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Authors: Alane Ferguson

BOOK: The Dying Breath
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“What is it, Cameryn? Another game? We’ll have forever now to play them.”
She swallowed hard, trying by the sheer force of her will to keep her panic down so she could speak. It all came down to this. “Kyle, before you do it, before you drive off the pass, there’s something you should know. . . .”
Chapter Sixteen
“YOU’RE LYING,” KYLE
said. “You want me to believe that there’s something I should know.” His words seemed to taunt her as he clutched the wheel so hard the vessels seemed to pop from beneath the skin of his hands.
Cameryn took a breath, trying to clear her mind in a wild bid to buy time. She could feel the seconds of her life were ticking away, each second, each heartbeat, each breath, almost her last. Fear rose and bloomed so large she could barely exhale.
Control,
she told herself.
Stay in control.
“So what is it?” Kyle snorted with contempt. “Nothing, right? You’re trying to buy some time. A pathetic attempt, Cammie. I expected better from my
anam cara
.”
When she couldn’t answer, he said, “Yeah, that’s what I thought. See, there’s nothing you can do. I’ve already covered all the bases. Kyle O’Neil is calling the shots, just like always.”
“No—I just don’t know how to put what I’m thinking into words.
Please
slow down.”
In reply, Kyle pushed the petal harder; the engine whined in protest as the trees streamed past in streaks of green.
“
Kyle!”
“Relax, we’re almost there.” He leaned forward so that his chest brushed the steering wheel, his face manic, intent, his eyes narrowed to slits. “You can see into my mind by what I’ll leave behind. You and me, crushed to pieces on the rocks below. I’m thinking the car might explode and then all they’ll find will be ashes. Instant cremation. What a way to go.”
“Don’t—”
“Why not? I’m not afraid to die.” A sadistic energy emanated from his erect body, and with one hand he gestured wildly. “
Everybody
dies, remember—mortality rate stands at one hundred percent. It’s all about making a
statement
. Whoo!” He pumped his fist in the air.
“Yeah!”
“Aren’t you scared about what comes after?”
He glanced quickly at her, his eyes alight with a strange gleam. “You mean hell? If there is a hell, I’m running it. I’m smarter than the devil, Cammie. Haven’t you noticed that I never kill in a common way—man, I have a
signature
! Exotic deaths. They’ll write about me
forever
, in their pointless little journals about the psychopathic mind. But like I said, I’m tired of playing. Now I just want to win. And I want to take you along for the ride.” He made a
tsk
ing sound between his teeth. “Me an only child, and you raised all alone. Both of us are drawn to death and now we’ll be going there together, sailing beyond straight into the other side. It’s perfect.”
“This doesn’t have to end!”
She was screaming now. Pleading with someone who didn’t seem to feel, her words falling like petals against stone.
“Yes,” he said calmly. “I think it does.”
Outside she saw a meadow unfold before her, the tall stalks of yellow grass peeking out of the snow like the bristles of a golden brush. They were driving through the one last open expanse before the final descent into Ouray, to the sheer cliff of the Ruby Walls, the place where she and Kyle would die. Mount Abrams rose to the east: an amphitheater of rock touching the sky dome, void of trees, glistening as though it had been topped with pastillage.
He was going fast, much too fast, on this last straight stretch of road. Only moments to make a plan.
“Kyle, listen to me. No, just listen.” There was desperation in her voice that she couldn’t control. “Back in the cemetery, when you kissed me, something happened.”
“Really.” He gave her a strange half smile. “And what was it that happened to you, Cammie? What
feeling
did I unlock?”
“I think—I think it was the way that you said we both are drawn to death. But I don’t think we need to die, Kyle.” She placed her swollen left hand on his thigh. Her stomach roiled as she touched him, but she could see no other way than this. “I think we can both live. I
know
we can. We don’t have to go off the mountainside. You and me—we can be together.”
He laughed hollowly. “And how would that look to the outside world? Cameryn Mahoney and her little zip tie, following me around like a dog on a plastic leash. Or do you think no one would notice the binding?”
“No, Kyle.” Her head whipped from the road to his face as she tugged against the plastic cord, helpless, trapped. Images, maybe the last she would ever see, streaked by, so much beauty in the colors that spun in a kaleidoscope of blues and greens, browns and every shade of white, this world she was not ready to leave. “I don’t need this—
thing
. Cut me free and I’ll show you. Kyle, I think you were right about us all along.” Her breath was coming in gasps as she said, “You said you loved me.”
He snorted. “But you don’t love me. I already told you, I’m smarter than you are, even with that famous forensic brain of yours. You can’t play with my mind, Cammie. I can see all of your moves.”
The mountain was coming on fast.
“Kyle—
we belong together
. Why don’t you—try to see if your life is worth living! Why die before you’re sure?” The strangled words sounded so false she didn’t dare to believe he would buy any of it. But something behind his eyes seemed to flicker. A pause. A tiny consideration.
“Kyle!”
“Stop saying my name. You’re saying my name so I’ll see you as a person. I know the tricks.”
“I’m not trying to trick you.” She was frantic now—ready to promise him anything if he would just put his foot on the brake. “I mean it. I
swear
!”
Thrusting out his jaw, he stared straight ahead. “So you think you have . . . feelings . . . for me.” There was an almost imperceptible change in his tone. Some of the arrogance has gone, replaced by something akin to sadness.
The chink hold was all she needed. “I
know
I do.”
“You said you cared for me. On the phone. You said you’d be there if I gave myself up, but it wasn’t true.”
“That’s because they
made
me say that. I wanted to go but they wouldn’t let me.”
“The police . . .”
“They told me what I had to do.
They
wrote down the words and they were standing right there. What would you have done?”
“I wouldn’t have lied to you. You and me—I let you live, and then you turned against me.”
Cameryn almost laughed at the absurdity of his words. He wouldn’t lie to her, but he would kill her in a murder-suicide, send them sailing over the side of the mountain to certain and irrevocable death. But she couldn’t let her mind even register anything more than the toehold she’d gained. With a wavering breath she said, “Let me prove it to you. There’s a pull-off coming up. Take it, Kyle. Turn in and stop the car.”
“I don’t think I can do that.”
They were racing toward the mountain. The tall peak cast its shadow onto the meadow, turning the snow a shimmering blue in the half-light and then, too fast, the shadow swallowed them whole. And then they were there. The mountain loomed above them and the switchback road with its sheer, unprotected drop began. To her left, an ever-deepening chasm. To her right, an unyielding wall of granite.
“It’s up ahead. Pull over! Please, please, just give me one minute!
Please
, Kyle!”
“Why?”
“Let me prove it to you!”
The vertical stone loomed above her so expansively she could no longer see the sky. If her hand had been free she could have reached out and touched it. Years ago miles of rock had been jackhammered away to create the thinnest precipice, a thread of asphalt more dangerous than any other highway in Colorado.
Kyle’s voice was suddenly low. “How can I believe you?”
This was it. Closing her eyes, she said, “Because you were right all along. You knew me better than I knew myself. And we don’t have to die. You are my
anam cara
.”
“I am?”
“Yes.”
“You wouldn’t lie to me?”
“No.”
And then, miraculously, the car began to slow. She opened her eyes to watch as he removed his foot from the gas pedal. Centrifugal force propelled them, the Jeep’s tires squealing as he made one hairpin turn, but his foot, hesitant at first, moved to the left to gently press upon the brake. The smallest of hesitations that could mean her life.
Not daring to speak, she waited, frozen, aware anything else she said now might be wrong. She knew this road. Three turns ahead lay the pullout, her sliver of hope.
Ten seconds later there it was—the crescent carved into the mountain, big enough for a single vehicle. She didn’t blink. She did not dare to blink, to break the spell of the slowing car.
And then, as if even he didn’t know what his body was doing, Kyle pulled the steering wheel and slammed on the brakes, skidding into the snow until they stopped in a movement so sudden Cameryn felt her neck lash forward and then back. In the silence she could hear them both panting as Kyle turned toward her.
“I must be stupid to listen, but maybe . . . show me,” he said.
“I will.”
To the left the mountain sheered down in a drop-off guaranteed to kill. To the right, the stone wall, varnished in a layer of ice, seeming to reach into eternity. She couldn’t see beyond the bend. Her prayer had been that a car or truck, any vehicle would appear, but the traffic was sparse in the winter over this pass and the two of them were utterly alone. In the abstract her idea made sense; but Kyle was looking at her in a way that engendered a new kind of fear. And then the thought that crystallized inside her: what would she do to save her life?
This. I can do this.
As she moved close to him, he grabbed the back of her head and pressed her mouth violently into his. Like a statue she held herself immobile, her fists constricting as she forced herself to stay still. Compliant. He was working himself up, more brutal now. She could feel the anger in him, the rage as his tongue barged into her mouth.
“Is this what you mean?” he asked hoarsely. “Because if you can love me, I will let you live. I’ll let
us
live.” Wrapping her hair around his forearm, he yanked her face to him so hard that her right arm twisted in its socket. She gasped in pain.
“Do you love me, Cammie?”
He forced her to look into his hazel eyes. The gold was back, shimmering like flakes of metal against warm wood. Wide-set, they pleaded with her, the eyes of a manic child.
“Yes,” she answered, as gently as she could. “Yes, Kyle, I do.”
“Then show me again.”
This time his hands were soft on her face. These were the hands that killed Justin. This body, this inhuman being she had to pretend to care for, leaned into her and pressed his lips against hers. Repulsed, she issued orders to her body, signals from the general of her mind to the soldiers that made up the parts of her. She commanded her mouth to follow his, her arms to flex toward him, not away. As he kissed her, she felt her mind detach from her body, separate and hover somewhere above them near the ceiling of the car.
A lone car roared by, then vanished beyond the bend, useless to her. Finally, he pulled back and sighed contentedly. “
That’s
what I remember,” he said.
“Yes.” It was all she could manage to say.
“You can see into me and see something worth saving.”
“I can.”
He moved close and put his arms around her, a lover’s embrace with no hint of violence. Gently, he put his lips to her ear and whispered, “The thing is, I’m not stupid, Cammie. I know you are lying to me. But I give you credit for trying. It was a good effort. Really, really good. A kiss before dying.”
And then in one fluid motion he sat back and floored the gas pedal, the Jeep fishtailing as it reentered the Million Dollar Highway.
But she was still close to him, just as she had planned to be. Beneath her, the gearshift knob rose like a beacon, only inches away, as the speedometer shot to thirty, thirty-five.
Now!
she screamed in her head. With all the strength she had left in her throbbing left hand she grabbed the ball of the knob, yanking it into reverse. Instantly the engine seized up with a violent spasm, the gears grinding in an almost human scream.
“What the—” Kyle swore in a fury as he wrenched back into his seat. His strike was fast and hard. Balling his hand into a fist, he punched Cameryn in her cheek as the Jeep lurched into the other traffic lane. Bright lights shimmered behind her eyes as she held onto the gearshift, but the second punch sent her reeling and Kyle once again took control of the gearshift.
He swore again as he tried to reset the gear, his attention solely on the car.

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