by Virna DePaul
Threatening.
Her palms grew damp as she remembered the disorienting walk home from John’s fifteen years ago, and the way the trees and houses had come alive.
She stepped back and knocked against a table, jerking when a frame rattled to the hardwood floor. She heard a cell phone ring somewhere nearby. She moved toward the foyer. “Officer Raddison?”
Her own phone rang. She sighed with relief, knowing it would be John. She answered. “John—?”
“Lily, it’s me.”
She recognized Albert’s voice immediately. She also recognized the fear that made it tremble. “Albert? What is it?”
“Get out, Lily. You’re not alone.”
She moved toward the foyer, intending to open the door to look for him. “Where are you? Outside?”
“No! Don’t go that way. The back, Lily. You need to go out the—”
She froze when the man, bloody and disheveled, plowed through the doorway. Her first thought was that he’d been in some kind of accident. Her next thought was that Albert had set her up. Finally, she realized that Albert had been trying to warn her.
Fear dug its claws into her and twisted deep. “Go, Albert.”
“Lily, I’m coming in—”
“No!” she gasped. Don’t stay. Don’t watch. “Get help, Albert,” she said softly. She cut off the call as her eyes darted behind the man in search of Officer Raddison.
“He’s sleeping,” he said in a singsongy voice.
She swallowed hard and tried to remain calm. “Did you—did you hurt him?”
He smiled gently and tsked. “Of course I did, Lily. How else was I going to get to you?”
She wanted to scream, but her eyes caught the slashing movement at the man’s side. He made short jerking movements with a knife, but didn’t seem to be aware of it. A knife stained with blood.
Oh God. Oh no. Her mind immediately drew an image of the young cop, a proud father of a newborn baby, sliced and bleeding because he’d failed to anticipate the arrival of a madman. “What do you want?” she whispered.
For a moment, he looked to be in pain. “I want it to stop. The fire’s burning me alive and I can’t make it stop. Not anymore. You’re the only one who can help me.”
Fear morphed into terror. She glanced down at the knife again. “How can I help?”
“It won’t go away. I have no choice, don’t you see?” His voice was high. Pleading.
She took several steps back. Glanced at the stairway. Wondered if Barb would hear her if she cried for help.
“You really want me to hurt the old woman, Lily?”
Shaking her head, she bit her lip.
He stepped toward her, covering the distance she’d retreated. “You changed. You’re like the others now. A whore.” He raised his other hand and held out a white patch of fabric.
Lily stared at it blankly.
He sighed and rearranged the fabric. Underwear. Plain white cotton. Hers?
Would John make it in time? Though fear made her thoughts sluggish, she knew she had to stall. Keep him talking. Pretending, she asked, “Who are you?”
“I wanted her, but I wanted you more.” He smiled wanly. “Two for the price of one.”
Fear iced up her spine. “Who? Who did you want? The other girls? The ones with the jewelry...”
His eyes widened and he grinned with delight. “Smart girl. I thought it was a nice touch. A trade-off of sorts. They gave me what I needed, and I left them something in return.”
She glanced once more at the underwear, knowing but not fully accepting. “The birthstone. How did you know? Who told you?”
He tsked. “Come on now, Lily. Don’t you know? It’s right there. Right around your neck.”
Her heartbeat lurched and she raised a trembling hand to her mother’s pendant.
Where was John?
She glanced back at the doorway and wondered, briefly, if she could overpower him. But he was big. The knife was so sharp.
“Don’t even think of fighting. I’ll hurt you. And I’ll hurt anyone who comes to help you.” For emphasis, he slashed the knife at her belly, laughing when she instinctively jerked back. “It’s for the best. I need to protect her. Kids are so innocent.”
“Who are you talking about? The girls you’ve killed? They were young. Innocent.”
He frowned. “They’re old enough to know better. They shouldn’t be hitchhiking. Besides, they weren’t important. She’s the important one. The one I have to protect.”
“She? Who’s she?”
He opened his mouth, then shut it. “Enough talk. I didn’t come here for conversation.”
Her limbs went numb and she knew John wasn’t going to get here in time. It was up to her. She braced her body to run, but he shook his head and lunged for her, grabbing her by the arm in a vicious grip. She opened her mouth to scream, but he dragged her into the foyer. Moaning, she saw Officer Raddison lying on the floor facedown. Blood leaked out from underneath his body.
“See what I did to him, Lily? That’s what I’ll do to anyone who comes to help you. Young or old. Man or woman. I don’t care. That’s why I took your niece, Ashley.”
He laughed when her body jerked and then went limp. Blackness settled like a veil over her.
—a bloody knife plunging into flesh over and over again. Her mother crawling, trying to get away. Ashley singing in the car to the radio—
Slowly, he took his hand off her mouth. She didn’t fight. Didn’t protest. She felt separated from her body. Unable to do anything but let him pull her strings.
“Good girl,” he crooned, twisting her arm behind her back, holding the knife against her side. “We’re going to get into my car. It’ll be over soon. I promise.”
He grasped her elbow, led her outside, and began pushing her toward his car. “My sweetie reminds me so much of you, even though the coloring is all wrong. A father shouldn’t feel that way for his daughter. It’s because I wanted you, because I never had you, that I think that way about her. I thought the other girls would help, but they didn’t. It kept coming back. But when John came to see me, telling me about you, I knew it was a sign. Even Ashley wasn’t good enough. It was you all along. Once I have you, once I kill you, she’ll be safe forever.”
She rose out of her terror enough to gasp, “Doctors. They can help you.”
“Been there. Done that. Bought the T-shirt.” He chuckled at his joke. “Once you’re gone, the danger is over.”
She saw the green belt. They were just a few feet away from his car. The synapses in her brain started firing again, telling her if she got in that car she’d never see her family again. She’d never see John. Desperately, she said, “The police know about Tess. They know who you are—”
“Don’t say her name!” Searing pain stunned her as he slapped her.
She gasped and fell to the ground, catching herself with her arms. Blood gushed from her nose. Preparing for another blow, she glanced up. Saw Albert peeking out from behind a car, his face still bruised from Ernesto’s attack. The boy’s fierce gaze was focused like a laser beam on Park. She saw his shoulder muscles tense as he prepared to leap out. Shaking her head, she tried to pick herself up to stop him but she didn’t make it in time.
She saw Albert leap. Saw Park’s face, a garish twist of subhuman features. Their bodies collided a second before Albert’s slumped. Lily knew immediately that Park had stabbed him. “No!” she screamed.
Park pushed Albert to the ground and then kicked him. The boy curled into a fetal position, clutching his right side.
Lily frantically crawled her way over to him. “No, no, no,” she chanted. “Albert—” Before she reached him, Park tangled his fingers in her hair and yanked her to her feet. “Please, he needs help—”
The words were barely out of her mouth before his hand shot out, quick as a snake, again making her slam back against the pavement. He grabbed her by her hair again, dragging her up until her toes barely touched the ground. She screamed
as he brought them face-to-face. A smile had transformed his features. He looked elated. As if every scream fed something inside him. Something monstrous.
She gagged, bile rising in her throat.
“Look at me, Lily. My Lily.” He shook her, wrenching her neck, when she didn’t comply fast enough. “Look at me.”
She did. A glint of metal dangled in front of her face. He was holding a thin, fragile chain.
“I’ll make it fast.” He opened his palm and she saw the aquamarine pendant. “Just like your mother.”
Memories exploded like a land mine, hurling out pieces of shrapnel and making her whimper in pain.
She saw him struggling with her mother. Hitting her, again and again. Saw her mother fight him. As she watched, he picked up a knife from the massive butcher block in the kitchen and plunged it into her mother’s chest. Her mother doubled over.
Run, Lily, run, her mother had screamed. Trying to save her because she loved her.
He turned toward her, his eyes awash with bloodlust. She glanced at Albert, who was still on the ground behind them.
“She met you at her gym. You had a date with her that night.”
He grinned. “Like I said, smart girl.”
“Why?” she choked out. “She liked you.”
For a moment, he looked confused. As if the answer was obvious. “But I loved her,” he said. “Just like I love you. All I wanted was something of yours. A pair of your panties. But she walked in on me. Freaked out.”
He released her hair with one hand and caressed her cheek.
A memory of her mother formed, but it wasn’t from that horrible night. It was the day they’d gotten a glamour makeover together. After she’d gotten straight As and her mother had wanted to show how proud she was of her.
No! It couldn’t end this way. She wouldn’t let him get away with it again. She struggled anew. “You sick monster!”
Anger twisted his features once more, making him look demonic. He started dragging her to the car. “It’s useless fighting it. The others knew and you’ll accept the same fate.”
“John—”
He stopped and laughed. Sick, heckling laughter. “That’s right, your lover. But he can’t save you. My salvation will be with your last breath. All along I’ve been using substitutes when I should have been using you.”
He grasped her arm even tighter. She went limp, throwing him off balance and forcing him to take her weight. When his grasp loosened, she lunged and raced away. Away from Albert and onto the green belt.
She knew her way. Flew across the grass and into a grove of trees. She dodged and leaped, feeling the blood surging through her veins. With Park’s breaths and footsteps echoing loudly behind her, she threw herself behind one tree and turned quickly. Not away from him but toward him. She whirled and rushed him, curling her fingers into claws and going straight for his eyes.
* * *
John’s blood froze when he saw the front door to the Cantrell residence standing open. He bolted out of his car.
Something closed around his ankle and he automatically kicked out while turning around. He registered the low moan of pain just as he saw Albert facedown on the ground, his arm stretched out toward him. A dark stain on the back of the boy’s shirt.
He knelt down beside him, his hands gently pushing material aside. A long, jagged gash in the boy’s side oozed blood. Fear for Albert, fear for Lily, made his first attempt to speak inaudible. He cleared this throat. “Who did this to you?”
“Don’t know him.” Albert’s voice was wheezy. Weak. “A man.”
“Where’s the officer. The guard?”
Albert’s eyes shut and he went limp, as if the energy had drained out of him. Still, somehow he managed the words: “Lily—he has Lily—go,” and pointed across the street.
A scream rang out. John fumbled with his cell phone with sweaty palms. He punched 911. “This is Detective John Tyler with the El Dorado Sheriff’s Office. I have an officer down, 245, and attempted 187 in progress.” He rattled off the address, squeezed Albert’s shoulder, and said, “I’ve got to help her.”
Albert opened his eyes for a fleeting second and nodded. “Help her.”
The two of them shared a look of complete understanding. “Whatever it takes.”
John was on his feet and running, saying a quick prayer for Officer Raddison and Albert, then pushing them out of his mind as he focused on saving the woman he loved.
Following her screams, arms pumping, he rushed into the green belt, heedless of the tree branches slapping at him. Hurtling himself into a clearing, he saw her, writhing in combat with a taller, bulkier figure. For a moment, he froze, unable to believe his eyes.
His Lily—the petite, gentle girl with a heart immeasurable in its capacity for love—was fighting her attacker. And it looked like she was winning.
She screamed like a banshee, a wild, primitive sound that made the hair on his body stand at attention. She punctuated each guttural sound with a strike of her fist or a vicious scrape of her nails. She raked her attacker’s face, drawing blood and gouging his eyes. He punched at her, but she seemed unaware of the blows. She ripped chunks of light hair from his scalp and he howled.
Mason Park.
John sprinted toward them, his own battle cry mingling with Lily’s just as Mason brought up both hands, clasped them together, and struck Lily on the side of her head. She collapsed to the ground and her head knocked against a rock. John saw the light glint off something next to her and realized it was a necklace. A necklace with aquamarine gems.
John leaped at Mason, catching him around the middle and knocking him to the ground. John pulled back his arm and hit Park, not hearing the sound of bone and cartilage cracking beneath his fist. Not even remembering in that moment he was a cop. All he felt was rage. And the fierce certainty that this man who had dared to threaten his woman had to die.
* * *
Lily grasped her head and moaned at the stabbing pain. Shadows swam in front of her but she knew what was happening. John. She needed to get to John.
She crawled toward the blur of movement and the sound of flesh hitting flesh. Please God. Don’t take him, too. And if you do, take me. I can’t survive without him. I won’t.
She whimpered and faltered, almost collapsing back onto the ground in terror. Dear God, Park had fooled them all. The police. John. How could he be that evil and still have gotten away with it?
Lily straight-armed herself off the ground and kept crawling. No more, she thought. I won’t let him hurt us anymore. As the shadows loomed closer, her eyes focused. She almost cried out with relief when she saw John unhurt. He straddled Park.
“John,” she gasped out.
He didn’t respond. Didn’t look at her. He wrenched Park’s head up and began pounding it into the ground.
She forced herself to her feet and staggered toward him, determined to make him hear her.
“John, stop. John, it’s Lily. I need you, John. I need you. Please.”
He pummeled Park’s head once. Twice. Then he let go, causing Park’s head to fall back with a sickening, hollow sound. Blood stained John’s face. His shirt. His hands. He stared at them for several long moments, as if he didn’t know where he was or what he’d done.
“John,” she whispered.
He jerked and his gaze instantly met hers. She almost flinched back at the savagery lighting his eyes. She’d felt the same mindless rage when she’d attacked Park, but this—my God, John looked like a warrior just come back from battle. Distant. Deadly. Crazed.
But his savagery didn’t scare her. He’d never hurt her. He’d protect her, just like he’d always done.
“John,” she said again, this time reaching out to touch his face. He blinked several times. She knew he’d recognized her when relief, like a tide of sanity fresh from the sea, slowly washed away the taint of rage and cruelty in his eyes.
Breaths heaving in and out of him, he lurched and fell against her. Each steadied the
other. He wrapped his arms around her and leaned his head against her stomach. She tangled her hands in his hair. “It’s over,” she murmured. “It’s finally over.”
Chapter 21
It wasn’t over, John thought as he stared down at Lily. She slept peacefully, but that was unusual. She was safe, but not healed. She’d been having nightmares again. In the last week, she’d had to deal not only with her own pain but her family’s.
Officer Raddison and Candace Evans were both still in critical condition. Albert was stable. Ashley was going to need therapy but she seemed like she was going to be fine.
And although John had been wrong about Barb being a threat to Lily, he hadn’t been wrong about her presence that night. She’d shown up after Douglas Cantrell had found Lily in the house with her mother’s body and she’d helped him with his cover-up. While Doug had been walking Lily through her return-trip home and the “discovery” of her mother’s body, Barb had returned to her house and disposed of the knife and Lily’s clothes. She’d willingly tampered with evidence in order to protect not only the man she loved, but Lily. Although their actions would be investigated by the new D.A., the couple seemed relieved that the truth had finally come out and that Lily’s innocence had been confirmed.
After leaving John that night, Thorn had gone after Morton Howe. He’d simply barricaded himself in with the man in his office and periodically threatened to shoot him until the man had wet his pants. Howe had still been covered in piss when the cops had come in and placed them both in custody. Thorn was out on bail now, but he had a long road in front of him, as well. And because she was standing by him, so did Carmen.
Lily had a lot to deal with, too. Repairing the bonds within her family. Dealing with Park’s trial. Following up on Hardesty’s formal exoneration. Testifying against Howe. Trying to help Carmen with her decision to stand by Thorn, despite the uncertainty of his future.
Hard times were still ahead for both of them.
But at least Lily wouldn’t be alone this time.
And neither would he.
He smoothed a hand over her cheek, smiling when she crinkled her nose and butted against him like a cat. She yawned and stretched her arms before opening her pretty brown eyes.