by Anne McAneny
One more plunge, this time from below, by the kidney. That oughta do it. Let the pig bleed out slowly and feel it coming, like when Daddy used to enter a room, his shadow looming, his alcohol-tinged breath reaching his intended target moments before his overweight body did. Yeah, impending death had to feel pretty much the same way.
Black turned to go without another glance at his victim. He was looking forward to getting back in his car and heading to the redhead’s apartment to finally take care of business, especially now that his knife was lubed and ready to go.
But wait, who was that?
Black’s eye caught a flash of movement, in the small clearing below, at the same time that a rustling sound reached his ears. Someone was down there. Must be whoever the pig was waiting to meet. Black leaned forward—couldn’t hurt to take a look.
Whoa—something strange going on, for sure. Wasn’t that the whore’s boyfriend? The one he’d seen yapping with her outside the building last night? Hmp. This could be interesting. Black climbed down to get a better look.
Chapter 50
About every fifth step, Zoey struggled to stay upright. Roots, rocks, thorns, poison ivy. It all seemed to converge on her in some coordinated effort to slow her journey. The bugs showed no mercy, either. Still, she tramped on, calves scratched and bleeding, bruises forming on her shins, and the damn GPS unit beeping. She wondered if the creep had purposely turned on the beep in order to hear her coming. She should have just programmed the stupid coordinates into her phone, but she didn’t want to take the time to do it now.
Beep.
On the upside, the sound gave her a small connection to society, something she normally shunned in historically rich sites, but today she wouldn’t have minded full immersion in modern civilization, with incessant connections to everyone and everything—and help a mere three digits away. At least Farnham would only be one shout away.
The quadriceps muscles in her thighs told her she must be traveling uphill, though the gradual slope deceived. A half mile in, the dense path crested at a rocky precipice and she realized just how high she’d climbed. She looked down at a pool of water that had formed in a low-lying area of the forest; it reminded her of a place she and her college friends would frequent called Devil’s Pool. The memory seemed to fit her impending encounter.
She checked her watch. With only a half-mile to go, she would arrive ten minutes early—a no-no according to the instructions, so she took a breather. She slapped at a bug drinking blood from her calf. Got it. As she squatted down to clean the blood from her hand with a bit of dew from a rock, she heard a gun go off in the distance, followed by a horn. She jerked in panic, but quickly realized it wasn’t the type of gun she needed to fear this morning. Rather, it was the starting blast for a crew team race, making her realize how closely her circumstances paralleled the foretelling once again. Her mother’s eye and ear for detail had certainly not failed.
Still crouched, Zoey picked up a rock and threw it hard into the pool of water below. As she watched the ripples cresting out in ever-widening circles, she caught a glimpse of a large fish. Its glistening, silver back burst in and out of a narrow space between a rock and a fallen branch, almost too quick to be seen. It flashed its shiny, arched back one more time, then disappeared, burying itself in the shifting waters.
Zoey gasped and shot bolt upright, nearly slipping on wet moss, but not caring. A glimpse of silver! That was it—the solid solution she’d been craving.
Like those ripples, all the myriad events and conversations of the last few days flowed together to form one overwhelming, rip-roaring tidal wave: the ring.
The excitement of two neurons finally connecting in her fog of a brain helped Zoey maintain a lifesaving balance as she slid several inches down the bank. She righted herself and found a three-square-foot sanctuary of flat earth where she could pace, her overloaded synapses firing on all cylinders. It all fit now. Not opal but old bull. Exactly like the ring Jake had found in the sidewalk crevice. In the stroke-affected voice of a dying woman, it was an understandable interpretation error on Dora’s part.
Zoey maintained laser-like focus as she traced the sequence of events in her mind. The realizations poured in so fast, she could barely process them. I actually saw the exchange. It explains the point of view. And why Eva recognized him. Even the name fits. If it’s possible. Oh my God, he must be insane. He probably thinks I’m—
Zoey broke into a run. An awkward, stumbling dash, but she stayed upright. Finally, she knew the truth and her future depended on her getting to that boulder before it was too late.
Chapter 51
The boulder hung over the edge of the thrashing Schuylkill River below. By some unusual defiance of gravity and erosion, the two-ton hunk of rock clung to the site where it had rested for centuries, determined to maintain its high and mighty status. How it had developed this cave-sized divot in its side was anybody’s guess.
Zoey could probably figure it out, Jake thought, given the chance.
In the distance, Jake could hear the shouts of the competing crew teams. He wondered if the sounds that would soon transpire here in the woods would travel as well to the rowers.
Zoey should be here any minute. He wished he could check the time, but his watch and cell phone were inaccessible now. She’d better have listened to the instructions in the email; he didn’t want her trying anything clever. He reflected back on the last week, from the time she had told him about the pregnancy up until this very moment when everything was going to come to a violent head. Why had he let it come to this? He should have just told her the truth immediately, about his fears, his insecurities, and his overwhelming, incessant guilt. Then, maybe they wouldn’t be in this crazy situation, in the middle of the woods where one of them, if not both, would probably die.
Every little sound made Jake both apprehensive and eager for her arrival. He’d heard a lot of noises in the area, but he couldn’t discern their sources. Ten minutes ago, he even thought he heard a stifled yell, followed by a low moaning, but he couldn’t be sure. And in the last few minutes, there’d been lots of crackling from a point somewhere above and behind him. He had jerked toward all the sounds, hoping to determine their origins, but he couldn’t see anything. Or do anything. Or say anything. Not bound and gagged as he was, with this damn blindfold on.
A distinct crackle reached his ears, and then an unexpected beep. Yes, definitely a beep. Followed by three more. Then absolute silence. Someone or something must be nearby because last time he’d checked, bucks and bears didn’t carry electronic devices. Crazy people did, though. Like the guy who had plunged a syringe into his neck last night and then brought him here. How, he had no idea. He’d merely awakened, unable to see or move, with some madman ranting at him about rape and retribution, responsibility and love.
Another three beeps. Insistent. Like a gadget trying to relay something important to its owner. Jake wriggled, fearful that the madman had returned to act on his promise of revenge. For what, he didn’t know. He only knew that he had to get loose to try to save Zoey—and his child.
From out of nowhere, the touch of strong but soft hands suddenly held his face.
“Jake,” Zoey said. Her hands grabbed him and hugged him and pulled his bound body in close. “Oh my God, Jake.” She reached behind his head to untie his black blindfold, expertly tied. Despite trembling hands, she managed to loosen it.
Jake blinked, his eyes slowly adjusting to the morning light, while Zoey removed a second cloth, tied in a manner she’d never seen, from his mouth. It had served as a perfect gag.
Jake’s hands remained bound behind his back with plastic ties that Zoey stood little chance of unfastening without a serrated knife. The tightly knotted cords around his ankles presented an equal challenge, but one she thought she could handle given enough time.
“Zoey, get out of here. I’m not worth it. This guy’s crazy.”
“Jake, I think I’ve figured it out. Who is it? Who did this to
you?”
“I don’t know. I’ve been either drugged or blindfolded since last night. He’s nuts, though. He wants me dead, but for some reason, he needed you here to witness it. Oh baby, you’ve got to get out of here. Please. You might be some sort of sacrifice.”
“No. Don’t worry. But you’ve got to tell me something. Where is that old bull ring you found on the night we got engaged?”
“The ring?” Despite the circumstances, Jake looked at her like she might be losing it. “Who cares about that ring?”
“Keeks!”
Zoey whipped around. Even though she recognized the voice—and his presence had been described in the foretelling—she was still shaken upon gazing up and seeing Cesar Descutner in the flesh. He loomed above her on a ledge that reached thirty feet higher into the sky than the boulder where she was crouched next to Jake. From her vantage point, and with Cesar’s considerable height and oversized trench coat, he looked like a gigantic warrior. A warrior with a powerful, precisely aimed Magnum in his hand.
“Cesar!” she shouted.
Zoey stood, gazing up at him, but he was neither aiming nor staring at her. His eyes—and gun—remained focused about fifteen feet to her right. She turned now and followed his line of sight until her eyes made contact with sinister dark orbs that smoldered with hate.
“You dirty whore,” Corbin Black said. “You think you can knock me down from my station in life?”
“Zoey, who is it?” Jake said from the ground, his vision blocked by the boulder. “What’s going on?”
From behind her, Zoey could hear Jake struggling to loosen himself, but she couldn’t help him right now. Not only was she about to enter an imminent struggle for her life, but she had to fight against the erroneous nature of the situation. This wasn’t right. Corbin Black—for that had to be the underworld creature facing her—certainly had motive to kill her. At least he thought he did. But his presence here didn’t fit everything that had come together in the last ten minutes. It contradicted the foretelling.
Unless it was the prelude. Yes, that’s right. She knew what was about to unfold, and she realized that someone else would be watching her in a matter of moments, the same someone to whom the foretelling had belonged all along. She felt a sudden confidence that she would survive Corbin Black.
“You don’t need to kill me,” she said. “You don’t even belong here.”
“Other way around, whore. Time for you to learn where you belong.”
Zoey’s eyes, trained for detail, took in the slovenly being—unkempt and weary, but with a manic intensity only madness could provide. Brittle anger coated him, but it held a trace of amusement, as if he seemed delighted with some unexpected turn of events in his favor.
“Besides,” he said, “you saved me a trip.” His left index finger tapped a menacing knife that hung from his belt. In his right hand, he awkwardly held a gun—the same type Farnham carried. It dwarfed Black’s small, callused hands.
A panicked thought leaped into Zoey’s head. Where was Farnham? Shouldn’t he be making his presence known by now? Fear edged its way to her brain, but she shut it down. No time. She dared not remove her eyes from Black; to do so might spur him into action. For now, she held him trancelike in her gaze as a strong sensation enveloped her—not of fear or alarm, but of unadulterated brazenness. It ripped through her, raising her adrenaline levels to unprecedented highs. She noticed that Black had positioned himself neatly to the side of a thick tree that would block the path of a bullet from Cesar’s gun. At the same time, if Black chose to use his gun, nothing stood in the way of his bullet’s path to her heart.
Zoey knew what to do. It required precise timing and a helluva lot of guts. But she trusted Cesar to keep mum and hold his aim steady. How had she ever doubted him?
“Just how many people you got looking out for you, you uppity bitch? I didn’t see that one coming.” Corbin Black gestured with his head toward Cesar above.
The implication of the statement made itself clear—he hadn’t seen Cesar coming, but he must have known about Farnham. Just then, a barely detectable scent tinged Zoey’s nostrils, that of stale blood and death. She berated herself for not realizing that its probable source—Farnham—had indeed been in the foretelling. Her mother had smelled death.
“Where is Detective Farnham?” she said to Black.
“That cocky old sack? Gotta be vulture food by now. He looked to be in good shape, that one, but when the knife went in, yup, nice layer of fat around the midsection.”
Zoey swallowed away her horror.
“Amazing what a sharp blade can tell you, eh?” Black glanced down at his steel weapon as he caressed its handle.
An image of this twisted animal pressing a knife against her mother’s throat filled Zoey’s mind, but instead of making her sick, the thought provided the springboard she needed for her bold action. She leapt off both feet like a cheetah in its final lunge to macerate its prey. She landed in a thicket of sharp brambles, the deep gashes on her limbs unfelt and unnoticed. Without hesitation, she scrambled another four yards to take cover behind a tree just as Black began to react.
He took a single step and turned thirty degrees, just enough to give Cesar the shot he’d been waiting for.
BANG! Black’s shoulder jerked forward at an unnatural angle.
“Stay low, Keeks!”
Zoey did as she was told, but didn’t remain still. She belly-crawled along roots and over large, hard-shelled bugs to move herself closer to Jake. The angle of the divot in the boulder was so severe that she couldn’t see him from her current position. Fearing he might be in a vulnerable position with Black now on the ground, she lifted her head enough to see Black. He was on the ground with his weight balanced on his knees and uninjured arm, like a three-legged dog. He seemed in shock that he’d taken a bullet.
Another shot rang out.
Cesar missed, but the bullet zinged past Zoey. She could feel its heat and the definitive path it had cut through the thickening air. The close call made her flatten herself like a snake, which aligned her eyes perfectly with the meeting point of two round rocks. It provided her a low peephole through which she could see Black. He had spun himself around to a sitting position at the sound of the errant second bullet, his spread legs and buttocks deep in the dewy leaves, making him look small and vulnerable. With his good arm, he raised his gun toward the distant and advantageously located Cesar, his face showing nothing but contempt for the man who had dared shoot at him. “Who do you think—”
BANG! Cesar had never been one to waste time.
Zoey witnessed the real-life, 3-D spectacle of a man taking a bullet in the thick of his chest. The sight appalled her, but her appreciation of Cesar’s success crowded out her revulsion.
Black’s upper body hit the ground with a force that matched the bullet, so hard that his thin frame bounced back up before settling into the blood-soaked bed of leaves beneath him.
Cesar’s voice rang out. “Keeks, I’m coming down.”
Zoey heard relief in her old friend’s voice. She glanced up just in time to see his large frame disappear behind the ledge, thinking too late to tell him to stay put because it wasn’t over yet. She thought about yelling to him, but she wasn’t entirely sure she wanted to give away her location.
For the first time, she got a good look at Cesar’s chosen hiding spot. It truly defined vantage point with its steep ledge jutting out in defiance of the laws of physics. The negative slope leading up to it, from Zoey’s angle, anyway, would be impossible to descend. For Cesar to reach her, he needed to climb away from her and double back on a path behind the ledge.
A quick panic shot through her, but she put the burst of energy to good use. As wet leaves and dirt congealed with the blood trickling down her legs, she crawled over to Corbin Black’s body.
“Zoey!” came an urgent whisper. It was Jake.
“I’m over here,” she said, as she leaned over Black.
“That wasn’t the voi
ce of the guy who brought me here. I don’t know who that was.”
“Don’t worry. I know.”
Zoey had to act quickly. The foretelling was coming. Corbin Black’s presence made it even more complete, his attempt on her life a necessary player in its conclusion—at least the conclusion she hoped to engineer.
Uncertain of Black’s respiratory status—either non-existent or fairly faint—she avoided looking at his face and struggled to grab the knife from his belt. Every second she spent in close proximity to his body weighed on her. Finally, she snapped the knife free, noting a small rise and fall of his chest. As if forced by an external hand, she turned her head to look at his face. His open eyes stared at her with weak resolve but stalwart hatred. The bastard wasn’t only alive; he was conscious.
But suddenly, his gaunt, feeble frame shuddered, a convulsion that started in his trunk and worked its way up until his eyes closed. Zoey gripped the reassuring, solid metal of the knife in her hand, tempted to thrust it deep into Black’s dark heart, but she couldn’t do it. He was gone now, anyway.
She tore her eyes from him and maneuvered around the branches and rocks to Jake who had made progress in moving himself to a sitting position. Zoey squatted down. She was about to slice the bindings that cut into his strong wrists when the sound of a squishy footfall in a pile of wet leaves made her stop. Too soon for Cesar to have reached lower ground, and Farnham would have called out to her. The person who had just made his presence known behind her had to be the same person whose future Susan Collette had foretold so many years ago.
Susan had warned the wrong individual. The only other person touching her mother on the night of the foretelling was Matthew Collette, Zoey’s father. Which explained why the foretelling had been from the attacker’s point of view. Susan had foretold Matthew’s future, not Zoey’s. Zoey just happened to be in the room—and in Matthew’s future. And the future was now.