Love Kills (25 page)

“You know it wasn't just you and me, Britt,” she finally said. “Women were so attracted to him. The gun is a phallic symbol, and it didn't hurt that he looked good and was great in the sack.”

Tearing up in the dark, I knew I shouldn't ask, but I did anyway. “When was the last time you and McDonald…”

“Had sex? You don't want to know, Britt.”

“He proposed.” I propped myself up on one elbow, voice rising. “Bought me a ring. We were about to set the date….”

“You don't know how it would have worked out.”

“If McDonald and I had split,” I asked, “would you have taken him back?”

“In a heartbeat, God help me. He was the love of my life.” She sighed softly in the firelight. “But any woman who married him would have found it a challenge.”

“Not me,” I said stubbornly.

“Love clouds your judgment,” she said. “Don't build him into a larger-than-life lost lover who shadows your future. He had all the usual flaws and foibles, that's all I'm saying. I loved him in spite of it. Always have, always will.”

She spoke gently, but her words stung. I sighed in anger and denial. The irony being that, despite it all, I could see what McDonald saw in her.

“Did you hear that?”

“No, what?” I listened, but all I heard was the rain hammering the metal roof, rattling the windows, and crashing like Niagara Falls off the gutter outside the kitchen door.

“A car.”

She sprang to her feet and blew out the candles.

“Stay where you are, Britt. Don't get up.”

Too late. I'd already struggled to my feet, heart pounding, straining to hear, hoping she was wrong.

Riley hunkered down next to one of the two front windows, her back to the wall, gun in hand, peering into the downpour.

I moved to the opposite window, staying out of sight. The visibility on the far side of the glass was nearly zero. I could barely make out the shrouded bulk of the Range Rover parked right out front.

“See anything?” I said softly.

“Not yet,” Riley said.

Then I heard the unmistakable thunk of a car door. Or was it? “Hear that?” I whispered.

“Car door?”

“Maybe something fell over in the rain, or a broken tree branch hit the roof,” I said hopefully.

I heard it again.

“Two,” she said.

“Did Nancy relock the front door when she brought in the laptop?” I asked.

“I double-checked every door, every window,” Riley said.

“Should I wake Nancy?” I said.

“Will she keep quiet?”

“Not if she's scared. Is your cell phone still out?”

“Yes.”

“Mine too.” I suddenly remembered something. “Kathy!”

“What?” she whispered impatiently.

“Lacey has a set of keys to this place.”

“There's a one-sided deadbolt, a thumb latch, on the inside,” she said.

I had to be sure. I slid down the wall into a sitting position, then crawled beneath the window ledge to the front door and reached up to see if the latch was engaged. It was. I sat, breathing hard for a moment, my back pressed against the door.

“Told you so,” she said, in an annoyed whisper.

Just then I sensed, rather than heard, movement on the other side. My spine tingled and the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. Was it the creak of floorboards? A cautious footfall only inches away? The slight squeak and smell of wet rubber soles?

I waved my arms, gesturing to Riley, as the metal doorknob just above my head slowly began to turn. Then I heard the smooth insertion of a key, followed by a metallic click as it unlocked. He tried to open it, but the deadbolt held. Afraid to breathe, I braced my back against the door in case he tried to kick it open.

Riley had crept up beside me. “He's right outside,” she whispered in my ear. “I can't see the other one. Don't know where he is. Take the poker and a sharp knife from the kitchen and go wake up Nancy. Gently, for God's sake. Keep her quiet. Take her into the bedroom closet. Stay there, both of you. Put the wooden chair in front of the closet door and keep low.”

“Have you tried your cell?” I whispered.

“Still no signal. If this takes a bad turn, try to get to the Range Rover. If you can't, take to the woods.”

I stared at her, startled.

“I don't expect the screw-up fairy, Britt, but it's smart to have a contingency plan.”

I groped about, found the poker in the dark, crept into the kitchen, shone my penlight into the drawer, and chose a razor-sharp filet knife.

Careful not to create a silhouette in front of the fireplace's dying glow, I inched into the bedroom where Nancy snored gently beneath a patchwork quilt.

I envied her peaceful sleep and hesitated, hating to wake her. As I reached out to gently nudge her shoulder, an earsplitting crash came from the bathroom, a few feet away. A shower of broken glass tinkled to the floor. A millisecond later, almost simultaneously, something smashed against the front door with the force of a SWAT team's battering ram.

Nancy sat up straight in bed. “What happened?” she murmured. “What was that?”

“Be quiet,” I whispered urgently. “They're trying to break in.”

She saw the glint of the knife in my hand and howled like a coyote.

I grabbed her arms and pulled her out of bed.

“What don't you understand about ‘Be quiet'?” I muttered fiercely in her ear.

I pushed her toward the closet. “Get inside, down on the floor, and stay there!”

Poker in one hand, the filet knife in the other, I cautiously approached the bathroom. The door stood ajar. I stepped closer and was sprayed by icy rainwater gusting through the shattered window.

The floor was wet, and getting wetter, the cheerful red and yellow patterned curtains already soaked.

A huge rock lay amid the glass shards on the floor.

Was he about to climb inside, or had he already done so?

The shock of cold water spray on my face startled and infuriated me. I swung the poker viciously at the closed shower curtain surrounding the tub, knife at the ready. No one there.

Another crash, followed by more breaking glass, in the front room. Again, almost instantaneously, something smashed into the opposite corner of the cabin. Wood splintered and the entire structure seemed to rock on its foundation. They must have rammed it with the Explorer or the Range Rover.

They moved fast, attacking from all directions. If their intent was to frighten and confuse us, it worked on me. I turned to rush toward the front room and collided with Nancy, who was right behind me. She sobbed under her breath.

I nearly wept in frustration. Where the hell were they?

Riley appeared in the doorway.

“Get back in that closet!” she snapped.

“Do you have a backup weapon I can borrow?” I asked urgently.

“No.” She shook her head. “Just as well. Too many shooters in these close quarters would be dangerous. You have to worry about cross fire—”

“I may not have police firearms training, but I was trained by a policeman,” I snapped. “I know how to use a gun.”

Nancy panicked at the word
gun
, screamed, and ran blindly through the kitchen. Riley followed, tipped the wooden table onto its side, and ordered her to take cover behind it.

Nancy's screams drew Marsh Holt to the front room. He hurled a log from the conveniently stacked firewood through a window. He used another to knock out the jagged shards of broken glass around the opening, and stepped through.

From behind the bedroom door I watched the rainwater drip off him onto the cabin floor. Holding a gun and breathing hard, he looked huge and menacing in the flickering light. But, I told myself, he's in for a surprise. He thinks all he's contending with are two unarmed women, one hysterical, the other pregnant.

“Nancy!” he bellowed. “Nancy Lee!” He was so close that I saw the flash of his bitter smile in the shadows. “Where's my goddamn wife?”

Nancy began to whimper in the kitchen.

He heard it too and turned toward her.

“Nice attitude for a man on his honeymoon,” I said, hoping to distract him.

“You're to blame for this, you bitch. Where's Nancy?”

She sprang out from behind the table and fled screaming through the kitchen.

I turned to follow and came face-to-face with John Lacey. Drenched, shivering, and holding a gun as though it were a foreign object, he looked as shocked as I felt.

“Lacey,” I whispered, “my God. Why?”

“Britt.” He stopped and stared.

I heard Holt approach behind me.

“Drop the gun!” Riley said, from somewhere in the dark. “You're under arrest!”

“Who the hell's that?” Lacey's eyes widened.

“What?” Holt spun around and saw Riley.

He fired a shot at her, then turned and fired at me. But I was already sliding to the floor, protecting my belly.

“Oh, no! My God!” Holt rushed at me. I braced and gritted my teeth. But inexplicably, he kept going. As he hurtled past, I summoned up all my strength, lunged, and sliced the back of his right ankle just above the heel as hard and as deep as I could with the filet knife.

He dropped in mid-stride, his outstretched arm unable to reach Lacey, who lay moaning on the floor. I never even heard him fall. In the dying firelight, a dark river snaked toward me across the wooden floor. It wasn't water. Instinctively, I rolled away from the blood, shuddering as I realized that the bullet Holt meant for me had struck Lacey in the side.

“Is he alive?” Blood from the gaping gash in Holt's heel spurted blood that sprayed across the wall and the baseboards. He clutched the wound with both hands and pleaded with Lacey. “J.L.—Johnny. It was an accident, I didn't mean—”

“Sure,” I said, “with you it's always an accident.” K. C. Riley snatched up both their guns.

She intended to handcuff Holt to a bathroom pipe but I protested. We were marooned and I had to use the facilities too often to share the space. She cuffed him to a pipe under the kitchen sink instead.

The rain began to let up.

I elevated Lacey's legs and cradled his head. He seemed as bewildered as I felt.

“Why?” I asked again.

“We had enough money. I begged him to stop. But he always said, One more, just one more. He promised we'd never have to work again, I could write my novel…”

“How…When did you and Holt hook up?”

His smile was a painful grimace. “You guessed it a long time ago, Britt. I had trouble keeping a straight face when you kept saying what a good actor he was. We met in an acting class the year I spent in New York. He knew at first sight. It was all new for me.”

“And Suzanne?”

His smile was sad. “We were misfits, best friends, always together. She was clingy, so needy. Once I had a taste of life in New York with Marsh, I could never go back to our old relationship in Baton Rouge. I tried. But she won that writing contest, got so much attention. I couldn't help but be jealous. Marsh was looking for another wife. He suggested her, and I agreed.” He winced. “It hurts,” he gasped. “Help me, Britt. I don't want to die here, not like this.”

“We have to take him down the mountain to a hospital,” I told Riley.

“Too dangerous,” she said. “In flash floods, the water always wins.”

“It's starting to recede, according to the radio,” I argued. “We can't wait. His heart rate is way up. He's so pale. His stomach looks distended; he must be bleeding internally. If we just get him down to the paved road, to a roadblock. Medics can stabilize him and get him out.”

Marsh Holt joined the argument. “Please,” he said, a sob in his voice. “Get us the hell out of here. If you don't, Johnny will die and I'll be crippled for life.”

He sat on the kitchen floor, cuffed to the pipe, pressing a blood-soaked towel to his slashed heel with his free hand.

“Don't let him die,” he pleaded, tragic and grief stricken, his usual act.

Maybe this time it was real.

 

By morning the rain had dwindled to a light drizzle. It took the combined strength of all three of us to move Lacey out to the car and make him as comfortable as possible in the back of the Range Rover. Nancy would drive, with K.C. riding shotgun, keeping an eye on the prisoners. I settled in the backseat with Lacey's head on my knees.

Holt sat in the space behind us, clutching the caked towels he used to apply pressure to the still-bleeding wound in his heel. My knife blade had apparently severed tendons and ligaments. He was unable to walk, and the open gash spurted blood at the slightest movement. “I have to keep pressure on it or I'll bleed to death,” he protested, when Riley reached to cuff him behind his back.

“Standard procedure,” she said flatly. “Prisoners are not transported without cuffs.”

“He can't run,” I argued impatiently. “He can't even walk. What could he possibly do? He'll bleed out all over the car if you cuff him. All he wants is medical help for Lacey and himself.”

Riley grimly removed the cuffs. “You sure you want to do this, Britt? I'd be more comfortable waiting here for medics.”

“Stop arguing! Start driving!” Holt cried urgently, pressing another bloody towel to his heel.

“Shut up,” Riley told him, her voice cold. “You have no vote. Try anything and I promise to shoot you dead. You make one move, and I'll dump you by the side of the road in handcuffs. The medics can look for you later. Got that?”

Holt nodded.

“Let's go,” I said.

“All right.” She chewed her lower lip. “Let's roll.”

So we rolled, despite her reluctance, all of us stressed, sleep deprived, and on edge.

We'd gone just a few miles when we spotted a police helicopter, flying low. Nancy and Riley waved. The chopper hovered overhead, as the pilot signaled us to proceed down to the main road.

“They gave us a go,” Riley said. “Either the road is open or they have a place to land.” The chopper headed south down the mountain and disappeared behind the trees.

“Hear that?” I told Lacey, who'd been drifting in and out of consciousness. “You'll be in a hospital soon. Hang in there.”