The Lion, the Lamb, the Hunted: A Psychological Thriller (28 page)

It was like watching part of my life whizz by in reverse.

But by far, the most shocking one of all: me, fast asleep in my motel room, with the tiny Nathan Doll propped against my shoulder—the same doll we found later, hanging from CJ’s shower rod, soaked with what appeared to be blood.

What kind of twisted game is this guy playing?

All along, it had been Bill who was a few steps ahead of me, a few steps behind me, and every minute of it—without fail—hot on my trail. Watching my every move, snapping away.

Even while I slept.

A spiky chill ran up my spine. He knew who I was long before I ever had a clue he existed.

But how?

“Would you please tell me what the hell’s going on?”

CJ’s voice pulled me from my thoughts. I handed her the photos, watched her expression turn to shock as she shuffled through them. She looked up at me, cheeks blanched, mouth hanging open. “
What the—”

I thought I saw something shift outside the window and shouted, “
CJ! Step away from the window
!
Now!
”

She gave a choked scream and dropped to her knees.

“
Holy shit,
Patrick! He could be out there. Or even in the house! We’ve got to get out of here!” She pulled the clip from her gun, checked the rounds, slammed it back in. Her hands were shaking.

“CJ. Listen to me.”

She looked up and gave me her attention.

In the calmest voice I could muster: “If he were in the house, we’d know it by now. He would have gotten to us before we ever started going through his things. I think we’re okay.”

She nodded quickly.

I stuffed the duffle bag under my arm, then said, “Follow me.”

We moved from window to window, searching for any sign he might be outside. Nothing. Then I led her down the cellar stairs. “Here’s the plan: if he’s here—”

“
Of course
he’s here. He’s everywhere!” She began fumbling with the gun. “Don’t you get it? He’s out there somewhere waiting for us. He has to be!”

“If he’s here,” I repeated, “then he’s probably sitting at a vantage point and waiting for us to leave the same way we came in. Our car is parked ground level to this cellar window. If he’s out front, he can’t see the space between the window and the passenger side door.”

“Right.” She took a deep breath. “Okay. Let’s do it.”

And then we heard footsteps upstairs. Someone with heavy heels.

I pointed at the window.
“Hurry.”

CJ stuck the gun into the waistband of her jeans, climbed into the sink, eased the window open, and skinnied through. As I followed, I could hear footsteps coming down the basement steps, getting closer by the second.

Chapter Fifty

We flew down the highway as fast as the car would take us. The rattle was getting worse, and I wondered if some loose part was about to fly off. I kept my foot to the pedal, alternating my gaze between the windshield and the rearview mirror, searching for Bill.

But I didn’t even know what to look for; I’d never seen the man. He’d sure as hell seen plenty of me, though, and had the photos to prove it.

I looked over at CJ and barely recognized her. Bags under her eyes, worry lines on her forehead—it was like seeing a different person. The gash on her head looked like it was starting to swell.

“That cut on your head is getting worse,” I said. “We need to have it looked at.”

“Yeah. Maybe Bill can recommend a good doctor. Or better yet, maybe he can have a look himself.”

“I mean it. Seriously.”

CJ took a deep breath, and I watched her get control of herself, start thinking again. She turned to me and said, “Why is he chasing us?”

“Because we know too much.”

“It can’t be that,” she said. “He started snapping those pictures the minute you got to Corvine, before you even knew he existed.”

“That doesn’t mean he didn’t know about me.”

“How could he?”

“Warren must have given him a head start. He had to.”

“But Warren didn’t know you came here, right? Let alone that you’re onto him.”

“I didn’t think so, but somehow he had to...” Then it hit me. “
So
n of a…
”

“What?”

“That damned box.”

“You’re losing me, Pat. What box?”

“The box of belongings I took from my mother’s house after her funeral. The one with the necklace in it.”

“How did he know what was inside?”

“I dropped it. Everything fell out, and he tried to help me pick it up.”

“And you think he saw the necklace then?”

“I know
he did. It was right there, right in front of him.
Damn it!
I should have known. The way he started grabbing at the stuff, the way he was staring at me.”

“But do you actually think he’d put a hit on you because of it? His own nephew?”

I looked at her. “We’re talking about protecting his career, his wealth, his public image, the only things that have ever mattered to him. He’ll preserve those things at any cost. Look what he did to an innocent three-year-old boy. A child!”

She looked down at her hands, clenched them together, then brought her attention back to me. “And if there’s a hit on you, then there’s one on me, too.”

“I think that’s a given.”

“What are we going to do?”

“It was a mistake to come here. We put ourselves right under his nose. We’ve got to get as far away from him as we can,
fast
as we can.”

“That’s if we can,” she said. “The guy’s like a ghost. He seems to know where you’re going even before you do. How does he do it?”

“My God,” I said.

I pulled onto the shoulder and hit the brakes.

“What are you doing?”

“
Damn it
.”
I said. “Why didn’t I think of this?”

“Think of what? What the hell are you talking about, Pat?”

I got out of the car. CJ did the same and followed me, watching my every move, as I knelt, ran my hand under the bumper, then pulled out a small metal device. Held it up. “Here’s how.”

CJ stared at the tracking device with a sickened look.

“He’s going to have to work harder if he wants to find us now,” I said, and hurled it as far as I could into the brush behind me.

Chapter Fifty-One

My mother found me in time and called for help. I never could figure out why. It would have been much easier to let me die, then claim she’d found me that way. It would have solved all her problems.

She told the authorities I’d been troubled for years and was gradually turning more self-destructive. Then she threw in the struggling single mother bit for extra measure. It worked.

The story went something like this. I’d gotten hold of her prescription pills after she’d stepped out for a moment. When she came back, she found the place trashed and me passed out on the floor. All true, of course, except she left out the most important detail: what she’d really been using the pills for all those years. I didn’t bother arguing with her story. I had no fight left in me. She had won.

I spent weeks in the psychiatric ward at Black Lake Memorial undergoing extensive counseling for my supposed nervous breakdown where they warned me about the dangers of abusing drugs.

“Valium is highly addictive,” the doctor told me.

It might have been the only time I ever laughed during the whole experience. I didn’t tell him that thanks to my mother, I’d been addicted to Valium for years—living like some junkie, only I’d never known it, alternately overly sedated or in the throes of withdrawal.

For a long time I beat myself up, asking how I couldn’t have known. But I ended up making peace with it. My mother had kept me locked within a strictly controlled environment where she could bend reality in any manner she wished. The brainwashing had started while I was very young, and as long as nobody on the outside challenged it, and as long as she kept me isolated, I remained in the dark, never stood a chance of finding the light.

When I returned home from the hospital I was a changed person. I’d been to the bottom, and in that process, finally got to see what was left.

Nothing.

I was tired of keeping secrets, tired of being the victim, tired of my mother and all her lies. She knew it, too, and kept her distance. We barely spoke a word to each other throughout the summer.

Soon September came, and thanks to Warren, I was out of there. I went off to college, finally freeing myself from hell, the one she’d owned and operated. As the years wore on, I had less and less to do with her, and as that happened, she continued losing the hold she’d once had on me.

But not all of it.

I could travel to the far ends of the earth, off the planet, even, and it wouldn’t have mattered. Her ghosts still lingered, always would; they’d become a part of me. That’s the most tragic thing about child abuse and its effects—they never leave, just take on another form. The abuser goes on living as if nothing has ever happened while the victim pays the price.

And that’s the biggest lie.

Chapter Fifty-Two

It seemed as if the Texas Plains were becoming the backdrop for our lives and perhaps the saddest of metaphors: a never-ending road. Muted shades of brown flanked both sides of a dusty blacktop, one that seemed to go nowhere.

Just like us.

The events of the past few days were catching up to me, and I could feel my mind and body quickly approaching overload. Now our lives were in more danger than ever, all because of a note and a necklace.

We drove on.

“We can’t go back to Telethon,” CJ said. “That’s the first place he’ll look for us. It feels like there’s nowhere else left to run.”

I sighed. The Road to Nowhere was getting longer all the time.

About ten minutes later, I noticed CJ looking at me funny.

“What?” I said.

She sniffed. Sniffed again. “I think we’ve got a problem.”

I took a deep breath through my nose, and smelled something burning. “Oh, no,” I said. “No, damn it,
no!
”