Dead and Gone

by Tina Glasneck

  53

  The water of Tampa Bay shimmered in the distance, a deep teal blue as sunlight glinted off the tops of the waves. Salsa music drifted across the beach from a radio playing somewhere to Cait’s right, lively and enthusiastic but soft as an afterthought. Cait’s eyes were closed and she felt warm and drowsy, but still she caught bits and pieces of conversations, some in English and some in Spanish, as groups of people passed her beach chair, all chattering and laughing and enjoying the tropical Florida heat.

  Her right arm sweated and itched incessantly. Surgeons had performed skin grafts to repair the damage done to the arm and had then covered it in antibiotic dressing before wrapping the whole thing in swaths of bandages, all of which needed to be cleaned and changed daily.

  Cait wasn’t about to complain, though. The doctors had said there was no structural damage and thus every reason to believe she would regain full use of the arm, although it would always look a little…off, with discolored skin from the grafts and small scars crisscrossing it like a road map. She considered herself incredibly, unbelievably fortunate not to have died an agonizing death in that tiny house in Everett, Massachusetts.

  Every few seconds she opened her eyes, squinting against the hazy brightness, reassuring herself she really was still sitting on the beach in Florida. She reached out to touch her mother’s arm. Received a comforting squeeze in return.

  She sighed tiredly. The worst part, now that the ordeal had ended, was her inability to get anything close to a good night’s sleep. Every night was the same: she would begin drifting off and the crippling fear would strike, the terrifying certainty that Milo Cain was lurking at the foot of her bed, knife in hand, waiting to begin peeling back her skin once more.

  The psychologist said it was a natural reaction; that it was to be expected and would begin to fade over time—the trauma was only a couple of weeks old, after all—but Cait wondered whether that was true. The psychologist hadn’t been in that house, hadn’t gone under the knife with no anesthesia. The psychologist didn’t understand. Not really.

  But Virginia understood, and that was why, no matter how many times Cait reached over in the warm Tampa sunshine to make physical contact, no matter how many times she started a seemingly normal conversation about the weather, or where to eat lunch, only to dissolve into tears for no apparent reason, her mother never complained. She never told Cait to buck up, or to be strong, or to tough it out because tomorrow was another day; she never once said any of those things.

  Because Virginia understood.

  Virginia told Cait that watching while her newfound daughter, her own flesh and blood, was carved up by her newfound son, also her own flesh and blood, while bound and helpless, tied to a chair in her own living room, was the worst thing she had ever experienced in a life that had seen more than its share of trauma.

  Cait reached over once again and stroked her mother’s arm and mumbled, “Tell me again.”

  And Virginia understood.

  “Well, let’s see,” she said amiably, as if sharing her recipe for lemon meringue pie. “You were conscious when the police SWAT team came charging into the room. That was right after you shot Milo.”

  She said it matter-of-factly, like it was no big deal. But Cait knew better.

  She swallowed hard and nodded. She did not look at her mother or even open her eyes aside from her almost unconscious little blinking motion every few seconds to assure herself she was still on the beach. She didn’t like thinking about that afternoon two weeks ago but couldn’t stop. And hearing her mother tell the story was cathartic. She had asked Virginia to tell it dozens of times over the past two weeks.

  “After you passed out,” Virginia continued, “the policemen split up, one checking Milo to be sure he was no longer a threat—as if there could be any doubt, after taking two .38 slugs in the head, one of them through his eye—another freeing me from the chair, and an officer each tending to you and Kevin.”

  “Tell me about Kevin,” Cait said, certain Virginia had known the request was coming. It was the same every time.

  “Kevin had lost a lot of blood and the stab wound had punctured a lung, the blade passing ever-so-close to his heart. In fact, the young man who checked him out couldn’t find a pulse and told his partners that Kevin was already dead. Needless to say, the medical personnel were inside the house the second the SWAT team radioed that it was clear. They stabilized you and then wheeled everyone out to waiting ambulances. That was the last time I saw Kevin.”

  Tears filled Cait’s eyes as they always did at this point in the story. It was like she was watching a horror movie where she knew every plot twist and every line of dialogue by heart, but still could not keep from screaming when the boogeyman jumped out of the closet. She hadn’t even managed to stay conscious to see her fiancé wheeled out on a stretcher after he had sacrificed everything in his failed attempt to save them.

  “The last time you saw him,” Cait repeated wonderingly.

  “You mean the last time until after the surgery,” a voice boomed from behind them, startling Cait and causing her to jump. She swiveled in her beach chair and drank in the sight of her boyfriend, his chest still swaddled in bandages covered by a light T-shirt. He looked ridiculous among all the tanned, shirtless surfer dudes dotting the beach, but also looked more desirable to Cait than all of them put together.

  Kevin took in the look on her face and chuckled. He handed Virginia a lavender-colored frozen drink in a big plastic cup with a tiny umbrella sticking out the top before easing into a beach chair next to Cait with a satisfied sigh.

  “I’m telling you,” he said to her, “you really need to try these frozen pina coladas. They’re unbelievable.”

  “I’ll pass,” she said. “I don’t want to get drunk. I want to stay sober so I can look at you with clear eyes.”

  Kevin laughed. “To each his own. But I think Virginia is being a little overdramatic. It’s not like I was that close to death. I just chose an inopportune time to take a little nap, that’s all.”

  “Yeah, right,” Cait shot back. “I’ve heard this story a hundred times and I’ve talked to the doctors. They said if the rescue had taken five minutes longer, you would have died right there in the chair, so don’t give me that macho male crap!” She smiled as she said it, still amazed at their incredible good fortune.

  Cait knew she had lost a lot on that couch—shooting her brother less than twenty-four hours after learning of his existence had opened a hole in her heart that would never completely heal—but she knew also she had had no choice in the matter, that Milo Cain had been irreparably broken and would not have stopped until everyone inside the house was dead, and that made all the difference in the world.

  She felt sadness for what she had done but no guilt.

  And while the sadness of losing her brother might never disappear, Cait understood she had gained something as well: a mother who would now be in her life forever. Virginia had already made plans to sell the house in Everett and move to Tampa permanently, and was on her way to becoming friends not just with Kevin, but with Cait’s adoptive mother as well.

  Milo had miraculously survived the shooting despite the delay in receiving medical attention, but was presently hospitalized and in a coma, and would require months of convalescence, maybe years.

  In any event, according to the Suffolk County district attorney, he would never see the outside of a prison again. The full extent of Mr. Midnight’s crimes, of his horrific brutality, was only beginning to be uncovered, and the D.A. assured Virginia and Cait that there was already more than enough evidence to keep Milo under lock and key for the rest of his life.

  Cait blinked and smiled at Kevin.

  She squeezed her mother’s hand.

  “You know what? I’ve changed my mind. Maybe I’ll have that drink after all.”

  Epilogue

  Footsteps echoed as the nurse moved away, waddling down the shadowy corridor of the prison infirmary like an overweight duck
. Still in a coma two months after being shot in the face, Milo was unable to move a muscle, not even to open his one remaining eye.

  What the others didn’t realize, however, what they failed to understand, was that he could still hear and comprehend. In fact, although it had changed, he still possessed an acute awareness of his surroundings.

  Milo paid particular attention to the doctors, who proclaimed, with their stuffy country-club Ivy-League medical school wisdom, that he would likely never regain consciousness, and even if he did, would remain forever in a vegetative state, paralyzed from the neck down, the result of a broken vertebra suffered from falling to the floor after being shot. It seemed a dismal future, and in those first agonizing days and weeks after the ill-fated confrontation in Everett, Milo had wallowed in utter solitary despair. He was unable to talk or to communicate in any way, a situation that left him desperate to bring an end to his misery, through death if necessary.

  Not that he had any way of making that happen.

  And then something strange and wonderful had occurred, almost mystical in its revelatory significance.

  About three weeks after the Everett fiasco, a nurse had been bustling around his lonely hospital room, changing his bed linens. She was ignoring him completely, of course, not that Milo minded. What would she possibly be expected to say to an unresponsive lump of human tissue huddled under threadbare prison hospital blankets, especially when that lump of tissue had been “Mr. Midnight,” one of Boston’s most notorious serial killers?

  Milo knew he would remember the following moment with the fondness and clarity other people reserved for their weddings, or the birth of their children. The coma and brain damage the gunshot wound had caused hadn’t eliminated the mental movies he’d been subjected to his entire life; if anything, their frequency and severity had grown steadily stronger and more vivid, and as the nurse worked, he felt one blast into his head.

  The nurse was daydreaming about her boyfriend, recalling their previous night’s sexual encounter with what Milo considered admirable enthusiasm. He joined her in recalling the intensity of her climax, and then, without so much as a single conscious thought on his part, pushed a suggestion into her unsuspecting brain.

  The nurse dropped immediately to the floor, panting and moaning and thrashing in a thirty-second orgasm. Afterward, she lay still for a moment. Then she rose, embarrassed and confused, but thankful no one besides the inanimate lump of tissue had been present to witness her carnal display. The nurse had hurriedly finished changing the sheets and then departed.

  Just like that, Milo realized he had not lost everything. He had not come close to losing everything. In fact, it seemed he had gained something of extreme significance. He immediately stopped yearning for death and began testing his newfound ability.

  And the more Milo tested the limits of his power, the more he discovered there weren’t many. Maybe there weren’t any.

  What had once seemed like the ultimate prison sentence—the solitary confinement of his coma—now struck Milo Cain as nothing more than an opportunity to expand his consciousness...and his gift. Because he was free—truly free—in all the ways that mattered.

  And now he was unstoppable.

  THE END

  Learn what’s next for Milo Cain and Cait in the shocking sequel to Mr. Midnight, After Midnight.

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  About the Author

  Allan Leverone is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of twenty-one novels in the horror, thriller and noir/crime genres, as well as four novellas and dozens of short stories. A former winner of the Derringer Award for excellence in short mystery fiction, Allan lives in Londonderry, New Hampshire with his wife of more than thirty years, three grown children and three beautiful grandchildren.

  Connect at AllanLeverone.com

  Chris Patchell: Deadly Lies

  Deadly Lies

  By Chris Patchell

  Author’s Rating:

  Language: *** Sexuality: ** Violence: ***

  For your convenience each book in this collection has been rated by the author for language, sexuality and violence, so that you as a reader can make an informed choice.

  Our collection includes books that span the intensity range.

  Language Intensity:

  * - No or mild profanity, if any

  ** - Stronger profanity, with up to 5 uses of the f-word

  *** - Strong language

  Sexuality Intensity:

  * - Sexual reference or no sexuality

  ** - Sexual reference which might include some details.

  *** - Intense, descriptive sexual scenes

  Violence Intensity

  * - Violence, but no gory details.

  ** - Mild violence, fairly detailed with some blood

  *** - Detailed violence

  Copyright © 2013 by Chris Patchell

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 1494296527

  ISBN 13: 9781494296520

  Blurb

  Hurt Jill Shannon once, shame on you. Hurt Jill Shannon twice, and she'll bury you six feet under.

  After running fast and far from her painful childhood, Jill Shannon has made it. She has a successful career and is married to Detective Alex Shannon. Together they live out what seems to be a perfect life in Seattle.

  The vow she made as a teenager to never again be a victim lies dormant—until one day a reporter lures her to his hotel room under the pretense of an interview—and suddenly it all comes rushing back.

  Jill seeks revenge on the reporter, triggering a series of events that leads Jill down a wormhole of retribution, forcing her to spin an ever-widening web of lies.

  Meanwhile, Alex is on the case of a series of murders that began as cyber relationships. There seems to be a familiar fingerprint on these crimes, but Alex refuses to believe that the murderer could be so close to him.

  For those who couldn’t put down The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo comes a thrilling ride a la Mr. and Mrs. Smith, where husband and wife stand on opposite sides of a divide created by lies and rooted in a dark and deadly past.

  Deadly Lies is Book 1 of the Jill Shannon Murder Series

  I like a look of Agony,

  Because I know it’s true—

  Men do not sham Convulsion,

  Nor simulate, a Throe—

  The Eyes glaze once—and that is Death—

  Impossible to feign

  The Beads upon the Forehead

  By homely Anguish strung.

  —Emily Dickinson

  Prologue

  Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen.

  She ticked the seconds off silently in her head. Her heart hammered painfully, the desperate waves of panic making it impossible to think. Stay calm. Stay calm, she repeated as she rifled through the drawers of what once had been her mother’s dresser.

  Twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four.

  Shit. It had to be here. This is right where her mother always kept it.

  She slammed the drawer closed. The clap of cheap wood echoed in the quiet house. The jarring noise was a dead giveaway.

  It didn’t matter though. She was out of time.

  His boots rang hollow on the stairs. He was coming. She pushed back the waves of panic and tried to focus.

  Thirty-three, thirty-four, thirty-five.

  It took a total of forty-five seconds for him to climb the stairs and reach her bedroom door. She should know. She’d counted it enough times, lying awake in bed listening to the heavy tread of his footsteps and dreading what would come next.

  He passed the top of the landing and headed down the narrow hall. She could feel the reverberation of his boots on the bare hardwood floors as he drew closer. Maybe five more seconds, if he’s drunk. Maybe. And then he would burst through the door.

  Panic overwhelmed her defenses and struck her full force. She knew hiding was futile. She knew he would fi
nd her. Unable to stop herself, she ducked into the closet.

  The dark welcomed her, and she slid through the curtain of her mother’s clothes. Her back softly collided with the wall. Inch by inch, she sank down until she sat hunched on the floor. Waiting.

  “Ready or not, here I come,” her stepfather, Master Sergeant Samuel Morris, called out in that creepy, singsong voice, like this was some kind of sick game.

  Her hands shook, and she clasped them in a tight knot under her chin. Her mother’s scent—baby powder and cinnamon—filled the small space, enveloping her like a warm cloak, and she wished she could hide here forever. Safe. Untouched.

  Tears stung her eyes. God, she missed her mother. It was bad before. His punishments had always been harsh, but since her mother’s death, everything had changed.

  Hot tears poured down her cheeks. She brushed them roughly away with trembling hands and cursed herself for being weak, for giving into her fear. She had to be strong. She must not cry. If there was one thing Sam liked more than the chase-me game, it was her tears, and she had no wish to give him what he wanted. He could take, but she would not give.

  She bit the inside of her cheek until the rusty tang of blood filled her mouth. Sometimes the pain helped her focus. She couldn’t win, of course. He was too powerful, too relentless. But she refused to give up. There had to be a way out of the trap. There had to be. She just had to live long enough to find it.