“You’ve got my eyes,” Myron said. Noah did not respond. “Okay, so why are you here?”
“I want to know how you got your hooks into her,” Noah said.
“Kizzy? I didn’t go to Kizzy. She called me,” Myron said. “She was low on gas, out of cash. Said she needed—”
“I’m not asking about Kizzy. I’m asking about my mother. I want you to tell me how you got your hooks into my mother.”
“Rainbow? What’s to tell?” Myron said. “Bow was young, empty, confused—you know, like every other teenage girl. She was new to the area and had no friends. She was easy pickings.”
“Go on.”
“Go on with what?” Myron said. “I sold drugs. She bought them. She got pregnant, had you, and kept using. Rainbow couldn’t handle her shit, and—well—you know the rest.”
“No, I don’t know the rest,” Noah said. “That’s why I’m here.”
Myron shrugged and sat silently.
“What drugs did you sell her?”
“The usual,” Myron said. “Started with pot, moved her to pills, then on to the hard stuff—heroine, crack. Why do you want to know all this? What does it matter? She’s dead, end of story. You don’t happen to have a cigarette, do you?”
“Were you with her the night she died?”
Myron shook his head. “Nah, she went out to the cabin alone.”
“She wasn’t alone,” Noah said.
“That’s right,” Myron said. “She took you along with her that night. Some mom, huh?”
“So when she died, what? You just said screw it? I wasn’t your problem?”
“No. That’s not how it went down,” Myron said, leaning forward in his chair. “I didn’t abandon you.”
“Bullshit,” Noah said.
“No, it’s not,” Myron said. “I’m probably going to spend the rest of my life in a six-by-ten cell, and I’m going to spend a lot of time regretting the shit I’ve done. But abandoning you? That won’t be one of the things I regret because I didn’t. I stepped up, Noah. But your grandmother and grandfather paid me to stay away. That’s the truth. Ask Kizzy.”
“Are you telling me that after they found me in the cabin you tried to—”
“Whoa, wait,” Myron said. “The cabin? I don’t know what crock of crap they’ve been serving you, Noah, but you weren’t found at the cabin. After Rainbow OD’d, someone took you from the cabin and dropped you off at a church. I’ve never been able to figure out who it was.”
Noah stayed silent, drinking in what he’d just heard.
There was only one person it could have been.
Onyx.
LYNCHBURG, VIRGINIA
DECEMBER 20, 2010
Maggie held the cellphone to her ear with one hand and steered the vehicle with the other, the headlights of the Taurus cutting through the darkness.
Again, the call went to voice mail.
Maggie tossed the phone on the passenger seat without bothering to leave a message. She’d left at least twenty messages over the weekend without a single reply. Now she was worried sick. Driving to Lynchburg seemed like the only course of action available.
Maggie parked on the street outside the Commonwealth Hotel and went straight to the stairway without bothering to check in with the grungy clerk reading a magazine at the front desk. Though she’d never been to the room before, she knew Newt’s room number from having FedEx’d him the Leg Collector files.
Maggie found room 206 and knocked. “Newt, it’s Maggie. Let me in.”
Maggie listened but heard nothing. She pounded on the door again, harder this time. Still no response.
Maggie went back down the stairs and approached the clerk behind the front desk.
“Can I help you?”
“Yes, please ring room 206 for me.”
“Uh, I don’t think 206 wants to be bothered.”
“Really? How do you know that?” Maggie asked.
“Because when I saw him, he said, ‘I don’t want to be bothered.’”
“When was that?” Maggie asked.
He shrugged. “Yesterday maybe? Or the day before.”
“You’ve got a master key, right? Give it to me.”
“I’m not allowed to.”
Maggie held up her wallet and flashed her bureau ID at the man. “You are now.”
Maggie slid the master key in the lock.
“I’m going back downstairs,” the clerk said from behind her in the hallway.
“No, stay put until I tell you to leave,” Maggie said.
There could be any number of reasons why Newt hadn’t answered his cell phone. Some of them weren’t good.
Maggie took a deep breath, turned the knob, and pushed the door open. The room was dark. “The switch is to your right,” the clerk said from behind her.
Maggie reached inside and found the light switch—flipped it—and took a step back. Every foot of the room, from ceiling to floor, had been turned into a giant spider web made with string. Taped to the web in various places were photographs of the Leg Collector’s victims.
“I’m leaving now,” the clerk said before walking off. Maggie ignored him, doing her best to wrap her mind around what she was seeing.
Then,Finally, Maggie spotted Newt sitting cross-legged on the floor in the center of the enormous web—his eyes closed, wearing headphones—completely oblivious to what was happening around him.
Maggie stepped into the room and closed the door behind her. “Newt,” she said loudly. “Newt!”
Newt opened his eyes and pulled the headphones off. “Maggie? What are you doing here?”
“Well, I wouldn’t be here if you’d answer your damn phone or checked your voice mail,” Maggie said. “What in the hell is this supposed to be?”
“It’s a web,” Newt said.
“I can see it’s a web, Newt,” Maggie said, shaking her head. “YGod, you look like hell, —you know that? ” Maggie said. “When’s the last time you ate or slept?”
“What are you listening to?”
“‘Hallelujah’ by Leonard Cohen,” Newt said. Newt pulled himself to his feet, trying not to disturb the strings running all around him. “I don’t know, y
“God, you look like hell—you know that?” Maggie said. “When’s the last time you ate or slept?”
Newt shrugged. “Yesterday sometime, I guess.”
“Take a shower and get dressed,” Maggie said. “We need to get some food in you. Then you can tell me about this insane web of yours.”
Newt finished his second cheeseburger and wiped the last of the bit of ketchup off his the plate with a french the last of his french fryies and popped it in them in his mouth.
“Better, huh?” Maggie said. “Now, So, explain that crazy tell me about this web of yours.”
“What’s to explain? The problem with an evidence wall is that it’s two dimensional—height and width—which is fine for visualizing connections between people and places—”
“—but it’s hard to build in the passage of time,” Maggie said. “That’s where the dimension of depth comes in.”
“Exactly,” Newt said. “So, I started the web on one end of the room, running a string from floor to ceiling and stapling the earliest known information about the Leg Collector to that string. Then I worked from there, tying connector strings from one strand to the next when and where connections were made. I’ve tried everything else I could think of to catch this guy.”
“It’s not just you, Newt,” Maggie said. “Pipi’s got forty special agents working the Leg Collector case. Forty. And none of them have come up with a damn thing. But I’ll tell you this—not one of them has an enormous, three-dimensional spider web in their office.”
“What’s to tell?” Newt said. “I’ve tried every approach known to man to catch this guy and come up empty.”
“So you thought building an enormous, three-dimensional spider web in your hotel room was going to help?”
“Yeah, well, I figured that
if No, not really, but I had to keep myself busy,” Newt said. “Besides, if we ever do catch this guy, they’re going to want to turn this into a TV series. Have you evern seen a serial killer movie or TV series that didn’t have a big wall of evidence?”
They both laughed.
“God, Newt, that’s why I fell in love with you,” I’m trying to understand you. I really am,” Maggie said.
“What’s to understand, Maggie? I failed. Seventeen years and the only thing I know for sure is this guy is right—he is smarter than I am.”
“Oh, it’s just you? There are forty special agents working the Leg Collector case, Newt. Forty. None of them has come up with a damn thing. Maybe it’s time you got off the pity train and—”
Without warning, Newt leaned across the table and grabbed Maggie’s shoulders, pulled her toward him, and kissed her hard.
She didn’t kiss him back.
“I’m engaged,” Maggie blurted outsaid.
“What?”
“I said, I’m engaged, Newt. I’m going to get married.,”
Maggie said.
Newt looked down at the ring finger of Maggie’s left hand and shook his head. The ring impression on her skin was clearly visible.
No wonder he couldn’t catch the Leg Collector, Newt thought. “See what I mean? AEven a half-assed agent with two months of an ounce of training would have noticed.
“Nothing in the universe is good or bad, big or small, hot or cold, up or down, right or wrong. The only thing that matters is the perspective of the observer.”
The 31 Immutable Matters
of Life & Death
All your favorite characters are planning to be there.
What about you?
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The story continues in
Onyx Webb: Book Nine.
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About Diandra Archer…
With two previous #1 Amazon bestsellers to their credit, Richard Fenton & Andrea Waltz—writing as Diandra Archer—have had a burning desire to create a paranormal ghost series for as long as they can remember.
Then, one day while walking around Lake Eola in the heart of downtown Orlando, the right idea struck. “The minute we came up with Onyx Webb—a ghost that would give anything for one more day of life, watching in torment while the living sleep-walk through life like ghosts—we knew we had it,” Andrea says.
“The story lines for the major characters were created within a matter of days,” Richard adds. “But getting a collection of complex characters from mind to page—in a 10-book saga that spans more than a century, in an easy-to-consume format—was another matter entirely.”
When not traveling, Richard & Andrea can be found in Orlando, Florida—typing as fast as they can—with their ghost cat, Courage, at their feet.
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