“Good. Now, are you injured?”
“My ankle. I can’t walk very well.”
“But if you had to, you could? If I brought a car around front? Because we need to get out of here.”
“Maybe with some help.”
“Okay. For the moment, you just sit tight.”
Alice reached out and gripped Helen’s hand tightly.
“What about everyone else? Jesse, Big Ed?”
Helen didn’t have the heart to tell her.
“Don’t worry, Mrs. Patterson. You just wait here and I’ll be back soon.”
“Don’t leave me!”
Helen remembered Rita asking her the same thing, at the jail. Before she was dragged into the woods and murdered.
“Lawrence will stay with you. Try to remain calm.”
She pulled her hand loose with some difficulty, then slipped out the bedroom door.
“Hear anything down there?” she asked Lawrence.
“Just Frank dying,” Lawrence said.
Helen’s stomach roiled. She leaned on the railing.
“You all right?” he asked.
She gave it a minute before answering. “I’m going to make my way to your house and pick up your car.”
“But Teddy—”
“Street lamps are out. If I avoid getting caught in his headlights, he won’t see me.”
“Maybe,” Lawrence said.
“Where are your keys?”
“They should be on the kitchen counter,” Lawrence said. “What if Teddy hears you start the engine?”
“We’ll have to move fast. Give it two minutes, then help Mrs. Patterson downstairs and over to the front door. I’ll drive up, you guys hop in, and we’ll make a run for it.”
“Uh … okay.”
“So it’s not exactly iron-clad,” Helen said. “If you have a better plan … ”
“No,” Lawrence said. “I don’t.”
“All right. Wish me luck.”
“Good luck, Helen.”
“Thanks. I’ll need it.”
18
WHEN HELEN STEPPED OFF the stairs into the vestibule, the back door was still open, but there was no sign of Coonie. She wondered if she’d hit him. Maybe he was out back, curled up on the lawn, dead or dying—like everyone else in town.
She cautiously approached Frank. He was no longer gasping for air. Didn’t appear to be breathing at all. She stepped over his body, walked through the restaurant, into the market, crouched by the open front door. Broken glass and wood splinters crunched under her boots.
No sign of headlights on Main Street.
Helen poked her head through the doorway. Frigid air numbed her face. She heard the hum of Frank and Mike’s generator, but otherwise all was quiet. She squeezed through the door, raced across the pavement, huddled in the shadows on the other side of Main Street. She paused to watch and listen. All clear. She started for Lawrence’s house.
Helen wasn’t a strong runner, but she jogged a couple times a week for exercise, ran the occasional half-marathon. Now, however, each step forward was like moving through quicksand. Her legs shook, her lungs burned.
When she reached the porch of Lawrence’s house, she dragged herself up the steps, completely spent. She stumbled through the front door, into the kitchen. She switched on her flashlight, scanned the counter next to the sink. No keys. Heart beginning to race, she ran the flashlight across the remaining counter space, the dining table, the floor. No keys!
She pulled out a chair, sank into it, rested her head on the table. One break. Why couldn’t she get one freaking break?
She sat there, brooding, for a long while. Then she had a thought: maybe Lawrence left the keys in his car. She got up, rinsed her face in the sink, and gulped down handfuls of clear, cold water.
She peeked out the front door. Still no trace of Teddy or the Explorer. Could he have just decided she wasn’t worth the trouble and split with the cash? Unlikely. He wanted everyone dead. So he could make a clean getaway. He was out there, somewhere.
She crept over to Lawrence’s car, checked inside. No keys here, either. She pulled the latch for the trunk, went around back and looked inside. The knife glinted dully in the beam of her flashlight. She was certain now that it was the murder weapon. Planted in Lawrence’s car to implicate him.
By whom? She’d been with Teddy from her arrival until the discovery of Rita’s body. There’d been a small window of time when she was in the red farmhouse with Big Ed, but she doubted that was enough time for Teddy to run to Lawrence’s and plant the knife. More likely, Frank and Mike were the culprits.
Yet both of them were at the Trading Post when Rita was killed. So who actually cut her throat?
Helen was certain her theory about Rita fleeing with the money, and Lee Larimer coming after it, was correct. And she was equally certain Lee Larimer wasn’t Rita’s murderer. No, there was a fourth party involved. And, as unlikely as it seemed, there was only one person it could be.
But solving the murder wasn’t a priority right now. Getting out of Kill Devil Falls alive was.
She closed the trunk. She figured the killer was smart enough to not leave fingerprints, but the knife was still evidence, so she wasn’t going to touch it.
She considered her next move. Hole up in the Trading Post, wait for Teddy to bust in? What if he just set it on fire like the jail? Leave town on foot? With Mrs. Patterson on a bum leg?
One thing was for sure. She needed a weapon. Between the two of them, she and Lawrence only had Frank’s half-loaded shotgun. That just wasn’t going to cut it. Because they weren’t getting out of Kill Devil Falls without a fight.
She assumed there were lots of guns and ammo at Big Ed and Teddy’s house. But that was all the way on the other side of town. Meanwhile, Frank and Mike’s trailer was just up the street and they seemed like the type of good old boys who kept AK-47s stashed under the bed.
Helen crossed Main Street, jogged down to the trailer. The generator was still purring along. She opened the trailer door, stepped inside, squinted against the sudden brightness of the lights.
She took in the lumpy couch, trash-strewn kitchen counter, taped-up porn spreads. Pretty much as expected. She quickly tossed the living area. Incredibly, there were no guns just lying around, waiting to be snatched up. But in the bedroom, in addition to four plastic-wrapped kilos of marijuana, was a metal gun safe. She jiggled the handle. Locked.
Helen was shocked. What kind of redneck dicktard actually stores his guns in a safe?
She gave the trailer another once-over, found a collection of knives, including one that was a twin to the hunting knife in Lawrence’s trunk. But no guns.
She’d been away from the Trading Post for ten, fifteen minutes. Time to get back to Lawrence and Mrs. Patterson. Think of a Plan B for making an escape.
As she was heading out the door, she spied Mike’s crossbow on the wall. She lifted it from its mount, weighed it in her hands. It was shaped roughly like a rifle, with a shoulder stock, pistol grip, a barrel with a flight groove down the middle, and a bow apparatus sitting perpendicular to the groove. A sliding mechanism cocked the string. A foot stirrup sat beneath the barrel, along with a quiver of five arrows.
Helen placed the crossbow nose on the floor, slipped her foot into the stirrup. She pulled on the cocking mechanism, drawing the bow string back into position. She righted the crossbow, slipped an arrow out of the quiver, placed it in the flight groove. The tip of the arrow was serrated metal. Nasty looking.
She pointed the crossbow at the fifty-five-inch-high definition television, the only object that appeared to have any value in the trailer. She pulled the trigger. The crossbow kicked. The arrow streaked forward, penetrated the glass screen, continued right though into the back wall. Chunk! Nice!
Helen reloaded the crossbow, slipped through the door, headed down Main Street. She was halfway to the Trading Post when she felt a rumble through the pavement, heard the growl of an engine. She turned. Twin ci
rcles of yellow light flashed.
Helen sprinted, but she knew she wasn’t going to outrun the Explorer. She leaped over a wooden fence into the front yard of the nearest house. The Explorer jumped the sidewalk, its right bumper smashing through fence posts, flinging them away one after the other like a row of bowling pins. Helen sprawled on the grass.
The Explorer arced back toward Main Street, pulled a sharp 180, tires squealing, lined up facing the yard. Helen got to one knee. The engine of the Explorer roared, rubber burned, and it sped straight toward her. She aimed, fired the crossbow. Glass tinkled and the Explorer’s right headlight went dark. She drew another arrow, tried to fit it into the flight groove, dropped it, realized she had forgotten to cock the string. But there was no time. She turned and ran up the porch steps of the house, yanked open the door, ducked inside. She reached up, locked the door.
She peered through a narrow window to one side of the door. The Explorer rolled to a stop on the grass of the front yard, cracking fence slats beneath its all-terrain tires. The single headlight spotlit the porch, its glare preventing her from seeing beyond it into the Explorer’s cab.
She heard the engine die. A metallic clang as the driver’s side door slammed shut.
The crack of a gunshot.
The front door shuddered, and a bullet punched straight through it. Helen ducked. A second bullet shattered the window, spraying her with glass. She flattened herself to the floor. Another bullet and another slammed into the door. Helen frantically searched for cover. Straight ahead were stairs leading to the second floor. To the right of the stairs was a hallway.
She slithered down the hallway.
She hurried past a closed door set into the side of the staircase. She kept moving, hoping for a back exit. At the end of the hallway was another door. Helen reached up, twisted the knob, pulled. The door swung open. She thrust her hand inside, touched a mound of leather, laces—old shoes. She reached higher, felt cotton fabric, nylon. Coats. A closet. Dead end.
A bullet ripped through the coats. Helen scooted back to the door in the staircase. She prayed it didn’t lead to another storage closet. She opened the door, wriggled inside.
She heard more shots, more impacts, striking the front of the house. She switched on her flashlight.
She was at the top of a flight of cement stairs. Below, she saw boxes, tools, a ladder against the wall, a portable generator.
Shit. She was back in Yates’s basement!
A splintering crash came from the foyer.
Helen put the flashlight in her mouth, stuck her foot in the crossbow stirrup, cocked the string. She placed an arrow in the flight groove, leaving one final arrow in the quiver. She took the flashlight from her mouth, switched it off, tucked it into her pocket.
She guessed Teddy would hesitate coming through the front door, uncertain of what weapon she might be carrying. And once inside, he would have to decide which direction to go—up the stairs, into the kitchen, down the hallway. He might pause, for just a second. Enough time to get off a shot with the crossbow.
She grasped the knob of the basement door, waited. It was an old house. Old houses had loose floorboards.
Squeak. Squeak.
Helen pushed open the door, swiveled her torso into the hall.
She saw a backlit figure in the foyer. A wide, bulky torso, huge goggle eyes, a trunk extending from its mouth. An alien creature, holding an assault rifle complete with a long clip and flashlight attached beneath the barrel. She heard a whoosh of artificial breath.
The figure swiveled its head, massive saucer eyes focusing on her.
Helen fired the crossbow. The arrow went wide. She leaped back through the basement doorway as series of rounds from the assault rifle ripped down the hallway.
She heard the thumping of boots running toward her. She slammed the door. There was no way to lock it from the inside.
She switched on her flashlight, stumbled down the stairs. Below, the generator sat atop the trap door. Above, the basement door crashed open. Teddy’s boots slapped on cement. Helen frantically disengaged the generator’s wheel locks, rolled it away, flung open the trap door, jumped.
She hit the floor of the shaft and felt her ankle twist. She got to her knees, flashlight in one hand, snatched up the crossbow with the other, crawled into the tunnel, huddled against a wall, out of sight from above. She switched off her flashlight and put it in her pocket.
She heard Teddy’s bootsteps, the artificial sound of his breath. A beam of light nosed around the walls and floor of the space, sweeping back and forth like a prison-yard searchlight.
Helen fumbled in the darkness of the tunnel to reload the crossbow. Last arrow, last chance.
The beam of Teddy’s light winked out. There was a metallic pop, like the opening of a soda can. Something fell into the dirt at the bottom of the shaft. Immediately, Helen’s eyes began to water. Acrid smoke choked her throat. Tear gas!
She turned, hurried down the tunnel. She realized the saucer eyes, the dangling trunk—Teddy was wearing a gas mask.
She careened painfully off a rocky wall. She switched on her flashlight. The tunnel curved here. Another twenty or thirty yards and she would emerge into the ventilated chamber. Then what?
Helen heard the cough of a motor. The string of bulbs dangling from the ceiling flickered, bathing the tunnel in an anemic glow. Teddy had started up the generator, powering Yates’s lighting system.
Now he would be coming fast, carrying a semi-automatic assault rifle, looking to finish her, tear apart her body with high-velocity rounds, leave her corpse to molder in the earth like Yates’s abandoned mining tools.
Helen dropped her flashlight, redoubled her pace, ignoring the shooting pains from her injured ankle. The sickly yellow light from the bulbs strung overhead revealed a long blue tube snaking along the ground. Detonation cord. Helen saw it but was too focused on escaping to give it a closer look.
A jingling and clomping echoed down the tunnel behind her. Teddy was gaining. Helen moaned. Now she spotted flashes of red tangled with the detonation cord.
Ahead was the opening to the ventilated chamber. A breath of cool air tousled her hair. She rushed through, gulped fresh oxygen.
She paused. Which way?
At her feet, the det cord skirted the perimeter of the chamber, extended down the tunnel that led toward the mine exit at the bottom of the ridge. Those flashes of red, they were attached to it here as well, in clumps of two or three.
Helen digested the empty crates, sawdust scattered on the ground.
Dynamite!
Teddy had rigged the mine to blow.
Jingling keys signaled his approach. Another canister of tear gas shot out of the tunnel, bounced across the chamber floor. Helen coughed, ducked low to get under the smoke layer. To no avail. She scrambled on all fours, her lungs burning, searching for the nearest exit.
She located an opening in the wall, squeezed through, entered a passageway, this one unlit, eyes stinging, tears coursing down her cheeks.
Light from the ventilated chamber dissolved into darkness, and she kicked herself for ditching the flashlight. After a few minutes of blind groping, she felt the narrow tunnel give way to open space. She ran her hand across roughly hewn walls, hoping for a way out. She stepped into a crack, tripped, dropped the crossbow. She sank to her knees, patted the ground, found the crossbow, checked to make sure the last arrow was still in the flight groove.
A beam of brilliant white light flashed over her left shoulder. Seconds later, the light zeroed in on her face. The sound of Teddy’s breathing was like something from a child’s nightmare—a harsh, inhuman rasp.
Helen aimed just above the white light, squeezed the crossbow trigger.
The arrow made a satisfying vroom and a thunk. She heard Teddy fall and a tinkle of glass as the flashlight attachment on his rifle shattered.
She felt a thrill of triumph. A direct hit!
Teddy groaned. There was a clatter of metal on rock.
<
br /> Helen rolled. Teddy fired his rifle, the gunshot deafening in the enclosed space. Bullets zinged into rock, pelting Helen with sharp little fragments.
She came up against something lying on the ground. She touched fabric. Cold flesh. The sheriff. Helen realized she was back in the wedged-shaped room where Rita had stashed her money, where Teddy murdered his own father.
Another shot rang out, the muzzle of the rifle belching flame.
Helen reached for Big Ed’s gun belt, struggled to free his .357 from its holster. Teddy fired again. He was shooting in the dark, but methodically, in a counterclockwise direction. The next bullet might be on target.
She frantically worked the holster snap, yanked out the heavy revolver, aimed over the sheriff’s corpse.
BOOM! Helen felt Big Ed’s body jerk violently. Congealed blood splattered. Helen fired the .357. It bucked violently in her hand, a bright muzzle flash reflecting off Teddy’s huge saucer eyes. She squeezed the trigger again, and again, kept shooting until the hammer of the revolver finally clicked on an empty chamber.
She flattened herself behind Big Ed’s body, pressed her cheek to the cold stone floor, the echo of the gunshots drumming against her tortured eardrums.
Thirty seconds passed. Sixty. Helen looked up but could see nothing in the pitch dark. She dropped the revolver, crawled over Big Ed’s body. She felt her way along the wall toward the exit.
But as she stepped into the passageway, fingers clutched at her leg. She screamed, ran in the dark, bouncing off rocky walls, tripping over the uneven ground. In time, she saw a blush of light ahead, finally emerging into the ventilated chamber. Threads of tear gas floated in the air, causing her to gag and wheeze.
She couldn’t bear the idea of a long, frantic trek to the exit at the bottom of the ridge, not with Teddy still alive and possibly in pursuit. She turned right, into the tunnel leading back to Yates’s basement.
She stumbled along, pain in her ankle forgotten in a rush of adrenaline, until she reached the shaft. Then she stopped dead in her tracks.
In her desperation to escape, she’d neglected to consider how she was going to get out of the mine. What would have made sense was for Teddy to use the ladder leaning against the basement wall to climb down into the shaft. But the ladder was still up there. Out of reach. Might as well have been on the dark side of the moon.
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