She just shakes her head at him, terrified at the thought of what might have been.
“Mack, listen,” Ben says, “did you call Nate Jennings a little while ago and tell him you needed a ride?”
“What? Nate Jennings? Why would I do that?”
“So you didn’t?”
“No. Why?”
“Either someone else did, pretending to be you—or who knows, maybe the crazy bastard just imagined the whole thing.”
“What are you talking about?”
Listening to the sirens in the background as Ben explains the situation, and seeing the hint of confusion meld with the guarded expression in her husband’s eyes, Allison can’t help but feel uneasy again.
“I’m going to call Jennings and figure out what’s going on,” Ben decides.
“First,” Mack holds the door open and steps back, gesturing him inside, “I need to call the monitoring service.”
Ben walks past him, but Allison hesitates before crossing the threshold.
Mack touches her arm. “Hey. It’s okay.”
No, it isn’t okay.
Looking up into his eyes, she searches for some real reassurance, but finds instead that familiar mask of emotional restraint. He’s worried—he has to be—and afraid, too, but he isn’t letting on.
Allison forces herself to walk inside.
Stepping into the front hall—seeing the three framed baby portraits on the wall and breathing the familiar scent—she’s swept by an unexpected wave of homesickness.
Yet she can’t get past the knowledge that he was here, whoever he is; that he violated this sanctuary.
She’ll never feel safe in this house again.
Walking across the hardwood floor and through the archway into the living room, she takes in J.J.’s ExerSaucer, the children’s’ books lining the lowest built-in shelf, the stacked throw pillows on the end of the couch where Mack likes to lie at night . . .
With an ache in her throat, she realizes that for the first time in days, she feels comforted.
This is what’s missing at the Webers’ house: being surrounded by familiar things that remind her of all the good times. Everywhere she looks there are mementos and photographs of smiling faces; colorful shards of a mosaic that tells the story of their life, hers and Mack’s and the kids—her hard-won happily-ever-after.
She picks up a framed snapshot of the five of them together on the beach last summer. Lynn snapped it on one of the few days Mack was able to be there with them. Sand and sea as a backdrop, smiles squinting into the sunshine—even J.J. looking alert and cheerful.
That was such a great day—and she didn’t even know it at the time. She remembers feeling frustrated that Mack couldn’t be there for the whole week with them, wistful every time she saw another family stroll by, intact with mother and father and children . . .
Things could have been worse for us, she tells her own image in the picture, forever frozen in a smile that doesn’t quite reach her eyes. You lost sight of that somehow. You were focusing on what was wrong instead of what was right, and now . . .
Now, she and Mack and the kids are living in someone’s guest room.
It isn’t fair. This is her home, dammit. Is she really going to let fear rob her family of their Happy House?
Do I have a choice?
Yes. There’s always a choice.
You can run scared, or you can dig deep for inner strength, hold your head high, and fight for what you deserve.
“Allison?”
She turns to see her husband watching her from the archway. She sets the photo back on the table. Maybe she’ll grab it later when they head back to the Webers’. It would be nice to have it on the bedside table as a touch of home.
Oh hell, it would be nicer to just go home.
“Where’s Ben?” she asks.
“In the bathroom.”
“I thought you were going to call the alarm service.”
“I am.” He looks like he wants to say something else, maybe take the wall down a notch at last.
She waits, holding her breath, willing him to say something, anything, that will make her feel less alone right now.
After a moment, he takes his cell phone from his pocket, and her hopes deflate. He just doesn’t have it in him, under duress, to be that guy. He has to be the strong, stoic one.
Okay, fine.
I’m not going to be the weak, frightened one, though, from here on in. No way.
Mack presses a couple of buttons on the keypad, then frowns.
“They have their number blocked.”
“Who does?” she asks, having lost track of what he was even doing.
“The alarm monitoring company. They called me and I didn’t put their number in my cell yet, so I thought I could just pull it up on caller ID and hit redial, but I guess I need to go look it up. I’ll be right back.”
He disappears.
Allison lowers herself shakily onto the couch and looks around the living room. It seems like a lifetime ago that she and Mack were here, in this house, living their day-to-day life with the kids. Has it really only been less than a week?
Through the doorway to the sunroom, she can see the new pleated fabric shades, pulled all the way down. Is that how they’re going to live from now on? In the dark, afraid to let the sun in for fear that someone is out there watching them, waiting to pounce?
In the far corner is the desk where she kept the Lewises’ spare keys. She pictures him—the Nightwatcher—stealthily creeping across the carpet, opening the drawer, rummaging through it.
Is that why Phyllis Lewis became a victim? Because she had the misfortune to entrust Allison with the keys to her home, just as Kristina Haines did?
What if . . . ?
Struck by a sudden, troubling thought, Allison sits up straight.
She’s the one who found Phyllis Lewis’s murdered body, and she was the one who found Kristina Haines, too, ten years ago.
What if the police decide she’s a potential suspect?
It was her eyewitness testimony that sent Jerry Thompson to prison. What if they conclude that she made it all up—seeing him there that night—in order to throw them off her own trail?
Jerry confessed, though. You had nothing to do with that.
Yes, Jerry confessed . . . but there was another murder after he died, and it was staged to look just like Kristina’s. The lingerie, the flickering candles, the missing finger on her right hand . . .
The only thing missing was the music, and—
“Allison?”
She whirls around, startled. Mack is once again behind her.
“This is bizarre. The alarm company said they didn’t call me.”
“What do you mean?”
“I just got ahold of them, and they didn’t know anything about making a phone call to me earlier about the alarm system.” He turns to Ben, who’s come up behind him. “Can you call Nate Jennings?”
Ben nods and pulls his cell phone from his pocket. Mack and Allison watch in silence as he scrolls through the numbers, selects one, and presses a button to dial the call.
It seems to ring a couple of times before Ben says, “Nate?”
Even from across the room, Allison hears the explosion of sound from the phone in Ben’s hand. Nathan Jennings is screaming about something, and the blood drains from Ben’s face.
Allison’s heart begins to pound and she stands, crossing the room to stand beside Mack.
“My God . . . my God . . .” Ben listens for a few more seconds, then says hoarsely into the phone, “Nate, I’m so sorry. I’ll be right there.”
Hanging up, he turns to Allison and Mack. “Zoe . . .” His voice breaks and he tries again. “Zoe’s been . . . she’s been . . . she’s dead. Someone killed her in her bed.”
Intellectually, Rocky knows the unsub had nothing to do with Ange’s condition. Even if he hadn’t seen her stricken with his own eyes in the darkened bedroom that August night; even if there were some
way a predator could administer some kind of drug that would mimic an aneurysm . . .
The truth is, it happened long before Jerry Thompson died in prison.
It has to be a coincidence, and nothing more.
In fact, if someone seeking revenge against Rocky had figured out that his wife is the most precious thing in his world, then chances are, the damned aneurysm very well saved her life.
But that doesn’t mean that someone isn’t watching at this very moment, bent on making sure that Ange never comes out of her coma, now that she’s showing signs of recovery . . .
The NYPD has already sent a couple of uniforms over there, and hospital security is on alert.
Still . . .
“I wonder if I should try to have her moved,” Rocky muses aloud to Murph, at the wheel.
It’s been over an hour since they left the prison, headed to Ange’s bedside so that Rocky can see with his own eyes that she’s still hanging in there.
“I don’t know, Rock. In her condition, that’s probably not a good idea.”
“Neither is leaving her there if someone wants to hurt her even more than she’s already been . . .”
Throat clogged with emotion, Rocky can’t even finish the sentence.
Murph glances over and says simply, “I know. Hang in there, Rock.”
They ride on in silence for another couple of minutes, Rocky weighing the odds that perhaps karma is somehow responsible for what happened to Ange. If he is partly responsible for sending an innocent man to prison, then in the grand scheme of things . . .
What right do I have to be happy? What right do I have to pray for a miracle? What right do I have to hold out hope when—
His cell phone rings abruptly. Pulse racing, he snatches it up.
Braced for bad news, given the path his thoughts have taken, he gets it—but not at all what he was expecting.
Thank God, thank God, it isn’t Ange.
He closes his eyes in brief, silent prayer as that sinks in—then opens them abruptly and grabs his reading glasses, a pencil, and notepad from the console.
“Okay, go ahead,” he tells Tommy, the station house desk sergeant, and quickly jots down the victim’s name and address Tommy provides.
Zoe Jennings . . . Abernathy Place . . .
Startled, he asks, “Did you say Glenhaven Park?”
Murph shoots a sharp, questioning glance in his direction.
“Yeah,” Tommy says. “That’s up in—”
“I know where it is,” Rocky cuts in. “We’re on our way.”
He hangs up and looks at his partner.
“Another one,” Murph guesses. “Same MO and signature?”
“Sounds like it.”
“And it’s in Glenhaven Park? So there’s a connection to Allison MacKenna again?”
“Looks that way,” Rocky says grimly, wondering if they were on the wrong track altogether with Jamie and the revenge killings.
He rubs his eyes, exhausted, and wishes there were some way he could just take a break to think things through. Wracked by the familiar notion that he’s missing something, some key piece of the puzzle, he knows that the best thing to do is take a step back and find some downtime to clear his head. That way, he can come at it from another angle and see things he overlooked when he was in the thick of it.
But there’s no such luxury on this case, on this day, with the clock ticking the way it is.
Three women have already been savagely killed. The timing between the last two murders is only a matter of days, not weeks. That means the cooling-off period before the unsub strikes again is likely to be even shorter.
There’s not a moment to waste right now on sleep, or anything else.
“Don’t worry, Rock.”
He looks up and makes eye contact with Murph before his partner turns his gaze back to the road, adding, “You know our guys will keep an eye on Ange. They won’t let anyone get near her.”
“How is it that you can always read my mind, Murph?”
He expects the usual quip in return.
Not this time.
“You and I have been together a long time, Rock. You’re like a brother to me, and Ange . . . nothing’s going to happen to Ange.”
Hearing the hoarse note in Murph’s voice, Rocky turns to look out the passenger’s side window, blinking away tears as they race on through the night.
Chapter Fourteen
Seated on the couch in his own living room, Mack holds his BlackBerry in his jittery hand, tapping it rhythmically against his knee as he waits.
Waits . . .
Waits . . .
It’s been at least an hour, maybe more, since a uniformed officer drove him from the Jenningses’ home back to his own. He was informed that one or more detectives would arrive shortly to question him.
Allison is in the house, too, somewhere—driven back separately, though. It’s standard procedure, he knows, to keep witnesses apart after a crime.
Witnesses?
Come on, Mack. You’re suspects—at least, you are—and you know it.
That was obvious almost from the first moment he, Ben, and Allison arrived at the house on Abernathy Place.
They were greeted by a familiar scene: squad cars, rescue vehicles, cops, reporters, curious bystanders. Just like here on Orchard Terrace the night Phyllis Lewis’s body was discovered . . .
By none other than Allison.
That alone would have made the local cops suspicious—he’s known it all along, though his protective instinct wouldn’t allow him to say that to his wife. But tonight—surely Allison didn’t miss the way the officers at the scene warily zeroed in on them both when they stepped out of Ben’s car.
Jack Cleary, the police captain they’d met after Phyllis’s murder, materialized immediately to take charge. One of his detectives asked a few quick questions, and the next thing Mack knew, he was in the back of a squad car being driven home.
All he wants now is a chance to clear up any misconception the police might have about his own involvement here. Whoever did this—whoever stole Allison’s nightgown and the Lewises’ keys, whoever lured both Nathan Jennings and Mack out into the night with those phone calls, whoever killed Phyllis and Zoe—that person knows exactly what he’s doing.
But why is he doing it?
And who the hell is he?
Mack wishes he’d paid more attention to the voice on the other end of the phone line, claiming to be an alarm company representative.
It was a man, and the connection was brief and to the point, along the lines of, “Mr. MacKenna, I’m calling from your home alarm monitoring service. There’s been a breach in the system. We’re sending a police officer to the house. Can you please meet him there?”
Meet him there . . .
Wouldn’t the alarm company, calling someone in the middle of the night, have assumed that the person could be found at home? Presumably in bed?
Whoever made that call knew that I wasn’t. He couldn’t possibly have known that unless he’s been watching.
And if he’s been watching . . . then he knows exactly where the MacKennas have been staying.
All this time, Mack has assured Allison that she and the kids are safe where they are . . . but he no longer believes it.
Yes, the Webers have a good security system. No one can get past their front gate without punching in a code, the property’s perimeter is guarded by an electric fence, and the house has an alarm, also accessible only by code.
Still . . .
Police protection. That’s what we need.
The sooner the cops find out that the phone calls were a setup, the sooner they can focus on keeping Mack’s family safe.
And the sooner they can track down the real monster behind all this.
Mack’s head is throbbing; his shoulders and neck are on fire. Is it any wonder? Stress, exhaustion, shock, fear. . . .
He thinks about Zoe.
Stabbed to death in her bed, Ben had told him. Just
like the others.
His gut churns. He closes his eyes, and he can see her lying in a pool of blood, with candles lit around the room and her middle finger missing, just like the others.
The image is so vivid that he can almost convince himself that he was really there . . .
But of course, he wasn’t.
No, he didn’t get that far . . . did he?
Momentarily confused, he runs back through the scene that had unfolded after he learned of Zoe’s murder.
It had taken only a minute or two to get over to the Jenningses’ house. Ben was at the wheel, Mack beside him, Allison in the backseat. He’s pretty sure none of them said a word.
The cops met them out front.
Right. Talked to them, separated them, drove Mack back here.
So he was never in the Jenningses’ house.
He’s just so exhausted he’s losing track of the series of events.
But he’d better get them straight, because the last thing he needs is to contradict himself in front of the cops.
He yawns, going back further, trying to recall exactly what had happened earlier, back at the Webers’ house.
After Zoe and Nate departed, he left Allison and Randi in the kitchen and Ben watching TV, and he went up to bed alone. He didn’t take a Dormipram because he’d had a couple of beers and anyway, he felt exhausted. But that didn’t matter. Without the medication, for the first time in ages, it took a long time for him to fall asleep.
He remembers lying restlessly awake contemplating taking the medication after all—what was the worst that could happen?
But he didn’t take it . . .
Wait, did I?
He can picture himself getting up and going into the small bathroom to find the orange prescription bottle . . .
But that doesn’t mean it happened.
He can envision Zoe’s murdered body, too, but that doesn’t mean he saw it.
He yawns deeply and rubs the burning spot between his shoulders, again replaying the earlier events in his head.
Okay, so he must have finally drifted off, and then the ringing telephone woke him, and—
“Mr. MacKenna?”
Mack looks up to see Captain Cleary.
The other night, the man’s expression was neutral. Right now, however, it’s ice-cold.
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