A surge of adrenaline hit her frozen limbs like a blast furnace, and she was able to move once again. With awkward, jerky motions, she clawed at the handle and yanked the drawer open. She grabbed the gun but couldn’t keep hold of it. It slid from her damp, trembling fingers and bounced on the bed. Frantic, she dove after it, seizing it with both hands. She held the unfamiliar weapon out in front of her, but she was shaking so badly she was sure she would be unable to shoot. The footsteps reached the third-floor landing, and Diana turned to face the door.
As she curled her finger around the trigger, she remembered Craig telling her it didn’t need to be cocked. “Just press,” he had said. “Point at his midsection and press.”
A long shadow fell across the hallway floor. Diana raised the gun a little higher, gripping it more tightly, steadying it, telling herself she could shoot it if she had to. That any fool could fire a gun.
But Diana was too startled by the sight that filled her doorway to do anything but stare. For the intruder, highlighted by the brightness streaming through her bedroom window, was James.
James Hutchins, supposedly dead for almost two months, was standing there, grinning and holding his arms open wide.
32
DIANA WONDERED IF PERHAPS SHE WAS STILL DREAMING, if the terror of the dripping forest and the towering rack had metamorphosed into a ghoulish nightmare of the walking dead. She blinked and the gun in her hands trembled, but still she held on to it, still she kept it pointed at the man in the doorway. The man who was, yet could not be, James Hutchins.
James dropped his arms, and his grin slipped into a sheepish smile, his eyes bright with the delight of one who has pulled off a successful surprise. “I’m alive,” he said softly, handing her his gift. “It’s really me.” He leaned against the doorjamb and casually crossed his arms, looking as brash and appealing as he had the first time she had seen him.
Diana felt as if she had been punched in the stomach. “Don’t move,” she ordered, gripping the gun as tightly as she could.
“You look wonderful,” he said, his eyes soft and magnetic, pulling her to him, drawing her in.
She shuddered and lowered the gun. “James,” she whispered.
He smiled at her, and a piece of hair fell to his forehead with a motion so achingly familiar that Diana longed to push the hair back with her fingers, longed to touch his brow. “I knew you’d be pleased,” he said.
Pleased? she wondered. Was she pleased? Staring at James, at the sweep of his cheekbone, at the cleft in his chin, at the excitement and delight that radiated from his eyes, Diana realized she was far more than pleased, she was ecstatic. Her James was alive. He was standing there, breathing and living. Her mistakes hadn’t killed him. She was being given the greatest gift of all: another chance.
As swells of glorious relief rolled through her, Diana suddenly saw the full impact of his return: If James was alive, then she was free. There would be no arrest warrants or barbed wire or coarse red uniforms—and the long shadow of Herb Levine would disappear from her life. Unconsciously Diana touched her stomach. Her family was free too. The nursery would be filled with laughter, and there would be a crib and a bureau and a changing table, bright-colored bumpers and quilts and a rocking chair where she would sing lullabies to soothe the baby into sleep in the dark silent hours of night. Craig would build a toy box and paint his fantasy mural on the walls.
Waves of pure joy engulfed every part of her being, inundating her, flooding her chest, almost choking her with their power. She was as light as air, weightless, almost floating. Her fingers and toes tingled with elation. It was over. Diana’s hands trembled as she began to raise her arms toward James, to touch him, to hear his heart beat beneath her ear, to bury her nose in the smell of his cologne. To feel, to really feel, to know with every part of her, with her every sense, that he was indeed alive. That she was indeed free.
But something in his eyes made her hesitate. Something in the way he was looking at her stopped her cold. Something that began to suck the joy from her. “I did it for you,” he said, taking a step toward her. “For us.”
Diana scrambled backward on the bed and raised the gun. “Don’t move,” she ordered again, a sudden slew of agonizing questions flooding in to douse her happiness.
“You’re not going to shoot me,” he said with perfect logic. “You need me to love you.” Stepping up to the footboard, James calmly rested his hand on the curved brass, secure in his insight. “And I do.”
She let the gun drop to the bed. Diana looked at him standing there, so hopeful and so much in love. Who could resist the power of being so adored? she wondered. Who could resist the power of almost unbearable charisma? He’s feeding something in you, Gail’s voice filled her ears. Some empty place you’re trying to fill.
“I love you more than anything,” James said softly, his velvety voice drawing her to him. “That’s why I did it.”
“It’s …” she stuttered, simultaneously wanting to hold him close and push him away. “It’s just so incredible …” James’s words finally got through to her, cutting off her own. She stared at him, unable to speak. Someone was dead because James was alive. Too sick for you—or anyone else—to do anything for, Gail had warned her. Diana’s stomach squeezed in panic as she groped toward the answer she didn’t want to find.
Images of Anderson Street flashed through her mind. The steep roadway clogged with emergency vehicles and yellow tape and gawking crowds. The cracked sidewalk under her feet. The scraggly geraniums flopping in the window box next door. The covered stretcher. The paint-splattered sneaker and the naked foot. It’s a real gory mess in there. Bone … on the walls. Then, suddenly, Diana knew. Suddenly she saw the whole thing—and understood it all too well. “Ethan,” she whispered, her voice hoarse with disbelief. “It’s Ethan who’s dead.”
“I thought of it the first time I met him,” James said, his eyes sparkling with pride. “Same hair color, same size—from behind, we could have been mistaken for each other.”
“Ethan’s dead,” Diana repeated stupidly. So this was what James had gotten out of his relationship with Ethan. This was the elusive payoff she could never figure out. “But what about—”
“You want to know about the messages,” James interrupted. “That’s the best part: Ethan thought it was a big joke—I got him to tape them all before I killed him. There’s still a few left I never used,” he bragged.
Dazed, Diana nodded, her stomach churning at the careless way he spoke of killing Ethan. Her James was a murderer. Cold-blooded and unremorseful. You let his charm fool you …
“And then I would have Ethan leave a message whenever you went out,” James was explaining, oblivious to her growing horror. He waved at the window. “I sat there on the fire escape and watched you. Right across the alley. I could even tell when you were taking a shower.”
A furry shiver of revulsion ran up Diana’s back. She hadn’t been paranoid. She hadn’t been imagining it. The eyes had been real. Someone had been out there. Watching her. Someone more dangerous than she had ever dreamed. Someone she never thought it could have been.
“How did you miss it?” he asked. “I was even afraid that you’d guess right away—I was sure you’d recognize my voice that first day when I called to tell you I was dead.” James shook his head as a mother would at a naughty but well-loved child. “I planted the whole toe business so that you’d figure out I was alive. I didn’t expect you to think I was murdered.”
Diana just stared at him in stunned silence, trying to grasp the meaning of his words, trying to comprehend the deranged complexity of his scheme.
“I actually was going to kill myself,” he continued conversationally. “To show you how much you loved me. But then I realized it would be a waste.” He grinned, and for the first time Diana saw the depravity lurking below his gleaming smile, a depravity she had been blind to before. “I realized that if I were dead, we’d never get to be together.
“So I decided t
o fake it.” James’s face glowed with excitement. “Got the idea about the shotgun from Ethan’s girlfriend blowing her head off.”
“Ethan’s girlfriend,” Diana repeated.
“I figured that after grieving for me, when I showed up alive, you’d be forced to admit to yourself how much you loved me—and then you’d come away with me.” James threw his arms upward, almost touching the ceiling, a look of wild ecstasy on his face. “And now,” he cried, “now it’s all happened. Now you can leave here. You’ve no husband, no career to hold you anymore. I made sure I got rid of them all—everything keeping you from me. I destroyed them so that we could be the family.” James glanced lovingly at her stomach. “Once our baby is born.”
Diana was filled with an icy dread as the jagged edges of James’s horrible puzzle began to come together. “There is no ‘our baby,’“ she said, moving her hand slowly, casually, toward the gun at her knee. “The baby is Craig’s. Mine and my husband’s.”
“Craig’s left you. I saw him leave with his suitcases this morning.” James took another step toward her, stretching out his hands. “And you know the baby’s mine. You know—”
“Don’t come any closer!” Diana warned him. “Don’t touch me.”
His face crumpled. “I thought you’d be so happy …”
She looked at James, her James, the light in his eyes clouded by disappointment that, once again, she had caused. Despite all that had happened, despite her fear and revulsion, Diana was suffused with compassion for the young boy who had been so violated that he could not be helped. No treatment, no therapy, no rehabilitation could undo the catastrophic harm that had been done to him. Uncle Hank had taken James’s promise and made him into this horror. Hank Hutchins had stolen James’s life from him. And Diana could not give it back. She couldn’t be the great rescuer. No one could. James, her handsome, brilliant James, was far too damaged.
He must have seen the compassion in her eyes, for he dropped to his knees by the side of the bed. “I felt it that day in your office when we made love—I felt your love.” His voice was deep with passion, and, despite everything, was so powerfully evocative of that afternoon that Diana began to tremble. “I know you want us to be together again,” he said, grabbing her hand and pressing it to his lips. “And so do I. Come away with me,” he begged, kissing her open palm. “I love you so much.”
“James,” Diana began, gently pulling her hand from his, filled with such conflicted emotions that she wasn’t sure she could speak. For despite her clear understanding of who—and what—he really was, she still felt such tenderness, such empathy, for him. Diana brushed the hair back from his forehead and sighed. “That day in my office was a terrible mistake. Probably the worst mistake I’ve ever made in my life. It’s—”
“You can’t deny us that day,” he said. “I won’t let you. We’re not children, Diana. You and I both know magnetism like ours happens once in a lifetime—if you’re lucky.”
“It’s over,” Diana said, choosing her words carefully. What he was saying was true. All too true. She had never felt anything like the powerful magic of that afternoon. She had been bewitched by him, drawn and pulled beyond her power, or her desire, to resist. She had never been so encompassed by passion. Never felt so masterful. So alive. “It will never happen again,” she said, her voice low with sadness for everything that couldn’t be. “Never.”
“Come with me now,” he begged. “It can happen again. Now is our chance.”
“It’s impossible, James. I’m not going anywhere.”
“But the baby. I figured it out. The timing—”
She shook her head. “I found out the next week that I was already pregnant.”
“I planned how this would happen,” he said calmly. “I worked it all out in my mind. Over and over. I’ve been controlled all my life and now I’m in control. I’m not going to let my plan fail.” His eyes burned into Diana’s, and again his depravity showed through.
“James,” she said softly, trying to distract him so she could grab the gun at her knee.
But he saw her eyes flicker downward and seized the gun before she could. He jumped up and backed toward the door, pointing it directly at her. “You’re coming with me,” he ordered, his quiet voice much more terrifying than if he had been screaming. “Right now.”
“James,” Diana said, trying to sound calm, “it’s no use. It’s over.”
“Not if I kill us both, it’s not,” he said, his eyes glazed. “If I kill us both, we’ll be together always.”
Unable to speak, unable to move, Diana felt time once again stall. James loomed enormous and hulking, growing thicker and wider, grotesque and terrifying. The ambient light glinted off the shiny gun barrel. James could very well do what he threatened. He had killed before, and she knew that to his deranged mind, his solution was all too plausible. She stared at the gun in horror, scrambling frantically for the response that would save her life and the life of her child. But she found only blankness. “The baby,” she finally sputtered. “You can’t kill our child.”
His eyes narrowed, and his handsome face became shrewd, the planes of his cheekbones shading to evil. “You said it was Craig’s.”
“I lied,” Diana lied. “You figured out the dates. You know the truth.”
He stood with the gun pointed at her belly for a long moment. “I don’t believe you,” he finally said.
“But what if you’re wrong?”
They remained that way for what felt like an eternity: James with the gun to her stomach, Diana still. To lose all she had just regained was more than Diana could bear. To lose it all once again because of her weakness that one afternoon—because of her obsession with James Hutchins. She knew she deserved punishment for her wrongdoing. But her baby didn’t. And neither did Craig. Diana didn’t move a muscle. She held her breath and kept her eyes locked on James’s, pleading sincerity, pleading for a chance to live.
Then James broke the eye contact and stared over Diana’s head at someplace far away. After another eternity he slowly lifted the gun with robotlike jerks of his hand. He placed the muzzle to his temple. “One word and I won’t pull the trigger.”
Diana gasped, her eyes glued to his. She clearly felt his sincerity, his need, his love—no less real for its debauched nature. And she also saw the hopeless depths of his insanity. You’ve got to let go of him—and of your need to cure everyone …
“One word,” he begged. “Just tell me that you want me to live.”
And Diana knew in that moment that she could not take responsibility for his life. That she could not save him. She closed her eyes, tears running down her cheeks. She wanted to open them. She wanted to scream out for him to stop. For him to save himself. That she would try to help him again. But she did not.
“Diana, please …”
She kept her eyes closed, kept her silence, until a powerful explosion shattered the stillness. Then Diana began to scream. And it seemed to her that she would scream forever.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book could never have been written without the support of my family, friends and colleagues. I owe each of you much: my writers’ group, Diane Bonavist, Jan Brogan, Floyd Kemske, Rachel Plummer and Donna Baier Stein; my experts and reviewers, Michael Bogdanow, Laurie Bernstein, John Conklin, Dan Fleishman, Norman Shapiro, Kelly Tate, and especially Phyllis Kaplan-Silverman whose input was instrumental from initial story conception to final review; my agent, Nancy Yost; my children, Robin and Scott Fleishman whose interest in my work is a joy to me.
And finally, to my editor, Ellen Edwards, who drove me crazy on this project from day one, my deepest gratitude.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents eithe
r are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1995 by B.A. Shapiro
978-1-5040-1101-3
This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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