If Looks Could Kill (47 page)

"Everybody's in position. You on your way?"

"I have one stop to make." He lifted an eye to that second chopper, this one from one of the television stations up in St. Louis. Good. At least he'd have a few clear minutes in the field. "Make sure everybody is ready to move on short notice. We're not interested in apprehension, just location. Got that?"

"Got it. See you in five."

"On my way."

Two satellite trucks careened around the corner without paying attention to most traffic laws. Mac didn't care. He was just relieved that they'd taken the bait, and that he could deal with Lawson, whoever she was, without having tungsten lights in his face. Reclipping his radio, he bent to drop his shotgun in the trunk.

He heard the footsteps approach and braced himself for another argument. Probably Harmonia Mae this time, crabbing about the noise.

Then, suddenly, the hairs on the back of his neck bristled.

Mac didn't even consider it. He just acted. Spinning around, he reached for his gun.

He never had a chance. Before he could even clear his holster, something blunt and heavy and cold slammed into the right side of his head. Fireworks exploded behind his eyes and the world outside tilted and dimmed. His last coherent thought before consciousness winked out in a sea of red pain was, Oh hell, not again.

* * *

"So, what do we do now?" Sue asked.

Chris kept her attention on the darkening streets. "We wait," she said, watching the street lamps flutter to life in the gray dusk. She was sweaty and stale, and the air conditioning was on. She couldn't imagine what it was like tromping out through the woods or climbing through the pipes in the subbasement of the hospital. Two helicopters roared overhead at about treetop level, and a couple of camera crews shot through town as if they were trying to beat them to the scene. Everybody wanted to be in on the action.

Everybody but her. She wanted to be somewhere else. Anywhere else. Anywhere but contemplating coming face to face with her own private nightmares. Exposing them for public consumption. Sharing them without benefit of anonymity or isolation.

"Well," Sue mused. "At least I know now why I didn't like her."

Silence settled again in the little room. Chris saw the swing of Mac's lights as he pulled out of the other end of the parking lot. She wished she could have stowed away in his car. She wished she could just open the door and walk on out after him. City hall was getting too small. Too close, with the humidity seeping through even the chug of the air-conditioning. She needed room. She needed to breathe. Something was going on. She could feel it dead center in her chest, and she couldn't do anything about it. She was stuck here in this tiny room with a baby-sitter to keep her sane.

Sane. That was a joke. She'd been tumbled around more than a surfer after a wipeout. There wasn't a chance in hell she'd come out of this whole. If she came out at all.

"What are you going to do?" Sue asked, as if privy to Chris's thoughts.

Chris never faced her. She was too busy facing the pictures she'd painted with words over fifteen years ago.

"I'm going to do whatever it takes to get Shelly out of there."

"But Mac said that if you follow the story... if
she
follows the story... that in the end, you get killed."

"It'd sure be simpler than facing all those cameras again."

Sue wouldn't have any of it. Stalking right up to Chris, she grabbed her by the arms and swung her around. "Not another word," she commanded, shaking Chris as if she were one of her own children. "You even consider doing something that stupid, and I won't let John within twenty feet of you."

Chris wanted so badly for Sue to understand. She wanted someone else to share the burden of grief and guilt and confusion. But Sue had only read those case histories. She'd never lived them. She would never quite understand the need to wash away the stain of sin. She'd never had her mother stand her in the middle of a church meeting, place her hand on her head, and proclaim to the congregation that a child who rejected the Lord was not worthy of her mother's love or forgiveness.

She'd never spent her teen years proving to the world that every horrible word her mother had ever uttered about her had been true, and then shattering because of it.

"I'm not going to be stupid," she assured her friend with every ounce of confidence she could muster. "But I am going to find out what I've done to warrant this. I want to know just what sin I'm being punished for. And that will mean talking to her. It'll mean, if I'm lucky, sitting down with her and convincing her to trade Shelly for me."

It would all come down to her own words. To a story she'd written as a way out of hell. And now, to keep her out, she had to remember it. To understand it.

...there, deep in the shadows, where her terror had risen to claim her, the pursuer, who had her own face, waited. Sighed with satisfaction, crouched in anticipation. Steel knife glinting in the harsh, stark light above. The knife of retribution. The instrument of sacrifice...

Deep in the shadows...

But Chris didn't think of the hospital as in the shadows. When she thought of it, she thought of sunlight. Of big windows looking out onto lawns and indirect lighting and the hush of crepe-soled shoes. Shadows.

Darkness.

Chris ran back for the window. "Oh, shit."

But Mac was gone. Out of reach, approachable only by radio, and that would be suicidal for them all. It might already be too late already anyway.

"What?" Sue demanded as Chris whipped around and ran for Mac's office.

"It's not the hospital," Chris said, slamming into the cabinets. Rummaging through the closet. "I've got to let them know."

"Radio them," Sue suggested. "There are some extras back here."

Chris came up with one of them and hooked it over her own belt. "We can't," she disagreed, pulling a vest down off a hook. "She's been listening to everything that's been going on."

Sue looked around, obviously at a loss for answers. "How?"

Chris didn't exactly answer. She was thinking. Organizing. Praying.

No atheists in a foxhole, she thought distractedly as she tried to decide what to do. Oh, what the hell. Cover all bases, just in case.

She'd sent absolutely everyone in the wrong direction. It meant that Sandy wouldn't worry about being discovered just yet. It also meant...

"Sandy!"

"What?"

Chris laughed, her voice shrill, her heart suddenly slamming into her ribs. "Her name's Sandy," she admitted, amazed. "She was the same age I was. Killed both her parents because the voices told her to." She shook her head, the sudden revelations tumbling around with the implications. With the comprehensions. With the brand-new set of questions and problems. "I still don't know why she's doing this."

Chris piled all her booty on the desk and took a second to think. It didn't seem to help. She had to get close enough to find out just how Sandy had set things up. She had to get some kind of advantage. And then, she had to go in alone and face the nightmare she'd been having for the last fifteen years, just as she'd known all along she would.

Chris sucked in a steadying breath. She did her best to appear in control as she turned on her friend, who had never really had to deal with situations like this. She grabbed Sue by the arms and forced her to help.

"You need to get out to the hospital," Chris commanded. "Get to Mac. Tell him that Sandy isn't there. She's at the jail." Chris tried to take another breath, but just the word "jail" had already closed off her air. "That means she also has Marsha, maybe Elvis. And the only way she's going to let them go is to talk to me."

"You're not going there!" Sue protested.

Chris challenged her with a determination she didn't feel. "Nobody else is going to be able to get in that front door. Tell Mac I'm going to try and get Sandy back outside. Into some kind of range. Tell him. Now, get going, or we're going to be too late."

"I thought you said everybody else was safe," Sue said.

Chris shook her head, already sweating. Stomach churning. "Not at the jail. That's..."

She could only shake her head again, words not able to convey the terrible power of those claustrophobic, suffocating cells. Beasts lived there, terrible truths, ancient evils. And Sandy, with her hypersaturated sense of reality, would be able to sense every one.

"Tell him that I'll get her out of the cell block. Tell him that."

Sue balked, her eyes wide with terror, her experience insufficient for this. "Chris..."

Chris knew better. "Go!" she shouted, giving the woman a good push.

She couldn't wait any longer. She wished for the time to carefully plan, to maybe concoct an act, a disguise to get her past the door. The outside world was ready to close in, though, and once it did Shelly would be forfeit. Chris had suspected that might be the case at the hospital. She knew it at the jail.

Why hadn't she understood? Why hadn't she admitted that Sandy would have chosen the door to Chris's own personal hell to act out the final chapter?

Because just the thought of stepping back over that threshold threatened to break her.

She'd have to face the dark.She'd have to face the small, dank well of confinement.She would have to face the demons those places awoke in her.

That was when she realized just how courageous a man Mac was. He had to face those demons every time he walked into a new situation, and yet he did it. Chris only had to do it once.

Only once.

But she knew there was only one way she could survive this at all, whether anybody died tonight or not. She had to move. She had to act, and this had given her her chance.

She waited long enough for Sue to get out. Then, before she could so much as consider what it was she was about to do, Chris went in search of her accuser.

Chapter 21

The town was so quiet. Chris imagined that everyone was probably watching the feeding frenzy up by Oz. She could hear the steady drone of helicopters, the sporadic whoop of sirens, the faint yap of bloodhounds. She just hoped that Sue had gotten to Mac so that he could keep everybody off her back until she got into the jail.

She'd thought she might actually catch up with him at her house when she went for the extra parabolic mike. He hadn't been there. He hadn't even stopped to pick up equipment. Maybe he'd wanted to coordinate with John first. Chris didn't wait long enough to wonder about it. Slipping inside with her spare keys, she grabbed her mike and ran.

Even with the streetlights on, the illumination was horrible. Some of them weren't working, and a couple that were flickered feebly. At any other time something to worry about. Tonight, a definite benefit. With the darkness quickly falling, maybe her tricks would work. Maybe nobody would catch her. Maybe Sandy wouldn't notice her until Chris was ready.

Chris wished she could have taken care with her disguise. She had all the equipment necessary to pull off a professional job. A little spirit gum, some facial hair and a short wig, maybe glasses and a mole or two. Nobody looked at old men on the street, and at Chris's height, it would have been an easy identity to pull off. She'd had to settle for stuffing her hair into a fedora and wearing Mac's long raincoat instead. There was nothing for it but to hope that it would keep her unidentifable enough for the time she needed. That it would help camouflage the extras she carried with her.

The mike was a godsend. A small hand-held unit that could pick up sounds inside the sheriffs office and the jail block. That way she could pinpoint location, identify occupants. Prevent surprises. She hoped.

She was so scared. Furious with impatience, terrified of movement. Sweating and nauseated and certain that any moment Victor was going to walk up and ask what character she was pretending to be out behind the sheriffs office.

At least Eldon's wife was gone. The lights were out in the sheriff's house, the missus down at the Methodist church for a meeting.

Chris swiped at the perspiration on her forehead and set up position in the side parking lot by the jail. Safely in a tunnel of shadow, out of the range of windows, with an eye toward the front of the office at the other end to prevent surprises.