by Lisa Gardner
“Danielle and a kid?”
“The Oliver boy. Evan. He was admitted earlier today—”
“Wait.” D.D. whirled back to Greg. “This is the Evan you know? You worked for his mom, who was stabbed this morning?”
Greg nodded.
“And Lightfoot knew them, too, right?”
“He paid me a finder’s fee.”
“Excuse me?” Karen spoke up. “You worked for a family? Finder’s fee?”
Greg winced, stuck his hands in his pockets. “Once things are calmer, I have some things I need to tell you.”
Karen opened her mouth as if to demand an explanation immediately, but D.D. was already waving her hand. “Yeah, yeah, yeah, and confession’s good for the soul. But first things first: I want Danielle. I want Evan. And I want Lightfoot. Anyone got a clue where the hell they are?”
She glared at the nurse administrator, then Greg, then the staff as a whole.
One by one, they all shook their heads.
“She’s the target,” Alex murmured in D.D.’s ear. “Lightfoot did this to get to her. But why? And where?”
D.D. looked at him grimly. “And how much time does she have left?”
CHAPTER
THIRTY-NINE
VICTORIA
I jerk awake with my mouth open as if to scream. For a second, I lie still, struggling to get my bearings. My heart’s racing. My side aches. I feel dazed, as if roused from a terrible dream.
By degrees, I register that I’m in my own bed. The windows are dark, my bedside clock glows four-fifteen. I start to relax, then realize I can’t feel my arms and legs.
In a fresh rush of panic, I try to sit up.
And immediately understand the problem. My arms are tied behind my back. My legs are tied at the ankles. I am trussed up, like a Thanksgiving turkey. But I’m in my own home, in my own bed.…
It comes back to me. Waking up in the hospital. My determined desire to see Evan on the eighth-floor pediatric unit.
I’d made it to the elevator banks. I can remember my hand reaching for the button. I can remember thinking that I was going to make it.
Then Andrew appeared. His presence confused me. We didn’t have that kind of relationship. He used my body for sex, and I let him.
And, Saturday’s interlude aside, he hadn’t wanted to see me at all. He needed to prepare something, he’d told me. A Monday surprise.
It comes to me. Today is Monday.
And when I’d met Andrew at the elevator banks, he’d hit me with some kind of electrical charge. A bone-deep, searing pain. And then …
My lover deliberately incapacitated me, and now here I am, alone in the dark.
I hear a groan, coming from downstairs.
No, not alone.
Michael is here, too.
What in the world?
Suddenly, I remember two recent cases in the news: families, both with troubled kids, murdered in their own homes.
We’re missing Evan, I understand now. Andrew will bring Evan. Then the killing will begin.
Furiously, I work my hands against my plastic bindings. No time for the pain in my side. No time for the pain in my head. Have to get out. Have to get us all out. Michael, Evan. I have made such a terrible, terrible mistake.
But before I have a chance to get started, it all ends. I hear the door open downstairs. I hear footsteps in the foyer.
“Honey,” Andrew’s voice croons. “I’m home.”
CHAPTER
FORTY
DANIELLE
My fucking head. That was my first thought. Next came awareness of shooting pains down my arms, muscles cramping in my right shoulder. I needed to move, stretch out, sit up.…
I was tied up.
The realization stunned me. I froze, trying to figure out what the hell had happened. I’d been carrying Evan, working my way down the stairwell. A door opened. Andrew stepped out.
The bastard had tasered me. The realization was so shocking, I tried to sit up again, and promptly whacked my head against a hard metal surface. Sagging, I honed in on the sound of tires on pavement, the scent of exhaust fumes, the stifling heat of a closed-in space, and the next piece of the puzzle struck me.
The bastard had tasered me, then tossed me into the trunk of his car.
Son of a bitch. He must’ve faked the whole poisoning episode. Gotten himself a free pass out of the unit, into the main hospital, where he’d disappeared, then circled back around to … torch the hospital? Attack the ward?
Evan. Oh God. What had happened to Evan?
I struggled desperately, rolling helplessly from side to side in the darkness of the trunk. I encountered something that felt like a metal tool chest, then a soft duffel bag. But no Evan.
Maybe he was okay. Karen had been behind me. She would’ve found him, carried him to safety.
The thought comforted me. I rested, wiggling my fingers and toes as I heard the hum of the pavement below, and felt the weight of the trunk door above. I wanted to throw up. Instead, I forced myself to take a deep breath, then marshaled my resources, and determined the best plan of attack.
I wasn’t scared. Maybe I should’ve been. But mostly, I was very pissed off.
I’d hidden once in my life. I’d handed over my safety to another and I’d buried myself under the covers. And we all knew how well that had worked out.
This time, I vowed, I was gonna put up one helluva fight.
The car slowed. I felt the momentum grind to a halt. Seconds later, the engine cut out; we’d reached our destination. My head pounded harder. The exhaust fumes had made me nauseous, while my right shoulder had locked up painfully. Despite my best efforts, I’d lost all feeling in my fingers and toes at least five miles ago.
I tensed, bracing myself for God knows what. Andrew would come around the car. Pop open the trunk. And I’d … leap out at him? Scream bloody murder? I was bound and gagged. Couldn’t move. Couldn’t scream. Didn’t have a cell phone. Didn’t have a weapon. I was doomed.
A car door opened. Slammed shut. Another door opened, maybe a passenger door. Andrew was getting something out.
My body screamed with tension. I squeezed my eyes shut, though I was already lost in the dark.
Footsteps, growing closer. I had to do something. Think.
There was nothing I could do. I was trapped, helpless.
I didn’t feel brave anymore. I pictured my sister, gunned down in the hall. I remembered my brother and his desperate race for the stairs. And I wanted to cry for them. I wanted to cry for all of us, because after tonight, I was pretty sure there would be no survivors.
The footsteps faded away. Long seconds ticked by without anything happening. My body relaxed, degree by degree. Think, think, think.
Both D.D. Warren and Greg seemed to feel that Andrew had personal feelings for me. Could I use that? Could I convince him that I liked him, too? If I could just sweet-talk him into loosening the bindings, giving myself one shot at escape …
The footsteps were back, growing louder. Then, before I was ready, the trunk flew open. Andrew loomed above me, his body shrouded in night. I couldn’t see his face, but felt his eyes upon me.
“Do you understand?” he asked me.
Bewildered, I shook my head, cotton gag chafing my lips.
“You will. It’s time to face your past, Danielle. I’ve been trying to tell you that, but you ignored me. Drastic times call for drastic measures. So here we are. Twenty-five years later. Same day. Time for a new understanding.”
He reached down, grabbed my shoulders, and forced me up. I screamed against the gag as blood-starved nerve endings roared to life. The sound was muffled, the shriek rebounding into my throat, where it died a quick death. Andrew grunted in satisfaction.
“You must open your senses,” he intoned, hands under my arms, dragging my deadweight from the trunk. “Remove your judgments. Listen with your heart, remember with your mind. He’ll find you. He’s been trying to contact you for years.”
He set me on the pavement. Run, my head commanded, even as my legs crumpled and I fell against my captor. Andrew was strong. I remembered his stories of running six miles in soft sand. Now he hefted me easily onto his back in a fireman’s hold. I tried to kick out with my legs, but couldn’t get any momentum.
With me in place, Andrew trudged toward a large house I didn’t recognize. He pushed open the front door and strode into the darkened foyer.
“Honey, I’m home,” he called out.
Upstairs, I heard a woman begin to weep.
Memory is a funny thing. My entire life had been defined by one episode, that until today, I’d assumed lasted no more than forty minutes. In my memory, my father was holding the gun. In my memory, my father shot himself, instead of me. In my memory.
Andrew removed my gag. I opened my mouth to scream, and he pressed a finger over my lips.
“Shhh, don’t forget about Evan and his mother and father. Surely you’d like to save one family.”
I closed my lips and stared at Andrew. We were upstairs, in a pink ruffled bedroom that clearly belonged to a young girl. I didn’t see any sign of her, and the bed was made, so I was hoping that meant she was no longer around, or maybe this room had been staged for my benefit. I wasn’t sure, and the not knowing kept me silent.
I studied Andrew, a mouse pinned by a cat, desperate for a glimmer of escape.
“What do you mean?” I asked. My mouth felt cottony from the gag. I couldn’t get enough saliva to enunciate clearly. I licked my lips, but it didn’t help.
Andrew set the flashlight between us. I’d grab it and bash it against the side of his skull, except my hands remained tied behind me. He’d released my ankles, allowing us both to sit cross-legged on the floor. I had my back against a wall of dark windows. He had himself situated between me and the bedroom door.
I didn’t hear crying anymore. The house had gone eerily quiet, the silence freaking me out more than the noises had. Bad things happened in places that were this hushed.
“Evan is an old soul,” Andrew stated.
This sounded like the Andrew I knew, so I nodded.
“He feels too much, is saturated by the negativity of this world. Other, crueler souls haunt his dreams. They seep into his waking consciousness. They encourage him to do bad things, such as kill his own mother. It’s a terrible way to live, such a young boy, fighting a war nobody else can see.”
I’d heard this spiel before, so I nodded again.
“He’s not the only one, Danielle. There are other souls caught in a horrible abyss. They cannot return to this world for a fresh set of experiences, nor can they journey to any other plane. They are trapped in the black hole of unfinished business. This is the Hell writers such as Dante described for us. It is a horrible, horrible existence, Danielle, for it has no end. Old, sensitive souls trapped for eternity.”
I had no idea what he was talking about, but I nodded again. Gag was gone. Ankle bindings were gone. If he’d just release my hands, I might have a chance of winning this.
“People fear death. They’re bound by primitive notions of Heaven and Hell. But that assumes we exist only in one dimension. Once you accept that souls are capable of moving among many spiritual planes, then you understand the greater truth of our existence. Physical death is nothing, merely a blip on a soul’s radar screen. Ozzie and his parents—they’re not gone; they’ve simply moved to the next set of experiences. Ishy, Rochelle, Tika, and baby Vivi. Again, not destroyed, just set free from an unfortunate corporal existence.”
“You killed the Harringtons and the Laraquettes?” I exclaimed in horror.
“I enabled them to move on to the next plane of existence,” Andrew corrected.
“Oh my God. And Lucy, too?”
“I’ve already explained to you that she’s happier now. You know what happened to her here. Surely you can understand it’s been better for her to journey on.”
“You hanged her?”
“She saw through me, straight into my heart. A powerful soul, that one. So I waited until it was late, and the unit lightly staffed. Then I simply led her out of the ward. She followed willingly. Again, she’s much happier—”
“You sick son of a bitch!” I interrupted hotly. “You had no right! Maybe Lucy followed you through the doors, but what about when you entered the radiology room? What about when you tied the knot in the rope? You murdered her. You violated the choice she made to exist on this plane of being. How could you!”
Andrew glared at me. “You’re not listening—”
“You weren’t even poisoned, were you?” I interrupted again, pissed off to the point of recklessness. “That was just a little charade to get you away from the unit. You’re a fraud. I knew it!”
“Quiet!”
“Fuck you!”
Suddenly, Andrew wasn’t sitting across from me. Suddenly, he loomed over me, his face inches from mine, the fury in his eyes threatening to drill me to the floor. I wanted him to be crazy. I wanted to see a rabid light shining in his gaze. Instead, the determination in his face frightened me to the core.
“You will believe. You will visit the interplanes, you will open your mind and open your heart. Or you and everyone in this house will die. Are you paying attention yet, Danielle? Are you listening to me?”
Wordlessly, I nodded. His blue eyes were burning, burning, burning. He was on fire with something. Faith, I thought. Mad faith.
When he spoke next, his words were clipped and direct. “I’ve hidden a gun in this house. It contains four bullets. I know where it is, and the person who killed your family knows where it is. Now we’re going to have a race. Whoever finds the gun first gets to use it. To be fair about it, I’ll give you a ten-minute head start. You may waste time searching for a phone, if you’d like. The phone service has been disconnected, just as the electricity has been terminated. Also, this house was set up by Evan’s mother to contain him twenty-four/seven. The locks are key-in, key-out, and there’s only one key that works.” Andrew lifted a chain around his neck, to reveal the single key.
“Finally, before you resort to smashing windows or other such nonsense, understand that you’ll be deserting Evan; his mother, Victoria; and his father, Michael, who did me the favor of showing up at the hospital. When the ten minutes are up, I will shoot them. I doubt you can break a window, race to the neighbors’, and summon help before ten minutes expire, particularly as your hands will be tied for the duration of our little race. Continue your policy of denial and people will die. Face your past, open your heart, and you have a fighting chance. You’ve driven me to this, Danielle. But I’m trying to be fair about things.”
“You want … you expect me to find my father’s soul on the spiritual interplanes and ask him about the hidden gun? I’m supposed to … talk to him?”
Andrew tilted his head. “What do you fear most, Danielle? That he won’t offer to save you? Or that he will?”
“You’re insane.”
“An explanation that enables you to continue your policy of denial. Let me give you a hint: Who saved you that night, Danielle?”
“Sheriff Wayne.”
“How did he get there? You never left your room and your house was located miles from the nearest neighbor. Who heard the gunfire? Who called nine-one-one?”
I stared at him blankly, not getting it.
Andrew sighed, shook his head at me, then rose to his feet. “You focus too much on the corporal world, Danielle. You hate yourself for not saving your family’s lives. I want you to fight for their souls. You don’t know the truth of that night. You refuse to see what you can’t accept. And in doing so, you’ve damned them all, especially my father.”
“Your father?” I asked incredulously.
“The respectable Sheriff Wayne. An old soul trapped in the abyss. That’s the true hell, Danielle. That’s what all of us should wisely fear.”
Andrew glanced at his watch. “Ten minutes. You can confront your past, or you can lose your futu
re. You can save my father’s soul, or I will use all four bullets. I’ll start with the mother. That’s how these things are generally done. Then Evan. Then his father. I’ll save you for last, the order you know best. Tell me, Danielle, how many families are you prepared to lose?”
Andrew disappeared into the gloom of the hallway. I sat frozen, too stunned to move. Then I heard a new sound, from the room next to mine.
“Mommy?” Evan whispered, his voice tinny with fear. “Mommy?”
Andrew was insane, I thought, and we were all going to die.
CHAPTER
FORTY-ONE
Phil was a brilliant man. Via cell phone, D.D. gave him the update on Andrew Lightfoot, who appeared to have abducted Danielle and Evan. They needed Andrew’s last name and background info, fast.
Phil answered by cross-referencing Lightfoot’s address with the state licensing board for financial traders. Given that Lightfoot used to be an investment banker, it stood to reason that he kept his license up, if only to manage his own assets.
Sure enough, the database spit back the name Andrew Ficke, son of Wayne and Sheila Ficke. Sheila had an address in Newburyport, not far from her son. Wayne, a former sheriff, had died two years ago.
D.D. called Sheila, told the bewildered woman that her son was currently assisting the BPD with an urgent investigation and they needed to locate him immediately. A list of known addresses, please?
Turned out Andrew owned a seaside home, a yacht, and a co-op in New York. If souls really got to choose their experiences, D.D. was coming back as a New Age healer.
She doubted Andrew would run all the way to New York with an abducted woman. Seaside home too obvious. Yacht more interesting; lots of privacy out at sea. D.D. would notify local uniforms to watch the docks, and the Coast Guard to monitor the harbor.
“Sorry to call so late,” D.D. told the woman, not wanting her to be alarmed and attempt to contact Andrew. “We’re all set now. Thanks again.”