Don't Even Breathe

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Don't Even Breathe Page 25

by Keith Houghton


  Tyler said a nervy, “Hey.”

  “Tyler, huh? Heard a lot about you, kid. You’re Maggie’s nephew, right?”

  Tyler glanced sidelong at Maggie. “Uh, yeah. Right.”

  Maggie’s cheeks were on fire. She was pleading silently with Nick to back off, painfully aware that if he pushed Tyler too hard, Tyler would push back, and with lethal force. The only trouble was, as a journalist, Nick couldn’t help being pushy.

  “You like pool parties, kid?” Nick said.

  Tyler’s mouth was a hard line.

  “Your aunt Maggie here will attest to this. I throw them all the time. Loud music. Lots of girls. Beer on tap. Drive the neighbors nuts.”

  “Nick . . . ,” Maggie began.

  “Thing is,” Nick said, ignoring her, “I’ve some pool furniture that needs moving. And my back isn’t what it used to be. You look like a strong kid. I’ll give you ten bucks if you lend me a hand. Only take a minute at the most.”

  Maggie sensed Tyler’s nervousness move up a level, saw his hand twitch behind his leg. “Nick,” she said, “I’m really sorry. But we need to go. I’ll get Loomis to call you about the Devil’s Landing gig.”

  For a second Nick looked down at her through buttonhole eyes. Then he leaned up off the door. “Oh, hey, I love that band. Okay. It’s a deal. Listen, you guys drive safe now, you hear? Nice to meet you, Tyler.”

  Through the rearview mirror, Maggie saw Nick hopping back to his house as she drove up the street.

  Chapter Thirty

  BURNT OFFERINGS

  Maggie pressed for information, but Tyler remained mostly uncommunicative on the fifteen-minute ride to the lake. Despite the breeze blustering through the car, he was sweating profusely, every now and then wiping a hand over his face.

  She wanted to know what they had planned for her when they got there. She wanted to know the ins and outs of how they had abducted her father. She wanted to know the exact role that Tyler had played in both Dana’s and Lindy’s murders. She wanted to know why Tyler was doing this, and what was in it for him.

  She appealed to any sense of morality and justice he had in him. She reminded him of the consequences of his actions, worsening the longer he held out.

  Above all, she wanted assurance that her father was all right and that no harm would come to him if she submitted to their demands.

  Finally, Tyler told her he wanted her to “shut the heck up,” or he’d personally see to it that her father never saw sunrise.

  Easy to be bold with a gun in your hand.

  With the Luger pointed at her side, he instructed her to follow a circuitous route to the lake—Maggie suspected to avoid traffic cameras—and for her to observe the speed limits.

  Maggie had no problem with complying. Even though she wanted to stand on the gas and race to her father’s side, she deliberately took it easy, letting each red-lit intersection delay their journey just a little bit longer.

  Tyler’s eyes never moved off her the whole while. And each time she happened to glance at him, she saw a deadness in his gaze reminiscent of a death row inmate with only hours left to live.

  Compliance and then confrontation.

  Maggie had to play this by ear. And carefully. Use all her senses and years of experience to switch the game around in a way that minimized collateral damage. At some point Tyler’s attention would become divided; he couldn’t watch her indefinitely. And when that opportunity arose, she’d be ready to take control.

  On Ocoee Parkway, near the high school, an old black Civic straddled the curb in the same spot that had been occupied by Tyler’s red Charger on Saturday evening. Black as night, with moonlight glinting off its windshield.

  Kristen’s car.

  Maggie pulled in behind it and cut the engine.

  “You still have time to do the right thing,” she told Tyler.

  Tyler signaled with the pistol. “Out.”

  And they made their way off-road, on foot, downslope along the grassy trail, and into the dark woods. Warm sand under her feet, and only the seeping moonlight to light the way.

  Although she wanted to, Maggie didn’t rush. The lack of footwear wasn’t a big deal on the fine soil, but the trail snaking through the trees was littered with brittle leaves and needling twigs. Several times she winced as debris stabbed her soles.

  Tyler kept pace a yard behind, covering her with the Luger.

  She wondered if it was even functional. It looked old. Probably an antique owned by his grandfather, never meant to be fired. Guns were Loomis’s forte; she didn’t even know if the ammo was still available for a Luger. For all she knew, the magazine could be empty.

  Could she take the risk it wasn’t?

  Her head buzzed with counterstrike scenarios.

  In her five years as a detective, Maggie could count on one hand how many times she’d found herself in a fix of this magnitude, when her own life was so clearly teetering in the balance.

  None quite this personal.

  Yet, it wasn’t her own life she feared for right now. It was her father’s. Her innocent dad who didn’t deserve being dragged into a twenty-year-old feud, partly of her doing.

  Try as she might, she still couldn’t fathom why Kristen had chosen to involve him in the first place, or how Kristen had known where to find him.

  It occurred to her that there might have been more to that brief encounter in the house the day of the party than he was letting on.

  Did Kristen harbor a grudge against him all these years, and this was her chance to exact payback?

  Other than the fact that his revolver had killed Dana, what else connected him to the homicides?

  Was he involved?

  The thought stung in her brain, and she swatted it away like an angry wasp.

  Tyler’s hand pushed between her shoulder blades, shoving her forward, and she stumbled onward in the dark.

  Given the right distraction, she knew she could take the boy by surprise and disarm him. Turn the tables. Bring about a satisfactory conclusion to her abduction. Although Tyler seemed muscular, his bulk was all confined to his upper body. On balance, this inverted-triangle shape penalized him, giving Maggie the advantage when it came to agility. Literally, she could run rings around him while he lumbered to land a single blow.

  Kick out his knees and he would go down like a felled tree.

  But a successful self-defense relied on prior knowledge of all the variables. And right now, she was headed into a confrontation blind and uninformed.

  Plus, she had her father to consider.

  Bands of pale moonlight painted zebra stripes in the woods. Maggie edged her way through the spiky palmetto, following the sinuous trail to the lake.

  She still couldn’t figure out how Tyler had come to be in cahoots with Kristen.

  At what point did their paths cross?

  Why had he chosen to do her bidding?

  Maggie rounded the last bend, the mawlike entrance to Devil’s Landing coming into view. Yellowy light flickering through the trees.

  “Keep moving,” Tyler said from behind her.

  She ducked into the clearing, expecting to see Kristen waiting for her. Kristen, with a tale to tell about killing Dana. Digging up the past and dumping all the hurt on Maggie. A flimsy excuse about homophobia that wouldn’t wash with her. A game of blame and cowardice and deflection, constructed as a defense for her despicable behavior. Not enough. Maggie’s analytical brain needed resolution. An answer to the one question that had been eating away at her after discovering Dana’s true identity on Halloween.

  Why?

  But to her surprise, the clearing was empty.

  The firelight, she realized, was coming from out on the water. Specifically, the small reed mound lying twenty feet offshore.

  “Far enough,” Tyler said as she came to the silt beach. Mud oozing between her toes.

  The lake spread out before her, moonlight transmuting the flat water to quicksilver.

  There were three p
eople on the mud mound, two men sitting on either side of a lit garden torch that had been stabbed into the earth, its long flame licking at the breeze. A witch’s broomstick on fire. Behind, in the reeds, Maggie could see a woman in clothes that matched Tyler’s, her sweatshirt’s hood pulled up, her face in shadow.

  Both men had their wrists bound with silvery duct tape. One of them was Thomas Cullen, and the other was her father.

  Maggie’s heart leaped in her chest.

  She took a step forward, squelching soft mud underfoot, but Tyler caught her by the arm, holding her back from the water’s edge.

  “Don’t,” he said, prodding the Luger in her sore side.

  Pain flared, and Maggie’s breathing quickened.

  Her dad looked ancient, withered, his thinning hair plastered to his scalp, his sodden clothes hanging. But thankfully, no signs of damage.

  The same couldn’t be said for Cullen. His face was busted up and bloody, one eye swollen shut. Bloodstains on his shirt, a torn collar, and one shoe missing.

  Tyler had beaten Cullen to a pulpy mess.

  There was a distinct chemical odor in the air, and Maggie realized with horror that both men had been drenched in gasoline. One wrong move and they would burn alive.

  Fear erupted through her vocal cords. “Dad!” Maggie strained against Tyler’s grasp, but his grip resisted. “Dad! Are you okay?”

  He lifted his chin, just enough to level his gaze on her, raising his tied hands at the same time to indicate he was in a predicament, but otherwise all right. He went to speak, but nothing came out.

  Maggie had a lump of lead in her belly.

  On the mud mound, the woman stepped forward into the flickering light, removing her hood at the same time. “Hello, Maggie,” she called across the water.

  Maggie felt her airway close, and she gaped, breathless, wordless.

  It was all she could do.

  The woman on the mound wasn’t Kristen Falchuck.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  LOW CALORIFIC VALUE

  Maggie’s mind spun, her thoughts cartwheeling, unraveling. It was like she was on a carousel, seemingly stationary while the whole world orbited in a blur. Thoughts hurtling away at a hundred miles an hour.

  Round and round, but then coming to a sudden jerking stop, centering on . . .

  Dana Cullen?

  Maggie felt dizzy, queasy.

  How could this be?

  It seemed impossible. But there she was: standing twenty feet away—the grown-up version of Maggie’s childhood friend, in the flesh.

  Dana Cullen.

  Slightly heavier than the skinny girl of Maggie’s memory. Older, for sure. Her pixie-faced youthfulness padded out, jowly. The shoulder-length hair that Maggie had seen in Dana’s driver’s license photo now cut short and bleached blonde. But definitely her. The sullen mask, those eternally hurting eyes—unmistakably Rita, even in moonlight.

  She was alive!

  It took Maggie a second to register the enormity of what her eyes were seeing, convinced at first that the gasoline fumes must be affecting her vision.

  Everything she’d pieced together over the last two days, every murder clue and bit of evidence, every thread woven into the fabric of the case, insisted that Kristen should be the one standing here.

  Not Dana.

  Anyone but Dana.

  Yet here she was.

  Maggie’s senses shrank back at the sight of her, tunneling her vision until Dana became the focus of everything, and Maggie was spellbound.

  “You thought I was dead, didn’t you?” Dana said before Maggie could summon up a response. “Well, tough luck. As you can see, I’m very much alive, and I intend to stay this way. Unfortunately, I can’t promise the same for you.”

  In Maggie’s seesawing mind, two trains of thought careered toward one another down the same length of track: her natural impulse to celebrate the fact that her childhood friend was alive, and her nurtured instinct to arrest her.

  The first reaction would allow Maggie to apologize profusely for her bullying—something she wished she had been able to do for so very long. The second reaction would bring closure in a different kind of way. Case closure.

  Maggie was torn, knowing that no matter which train she rode, a wreck was inevitable.

  But she couldn’t just stand here waiting for it to happen. Every second she wasted now was a second closer to that calamitous finale.

  It could only mean one thing, the fact that Dana was standing here.

  “You killed Kristen,” Maggie said, breaking the spell. “And you faked your own death.”

  Her words carried over the calm water like a cloud of angry wasps, stinging every bit of flesh they touched.

  It sounded extreme: Dana killing Kristen. Why would any sane person do such a thing? At what point did killing someone ever become the only viable option? When presented with the unfathomable, Maggie always asked herself, Why would anyone in their right mind choose murder over mediation?

  Dana killed Kristen.

  “It was Kristen, here, on Halloween,” Maggie said, her mind working furiously. “You killed her and then you burned her. Made her unrecognizable. You planted your ID. And you cut off her finger so that I’d think it was you.”

  A slanted smile broke out on Dana’s face. “Oh my,” she said. “No wonder you’re a detective, sweetheart. Look at how smart you got.”

  It was Rita’s voice all right. Maybe an octave deeper than Maggie remembered, but undeniably hers.

  As though a switch had been thrown, Dana’s smile vanished. “But if you think this is the point where I make some tear-jerking woe-is-me speech about being a bullied teenager and the poor unloved wife of a cheating, scumbag husband, you’ve got another think coming. I didn’t bring you here so that we could swap confessions, Maggie, or air our sins and be best friends all over again. That’s never going to happen. I brought you here so that you could bear witness, and then die.”

  Dana uprooted the torch and, without the slightest hesitation, thrust it at her husband’s face. His head burst into flame, his screams ringing out across the water like a death knell.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  BAPTISM OF FIRE

  Cullen’s bloodcurdling screech hit Maggie like the concussion wave from an explosion, and she reacted on instinct, twisting her arm out of Tyler’s grasp and plunging into the lake, splashing her way through the shallow water, focused solely on reaching Cullen and putting out the fire. No idea if Tyler was chasing after her.

  Cullen writhed on the mud, his screams already dying. Like a flaming log, he rolled to the water’s edge and became still. Skin crackling. Bits of charred clothing rising on the thermals. Within seconds, the fire had completely taken hold, turning him into a burning effigy of himself.

  Soaked, Maggie waded out, then dropped to her buttocks on the mound. It was instinct to grab Cullen and haul him into the water. But she fought the impulse, knowing that it would mean reaching into the flames with her hands and possibly getting burned. Her feet were already wet, providing a little more protection from the flames. Pushing with both feet, Maggie rolled Cullen into the water.

  Fire seared her skin, excruciating pain leaping up her legs.

  But she didn’t stop kicking until he was fully afloat.

  Cullen’s body hissed and spat as it flopped into the lake, floating facedown, a mixture of steam and smoke rising.

  Maggie scrambled to her feet and followed him in, the water’s relative coolness sucking the ferocious heat from her feet. Parts of Cullen’s clothing were still ablaze, the gasoline feeding the fire. She manhandled him onto his back, splashing water over him, more steam hissing.

  But her efforts to save him were all in vain.

  Cullen’s mashed-up face was a black crepe mask, blue smoke coiling from his mouth, the smell of scorched skin thick in her nose.

  She swung her gaze at Dana, every nerve in her body electrified.

  Dana was holding the flickering torch
over Maggie’s father. “It’s your choice who dies next,” she said.

  Her slanted smile made a brief reappearance.

  Dana was enjoying this.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  HOSTAGE

  Utter silence descended over water, an absence of sound like no other that Maggie had ever experienced, the only noise coming from the blood thundering through her brain. Cullen’s screams had silenced all the insect activity in the vicinity, deadening the air.

  Cullen’s dead body floated at her feet, nightmarish, the stench of barbecued skin pungent.

  “Let my dad go,” Maggie said. “Take me instead.”

  “Trade places?”

  “It’s what you want, isn’t it?” She stepped up onto the mound, the silt as sharp as broken glass underfoot. “He doesn’t deserve any of this. Imagine if he was your own dad, sitting here, scared out of his wits, and you had the power to do the right thing. You’d let him go, wouldn’t you?”

  Maggie knew that if she could put some breathing space between the flame and her father that he would stand a much higher chance of surviving. As it was, a stray spark could ignite the gasoline at any moment, like a flash in a powder keg. Cullen had gone up in flames within seconds, dying horribly a moment later. She couldn’t let that happen to her father.

  “Let’s be honest here,” Maggie said, trying her best to keep her fear from creeping into her voice. “Your issue isn’t with him. You got what you wanted. I’m here now. This is about you and me, Dana. And what I did to you. Focus on that. You need me to feel your pain and pay for what I did. This whole drama isn’t about anyone but you and me. Don’t turn this into something it’s not.”

  Purposely, Maggie didn’t mention the horror floating in the lake behind her. She avoided the subject of Dana murdering her husband, and the catalyst that had compelled her to slaughter him in cold blood. Crisis negotiation training had given Maggie the tools to defuse tense standoffs, but on-the-street experience had taught her never to confront killers on their motives in the heat of the moment, when tempers were still hot and the mood still volatile. Making potentially incendiary comments could kindle the crisis and blow up in her face. It was a surefire way to end things badly for all concerned. Cullen was beyond saving. Right now, her dad was her top priority. And Maggie was prepared to do anything to guarantee his safety.

 

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