Before I Wake (32 page)

Just like he was fixin’ to give somebody an ass whuppin’.

He let out a little laugh as he slid the belt under his leg, above the shattered artery. Without looking, eyes squinted against the falling snow, he slipped the leather end of the belt through the buckle and pulled tight.

No more hunting, he told himself. No more fucking hunting.

“Harley! No!”

The words were out of Arden’s mouth before she realized she’d spoken. All she’d thought about was stopping Harley from putting another bullet in Fury, who had crumpled to the ground.

Harley slowly swung around to face her. The rifle barrel followed. Daniel’s .22. She remembered it well. It was the semiautomatic that held a magazine of ten rounds.

She turned, ducked, and ran.

Never run in a straight line. Always zigzag.

The weapon discharged, the reverberation echoing off the outbuildings to finally move into the far distance. That was followed by the
click, click, click
of the emptied gun’s chamber.

Flames shot from the roof of the house, illuminating her way. She aimed for an old wooden outbuilding, once painted white but now peeling to reveal an old coat of red beneath.

The slaughterhouse.

The shed was small. Maybe ten feet by twenty.

She threw her shoulder against the door. It shuddered open. She stumbled inside, slamming the door behind her.

No lock.

She pressed her back to the door, breathing hard and loud, her mind racing, trying to piece things together.

Harley had been mad at Eli. Like someone with multiple-personality disorder, he’d pulled French out when he’d needed someone ruthless and bloodthirsty.

Maybe Harley didn’t even remember killing Eli. Maybe he’d truly been horrified by what had happened, but now French had taken over completely. There was nothing of Harley left.

The door burst open, sending her flying forward. She crashed into the metal butcher table screwed to the floor, the wind knocked out of her.

Then Harley was there. He grabbed her by the shoulders, making loud roaring noises while he shook the hell out of her.

She kneed him in the crotch, dropped, and twisted away, scrambling through the darkness. She felt her way back to the table. On her knees, she opened the drawer, blindly running her fingers across the contents of cold metal objects.

Harley grabbed her from behind. At the same time, her fingers curled around what she’d been looking for.

A gun.

The captive-bolt gun.

Harley was choking her.

Her arms flailed as she tried to hit him, the uncocked gun smacking him in the head.

He made a sound like an injured bull and let go.

Arden crashed to the floor, gasping for air.

Hurry. No time to recover. You have to hurry.

In the dark, she dragged the weapon to her lap and tugged the mechanism back, cocking it.

Harley came out of nowhere, knocking her over. He pushed her down, her shoulder blades crushed against the cement floor. He choked her again, his thumbs pressed into her trachea, shutting off her air.

She lifted the gun.

It was heavy.

Much heavier than a revolver or rifle.

From outside came the sound of an explosion.

The propane tank.

The ground shook. A concussion rattled the windows. Flames illuminated the interior of the small building.

Arden could see Harley above her, his face contorted with rage. It wasn’t Harley; it was Albert French.

Albert French. The man inside Harley who had killed her mother and father. The man who had killed Eli and probably Vera Thompson and the family in Oklahoma.

She pressed the gun to his temple.

It wasn’t Harley’s fault. None of it was his fault. They were all victims. Harris had created a monster. A Frankenstein. A killing machine that had to be stopped.

It would be so much easier if she could hate him…

She pulled the trigger.

She heard the bolt go in. One loud, sickening crunch of the skull followed by a pop.

Time got weird.

In that encapsulated moment of disbelief and horror and pain, her synapses sparked and memory paths reactivated.

She saw his expression fade from rage to surprise.

A kind of
what the…?
Then, in a baffled little boy voice, he said, “Arden…?”

He was Harley again.

I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.

Not much blood. Just a hole. Maybe he would be okay. Maybe he would live.

“Did I hurt anybody?” he asked in a distant, groggy voice that told her death was already in the room, tapping on his shoulder. “I didn’t hurt anybody, did I?”

She shook her head, unable to speak. “No,” she finally managed, her eyes swimming with tears.

“It’s the h-house,” he said with whispered intensity. “It’s bad.”

“I know,” she crooned. “I know.”

He slumped forward.

Albert French was gone.

Harley was gone.

Arden stepped from the slaughterhouse, spotted Fury lying near the burning building, and ran.

Noxious fumes stung her eyes and lungs as she braced herself behind him, hands under his armpits. Walking backward, she dragged him away from the farmhouse, across the exposed grass to an area of snow that hadn’t melted from the heat.

She dropped, crossed her legs, and rested Fury’s head in her lap.

Fear, pain, loss, and grief.

Life, death, murder.

Blood, snow, and Nathan Fury.

A spark of memory had started in the slaughterhouse when Arden had pulled the trigger and watched the life fade from Harley’s eyes. Now, looking at Fury in the bloody snow, time telescoped and the past returned full-blown.

She remembered who Fury had been to her, and how much she’d loved him. How much it had hurt when he left the program and when they’d gone their separate ways.

France was real. France had happened.

With Fury.

She’d confided in Harley. She’d cried on his shoulder, telling him stories about herself and Fury. Harley was a sponge, absorbing personalities, absorbing lives. Somehow he’d gotten the events mixed up in his head. Maybe he’d really believed he’d been to France with Arden.

At the last minute, Arden had invited Harley home for Christmas after finding out he would be alone. He’d smiled, thanked her, and said he might drop by.

Might.

She’d driven home from the Hill, her car full of presents. It had been snowing, but her mind hadn’t been on the weather. She’d been thinking about Fury. Confused. Missing him. Wishing things hadn’t happened the way they’d happened.

She’d arrived at her parents’ house in the early afternoon, entering through the back door, her arms loaded with presents. “Mom? Dad?”

The house was silent except for the ticking clocks.

She kicked off her boots and put the gifts down on the kitchen table. She walked through the dining room and living room.

Up the stairs.

“Mom?”

Turned the corner to the master bedroom—to find her mother lying across the bed, her throat sliced, the smell of blood and perfume in the air.

A familiar MO. Albert French’s MO. Arden had seen the exact scene before, down to the placement of the body positioned diagonally across the bed, face toward the door, upside down.

Her mother was blue. She’d bled out.

Even though it was too late, Arden attempted CPR. Then she called 911, and ran from the house.

She found her father in the barn. Hanging from a rope attached to a pulley, his body slowly twisting as if it still had life in it.

She released the pulley, and he tumbled to the straw-littered floor.

Dead.

Albert French had done this. To teach her a lesson. That was what she had thought that day. What everybody thought. But it had really been Harley, an unwitting disciple of French’s. The trigger had been the farmhouse, a setting eerily similar to those of the actual French massacres. For a little while, Harley had become French.

It was very possible Harley had still been on the farm at that time, hiding, waiting for her. Instead of trying to find him, catch him, Arden had run.

To the corncrib. To the very top, where she remained until the police came. Until the FBI was called.

Until Fury showed up.

She’d clung to him with frozen fingers, unable to speak. Unable to make a sound. He’d hugged her to his chest and cried with her.

Now Fury let out a low moan and opened his eyes.

“I remember everything,” she told him. “I remember France.”

He let out a gasp, struggling to form words.

“There was a vineyard,” Arden said, speaking for him. “And rain.”

“B-bikes,” he added.

“And bikes.” She could tell him the rest of the story. “We went for a ride, but it started to rain so we hurried back to the chateau.”

“Y-yes.”

“I loved you.”

He blinked. There were tears in his eyes. In his blue, blue eyes. He lifted a hand to reach for her. “This… isn’t… over.”

It was painful to watch him try to talk. “I know,” she said.

“Harris.”

She picked up his hand, holding it in both of hers. “I’ll take care of it.”

She tugged at his zipper, opening his blood-saturated coat. He’d been hit in the shoulder, the chest, the abdomen. She didn’t even know where to start.

“Don’t.” He struggled to take a shallow breath.

“Daniel?” His name was all Arden could manage to get out, but Fury understood.

“S-sorry.”

No.

No, no, no. A
sob of grief escaped her.

She wanted everything to stop. To shut off. But she’d wanted that before, and look where it had gotten her.

She and Fury used to talk about getting killed in the field, because it was always in the back of an agent’s mind. Fury said he’d rather go out that way than get old, infirm, and senile.

His eyes glazed over, became unfocused, as if he were looking at something beyond her, in the air just past her shoulder. “The shadow people are here,” he whispered with a half laugh.

“No.” Her bottom lip trembled. “No, they aren’t.”

But they were. How he was still alive was a mystery. But she didn’t want him to say he was dying. Saying it was an invitation to death. An open door. Saying it made it too real, and didn’t give her a chance to adapt.

She’d just gotten him back. Just remembered him.

It wasn’t enough time. She needed more time.

His eyes closed.

She pulled his coat together with fingers stiff and crusted with dried blood.
Don’t leave me here
.

Something splashed on his face. For a minute, she thought it was raining. Then she realized she was crying. She blinked and wiped the tears away with a bloody hand.

Maybe she would die. Then this would end. A complete and total bleaching. That was the only way to stop the madness. And anyway, she’d come full circle. Not a good circle, but a solid one. A circle that had a beginning, a middle, and an end.

But things never happened the way you expected.

Sounds intruded.

The deep, heavy rumble of snowplows. Beyond that, sirens. Far away, but moving closer.

The first officer on the scene found her sitting in the snow, wearing nothing but brown coveralls and a sweatshirt, the hair on her head frozen and covered with frost, hugging a man while she stared into space.

She had blood on her face. Blood on her hands.

So much blood.

Officer Bennett stared at the man. Was he dead?

Bennett was young. He’d seen only a couple of dead people in his life, and he’d never seen an actual murder victim except in the films they showed at the police academy.

“Here’s another one!” someone shouted. “Gunshot victim!”

Somebody had spotted the smoke and called it in. A house fire.

Officer Bennett bent down, hands on his thighs. “What’s your name?” he asked softly.

The woman raised her head and looked at him with unfocused eyes.

“Or the victim?” he asked. “Who’s the victim?”

“My partner.” The words were delivered in a robotic manner.

“Who did this?” He reached for his gun, suddenly realizing that the perpetrator could still be in the area.

With a blood-encrusted hand, the woman pointed toward a shed. “In there. Dead.”

The storm had ended abruptly. The sun was out, shining harsh and brittle. From the bare limbs of nearby trees, birds sang.

Officer Bennett didn’t like this. Not one bit. But then he thought about going to the coffee shop later that day. Damn, but he was going to have a story to tell the guys. They were gonna be hanging on his every word. And it wouldn’t just be this afternoon. This was a story that would last days, weeks. Hell, he’d probably be telling it to his grandkids. And what about his sister? She’d moved to Seattle and always liked to bug him, tell him nothing exciting ever happened in Lake County.

Like hell.

Paramedics arrived. They eased the woman away from the man and began working on him, faces grim.

“No pulse,” said a paramedic. “No heartbeat.”

“Another body over here!” somebody shouted from a distance. “This one’s alive!”

It took a little while, but the words finally registered with the woman. She pulled her gaze from the man on the ground. She turned and began walking stiffly through the snow.

Bennett followed.

Her walk became a run. Faster and faster, until he could hardly keep up. Hurrying in the direction of the shout, where workers were beginning to cluster. Two men cut across the hillside, carrying a gurney. Two more followed with emergency kits.

“Daniel!” the woman shouted.

Daniel heard someone call his name, but he couldn’t seem to open his eyes.

And then Arden was there.

“… culvert,” he managed to croak. “Franny.”

Somehow he had an IV needle in the back of his hand.

How had that gotten there?

Somehow he was being carried on a gurney.

He rolled his head. Was that the house? That charred, smoldering, stinking mess?

He was glad it was gone. It needed to be gone.

Arden fell into step beside him, her face bobbing in and out of his field of vision. “Franny’s alive,” she told him.

He suddenly felt like crying. Give him some good news, and he wanted to cry like a baby.