrils, a blend of offensive odors. Damp earth . . . unchecked male sweat . . . old, spilled blood . . .
Terror bolted her feet in place. She wanted to run. But she couldn’t order her muscles to work.
There was a thud, and a creak: the weight of a body dropping onto the hardwood floor.
I smell him, I hear him, but I can’t see him. What the hell?
“I kept my promise, baby,” a familiar voice said, which had an effect on Rachel like an ice pick piercing her spine. “I found you.”
Run, Rachel thought, wildly. Run, run, run.
But she couldn’t. She wouldn’t.
Not any more.
She trained the flashlight in front of her.
Dexter materialized in the space, as if magically taking shape from the darkness itself. He looked the same, like the man who had haunted her nightmares for so long, but different. Crazier, if that were at all possible. Madness glinted in his eyes.
She had no idea how he did the invisibility trick. It didn’t matter. All that mattered was that she was going to put an end to this.
“Aren’t you going to run?” He nodded toward the doorway. “There’s the door. Make me chase you, baby, make it sweeter for me. You know I love it when you fight.”
“Then I’m happy to disappoint you, asshole.”
She dropped the flashlight, raised the gun, and pulled the trigger.
* * *
He got in through the attic, Joshua thought. Why didn’t I think of that?
Dexter had out-foxed him. The man had a singular, twisted brilliance.
Joshua rushed up the porch steps and through the front door. Like a fool, he had sent Rachel upstairs, thinking that he was going to protect her from harm. But he might as well have sent her away to die.
“Rachel!” He took the steps two and three at a time. “Rachel! Where are you?”
From a room upstairs, gunfire rang out.
* * *
His wife looked juicy, delectable. She had kept herself up well for him, her first and only husband. As Dexter looked at her, and thought about what he was going to do to her, how he was going to take her, he got a massive hard-on.
Then the bitch shot him. Point blank in the chest. It was like getting punched by a heavyweight champ. He rocked backward on his heels, fiery pain fanning across his torso.
But he didn’t fall. A man would have fallen, but he was greater than a man.
“Try again,” he said.
He charged her.
* * *
Joshua had told her that when he’d fought Dexter, Dexter had taken three rounds point blank from a .38 and had gotten up only a few minutes later and walked away. She should have known that shooting him would be a waste of energy and ammo.
But she tried it anyway. She fired, scoring a direct hit in his chest, and he only tilted backward on his heels, as if she’d merely punched him.
How was this possible? It wasn’t. The invisibility, the immunity to bullets . . . it just wasn’t possible. Perhaps she was asleep and experiencing her worst nightmare ever about him.
“Try again,” he said. He thundered forward.
Outside the room, Joshua was shouting her name. He couldn’t help her as she’d hoped he would. It was only the two of them, her and Dexter, as it had been in the beginning.
She aimed for his head and pulled the trigger. His head snapped sideways, and thick blood oozed down his face. But he kept coming, like an indestructible monster. Closing in fast.
Backing up against the wall, she went to squeeze off another shot, and he snarled and swiped at her, knocking the gun out of her hand. She screamed, spun to the doorway.
He seized her arm and threw her across the room as if she weighed no more than a doll. She smacked against the wall, rapping her head hard against the plaster, and slid to the floor.As if from a great distance, she heard Joshua pounding on the door, calling her name.
I’m sorry, baby. I’m so sorry for everything.
Grinning, Dexter descended on her like a spider that had trapped a fly in its web. He put his cold hands around her neck, and started choking.
* * *
The gunshots came from Rachel’s meditation room. Joshua tried frantically to open the door, but it was locked.
“Rachel! I’m coming!”
He took a few steps backward, and then lowered his shoulder and rammed against the door like a mad bull. He hit the door hard enough to rattle his teeth. Wood splintered, and the door buckled in the frame, but it remained intact.
Inside, Rachel screamed.
Joshua thought of using the .357 to blow the door open, but his father had warned him that the .357 was such a powerful caliber that a round could punch through walls and kill someone inadvertently. What if he shot at the door, blew away the lock—and hit Rachel, too?
He couldn’t risk it. He had to knock the door down. He was strong, a big man. He could do this. He had to. She needed him. His baby needed him. His future lay in that room, his only hope of lasting happiness, and this was his last chance, his only chance, to take hold of the future and blast away the darkness forever.
He slammed against the door again. And again. And again . . . .
* * *
He had his hands on her soft, warm flesh. Wrapped around her delicate, slender neck. Her big, pretty eyes bulging, lovely mouth lolling open, pink tongue wagging.
He hadn’t planned to kill her, not yet, not until he’d fucked her and she’
d had his baby, but he couldn’t contain his rage, it was overpowering him, taking over. The bitch had robbed him of everything—because of her, he’d been sent to live like a caged animal for four years, and he’d lost it all, his law license, his home, his life, while she went and brazenly married someone else.
He had to choke the life out of the bitch, he had to kill her, kill her.
Till death do us part . . . .
And after he killed her, he would kill himself.
* * *
He was going to kill her. Through her dimming vision, she could see the murderous intent in his lunatic eyes, could feel his overwhelming desire to murder her in his trembling hands.
Across the room, Joshua was banging against the door, attempting to knock it down, but the chair wedged under the doorknob was holding him back.
Above her, Dexter grinned maniacally. Darkness pulled at her, a fathomless darkness that would never relinquish her once she surrendered to it.
“Gonna do you . . .” he said, his fetid breath washing over her. “Then do myself. Together forever . . .”
Her arm was twisted behind her. Her fingers brushed against the handle of the knife she’d had Joshua tape to the small of her back, her secret weapon.
“Till death do us part, bitch . . .”
Using the last of her remaining strength, she ripped the knife away from her back, brought it around, and plunged the blade into Dexter’s throat.
* * *
On Joshua’s seventh or eighth try, the door gave way. He stumbled inside, a chair spinning away—that was what had made it so hard to get in.
Dexter and Rachel were on the other side of the room, revealed in the pale moonshine and the backsplash of the flashlight that lay on the floor. Rachel was curled up, gagging violently. Dexter lay on his side, gasping, too, fingers plucking at a knife embedded deep in his throat.
She’d stabbed the bastard. He felt a flash of savage triumph.
Dexter saw Joshua, and hatred twisted his face. He ripped the blade out of his neck, an arc of blood spouting from the wound and splashing against the wall. As if indifferent to the pain and blood loss, Dexter got to his feet, gripping the knife.
“She’s mine,” Dexter said, in a guttural, blood-choked voice. He trudged forward, slowed but deadly as ever.
Joshua trained the .357 on him.
“She was never yours.”
Dexter lunged at him.
Joshua fired, the gun’s report like an explosion in the small room. A round blasted Dexter’s shoulder and spun him around.
He staggered, but didn’t fall.
Joshua fired again, blowing a fist-sized hole in Dexter’s blood-spattered chest. Dexter swayed backward like a man trying to stay aloft on a balance beam. Joshua loosed another round, and this one shaved across Dexter’s head, ripping away half his scalp and shattering the glass on the big window behind him. Another round in the head drove Dexter backward, reeling.
But not dead, dammit.
Lips drawn into a firm line, Joshua fired the last two cartridges. They tore through Dexter’s chest and sent him hurtling through the window, to the beach below.
* * *
He wasn’t supposed to die. He was superhuman, invincible. Bullets and knives couldn’t defeat him.
But when the bitch stabbed him, she must’ve severed his carotid artery, because he started spouting blood like a ruptured water hose. And when her illegitimate husband began shooting him with that damn elephant gun, it ripped deep plugs in his flesh that brought to surface a rare emotion for Dexter: fear.
Maybe he was going to die.
That thought stayed in his mind as he dropped through the window and fell to the hard-packed sand.
* * *
Standing at the shattered window, wind swirling around him, Joshua nervously peered below. Dexter lay sprawled in the sand, bits of glass sprinkling him like party glitter. He wasn’t moving.
He appeared to be dead. But it would be wise to make sure.
First, Joshua went to check on Rachel. She was sitting up against the wall. Breathing laboriously, she massaged her throat.
“You okay?” he asked.
She nodded, and asked in a croaking voice, “Is he dead?”
“It looks like it. He hasn’t moved.”
“Better make sure.”
“I thought the same thing.”
He had left the Molotov cocktail in the hallway. He retrieved it and returned to the window.
Lying on the beach, still, Dexter’s fingers appeared to twitch, but that might have been due to the stiff wind.
Rachel made her way to the window. She had picked up her gun.
“Let’s end this,” Joshua said.
He waited a moment for the wind to subside, and then he thumbed the Bic lighter, conjuring a flame, and touched it to the oil-soaked wick of the hand grenade. The fire tasted the rag, and began to devour it hungrily.
He let the bomb drop, the flaming wick fluttering like wings as it arced through the air. The bottle struck Dexter and exploded in an orb of flames and glass shrapnel, the heat so intense that Joshua felt it from his vantage point twenty feet above.
Engulfed in fire, Dexter screamed. He rolled across the sand and clambered to his feet, covered in rippling flames from soles to crown, but somehow still alive.
He lurched blindly toward the ocean.
“Oh, shit,” Joshua said. “He’s gonna jump in the water and put out the fire.”
“No, he’s not.” Rachel raised her gun and aimed, teeth clenched in concentration.
Dexter was less than ten feet away from the roaring tide. But perhaps thirty feet away from them. If Rachel missed . . . .
Joshua held his breath. She pulled the trigger.
Dexter wobbled as if slapped upside the head, stumbled, and fell to the sand, out of reach of the saving tide. He finally lay lifeless, and still.
Joshua exhaled, explosively and gratefully.
“That was for everyone and everything you took away from me,” Rachel said softly. She bowed her head, whispered a prayer, and dropped the gun to the floor.
They stood at the window for several minutes. The strong wind fanned the flames, the corpse that had once been Dexter Bates burning brightly in the night, keeping the darkness at bay.
Chapter 65
The logical next step was to contact the authorities, report what had happened, and let them clean up the mess. With Dexter sought for homicide in three states, law enforcement would be eager to get their hands on his remains.
Rachel’s phone was out of service, but she said that her neighbor should have a working landline. After giving themselves a once-over in a bathroom mirror—both of them looked weary and war-ravaged—they left the house through the front door.
Leaving the porch, Joshua heard an unexpected sound on the wings of the wind. The distant, rhythmic thumping of helicopter blades.
He stopped. “You hear that? Could someone in the neighborhood have already called the cops?”
Arms folded over her chest, Rachel gazed at the sky, frowning. “People here aren’t presumptuous like that—they would have come to the house first to see what was going on. Anyway, with the way the wind’s been shrieking, I doubt anyone’s heard anything.”
The sound of the chopper was growing louder. Joshua examined the cloud-strewn night sky, but didn’t see the aircraft.
“Then what’s going on?” he asked.
A realization lit up Rachel’s eyes. She grabbed his arm. “Out back. The beach!”
They hurried inside the house and raced down the hallway to the kitchen, where a kerosene lantern glowed. Joshua started to open the patio door, but Rachel stayed his hand.
“Wait,” she said. “Let’s stay inside.”
He didn’t understand her request, but he was too weary to argue. They stood at the glass, and watched.
The helicopter wheeled into view above the beach, the rotor blades spinning up wraiths of sand and making the windows, walls, and fl
oor vibrate. The craft was painted eggshell white. “Infinity Defense Systems” was emblazoned across the fuselage in blue, and there was a strange, blue and green symbol beside the text; circles within circles within circles, to suggest infinity, perhaps.
Silently, Rachel doused the kerosene lantern, to offer them greater concealment.
Outside, the copter’s cabin door opened, and two masked men in black, military-style uniforms rappelled to the shore, dark cables swinging around them like jungle vines.
“What the hell is going on?” Joshua asked in a whisper.
The men had assault rifles strapped to their backs, and Joshua was thankful that he’d heeded Rachel’s warning to remain indoors. These strange men—he was inclined to think of them as soldiers—had an air of cold, ruthless efficiency and purpose. He doubted they would have hesitated to dispatch of someone they regarded as a threat to their mysterious mission.
“Definitely not cops,” Rachel said in a low voice.
Moving swiftly, the men unfurled a large black bag and used it to collect Dexter’s smoking corpse. They hooked one of the cables to the end of the bag; the body bag was quickly sucked upward into the cabin. The men mounted their rappel cords and ascended into the aircraft. The helicopter rose into the sky and thumped away into the night, leaving behind only mounds of disturbed sand.
The entire operation had taken less than one minute.
Joshua and Rachel looked at each other. Neither of them spoke.
“I don’t think we should call the police,” he finally said.
* * *
The next morning, they returned home. Eddie had suffered a nasty, broken ankle and electrical shocks delivered from his own Taser, but he was healthy, and in good spirits.
Coco was fine—Eddie said the little dog had gone into hiding when Bates had arrived—and she squealed with delight when she saw Rachel. “Yes, Mommy’s home,” Rachel cooed to the dog, and she looked at Joshua when she said: “Mommy’s never, ever leaving again.”
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