'Quick, help me get free,' Maggie urged her.
Kasey stood frozen. She couldn't move. She stared at him as he slowly regained consciousness. Her own blood ran in streams down her neck. Beside him, sprawled on the floor; she saw the blue skin of one of the women he had killed, and something wriggled in the wound on her neck. Maggots.
'Kasey.' Maggie said, her voice a warning.
His eyes opened. That was what she was waiting for. They opened just enough for him to see her standing over him. For him to realize she was there and for her face to penetrate his mind.
He saw the gun in her hand. He knew what she was going to do. And why.
'You're a killer, Kasey,' he breathed, his lips folding into a broken smile. 'Just like me.'
She nodded. 'You're right.'
Kasey lifted the gun and fired a single shot into his brain.
* * *
Chapter Fifty-two
Serena left tracks in the snow with her boots as she marched up the driveway. The farmhouse was ablaze with light, and through the windows, she saw the shadow of someone moving on the second floor. As she got closer, she found the front door wide open. A moving truck was parked outside, its engine running. Behind the truck, hooked for towing, she saw an old Ford Escort.
It was the car she had seen at Regan Conrad's house, the car that had vanished while she was inside.
Everything made sense, but she wished it didn't.
Serena was conscious of her gun hidden in her shoulder holster under her jacket, but she left it where it was. At the threshold, she hesitated. The house was mostly stripped, but she saw an old television in the family room, tuned to the local network. She heard the breathless voice of Blair Rowe and saw the crawl for breaking news scroll across the bottom of the screen.
POLICE RECOVER CHILD'S BODY NEAR CEMETERY.
The news explained the frantic rush to escape. They knew about the search. They knew what the police were going to find in the woods. After that, it wouldn't be long before someone wound up at their doorstep.
Serena walked silently into the house. The main floor was empty, but upstairs she heard heavy, panicked footsteps in the hallway. As she watched, a burly, bearded man thundered down the stairs and froze in horrified surprise when he saw Serena.
Her heart lurched. The man carried a baby wrapped in a blanket in his arms. She couldn't see the baby's face, which was covered by a hood, but she knew who it was. She had suspected all along what she would find inside the house, even though she hadn't allowed herself to believe it could end this way. The baby's hand reached up out of the folds of the blanket and tugged at the man's beard. The hood slipped off her head, and Serena saw her blonde curls. Her beautiful face with its wide eyes and toothy grin. Valerie's child.
It was Callie Glenn. Alive. Safe.
Serena put up her hands to steady him. 'Stay right there, OK? Let's be calm about this. No one wants anyone getting hurt.'
He didn't move. He didn't say anything.
'Where's Kasey?' Serena asked Bruce Kennedy.
Bruce wilted on to the steps. His head burrowed into his thick neck. 'She's out.'
'Did you two really think you could get away with this?'
Bruce put out a thick finger, and Callie grabbed it and put it in her mouth. His eyes welled with tears. 'I don't know what I was thinking. You have to believe me, I never thought any of it would go this far. But when I saw the news, I knew you'd be coming for us. I knew you'd want to take her back.'
Serena gestured toward the sofa. 'Why don't you come downstairs, Bruce? Tell me about it. Tell me why you and Kasey did this.'
Bruce held Callie like a treasure as he came downstairs. She was a tiny bundle in his huge arms. His eyes shot to the open door behind Serena, and she shook her head.
'Please don't try that,' she told him. 'There are police outside. All you would do by running is put her in danger.'
'I'd never do that.'
He sat on a corner of the sofa, and Serena sat opposite him. She couldn't take her eyes off Callie. The little girl was even more beautiful than she had dreamed. All she had seen until now was a photograph, and for days she had steeled herself to the eventual reality of finding her dead. Or never finding her at all. And here she was, perfect and gorgeous. She wanted to take her in her arms and never let go. She was so happy that she thought her heart would break, and she realized that she was crying herself. The reality of seeing Callie hit her harder than she could ever have imagined.
'Isn't she wonderful?' Bruce said.
Serena nodded mutely. She couldn't speak.
'You can't take her away from us,' he said.
'Tell me what happened,' Serena told him, her voice cracking. 'For God's sake, why would you two do something like this?'
Bruce sank back into the sofa with Callie on his chest. 'Our own little boy never had a chance.'
'Your son? He was the baby we found in the woods?'
'Yes.'
'What was wrong?'
'Jack's lungs didn't develop properly.' Bruce shook his head. 'That poor little boy, he would turn blue fighting for breath. As he grew, he struggled more and more.'
'Did you take him to the doctor?' Serena asked.
'Of course we did. They ran tests and scans and put him through hell and all they could say was the defects were too severe. Surgery would have killed him, and he was going to die without it. It was just a matter of time. We didn't want him to die in a hospital. We wanted him home with us. At least we could make him comfortable as long as we could.'
'I'm sorry.'
'Kasey was so depressed. She never slept. She would have killed herself to make that baby healthy, and she thought it was her fault that we were losing him.'
'You're talking about severe congenital defects. It's nobody's fault.'
'I know, but Kasey thought God had abandoned us. She was desperate.'
Serena watched the frantic longing in Bruce's face. She could imagine their minds fraying after months of their child slowly getting worse. 'What about Callie?' she asked.
Bruce stared at the girl in his arms. 'Regan put the idea in Kasey's head. She was our nurse at the hospital. She helped us all year. She came by our house every day. I don't think Kasey would have survived without her.'
'What did she tell you?'
'Jack was dying,' he said with a sigh. 'There was nothing we could do. Regan told us how unfair it was and how we'd been cheated.
She said we deserved to have a baby. She told us about Marcus Glenn and how he didn't love Callie because she wasn't his, and how he and his wife were both cheating on each other, and how awful it would be for a baby to grow up in that household. She said it was like God had made a mistake that night and switched the babies. That's what it was - a mistake. They had a wonderful, healthy little girl, and we were forced to live through the agony of watching our sweet little boy fighting and fighting and not making it. Don't you see? It wasn't supposed to be that way.'
Serena grew angry, imagining Regan preying on their vulnerable souls, using them as pawns in her own game of revenge against Marcus and Valerie Glenn. 'What happened?' she asked.
'Jack finally passed away last week,' Bruce said. 'We lost him.'
'What did you do?'
'I thought, if it really was God's mistake, I could put it right, you know? So I had the idea that I should bury him with the Glenn family. I wanted him to be protected. Taken care of. I took him with me that night and I buried him near the cemetery. He was finally at peace. He was where he was meant to be all along.'
Serena closed her eyes. 'What about Kasey?'
'Kasey went to get Callie,' Bruce said. 'Regan told us it was the only way. She offered to help us - she had a key to the doctor's house. She said we had to go rescue her.'
Serena stared at Callie in Bruce's arms. The little girl knew none of the heartache around her. None of the sorrow and desperation that had become focused on her.
'Bruce, may I hold her?'
She wa
ited, holding her breath, to see what he would do. To see if he could give her up and let her out of his hands. Somewhere in his mind, he had to know that he would never get her back. She would never be in his arms again. She was someone else's child. Their child was in the ground.
Bruce sobbed. He laid a soft hand on the girl's curls. 'I can't lose another baby,' he murmured.
'I understand. Just let me hold her for a while.'
Give her to me. Let her go back home to her real parents. Grieve for your son.
Bruce held up Callie in his outstretched arms. She giggled as he held her. His mouth contorted in an awful, wounded frown, even as he tried to smile for the girl's benefit. Serena got up and reached out her hands. Her fingers touched the child's blanket, and her hands took hold of her soft sides. For an instant, Bruce didn't let go. He clung to Callie, as if the moment of parting were too painful to bear. Then, with gentle pressure, Serena took the girl into her own arms and folded her up against her chest.
Bruce watched the two of them sit down and then buried his face in his hands. He was grieving for both babies now. One dead, one alive, but both of them out of his life. Serena knew he loved Callie, even if she wasn't his own.
'Tell me what happened that night, Bruce. What did Kasey do?'
'She drove to Grand Rapids. She went inside the doctor's house. She got Callie.'
'And then?'
'And then she got lost in the fog.'
* * *
Chapter Fifty-three
'Are you crazy?' Maggie screamed. 'Kasey, what did you do?'
The gun smoked in Kasey's hand. The burnt powder briefly rose above the stench of the dead. She watched him lying there with the gray tissue of his brain blown against the wall behind him. Bloody, dazed, she found a concrete pillar and slid down to the floor, laying the gun beside her. She turned the flashlight toward Maggie's face.
'He knew,' she told Maggie.
'What are you talking about?'
'He knew about Callie.'
Maggie stared at her, and her mouth fell open. The confusion in her eyes became something else. Recognition. Horror. Anger. Kasey felt Maggie judging her, and she hated it, because she liked Maggie. She had never wanted it to end this way. All she had wanted to do was drive away to the desert with her husband and her daughter.
'Why?' Maggie asked.
Kasey shrugged. 'God took away my son for no good reason. He just let him die. I didn't deserve to lose my baby like that. There was no reason I got a sick baby, and Valerie Glenn got a beautiful, healthy baby. I decided that I wasn't going to live with it.'
It was a relief to say it out loud. To tell someone the truth. She had accepted what she was doing, accepted who she was. She had made up her mind that she would do whatever it took to erase the previous year and all the hell and suffering she had gone through. She had faced the truth about herself that night in the fog, and once you choose to cross the line, you can't go back.
Maggie understood. She was smart. 'Susan Krauss,' she said quietly. 'What really happened?'
'Callie was in the back seat of my car that night,' Kasey explained. 'I was almost home. Can you believe it? I was a mile from home when I got lost. And suddenly there I was in the woods, and Susan Krauss was bleeding outside my car. She saw Callie. It's not like I could let her go. I had to go after her. And after him, too.'
'Nieman didn't kill her.'
Kasey shook her head. 'No, she was still alive when he ran for the highway. He dropped the garrote. She was barely breathing. I went over to her, and I thought, I can save her. That's what I should do. But then she would see the pictures of Callie on TV, and she'd know what I'd done. After all that sacrifice, I couldn't let that happen. I figured that this woman was almost dead anyway, and he'd be blamed for it. So I took the garrote, and I finished the job.'
Maggie struggled against the bonds that held her to the wooden chair. 'My God, Kasey.'
'I know. I've disappointed you. I'm sorry.'
'Nieman knew you'd killed that woman, not him. That's why he was hunting you.'
'Yeah. He knew I was a bad girl. What can I say?'
The light on the flashlight dimmed. Kasey jiggled it, and the brightness came back. Her head snapped round as she heard a noise beyond the crumbling walls of the classroom. She waited, but nothing moved.
Except the ghosts. There were plenty of ghosts here to haunt her.
Kasey stared at the bodies near the wall and their lifeless eyes. Every night, Susan Krauss had visited her in her dreams with those same dead eyes. She had stood over her in the field behind the dairy, and her eyes had pleaded for help. For rescue. She had looked at her as if Kasey had brought her salvation. And then the look had turned to panic and disbelief as Kasey tightened the wire around her neck.
Once you cross the line, you can't go back.
'What about Regan Conrad?' Maggie asked.
Kasey's face flushed with anger. 'Regan and I planned the whole thing, but she couldn't keep her mouth shut. I realized she had lied to me all along. This wasn't about me and my baby. It was about her hating the Glenns. She started taunting Valerie, and I knew she would ruin everything. Serena told us that night at dinner that she was getting a search warrant. If she did, she'd find records about me and Regan and our son. So I had to take care of Regan first. I pulled my file so no one would find it. I assumed Nieman would get the blame for that murder, too, but I never thought he'd be watching me. He must have seen me go in, and then he stole the body. To drive me crazy.'
Maggie stared at her as if she were seeing her for the first time. 'Kasey, what happened to you?'
Kasey eyed her with regret. Her heart hardened, the way it had time after time in the past year. 'Just imagine watching your little boy slowly waste away. Day after day, night after night, and all he does is get worse, and there's nothing you can do. You just have to watch him die. And you're alone. No God. No mercy. All you can do is blame yourself and tell yourself what a worthless excuse for a mother you are. You try living through eleven months of hell…' she began to shout, 'and then you tell me why Valerie Glenn should have Callie, and I should have fucking nothing nothing nothing.'
She slammed her fist repeatedly on the concrete. The rats scampered in fear. She breathed hard in the aftermath, and the room was silent except for the sound of her breath and the ceaseless dripping of water overhead.
Then, in another room, she thought she heard a noise again. Her eyes narrowed. Her imagination ran wild.
'I'm sorry,' Maggie murmured.
Kasey shrugged. She was anxious to get away from this place. 'Don't patronize me.'
'What happens now?'
'You know what I have to do. I wish there was another way. I've gone too far to go back now.'
'You can't expect to escape. They'll figure it out. They'll find out about Callie and about everything else.'
'It's too late now,' Kasey told her. 'Believe me, I never wanted you in the middle of this. It was between me and him. But now I have no choice.'
'Kasey, you're not like him. If you kill me, you're no better than he was.'
'You're right. I'm not.'
Kasey picked up the gun, which was still warm. Tiredly, she pushed herself to her feet against the concrete pillar. She jiggled the flashlight again and watched the beam flicker. She went over to Nieman's body and dug a hand in his pocket and found his keys. Her escape route. When she turned back to Maggie, her hand trembled. She knew what she had to do, but she didn't want to do it. She was in a corner with nowhere to go. In the last week, she had killed three times. This was just one more murder. The last. And then she was finally free.
Six feet away, Maggie struggled, squirming to get free. 'Don't do this,' she told her. 'Kasey, I know you, this is not who you are. Don't do this.'
Kasey realized that no one knew who she really was. Not Bruce. Not Regan. Not Maggie. The man on the floor, the man who had chased her, the man she had killed, had boasted that he understood her. He had claimed to be able to s
ee into her head. Claimed that they were kindred spirits. The terrible irony was that he was right. In the end, he had known her better than anyone.
'I'm sorry,' she said.
She raised the gun and pointed it at Maggie's head. She took a step closer.
Then she froze. The noise was real and unmistakable this time, not the product of her wild fear. She heard the echo of footsteps on glass, getting closer. Someone else was in the building.
'Stop,' said a voice from the darkness across the ruined space.
* * *
Chapter Fifty-four
Serena's Mustang was a cocoon of perfect silence. Just her and Callie. In the mirror, she could see the little girl sleeping in the car seat she had taken from Bruce Kennedy's Escort. She slept the way an angel sleeps, in peace and innocence, unaware of anything that had happened to her. That was the bliss of being so young. She would never remember Kasey lifting her out of her crib or getting lost in the fog, never remember being left alone in the back of the car as Kasey chased Susan Krauss through the woods. She would never remember the days spent in a strange house. In her sleep, she had probably already forgotten and was dreaming of being back home in Valerie's arms.
That was the sad part of being so young. She wouldn't remember her mother's tears of joy at their reunion. The cry of relief and exultation. The never-ending embrace. She would never know that she had once been gone, and now she was back.
Serena drove slowly. She told herself that the roads were lonely and dark in the middle of the night, and she didn't want to take any risk in the snow. It was too easy to hit a deer. Too easy to skid off the road. The reality was that she didn't want the drive to end. For one hour, Callie was totally within her care, almost as if she were her own, and she realized that Valerie had been right all along. Without kids, Serena couldn't understand the desperation of loss or the depth of responsibility. Now, for a brief moment, she did understand. She would have thrown herself in front of a bullet for Callie.
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