by Hazel Holmes
After all, Sarah had went on the run to save her own skin. And she wasn’t searching for the orb to save the redhead, or avenge Maggie’s sacrifice. She was here for one reason only: to save herself.
The thought sickened her, and Sarah turned to leave, but then stopped when she reached the door. She spun back around and looked at Iris, her eyes falling to the wooden sphere around her neck.
Iris always wore it, and the longer Sarah stared at it the more she frowned. “It moves, but is always in the same place.” Her eyes widened in shock. “The orb!”
But just as Sarah lunged for Iris, stretching out her hand, she felt a tug at her waist, and everything went black.
After a moment of being lost in the darkness, Sarah suddenly realized that she was outside, her head aching as she lay on her back on the grass. She blinked, trying to rid herself of the black spots that plagued her vision. She propped herself up on her elbow and caught a glimpse of the mansion just before she turned around to find Brent hovering over her.
“Hello, sweetheart. Did you miss me?” Brent smiled.
A scream began to crawl from the back of her throat, but it was cut short by the harsh crack of a pistol against her face.
The pain was sharp and hot. Blood trickled down from the wound, casting a brilliant streak of red against her pale skin. Hands groped her neck and shoulders, and she was yanked from the ground, too disoriented to fight back but still conscious enough to see Pat lying motionless on his back.
“Pat? Oh my god, Pat?” Sarah wiggled herself free, scrambling toward the old barkeep who lay lifeless on the ground.
Pat had pressed both hands to his bloodied stomach, his body trembling. Blood pooled in his mouth and he locked eyes with Sarah before he spoke, his voice raspy and tired. “Sarah.”
“It’s okay,” Sarah said, starting to cry. “Everything’s going to be all right.”
Sarah pressed her ear to his nose to check his breathing, but it was so cold outside that she couldn’t feel if there were any breaths or not. Pat grabbed hold of her arm, transferring bloody prints to her jacket. His eyes were wide, the white turning the same shade of red as the blood welling up from his gut.
“I didn’t know you two were so well acquainted,” Brent said, walking over to hover over Sarah’s back. “Well, say goodbye.”
Sarah turned. “No, wait!”
The gunshot cut through the night air fast and hard. A high-pitched whine in Sarah’s ears deafened her to her own screams as she turned back around to find Pat’s face blown away.
“Get up!” Brent yanked her by the collar, lifting her completely off the ground with one hand, and dragged her, kicking and screaming, toward the road.
“NO!” Sarah wriggled and punched at Brent’s arm, but the defiance ended when he placed the end of his pistol against her forehead.
“Move again and I’ll blow your brains out across the snow,” Brent said, his voice spitting anger against her cheek. “And then you can be just like your little friend over there.”
With her face still turned in the opposite direction, Sarah glanced at Brent from the corner of her eye. She hated that she couldn’t stop shaking, she hated that he had found her, but what she hated even more was the hope that she had allowed herself to believe that she could escape his reach.
“You didn’t have to come here,” Sarah said, this time forcing her gaze into Brent’s eyes. “I’m not a threat.”
Brent laughed. “Not in the way you think, sweetheart, no.” He readjusted the grip on his pistol and flicked the end of it toward the road. “Get moving, honey.”
Sarah turned back to Pat one last time.
Brent raised the pistol and pressed it against her forehead with his finger on the trigger. But she didn’t turn away this time. She faced him, stiffening in courage.
“You want to kill me?” Sarah asked. “Then just fucking do it. C’mon.” She taunted him, leaning into the revolver’s barrel. “Do it!”
He paused as if he was going to pull the trigger, but he only laughed. “Son of a bitch.” He lowered the revolver. “I really wish I could, sweetheart, but I can’t. You’ve made a lot of trouble for me, and now I’m going to have to take you back to New York, so let’s go.”
Brent picked her up by force, and Sarah screamed, crying and fighting back as hard as she could, but it was no use. He was too big, and she was too tired. He tossed her into the GTO like a rag doll, and was cried out by the time he zip-tied her wrists together, then put on her seatbelt.
He climbed into the driver’s seat and started the car. “You know, you had me fooled.” Brent laughed, shaking his head. “But you’re all kinds of fucked up in the head, aren’t you?” He nodded. “Yeah, you are.” He leaned closer, his lips barely touching her ear, his voice tickling her skin. “And I know that from all that crazy shit you liked to do in bed.”
Brent kissed her ear, and Sarah slammed the side of her skull into his face. The harsh crack of bone against bone caused both of them to wince, and Sarah opened her eyes just in time to see the backhand coming toward her face.
Brent’s heavy knuckles pounded her mouth, smashing the thin cushion of her lips against her teeth and knocking her entire body toward the window.
“Dumb bitch!”
The curse was followed by the pressure of a pistol to the back of her skull, and Brent used it to jam her face up against the window.
“I told you no funny business!”
Sarah struggled for breath with her face pressed against the glass, her mouth numb. More pressure was applied to the back of her head, and then with one final push, it ended. Brent settled behind the wheel, and Bell faded into the rearview mirror.
Head throbbing, Sarah gently sat back in the seat. The GTO’s engine hummed loudly, the pistons firing on all cylinders as the muscle car’s tires chewed up the road ahead on their way back to New York City.
“I won’t make it,” Sarah said, her head gently swaying left and right with the curves of the highway. She stared at the exit for Redford, watching the sign grow smaller in the rearview mirror until it was completely gone.
“Bit of a pessimistic outlook, don’t you think?” Brent asked, smiling. “I’m not gonna kill you, Sarah. If I wanted to that, I would have just done it back in town.” He shook his head. “No, I need you alive to take the fall for me.”
“I’m not going to do that,” Sarah said.
“If you want what’s left of your friends in New York to survive, you will,” Brent replied, his tongue sharp and forceful. “How many deaths do you want on your conscience, huh? Three? Four?” He shook his head. “I can keep piling them up for you, Sarah. Stack ’em as high as the fuckin’ Empire State Building.”
Sarah’s eyes watered as she wondered who he’d already killed. At least half a dozen names scrolled through her mind, all of them good people. She had no doubt that he’d killed at least one of them, probably Moss or Cassie. She hoped they hadn’t suffered.
When the first tear fell, Sarah turned her face away so Brent wouldn’t see, but she couldn’t hide her reflection in the mirror.
Brent started laughing. “Oh, don’t be sad, sweetheart. Listen, I’ll tell you what.” He inched closer, keeping his left hand on the wheel while he rested his elbow on the center console. “When we get back to the city, I’ll arrange a quick little meet for you at the graveyard so you can say your goodbyes before they lock you away and throw away the key.”
More gut-bursting laughter rolled off of Brent’s tongue, lashing her ears with a wicked laugh that echoed through her mind. But the laughter faded, and Sarah’s stomach churned sourly. Beads of sweat broke out on her forehead. It was happening.
Sarah flung her back against the car seat and shut her eyes, her muscles starting to tremble as she gritted her teeth in pain. “GRAAAHHHHH!”
“Hey!” Brent said, ending his laughter and leaning away from Sarah. “Knock it off!” He placed one hand on his pistol. “I said—”
But Sarah thrashed back and
forth, the pain reemerging in her leg as she reached for her jeans with her bound hands. The burning sensation crawled up her thigh, the pain growing more intense with every passing second.
“Calm down!” Brent backhanded Sarah once more, this time striking the center of her nose.
The force of the blow should have knocked her into unconsciousness, but the pain crawling up her leg made the blow feel like nothing more than a light breeze against her cheek.
In retaliation, Sarah flung herself into Brent, grabbing hold of the wheel and turning it hard.
The world immediately spun, tires screeching, and centrifugal force flung Sarah back into her seat. She cracked her head against the glass, which shattered, and the last thing that Sarah remembered before she blacked out was watching the road pass beneath her, the world upside down, and a loud crunch when the car rolled into the ditch on the side of the road.
73
The moment Dell was out of Bell, he floored the gas pedal. The cruiser sped down the two-lane highway, lights flashing red and blue against the backdrop of the forest.
Dell gripped the steering wheel tightly, his vision focused on only the road ahead. A sense of urgency flooded through him, and while the consequences of failing to obtain a cure for Sarah had gone unsaid, he understood them perfectly clear. If the doctor couldn’t cure her, she’d die. But when that would happen and how long it would take, Dell had no idea.
And what was more was how the idea of Sarah’s death affected him. It was a thought he refused to let fester in his consciousness. But despite his efforts, he couldn’t shake it. And he wasn’t sure what to make of that.
Sarah wasn’t exactly his type. She was pretty, of course, but there was a reckless danger to her that clashed against his own ideals. Not to mention she was stubborn and seemed to find trouble wherever she went. Not exactly a “bring her home to Mom” kind of girl.
And still, Dell couldn’t get her out of his mind.
Once he was west of Redford and onto the mountainous dirt roads, Dell’s GPS lost its signal. Luckily, he had a vague remembrance of the doctor’s location. There was a lookout point in the same area where high school kids would go on dates. It was a popular destination for kids to lose their virginity. It was where Dell had taken his high school girlfriend. He was sixteen and she was fifteen. It was hard to believe he was ever that young. And even harder to believe he was ever that scared.
Maybe it was the fact that he was returning to a place where innocence was lost, but those same nerves returned to him on the dirt road, and it didn’t take long for a layer of cold sweat to accumulate beneath his uniform.
The cruiser’s shocks were tested on the rocky road, and Dell was tossed left and right behind the wheel like a rag doll as he kept his eyes peeled for any sudden turns. Northern Maine’s back roads had claimed more tourists than Dell could count, and a few drunk locals. The moon and stars being covered by a thick blanket of clouds only made the night darker.
Headlights flashed on a small road sign, barely two feet off the ground, and Dell slammed on his brakes, the cruiser sliding forward in the gravel. Dell leaned across his center console and squinted to make out the sign’s text.
Black paint had been used in the lettering, and the wooden plank that it had been written on had faded to a dull gray, making it unreadable from inside the car. So Dell unbuckled his seatbelt and stepped out.
With the headlights from the cruiser illuminating his path, Dell dropped to a knee in front of the sign and wiped away some of the crud that had collected over the wood’s surface. Beneath it, he found the doctor’s address.
Dell looked down the road that the sign marked and found that its path was even narrower and less maintained than the dirt road behind him.
Back in the car, Dell reversed a few feet and then carefully turned down the narrow path, which climbed upward on a steep incline. The cruiser’s tires slipped multiple times on the way up, the seatbelt over Dell’s chest tightening with every jerk, and twice the decline backward nearly resulted in contact with one of the thick maples that lined the road. But Dell maintained a slow and steady pace, and eventually the gravel gave way to more compacted dirt, which allowed for a smoother ride.
Maintaining a crawling pace forward, Dell kept his eyes peeled for any other signs or roads that veered off his path. But the longer he drove up the hillside and through the forest the more his confidence shrank.
The address Faye had pulled from the system was three years old, which meant that the doctor could have moved somewhere else. It wasn’t uncommon for the elderly to flock south, selling off everything they owned, and disappear to warmer weather without notifying the appropriate agencies of their departure. It was an easy way for them to avoid certain tax payments.
A lot of them also rented out their houses through the winter and fall to tourists, which helped pay for their tiny beach condos down in Florida. So the possibility that Dell was about to walk into a winter-break holiday party with a house crammed full with wasted college kids was just as likely as waking up an old man from his bed in the dead of night.
The rough path continued for another mile, and just when Dell was about to find a spot to turn around, he saw a break in the path ahead, and beyond that break was a shimmer of taillights.
Dell breathed a sigh of relief when he saw that the truck was parked at the end of a long drive, blocking the path toward a small cottage nestled quaintly in a grove of trees.
With no sign of a family or college kids inhabiting the place, Dell parked his cruiser directly behind the truck in the long drive.
Dell’s vision adjusted to the darkness, the features of the forest taking shape as he scanned his surroundings on the walk toward the front door.
Leaves rustled from a steady breeze coming down from the northwest. The cold stiffened Dell’s movements. He kept one hand on his service pistol, the strap over the handle already unbuckled in case he needed to draw quickly.
The windows of the cottage were darkened, and the closer Dell moved toward the house, the more he saw its age and imperfections. The rain gutters were clogged and overflowing with leaves, and the small plot of land that had been cleared in the trees was overgrown with grass and weeds.
A three-foot-high, rusted iron fence surrounded the house, a lattice with dying ivy leaves crawling over it acting as a sort of bridged entrance. The gate’s hinges groaned as Dell entered, and a few critters scattered from the untouched landscape.
The grass was so overgrown that there wasn’t even a worn path from the gate to the front door. He approached warily and checked the window to the left of the door. The view was limited, the interior even darker than outside.
Unsure if anyone was even home, Dell pounded his fist on the door, rattling the old wood and ending the quaint silence of the forest. “Doctor Wagner, Redford Police Department. Open up!”
Dell waited for a response or the flick of a light but saw no movement inside the house. He peered through the window again, hoping to see an elderly figure heading his way, but there was nothing. He pounded on the door again.
“Doctor Wagner, this is Deputy Dell Parker with the Redford Sheriff’s Department!” With his hand still on the handle of his service pistol, he stepped back, examining the sides of the house, and then looked back toward the truck down the worn drive.
Dell pounded again. “Doctor Wag—”
A light flicked on, and mumbled groans penetrated the sleepy, sagging walls of the cottage, followed by the noisy turn of the lock. The door opened only a crack, and Dell stepped back when he saw that he was staring down the barrel of a twelve-gauge shotgun, held by an old man with a walker standing in front of him.
“What do you want?” Doctor Wagner asked, his expression a snarl ensnared by hundreds of wrinkles that puckered his face like a raisin.
Dell slowly raised his hands, knowing the old man’s bark was worse than his bite. “I’m Deputy Dell—”
“I already heard that,” Doctor Wagner spat from behi
nd the crack of his door. “I’m old and immobile, not deaf and dumb. What do you want?”
Dell stared at the shotgun. “Do you mind lowering the weapon, sir?”
Wagner grunted and reluctantly complied with the request. He opened the door and set the shotgun in the corner near the entrance, both hands now gripping a silver walker that looked as fragile as the man who used it for support.
“Thank you,” Dell answered. “May I come inside?”
“Fine.” Wagner spun around, shuffling toward the kitchen as Dell entered the foyer. “I was finally drifting off to sleep when you started pounding on my door!” He flicked on a light as he entered the kitchen, Dell watching him through the tiny cutout in the wall overlooking the sink. “You know how difficult it is to get rest at my age? Might as well try and run up this mountain in my bare feet, that’s how impossible. So whatever ended my chance at some peace and rest better be good.”
Dell shut the door behind him, examining the bare-bones interior of the living room. A single reclining chair with a tabletop next to it was positioned directly in front of a television that had to have been more than thirty years old. The face of the box still had dials on it, and a pair of rabbit ears stuck out the back, sagging like everything else in the house.
A few pictures lined the walls, and Dell spotted one of a young woman, the picture black and white, but even the lack of color couldn’t hide her beauty.
“My wife,” Wagner said, reappearing from the kitchen without a sound, his tone gentler than his earlier greeting. “God rest her soul. Passed away for nearly ten years now, and I still can’t figure out what the hell the bastard is keeping us apart for. I was ready to go when she did, but—” He shrugged and shuffled toward the recliner. “Here I am.”
Wagner transitioned from the walker to the recliner with a practiced motion, though it still took some time. Dell nearly asked if the old man needed help but thought better of it. The elderly didn’t need reminding of their own frailty. They lived with it every day.
“Doctor Wagner—”