A Cold Dark Place (40 page)

Where did Nick put my mother's gun?

Jenna saw the rebar by Nick's feet. While his hands were
in his pockets searching for his lighter, she lunged for the
metal rod.

"Jenna!" Emily screamed.

Still on her knees, Jenna grabbed the bar, started to swing.
Nick looked down, his eyes fixed with terror as the bar
smashed into his kneecaps.

"Hey! Damn you. Leave him alone!" a voice, a man's
voice called from the other side of the bunker.

It was Dylan Walker. He'd been there the whole time,
watching as if the whole series of events unfolding were
some kind of a performance. A play. A crazy, horrific skit.

Nick let out a scream. But he was clearly more than startled. He was also hurt. His face was warped with pain and he
finished the little scream with a growling moan.

Dylan Walker leapt across the bunker. But he didn't really
intervene. It was as if whatever was happening was just fine
with him.

Jenna didn't stop, even after Nick fell to the cement floor,
doubled over in pain. There was enough adrenaline pulsing
through the teenager's veins to keep her going. He had
sounded weak. She knew she could hurt him more. Hurt him
enough so that he couldn't hurt her or her mom. She closed her eyes and she pounded him with the steel bar, not like
some girly girl who'd been featured in ballet recital back in
Cherrystone.

Far from it.

"You're a liar," she said, tears streaming down her face. "I
hate you. I wish you were dead" Now, as he crumpled over
his stomach, she brought the bar down hard on the back of
his skull. Suddenly there was a lot of bright red blood soaking his hair. Jenna remembered hearing her mother talk
about head wounds being "big bleeders." Good. She'd open
up that wound even more.

Nick was a limp heap but Jenna kept waling on him.

"Jenna, stop it!" Emily struggled to free herself, to stop
her daughter from doing what she had done once. There would
be no more blood on their hands, no matter the reason. "Honey,
stop!"

Jenna froze in a semicrouch, her bloodied weapon held
like a baseball bat, droplets of blood dotting her face like
scarlet freckles. She looked at her mother with wide, scared
eyes.

"Stop, Jenna. Now"

"But, this is my fault .. deg"

"Now! Drop it!"

Jenna let the bar fall; its heavy steel clatter echoed. Nick
lay still on the dirty cement floor. He was curled up in a fetal
position. A rivulet of red ran from his blood-matted hair
down onto his pale, white cheek. His breathing was labored
and raspy.

Jenna was sobbing now. "I want to go home, Mom"

"You're not going anywhere" Dylan kicked the rebar out
of the way and brandished his gun, the gleam of black barrel
visible in the dark bunker. "Nice work, kid," he said to Jenna.
"Nick told me you were tough. Tough like your mom"

"Dylan, Nick is your son. He needs help." It was Emily. She knew it was a last-ditch effort to try to wheedle some
sympathy from the man. Was there anything in his DNA that
tied him to his son? A bond? Any connection whatsoever?

"You're confusing me with someone who gives a shit.
Nick served his purpose. I don't care if he lives or dies."

It dawned on Emily that Dylan Walker might be one of
those serial killers who didn't like to get his hands dirty.
Killing someone only brought a rush when he could manipulate someone else to do it. It was a coward's way to kill.

Killing Tuttle had been a manipulation.

He pointed his gun at Jenna.

"Leave her alone!" A familiar voice called out.

Emily looked up and saw a figure backed by a halo of
light coming into the bunker.

"Leave her alone!" the voice repeated.

The figure was carrying a gas-powered camping lantern.
Its fiery mantle hissed in the darkness. As it moved closer,
the smaller figure appeared to be woman.

"We're over here!" Jenna called out.

"Shut up," Dylan said.

Emily rested a hand on her daughter and tried to feel for
the steel bar. How far had he kicked it away? She tilted her
head to look into the streaming light.

"Don't even think about it," he said.

To Emily's relief, the light ran over the startled face and
tiny torso of Olga Morris-Cerrino. Her eyes were round and
terrified. It was just a quick strobelike image, but Emily
could see that Olga's gun was drawn.

From near Emily's feet, Nick moaned.

Olga lowered the lantern. "Are you okay?"

"We're all okay," Emily said. "But he needs a doctor."

Olga stared at the crumpled boy while Dylan moved the
gun barrel around the room, unable to see where anyone
was.

"Let us go!" Emily yelled. "Olga, be careful. Dylan has a
gun"

The lantern was steadier, casting a ghostly light over the
bunker. Olga could see the little tableau now. Jenna was
crouching down low, crying softly a few steps from Nick,
who was on his side curled in the fetal position. His hair was
matted with blood. His eyes were slits of white. The light
swung again slowly, including Dylan and Emily in the composition.

Hang on. This isn't over.

"You miserable piece of garbage," she said in a low rasp.

"Wow, scary," Dylan answered with his washed-up, hasbeen, serial killer laugh, underscoring his contempt.

Emily shifted her attention to Dylan. She meant to distract. "Look what you've done. None of this was necessary.
What's the point of it all?"

"Mom, I'm scared," Jenna said. "I want to go home"

"You're all going now," Dylan said, in a still, uncertain
voice. "But not home. You messed with my legacy."

A cry came from the floor of the bunker. It was Nick.

"I hate you!" Nick pulled himself up, leaning on his
palms, turning a bloodied face to his biological father.

"You ungrateful kid," Dylan yelled back.

"Why did you let her hurt me? You told me you'd protect
me if I did what you wanted"

"You get your stupidity from your mother's side of the
family," Dylan said. There was no irony in his statement.
Just a cold hard comment.

Olga dropped the lantern and rolled it toward Emily, spinning light in the cavernous space like a cop's strobe. Emily
aimed the trigger at Dylan's chest and she fired. No warning.
Just three bullets firing in rapid succession.

Pop. Pop. Pop.

Dylan slumped down onto the cold floor.

"You shot me, you bitch!" he said, a gurgling sound coming from his windpipe. Blood trickled from his mouth slowly,
like red candle wax. "Three times! You shot me. You didn't
even tell me to drop my weapon!"

Emily took one step over and kicked the gun away from
Walker. Then turned back to Jenna and Olga.

"Yeah," she said. "One time for Kristi and"-looking at
Olga-"one each for Lorrie and Shelley. I hope you feel
each one, you piece of garbage"

"Call an ambulance!" Dylan coughed out. "Please!"

Emily lifted Jenna to her feet, and then when she was
steady, she turned to Olga. It was as if Dylan Walker was already gone.

"Thank God you got here," Emily said. "How did you?
How did you know where we were?"

Olga smiled. "A smart guy who thinks the world of you
told me"

Emily smiled back. She knew it had been Chris. He'd always promised to look out for her.

"Mom, I love you" Jenna wrapped her arms around her
mother. "I knew you would come for me. I'm so sorry. I was
so stupid. I shouldn't have gone off with Nick."

None of that mattered. "Honey, we're all okay. You're
okay."

"What about me?" It was Dylan Walker again, weak and
pathetic on the cold, hard floor. "I need you to get me
help!"

Olga shrugged. She no longer had a smile on her face.
"We'll call all right," she said. "After you've died." Olga looked
over at Nick Martin, now unconscious. "What about him?"

Emily shook her head. "He's a basket case. He's pretty
badly beat up, too. But he'll live and he'll go to trial." She
looked at Dylan Walker as he slowly writhed. Life seeped from him. She stared at him. Kristi. Lorrie. Shelley. Jenna.
All victims past and yet to be flashed through her mind.

"Emily?" Olga asked. "You all right?"

Snapped back into the moment, Emily put her arm around
her daughter and pulled her tighter.

"Yes," she said. "Let the monster die."

It had been months since The "sexiest killer alive" had
been dispatched for eternity in the dark confines of the
bunker. Media attention had died down. "He died instantly
and thank God for retired Detective Cerrino. Without her
intervention we'd have all been on his gristly tote board,"
Emily said when she talked to People magazine about her
daughter's kidnapping and the connection between Dylan
Walker and the murders in Utah, Washington, and Iowa.

"Nick Martin told his lawyers that you and the detective
purposely let Dylan die. You didn't get him help because you
wanted revenge," the magazine reporter said.

Emily sighed. "Poor Nick, he's such a mixed-up kid."

Olga had been over to Cherrystone twice; her friendship
with both Emily and Jenna was built on a terrifying night in
utter darkness that the three of them shared.

"No one will miss him," she said to Emily over coffee at
the kitchen table one afternoon during a visit to the old
house on Orchard Avenue.

"Except his Internet fan club," Emily said. "I feel sorry
for those people."

Olga's flinty eyes sparkled. She suppressed the urge to
smile.

"Dylan got what he deserved"

Emily nodded. "Guess so"

Olga sipped her coffee. "My girls, Lorrie and Shelley,
can rest easy now. So can Kristi."

Emily looked over at Jenna who was watching TV in the
living room. She swirled some artificial sweetener in her
coffee. "We all can"

In many ways, they could.

Nick Martin was in county jail awaiting trial for his role
in kidnapping Jenna Kenyon, but mental health advisors said
he wasn't sane enough to stand trial, and figured he'd be a
shoo-in for an insanity defense. The kid was screwed up. If
he was aware of what he was doing-which they implicitly
denied-the defense was sure it was the result of a mental
breakdown brought on by the murders of his family. He had
no hand in the events that brought him to the bunker. He
wasn't a murderer. Bonnie and Dylan had cooked it all up.

The rental car from the Spokane Airport tied Bonnie to
the locale, though the tornado had swept away any real trace
that she'd done it or if Dylan had been with her. The same
had been true with the Utah and Iowa murders-a paper trail
indicated Bonnie, not Dylan Walker.

Yet Emily knew that Dylan Walker never worked alone.
Olga was able to pry some information out of Nick Martin
that suggested supposed suicide victim Tyler Ticen had, in
fact, been involved in the double homicide of the two college girls from her jurisdiction. But those cases would never
be officially solved. The Ticen suicide was a cover, she was
sure, a way for Walker to silence his accomplice.

Using schizophrenic Reynard Tuttle had been a master stroke. Handsome, brilliant, and evil: the trifecta of serial
killer superstars.

And dead.

The house on Orchard Avenue in Cherrystone had seen
its occupants find their way back to a closer, more loving
relationship than they had before mother and daughter were
held captive by the serial killer's son. It had been a slow
climb back to their normal lives. Jenna obsessed about her
father's new baby, his betrayal, and the nightmares of the
bunker. But she was determined to get over it as was Emily.
In many ways, David had become part of her past, just as he
started anew with Dani and their daughter, Cassandra. Custody gripes involving Jenna were no longer an issue. David
didn't fight for his daughter to visit, and she didn't balk
when the time came.

They found balance in forgiveness.

Emily had worked out the loose ends-a phrase that
caused her to wince-with the help of Christopher Collier,
who'd made a rapid and remarkable recovery from the gunshot wound to the chest. They talked on the phone and even
dated a couple of times. Where all of that would lead was beyond the point right then.

"I just want to heal and move on," Emily told him one
night late as they were talking on the phone. "But when I do,
I want you there"

"Promise?" he asked.

"Promise. Definitely, a promise."

One fall evening, the air crisp as a freshly laundered man's
dress shirt, Jenna was in her bedroom, pink keyboard and
mouse in hand. On the screen was a chat window with bestfriend-forever Shali Patterson, who by then had a new VW,
and was delighted with all the attention her part in the ordeal
had brought her. She was the best friend of a kickass girl,
one who saved her mom from a serial killer's kid. Nice. The girls chatted about their senior year and who would be
crowned homecoming queen later that week. Jenna dared to
dream that it would be her. In no small way, she felt she did
deserve it. Saving her mom was a bigger deal than being
yearbook editor.

With its characteristic chime, her Instant Messenger account announced a name she'd almost forgotten-Batboy88.
She could scarcely believe her eyes. A wave of panic hit her.

Batboy88: Hey Jengrrl!

Jenna froze at her keyboard.

Batboy88: You there?

Nick was in county jail. He didn't have access to a PC.

Batboy88: Missed U!

Jenna found her voice. "Mom!"

Emily was in the kitchen soaking a dreadfully dried-on
lasagna pan when she heard Jenna's scream from down the
hallway. The timbre of her daughter's voice suggested trouble and fear shot through her. There had been screams for
her before, night terrors, as she recalled the dark hours in the
bunker. The idea that she'd been so close, a hairsbreadth
from evil. But this was too early in the evening.