Winter’s End: Winter Black Series: Book Nine

by Stone, Mary

  Winter’s End

  Winter Black Series: Book Nine

  Mary Stone

  Copyright © 2020 by Mary Stone

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Created with Vellum

  To my husband.

  Thank you for taking care of our home and its many inhabitants while I follow this silly dream of mine.

  Contents

  Description

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Winter Black Series by Mary Stone

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Description

  Sometimes, the beginning is the end.

  For thirteen years, FBI Special Agent Winter Black has been haunted by a man who performed heinous acts. Murdering her parents. Abducting her baby brother. Leaving her in a coma that changed her life forever.

  For thirteen years, she’s suffered mentally and physically. Often doubted her sanity and ability to move forward to achieve her goal of bringing that brutal man down.

  Thirteen years of regret. Of hope. Of fear. Of hate.

  But now, the boy she longs for has transformed into a man she fears.

  She has to face him. Catch him.

  Maybe even kill him. Even if it means the end of her.

  Winter’s End, the ninth and final book of Mary Stone’s gripping Winter Black Series, examines the intricate battle between love and hate. Right from wrong. Leaving you breathless and asking...what would you do?

  1

  It was dark.

  I didn’t like the dark. The aloneness that went along with its presence felt like a living thing. At least the moon was trying to look in on me, so I didn’t feel so by myself. That was okay because I sometimes laid in my bed and watched the moon right back, so that was fair.

  What time was it? Blinking hard, I leaned toward my nightstand, turning my clock so I could see—

  Thud.

  A sound ruptured the silence, making me jump. It was like something had fallen, creating a hollow echoing sound that didn’t belong in my house. Was that what had woken me to begin with? I was usually a very good sleeper. Mommy said so. But I was awake now. Very awake. I didn’t like it. Maybe I was such a good sleeper because being asleep made me not think about the dark.

  I wish I wasn’t thinking of it now. It was watching me.

  Heart making my ears feel full, I sat up, pulling my blanket to my chin, peering into the dark shadows of my room.

  The closet was closed, which was exactly the way I liked it. It scared me when the door was cracked open, giving evil enough room to peek through. I could feel it sometimes watching me when my closet was like that. Feel it waiting. Hoping. Wanting me to get too close. Ready to attack. Gobble me up.

  Was it the monster who’d made that noise? Was it placing its hand on the knob right now, ready to open the door and leap?

  Scraaape.

  Holding my blanket tighter, I almost screamed, but managed to keep the sound behind my teeth. If I’d screamed, the monster would know I was awake. And it would make my big sister laugh at me in the morning. I didn’t like to be laughed at, which was why I’d stopped using a nightlight in my bedroom. I wished I had my nightlight now.

  Stupid sister.

  The scraping sound came again, making it hard to breathe for a while. It came one more time, and this time, instead of freaking out, I tried my best to recognize the sound. Was the monster carrying an ax, dragging it on the floor? Heading my way? Or was it already under my bed, waiting for my feet to hit the floor so it could chop off my toes and catch me before I could run?

  “Stop being a baby,” I whispered to myself as I scanned the entire room, too afraid to turn the light on. I hated being called a baby, especially by my sister. I was six years old, practically a grown-up, for cripes’ sake.

  Maybe whatever I’d heard had slammed my closet door shut, and whatever it was could be in there now. Or worse, maybe it was now in my room. Trying to look everywhere at once, I peered into the shadows, but nothing moved. Nothing was crawling over the floor or across my ceiling. Being super careful, I peeked over the side of my bed, expecting something to jump up at any second.

  Which was worse? Confronting the monster or waiting for it to confront you?

  I didn’t know.

  Frozen with indecision, I thought through my options. If the monster wasn’t in my closet or on the floor or ceiling, it could only mean one thing. It was under my bed.

  I needed Daddy. Monsters were afraid of Daddies. I pulled the covers up to my chin and locked them in my fist. Monsters weren’t allowed to dig under blankets, Daddy said so. If I stayed under the blankets, they couldn’t get to me. I couldn’t cover my face, though, because that made it hard to breathe. Besides, I was too scared. I had to see if one of them rose from the floor and reached for me.

  None did.

  Just when I thought it was safe again, I heard another thud, and my heart started galloping in my chest again. But this time, I knew something I hadn’t known before. The noise wasn’t inside my room. It had come from down the hall. From Mommy and Daddy’s room.

  As I listened with all my ears, I realized that the sound was familiar. It was the same sound I made when I tried to use the bed as a trampoline. Mommy didn’t like that. Daddy said I had to work on my…dismount, whatever that meant. Instead of landing on my feet, I always landed on my butt on the wood floor in my room, and this new middle of the night sound was kinda like that.

  Which was funny because I didn’t hear Mommy or Daddy jumping on their bed. The bed squeaked when I did that, and the headboard hit the wall. I wondered if I’d slept through that part and only woke up when they fell. I grinned, thinking how funny it would be if one of them needed to work on their dismount too. I wanted to go and see and laugh with them. I wanted to see them on their butts, just like me.

  But getting up meant turning on the light. That was scary. Monsters didn’t like Daddies and blankets and light especially. That meant they’d keep you from turning on a light if they thought you were going to.

  I thought about this a long time and finally pulled my arm free of the covers because I was brave—Mommy said so—and that was what brave boys did. I reached up as hard and as long as I could, and I still nearly missed the dangling chain, making it make a clinking sound against the metal pole thingy that held the light.

  When it was finally
in my hand, I pulled it really hard, hard enough to send the lamp dancing across my nightstand. The race car at the bottom of the light glowed, and the light shone off its little windshield in a hundred different places that were dazzling.

  At least the light was on. The monsters had to leave me alone now. I saw Captain America watching from a poster I put up a couple of days ago. I knew that he was only paper, but I kept thinking that if monsters ever did show up, Cap would sound an alarm. ‘Sides, now that I was up, I was thirsty, and a glass of water would be just about right.

  I grabbed my giraffe. Mommy and Daddy got him for me when I was little, and his neck didn’t stay upright too much anymore, but that just meant he leaned into me harder. He’s Raff. He reached things for me when I couldn’t because I didn’t tall well. I liked Raff even if Winter thought it was a stupid name.

  My sister called a lot of things stupid. She was thirteen and nearly a grown-up. She called me “Stupid” too. I thought maybe she didn’t do well with names and forgot mine was Justin because she called me Stupid a lot.

  My footie pajamas made little whisper sounds as I headed to the door. It was kind of hard for me to turn the knob because my hands were all sweaty. I wished that Raff was real and that he could do the doorknob for me. He was good at knocking things off shelves and stuff, but he couldn’t quite do twisty round parts, and doorknobs were all twisty round parts that should be banned by every house in America.

  Peeking into the hallway, I could tell that my parents’ door was open. When their door was closed, that meant I had to knock, and even when I did, Daddy got grumpy. But if the door was open, then it was okay to walk in and wake them up. They were probably already awake if they were making thud noises.

  Still, I was a little worried they wouldn’t like me seeing them “have fun” because Daddy told me that—in exactly those words—when I walked in one night when they forgot to close the door and were doing something not sleeping.

  I told him that I liked to “have fun” too, and he told me that I needed to talk to Mommy about the “birds and the bees,” which was confusing because, while birds were fun to watch, bees only wanted to sting with their butts. I didn’t want to sting anyone with my butt, and I absolutely didn’t want them stinging me.

  Grown-ups were so confusing.

  “Should we go in?” I asked Raff in my very quietest whisper.

  Raff nodded. He nodded at a lot of things. I liked that about Raff because, sometimes, I needed someone around to tell me “yes” because everyone else was so good at saying “no.”

  “Okay,” I whispered. I held Raff tight, my fist gripping his long neck as I walked into the room. After all, his plastic eyes were watching me like the moon was watching me, so it wasn’t like I was alone. Mommy and Daddy couldn’t say no to all of us, could they?

  Only they didn’t say anything at all.

  I stopped and stared because Daddy was right there, kind of hanging off the bed, his head back, and looking at me upside down. One arm was kinda up over his head, the other was somewhere in the blankets. It was a funny way to lay. I didn’t like the way Daddy was looking at me. He was looking at me the way Raff looked at me. Daddy’s eyes didn’t blink, and they looked kind of shiny and plastic and not real at all.

  There was a kind of third eye on his forehead now, which I knew hadn’t been there before. I wondered where he got it, and why he’d put it there. If I had a third eye, I’d put it on the back of my head so I could see things that came up from behind me. Because monsters liked to come up from behind little kids, so they could gobble them up before they could scream.

  Scream…

  Scream…

  I must’ve made a noise because the moon came out to look and see what was going on. Mommy and Daddy’s bedroom window got brighter, and I started to see the red.

  It was everywhere. I thought that it must be ketchup. If it was, Daddy must have broken a whole bottle ‘cause the ketchup was covering his face and rolling in and out of his open mouth. I wanted to ask why Mommy and Daddy had ketchup in bed because I wasn’t allowed to eat in my room. But Daddy wasn’t swallowing, and I didn’t think he’d answer if I asked.

  I hoped it was ketchup. I prayed it was ketchup because it was starting to look like it did when I fell on the rocks and cut my arm. When that happened last summer, the blood ran and streaked down the skin from wrist to elbow.

  Mommy bandaged my arm, and Daddy fixed the bicycle, but there wasn’t nearly so much blood then as Daddy had now. He was covered in it. I thought it must hurt, but Daddy’s eyes still didn’t blink, and he was staring at me like he didn’t want me to be there.

  Mommy bandaged owies. That’s what she did. She wrapped them and put that stuff on the cuts and scrapes that stung like crazy, but you had to have it. I liked it better when she put the bandage on and kissed my forehead and smiled, and the world was all right again. Mommy could bandage this; she could put some of the stinging stuff on Daddy and make him better and get me and Raff a glass of water.

  I trotted to the other side of the bed. I saw Mommy’s feet first, only they didn’t stand up. Her feet looked funny all slack like that, and I thought she must be very tired to sleep in such a twisty way. I thought if I touched them, she’d wake up and giggle because Mommy was ticklish. But I was scared to, and I didn’t know what to do.

  Raff said that he’d touch them, he just needed a boost. I lifted him, and Raff touched his face against her feet, but nothing happened. I tapped Raff’s nose against her, but she didn’t move her feet. I didn’t want to look at her face for some reason. I couldn’t.

  Suddenly, I didn’t want to see, I didn’t want to know. I wanted to go back to my room and hide and crawl under the blankets and stay there until the moon and Daddy stopped looking at me with unblinking eyes. I wanted the sun to come up and Mommy to make pancakes and for Daddy to be late for work and rushing around complaining like he always did.

  I wanted to go away until life was normal again.

  But even as my heart was telling me to run, my feet wanted to know. They moved closer, around the corner of the bed. I didn’t ask them to, they just did. The moon came too, and I could see that Mommy was covered in red. The sheets, the pillows, the blankets. Everything was red.

  I guessed the blankets didn’t save her. Daddy didn’t save her. Maybe some monsters weren’t afraid of Daddies or blankets, after all. I wondered if they were afraid of the light.

  I decided I didn’t want to know those kinds of monsters.

  Mommy was looking at the ceiling. She was staring at it, but it looked wrong when she did, the way it looked wrong when Daddy stared at me. I was still close to her feet. If I tickled her, maybe I could make her wake up. I reached for her foot like I’d reached for the lamp, but when I touched her foot, it was cold, and it didn’t move under my fingers.

  It wasn’t real. It wasn’t alive. It wasn’t her.

  It couldn’t be.

  I wanted Daddy, but he was still upside down. For a minute, I wondered if he was laying like that so he could slide off and check for monsters under the bed. Or maybe he already checked…and one of them got him.

  My whole body shivered, and my heart began punching at my ribs.

  I shook Mommy harder until her whole body moved. Her head turned, and there was something wrong with her neck because it twisted funny, and suddenly, there was more blood. It was on my hands and on my pajamas.

  This wasn’t my Mommy and Daddy. I was really scared now, and I wanted them to wake up now.

  I turned and screamed for my sister. She could set this right because Winter always fixed things, like when she fixed the lampshade I hit it with my ball. She could wake Mommy and Daddy, and if she wanted to call me Stupid, I didn’t care. She could call me names and beat me up and make fun of me all she wanted if she’d just wake them. Then I could get a glass of water and a kiss on the head, and they could tuck me in.

  Only, I couldn’t scream. My mouth was open, but nothing came out, even though a
part of my chest was breaking, and the pounding of my heart crashed through my ears, and I was deaf with the throb-throb-throb of it. I couldn’t even yell for help.

  I made my feet move. I forced them to turn me around, to carry me out of there, to get away from plastic eyes and funny Mommy and Daddy shaped things. I was stuck, though, my feet sticking to the floor. I realize that it was because the red stuff was on them, the rug was full of it. My feet of my pajamas were red, and they left red footprints everywhere I stepped until I was in the hallway. I didn’t remember getting there.

  I left footprints from my Mommy’s room to the hallway, and she was going to be so mad when she woke up, woke up, woke up, wake up. Suddenly, my voice came back in a shriek as loud as any firetruck.

  “WAKE UP! WAKE UP! WAKE UP!”

  I couldn’t think of my sister’s name. I couldn’t think at all. I just needed everyone to wake up, everyone needed to wake up, everyone needed to wake up, and I screamed as loud and as long as I could.

  But no one came.

  Backing down the hallway, I didn’t stop until my back hit my sister’s door. I needed to go inside and wake her up. But…what if she had a third eye too?

  Whimpering, I just stood outside her door, my hand on the knob. Raff told me to turn it, but then I heard a soft click coming from downstairs. It sounded like the front door.