by K. J. Emrick
Actually, that was only half true. In Darcy’s book, you did whatever you could for someone you loved. You didn’t do anything at all. That wasn’t love. That was blind devotion.
A thought was forming at the back of her mind. One that she definitely did not like. If Lauren was that much in love with Carson Everly, what sort of things would she be willing to do for him?
Lauren’s eyes locked on Darcy’s. Her fingers hovered over the light switches on the wall between them. “You don’t understand,” she said. “I love him. You could never understand what we have.”
Darcy realized the question wasn’t what Lauren would do for Carson. It was what wouldn’t she do?
Lauren smiled.
And flicked the lights off.
“Let’s talk about this,” Lauren said to her from the darkness. “Stay right there.”
No way, Darcy said to herself. No way was that going to happen.
Her feet moved with a purpose all their own, running out of the mayor’s office and taking her with them. The whole building was dark. The only light came through the windows of open rooms and offices, the orangish haze of sunset. It was enough for Darcy to avoid banging her knees against the edges of chairs set up in the hallways for people waiting on appointments or barreling into American flags set on display. When did the Town Hall get so many flags?
It took her only a few seconds of running to realize her mistake. She should have gone the other way. A right turn would have taken her out the front doors. This way took her further into the building.
Well. That was stupid.
Lauren was Helen’s killer. Not Carson, and—thank God—not her husband Bruce. It was Helen’s own assistant, madly in love with Helen’s competition and willing to do anything for him in her warped version of what love really was.
She had to get away. She had to get in touch with Grace and Jon and tell them what was happening before she wound up the next victim. All of that was going to be very hard to do when she was running further away from the exits!
The back door. She needed to get to the back door. It was down past the offices, past the huge community room at the very end of the first floor, all the way to the back. When the Town Hall had been rebuilt after the fire that was—mostly—not her fault, the contractor had been very sure to make every inch of the new building to code. That meant nice wide hallways and Exit signs that lit up in red with their own power source. All Darcy needed to do was follow the signs to—
Clang!
Something whipped by her head close enough to stir her hair. When it struck the wall, it did so with a metallic ringing that made Darcy yelp. She dodged through the first doorway she came to, hoping to God that it wasn’t a janitor’s closet.
Rebuilding the Town Hall to code had also meant using steel girders inside the walls. Whatever Lauren had just swung at Darcy’s head had hit with enough force to go through the paneling, through the sheetrock, and strike one of those metal uprights.
She could only imagine what that had felt like in Lauren’s hand. She hoped it stung her fingers hard enough to make them go numb. That would slow her down! It still wouldn’t be enough to stop her, Darcy realized. She was insane, and she was mistaking that insanity for love. That would make her dangerous.
So Darcy ran even harder.
Downstairs.
The door she had chosen to make her hasty escape through turned out to be the entrance to the stairs. The ones leading down to the basement.
The Town Hall had an upper floor, more of an attic used for storage, and the stairs that went up there could only be accessed from behind the community room, to the right of the back door. Below the main floor was a basement area that housed the furnace and the water tank and the majority of the plumbing. That was where Darcy was heading. These stairs were taking her down into a dark area that smelled of damp cement and dust.
These stairs were taking her away from the exits, and away from safety.
At the bottom step she fumbled along the wall for light switches. Then she felt overhead for a pull chain. Nothing. There were no windows down here, and without the lights everything was blacker than night.
Darcy slapped her forehead with her palm. She had never been down in the basement but now she remembered a quick tour Helen had given her when the new Town Hall was opened. Helen had opened the door up there to these stairs, turning on the lights to give Darcy a quick look.
The light switches were up in the hallway. It was more convenient that way, Helen had explained.
At this point, Darcy would have to argue that point.
“For Pete’s sake!” she snapped at herself. “You’d think this was the first time I’ve ever run for my life!”
She pulled out her cellphone, swiping the screen to life, searching for the flashlight app so she could use it to guide her way—
The lights came on.
“Darcy?” Lauren called down to her. “Hey, let’s talk about this, all right?”
Her calm and reasonable request was followed by the sound of something metal slapping the wall again.
Oh. So the sound she’d heard earlier wasn’t from Lauren hitting a metal support girder through the wall… it was because whatever weapon Lauren was holding was made of metal itself.
Yeah. That really wasn’t any better.
At least now she could see. The stairs doubled back on themselves and kept Lauren from seeing her down here, but now Darcy did a quick scan of her surroundings, looking for an emergency exit or a place to hide or a weapon of her own. The big hulking frame of the furnace was over in that corner, big round pipes leading away from it in all directions. The massive water tank and pump were right next to it. Further down, on the wall, was the row of electrical fuse boxes. Each one had a lever to turn power on and off to different sections of the building.
“Darcy!”
She ran again when she heard her name and realized Lauren was closer. She was coming down the switchback stairs. Standing here and waiting wasn’t going to help her situation.
The basement was sectioned off by walls, empty doorways leading to another section, and another one beyond that. The walls created wide rooms that went from one side of the basement to the other. It looked like the original plan had been to make more rooms down here. Either the money ran out, or someone just decided it wasn’t worth the expense. Instead, this was apparently where things got stored for the short term. Couches and desk chairs were shoved into the corners. Boxes with black marker labelling on them were stacked in short towers that framed the doorway to the next section.
Darcy decided going that way was her only option at the moment. At least until she could stop for two seconds to text with Grace, and let her know who the killer was and, oh yes, tell her sister that she was in deep, deep trouble.
Maybe she’d text that last part first.
On her way through to the next room partition, Darcy threw the lever on every one of the fuse boxes. She wasn’t sure which one turned out the lights down here, so she opted to turn off the power to the whole building instead.
Then she was in darkness again, except for her flashlight app lighting her way.
“What’s this?” she heard Lauren saying from behind her. She was almost to the bottom of the stairs. “Did you turn out the lights? Oh, Darcy. You really are desperate. Can you just listen to me for two seconds? You stay there, and let me talk, okay?”
Darcy listened, but she did not stop moving.
“Darcy, Darcy, Darcy. All I wanted was for Carson to win the election. You’re right, we’re dating, and he loves me. Don’t make that out to be something bad, because it’s not. I know it’s a whole conflict of interest thing, since I worked for Helen and Carson was her political opponent, but I just wanted what was best for him. Isn’t that what you do when you love someone?”
Through the first open doorway her phone’s flashlight showed her the sections of a disassembled artificial Christmas tree. There were boxes of ornaments and garland and lights. Th
e big plywood Santa from the town’s winter gazebo display was leaning against the wall, with his reindeer right next to him. They would be going back out in a couple of weeks but for now… could she hide behind Santa? No. That would last about three seconds before Lauren found her. There wasn’t anything she could use here as a weapon, either, unless she wanted to defend herself with a colorful line of Christmas bulbs.
She kept moving, still listening to Lauren’s excuses behind her.
“He was going to meet with Helen that night and appeal to her senses. Helen was old! You know it’s true, Darcy!” Lauren waited for a reply. Darcy wasn’t going to give her one. “Everyone knew it. She needed to retire and let someone else take over and Carson thought if he just talked to her that she’d see it his way. I told him it wouldn’t work. I told him that Helen was set in her ways. I told him to let me take care of it instead. So I went to see Helen for him. I went there right after we both left the Town Hall. I told her that she should just step down and let Carson take over. Know what she said? She just laughed and said she still had a lot of years left. Well, she doesn’t have any years left now, does she! She wanted to be such a perfect mayor, so I took her perfect mayor award and slammed her in the head with it. I didn’t mean to kill her. I just wanted her to listen. Why wouldn’t she listen!”
Darcy cringed. It worried her that Lauren was so angry, and it worried her that she was confessing to everything like this. She wouldn’t let Darcy know everything she did… unless she had no intention of letting Darcy out of here alive.
“Of course,” Lauren continued, “I had to get rid of that stupid award after. I’ve watched enough crime dramas to know they would have found some evidence on it. My DNA. My hair. Something. I couldn’t risk it. Had to throw it in Helen’s trash. Once it got picked up with the rest of the garbage no one would ever see it again. Problem solved… oh, but wait. I guess you ruined that for me too, didn’t you? Sure. Knowing you, you probably found the award and turned it over to your goody-goody husband, didn’t you? Darcy? Hey, Darcy? Where are you?”
Clamping her mouth shut, Darcy kept herself moving and tried to puzzle through what Lauren had said. So, Carson didn’t meet with Helen that night. It had been Lauren. Except, he must have known what Lauren did. Lauren told him she was going to talk to Helen for him. Carson had to have figured out the next day that was how Helen died. The man was a lot of things—like pompous, and arrogant, and self-centered—but he wasn’t stupid.
Darcy frowned into the darkness ahead of her. She had really wanted the killer to be Carson. Funny how it was okay for people you didn’t like to be murderers. Well, if he wasn’t the killer, she supposed accessory after the fact would have to do…
The lights came on.
“Nice try, Darcy,” Lauren called out to her, “but I know which switch turns the lights on. I know everything about this building. Helen made me do everything for her! She made me get the coffee. She made me run her errands. She made me make the copies and haul up boxes from down here and do this and do that and I was sick of it! I deserved better than that! Know what, though? Those boxes weighed less than Helen did after I knocked her out with that award. She wasn’t dead, so I hauled her upstairs and put her in bed and let me tell you what a chore that was! She wasn’t nearly as frail as she looked. No, that was not easy. Especially with that mutt dog barking outside.”
Cha-Cha. She was talking about Helen’s puppy.
Just like he’d told her in his dream.
“She looked so peaceful in bed.” Lauren was getting closer. “I wish you could have seen her, Darcy. I almost left it at that. Seriously, I almost walked away right there. But then I realized, if she woke up and told anyone what I did it would ruin Carson’s chances at winning anyway. Even his own mother wouldn’t vote for him after that. So I smothered her with a pillow. I had to.”
Darcy was through the next partition, and this space was completely empty. Her options were getting worse, not better.
Then she had an idea.
“Helen never appreciated me, Darcy! Not like Carson does. He loves me. Helen used me like I was a rented mule and took advantage of my talents. She’d say ‘thank you, Lauren’ and ‘good job Lauren’ but she never meant it. I could tell! It would have been so much better with Carson as the mayor. It would have been so romantic, me and him working here together. We would have been together all the time, and now you’re trying to ruin that!”
Darcy snuck back to the room with the Christmas decorations.
“Why couldn’t you just leave well enough alone? Helen would have died, and the whole town would have mourned, and then at the election Carson and I could have started a whole new chapter in our life together!”
Squeezing herself in between the giant Santa and the wall, she waited.
She hadn’t done this before, because she’d been sure Lauren would find her in three seconds flat.
Now she waited to see if she was right.
“Where are you?” Lauren’s voice was right outside this room. In five steps, she would be right next to the Santa and would be able to see Darcy’s hiding spot. “I just want to talk, Darcy. I just want to convince you why I had to do what I did.”
Darcy held her breath.
“And then, I want to explain why I have to kill you, too.”
Bracing her hands against the back side of Santa’s wide tummy, Darcy waited, straining her ears to listen.
She heard Lauren’s footsteps over her own heart beating in her ears.
Lauren stopped.
Her face came into view around the side of Santa’s arm.
“There you are,” she said with a smile. “Let’s talk.”
It had been a little more than three seconds, but here she was.
She hefted a metal bar in her hand, two feet long and hollow. Something she must have found in the janitor’s closet from a leftover plumbing job. After all, wasn’t hitting people with blunt objects her preferred method of killing her victims?
Darcy swallowed, and tensed every muscle in her body.
“Uh-uh,” Lauren warned her. “Whatever you’re thinking of doing, just forget about it.”
The bar went up higher.
“This won’t hurt,” Lauren promised her with a crazed light in her eyes. “Or maybe it will. Helen didn’t seem to suffer much. Hold still, now.”
The lights went out.
Darcy heard Lauren as she stumbled, disoriented by the sudden darkness. “Who did that?” she asked, sounding just as confused as Darcy felt.
However it happened, whatever fortune had smiled on her just now, Darcy was going to take advantage of it. She heaved her shoulder against the Santa and sent it toppling forward, crashing down on Lauren.
It was like Christmas was falling.
The cut out was heavy, made of three-inch-thick plywood. It slammed into Lauren and knocked her clear off her feet. Darcy heard the metal bar rolling away, and Lauren’s surprised grunt as the weight of it fell on her full force.
Darcy dropped onto Santa’s back, sitting there, using that to hold Lauren down.
The woman didn’t move, and she didn’t speak, and Darcy assumed that she’d been knocked unconscious against the cement floor. Talk about irony.
Darcy dared to take a breather before reaching for her phone and activating the flashlight app again. There was Lauren, eyes closed and her mouth hanging slack. Darcy waited until she could see the rise and the fall of her chest and know that she was still breathing. Her lower half was pinned. There was a nasty bruise starting on her forehead and probably an even worse one at the back of her skull. It was less than she deserved.
It was over. Now, all she had to do was text Grace and tell her to come down in the basement and find them. Darcy had been very lucky, and very blessed, that things hadn’t gone worse for her. If the lights hadn’t cut out again when they did, who knows if her plan would have worked?
Which reminded her. How did the lights turn off like that?
A noise o
ver by the open doorway caught her attention and she swung her phone’s light that way. In the gloom, a pair of cat’s eyes glowed with a light of their own. She couldn’t really see the rest of the cat. Just a faint impression of dark patches… white patches…
Darcy held her breath. “Smudge?”
It was impossible for him to be here, the rational side of her brain told her.
Her heart told her brain to shut up.
The eyes blinked, and then they turned away into the darkness, and disappeared.
Then the lights came on again, and there was no cat to be seen.
It was a moment later when Darcy found her voice. “Thank you, Smudge.”
Was it really him? Could it really have been Smudge, her beloved Smudge, watching over her from the other side?
Darcy smiled. She knew it could. In her world, ghosts were real, and love was eternal.
Chapter 9
Grace found her a few minutes later. Without the timely intervention of her ghostly feline friend, her sister would have been too late. Not that Darcy didn’t have a killer plan to save herself. That whole idea about using Santa Claus as a weapon was nearly genius.
Or so she kept telling herself.
The truth was more like fifty-fifty that she would have ended up with a metal bar buried in her skull. Lauren could have spun some story about thinking Darcy was an intruder. Jon wouldn’t have bought it, but by then Darcy would have been a ghost looking over his shoulder.
All things considered, she much preferred being alive to explain herself to her husband. He wasn’t happy with her, but at least she knew he wasn’t going to kill her.
“What were you thinking?” he said for the tenth time. “Darcy, you could have gotten hurt!”
“It’s not like I went in there looking to confront the killer!” she argued with him.
“This time,” he added.