“Flee!” it cried. “Flee, my son!”
Her legs moved of their own volition, free of any control she might have tried to force upon them. They carried her down a thick-carpeted hallway hung with the portraits of severe, cruel-eyed men.
“You are free, Reginald! Flee and save yourself!”
She careened into an adjoining hallway and did not slow.
“Save yourself!”
The foyer appeared ahead of her, then the front door. Issabella’s heart thundered in her ears. She collided against the closest door and groped with clumsy fingers at the handle.
Darren was right beside her. He reached out and yanked one of the doors open. With one arm around her, he propelled them out and down the landing, across the drive and to his car.
“Get in,” he gasped.
She did. As he shut her door, she saw Luther appear behind him. The Fletcher brothers jogged in tandem around the driver’s side and stopped there. Reflexively, she yanked her seatbelt into place. Darren was talking frantically just outside the driver’s door. He saw him press his hand into his brother’s.
Luther climbed into the Lexus. His expression was grim, the mask a man wore when he was resolved to a bleak but necessary task. She watched him stab Darren’s key into the ignition. The engine roared to life.
Too late, she understood.
Her hands fumbled for the seat belt and she shouted, “No!”
Luther put the Lexus in reverse and hammered the accelerator down. They shot away from the black SUV, racing backwards down the long asphalt drive. The headlights swam over the mansion’s facade. They illuminated Darren. Haggard and stooped as if under an insurmountable weight, he stood alone in the driveway as she was rushed away from him.
Their eyes met. She saw the forlorn apology in his stare, before his face hardened and he turned away, toward the horror-filled house they’d just escaped.
And in his hand, she saw the gun.
Chapter Seventeen
At the bottom of the stairs, a steel door yawned open.
The steps and the walls around them were pocked and sundered. Blood and bits of viscera were splashed in a semi-circular spray. Pulverized cement dust hung in the air.
Lying amongst it all, torn apart, was Joe Link.
Darren stepped over him and into James Klodd’s sanctum. He gagged at the smell, but when he saw that the room was empty, he kept on. Dimly, it registered that he was passing by furniture and appliances, and that the carpeted—even luxurious—suite of rooms was a rich man’s haven now transformed into a foul and reeking den. Everything was mildewed and stained, every surface abounded with discarded clutter and cast off food.
It was a stretch of madness and he rushed through it without thought until he spied the door that lead to another set of stairs. He ascended methodically, paused when he felt the touch of evening wind in his hair, and then emerged from the ground and onto the back lawn of the estate.
Glancing behind him, he saw that he had exited through a set of heavy steel cellar doors that had been thrown wide. A steel bar connected to a motorized pivot was swung off to the side. Ahead of him, the dark expanse of lawn rolled far away until the property’s stone wall cut it short.
There, a gate among the stone and a person disappearing through it.
Darren raced toward the gate. Above it, the black silhouette of a tangled woods touched the purpling sky.
When he reached the gate, he saw a smear of blood, dark and shining in the moon’s light. A handprint, he realized, where someone had grabbed the gate before passing through. His chest was a raging furnace as he stood still, gasping for breath.
He saw Issabella’s face, pale and anguished in the dashboard’s glow, moving away from him.
I’m so sorry, Izzy.
Darren stepped through the gate and into the black woods.
* * *
“Turn around!” Issabella shouted.
She had shouted repeatedly as Luther reversed them out into the night. When they were clear of the house, he’d spun the Lexus around in a squealing half-circle, and continued on in Drive. Issabella threw her seatbelt off and repeated her demand.
Luther was silent and stone-faced. She had never seen him this close. Darren’s older brother was clad in a rich man’s finely tailored suit. A platinum watch encircled his wrist and a fat university ring bulged around one of his fingers. He was deeply and evenly tanned and he smelled faintly of cologne. He was exceedingly handsome, in the same way as his brother: tall and lean, with pronounced cheekbones and a strong, straight nose.
The wealth he wore so easily, his grim confidence, his entire air of being some privileged executive—all of it seemed unutterably obscene to her in that moment.
“Turn around now,” she insisted.
The front gate raced up on them and he spun the wheel to the right. They careened onto the road and Issabella was pressed against the door until they straightened out again. The back wheels skipped over gravel, caught hold again, and they were arcing away from the estate. Away from Darren.
Issabella was not crying. She was furious.
The Chalmers estate’s wall ended and immediately was replaced with its adjoining neighbor’s. Issabella turned in her seat and stared at the man she wanted to punch and smash against until he was gone. In one fashion or another, all of this was the fault of Luther Fletcher, of that much she was without doubt.
“Stop this car!”
Luther grimaced and kept his eyes on the road. As she glared at him, she saw that those eyes were glassy with unshed tears.
“I can’t do that,” he said very softly. “I gave him my word.”
“Screw your word! When has that ever meant anything?”
“It does right now. I’m sorry.”
She contemplated unlocking her door and leaping out. But one look at the road rushing by underneath them and she knew Luther was driving far too fast for that. She would be maimed and useless if she made the attempt.
“Luther, I can’t leave him,” she said, forcing herself not to yell, to attempt a reasonable tone. “Can’t you see that? I can’t let him do this.”
“He knew that. I know that. I’m sorry.”
“Stop saying that and turn around.”
He kept his eyes on the road and didn’t respond. It was useless. Darren had convinced him to do this for him. Whatever had transpired between the two Fletcher brothers in the library, wherever they stood with one another now, it was clear that Luther meant to keep his word on this single issue.
Alright, she thought. Alright. Just do it.
She didn’t hesitate. The urgency inside her to return to Darren and shepherd them both out of danger was too immediate and overwhelming to allow hesitation.
Issabella pulled her seatbelt back into place and tugged on the clasp to make certain it was securely locked. Then she reached out with her left hand and grabbed hold of the steering wheel.
“Let go—” Luther managed to blurt before she yanked down as hard as she could. The wheel spun in his hands and the Lexus shot to the right. Luther cried out and struggled to turn the wheel in the other direction.
It was too late. In less than a second, they careened against the stone wall surrounding the neighboring estate. The right front panel of the car collapsed and her vision was eclipsed by the impact of the airbag expanding in an instant.
She heard the scream of metal, felt the car grind to a halt, and opened her eyes again when the bag limply deflated. Her ears were ringing and her face felt like she’d acquired a sunburn, but she thought she was whole.
She peered around at what she had wrought.
They were stalled in the middle of the road, sideways. The front of the car was mangled on her side. Luther was thunderstruck beside her, blinking in confusion as his ow
n airbag withered away.
His face was raw and irritated from the collision with the bag and his hair was comically askew, as if he’d been caught in a windstorm.
“You maniac,” he wheezed. “You could have killed me!”
“Somehow I think I’d have slept alright.”
She unfastened her seatbelt.
“What...wait, now. Goddamn it, I promised to get you to safety.”
She stopped listening as he struggled to get his own belt free. She tried her door, found it remarkably undamaged, and climbed up out of the car. Her legs felt weak from adrenaline, but she forced them to start plodding heavily ahead. Back the way they’d come.
“Issabella, wait!”
She heard his door open, followed by the slap of his shoes chasing after her. She shot a look back at him. He was disheveled and weaving on his feet as he scrambled to catch up to her.
She ignored his repeated pleas and focused on improving her gait. Steadily, the collision’s shock to her system loosened its grip and she was fully running. She controlled her breathing and kept on, kept steady. Luther’s protestations got further away.
“Men are coming!”
That was the last thing she heard before the Chalmers driveway appeared out of the gloom.
She turned and sprinted toward the mansion.
* * *
Darren had hardly made it twelve feet through the woods before the thick tangle of limbs and underbrush forced him to slow to a halting pace. Sharp brambles caught his cheeks and bit the backs of his hands.
The moon was on the wane behind thick cloud cover. The world was nearly lightless as he struggled ahead. He hadn’t made it far when a light winked in the darkness ahead and the sound of a gunshot clapped through the woods.
Several feet to his left he heard the bullet slap into the trunk of a tree.
Darren dove headfirst to the ground, heedless of the limbs that clawed for his skin and his eyes.
A second gunshot, and this time the bullet whistled through the air off to his right.
He doesn’t see me.
Carefully, Darren crawled ahead on his belly, Gil’s pistol clenched in his right hand. He knew he should be afraid. But his outrage and his hatred of the things he had learned that night were too large to allow anything else inside him.
When a third shot split the silence and did not find him, he continued to inch his way toward the point in the darkness where three times he had seen the flash of light.
He was close. Close enough to come to a halt, straighten the gun in front of him, and peer into the darkness beyond.
“Come and get it, you freak. Come closer. See what it gets you.”
Darren froze. That was not James Klodd’s voice. It was the weakened but defiant voice of a woman.
“Carmen?”
A rustling of brush ahead of him and an accompanying groan of pain.
“Luther?”
“No. Darren. His brother. I’m coming to you. Alright?”
“Yes.”
He found her in the tangle of brush and weeds a few feet ahead. In the darkness, her skin stood out clearly. She had shed her suit coat and her shirt. Lying there in her bra, she had her shirt balled up and pressed low against her abdomen.
“You’re shot,” he said.
“Yep.”
Closer now, he could see her gritting her teeth. Her eyes swam in and out of focus and her fingers spasmed over the wound.
“Joe...” she whispered.
“Joe’s gone. Let’s worry about you.”
Like that, Darren’s all-encompassing rage washed away. Whoever she was as a person, good or bad, cruel or kind, she was suffering. As feverishly as he wanted his measure of vengeance, there was nothing in his nature that would allow him to ignore her or leave her to her own ends.
“I’m going to help you, alright?” he said.
“Alright.”
He moved her hands away from the bunched up shirt. Blood blackly welled out underneath it. He pressed her shirt back over the wound and put her hands back in place atop it.
Darren stripped out of own jacket and shirt. He held his shirt by each sleeve cuff and spun it in front of him until the shirt wound itself and was as near the shape of a rope as it would ever be.
She groaned and shivered as he worked to get one sleeve under her and around.
“Did it go out the back?”
“No. It’s still inside you.”
“I...I don’t think it hit an organ.”
“I don’t know. I’m not a doctor. Hold on, now. This is going to be a bitch.”
He looped the sleeves once and pulled tight. Carmen seized up and wailed in agony. Darren looped them again and pulled with all his might. The knot he had made bore down directly on her balled up shirt and the wound beneath it.
This time, Carmen cried out and went limp. He touched his fingers to her throat and felt around until he found a pulse. It was strong enough, he decided, and leaned back on his heels.
While Carmen made indistinct noises and seemed to slowly begin to swim back up to consciousness, Darren stared past her into the pitch-black woods. The choke of limbs did not lessen in that direction. If anything, they looked ever denser. How much farther than this could Klodd have gotten?
Not much farther, he hoped, and struggled to his feet.
“We have to get you out of here. Can you hear me?”
She mumbled something that sounded like an acknowledgment.
“Carmen, I have to get you real help. If I prop you up, can you keep it together enough to help us get back to the house?”
Carmen coughed, winced, and slowly rolled onto her side. It seemed to exhaust her and she tucked her knees up into the fetal position. Darren suspected she was shutting down. She didn’t have the strength to walk back, even with him as a crutch.
He reached down into his discarded jacket and found his phone. There was no signal. He walked around in a small circle, holding the phone out and waiting for a single bar to appear and announce he had a tenuous connection to the world beyond this estate. Nothing appeared.
“Not going back,” she said, her voice a weak whisper.
“I know. I’ll be as fast I can. I’ll get help and come back.”
“Don’t.”
“I’ll be right back.”
She shook her head and her eyes rolled up to find his face in the darkness.
“You don’t get it. He’s still in the house.”
* * *
Issabella used her palms to wipe the tears out of her eyes before they could fall.
In death, Joe Link looked diminished. Sprawled in the bullet-shattered hallway, chewed up and covered in a patina of blood and cement dust, he looked smaller than he had in life. The dead man looked somehow vulnerable, there on the floor.
She didn’t know why the sight of him instantly brought a rush of sadness into her. She hadn’t known him and he had worked for Luther. Still, he had tried to be kind to her, here in this house. Protective. Hadn’t he? Maybe that was what had her wiping tears off her face.
She couldn’t afford him more than that moment of sympathy.
She walked past Joe and past the reeking threshold of the room beyond. But there she stopped and retraced her last few steps until she was standing over the dead man again. His right hand still held a pistol.
Dick’s gun, she thought and recalled the way Joe had taken it from his fallen friend. Issabella crouched down and pulled Joe’s fingers apart until they released their grip. She stood straight up with it in her hands.
“Sorry, Joe.”
The pistol was black and heavier than she would have guessed. But even though the weight of a gun was an unfamiliar and still unwelcome sensation, she knew at a glance that it was
.45 caliber weapon, manufactured in Germany by HK, which stood for Heckler and Koch. She knew words like slide, extractor, firing pin and others.
But it was all just so much terminology—facts she’d pieced together from one defendant’s case to the next. She understood the mechanics of the weapon and the physics involved when it propelled a bullet through time and space.
All that meant was she could read a ballistics report and talk competently about firearms in front of a jury. None of that meant she could wield one.
Shut up. Shut up and move.
There had been a time, not so long ago, when Issabella would have hesitated to listen to that voice that prodded to throw her fear away and continue on brazenly. Now, standing over Joe Link, the gun in her hand and the dim depth of James Klodd’s room waiting, she did not hesitate. Darren had come this way, she was certain. He was chasing his demon and this was the demon’s lair. She would not allow him to do it alone.
Issabella held the gun in both hands and pointed it directly in front of her. She kept her forefinger off the trigger itself, but close. Some triggers were sensitive to the slightest pressure. Some required pounds of pressure before they would do their job.
Like that, she walked slowly into the humid stench.
It was a living room of sorts. Only the weak light from the basement hallway illuminated the edges of the furniture. Standing in its light as she was, her shadow was an elongated caricature of herself, stretching ahead until it merged with the other shadows of the room. Heaps of clothing and towels were piled in one corner near the door, making a moldering mound that she guessed was responsible for much of the awful odor that permeated the place. Food containers littered the carpet. Plates were strewn about with uneaten remains turned to moldy lumps.
“Darren?” she called out, tentative and faltering.
At the back of the living room, there was a second doorway. She thought she could just make out the shape of a refrigerator there and decided it was the kitchen. A third doorway stood on the wall to her left. That way, the darkness seemed absolute.
Issabella walked into the center of the living room, knocking food wrappers and soda cans aside as she moved. She stopped and listened.
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