by John Saul
Sarah’s voice took on a desperate note. “We can’t just walk around in the woods all night. We need to go back to Bettina’s.”
“No way,” Nick said. “My dad—”
Now they heard the faint sound of a siren in the distance, and Sarah knew in an instant what it meant. “Hear that? That’s a fire truck, Nick. And there’s going to be more. We have to go back to Bettina’s. We’ll tell her what happened, and she’ll know what to do.”
“But my dad—” Nick began again, and once more Sarah cut him off.
“We don’t even know if your dad was really coming out here. At least we should go back to Bettina’s and see. If his car’s there, we’ll decide what to do then.”
Still Nick hesitated, but even as he tried to think of something that might be better than what Sarah wanted to do, he knew she was right. There wasn’t any way they could get back to town now without being spotted, unless they tried to go all the way through the woods, and even though he knew where they were right now, he didn’t have any real idea how to find the way back to town.
Shutters, yes—it wasn’t that far away.
But home?
At least a mile through the forest, with no trail, and the wind-driven snow starting to sting their faces. Sarah was right.
Turning away from the glow of Conner’s burning car, he started leading her back toward the old mansion overlooking the lake.
Shep Dunnigan opened the kitchen cabinet and pulled out two glasses.
“I’ll get those,” Lily said a little too quickly. “Just go sit down and I’ll bring you your plate and a beer.” She quickly added some sautéed string beans to the fried pork chop and a helping of mashed potatoes. If anything could improve Shep’s mood, it was pork chops and mashed potatoes, but so far even the promise of his favorite meal hadn’t cooled his simmering anger.
“I got them,” he snapped, turning to glare at her. “What’s going on with you, Lil? Is there something you’re not telling me?” When she came up with no answer, he shook his head in a gesture that clearly told her he was resigned to having a wife so stupid she couldn’t answer the simplest question. “Just put the plates on the table, Lily,” he said. “Think you can do that? I’ll be there in a sec.”
Lily picked up their plates and went to the dining room, leaving the third plate, covered with plastic wrap, in the microwave, ready to be reheated when Nick finally came home. But she was beginning to think maybe it was time to call the police or the hospital or something, rather than just wait while Shep got madder and madder. Except any call she might make would only make him even angrier, and when he got mad—
She cut the thought short, not even wanting to think about what he might do.
Shep, left alone in the kitchen, set the glasses on the counter, opened the refrigerator, and was just reaching for a beer for him and a Coke for Lily when he saw the corner of a plastic bag sticking out from behind the coffee canister.
He frowned.
Lily knew he hated it when she left anything but the canisters on the counter. Closing the refrigerator again, he pulled the offending Ziploc bag clear of the canister and held it up.
Inside was about an inch of dried leafy green stuff.
What the hell? It almost looked like pot. But what would Lily be doing with something like that? “Lil!” he called out in a tone that left no doubt he wanted her in the kitchen and he wanted her there now. A moment later she appeared in the doorway, and he held up the plastic bag. “What the hell is this?”
Her eyes widened. “J-Just tea,” she stammered, then went to the refrigerator herself to get the beer and Coke Shep had been after only a moment before.
Shep slammed the door shut before she had it more than halfway open and spun her around to face him. “Doesn’t look like any tea I’ve ever seen. Where did you get it?”
“It’s for Nick,” she said, knowing if she tried to lie, Shep would recognize it right away. “It’s just herbs to calm him down. I—I thought it might help with his … well, you know,” she finished lamely.
Shep glowered down at her. “You and who else thought it might help?” he demanded. “You didn’t just dream this up by yourself!”
She thought fast, but not fast enough.
“Don’t make me ask you again, Lily.” His voice was dangerously low and the vein in his forehead was throbbing.
“Th-There’s nothing wrong with me wanting to help my son.”
Shep leaned closer, towering over her, his clenched fist rising above her face. “Who, Lily? Who gave you this stuff?”
Her eyes widened with terror, and she saw no escape. “Bettina Philips,” she whispered.
“You got this stuff from that witch?” Shep bellowed. “You go to that evil woman’s house and talk about our son with her? You heard me telling him to stay away from her! Did you think I didn’t mean you, too? Christ!” He opened the bag and smelled. “Do you even know what’s in here?”
“She said—”
“I don’t give a shit what she said.” He wadded up the bag and threw it at her. It hit her in the face, then dropped to the kitchen floor. What the hell was she thinking? What if someone had seen her going out there? And what the hell was Bettina Philips doing, giving Lily drugs to give Nick? Well, enough was finally enough—he’d fix Bettina Philips right now!
Maybe he’d even fix her permanently.
Hurling Lily against the wall hard enough to make her cry out, Shep Dunnigan spun around, grabbed his keys and his coat, picked the Baggie up off the floor, and slammed the back door behind him.
When he’d called Bettina earlier, it had mostly been a bluff. But not this time.
This time it was serious.
Dead serious.
The flashing red and blue lights of a fire truck and an ambulance lit up the snowy night and refracted off the layer of snow already accumulating on the dirt road. Dan West expertly braked to a stop without even a hint of a skid, turned off the ignition and jumped out of his patrol car, his heart pounding as he prayed that Mitch Garvey had been wrong, that whatever happened out here had nothing to do with Conner or his car. But even though the fire truck blocked his view of the burning car, the look on the fire chief’s face as he grabbed Dan’s arm to keep him from rounding the end of the truck was enough to tell him that Mitch hadn’t been mistaken.
“Don’t go over there, Dan,” Harvey Miller said. “That’s not something you need to see.” Dan tried to shake Miller off, but the fire chief only shook his head. “Go home, Dan,” Harvey said. “Go home to Andrea.”
Dan searched Harvey’s eyes for any hint, no matter how slight, that might give him hope, but there was nothing.
Nothing but sympathy.
“There’s no possibility it’s not Conner’s car?” he choked out.
“It’s his,” Miller replied. “I double-checked the plates myself. As for Conner …” His voice trailed off for a moment, then: “The coroner won’t get here for another hour.”
Once again Dan tried to shake Miller’s grip from his arm. “Let me go,” he said. “I want to see—I have to see it myself.”
“It’s too late, Dan,” Harvey countered, shaking his head. “There’s nothing for you to do here. You need to be at home with Andrea.”
“I’m the sheriff—” Dan protested, but his voice broke and he felt his knees weaken as the truth of what had happened began to sink in.
“Not tonight you’re not,” Miller replied. “Besides, there’s no crime here, Dan. It was an accident, pure and simple.” He shook his head sadly. “Kids,” he muttered more to himself than to Dan West. “Kids and cars.”
Dan West was no longer listening; instead, his son’s name kept echoing in his mind.
Conner … Conner…
“I’m going to have someone drive you home,” Harvey Miller said quietly, beckoning to one of his men.
Oh God, Conner …
A chill far colder than the night seized Dan, bringing with it a strange feeling of surrealism. None
of this could be true. Whatever was happening was happening to someone else, not to Dan West. Dan West was the man who told people about things like this, told them that one of their kids was dead.
So it was wrong! Had to be wrong!
A team of EMTs appeared around the end of the fire truck, bringing a stretcher to the waiting ambulance, and at the sight of the white-shrouded form strapped to it—a form with an oxygen mask covering the face—Dan felt a flash of hope. But then he saw Mitch Garvey, his face pale as he watched the EMTs load the stretcher onto a gurney and slide the gurney into the ambulance, and his hope faded, and a moment later Harvey Miller crushed it completely.
“Tiffany Garvey,” the fire chief told him. “She was in the ditch, unconscious.”
Dan West’s eyes remained fixed on the ambulance. “Anybody else? Any other vehicle?”
Harvey shook his head, and finally loosened his grip on Dan’s arm.
Dan steeled himself against his shaky legs, refusing to give in to the emotions boiling inside him, focusing his mind on what had happened, rather than what had happened to his son.
A one-car accident in the middle of nowhere that burned so fast the driver couldn’t even get out to save himself. How could that be?
The surrealism of the night tightened its grip on him, and for a moment Dan wasn’t sure where he was or what he was doing there.
Then, as if of their own volition, his legs carried him two quick steps to the right, and he could see the blackened rear end of Conner’s car.
Another two steps and he could see it all.
The remains of what only a little while ago had been his son were still behind the steering wheel, and even though he couldn’t see his son’s face, the full force of it finally hit him.
It was his son, and he was dead.
“Conner,” he whispered, one arm coming up from his side, reaching out toward the car is if somehow he might help the boy from the wreckage.
But he couldn’t.
All he could do was go home.
Chapter Twenty-eight
Nick hunched his shoulders against the wind and peered warily around the edge of Bettina’s garage. An inch-thick layer of snow covered everything now, and in the dim yellow light of the sconces flanking the front door, the old house seemed to have lost even more of its age and ruination. He could almost imagine the old fountain filled with water, and horse-drawn sleighs, their bells ringing merrily, coming up the drive through the woods.
But there were no bells, and since the sirens that rent the night a little while ago were quiet now, a silence Nick had never experienced before had fallen over him.
He could hear nothing at all.
Nor was there anything to be seen.
No tire tracks, no car.
So far, at least, his father had not made good on his threat to come out here.
“He’s not here!” he whispered. “C’mon.” But when he moved toward the front door, Sarah grabbed the sleeve of his coat and pulled him back into the shadows.
“They’re going to be looking for us,” she said.
“So?” Nick leaned against the garage wall to get out of the biting wind that had started to whip the leafless trees.
“So what if they come out here?” Sarah said. “Half the people in town already hate Bettina. If they find us here, they’ll blame her for what happened.”
Nick knew she was right, but even worse was the knowledge that if he hadn’t panicked and left Bettina’s house to begin with, Conner would still be alive. “What should we do?” he finally asked. “We can’t stay out here all night—we’ll freeze to death.”
“I don’t know,” Sarah said. The cold was sinking deep into her now, and her hip was aching, and even though she knew she had to think, she couldn’t. “Maybe we’d better just go back to town. After what happened—”
“What happened wasn’t our fault,” Nick broke in. “Conner was trying to kill us!”
“I didn’t say it was our fault,” Sarah protested. “But we don’t even know what happened! Maybe—”
Abruptly, she fell silent as a pair of headlights swung across the side of the garage. Then Nick ducked back into the shadows behind the building, pulling her along with him. Holding her back in the sheltering darkness, he eased his head out just far enough to see a car emerge from the woods and stop. Whoever was in it doused its headlights before they hit the house.
His father.
It had to be his father.
“It’s my dad,” he whispered, though the car was 150 feet away and closed up tight, with its engine running. Sarah’s fingers closed on his arm.
“C’mon,” he said. “We’ll just get lost in the woods, and we can’t go down the driveway. So we’ll go in through the old coal chute and hide in the basement. Bettina won’t even know we’re there. And at least we won’t freeze to death, and maybe we can figure out what to do.”
“Where is the coal chute?” Sarah asked, too tired and cold to argue with him. Besides, he was right—if they stayed out too much longer, they just might actually freeze.
“It’s got to be on this side of the house,” Nick said. “Come on.” Taking her hand, he led Sarah a few yards back into the forest behind the garage, then began working his way closer to the house. In less than a minute the house itself was blocking their view of Shep Dunnigan’s car.
And Shep’s view of them.
Nick tightened his grip on Sarah’s hand. “I think I can see it!” He pointed toward the house with his free hand. “See that sort of slanting thing? That’s got to be the door.” Without waiting for her to reply, he started toward it, and a moment later Sarah found herself staring at what was indeed obviously the metal door to a coal chute.
With a badly rusted lock on it.
The wind was coming up, and the snow was falling faster, and Nick decided that even if he made a little noise, no one would hear. He reached down and gave the lock a tentative twist, but it held. Then he noticed that one of the hinges on the left panel was even rustier than the lock. Bending down, he slid his fingers under the door frame and jerked upward.
The screws snapped loose and the corner of the door lifted high enough so he could slip through. “I’ll go first,” he said.
While Sarah held the corner of the door up, he dropped to the ground, slid his legs through the gap, then rolled over on his stomach. A moment later his whole body was hanging over the edge of the chute, and though his feet were touching nothing, he let himself drop into the darkness.
After no more than a couple of feet he landed on the concrete floor, flexing his knees to absorb the shock.
“Come on,” he whispered up to Sarah. “It’s easy—maybe two feet. I’ll catch you.”
Refusing to think about what might happen if Nick didn’t catch her, Sarah wriggled through the gap and began lowering herself into the darkness.
Mitch Garvey stared numbly at the striped curtain in the small Warwick emergency clinic behind which his unconscious daughter now lay.
Unconscious.
The word resounded in his mind, but even though he kept hearing it, somehow it had lost its meaning. How could it be? How could his perfect Tiffany have been so damaged that she didn’t even know he was there?
The doors opened and he turned to see Angie and Zach coming in. Her eyes met his, and he could see her pale face before she fell into his arms.
For a moment Mitch simply held her.
“Is Tiff okay, Dad?” Zach asked, his voice shaking enough to betray the fear he was doing his best to conceal.
Mitch’s shoulders twitched in a faint shrug. “Don’t know. She’s unconscious—they’re working on her.”
“What happened?” Angie asked, finally stepping back from her husband and glancing around the waiting room as if embarrassed that someone might have seen her clinging to Mitch.
“Looked like she was thrown from Conner West’s car. But until she wakes up …”
Mitch Garvey’s words died on his lips as Tiffany’s w
eak voice drifted out from behind the curtain. “Mama?”
Angie’s eyes widened and she reached for Mitch with one hand as she pulled back the curtain with the other. Tiffany lay on a gurney, her face cut and bruised, an IV in her arm.
Relief flowed through Mitch, and he sagged into a chair near the gurney.
Angie wept silently.
“Wh-Where’s C-Conner?” Tiffany whispered, her eyes barely visible in her swollen face.
“Conner?” Angie echoed. “Don’t you worry about Conner West, sweetheart.” She took her daughter’s cold hand and tried to rub some warmth into it. “You just get yourself all better so we can get you home and take care of you right.”
“Wh-What happened? We were—”
“There was an accident,” Mitch told her. “You and Con—”
“No accident,” she whispered, silencing her father as she shook her head as much as the pain in her neck would allow.
A doctor appeared, a metal-clad chart in his hands. “Mr. and Mrs. Garvey?”
Mitch nodded.
“We’re waiting for X ray to check for broken bones, but I don’t think the damage is too severe. She got quite a bump on the head, possibly a minor concussion. The fact that she’s already awake is a good sign.”
But Mitch was barely even listening to the doctor. “Tiff?” he said, taking his daughter’s hand. “What do you mean it was no accident?”
His daughter did not answer, and the doctor pulled back an eyelid and shined a narrow beam of light into her eye.
Tiffany startled awake with a gasp.
“Princess?” Mitch began again. “What did you mean when you said it wasn’t an accident?”
“They tried …” she whispered, and then her voice trailed off for a second before she pulled together the strength to finish the sentence. “… to kill us.”
Her eyes closed again and her hand went limp in her father’s.
Angie leaned over the gurney. “Tiffany? Honey?” When there was no response, Angie looked up at the doctor, her terror clear in her eyes.
He pulled the stethoscope from around his neck and scanned the meters displaying Tiffany’s vital signs. “Maybe you folks ought to wait outside for now. Just give me a couple of minutes, all right?”