Strings of Fate (Mistresses of Fate) (33 page)

His body fell forward on top of Chris, the knife in the back of his neck waggling obscenely when he hit the floor.

Chris, pain forgotten, scrambled out from under him, shoving him as far away as she could and picking up the glass again just in case. When it was over, the noise of the past few moments seemed to swell in the room. The silence felt like a lie, like they’d all just gone deaf while the world continued screaming. She swallowed, afraid to move just yet, afraid he would come to life like a damn zombie.

Martha collapsed to her knees and began scratching her arms, long, deep gouges that bled in stringlike rivers. “He made me kill Badger. He made me kill Badger. He made me kill Badger.”

She didn’t seem to be able to stop saying it.

Chris made herself move, glancing at the girls. They seemed unharmed, if freaked out, their pale faces fixed on the body.

Chris knelt next to Martha, wanting to comfort her somehow. She bent down and put her free hand on Martha’s shoulder.

“It’s okay—” she started to say, but the woman reached out with clawlike hands and grabbed Chris’s other wrist, jerking the shard of glass into the big artery in her own neck. Blood sprayed out, coating Chris, and the girls screamed.

Her eyes wide, her face covered in blood, she managed to whisper, “I killed Badger,” before falling over onto her side.

Chris, drenched in warm blood while her feet froze and her body trembled, let out a heartfelt “FUCK!”

38

“YOUR BOYFRIEND WILL
be here soon,” Ro murmured.

The four of them were huddled together on the first floor of the paper mill, having elected to stay where they were rather than try to find their way to civilization at night, bleeding, and without any shoes.

Chris laughed, feeling woozy from shock and blood loss. “Last time you said that, it was bad.”

“Not this time,” Ro murmured. “It’s Ryan.”

“Ryan,” Chris murmured, feeling tears sting her eyes. “Knew he’d find me.”

Ro touched her finger to Chris’s tears, her face thoughtful. She looked out toward the millpond. “There are others here. This is a bad place.”

Chris blinked, struggling to stay awake. “Others?” If there were more freaking serial killers in this bitch, she was going to have a word with God in church on Sunday.

“Others who are dead. They’re in the pond, waiting for someone to find them.”

“In the pond?” Chris whispered, and she immediately thought of Summer.

She tugged on Ro’s arm. “Is Summer there? Do you know?”

Ro looked frustrated and sad, as if she wanted to give Chris an answer, but just couldn’t. “We can’t see our aunt. Can’t see our own. Never could.”

“So she could be?”

Ro nodded. “It’s possible.” But Chris could see that she didn’t really believe they would find Summer in the pond.

Chris didn’t remember much after that. She thought she might have passed out. When she woke up, Ryan was staring at her, his eyes drawn at the corners behind his glasses, mouth pinched shut.

“Ryan.” She smiled at him and touched his cheek, smearing blood on him. “How’d you find me?”

Ryan ran a hand over her hair. “They’re going to put you in the ambulance now. But don’t worry—I’m coming with you.”

“Hmm.” Chris leaned into his hand. “That sounds really nice.”

She was out again as they placed her on a stretcher, Ryan a blur next to her, holding her hand in his.

WHEN SHE WOKE AGAIN,
she was in a hospital bed, the insistent beep of the monitors a lovely counterpoint to Ryan’s snoring. He was asleep in a hospital chair with his head thrown back, mouth open, looking disheveled, unshaven, and adorable.

“Ryan,” Chris murmured, and he woke immediately, coming to her side.

“Hey,” he murmured, scrubbing a hand over his face.

“Hey,” Chris murmured back, content to simply stay in his presence for a few moments, which was all it took before curiosity got the better of her.

“So what happened?” She squeezed his fingers, everything suddenly coming back to her. The Triplets. Martha. The pond . . .

He closed his eyes, as if he didn’t want to remember it at all, but he answered. “We moved on the cabin when we saw that it was clear of hostages. There was someone there. Apparently the unsub, whose name was Joe Sherman, by the way, offered Martin Hays the cabin as a safe house. They knew each other more or less through a child pornography network, though apparently the unsub used the network to find people with suitable strings rather than children.”

“Some safe house,” Chris tried to joke, but Ryan didn’t seem inclined to smile.

“Martin Hays is revealing the location of the other two girls he kidnapped.”

Chris blinked back tears. “I don’t suppose they’re alive?”

Ryan shook his head. “No, they’re not.”

Chris turned her head away for a minute to hide her tears. “What about us? How did you find us?”

“Well, we figured out that he’d taken you fairly quickly after we’d moved on Martin Hays, but following the tracks just led us back to the road, where we assume Ms. Cooper was waiting for him.”

He paused, his face flushed. Chris assumed it was at the memory of what he’d felt in that moment, to find her gone.

“Martha killed him,” Chris said, remembering in vivid detail.

“The girls told us,” Ryan confirmed. “We matched surveillance we had of her and the DNA we found on her dog, so we knew she might be involved. Tavey and Raquel confirmed that she’d been working as a groomer at the pet salon. We’d already narrowed our search to include the paper mill, but one of the agents went through her belongings at the salon and found a map with the mill circled.”

“She seemed pretty broken,” Chris murmured, and Ryan nodded.

“The ME has already found evidence of extensive torture, though Sherman kept it focused on places that wouldn’t show.”

Chris wasn’t surprised and she certainly didn’t want the details. She hoped that Martha had found a measure of peace.

“So . . .” She pulled his hand forward so she could kiss his knuckles. “What else?”

He rested his head on the edge of her bed and she stroked his hair.

“The girls told us that Sherman bragged that he’d dumped bodies in the millpond. We’re dragging it now, but they’ve already pulled out three young women.”

He looked up at her. “I’m sure I don’t have to tell you, but it’s possible—”

Chris stopped him by putting a finger over his lips. “I trust you,” she whispered. “If she’s there, you’ll find her.”

39

CHRIS KNEW WHEN
she heard Ryan’s knock on the door that they hadn’t found Summer. It wasn’t his usual knock, solid and urgent, but a hesitant one, as if he didn’t want to knock at all. Chris could picture him, standing on her ridiculous doormat, frustration drawing down the corners of that gorgeous mouth.

She opened the door and saw she was right. His hair was mussed, and the light from the setting sun highlighted the red in it. Behind his glasses, his gray eyes were solemn in a pale face. He regarded her silently, hands on his hips, head slightly down.

“We didn’t find her,” he told her simply, and she nodded, holding out her hand to pull him inside. He came willingly enough, or at least too tired to argue, which was close enough to willing for Chris.

She started leading him toward her bedroom, but he stopped. “Wait.”

“Come on, Ryan. I want to show you something.”

“I want to show you something, too.” He held up a folder, removing a photograph of a small leather-bound book. It looked mildewed and rotten.

“What’s this?” Chris studied it, figuring it must have been taken from the paper mill where she’d been held with the girls.

“We think it might have belonged to Summer.”

Chris’s head snapped up. “Summer? Why?”

“It’s been there awhile and it has her name in it.”

“Her name,” Chris repeated stupidly, her heart leaping and shuddering at the same time. What did it mean? The book had been there for a while, but they hadn’t found her body. Maybe she’d dropped it; maybe someone had kidnapped her and taken her somewhere else.

“There’s also a quote inside.” He flipped to another photograph in the file. There was a picture of the inside pages. Summer’s name was written in red crayon in big awkward letters. The quote was written in tight, elegant cursive.

“But in a story, which is a kind of dreaming, the dead sometimes smile and sit up and return to the world.”

“What’s it from?” Chris whispered.

“This book
The Things They Carried,
by Tim O’Brien, about the Vietnam War. The quote is from a story in it called ‘The Lives of the Dead.’ ”

Chris thought about that, wondering what it meant. The old man who lived on the strip of land next to Tavey, between her property and the witch family’s, had fought in the Vietnam War.

“We can go back to the office this afternoon. I’ve requested the old files on Summer’s disappearance be sent there, as well as the records on the paper mill. We should be able to get a good start on finding out where this piece fits.”

Chris didn’t want to wait; she wanted to get the file she kept about Summer’s disappearance, wanted to call Tavey and tell her that her suspicions about Old Abraham may have been correct all these years. She was practically vibrating with the need to do something.

“Chris?”

Chris blinked. He’d said they’d look into it this afternoon. That wasn’t so long, and there was a part of her that thought the events of the past few weeks had been a kind of warning to her—a hint into how little she’d been connecting with others.

“That sounds good. We can eat lunch in that café again. I liked their roast beef.”

He looked at her suspiciously, like he knew exactly how much she wanted to start digging for more information.

“You know what I like,” he said, and pulled her in the direction of the living room.

“Do I?” She wiggled her eyebrows at him, wanting to lighten the mood a little.

“In a minute, I want to tell you something.”

Chris winced. His tone was really serious. Damn. This wasn’t good. He was going to break up with her. He was probably being offered some huge promotion for catching Joe the string-obsessed psychopath, Martin the sick fuck, and recovering the bodies of over two decades’ worth of murders, and was planning to leave for Washington, D.C.
Bye-bye. Nice screwing you. Have a nice life.

He sat down on the couch and patted the seat next to him.

She sat down and folded her arms across her chest, ready for whatever bullshit line he wanted to deliver.

He met her eyes, his serious, but when he took in her mulish expression, a smile kicked up the corner of his mouth. “God, you’re beautiful. Maddening, but beautiful.”

Chris unfolded her arms. This didn’t sound too bad, really. And he said the cutest things. What man today used the word
maddening
?

“I wanted to tell you that I was wrong. Yesterday, when I told you that you were stupid, I’m sorry for that. Now I know how you felt in that moment . . . shit, how you must feel every day. When I realized you were missing, I would have done anything . . .
anything
to find you.”

He was stroking her arm while he spoke, looking away from her, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat.