Wake to Darkness (21 page)

Then think about it now. If it works for all of them, maybe it’s not all bullshit after all.

I rolled my eyes.

Mason doesn’t think it is.

Myrtle had finished her job and was kicking up snow with her hind legs with all the agility of a mule on crack. She did it every single time. I had no idea why. Then she bounded through the snow like a child, burying her face, shaking it back and forth in the white fluff, then looking up again toward me with snow all over her.

“You look like a miniature Yeti,” I muttered, then looked up to see if Mason was catching this little display.

He was. His warm smile beamed down, and I went all goofy inside again. Hell. Had I forgotten there was a murderer after me?

I started to look away, but something fluttering two windows over from Mason caught my eye. I squinted and realized it was the edge of a curtain, caught in the window frame.

Part of my brain kicked into overdrive, while the other part kept telling me it was nothing. So someone had opened a window and shut the curtain in it. It was no big deal. Right?

“Come on, Myrt, let’s go inside.”

She trotted along beside me, right up to the back door, where Mason had appeared. I bent, unsnapped the leash, petted my dog and straightened again.

He took one look at me, and asked, “What’s wrong?”

Too perceptive, this guy. “There’s a window upstairs with a piece of the curtain shut in it.”

His frown came fast and hard.

“You looked around out back yesterday, right?” I asked. “ After we thought Jeremy had snuck out?”

“Yeah. I looked thoroughly. There was nothing like that.”

“Unless you missed it.”

He was already heading upstairs. I raced behind him.

“I didn’t miss it.”

“So that means someone opened a bedroom window since then. Which means during the storm.”

“Uh-huh.” He went straight to Jeremy’s room, opened the door and strode to the window. But the curtains there were hanging normally.

I was still in the doorway, so I had a head start checking the next room. Marie’s room. I opened her door and went straight to the window with the curtain caught in it.

“Why would Marie have had her window open during that storm?”

Mason came over to where I was standing and looked out the window at the smaller roof jutting out below it, where the kitchen was.

“Do you think that’s how she snuck out to go meet Douglas?” I asked. “We never asked her.” I looked past him. “It wouldn’t be hard, with that lower roof to jump onto. From there to the ground isn’t too tough a leap.”

“She’s a grown woman with two kids. Why would she be jumping out of windows and climbing over rooftops in the dead of night in a snowstorm? Besides, that would explain her sneaking out the night
before
last. This had to happen
last
night.”

I glanced at the nightstand. Box of tissues. Magazine. Alarm clock slash radio. “She’s been through a lot. I’m sure she had her— Wait a minute, what the hell is this?” I went to the nightstand and picked up the magazine, then turned to show it to Mason.
“Book Review Weekly.”

He frowned at me. “Why is that important?”

I was flipping pages rapidly. “It’s a couple years old, for one thing. For another— Oh, my God.” I’d stopped flipping pages, and my heart jumped into my throat. Mason came closer to look at what had me so dumbstruck and saw what I did. The page with the review of my book
Create Your Life.
It had a tiny rectangular bit cut out of it.

The bit that had called me “the archangel of new-age spirituality.”

Mason pulled a plastic zipper bag from his pocket and held it up. The clipping from the Secret Santa gift was in it, nice and flat, and it was the same size and shape. It was also the missing phrase of my best review ever. It wasn’t like I would forget it.

“This doesn’t make any sense,” Mason whispered. “
She
was attacked by this guy, too.”

I was onto her now, though, and the pieces were falling into place for me as I paced. “No, no, it makes perfect sense. Mason. The person who attacked me in my car was there when I rolled it down that embankment. She would have been pretty banged up from the accident.”

“She?”

“Then we got back to Marie’s and found her all bruised and battered. She was never attacked, Mason. She made it up to account for the bruises she got when I rolled my car. It was her. It was her all along.”

I walked as I talked, and my toe caught on something on the floor. Looking down, I saw a perfectly rolled-up blanket stuffed just under the edge of the bed. Bending, I swept it up and shook it at him. “
This
is how she fooled me when I was checking on her last night. She put this in the bed. The first few times I checked on her, this was taking up space. A freaking teenager’s trick, and I fell for it. I thought she was lying there sleeping while she was out killing poor Finnegan and taking that phone so we wouldn’t find out it was hers.”

Mason’s eyes met mine. “She tried to frame Jeremy. With the jackknife. Her own son!” Then his eyes went wider. “She’s with the boys now!”

I turned and ran, and so did he. Poor Myrtle had to stay behind once more as we pulled on our coats, jumped onto the snowmobiles and sped back toward the lodge. I drove so fast I scared myself.

It wasn’t far but it seemed to take forever. We killed the engines and raced inside, drawing the attention of Rosie and Lieutenant Mendosa as we ran past the front desk and through the crowded lobby toward the bar.

“Where are Marie and the boys?” Mason asked before we even made it to where Marlayna, Angela and Misty were sitting.

“Still up in my room, resting,” Angela replied.

“Do you have another key?” Mason asked her.

Nodding, Angela slid one from her handbag and handed it to him.

“What’s going on? What’s wrong?” Misty asked, jumping off her bar stool.

But Mason was already racing for the elevators.

“Just...just wait here,” I said, and ran after him.

He pushed a button. I pushed it again.

“What’s going on?” Mendosa asked.

Rosie was behind him, but kept looking back over his shoulder toward the bar where Marlayna was.

Mason told him to go stay with his wife, then stared impatiently at the elevator, which hadn’t yet arrived.

“Stairs!” I pointed at the door with the familiar logo, yanked it open and started up.

“Room four-nineteen!” Mason shouted from behind me.

The place only had four stories. It figured Angela’s room would be on the fourth one.

We ran, and I was faster than I thought I was capable of being. When we hit the fourth-floor landing I shoved the door open and lunged out into the hallway.

“Turn right, end of the hall!” Mason said, right beside me.

I sprinted so fast that as I rounded the corner the young cop standing guard outside the door reached for his gun. It had half cleared its holster by the time he recognized us and I skidded to a stumbling halt, holding up both hands to tell him not to shoot and almost falling over. Mason, who’d stopped faster, caught me from behind. “Easy, pal. We need to get in there.” He started forward with the key card just as Mendosa caught up to us, gun drawn.

From a distance I heard the elevator ding open, and then Misty ran up—alone, thank God. “What the hell, Aunt Rache?”

I just held up a hand. Mason opened the door, and he and Mendosa burst into the room, guns drawn. The young cop followed them in, his own gun at the ready, too.

I ventured closer when I didn’t hear anything, holding Misty behind me with one outstretched arm. She was crying softly now. Inching into the room, I saw that no one was there. No Jeremy. No Joshua. No Marie. Only the cops.

I half registered that Mendosa was on the phone as I took in the fact that the French doors were ajar. I went over and opened them fully, then stepped out onto the small balcony, where I saw that a pre-attached rope ladder, obviously designed to serve as a fire escape, had been deployed and was swaying in the wind.

“Dammit, she’s got the boys,” I said. “Both of them.”

“Of course she does. She’s their mother. But...why did they leave?” Misty whispered.

I saw her eyes searching mine, begging me to say anything other than what I did.

“She’s the killer,” I told her.

Misty clapped a hand to her mouth, her eyes going huge. Then she raced to the railing and leaned over. “Jeremy! Josh! Where are you?”

I put an arm around her and drew her back inside. She was still crying.

Mendosa looked from me to Mason, his questions in his eyes.

Mason handed him the zipper bag with the clipping inside it. “This was the clipping in that Secret Santa gift, the angel with the missing eyes. We found the magazine it was cut from in Marie’s room.”

“And a rolled-up blanket by the bed that she probably used to make us think she was sleeping when we checked on her last night.”

Mason climbed over the railing onto the rope ladder, then paused and looked back at us. “Mendosa, get your men to organize a search. I’ll start from here, and your men can start from the lobby. There’s no way she didn’t leave tracks.”

“I’m coming with you,” I said. “Misty, go back to the lobby bar and stay there with Angela, okay?”

“Do you think she’d hurt them? She wouldn’t, would she? She’s their mother.”

“They’re going to be okay. You just keep believing that, all right?” Mason was already halfway down the ladder. “I’ve gotta go, honey. We’ll bring them back, I promise.”

Mendosa put a hand on her shoulder, assuring me with his eyes that he would watch over her, then keyed his walkie on to update his men down in the lobby. Reassured, I headed down the ladder after Mason.

When we reached the bottom, I saw the tracks in the snow as clearly as he did. Three sets, one really big that had to be Jeremy’s. Mason warned me to stay next to the footprints and not obliterate them as we followed the trail around the building, but they ended at the freshly plowed parking lot.

“The Jeep’s gone,” Mason said, cussing under his breath as he ran to the empty spot where it had been. “She must have taken my keys from the cabin.”

He was looking toward the road when I heard running feet on blacktop. Mendosa called, “She’s not going to get far. The grounds staff may have cleared the lot, but it’s going to take a lot longer for the roads to be plowed.”

“My mother leaves her keys in the car,” Mason said. “Never takes them out, because there’s a keypad on the door. Come on, Mendosa. Rachel, I want you to stay here.”

“What? No!”

Mendosa caught up to us, looking around the lot. “Which car?”

“The Escalade,” I said, pointing. “But—”

“No buts, Ms. de Luca. We’re cops. You’re not. Stay here,” Mendosa said as Mason hit the numbered buttons on the door.

“I’ll drive,” Mason said. “You can radio in to get that chopper back in the air.” Mendosa pulled out his walkie and was speaking into it while he got in the passenger side of Angela’s Escalade.

Mason came straight to me, gripped my shoulders in both hands and kissed me hard on the mouth. “I have to go. Please go back inside and be safe. I can’t lose anyone else I love right now.”

“You...huh?”

But he’d already let me go and was diving behind the wheel. Then the SUV roared, lurched and was speeding across the parking lot and out of sight onto the narrow gravel road.

And then an arm came around me from behind and I felt a needle sink into my neck.

17

Saturday, December 23

M
ason was stunned when they were only about two miles from the lodge and he saw the Jeep heading back toward them. With Jeremy at the wheel.

He braked fast, and so did the Jeep, skidding sideways a little, then coming to a stop at a cockeyed angle in the middle of the still-snowy road.

“We’ve got them,” Mendosa said into his walkie. “Get backup out here. Two miles north on the lodge road. Cancel the chopper.”

Something in Mason’s gut was telling him this wasn’t right. He got out of the car, gun drawn but barrel down, quickly moving to the Jeep and scanning the interior for Marie.

Jeremy opened his door and got out, looking pale and wide-eyed at his uncle. “Uncle Mace, what the
hell?
”

“Move away from the car, Jer.” He took Jeremy by the shoulder with his free hand, moving him to one side. “Where’s your mother?”

Jeremy shook his head in anger and confusion, taking a few halting steps toward the Caddy and Mendosa. Mason swooped around the open driver’s door, gun first, looking inside. Joshua was looking back at him, eyes huge.

“It’s all right, Josh. I’m here. It’s okay. Where’s your mother?” Leaning into the vehicle, Mason checked the backseat. “Where’s your mother, Josh?” He looked into the cargo area in the back. Mendosa was already back there, opening the hatch and looking around inside. He met Mason’s eyes over the backseat and shook his head.

Josh was crying. “Uncle Mace, you’re scaring me! What’s going on?”

“Come on, Josh, come on out of the car.” Josh did, and Mason put an arm around his shoulders, leading him to the Caddy, where Jeremy was standing, glaring at him.

“I’m not gonna ask you again, Jer. Where is your mother?”

“She’s at the lodge.”

Mason shoved his gun into his jeans. “Tell me everything,” he said, then, “No, get in the car.
Then
tell me everything.” He kept his arm around Josh, leading him, then opened the back door of the Escalade and picked Josh right up and set him on the seat. “Jer, move it, okay?”

“But the Jeep—” Jeremy said.

“Leave the fucking Jeep. Get in. Now.” Mason held the door open while Joshua scooted to the other side to make room for Jeremy.

Mendosa took the wheel, so Mason got into the front passenger seat. He leaned over the backseat to talk to the boys while Mendosa turned the SUV around and gunned it for the lodge. “Tell me everything, Jer. And don’t leave anything out.”

Nodding, Jeremy started talking. “Mom said she thought the cop guarding our door might be getting ready to arrest me. But she said she’d heard the roads were open, so she wanted me to take Josh into the village, where we’d be safe until she could get me a good lawyer. We went down the rope ladder, sneaked out to the parking lot, and she gave me the keys to your Jeep, Uncle Mason. I’m sorry, but I was scared. I don’t want to go to jail. I didn’t do anything.”

“I know you didn’t. I know. We all know. It’s all right. You were just doing what she told you.”

“Something’s wrong with her,” Josh said softly. “She wasn’t acting right.”

Jeremy put an arm around his brother’s shoulders and told Mason with his eyes that he agreed. “Mom was wrong about the road. It was plowed for a little ways, but a couple miles out it was still blocked with, like, a mountain of snow. So we turned around to head back to the lodge, and then you were there.”

“Where was the last place you saw your mother?” Mason asked.

“In the parking lot.”

Mendosa shot Mason a look, and he knew they were thinking the same thing.
That’s right where we left Rachel.
Though he doubted the lieutenant was experiencing the same gut-wrenching dread that he was.

* * *

I have never thought of myself as having the reactions of a ninja, but when I felt that fucking needle sink into my neck I channeled one. That was the only way to describe what happened. There was no wondering what the hell was happening, no mistaking the jab for a bee sting. Nothing like that. I knew—instantly, I
knew
—that it was a needle full of succinyl-nowyou’redead, that it would paralyze me, leaving me to suffocate slowly to death while Marie cut out my eyes.

I knew all of that in the nanosecond it took to feel the jab, and my hand shot up fast in an instinctive act of self-preservation. I wedged my thumb under the plunger, hitting a target I couldn’t see—no great task for me, right?—and kept it from depressing any farther. I clenched my fingers around the rest of the syringe and I twisted hard, wrenching it away from Marie. There was a snapping sound, and the syringe flew. It landed on the freshly plowed blacktop, almost at my feet, the needle broken off. Was the tip still in my neck?

“Bitch!” Marie shouted, jumping at me with her hands going for my throat. I punched her in the face with everything in me, knocking her backward into a snowbank, and then I spun around and ran. One lunging step forward, then two, and then I was moving in slow motion. It felt like I was wading through mud. No, something thicker. Quicksand, maybe, or fast-drying concrete.

Oh, no. Oh no no no no, the sux got in, my muscles are shutting down.

My body wasn’t responding to my commands. It was exactly like one of those nightmares when you have to run very fast, but your body refuses to do what your brain tells it, and you can barely move at all. I was running for the lodge mentally, but my body was barely moving. Barely responding.

And then I went down, face-first in the snow along the edge of the parking lot.

How much did that bitch manage to get into me? Enough so I’ll suffocate? Enough to kill me? Or will I live through this nightmare right to the end? I wonder which is worse?

Her hands were on my shoulders, rolling me onto my back. And I felt it. I felt everything. I tried to will my legs to move. My arms to move. God, I was getting dizzy. Had my lungs already stopped functioning? I told myself to breathe. Inhale. Exhale. Yes, it seemed to be working, not easily, but a little, despite the black spots starting to pop in and out of existence in front of my eyes.

Marie’s little red caboose had definitely gone chugging around the bend, I thought. She’d lost it. She vanished for a few seconds. Maybe a few minutes. I don’t know. I tried to call for help, but there wasn’t enough air in my lungs to make more than a whimper.

This isn’t happening. It can’t be happening.

I heard a motor, the familiar roar of a snowmobile, and shifted my eyes in its direction, praying I could somehow get the driver’s attention. But Marie was the one driving it, speeding right up to where I lay between two cars in the parking lot. She drove it right up beside me, then past me, and I saw the red plastic toboggan she was towing. She rolled me onto the sled, wrapped a rope around me to hold me on board and then jumped back on the snowmobile and gunned it. My body bounced and bumped as I was pulled farther and farther from the lodge and out into the woods. The cheap plastic toboggan tried to buck me off at every bump and fling me over the side at every turn. There was nothing I could do to hold on. I couldn’t move.

She won’t take me far,
I told myself as my back took a pounding from the terrain.
The sux won’t last long enough for her to take me far. I’ll either be dead or it’ll wear off. Which reminds me...

Inhale.

Exhale.

Repeat.

I’m still breathing. Just a little. Tiny, tantalizing tastes of air, not even enough to blow the seeds off a dandelion. But maybe enough to keep me alive.

But do I want that? Do I really want to keep myself alive? Because I know what’s coming next. Do I really want to be present for that?

Where the hell is Mason?

* * *

Mendosa had radioed his second-in-command to send men into the parking lot to look for Marie and Rachel, but the black Escalade was skidding to a halt in the parking lot before his men even had time to report back.

Mason jumped out of the SUV and ran to where Mendosa’s men had gathered. As he shoved his way through them, he saw the syringe lying in the snow, along with a few drops of blood and signs of a struggle. He swore softly, bending down for a closer look at the needle. The tip was broken off. Probably happened when it landed on the pavement. But it looked as if there was still quite a bit of the drug inside. Maybe there was hope.

There had damn well better be hope. God, what the hell had happened to Marie to turn her into a stone-cold killer?

He saw snowmobile tracks leading out of the parking lot and into the woods west of the lodge. He looked at the men. “I need a snowmobile. Hurry.”

“Bring two!” Mendosa shouted.

Mendosa’s men raced to where the machines were lined up, only yards away.

“What’s going on, Uncle Mason?” Jeremy called from inside the Escalade.

“I don’t know.”

“It’s Mom, isn’t it? She’s lost it, just like Dad did. Hasn’t she?”

Mason looked at the boy, and Jeremy tipped his head back and turned away. “I knew it. I should have said something. I knew she was slipping. Talking to herself, sometimes to Dad, late at night. Dammit, I knew. I just thought she’d get better, you know? I just thought...”

“It’s not your fault, Jeremy. None of this is.”

“She took Rachel, didn’t she? Is she going to hurt her?”

“Jeremy, we don’t know anything for sure, but I’m going to find them both, I promise you that. Right now, though, I need you here. I need you to take care of your brother. And I need you to send someone out to the cabin to get Myrtle.”

Snowmobiles skidded to a halt, more than just two of them. Misty jumped off the back of one driven by Rosie and flung herself into Jeremy’s arms. “Are you okay? I was so scared when you weren’t in the room!”

“Rosie, get Misty and the boys back to the lodge.”

Rosie nodded and dismounted, and Mason jumped on the vacated snowmobile and took off, following the trail Marie had left. As he sped through the snow, Rachel’s words about death came back to him. About how your flaws were erased, how you got better on the other side. And he started praying with everything in him.
Eric, if you can hear me, and if there’s any way you can help here, you’ve got to step up, bro. You’ve gotta stop her. Stop her, Eric. Redeem yourself. You fucking owe me. And God knows you owe Rachel.

* * *

Marie stopped the snowmobile, untied the tow rope and pulled me through the woods on the plastic sled. It shouldn’t have been easy for her, but she seemed to have developed some kind of super strength or something. I guess she figured the snowmobile tracks would be too easy to follow, or maybe she was taking me somewhere the snowmobile couldn’t go. I couldn’t see what was ahead of us, only behind, lying face up on the sled, unable to move my head. Dizziness swamped me again.

Breathe in. Breathe out. You dumbass, if you keep forgetting, you’re gonna die.

So I did. I breathed those almost-worthless whiffs of not nearly enough air, and I tried to breathe them faster, to make up in frequency for what they lacked in size.

But then I couldn’t anymore, because Marie sat on my chest and used her legs to propel the sled forward. It tilted sharply down, and I realized we were at the top of a hill, a steep one, and before I even had time to panic we were flying downward at dizzying speed. The dark spots returned, expanding to fill up more space in my eyes. I tried to inhale, but my lungs couldn’t fight her weight. I was going to die right there. My lungs screamed for air, but I couldn’t give them any.

We finally stopped and she rolled off me.

Breathe in! Quick!

I did, inhaling for all I was worth, but it amounted to a breath so small and so shallow that it didn’t even make a sound. I did it again and again and again, all the while wondering why I was fighting so hard to stay alive.

Because I fucking believe, that’s why! I believe! This is not the way my life is supposed to end. I did not get my eyesight back after twenty years only to die a few months later. And I did not meet Mason Brown just to put off being with him until it was too late. This isn’t how it’s supposed to work.

My own platitudes, all the words I’d ever written, played through my mind. You create your own experience according to what you believe. Okay, then, what do I believe?

I believe that I am not going out like this. I’m going to have a happy ending, dammit, and this isn’t it.

Do you really believe that, Rache, or are you just trying real hard to?

I mentally cussed out my inner bitch, but while I was at it I searched my soul, and I knew that I honestly did not believe Marie was going to cut out my eyes. I didn’t. That’s why I was fighting so hard to breathe. Because somewhere inside me I knew it wasn’t going to end this way.

And what about Marie, Pollyanna? What did
she
believe that led her to this?

Marie dragged me a little farther into the cover of some nearby pines. And then she finally stopped and sank to the ground, panting.

God, I wish I could pant like that. My lungs are starving. Breathe in, breathe in, breathe in, dammit!

“I have to put my family back together,” she said softly. It startled me, when I realized she was speaking to me. “Everything was taken away. Everything. And I know it was punishment.”

She moved closer, kneeling in the snow beside me, taking a backpack from her shoulders. “I knew what my husband was. What he was doing. I knew it. And I didn’t tell. I just... I kept his secrets. I let him do what he needed to do. I could see how it was with him. How tense and tight he’d get just before... And how relaxed and easy he’d be right after. He couldn’t help it. He wasn’t a monster.”

Not a monster?
I would have laughed if I could have.
He was a sick, twisted fuck, and apparently you two were a perfect match.

Breathe in. Breathe out.

“He took his own life. He wanted to stop so badly that he killed himself. And still the killing went on. I knew, you see. Mason didn’t tell me, but I knew. The people who got Eric’s organs went on killing.”