Listen to the Shadows (26 page)

Straightening, he went on. “Naturally, her speaking in that turkey-talk, I didn’t know what the hell she was saying. And then, suddenly, like a shot, this kid comes running and yelling out of nowhere.”

Drake’s eyes took on a glitter of excitement. “Coming right at us. I cocked my rifle—” He mimed the action. “Aimed…”

“Don’t,” she whispered, unable to stop herself, wanting to shut her eyes and mind to the terrible images. She couldn’t bear to hear more of this horror story, and yet she knew she needed to, needed to hear it all.

“Yeah,” he smiled. “That’s what Raynes said. Only he screamed it. Goddamn bleeding-heart Raynes. Hold your fire, he yelled, but it was too late. I didn’t hear him. I’d already pulled the trigger.”

And something squeezed Katie’s heart.

Drake’s voice lowered. “Or maybe I did hear. And maybe I just said the hell with you, Raynes. I ain’t takin’ no chances on dying for some gook kid.” He gave a harsh laugh. “Well, you don’t ask for an identity card, do you? You by any chance armed?” His fingers dug into Katie’s bare shoulder with savagery. “Do you know what I’m telling you?”

“Yes,” she managed past the taste of bile rising in her throat.

Todd’s face came to her clearly, then, as it had not done in many months, each dear feature of his face, his sensitive brown eyes, his easy grin. Todd would have loathed the sort of man Drake was. Even in the midst of war, Katie had no doubt that Todd would have bled in his soul for the murdered boy.

“You shoot, goddammit! You shoot!” Eyes wild, Drake reminded Katie of a killer dog on a frayed leash.

“How old was the boy?” she asked, a dangerous, futile question, but she was remembering the vision she’d had in the hospital, and it seemed, for some reason, important to know.

Drake didn’t answer right away, then quietly, “Like I said, I didn’t ask. What’s the difference? Six—eight—they weren’t kids. They were goddamned midgets carrying guns and grenades.”

“Was he—the boy…?”

Fury leapt into Drake’s eyes, and for a horrifying instant Katie feared she had gone too far. “No, he wasn’t armed. But how the hell could I know that?” He thrust his face close to hers, his fingers digging ever deeper into her shoulder. “Answer me! How the hell could I know the little bastard wasn’t armed?” His voice was edged with madness, and she sensed the twisted threads of his mind were as precarious as fine wires in a time bomb.

“You c-couldn’t,” she stammered, knowing it wouldn’t have mattered. There was no remorse, no regret in Drake. Only hatred—and blood-lust. Blood-lust as he relived the moment of impact when his bullet struck the boy down.

The phrase “the thrill of the hunt” came to mind, and Katie knew it was that which had made Drake so tenacious, so tireless in his efforts to track her down. But more than that, Drake enjoyed killing. There was no question in her mind about that.

“Raynes came at me like a madman,” Drake was saying, “and he kept coming at me until I…”

At the abrupt distortion of Drake’s features, Katie’s thoughts swept back across time to when she was in the sixth grade. She even remembered the boy’s name—Greg Coombs. He was the school bully.

He’d picked on little Billy Miller the entire year, but on that one day in early June, something snapped in Billy, and he turned on him, beat him until Greg begged him to stop and all the kids were cheering Billy on. She remembered the look on Greg’s face—it was the same expression Drake wore now, and Katie understood more clearly what had happened.

Todd kept coming at you until you begged him to stop, didn’t he, Drake? She was glad, but as on that day in the sixth grade, not brave enough to cheer aloud.

“They watched—women, old men, kids—watched while Raynes made me wrap the kid in an army blanket and dig a grave. He stood over me, arms folded across his chest like some goddamned sentinel while I lifted shovel full after shovel full of stinking, heavy mud. I lifted, while they all watched, wailing the whole time like Christless banshees. Even Raynes—sniveling, wiping his eyes, while I wiped sweat from mine.”

Drake was calmer now, his voice dropping, becoming monotone, almost hypnotic. “After I buried the kid, Raynes turned and walked away—turned his back on me like the fool he was. I picked up the rifle—let him hear me cock it, saw his back stiffen. Someone screamed a warning, but too late. I pumped the life out of that bleeding-heart, left him sprawled right there on that stinking swampland in a pool of his own bleeding-heart blood. And then I buried him.” He smiled. “Do you know what day that was, Katie?”

She could only look at him. My God! Todd was murdered.

Murdered by one of his own men.

“It was November fifth.”

He was waiting for her response, obviously congratulating himself for some touch of irony that was lost on her. The date meant nothing to

Katie. She didn’t receive word that Todd was missing in action until the third of December. Despite her fear, anger boiled in her. Todd might have made it back home.

“There were witnesses,” she said carelessly. Maybe one would be found, and Drake would be made to pay for his crime—if she and

Jonathan ever got out of here.

He grinned. “Not when I left that village.”

He was watching her face, enjoying the impact of his words on her.

Sickened, in a voice devoid of emotion, Katie, said, “Then you had your revenge.”

“Oh, no. It didn’t mean anything. A lot of people died in `Nam. It wasn’t special.” As he picked up the lamp from the sawhorse, his face went eerily in and out of shadow. “There are a few finishing touches I have to take care of,” he said. “I’ll be back.”

And then he was gone, and the wooden bar on the outside cellar door thumped into place. Katie struggled at once to a sitting position.

“Jonathan?” she whispered into the darkness.

Nothing.

The window was low, and Katie began inching her way toward it.

She could make out Drake’s silhouette easily in the moonlight. He stood about forty yards off to her right, among the trees. The lamp was on the ground beside him.

As Katie watched the shovel lift—drop—then lift again, each time imagining the soft thud of upturned earth plopping on the hard ground, her mouth went dry. It was a scene out of a horror film.

Drake was digging a grave.

He turned suddenly, as though sensing her watching him, and leaned on his shovel. Katie could not see his face, but she felt the heat of his stare burning into her, and tore her own eyes away, the heart-stopping knowledge that Drake meant to bury them alive dawning on her in all its horror. Why else would they still be breathing? My God! And all because Todd had humiliated him all those years ago.

Gripped with panic, Katie began working her way along the floor toward where Jonathan lay, her movement agonizingly slow, the cold cement rubbing her flesh raw. Hurry! She commanded herself, terrified that any moment the door would open, and Drake would be standing there. Hurry!

At last she reached Jonathan’s still form.

“Wake up, darling.” How badly was he hurt? Was it possible…?

No, she would not even allow herself to think it. Yet there was no sound from him, no stirring of life to reassure her. Tears of fear and helplessness ran down her cheeks, and she couldn’t even wipe them away. “He’s outside now, Jonathan,” she said. “He’s digging a grave to bury us in.” When still he gave no response, Katie lay her cheek, in near despair, against his hair and felt the sticky wetness matted in the strands. Please, no! She moved her face lower, pressed an ear to his chest to listen. Only when she heard the strong, steady beat of his heart did she let out her own breath.

“Jonathan, please hear me. I need you. We are both going to die if you don’t help me. We are both going to die horribly.”

There was the softest moan from him, enough to send a surge of hope through Katie. “Katherine?” His voice was weak and thready.

“Yes, Jonathan, it’s me.” She could barely see him in the pale light from the window. “Are you all right?”

Groaning, he struggled to get up, falling back again before Katie remembered to tell him that his hands and feet were bound. “Christ, my head,” he groaned. “What happened?”

Briefly, prodded by a powerful sense of urgency, Katie explained their perilous situation, along with giving him a quick summary of all that Drake had told her. “Both exits are locked,” she finished. “I don’t know how we’re going to get out of here, but we don’t have much time.” She paused, becoming aware that Jonathan did not seem at all surprised. “You knew all along that it was Drake, didn’t you?”

“No, not really,” he said, keeping his own voice to a near whisper, “but I did get a sense of—I don’t know—the uncanny, I suppose, when we ran into him at the funeral parlor. There was something in his eyes—like hearing a sour note on the piano. I put my aversion to him down to jealousy, though I found myself remembering something my mother told me years ago—that dried wheat stems make excellent straw, and Devlin had said that he and his father grew wheat on their land. But that bit of trivia isn’t going to help us now—too little, too late, as they say. Our first job is to get out of these ropes. We need something to cut them with.”

Katie wracked her brain, then, in a flash of recall, saw herself dropping the flashlight down here the other night, heard the splintering of glass. She told Jonathan. “I dropped the flashlight when I saw—anyway, if the police didn’t clean it up, the glass is still here.”

“Be careful,” he said behind her. “Don’t cut yourself.”

After only a moment’s searching, excitement rippled through her at the touch of something smooth and cool against her cheek. “I’ve got it.” Seizing the fair-sized sliver of glass between her teeth, she made her way back to Jonathan and maneuvered the glass into his hand.

Backs pressed together, Jonathan worked feverishly at the ropes binding her wrists. Their combined breathing seemed deafening in the quiet of the cellar. The seconds crept by with nerve-screaming slowness. Katie was about to despair that their plan would fail when, suddenly, the rope snapped. Her hands were free. Briskly, she rubbed the circulation back into them, then quickly undid the rope around her ankles.

“Listen!” Jonathan whispered.

Katie froze. “I don’t hear anything.” And then she did, a soft rustling just outside the door. Oh, no, she had to untie Jonathan.

“No!” he whispered, as she turned to him. “No time. Get away from me. He has to believe I’m still out. It’s our only chance. Go!”

She’d barely managed to put a few feet between them when the door swung open. Drake’s silhouetted form seemed to fill the doorway. The knife was in his hand, its blade gleaming in the moonlight. He came inside, slowly, warily, the knife poised now, leaving the door open wide behind him to let in light. His eyes went from Katie to Jonathan who lay perfectly still and in the same position as Drake had left him. After a moment, Katie saw the tension leave Drake’s shoulders, and the wild look go out of his eyes.

“So you’ve managed to free yourself,” he drawled, moving toward her, reaching out a hand to stroke her breast beneath the tissue-thin fabric. Katie’s skin recoiled at his touch. “Nice,” he murmured. An almost uncontrollable hatred for Drake Devlin washed over her, and she had to fight the compulsion to ignore the knife, and just fly into him, hands, feet, everything. But in the rational part of her mind, she knew she would be no match for a madman wielding a knife. He would kill her. And then he would kill Jonathan.

“I’ve got something I want to show you,” he said, his hot, greedy eyes raking her body, “then you and I will take a little trip upstairs. No sense in our not being comfortable, is there? By the way, you do look ravishing in that negligee. A nice touch, don’t you think?” He shifted his gaze to Jonathan again. “Did you try to wake your boyfriend?” He sauntered over to where Jonathan lay still as death, and nudged his ribs with the toe of his boot.

Katie’s own breath stopped.

“I thought you’d try,” he said, coming back to her. “But I made sure he wouldn’t be waking up for a long, long time.”

As he reached to take her hand, Katie flattened herself against the wall. “No. You’re crazy, Drake. You’ll never get away with this.

They’ll find you. Jonathan will…”

“What they’ll find,” he cut in softly, “is the good doctor here slumped over your grave with his wrists slashed. Murder and suicide. A crime of passion. Happens all the time.” He gave a hard laugh.

“No one will believe…”

“Oh, of course they will. A psychiatrist who’d just lost a patient— blames himself, poor man. He takes a year off. A mental breakdown, they’ll say. Poor Dr. Shea had a mental breakdown.”

She felt herself beginning to hyperventilate, tried to control it.

“You—you said you didn’t know that until Jonathan and I were…”

“I didn’t. Until I saw you together. Then all it took was a little phone call to Belleville General to collect a bit of information. What I got was a bonus. You’d be surprised how cooperative some women can be—how they love to divulge secrets. But after all, what could be so threatening about a guy who just landed into town and wants to look up his old college buddy?”

Closing his hand around Katie’s wrist, he pulled her roughly to her feet and toward the door. “Enough talk. Come. Your bridal bed is ready.”