Watching for Willa

by Helen R. Myers

  “Only a short time ago. An observant neighbor saw smoke coming from the house and called it in, even though the person saw Judith’s car in the driveway. The body had been dragged into the kitchen in the hopes of making it look like she’d been trying to put out an accidental stove fire. Hell, all they would have to have done is check the refrigerator to know that was a joke. She was the one person who cooked less than I do. Was. Did you hear how easily I can talk about her in the past tense?”

  Willa winced at the raw edge in his voice and hugged him tighter.

  “As soon as he can cut someone loose from there, Pruitt’s going to put a patrol car out front,” he murmured, resting his cheek on the top of her head.

  “Do you really think that’s necessary? Surely whichever of them killed Judith, he’s long gone by now.”

  “Let’s hope so. But I’d rather the cops play it safe, especially where you’re concerned.”

  “Wait a minute.” Willa saw a flash through the sheers. She eased out of Zach’s arms and went to the window. “I think that’s the patrol car now. He must have his lights—Zach! My house is burning!”

  She couldn’t believe it. It had to have started minutes ago, perhaps as Zach spoke on the phone, because the flames were already spreading in both her bedroom and the kitchen. Horrified, Willa ran for the door. “Call 9-1-1!”

  “Where do you think you’re going?” Zach yelled at her, telephone in hand. He grabbed for her, but missed, tumbling off the bed and hitting the floor with a loud thud. “Willa!”

  She was already in the hall. “It’s my house, Zach! I know what to do,” she added, bumping into the door frame of his office. “I’ll take your gun. Make the call!”

  She sped across the room, grateful for the computer screen’s light and jerked open the top drawer. Grabbing the revolver, she saw the remote control for the front door and grabbed it, too.

  Zach had managed to make it to the hall when she ran out and she barely escaped another desperate grab.

  “Willa—for the love of heaven…!”

  “Call!”

  She felt his fury and frustration and her heart went out to him, but he hadn’t seen the fire. She couldn’t just stand and watch. And it wasn’t stupid vanity about all her hard work, either. It wasn’t the money. She had insurance.

  How could she put into words that it was the assault, the rape of her memories?

  So she ran through the dark house with him screaming and cursing behind her. If she could get the garden hose started, she might be able to contain the damage. And with every step she prayed, Forgive me, Zach. But he’s not destroying another life.

  In the foyer she grabbed her keys lying beside her purse on the entryway table and punched the remote. The door creaked open, letting in a gust of hot, humid air.

  Wind! If the fire department didn’t get here soon, the fire would take more than her house. “Hurry!” she screamed up to Zach, and thrust open the screen door.

  She ran as fast as her bare feet allowed, hating that the soles were so tender, and hoping she wouldn’t lacerate them and slow herself down. The fire downstairs had already reached the dining room. The oak table, the second piece of furniture she’d chosen with A.J. after their bed, was beginning to scorch.

  At the front door she came up against another hurdle. For whatever reason the timer hadn’t gone off and, except for the eerie glow beginning to flicker through the sheer draperies, it was impossibly dark.

  Once she had it unlocked, she felt the door for heat as she’d learned during safety courses at the mall. It wasn’t hot, so she felt fairly confident in thrusting the door wide.

  No blast of flames assaulted her, but the smoke was getting thick, rolling down from the ceiling like some malevolent creature from one of Zach’s darkest nightmares. She ducked to peer beneath the thick, pungent mass, but she didn’t see or hear any sign that someone was in there. That didn’t mean he wasn’t, though.

  The doubt finally hit her. Her own mortality. And the ugliness swelled until everything seemed to be mocking her, the smoke alarms, the ravenous flames…

  She didn’t know what drew her gaze to her wedding photo, to A.J., but she stared at that wonderful thumbs-up, piece-of-cake smile, and not since the night she’d lost him had he felt closer.

  Something calmed within her. She took a deep breath and reached into the flower bed to tug the hose carriage onto the front stoop. Then grabbing the nozzle, she turned on the water pressure full force and ducked inside.

  Once through the doorway the temperature shot up at least thirty degrees, the noise became deafening. But the worst of it was that after only seconds of spraying into the dining room, she knew she didn’t have a prayer. A window exploded upstairs. Another went in the kitchen. With the breeze seeping into the house, she knew her only hope now was the fire department.

  But she wasn’t ready to leave yet. Although the smoke was already reaching the floor and her eyes were beginning to tear up and burn, she crab-walked toward her photograph. It was as she reached up that she heard the slam.

  The force shut off the water, and she knew no wind was strong enough to have done that. Horrified, coughing and wheezing, she dropped the hose and dashed for the door. She pulled, jerked and beat at it. Not even the knob budged.

  “Open up! Help! Let me out!”

  Her cries only made the coughing worse. Oh, God, she thought, the smoke. Thinking became a struggle, but breathing was already an impossibility.

  He couldn’t have locked her in, she told herself gripping the keys so tight, they cut into her left palm. She could get out…if she used the gun. The gun.

  She tightened the fingers of her right hand around the revolver, stepped back from the door, aimed and fired. Then she fired again. And then again.

  The third shot won her a scream. She grabbed the doorknob and jerked, and even though she couldn’t see a thing for the smoke and the tears, she burst from the house, holding the gun before her.

  She stumbled as if she were drugged or drunk or both. The fresh night air felt wonderful wafting against her burning skin, but she sobbed at the agony it caused her lungs. And her eyes…

  She practically stumbled over him. He lay facedown and she couldn’t tell where she’d hit him, but the blond hair and his muscular build told her who he was.

  “Ger?” she wheezed. “How badly are you…hurt?”

  She couldn’t say anything for another minute. A new rage of coughs nearly brought her to her knees.

  Finally, convinced he was either out cold or dead, she glanced back toward Zach’s in time to see him crawling out his door. She rose and waved. Tried to let him know she was all right, but coughed and gagged instead.

  “Willa—no! Behind—”

  The blow caught her in the small of her back knocking the wind from her lungs. She had a momentary flash of the ground racing up at her, the gun and her keys leaving her hands, and then her head exploded into millions of lights, each tiny dot erupting into a pain as horrific as anything she could have imagined.

  She couldn’t see, couldn’t catch her breath. Then she felt his hands closing around her throat and she knew she wouldn’t again. Ever.

  Her mind said to fight, to claw and kick. To live. But her body refused. She had nothing left.

  I’m dying, Zach! Oh, Zach, I’m…

  Blissfully, the agony began to grow vague, her panic waned to a sorrow. And then there was only the welcome darkness.

  “No!” Zach clutched at the screen door as a dull knife ripped out his heart. “No!”

  How could he have made it this far only to fail? Willa! Sweet Jesus, please…

  “Here I am, you son of a bitch!” he screamed at Ger, pain and rage giving him a new strength. “It’s me you want. Come and get me!”

  Dazed, and bleeding from his side, Ger rose from Willa and started toward him.

  So this was it. Zach wiped ruthlessly at the tears flooding his eyes and, empty except for grief and hatred, he started crawling back to t
he elevator. He knew what he had to do. Gerald Sacks wasn’t going to go through any trial and be found guilty by reason of insanity. He was going to hell. Tonight.

  And I’m going to take you there.

  He crawled like the reptiles he used to watch race across the desert sand. “Come on!” he taunted over his shoulder. “This is what you want, isn’t it?”

  The wounded, winded man appeared in the doorway just as Zach reached the elevator and slammed the cage shut.

  “Stop, Zach. It doesn’t have to be like this.”

  “Bull. Come on, you coward!” He pressed the button and the car rumbled into action.

  Ger stumbled to the stairs and began climbing like a robot. He was halfway up when Zach reached the second floor and threw open the gate. With his legs and back killing him from the exertion, Zach mostly dragged himself, but determined, he made his way toward his bedroom. It had the nearest dormer window.

  As he passed Willa’s clothes and shoes, he suffered another sharp spasm of grief. Tears threatened to blind him, but he used the rage to rip at the draperies and hoist himself up on the ledge. Then he released the lock and pushed up the window.

  Sirens greeted him along with flashing lights, police cars and fire trucks. He saw men running. One raced for Willa. His darling. His love. He’d never said the words to her. The bastard had even deprived them of that.

  Hearing Ger right behind him, he crawled, indifferent to his nakedness, out the window. Ger grabbed at his arm, but Zach beat him off.

  “Come on,” he growled, hatred seething in him. “Come on out here and get me.”

  “It’s not my fault, Zach. It was never my fault.”

  “Yeah? Who’s then?”

  “Judy. No, I mean Judith.” He rubbed his forehead. “I have to stop their voices. Too many…Tell them to turn off those sirens, Zach. I can’t think.” He shook his head. “Judy was the one who kept saying we weren’t really related, that we could be together. But I knew it was wrong…and she—she was bad to me. She wouldn’t leave me alone. I had to make her shut up. Why didn’t she just shut up?”

  What the hell? Zach couldn’t begin to make sense out of the crazed gibberish, but he was determined to try and use it.

  “Maybe she couldn’t because she was right about you,” he shouted at him. “And you know what? See all those people? They’re wondering about you, too. And I’m going to tell them.”

  “No! Judith was right—you were never my friend! You were using me, too!” Furious, Ger climbed onto the roof after him.

  Men yelled at them from below. Zach recognized Pruitt as he inched down the still-warm, composite shingles. The sharp flats bit into and scratched at his flesh, but he wanted to reach the gutter in case Ger tried to knock him over and he didn’t get a good enough grip to take him with him.

  The cop yelled something again, but he couldn’t understand with all the noise. Besides, he no longer cared.

  “Denton! I said, don’t be a fool. She’s alive! Hold on!”

  Alive? He looked toward Willa again and saw two paramedics now had her sitting up and were holding an oxygen mask to her face.

  “Willa…?” Joy replaced disbelief, as he saw her push the mask away, point toward him and try to break free from her two guardians.

  Almost too late he sensed the movement beside him. He stiffened, but couldn’t stop the brutal kick he took to the shoulder.

  It sent him rolling like a fallen log down a mountain. But fortunately, he was close enough to the gutter not to build up too much momentum. He grabbed and stopped himself. Barely.

  “Go down, Zach,” Ger muttered, inching toward him, his expression mad, determined. With every few inches of progress, he reached with his heavy-soled athletic shoes in an attempt to land another kick. “Go down.”

  Zach swore silently. The guy sounded like a petulant child for crying out loud.

  He looked over the edge of the gutter to consider his chances, trying not to think how moments ago it hadn’t mattered. It would be a twenty-foot drop if he landed on the overgrown shrubs. If he missed, at least twenty-five or six.

  He glanced back toward Ger and saw the younger man ready himself.

  Pruitt yelled, “Don’t do it, Sacks!”

  Ger ignored him.

  A shot rang out.

  The bullet jerked Ger as it struck him in the middle of his chest. Almost immediately a circle of red began spreading toward the matching stain near his waist. For a moment he looked directly at Zach. Then, smiling, he lurched forward and tumbled down and over the roof, taking Zach with him.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  “Look at you two. How the heck they agreed to release you from the hospital after less than twenty-four hours, I’ll never know.”

  Willa exchanged smiles with Zach. After using the remote to release the front door latch for Detective Pruitt, she’d returned to Zach’s bed and now snuggled happily beside him. Her attire was another of his shirts because her house had been deemed a total loss and she hadn’t yet let busy Starla bring anything from the shop. She wasn’t surprised when he snatched up his bathrobe from the foot of the bed and spread it over her bare legs—as well as he could with his left arm in a cast.

  “They were glad to be rid of us,” he told their visitor. “Refusing to stay out of her room helped.”

  Out of her bed, Willa amended silently. But it was true. As soon as he’d been checked out, stitched up and his broken arm put in a cast, he’d demanded entrance to her room and had used his now-famous glare on anyone who’d attempted to separate them. Although she’d tried to argue otherwise—mostly by hand signals and notes—he’d seen her injuries as far more severe than his, and he refused to let her out of his sight.

  They were lucky. Fate had been generous to them. The doctors said she hadn’t suffered any permanent damage to her throat or lungs, and that the hoarseness would eventually disappear, as would the bruises on her neck.

  But most gratifying of all, Zach hadn’t suffered any new damage to his spine. The stitches at his temple would be out in about ten days, and he’d already proved the cast wouldn’t keep him from showing her at every opportunity how much he loved her.

  “Well, you’ll be happy to know most of the press have resigned themselves to the idea that you aren’t going to make a statement,” Detective Pruitt continued. “They’re packing up and pulling out. Moving like turtles, but moving.”

  “Good,” Zach muttered, taking hold of her hand again. “And did you contact Willa’s family?”

  The older man’s smile grew warmer as he focused on her. “Yes, I have. They were, admittedly, shocked and upset, but they’re okay now. They understand you can’t talk for a few days, and your parents are insisting on cutting their vacation short and returning to the States, but everyone sends you their love. If I were you, I’d expect some strong pressure about taking you back to Dallas for a while.”

  Willa shook her head adamantly, and inched closer to Zach. Although she took reassurance from the gentle squeeze of his hand, she knew he and her family would need time to get used to each other.

  “All right, enough pleasantries. What the hell was this whole mess about?” Zach demanded, exposing his lack of patience with small talk, and with what had almost cost them everything.

  If Detective Pruitt was offended, he hid it well. “Well, to start with, you heard Sacks correctly when you said he called Judith Judy because it turns out there were in fact two of them. The one he referred to as Judy was an adopted sister he grew up with in California. She was two years his senior. Not exactly a little angel. Neighbors who remember the family didn’t recall when or how the Sacks got her, but just about all said she was a wild one. Er, promiscuous. It’s believed she tormented the boy badly, which explains where his problems both with his morality and his sexuality set in.”

  “How’d you find all that out?” Zach asked, not doing a good job at hiding his curiosity.

  “Professional secret,” the policeman replied, reciprocating n
icely. “You think I want to read about this in your next book? In any case, somehow your Judith—”

  Zach stiffened. “Never call her that again.”

  “Zach,” Willa whispered as best she could, touching his cheek. “He’s only trying to explain.”

  He blinked, and then gave her an apologetic, haunted look.

  “Ms. Denton,” Detective Pruitt continued, almost kindly, “began receiving threatening notes, too. We located quite a collection during our search of her house. Being far more social and mobile than you, she had less difficulty determining who her pen pal was—no doubt. She started from the suspicion it was you or someone you’d hired to either intimidate or harm her after your unpleasant divorce.

  “She was acquainted with Sacks through the health club. And again, we can only speculate how she picked up on the tidbit about Sack’s sister. My guess is that she wasn’t all that different in her technique than Judy and she apparently knew how to shrewdly manipulate him, didn’t she? Just as she must have used the fact that Sacks had access to your house. She was one tough and sharp cookie. Poor Sacks. He never stood a chance. He went from idolizing you, Denton, and despising her, to hating you, and worshiping her. We’ve been through his apartment—it’s all there the pictures on the walls, the graffiti, sex toys, cut-up magazines and a few things you’re better off not knowing about. The head doctors and think-tank people who’ll end up studying his case for suspect profiles are going to have a field day sorting through his psychoses. Maybe one day they’ll be able to tell us what made him ultimately turn on Ms. Denton and slip completely out of control. Hopefully the transcript of your last conversation with him will help,” Pruitt told Zach.

  Zach thought it a miracle Ger hadn’t turned on Judith sooner. “What happened to the stepsister?” he asked the cop.

  The detective hesitated, then gave Willa an apologetic look. “A more successful version of the punishment he inflicted on Ms. Denton. He raped then strangled her, and burned down the boarding house where she’d been living. The authorities were glad to solve the case. Ten years that one stayed open.”