Awaken the Devil

by A. J. Chase

  He was backed against the wall. "No, it wasn't some strange ability was it? He knew about little girls from raising you." He shook his head. "He took pictures of her in the fountain in the yard, playing. He took pictures of her at the park. He exploited her and made her a target. He took her little baby heart, with all its destroyed hopes and living fears, and gave it away to people who hated me."

  Fielding was horrified. She hadn't known. She hadn't known what Mac was doing during that period at all. She had been too busy living her own seventeen-year-old life, enmeshed in a production of Carousel way off Broadway. "I didn't know. He never told me…"

  He cut her off. "Did he tell you that he was the ring leader? That he was the one who dug through my trash and told the police and his readers all my secrets until I felt like I had been stripped naked and whipped in public? Did he tell you that he found a record of every one of Helena's lovers and made a list of them in the paper, just in case I didn't already appear enough of a fool? Did he tell you that he encouraged Anne to dredge up all her feelings about how scared she was that I would also die so that he could tell the world about it?"

  "I'm sorry, Chandler. I didn't know…"

  He cut her off again. "But you knew what you came here for this time, didn't you? Did you get extra points for screwing me? Did you take pictures so he could show that to his readers, too?"

  She recoiled. "It wasn't like that. You know it wasn't. If he was even lucid any more, he would hate me for falling in love with you. It isn't what he sent me to do."

  He shook his head, disgust and aching visible in every tight muscle of his face. "Well, it looks as though McKinley French and I finally have reached an understanding."

  It was her turn to back away as though she had been struck when she realized what he meant by that comment. He hated her. How could he hate her when she had only been trying to help? That was a stupid question. She had known he would. "I was just supposed to prove you were innocent." Her words were stuck in her throat and barely came out at all.

  He shook his head again. "I trusted you." He also sounded like the words were forced past his throat.

  The stupid tears that seemed to be her constant companion the last few weeks filled up her eyes again. She wanted to blink them away, but they swelled over and she had to wipe them off her cheeks. He had trusted her. He no longer did. She had taken that trust, that had no doubt been so hard for him to give, and she had betrayed him.

  The words were like a knife. They were killing her. "I'm so sorry, Chandler. He was dying, and he raised me. I didn't know that he had hurt you. I'm sorry. I just did what I thought I had to do."

  Suddenly, they both turned to the door when the loud sounds of Wallace and Pettigrew still griping approached the door. "You already knew," she reminded him what to tell the cops.

  The look he gave her was as sharp as the sting from a whip. She wanted to leave, but she wanted more to protect him. She owed it to him. She wiped at her face again and looked down at the floor.

  The two detectives burst into the room without even knocking. "I thought you might have come here." Wallace frowned at her. "Why didn't you tell us the truth at the beginning?"

  "Fielding tells the truth only when she has to, isn't that true?" He sounded playfully venomous, and she had little doubt that the police didn't know how to differentiate that tone from his usual sharp-edged sarcasm. She felt like she might throw up again.

  "I better get to the stage. We open tomorrow," she reminded with false cheerfulness, deciding that Chandler would be fine. The detectives were not trying to arrest him, not at the moment. She had cast at least that much doubt.

  "You shouldn't be alone," Wallace said. "Someone did just try to kill you not half an hour ago."

  Chandler flinched but made no other outward sign that he cared, and she sighed.

  "I'll go straight to the stage. You can check on me there in a few minutes when you're finished here." She didn't wait for his acquiescence, just turned on her heel and left the room before she broke down again.

  Zave was really starting to hate this stupid musical and everyone in it. Well, not everyone. There were one or two notable exceptions, but for the most part, he was no fan of Broadway. He didn't believe Fielding French for one second.

  Certainly, he believed that she was really a reporter. Even if he hadn't had an instinct that she was on the take somehow, he would have believed her absurd story. It was just too involved and weird. People didn't make that kind of crap up. Aside from which, it would be easy enough to check up on her and her dying uncle. No, what he didn't believe was that Bentley had already known what she was.

  She had been terribly upset in Bentley's office despite her forced cheerfulness, and he had been explosively furious and merely masking it with his familiar dry responses. Fortunately, Zave also didn't believe that Bentley was guilty of more than being the sort that people loved to hate. And as Zave had expressed many a time before, being annoying wasn't illegal. Lying to the police was, but he wasn't going to call her on it. She was clearly paying enough already for her deception.

  His phone rang, and he pulled it off his belt and flipped it open. "Hello?" He listened for a long moment filling progressively with dread. "Thanks Tate," he told the coroner before he snapped the phone closed, and then he started to run.

  Fielding knew there was nothing that she could do but leave. Profundo would be short one couple, but three could do it as well as four. They would just have to spread out their spacing. Chandler was actually needed here, and she would do nothing but compound his misery if she stayed.

  She was furious at Mac for not telling her that he had been the lead tormentor during the aftermath of Helena's death. How could he have left such a thing unsaid when he knew she was coming in to do this job? I just owe him, that's all. She couldn't possibly stay and make things worse for Chandler. It wouldn't be right.

  She went into the dressing room, ignoring the horrible feeling that stayed with her in this room where she might have died. She was on her way out the door. There was no reason to be afraid now. The Chorus Line Killer was going to be nothing, but a bad memory, in five minutes. She needed to be out of the theater before Chandler got done in his office so that she didn't have to look in his eyes again. She honestly didn't think she could bear it. But first she had to get her things.

  She was packing up her bag when she smelled it again. The coffee. She told herself not to panic. Plenty of people had been drinking the brew, not just the person who had attacked her. She turned quickly and found Sara standing in the doorway having arrived, as she ever did, silently. Fielding backed up slightly. "Oh, hello."

  Sara cocked her head to the side and looked at Fielding's bag. "Going somewhere?"

  Fielding didn't like the question, nor did she like the fevered look in Sara's eyes. "I have to go home."

  "You're not coming back." It was a statement not a question. "I can't let you do that." She shook her head. "Not this time. Sure, Charlotte was a mistake. I probably should have been more careful, but this time he was really sloppy. Your prints will be all over his suite at the Mandarin Oriental. There will be no way that the police can fail to miss that the two of you were involved."

  "I…"

  Fielding didn't know quite what to say about that. She was just feet from the door, but Sara stood in her way. She evaluated how successful she was likely to be in using brute force to get past Sara. They were both very small, around an equal five three. She had ten years of youth on Sara, but unless she was very much mistaken, Sara had a large knife and she wasn't afraid to use it. Fielding had to keep her talking until she came up with an idea. "I don't know what you're talking about."

  Sara rolled her eyes and sighed. "Don't be absurd. Of course you do. I don't know how many people I have to kill before the police figure this thing out. I mean honestly. Every time he starts a new relationship, I come in, and I set him up, and I swear to you every time he just walks out of the rubble like a bloody cat."


  "You're trying to frame him?"

  Fielding realized her mouth was hanging open, and she snapped it shut. Sara had never even crossed her mind. How could a little woman like Sara kill six people like it was no trouble at all? Then she knew. It was because she was quiet. How many times in the last two months had Sara approached her without her noticing?

  "Why would you do that?"

  "Because he deserves it," Sara spat vehemently. "He killed my sister, and he never paid for it. For twenty-four years, I've been trying to get her retribution. He's going to pay for someone's death if it's the last thing I do. Let's try and make sure it's yours."

  Fielding didn't quite know how it worked, but she knew nevertheless, that it was the truth. "Annabelle Aylesworth was your sister."

  Sara reared back and, for the first time, Fielding saw a flash of silver in her right hand. "What do you know about Bella? You know nothing."

  "I know that she killed herself. Chandler was gone. He was already back home when Annabelle died."

  "If it wasn't for him, she never would have killed herself. She told me. She told me all about it. She said that he seduced her. Told her that he loved her and then broke her heart. If it wasn't for him, it never would have happened." She used her knife hand to rub her face not seeming to notice or not caring that the action was potentially dangerous. "You've seen him. You know how beautiful he is. She was no match for that. She was a silly little girl."

  "You know that isn't true." Fielding spoke softly to try and prevent her from attacking without warning. "He doesn't seduce." At least not on purpose. "He doesn't make proclamations of love. After all these years, surely you know that's true."

  For a moment, Sara looked uncertain.

  "I don't think that he even knew your sister. If he did, he only met her three days before his parents took him home. Think, Sara. He didn't kill Annabelle. I think maybe Annabelle was confused. She thought that Chandler was someone else. Someone that she knew. I think maybe you're confused too."

  Fielding knew that a better word was probably crazy, but name-calling to a woman with a knife didn't seem like the best idea in the world.

  Sara shook her head, screamed with sudden rage and frustration, and rushed forward. Fielding barely had time to react. Even then, she made an error that proved to be potentially fatal. She had thought that Sara would go for her throat. That was why it was completely unexpected when Sara's knife thrust into her abdomen. Fielding stared at the hilt protruding from her stomach and then at Sara. She pressed her hand to the blood pooling on her shirt in total shock. Sara had stabbed her.

  Sara was reaching for the knife. Fielding backed away from her, clutching the hilt to her body. She could not allow Sara to have another shot at her. She stumbled. She was unbelievable dizzy. Suddenly, she heard the voice of vengeance like it was swooping down from heaven. "Get away from her. Put your hands in the air. Now!"

  She looked up from the knife to see Zavad Wallace standing in the doorway, legs spread holding his service revolver on Sara with lethal intent. But Sara wasn't having one minute of it. Fielding stumbled again, the edges of her vision getting fuzzy. She collapsed to her knees just as Sara lunged for the detective. She no longer had a weapon. Zave was a big man, and she was a small woman. Everything went black, just as Fielding heard a shot explode through the room. At the edge of her consciousness, she thought that she heard Chandler shout out her name.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Chandler was trapped in horrible nightmare. First there had been Fielding's words that had started out the morning. He had not even hated Helena's perfidy as much as he had raged at the words that had fallen from Fielding's lips, wounding him so easily. Because he had always expected Helena to turn against him.

  But Fielding, he had trusted Fielding, and it had made him weak. Worse than that, he had allowed himself the weakness he would have thought impossible. He had fallen in love with her. He had turned himself away, for a moment, from the cold reality of the fact that it was not possible for anyone to love him, and he had believed her words like the idiot he was.

  And she had used him. In a way that was far worse than Helena ever had, because he had never allowed Helena the chance to touch him. Not really. But Fielding had broken through every defense he had and then taken him down while he was unprotected.

  She was a reporter.

  She was a damn reporter, and worse yet, she was like a daughter to the reporter he hated most of all. How could he have been such a fool? How could he have fallen for sex appeal and sweet green eyes? How could he have thought that for a second it could be true that someone could know him for what he was and still honestly love him? He was so stupid.

  He was still reeling, his head on fire, when he saw Detective Wallace run past his office, and his sudden feeling of dread was so strong it cut through his incredible anger, his misery, and left him suddenly breathless. Fielding. He slid into the hallway and pounded after Wallace. For a moment, he lost the man and had to reorient himself. When he caught up to the detective, it was not in time to save anyone. Not Fielding, not Sara, not even Wallace whose mouth hung open in horror as he dropped the gun in his hand.

  Sara lay sprawled on the ground, a gunshot wound to the chest. And Chandler knew instinctively that she had done it herself. She had probably grabbed the gun in Wallace's hand and pulled the trigger. Wallace certainly hadn't done it if his surprise was any indication. In a flash, Chandler understood that Sara was the one who had killed Helena, who had killed all the women. Another familiar face he had trusted in his eternal foolishness that had turned against him, and he didn't even know why.

  Then he had seen Fielding. And that was the worst blow of all. She was crumpled on the ground, her hands clutching at the black handle of a knife that was clearly embedded in her. He had almost collapsed, his knees buckling at the sight. He heard himself call out to her, although he certainly had not done it on purpose.

  He had fallen to his knees by her body and nearly collapsed again, this time from relief, when he heard her labored breathing. Unlike Charlotte, unlike the others, she was still alive. He had not killed her after all. This time he had not killed someone by touching them.

  He was in a daze, unable to think at all. Zave Wallace surprised him by ensuring that he was given a ride to the hospital in the back seat of an unmarked cruiser that belonged to Wallace and Pettigrew. Pettigrew drove, following up the convoy of ambulances carrying Fielding and Sara. Wallace sat in the passenger seat looking sad and dazed. Every once in a while he would mumble something like, "She just grabbed my hand and pulled the trigger."

  Sara, why did you do it? It was more than Chandler could bear to think about at that moment. He had considered her a friend for almost two and half decades, and she had killed a half a dozen times over.

  At the hospital, he pulled open the door and hit the pavement before Pettigrew had even brought the car to a complete stop. The paramedics were wheeling stretchers carrying Fielding and Sara into the double doors of the emergency room. He could tell just by looking at her that Sara was dead. They were paying far more frantic attention to Fielding. She lay on the gurney as white and frail as any ghost while they screamed orders at each other. They wouldn't let him get near either one of them. He was sent to sit in a sterile waiting room while both women went behind closed metal doors with an ocean of doctors and a feeling of hideous urgency.

  No one else came into the room, and it seemed a significant symbol of his life in general, left to suffer the impossible humps alone. Once, two cops came in, but they took one look at him and then turned and left the room again. He was still sitting in the same place an hour later, in a painful daze, when a doctor finally emerged to address him. "You're here with Fielding French?"

  He rose to his feet immediately. "Yes. And Sara Flynn."

  The doctor looked momentarily confused and checked his charts.

  "Um. I don't know what Sara's condition is, I'm sorry." He looked back up at Chandler. "Your wife has been incredib
ly lucky considering the alternatives."

  Chandler didn't bother to correct him. It would only help him get the information that he needed if they thought he was related somehow. "So she's okay?"

  The doctor shrugged and seemed to choose his words carefully. "I wouldn't say she is okay, but she has a strong chance of survival. She did lose an incredible amount of blood and being stabbed in the stomach is never good. It's an excellent place to foster infections. But those two things aside, she's holding her own."

  Chandler sat back down and buried his face in his hands. He took a deep breath and rubbed his hands along his cheeks, before looking at the doctor again "Will she be okay? From here forward?"

  "Well, to tell you the truth it would be impossible at this point to say anything for sure, but I feel she'll be fine. Everything looks good and she is a healthy young woman.

  "One more thing, I'm very sorry but there's no chance the baby will survive."

  The doctor put a comforting hand on Chandler's shoulder, but his ears were buzzing with the man's last words, and he struggled to hear the rest of what he was saying. "There was no damage to the uterus, that we could tell, but the blood loss was really just too extreme. We'll monitor her to make sure that her HCG levels go down on their own, and hopefully there won't be any reason to put her through more physical trauma by doing a D and C."

  "Little chance the baby will survive," Chandler repeated stupidly, as breathless as if this even-tempered doctor had just punched him in the gut.

  He looked at Chandler's face, and raised an eyebrow. "You didn't know?"

  "I…no."

  He nodded. "Honestly, there wasn't much to know at this point. The blood tests indicated four to five weeks. She probably didn't even know herself."