by T. L. Hart
“You aren’t in control anymore, Max,” I hissed. “They know what you’ve done. They’re looking for your car. You aren’t going to get away with this.”
He laughed. It was too loud. I glanced back over my shoulder at the bedroom for a split second. He noticed.
“Ah Jennifer. Where is our little Jo? And what are we going to do with her? Should she live this time?” He flexed the bat as if taking a practice swing. “Or die? Live?” He laughed. “I haven’t quite decided.”
My stomach tightened and I wished I could get to my gun. I could make a run for it—I had a few steps on him. But even if I could make it to the darkened bedroom and grab the gun from my bedside table, Jo would be completely vulnerable to his reach. I stayed still, hoping to find some answer, some tiny prayer of survival.
“Even if you kill us, you’ll never get away with it. Everyone knows you’ve been stalking us. The police forces from every town for miles around are looking for you.”
“Yes that’s true.” He didn’t seem to care. “I haven’t been very smart, have I? Of course no one ever accused Max Sealy of being a genius.” He flexed the bat again and took a step toward me. “No, this time there’s no one in a position to engineer a cover-up. Too many people know Max is stalking you two. It’s such an open-and-shut case, they’ll never even question it, will they? Lock him up and throw away the key.”
“Lock him up? Lock who up?” This wasn’t making sense and I didn’t want to leave this life as confused as I came in to it this round. “Max?”
He laughed again, louder and with obvious glee.
“Are you working for Biggs?” No answer. “Damn it, who are you? Why are you doing this?”
“Why? Jennifer, it’s the oldest reason in the world.” He was enjoying this—the sadist—feeding off my fear, growing casual with his power of life and death. “Money. Freedom. Maybe a little touch of revenge.”
“I can give you money.” A ray of hope gave me a straw to cling to in the raging flood of fear. I had something to bargain with, something he found valuable. Maybe greed was stronger than revenge. “Listen to me. I have money. Anything you want. Any amount. Just walk out of here and let us live. I’ll get the money to you safely. I swear.”
“And I’m supposed to trust you? Why would I do that?”
“If you kill me, all I have here is a few hundred dollars. If you let us go, I can get you a million.” He shook his head. I upped the offer. “Two million. In a Swiss bank account.”
“You don’t get it, do you?” He came closer still. “You can’t buy me off. Letting you live would be signing my own death warrant. You can’t pay me enough to make the risk acceptable.”
“Yes I can.” I was negotiating, still stalling for time to make a run for the gun. It was my only chance. “I’ll give you whatever you say. How much do you want?”
“All of it, Jennifer. I want all of it. Years I’ve planned and lived off crumbs.” He raised one hand to his mask to pluck the mask out of where it had slid too far down over his eyes. His fingers were long and had a sprinkling of dark hair over his knuckles. “I set this stage up so carefully. Thought about how to do it for months. Then you played right in to my hands. It was almost like you were helping me. All that’s left to do is—”
“You are beyond crazy. How could I help you? I barely even know you.”
“So true. And you never really did.” He dropped the faintly amused tone and growled, “Get on your knees.” He was in a batter’s stance, and my head was obviously supposed to stand in for the ball. “Don’t make me make you suffer. You don’t have a prayer of getting away from me.” He sounded matter-of-fact, as if cooperating in my own death was a reasonable course of action. “Make this easier on yourself, Jennifer. Just get on your knees.”
The sudden weakness washing over me would have made it easy to do just that, but all I could think of was that if I let him kill me in silence, let him club me like a mute and docile animal, there would be nothing to stop him from going after Jo. If I was going to die, there would be a hell of a fight first and enough noise to wake the dead.
“You can bite me.” I started backing away, planning how many steps to the bedside table. “No way I’m going to make this easy for you, you scumbag.”
“We’ll just go ahead and do this the hard way.” He drew the bat all the way back. “All that’s left to do is—”
“Freeze!”
We both froze. It was amazing how instantly that word worked.
“Cotton—get over here. Max, don’t you even breathe or I swear I’ll blow your freaking head off.”
And there was Jo, holding my Kimber in her outstretched hands.
Chapter Forty-Nine
“Jo,” I said, still whispering like an idiot. “Thank God.”
“Get over here and take this gun.” Her voice was loud and clear. Her hands were shaking visibly, but she had the pistol trained on him. “Hurry.”
I moved toward her, but it was too late. Max leaped across the landing and grabbed me by the neck in a vise-hard grip, forcing me to my knees. I could feel the carpet burn ripping across my bare skin as he yanked me backward and slipped the bat around my neck, choking me with the hard edge of the wood. I latched both hands around the bat, trying as hard as I could to move it a fraction of an inch from my windpipe. He was very strong and I knew I wouldn’t last long like this.
“Shoot him,” I rasped, hardly able to get enough air to get the order out. “For Christ’s sake, shoot him right now.”
“Put the gun down or I’ll break her neck.” He was calm as if he were asking for a cup of coffee. “I mean it.”
“Kill the bastard, Jo.” The words gurgled out of my mouth, barely audible. “It’s our only chance.”
“She’s not going to shoot me.”
He tightened the pressure on the bat. I was clawing at my throat, trying to get it loose enough to breathe, trying to scratch his hands, but I could feel the blackness closing in, swirling and sucking me into the void.
“Put the gun down or she’s dead. Now!” he screamed suddenly—shrill and on the edge of complete fury. “Put it down now!”
Jo was crying, but she wasn’t stupid. She pulled the trigger.
Click.
Nothing happened.
“The safety,” I gasped, but too late.
He dropped his hold on me and left me retching and gasping for air. In a split second he covered the steps between him and Jo. She was in stunned shock then, still trying to fire the locked weapon.
Click. Click. Click.
He knocked the gun out of her hands and grabbed her hair, pulling her closer to me. I was trying to get enough oxygen in me to move. I wanted to leap on him and do something heroic and brave, but gagging and gasping were all I was capable of.
He pushed her hard and she landed on top of me, the weight of her body knocking out the air I had managed to suck into my burning lungs. We clutched at each other and huddled in fear, holding on without much hope, but together. It was a small comfort. He loomed over us, triumphant, framed in the window, outlined by the swirling fog.
“Please Max.” I didn’t know what to beg for. “Why are you doing this? You know you can’t get away with it.”
“I think I can, you know.” He sounded almost normal, for a moment. “When the two of you are found, the police will fall in line, especially when they find his body and a note explaining that he just couldn’t take it anymore after what he’d done.”
“What he had done?” I asked. “What who had done?”
“Max please—” Jo was crying. “Don’t do this. I’m begging you.”
“Max please,” he mocked. “Sorry. Mr. Baseball couldn’t make it. Previous engagement.”
“Who are you?” Jo rubbed her eyes with the back of one hand and squeezed my hand with the other. “You aren’t Max. I just assumed it, but look at him.” She hiccupped the words around the tears and pointed in his direction. “That’s not Max. Max bats left-handed.”
/> Our tormentor took the bat from his right shoulder and put it on his left.
“Nope, not comfortable.” He switched back to the right-hand grip. “Guess you got me. Max is dead.” He looked down at his watch. “Or he will be in a short while. Poor fellow, so overcome with remorse, he checked in to a seedy motel and washed down a bottle of pills with half a bottle of whiskey. He was well on his way to that big Hall of Fame in the sky when I last saw him. Far too late to change his mind.
“The police will find his body and they’ll find the two of you—excuse me, they’ll find the three of you. No doubt this will make the front pages for a while. A tragic murder—no, make that a tragic multiple murder/suicide.”
“Then why are you doing this?” I asked. “Who are you and why?”
He was high as a kite on something—drugs, power, revenge—and talking fast as he stepped in for the kill. Maybe he was revving himself into the blood frenzy he was about to unleash.
“Jennifer, I think you deserve an answer to your question before you die. This should answer who.” He reached up and yanked the mask off. “Any more questions?”
“Gregory.” I mouthed the words, but no sound escaped.
“My darling little wife. Why didn’t you die in the accident? It would have been so much simpler for us all.”
Gregory’s face was a twisted mask of hatred.
“You were going to divorce me. Leave me with nothing. Then after your accident, when you didn’t remember, I thought it would be all right.”
He shook his head and stroked the bat with those hairy knuckles the way I had seen him stroke his laptop so many times. He looked at me as if it were my fault that he was about to split our skulls open.
“I told you to stop trying to get your memory back. I hoped you wouldn’t have to die.” Gregory sighed. “The divorce would have uncovered the funds I took as well as…other things. You would have ruined me.”
“It’s not too late, Gregor.” I hoped my voice was calming, hoping against hope he wouldn’t be able to dirty his hands with the bloody act of murder. “I don’t care about the money.”
“But I do.” He sounded regretful, yet determined. “I really do.”
Chapter Fifty
I had a sudden moment of clarity. On that landing on my knees literally begging for my life, I realized that all the years of college, a doctorate in psychology and years of counseling at the Outreach had led me to this point. I was a professional at figuring out what makes people tick, especially angry and violent men. Since I couldn’t get to my gun to kill him, I had to use my training to buy time, hoping against hope for a better ending than the one I feared was coming.
People like Gregory—fastidious metrosexuals who hated disorder of any kind—were not by nature eager to spatter blood and brain matter all over themselves. Only desperation or a provocative movement by one of us would spur him into action. He was stalling right now. Testing the bat in short little bounces, waiting for one of us to make a move that would give him the courage to attack.
I could only hope to keep him talking for as long as possible. The police had promised to drive by at regular intervals. Maybe the lights on in the hallway would bring them for a closer look. It wouldn’t be hard to see we were in trouble if they paid any attention. Gregory was standing on the landing in front of a full window test-driving a baseball bat in the wee small hours. Might be something to look into.
I tightened my hold on Jo, willing her to stay still, not to make any sudden moves. She leaned closer to me, but other than that she was quiet. Probably scared stiff as I was.
“Why not get a divorce, Gregory?” I tried to sound as if that was still a viable option. “You’ll get a fortune in any settlement. We don’t have a prenup.”
“Right Jennifer,” he said. “I’m sure you’d be willing to forgive this little misunderstanding tonight and make me a generous offer.” He twitched the bat, not breaking his wrist, just a wiggle. “I’m not crazy.”
He could have fooled me. His eyes were bloodshot and he was blinking way too fast. Except for the wild eyes and the way he was licking his lips every few seconds, he looked normal as pie. Well, that and the way he kept twitching the bloody baseball bat.
“You were provoked.” I offered him an excuse. “I was at fault too. Deserting you. Having an affair.” He nodded. “If you let us go check and make sure Aggie is okay, you can walk out of here free and clear. No one has to know about anything else.”
“Do I look stupid?” He obviously meant that as a rhetorical question. “You’ll turn on me the second I walk out of here. You’ll tell them about everything I’ve done. You’ll tell them about Max.”
“I don’t care about Max. He made his own choices.” I couldn’t believe he was buying into this for a second, but it was all I had. I laid it on with a trowel. “Everybody knows he was guilty.”
“That’s true. When you and your little slut here started up, the men at the club started saying I should wait until Max found out that his whoring ex-wife was on the prowl again—he’d kill you both and save me the trouble.”
“Sounds to me like he asked for it.”
Gregory was awfully willing to admit his misdeeds. That didn’t make me hopeful he was going to have a change of heart and let us go on our living, breathing way.
“I gave him a call that the police were on their way. Told him if we met, I’d help him prove he wasn’t behind the stalking.”
“Why would he believe you?” Jo asked, finally finding her voice. “Max isn’t stupid. He doesn’t know you from a hole in the ground.”
“Not true. We played golf a few times. I told him my wife was your latest fling. Told him the police were questioning me too.”
“You don’t want to do this, Gregory,” I said. “It’s not too late to quit before anyone else gets hurt.”
“Are you forgetting Max left a note confessing to this?” He waved the bat around to point at Jo and me. “There’s no way to explain a confession to a crime if the crime doesn’t happen. An investigation will get me eventually.”
“We won’t tell. I swear we won’t.” I tried to sound reasonable. “We want to live. You want the money. You walk out right now and you can write your own ticket. Whatever you want. Five million sound good? You could live like a king anywhere in the world on that. Someplace with no extradition. Works for me.”
“I didn’t actually kill Max, did I?” he asked. “I just talked him into killing himself. He said he’d never make it in prison. I did give him the pills and booze though. And sat with him until he was passed out. Does that make a case for murder?”
Yes, you crazy bastard, I wanted to yell. Instead I played cheerleader.
“Of course not. Unless you were holding a gun to his head—”
The look on his face would have been comical if this had been a movie. He and I looked at each other and I cringed. Doomed, we were definitely doomed.
“But in the end, he killed himself,” Jo said, getting into the spirit.
“That’s true. He said he had nothing to do with killing the Claymore woman, but he knew who did. Said no way he’d rat on him or he’d end up as dead as she was.”
“Who else would have a reason to kill Cotton?” Jo asked. “All she did was help people.”
“No one is a saint, baby.” I loved her for her faith in me, a faith I didn’t deserve. Must have been Biggs, I thought, making sure nobody knew about his abuse of his wife. No reason to try to explain about him. Since we were about to die, let her keep her illusions. “It doesn’t matter anymore.”
“You’re right. It doesn’t matter now.” Gregory took a deep breath and bounced on the balls of his feet like an athlete getting primed to run the big race. “I’m sorry, but all that’s left is for you two to die.”
Just then there was a slight but definite sound from downstairs. We all held our breath, listening. Was it a moan? Aggie? Oh, Lord, please let it be true.
“Gregory. It’s Aggie. She’s alive.” I pres
sed him to reconsider. “Get out of here while you still can.”
“You know I can’t do that, Jennifer.” He at least sounded regretful. “It’s too late. All that’s left is—” He raised the bat high over his head and sucked in a couple of deep, ragged breaths. “It’s been too late since your parents had to die. It’s been too late since you got your memory back.”
“No Gregory. I’ll help you. I’ll get you a doctor.” I would have promised him anything at the moment, but I knew it was too late. “Please don’t do this.”
His answer was swift and merciless. He swung the bat, following through with all his might. Jo screamed as the wood connected with my shoulder, snapping the bone with a horrible crunch and immobilizing me with the enormity of the pain. I couldn’t even scream through the agony; I couldn’t make a sound other than a keening animal-like whimper.
Jo didn’t have any trouble making sounds. She yelled bloody murder and threw herself over me, covering me with her body, as if her slight form would protect me from the next blow. I couldn’t even tell her I loved her, but she knew it. We braced for the end, looking up at the blood-crazed maniac who was once Jennifer’s polite, urbane husband.
None of the mild-mannered stockbroker was left in his eyes. He had gone to a place beyond all of that. Nothing left but savagery and desperation. He raised the bat high above his head again.
“All that’s left is—”
There was a noise downstairs again, more noticeable than before. Someone was in the house. Gregory’s eyes blinked faster. Bat poised, ready to strike again, he looked toward the stairs and froze in place. I sucked air in and forgot the blinding pain as Dr. Carey walked into view, a nasty-looking gun in her hand.
“All that’s left is for you to finish what you started, Gregory. Kill them. Now.”
Chapter Fifty-One
I’ve lost my mind.
The lights are on, but nobody’s home. That’s what Aggie would say. If only she were here to say it.