House of Reckoning (35 page)

“Not tonight you’re not,” Miller replied. “Besides, there’s no crime here, Dan. It was an accident, pure and simple.” He shook his head sadly. “Kids,” he muttered more to himself than to Dan West. “Kids and cars.”

Dan West was no longer listening; instead, his son’s name kept echoing in his mind.

Conner … Conner…

“I’m going to have someone drive you home,” Harvey Miller said quietly, beckoning to one of his men.

Oh God, Conner …

A chill far colder than the night seized Dan, bringing with it a strange feeling of surrealism. None of this could be true. Whatever was happening was happening to someone else, not to Dan West. Dan West was the man who told people about things like this, told them that one of their kids was dead.

So it was wrong! Had to be wrong!

A team of EMTs appeared around the end of the fire truck, bringing a stretcher to the waiting ambulance, and at the sight of the white-shrouded form strapped to it—a form with an oxygen mask covering the face—Dan felt a flash of hope. But then he saw Mitch Garvey, his face pale as he watched the EMTs load the stretcher onto a gurney and slide the gurney into the ambulance, and his hope faded, and a moment later Harvey Miller crushed it completely.

“Tiffany Garvey,” the fire chief told him. “She was in the ditch, unconscious.”

Dan West’s eyes remained fixed on the ambulance. “Anybody else? Any other vehicle?”

Harvey shook his head, and finally loosened his grip on Dan’s arm.

Dan steeled himself against his shaky legs, refusing to give in to the emotions boiling inside him, focusing his mind on what had happened, rather than what had happened to his son.

A one-car accident in the middle of nowhere that burned so fast the driver couldn’t even get out to save himself. How could that be?

The surrealism of the night tightened its grip on him, and for a moment Dan wasn’t sure where he was or what he was doing there.

Then, as if of their own volition, his legs carried him two quick steps to the right, and he could see the blackened rear end of Conner’s car.

Another two steps and he could see it all.

The remains of what only a little while ago had been his son were still behind the steering wheel, and even though he couldn’t see his son’s face, the full force of it finally hit him.

It was his son, and he was dead.

“Conner,”
he whispered, one arm coming up from his side, reaching out toward the car is if somehow he might help the boy from the wreckage.

But he couldn’t.

All he could do was go home.

N
ick hunched his shoulders against the wind and peered warily around the edge of Bettina’s garage. An inch-thick layer of snow covered everything now, and in the dim yellow light of the sconces flanking the front door, the old house seemed to have lost even more of its age and ruination. He could almost imagine the old fountain filled with water, and horse-drawn sleighs, their bells ringing merrily, coming up the drive through the woods.

But there were no bells, and since the sirens that rent the night a little while ago were quiet now, a silence Nick had never experienced before had fallen over him.

He could hear nothing at all.

Nor was there anything to be seen.

No tire tracks, no car.

So far, at least, his father had not made good on his threat to come out here.

“He’s not here!” he whispered. “C’mon.” But when he moved toward the front door, Sarah grabbed the sleeve of his coat and pulled him back into the shadows.

“They’re going to be looking for us,” she said.

“So?” Nick leaned against the garage wall to get out of the biting wind that had started to whip the leafless trees.

“So what if they come out here?” Sarah said. “Half the people in town already hate Bettina. If they find us here, they’ll blame her for what happened.”

Nick knew she was right, but even worse was the knowledge that if he hadn’t panicked and left Bettina’s house to begin with, Conner would still be alive. “What should we do?” he finally asked. “We can’t stay out here all night—we’ll freeze to death.”

“I don’t know,” Sarah said. The cold was sinking deep into her now, and her hip was aching, and even though she knew she had to think, she couldn’t. “Maybe we’d better just go back to town. After what happened—”

“What happened wasn’t our fault,” Nick broke in. “Conner was trying to kill us!”

“I didn’t say it was our fault,” Sarah protested. “But we don’t even know what happened! Maybe—”

Abruptly, she fell silent as a pair of headlights swung across the side of the garage. Then Nick ducked back into the shadows behind the building, pulling her along with him. Holding her back in the sheltering darkness, he eased his head out just far enough to see a car emerge from the woods and stop. Whoever was in it doused its headlights before they hit the house.

His father.

It had to be his father.

“It’s my dad,” he whispered, though the car was 150 feet away and closed up tight, with its engine running. Sarah’s fingers closed on his arm.

“C’mon,” he said. “We’ll just get lost in the woods, and we can’t go down the driveway. So we’ll go in through the old coal chute and hide in the basement. Bettina won’t even know we’re there. And at least we won’t freeze to death, and maybe we can figure out what to do.”

“Where
is
the coal chute?” Sarah asked, too tired and cold to argue with him. Besides, he was right—if they stayed out too much longer, they just might actually freeze.

“It’s got to be on this side of the house,” Nick said. “Come on.” Taking her hand, he led Sarah a few yards back into the forest behind the
garage, then began working his way closer to the house. In less than a minute the house itself was blocking their view of Shep Dunnigan’s car.

And Shep’s view of them.

Nick tightened his grip on Sarah’s hand. “I think I can see it!” He pointed toward the house with his free hand. “See that sort of slanting thing? That’s got to be the door.” Without waiting for her to reply, he started toward it, and a moment later Sarah found herself staring at what was indeed obviously the metal door to a coal chute.

With a badly rusted lock on it.

The wind was coming up, and the snow was falling faster, and Nick decided that even if he made a little noise, no one would hear. He reached down and gave the lock a tentative twist, but it held. Then he noticed that one of the hinges on the left panel was even rustier than the lock. Bending down, he slid his fingers under the door frame and jerked upward.

The screws snapped loose and the corner of the door lifted high enough so he could slip through. “I’ll go first,” he said.

While Sarah held the corner of the door up, he dropped to the ground, slid his legs through the gap, then rolled over on his stomach. A moment later his whole body was hanging over the edge of the chute, and though his feet were touching nothing, he let himself drop into the darkness.

After no more than a couple of feet he landed on the concrete floor, flexing his knees to absorb the shock.

“Come on,” he whispered up to Sarah. “It’s easy—maybe two feet. I’ll catch you.”

Refusing to think about what might happen if Nick didn’t catch her, Sarah wriggled through the gap and began lowering herself into the darkness.

Mitch Garvey stared numbly at the striped curtain in the small Warwick emergency clinic behind which his unconscious daughter now lay.

Unconscious
.

The word resounded in his mind, but even though he kept hearing
it, somehow it had lost its meaning. How could it be? How could his perfect Tiffany have been so damaged that she didn’t even know he was there?

The doors opened and he turned to see Angie and Zach coming in. Her eyes met his, and he could see her pale face before she fell into his arms.

For a moment Mitch simply held her.

“Is Tiff okay, Dad?” Zach asked, his voice shaking enough to betray the fear he was doing his best to conceal.

Mitch’s shoulders twitched in a faint shrug. “Don’t know. She’s unconscious—they’re working on her.”

“What happened?” Angie asked, finally stepping back from her husband and glancing around the waiting room as if embarrassed that someone might have seen her clinging to Mitch.

“Looked like she was thrown from Conner West’s car. But until she wakes up …”

Mitch Garvey’s words died on his lips as Tiffany’s weak voice drifted out from behind the curtain. “Mama?”

Angie’s eyes widened and she reached for Mitch with one hand as she pulled back the curtain with the other. Tiffany lay on a gurney, her face cut and bruised, an IV in her arm.

Relief flowed through Mitch, and he sagged into a chair near the gurney.

Angie wept silently.

“Wh-Where’s C-Conner?” Tiffany whispered, her eyes barely visible in her swollen face.

“Conner?” Angie echoed. “Don’t you worry about Conner West, sweetheart.” She took her daughter’s cold hand and tried to rub some warmth into it. “You just get yourself all better so we can get you home and take care of you right.”

“Wh-What happened? We were—”

“There was an accident,” Mitch told her. “You and Con—”

“No accident,” she whispered, silencing her father as she shook her head as much as the pain in her neck would allow.

A doctor appeared, a metal-clad chart in his hands. “Mr. and Mrs. Garvey?”

Mitch nodded.

“We’re waiting for X ray to check for broken bones, but I don’t think
the damage is too severe. She got quite a bump on the head, possibly a minor concussion. The fact that she’s already awake is a good sign.”

But Mitch was barely even listening to the doctor. “Tiff?” he said, taking his daughter’s hand. “What do you mean it was no accident?”

His daughter did not answer, and the doctor pulled back an eyelid and shined a narrow beam of light into her eye.

Tiffany startled awake with a gasp.

“Princess?” Mitch began again. “What did you mean when you said it wasn’t an accident?”

“They tried …” she whispered, and then her voice trailed off for a second before she pulled together the strength to finish the sentence. “… to kill us.”

Her eyes closed again and her hand went limp in her father’s.

Angie leaned over the gurney. “Tiffany? Honey?” When there was no response, Angie looked up at the doctor, her terror clear in her eyes.

He pulled the stethoscope from around his neck and scanned the meters displaying Tiffany’s vital signs. “Maybe you folks ought to wait outside for now. Just give me a couple of minutes, all right?”

Mitch took Angie’s arm and drew her away. “C’mon, honey. Let’s let him do his job.”

Back in the tiny waiting area, Tiffany’s strange words finally sank in, and a cold fury began to build inside Angie. “She said it wasn’t an accident, Mitch. You heard her. ‘They tried to kill us!’ That’s what she said, Mitch.”

He sat down in one of the plastic chairs and drew his wife down into the chair next to him, feeling her anger, along with the fury in his own heart. “Who, though?” he grated, directing the question to no one in particular. “Who’d do something like that?” But even as he asked the question, an answer was already forming in his own mind.

“Why doesn’t someone ask Conner?” Zach asked. “That’s who she was with, wasn’t it?” But when he looked at his father, he instantly knew the truth. “Oh, jeez …” he groaned, burying his face in his hands. “Conner can’t be dead! He—”

“It was murder,” Angie said, her fury finally erupting. “Whoever they were, they killed Conner, and they tried to kill Tiffany, too. You call Dan West, Mitch! You call him right now!”

But she didn’t need to tell him; Mitch Garvey was already punching
Dan West’s home number into his cell phone. Whoever had done this was going to pay.

If he had to, he might very well kill them himself.

In fact, he’d like to do that.

He’d like that very, very much.

Bettina’s eyes moved from the light and shadows on the wall to the window. A car was approaching, its running lights refracting in the snow, seeming to come from everywhere and nowhere at the same time.

The house trembled as a nearly subsonic rumble rolled through it, and a chill swept over her.

She backed away from the window.

Her hand closed on the iron poker from the fireplace.

She took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

The strange rumble in the house grew louder, but not quite loud enough to keep Bettina from hearing a car door slam.

Her grip tightened on her weapon.

There was a great pounding on the door, and before she could move either to open it or back away, the massive oaken door flew open.

Shep Dunnigan strode in, his face scarlet, his body shaking with barely contained fury.

Bettina unconsciously reached out to steady herself against the wall as she faced him.

“Where is he?” Dunnigan demanded, his voice low and dangerous. “What the hell have you done with my son?” He stepped toward Bettina, the front door slamming shut behind him and the locks falling into place. Shep spun around and tried to open the door.

It held, locked fast.

“Nick isn’t here,” Bettina said, struggling to keep her own voice under control, to betray nothing of the panic—and fury—welling up inside her.

Shep glowered. “You’ve done something to him,” he snarled. “And to my wife, too. You’re a witch.” And there it was.

The word that had been whispered about her for so long, finally flung in her face.

Bettina felt her legs weakening, and when she opened her mouth to speak, nothing came out. No, she told herself. You’ve done nothing to be ashamed of, and never have. She steeled herself, and found her voice. “I did nothing to them, and you know it.” Her eyes bored into him, and she hurled one more word at him: “Nothing!”

Shep stepped closer. “Nothing?” he echoed, his voice as poisonous as the sneer on his lips. “Then what the hell is this?” He held up the bag of loose tea. “It’s drugs!” he shouted, not giving her time to reply. “You think I don’t recognize drugs when I see them?” He flung the bag of tea at Bettina’s face, but before she could duck, a blast of air ripped through the huge foyer, snatched the Baggie and hurled it to the far end.