Death Notice (33 page)

“The door is locked!” Kat yelled back. “I need you to open it!”

Through the barrier of the door, she heard Amber’s frantic footsteps in the hallway. They were followed by a sharp click. It was the lock, sliding loose. Next was a louder, stronger click. The deadbolt.

The door opened a crack. Amber was just on the other side, pressing her face in the gap between door and frame. Her
cheeks were streaked with tears and her body vibrated with fear.

“Thank God you’re here,” she said. “I think he’s inside.”

She gasped suddenly, her eyes widening in shock. And then, so quickly that Kat could barely comprehend what was going on, Amber Lefferts was yanked backward and out of sight.

Kat shoved the door. It opened another inch before coming to a jarring stop. The chain. It was still in place.

On the other side of the door, Amber screamed. It echoed from deep inside the house before quickly, eerily cutting off. The interrupted cry told Kat everything she needed to know.

The killer was inside.

And he had Amber.

Shoving the door open as far as the chain would allow, Kat shouted, “I’m coming! Don’t worry!”

There was no response from Amber. Not even another scream. Rearing back on the porch, Kat rammed into the door, shoulder-first. She felt a momentary queasiness as pain pulsed through her body. Then the chain snapped free, letting the door fly open and smash against the wall behind it.

“Amber?” Kat yelled. “Where are you?”

The power came back on as soon as she entered the house. All the lights suddenly sprang into brightness, forcing Kat to squint. That’s when she saw the birds. There were four of them, jumbled together in a heap on the hallway floor.

“Amber? Answer if you can hear me!”

In the kitchen, the back door slammed shut. Kat raced toward it.

She stepped on a bird in the hallway. Her feet slid forward, jerking her legs out from under her. When Kat fell, the birds on the floor cushioned the blow. Lumpy balls of feathers, sawdust, and bone crushed under her spine.

Kat pushed herself off the floor and ran to the kitchen,
not stopping until she reached the back door. Flinging it open, she scanned the back porch, seeing nothing. Beyond it was the backyard, a neighbor’s house, and the street, where a white van idled at the curb.

Kat had seen the van before. The white Ford with the words Awesome Blossoms painted across its side had eluded her for the better part of a year. It was Jasper Fox’s stolen delivery van, and now it sat just beyond the Lefferts’ backyard.

Before she was able to piece together why the van was there, it jerked to a start. Kat took off across the lawn after it, but it was too late. The van roared away from the curb, moving so fast she couldn’t get a glimpse of the driver through the rain-soaked windshield.

The killer was behind the wheel. Kat had no doubt about that. And Amber was inside the van, possibly dead already, being driven to a place where a homemade coffin waited just for her.

Henry rode shotgun with Nick. Because Kat had left too fast for them to keep up, they found the Lefferts’ residence by following the collateral damage left in her wake. A scrape of white paint on a fire hydrant guided them north. They turned left at the Cadillac askew in the road, missing a side mirror. The debris was worse on Main Street, where an SUV had collided with a Volkwagen. Three blocks later Henry spotted Kat’s patrol car sitting in the Lefferts’ front yard, still running.

Nick screeched to a stop at the curb on the other side of the street. Henry hopped out of the car and was immediately
pummeled by the rain. It fell in huge, cold drops that stung when they hit his skin. Blinded by the deluge, he stumbled into the street.

He was halfway across when a white van appeared, careening around the corner. Caught in the van’s path, Henry froze. It bore down on him quickly, its grille a sneering mouth, its headlights as bright as dragon’s eyes.

“Henry, watch out!”

He heard a series of splashes on the asphalt, heavy and fast. Footsteps. A blur of darkness burst into view, coming from Henry’s right. It was Nick, sprinting toward him. The lieutenant tackled him, knocking the breath out of his lungs as they both tumbled into a puddle on the asphalt. Hot air, exhaust fumes, and a spray of oily water rushed over them as the van roared by, missing Henry by inches.

Nick wasn’t so lucky.

Scrambling to push Henry out of harm’s way, his right leg jutted into the street. The van’s tires bumped over it. It then increased its speed and shot through a stop sign at the end of the block.

In the road, Nick howled with pain. Struggling to sit up, he grabbed at his injured leg. His pants were torn at the knee, the shredded fabric revealing oozing blood littered with gravel and dirt.

More yells came from Amber’s house, where Henry saw Kat burst onto the porch.

“He has Amber!” she shouted as she ran to her car.

“We can’t lose it.”

It was Nick answering her, pushing himself off the ground with an agonized grunt.

Henry helped him stand, Nick putting all his weight on his uninjured leg. He wasn’t able to walk, so he lurched instead, dragging himself toward the car.

“We need to follow that van,” he said through gritted teeth. Although he seemed to be on the verge of passing out, he didn’t stop moving. He made it all the way to the car, every step causing a high-pitched wail.

“Henry,” he said, gasping. “You need to drive.”

Nick shoved him toward the driver’s side door. Within seconds, Henry was behind the wheel, strapping the seat belt across his chest. Nick sat beside him, body shaking, as water slid off his flushed face.

“Step on it,” he said.

Henry hadn’t been behind the wheel of a car in five years. Not since that terrible night. But as soon as he gripped the steering wheel, it all came back to him. Shifting the car into gear, he did what Nick had instructed.

In the rearview mirror, he saw Kat jump into her patrol car. She fishtailed in the soggy lawn, struggling to get traction. Henry had no such problem. The car careened down the street, leaving Kat behind.

Blasting down the street, Henry had one thing on his mind—catching up with the van. The quickly descending nightfall made it difficult to see. So did the rain, which overwhelmed the wipers working at high speed.

“I don’t see it,” Henry said.

Nick seemed to have settled into his pain. His body trembled less as he craned his neck to search every side street they barreled past. He spoke in ragged breaths, forcing every word out of his mouth.

“Where were Troy and George found?”

“Old Mill Road and the lake, which is near it.”

“Go there.”

Henry steered the car through back alleys until they were at Oak Street.

“There it is!” Nick gripped Henry’s arm. “To the left!”

Henry cut the wheel sharply to the left. The van was now just ahead of them, moving quickly northward. They followed it, rumbling past the cemetery.

Not slowing, the van suddenly swiped to the right, tires jumping the curb as it turned onto a side road. Henry followed suit, taking the corner tight. The car skidded on the wet pavement, and for a moment he thought they might spin out of control. But he corrected the steering, held the car steady, and they rounded the turn unscathed.

The van next made a sudden left. Henry did, too, fanning out widely to avoid an oncoming Jeep. When the van veered right one more time, Henry stayed on its tail, realizing they were now on Old Mill Road, the vast expanse of Lake Squall to their left.

The road was wider and smoother than the ones in the heart of town, allowing the van to pick up speed. Henry kept his foot pressed on the gas. The car shimmied as the engine opened up. He peeked at the speedometer. Seventy and rising.

Henry realized he had been going that fast the last time he drove a car. He tried not to think about it. He needed to focus on the van and not the past. But memories snuck in, coming at him in quick, blinding flashes. The rain. The speedometer inching forward. The jackknifed truck getting closer. Gia’s screams.

“Christ, Henry, look out!”

At first, Henry thought it was his memory, sounding as loud as the present in his ears. Then he realized it was Nick, shouting in the here and now.

Henry’s gaze shot to the road in front of them, seeing what Nick was yelling about. A deer stood on spindly legs just beyond the road’s shoulder. Startled by the noise of the chase, it jumped out of the brush and into the van’s path.

The van’s brake lights flared and its tires screeched as the vehicle fishtailed. It did no good. The deer was in midleap,
arched across the road as the van barreled forward. One second later, the inevitable happened—the van and the deer collided.

To Henry, everything unfolded in slow motion. When he hit the brakes, the uncontrollable skidding of the car seemed to wind down to a crawl, the seconds expanding into minutes. He saw the van lose control, the deer pinwheeling away from its shattered grille as the van veered off the road.

The van bounced down an embankment, three endless leaps in which the vehicle seemed unencumbered by gravity. It tipped onto its side in the weeds next to the lake. The van’s back doors had been forced open, revealing spikes of shattered pine.

A homemade coffin. Overturned, it spilled out its contents, which in this case was a young girl, lifeless and still.

Henry turned his head forward again, facing the road, where the mangled deer, thriving on momentum, rolled toward them.

Time seemed to right itself when the animal connected with the windshield. Henry experienced a breathless speediness as the deer smashed into the glass. The windshield cracked as the animal’s body fell away. It slipped off the hood, tumbling under them, lodging itself between the road and the front wheels.

The tires locked, bringing the car to a gut-tugging halt. The back of the vehicle kept on going, whipping it around until it faced the opposite direction.

Henry stomped on the brakes, which did nothing to stop them. The car spun wildly, smashing into a telephone pole before bouncing away like a pinball and shooting across the road. Henry closed his eyes, feeling bits of glass from the freshly shattered window bounce off his eyelids.

When he opened them again, the world was upside down. Earth and sky seemed to switch places briefly before returning
to their normal positions. Then they reversed a second time, a sickening roll of horizons that happened again and again.

Henry had heard Nick screaming when the flipping began, but now he was silent and motionless, a limp rag doll being tossed by gravity. When they did another turnaround, Henry saw they were fast approaching a copse of pine trees. The car rolled into them, tires first, as if it could drive right up their trunks.

But it couldn’t. The car tilted back violently. It rocked a moment before flipping onto the roof and staying that way.

Henry’s seat belt snapped. He fell forward, smacking against the dashboard that no longer resembled a dashboard. Eyes closed, he was vaguely aware of Nick dangling upside down above him, held captive by his unbroken seat belt.

He heard the car’s engine, clicking to a weary stop. The automotive equivalent of a death rattle.

Henry, too, began to wind down. His head hurt. His limbs felt heavy. His ears stopped hearing. Then, giving in to darkness and pain, he passed out.