Hear No Evil (33 page)

E
ACH TIME THE WOMAN SCREAMED, THE SCREAM WAS LIKE
a long, poisoned needle jammed into Mimi’s body, tearing her innards and making her sicker. It was like more fire being poured down her throat.

And Eden kept screaming those terrible words:
He’s dead and the child’s hurt, and I can’t move my legs. The child’s hurt the child’s hurt the child’s hurt
.

Not all Eden’s cries were coherent, sometimes they were only sounds, but terrible sounds. Out in the night, Peyton was suffering, and Mimi thought,
I tried not to do this, but I did, I made it happen
.

Eden kept screaming.

“Ray!” Drace yelled angrily. “Stay back. I’m going to fucking open fire. I’ll rip that car apart. So stand back. Hear me? Raylene?”

There was no answer.

He waited. “One more minute,” he said as if assuring himself. “One more minute.”

Peyton, forgive me

Eden, forgive me

Jessie, forgive me

I’m so sorry so sorry so sorry

The minute took an eon to pass.

Drace moved to the northeast window of the house, peered out and swore. “Frigging bushes,” he said. But he smashed out the glass from the window with his rifle butt, and aimed out the window.

He squeezed the trigger, and fired repeatedly. Mimi heard the clangorous din of bullets tearing metal. The image of Peyton trapped in that barrage shook her to her heart. She thought,
Hell is like this. I’m in hell
.

Then the volley stopped, and a deathlike stillness fell. Only the leaves in the dark wind rustled and whispered.

Mimi kept her eyes tightly shut. She could not breathe and her mouth and throat burned, but she no longer felt the pain. She hated Drace so much it crowded out the pain.
You’ve killed them, you bastard
, she thought.
My baby. My sister. You bastard
.

Then, like a demon riding on the night, Eden’s cry came again.

Drace cursed it with such malice that Mimi was glad it tormented him. He pointed the rifle, aiming again toward the car.

But suddenly, inexplicably, the single light in the house went out.

Blackness embraced them. Mimi’s heart leaped in astonishment.

“What the fuck?” Drace snapped.

The darkness pulsed around them. The unseen leaves
rustled, they whispered, and in the distance a woman moaned and then fell silent.

A noise, a heavy scuttling, came from the back porch, and Mimi thought,
My God, somebody’s there, somebody’s at the back door, somebody’s trying to get in
.

She turned instinctively toward the kitchen. The scuttle, a kind of indistinct rasping and thudding, sounded again. Drace was beside her, hauling her to her feet, holding her as a shield before him.

A burst of noise split the silence, and a small, bright storm of gunfire blazed at the lock as the back door was shot away.

The door itself flew open, a voice—a man’s voice—shouted something incomprehensible, and someone was hurling through the doorway toward them. Drace fired.

He fired repeatedly, and Mimi cringed as the kitchen windows shattered and the bullets ripped the walls.

She had the befuddled sense that the man who had entered the kitchen stumbled and then fell. But Drace kept shooting, almost insanely, even though no answering fire came.

Even when he must have realized his attacker had fallen, he still kept squeezing off rounds as if possessed. He swept his arc of fire across the kitchen floor, strafing it until he was sure the intruder was dead.

Then he stopped. He was shaking.

“Crazy son of a bitch,” he said. “He walked right into it. Crazy. Crazy.”

He fumbled in his pocket for his lighter, flicked it on. The figure, sheeted in blood, lay on its side on the floor. Mimi gasped brokenly, sickened because Drace’s bullets had savaged the corpse.

One booted foot was severed from the shattered legs, and lay beyond them. The shots had struck mostly in the
lower body, which looked as if it had been partially shredded by the teeth of some terrible machine.

Yet something was odd about the body. The hands, hardly touched by gunfire, were small, even delicate. The clothing, which had once been the mixed colors of camouflage, was darkly soaked with blood.

The night was quiet now. Eden had stopped screaming.

Drace stared at the corpse, transfixed. His hand trembled as he drew the lighter nearer the head. A large piece of skull had been shot loose and lay in the pool of blood, red soaking the pale hair.

But the face itself, turned sideways, was untouched by bullets. A cobalt-blue eye stared fixedly at nothing. The face was flecked with blood, like a disguise, yet Mimi recognized it. Before them, dead and shattered by Drace’s gunfire, lay Raylene.

From her chest was inexplicably thrust the feathered shaft of an arrow.

The blond woman was dead by the time Owen had reached the house. She had died as he carried her. He told himself it was best that way. That way his choice was easy.

When he shot the lock off the back door, the force of the bullets shuddered the door and simultaneously forced it to swing inward.

He half shoved, half threw the woman’s body into the dark kitchen, then instantly dropped to the concrete porch, shoulder-rolling across it. Even as he hit the dirt, he heard a wild fusillade of shots.

He sprang into a crouch and dodged behind the parked van, the assault rifle raised. Clouds were thinning,
the night growing brighter. The van was lousy cover, but it was better than none.

When he had first seen the van, his heart had leaped with a hope that was both joyful and barbarous. If he could flush out the man inside the house, the bastard would have to go for the van. It was his only means of escape.

Now Owen, breathing hard, trained the sight of the captured rifle on the back door. Its wood ripped and splintered by bullets, the door swung slightly in the cool night wind, back and forth.

Raylene
. That had been the name shouted from the house, the name of the woman he had captured.
Raylene
, he thought, breathing hard.

He hadn’t enjoyed the thought of sacrificing her. Neither had he flinched from it. He had Eden and Peyton to protect. The bastard in the house was opening fire on them again, and the revelation of the hostage had put a desperate spin on everything.

With enough ammunition and a hostage, the son of a bitch could barricade himself in the house indefinitely. He could keep back the police cars and the ambulance, and stand off the police and even the fucking FBI.

Suddenly a very small and unsteady light flared within the kitchen; the bastard must have lit a match. The light flickered for a moment, then went out. He must know he was alone now, except for his prisoner.

Owen licked his upper lip and tasted the warm salt. He shouted, “Put down your weapon and come outside, asshole. It’s over now.”

For a few seconds there was silence. Then from within came a man’s voice, so harsh and raw it sounded crazed. “Get back, you motherfucker. I still got a woman here, a hostage. Stay back or I kill her.”

Owen gritted his teeth. He thought of Mimi, but mostly he thought of Eden. He prayed that she and the kid were safe; her name kept drumming through him like his own blood.
Eden. Eden
.

The man’s voice tore through the night again, and it sounded dangerous with despair and rage. “I said I got a woman. Stay back or I kill her.”

Owen’s heart pounded, but he willed his own voice to be steady and flat. “How do I know you got her? Let me hear her talk.”

Another silence.

“She can’t talk,” the man cried in frenzy. “But she can scream—listen.”

Owen heard a woman’s cracked, agonized moan. He thought,
Jesus, what’s he done to her?

The man shouted, “I’m coming out. I’m getting in the van and driving out of here. Make a move, and I’ll blow her fucking head off.”

Owen stepped back from the van and looked for cover. There was little. A few pale stars had pierced the thinning veils of cloud overhead. In their faint light he was visible, a clear target. He edged toward a patch of immature scrub cedars. They would provide concealment, but no cover.

The man burst out of the door, pushing the woman before him. He held an automatic to her temple, and he had an assault rifle slung over his shoulder. Owen kept edging as quietly as he could into the cedars. He cursed under his breath; the bastard was too headlong, too rash.

The man paused on the porch, peering out into the night. The woman’s head was twisted at an odd angle; he seemed to be gripping her by the hair. Her hands seemed to be bound behind her, and she looked as if she were
barely able to stand. She was slender, that was all Owen could tell. He couldn’t see the man’s face.

Owen crouched, aiming at the gunman, but the woman was in the way. The man must have wrenched her hair, for her head jerked to an even more unnatural angle.

The man began to move across the small porch, to descend its two concrete stairs. The woman struggled. She tried to cry out something, but her voice was ragged and incomprehensible.

“Let her go,” Owen shouted, “or I shoot you both.”

It was an empty threat, and he knew it, but he kept the sights on the struggling pair.

The man, wrestling Mimi down the stairs, suddenly swung the rifle’s barrel in an arc across the backyard, squeezing off a series of shots. Owen felt something knock him to the earth, biting into his ribs like a snake.

Mimi seemed to rise out of her own body, to look down and see herself and Drace as if she floated above the two of them. At the sound of the man’s voice in the night, Drace had swept his aim across the yard, strafing it.

Now he had forced her almost to the door of the van and for some reason he was aiming at a shadowy little stand of trees. His hand was near her head and

I don’t have to let him, Peyton, I don’t have to

and she saw how near Drace’s hand was and she heard him fire again and
I won’t let him Eden, I don’t have to
and she sank her teeth into Drace’s wrist as if she were an animal, and although it hurt her burning jaws, she bit and bit.

She bit until hot blood bathed her mouth and her teeth ground hard against the bone.

Drace released her hair, shoved at her as if fending her off, and she stumbled away from him, trying to run, trying to hide because suddenly she was

free

running toward Peyton

running toward Eden

running toward home

Afterward, when Owen remembered it, it seemed to happen in a jerking blur, as if a very old piece of movie film had gone awry.

He’d been hit. It felt like somebody had jabbed a burning spike between his ribs, deep into his innards, knocking him to the ground. He recovered himself enough to get the rifle aimed again from a lying position, but the woman was still in the way.

The gunman aimed toward the cedars again. Owen gritted his teeth in pain and kept his aim as steady as he could.

Then, somehow the woman, Mimi, broke away, and he had a clear shot at the gunman, and he fired again and again. But the man shot, too, and the shot hit Mimi in the back and she fell, even as the man crumpled beside the van’s closed door.

Owen knew immediately that he’d mortally wounded the gunman. He’d hit him at least three times, and one shot had struck squarely in the center of the chest, ripping it open.

The man had screamed out a single anguished syllable, the name Ray. He’d drawn out that howl until he began to choke on his own blood, and then he’d fallen and gone silent. The body lay motionless.

The girl didn’t move, either. Owen started to rise, to
go to her. He intended to keep the rifle aimed at the man, just in case, but he found he could not get to his feet. He simply could not.

His legs felt like dead weight and would not obey him. He ended up dragging himself to her, still awkwardly holding the rifle, like a soldier crawling through the dirt.

As soon as he was close enough to touch her, he knew she was dead. He turned her over and saw that something terrible had happened to her mouth. Yet the rest of her face seemed strangely peaceful, almost placid, even with dirt and blades of dead grass clinging to it.

Her eyes were open and reflected the light from the stars that were starting to shine overhead. Did he imagine it, or were they extremely lovely eyes?

He tried to close them, but then the pain overcame him, and he passed into unconsciousness.

He lay bleeding beside her, his fingers still touching her upturned face, the starlight still shining in her eyes.

Crouched in the backseat of the Blazer, her hand pressed against Peyton’s damp brow, Eden used her other hand to dial 911 for the third time.

Tears ran down her face, but she did not realize it. Again the laconic officer answered her, the voice absolutely empty of emotion.

“This is Eden Storey again,” she said, her voice shaking. “Where
are
you people?”

“Ma’am, hang on. We’ve got a SWAT team and an ambulance on the way. I’m surprised you don’t hear the sirens by now.”

“There’s been more shooting up there,” she said.

Peyton moaned slightly, and her small body twitched, then shuddered. Eden sucked in her breath and thought,
Hold on, Peyton. Hold on, sweetheart
.

“Shooting exactly where, ma’am?” the officer asked in his bored voice.

“At the house. He went up there. Owen Charteris. There was shooting. A lot of shooting. It’s stopped now. I—he might be dead. Where
are
you?”

“There was more gunfire?”

“Yes.”

“But it’s stopped.”

“Yes. Yes.”

“I’m going to keep the officers informed, ma’am. Now, how long since you heard anything?”

“I don’t know,” she said in frustration, staring at Peyton’s small, shadowy face. “A long time. I can’t tell.”

“Five minutes, ma’am?”

Peyton made a sound of pain. “I don’t
know
,” Eden repeated. It seemed like fifty years, all spent in darkness and fear.