“Your kids are great, Hank. The best.”
For once he didn’t feel the usual pang of melancholy that being “Uncle” Jack brought him. Always before, he’d thought this was the closest he’d ever come to being a father. He’d always known he could never have kids of his own. But now he wasn’t so sure. A fragment of hope lodged in his chest the day he met Larsen. The day he realized she could stop the voices.
A flash of white caught his attention inside the restaurant. As he peered closer, he realized he was staring at the same stark white hair, the same odd clothes as on that news report last night. His blood went cold.
“He’s in there.”
Henry pulled his gun. “Where? I don’t see him.”
Jack yanked out his phone and called Griff and Duke who were inside the restaurant posing as patrons. He could see Griff’s red hair, knew he was facing the Pied Piper. Why hadn’t he called for backup?
“Griff, he’s there. Do you have him?”
“Where? I don’t see…”
A sudden crash reverberated through the phone, the sound of breaking glass and shattering plates, followed by an eerie silence.
“Griff? Griff!” In the background he could hear someone…singing. The hair rose at the nape of his neck.
“Come on.” Jack snapped his phone shut and dodged through traffic, Henry racing behind him.
Jack pulled his gun and burst into the restaurant, aiming the weapon at the whitest man he’d ever seen. The man wasn’t merely blond, but a true albino, skin without color.
“Police! Hands in the air!”
The man turned to face him, still singing the odd, tuneless melody Jack had heard through the phone. A movement in the booth beside him caught Jack’s attention.
A man was strangling a woman.
Jack fired at the ceiling. No one seemed to notice, no one reacted at all. Their expressions, to a man, woman and child, were blank. As if every one of them was completely stoned.
He ran and lunged for the strangler, hauling him off his victim. The woman gasped, coughed, then screamed when the man reached for her again.
“Stop!” Jack lifted his gun to shoot him.
“No!” the woman cried as she scrambled out of her assailant’s reach. “It’s him.” She pointed at the albino. “It’s his singing.”
Jack aimed his gun at the pale man. “Quiet!” When the man ignored him, Jack shot him in the leg. The song stumbled, but never ceased, and the Pied Piper’s expression never changed.
Jack stared at the uninjured leg. Had he missed? A second shot rang out and a bullet ruffled his hair. He dove for cover as another hit the table beside him. Were they trying to turn this into a shoot-out? Jack lifted his gun in the direction of the shots, and froze.
The only one aiming for him was Henry.
“Hank!”
But his partner’s eyes had gone as blank as the others. His partner and best friend fired at him again.
“He’s hypnotizing them,” the woman shouted, scrambling under the table as a man lunged for her over the back of her booth. “They don’t know what they’re doing. You’ve got to stop the white man.” Two men surrounded her table and she screamed again.
Pulse thudding through his veins, Jack rolled under another table a second before Henry’s shot hit the place where he’d been. Henry was slow, he realized. His reflexes weren’t his own.
If he kept moving…
“Stop it!” the woman cried.
Jack’s gaze jerked toward the sound and he nearly choked. The Pied Piper was pulling out his dick while a teenage girl pulled down her shorts in front of him.
The rapes. The victims never remembered.
Rolling out of Henry’s line of fire, Jack took aim at that engorged piece of white flesh and fired right at the base of it, right into the heart of the bastard’s groin…and didn’t miss.
The man let out a howl that would have done a wolf proud. The gunfire came to an abrupt halt, an eerie silence pressing at the walls of the restaurant. Jack held his breath, his pulse pounding in his ears. As long as Henry was firing, Jack had a fix on him. Without that, he could be anywhere. Creeping up behind him…
Suddenly, as one, the people who’d been controlled sank to the ground, unconscious. Or dead. Jack saw Henry fall with a silent thud and turned back to the white bastard, the man he was now certain was the rapist. This bad guy was his.
But as he lunged for him, an arrow missed his face by millimeters. Damn. He dived for cover, more arrows clattering on the empty tabletop above him. In the background, the low sounds of the Orioles baseball game provided an eerily normal soundtrack to a bafflingly surreal battle.
Jack fired at the nearest archer, but the shot went high as the small man ducked behind a booth. His gaze swung to the rapist and he found him pushing his dick back into his pants as if nothing had happened. As if he hadn’t just been shot.
Jack stared with disbelief at that white flesh. He wasn’t bleeding. Why wasn’t he bleeding?
The albino met his gaze, his yellow-green eyes lit with hatred. “I will kill you.”
“Not if I kill you first,” Jack murmured, taking aim at the bastard’s forehead. He pulled the trigger. A hole appeared in the center of that snow-white forehead…two seconds before it disappeared.
Jack’s blood went cold. No way. No damn way. He was losing his mind. This could not be happening.
Hands shaking, he shot him again.
The white man simply looked at him with venom in his eyes. “I will kill you.” Then he turned and walked toward the kitchen as if Jack’s gun had been firing nothing but blanks.
Jack stared at him. How in the hell…? He jumped up to chase after him, but a hail of arrows forced him back under the table. When the attack finally ended, he raced after them, but he was too late. By the time he reached the swinging door to the kitchen, they were gone.
His head pounded with questions as he called for backup and returned to the front of the restaurant where the booths and floors were littered with bodies.
He ran to Henry and felt for a pulse. Steady. Strong.
He’d tried to kill him. His partner and best friend had tried to kill him. And if he was right, if this crime scene played out the way the others had, he wouldn’t remember. None of them would remember a thing. Hell. How was he going to write up this one? He couldn’t tell the truth. Henry would be put on administrative leave and it hadn’t been his fault. He hadn’t known what he was doing.
Besides, no one was going to believe any of this. He wasn’t sure he believed it. Had his mind finally snapped?
The big man moved and gave a small snore. “Hank.” He shook him. “Hank!”
“You can’t wake them,” the woman called from the end of the aisle. Fortyish and carrying an extra fifty pounds, she knelt on the floor, fastening her sleeping daughter’s clothes.
Jack went to her and squatted in front of her. “Is she okay?”
“I think so. But I can’t wake her or my husband.” She looked up, her distraught gaze meeting his. “I’m a doctor. An anesthesiologist with Children’s Hospital. I put kids under all day long and I’ve never seen anything like this.”
“Can you tell me what happened?”
A host of conflicting emotions crossed her face. “We were eating lunch when the white man walked into the restaurant. He was so odd-looking. I mentioned him to my husband and daughter, but they couldn’t see him.” Her brows pulled together and an expression that was almost hurt entered her eyes. “Where I pointed, they saw only a normal-looking businessman. Then he began to sing and everything stopped. All the conversation stopped. It was like he hypnotized them. With a song.”
She looked at him like a child whose most treasured belief had just been shattered. “How can that be?”
“I don’t know. I wish to hell I knew.” The only one who might know something was the person who’d put the note in his newspaper. The person who’d sent him here. The person who’d set him up to be killed.
/> Larsen.
Jack slammed the front door behind him, his face hard, his blue eyes blazing. Larsen’s heart gave an anxious lurch as she rose from the chair and watched him toss his sport coat on the back of the sofa without so much as a glance her way, making it pretty clear his anger was directed at her. He knew. But what?
He went into the kitchen to talk to Sergeant O’Malley, telling her she and the other cops would no longer be needed.
What happened? It was nearly six o’clock and she still didn’t know anything except that things had gotten ugly. Sending him into that without a warning had been a mistake. But how could she have warned him? And if the cops couldn’t catch the villain, who could?
She stood rooted as Jack escorted the policewoman to the door, then closed and locked it. Slowly he turned and met her gaze, the hard mask melting beneath his fury, his hands clenching and unclenching at his sides.
A primal fear lodged in her chest as he started toward her, his stride slow and deliberate. Larsen took a step back.
“You set me up to be killed.”
“I didn’t.” I didn’t mean to. She bumped into the table behind her. “What happened, Jack?”
He closed the distance between them and grabbed her with both hands, his fingers digging painfully into the bare flesh of her upper arms. “What happened is you put that note in my paper this morning, sending me to Tony Jingles where I damned near died.” Jack shook her roughly, making her teeth rattle. “How did you know, Larsen? How did you know he was going to be there?”
The air caught in her lungs. “I didn’t,” she lied. “How could I possibly know something like that?”
“You couldn’t.” His lip curled nastily. “Not unless you worked for him.”
Larsen gaped at him, fear congealing in her chest. “No. Jack…How can you even say that? He’s a rapist. A murderer.”
“And you knew what he had planned.”
Had he seen her put the note in the paper? No. He couldn’t have. He was guessing.
She forced herself to look him in the eye. “You’re wrong. I’m not part of this.”
He shook her again. “Quit lying to me. How does he do it, Larsen? How does he control them?” A bolt of pain flashed through his eyes. “My men…my partner…tried to kill me.”
She caught her breath on a burst of understanding. Dear God. He was like her. He couldn’t be controlled. And the albino tried to kill anyone he couldn’t control.
Jack’s mouth grew pinched. “I shouldn’t have said that.” He released her and turned away. “Henry doesn’t even know. None of my men remember any of it.” He stared at nothing, his eyes narrowed in thought. “It’s just like the murder. And the assaults. No one remembered a thing.”
“Did he…was anyone hurt?” The woman she’d watched strangled had haunted her dreams. And her poor daughter…
“No. I stopped a murder in progress and foiled an assault. Barely.”
Larsen had to struggle to keep the relief from showing in her face. “What about him…the albino. Did you catch him?”
“No. I shot him, but…” His razor-sharp gaze cut to hers. “Why did you call him an albino?”
“What would you call someone that white?”
His eyes narrowed dangerously. “And just how do you know his skin’s that white?”
Larsen stared at him, too late realizing her mistake. She wasn’t supposed to have seen him except for the security video. And the man had never turned around. She’d known it was him from his hair and his odd clothes. But not his skin.
Damn, damn, damn. “That hair…” Her voice cracked and she cleared it. “I just assumed…”
“He’s white. Pure unadulterated white. Total absence of color except for his eyes.” His own eyes glittered ominously. “There’s no way in hell you could know that from that piece-of-crap tape.” He veered toward her.
“Jack…” Her heart pounded at the stupidity of her slip.
He stopped a hand breadth away from her, but didn’t grab her this time, as if he didn’t trust himself. His eyes were no longer burning with fury, but with something far more dangerous.
“You are going to tell me the truth, Larsen,” he said with deadly softness. “All of it. Right now. Or I’m going to haul your ass to the station and lock you up until you decide to talk. I’m through playing games, lady.”
She couldn’t tell him how she knew. She couldn’t. Ever.
She forced herself to meet his gaze without flinching, to stare into blue eyes as rigid as the steel bars of a prison. “I’ve told you all I can, Jack.”
The planes of his face hardened. “Then I’m taking you in for questioning.” He reached for her, then stopped midmotion, his body going rigid. “Hide.”
“What?” But then she heard it, too. A commotion out front.
A shout. A child’s cry of pain. Running feet.
“Hide, Larsen!”
He spun away, leaving her staring after him, shaking, as he pulled the gun from his waistband and ran for the front door.
She had to get out of here. She had to get away from him. He knew too much, or suspected too much. Either way, if he hauled her into that police station, she’d never come out again. Not whole.
As she started for the bedroom, Jack wrenched the door open, revealing a young, dark-skinned girl standing on the porch, a smaller child lying at her feet. Larsen stopped, recognizing the kids Jack had been playing ball with that day at the marina. Was it only three days ago?
“What happened?” Jack demanded as he bent and scooped up the boy.
Words spilled out of the girl’s mouth in a quivering rush. “There were two little bald people trying to see in your windows.”
Larsen’s eyes widened. Her archer.
Jack ushered the girl into the house.
“He shot me,” the boy said as Jack kicked the door shut, then turned to lock it despite his full arms.
“Where, David?” Jack strode to the sofa and deposited the child gently. “Show me.”
The boy lifted his shirt to show an unblemished expanse of brown tummy.
Jack nodded. He speared Larsen with his gaze as he rose. “I’m going after them. Lock the door behind me, then get David and Sabrina in the bathroom where they can’t get shot.”
“Jack—”
But he was already heading out the door. Larsen stared at the closing door, the blood pounding in her ears. She could leave. For the first time in two days, she was without a jailer.
Behind her, the little boy whimpered. Larsen shook her head. She locked the door as Jack instructed and helped David into the bathroom, the only room without a window. Sabrina followed and perched on the edge of the tub. David curled up on the rug, holding his stomach, tears in his eyes.
Larsen knelt beside him. “It still hurts?”
He nodded, tears sliding down his cheeks to drip on the rug. “He shot me.”
“With an arrow?”
“Nah-unh. It was invisible.” His face screwed up in a mask of pain. “He flicked it off his thumb.”
It didn’t make any sense. But she couldn’t deny his pain, nor the fact that nothing about this nightmare had made any sense from the beginning. She was all too afraid the little bald people had come after her. Why had they attacked the children?
Larsen had badly misjudged the cancer girl. She’d appeared so fragile when Larsen had first seen her in the church. Sweet.
“What are you doing here?” Sabrina asked sharply.
Larsen looked up and met the teen’s glare. She was a pretty girl, though Larsen didn’t much care for the look in her eyes.
“I’m a guest of Jack’s.”
“Why?” Dark eyes flashed with unfriendliness.
Larsen watched the girl with interest. She knew jealousy when she saw it and decided to answer truthfully. “One of those little bald people shot me with an arrow Monday night. Jack’s a cop. He brought me here to keep me safe until he caught her.”
“She followed you, then. It’s y
our fault David got hurt.”
“It’s not my fault.”
“It’s not my fault either! David shouldn’t have yelled at them.”
The girl’s sudden defensiveness took Larsen by surprise.
The teen’s face crumpled, tears welling in her eyes. “My dad’s going to be so mad.”
“He told her…” David began, then gripped his stomach and grimaced. “He told her not to leave the house without him or Mom. But she wouldn’t listen.”
“It’s Jack’s birthday,” Sabrina said through lips tensed and trembling. “We always surprise him on his birthday.”
“Maybe you should have sent him a card,” Larsen murmured.
The girl stared at her, then began to cry in earnest.
Larsen sighed. “Sabrina, please don’t cry. It won’t help anything.” But she might as well have been talking to the sink. She rose and went to stand in the open doorway where she might hear Jack when he returned. Finally the rap sounded on the front door.
“Larsen, open up. It’s me.”
She hurried to the door and let Jack in. “Did you catch them?”
“No.” He met her gaze for one brittle moment, his eyes revealing a wealth of anger…and a deep vein of hurt. He brushed past her and went to the bathroom where Sabrina still cried. The bathroom where she’d experienced the most amazing kiss of her life.
She followed him and stood in the doorway, watching him kneel beside David, his dark head bent with concern. Whatever had been growing between them was gone. There would be no more kisses. No more sexy smiles. No more warm arms holding her through the night. All that was left between them was blame and anger and guilt. A fist-size lump of regret lodged in her chest. If only things could have been different. If only she were different.
If only she were normal. But she wasn’t and she had to get away from Jack and his cops before they figured that out, even if it meant risking another arrow.
While Jack comforted the children, Larsen walked to the bedroom and closed the door, then grabbed her purse. As she eased open the window, the doorbell rang. She tensed until she heard the deep rumble of a second male voice and knew the kids’ dad had arrived.
The Dark Gate Page 6