Kill Her Again (A Thriller) (22 page)

But Suzie was breathing really hard now, sobbing, and Jillian could feel her starting to fall behind.

The car’s engine grew louder and Jillian wanted to turn and look, to see how close he was, but she didn’t dare, because she knew that would only slow her down.

Then she lost her grip on Suzie’s arm and had no choice but to look. The car was directly behind them now, Suzie stumbling in front of it, tears streaming down her face.

“Help me,” she shouted. “Help me!”

But it was too late. The car revved and picked up speed, its bumper hitting Suzie, knocking her back and over the hood of the car and into a row of metal garbage cans—

—and suddenly Mr. Stinky and his encounter with the bus came to Jillian’s mind—

—but Jillian didn’t have time to be thinking about such things, because the car was bearing down on her now. And just as it reached her, she grunted and dove to her left, straight into a pile of discarded cardboard boxes—

—as the car roared past her and squealed around the corner.

The boxes went flying as Jillian plowed through them, landing hard on the ground beneath them, the impact knocking the wind out of her—what little wind she had left.

She lay there for a moment, trying to breathe, trying to figure out what had just happened, when she heard a soft moan coming from the trash cans behind her.

Suzie.

Dragging herself to her feet, Jillian saw that most of the cans were lying out in the middle of the alley now, but Suzie was crumpled up against a wall.

Jillian staggered over to her, knelt beside her. She was alive, but her nose was bloody and one of her legs was twisted funny.

“It hurts,” Suzie said.

“I have to go get help.”

“No. Don’t leave me here. He might come back.”

“I have to. You can’t walk like this.”

“It’s all your fault. You shouldn’t’ve been looking in his car.”

“I’m sorry,” Jillian said. “I’m sorry.”

But she knew that looking in that car had nothing to do with the attack. She had been right all along. Maybe not the part about Craig—that was just stupid—but she knew that the man in the baseball cap had been following her. Watching her. Ever since they sat outside that house of mirrors.

What she didn’t know was
why
.

And for some reason, the photo from the locket came into her head. The gypsy girl with her big brown eyes.

Who was she? What made her special to him?

Suzie’s face was streaked with blood and tears. “How am I gonna go to Big Mountain like this?”

“Will you shut up about Big Mountain already?”

“You don’t have to yell.”

“I
hate
that place,” Jillian said. “I hope they close it down and burn it to the ground. I don’t care if I ever go there a—”

Suzie’s eyes went wide again and Jillian froze.

Someone was behind her.

Suddenly an arm wrapped around her—that same arm she’d seen dangling from the Rambler’s window—as a hand came up to her face carrying a damp, greasy rag. It covered her mouth and nose, and before Jillian even had a chance to resist, she sucked in a deep, frightened breath—

—and everything went black.

2
7

“
JILLIAN?”
 

MCBRIDE
didn’t stir. Was so still, in fact, that Pope wondered if she was breathing.

He touched her wrist, feeling for a pulse.

The beat was there, but erratic. Should he bring her out? “Jillian, talk to me. Tell me what’s happening.”

Still no response.

“Jillian, can you hear me?”

Nothing.

What was going on inside there? Why wouldn’t she respond? He’d never seen anything like this before.

“Anna, it’s Pope. Listen to me. I’m going to start counting again. And when I get to ten, I want you to open your eyes and—”

McBride’s eyes flew open. “He has me in his car.”

She was trembling. Frightened.

Pope thought she might have spontaneously emerged from her trance, but quickly realized that she was still under. He waved a hand in front of her face, but she didn’t react, blind to the real world.

“I’m in his car,” she repeated.

“Where, Jillian? Where is he taking you?”

“I-I don’t know, I . . . He put tape on me. On my mouth and my hands and feet. He’s going to hurt me. I know he’s going to hurt me.”

“Don’t worry, I won’t let him. Look around. Tell me what you see.”

McBride’s head turned, her eyes searching blankly.

“The shadows. Tree shadows. He’s taking me into the . . . no, wait. I’ve seen this place before. I’ve been here. It’s a park. We used to bring Mr. Stinky here.”

“Who?”

“My dog. He died when I was . . .” She stiffened. “Oh, god, he’s stopping the car.”

“It’s all right,” Pope said. “Tell me what you see. Tell me everything you see.”

“I want my mom. Please call my mom.”

“Easy, Jillian, it’s okay.”

“He’s opening my door now. Please. You have to make him stop.”

Pope got to his feet and stood over her. He’d let this go on too long.

“Anna, listen to me carefully. It’s time to let Jillian go.”

“You have to stop him! Somebody has to stop him.”

“Anna, I need you to listen to me.”

But McBride was oblivious. “He’s pulling me out of the car, he’s got the shovel now!” She started thrashing in the chair, as if fighting off an invisible force. “Help me! You have to help me!”

Pope took her by the shoulders. “Anna, it’s me, it’s Pope. You need to let her go. Let her go now. I’m going to start counting from one to—”

“He’s dragging me into the middle of the park!” Anna shouted. “He’s got a suitcase with him. He’s pulling something . . . Mommy! Mommy, help me! He has a knife! He’s going to—”

“What are you doing to her?”

The voice was shrill, angry.

Startled, Pope spun around, surprised to see Evan standing stiffly at the mouth of the hallway. He was staring straight at them, but only the whites of his eyes were showing.

“What are you doing to my Anna?”

But the voice coming out of him was not his. It was older. More mature.

A woman?

“He’s hurting me!” Anna shouted. “He’s got his knife out and he’s cutting me! He’s cutting my finger!”

Evan moved toward them. “Don’t you see what you’ve done, you fool? You’ve opened a door. You have to bring her back! Bring her back now!”

Pope looked from one to the other, feeling as if his mind were about to astral project straight out of his body. This had to be the most surreal moment he had ever experienced in his thirty-eight years of life.

“Wake her up!” Evan shouted. “Before it’s too late!”

There was noise from the back of the house and Ronnie came running, followed by Jake, both of them exchanging looks with Pope, their faces stretched in alarm.

Worthington stared at Evan in utter disbelief. “What the hell is going on?”

“Anna, wake up!” Evan shouted. “You have to come back!”

But Anna kept thrashing, crying out in pain. “He’s hurting me! Make him stop!”

And suddenly Evan was at her side, his blank white eyes staring at her as he grabbed her hand, trying to calm her. “It’s me, darling. It’s Mama. Listen to me carefully. You have to come back to me now. Let go of the past and come back.”

But Anna didn’t respond. Was still thrashing uncontrollably. She began to grunt as if she were being struck by blows.

Knife blows?

She continued to thrash, crying out in pain. And then, to Pope’s horror, she fell still in the chair and the light in her eyes began to grow dim.

Oh, good Christ, he thought, she’s dying.

But how could that be? This was nothing more than a hypnotic trance. People don’t
die
under hypnosis.

Evan kept talking to her. Almost cooing now. “Come back, Anna. Come back to Mommy.”

But she didn’t respond.

“Anna, let the little girl go and come back to me. You need to come back.”

When she failed to respond again, Evan did something so unexpected that Pope had to wonder if this was simply a bizarre, twisted dream.

He began to sing, in a low, sweet voice:

Every little star

Way up in the sky

Calls me

And to Pope’s surprise, Anna stirred. She could hear him.

Heaven in my heart

Wishing I could fly

Away

Anna jerked her head in Evan’s direction. “Momma?”

Drift off to sleep

Into a dream

“Momma, is it you?”

My soul to keep

I do believe . . .

And then, suddenly, Anna blinked and her eyes came into focus, staring at Evan as if he were a long-lost friend. Tears began to flow as she pulled him into her arms, hugging him furiously.

She was back. A little worse for wear, but present in the room.

“Oh, god,” she said. “I’ve missed you so much.”

She released him and Evan smiled, squeezing her hand, stroking her cheek. “I know, sweetheart. I’ve missed you, too. And I love you, darling. You’ll always be my little star. Always.”

Then he collapsed to the floor.

2
8

E
D “SHARKEY
” O’Donnell was worried.

Two years of his life. Two years spent working deep undercover on a case that involved racketeering, gambling fraud, murder, and a string of bribes that stretched all the way to his own department—and some dipshit hypnotist was about to bring it all crashing down.

The first time Sharkey saw Pope outside of a TV screen was downstairs in the VIP poker room. Pope had a short stack, a bad hand, and seemed willfully determined to lose everything he owned.

But thanks to an impromptu bit of heroism on Pope’s part that night—performing the Heimlich maneuver when Troy started choking on his personal pizza—Troy had taken a liking to the guy. So much so that he’d fronted Pope just enough cash to keep him from signing over the house he’d closed up and left for dead.

Not only was Troy grateful that he could continue his life of crime, but he felt sorry for Pope, or so he claimed.

Sharkey suspected his attraction to the guy had more to do with Pope’s celebrity than anything else.

Earlier in the year, the “Little Ben” kidnapping case (as the reporters had dubbed it) had dominated the media for weeks. When Troy wasn’t cruising the Internet or downstairs playing poker, his attention was fixed on the 60-inch plasma in his game room, where news of the snatch, the murder, and the subsequent trial played endlessly.

If you were good with a remote and timed it just right, you’d get wall-to-wall coverage. The police, the pundits, the overly serious talk show hosts, all dining on the Pope family corpse.

Sharkey, like most in law enforcement, assumed the kid was dead long before they found him. And after watching a clip of the mother begging for the big bad Mexican carjacker to bring her son back, Sharkey was convinced that she was the perp. She was as nutty as a fucking fruitcake. A woman who had seen some bad times in her life and had never quite recovered.

But that wasn’t his concern at the time. He was smack in the middle of an investigation that had required him to give up his own life as he’d known it. A mole hunt that was so sensitive and so far off the radar that nobody but his handler knew what he was up to.

So when Pope first appeared in that VIP poker room, Sharkey had been curious about him for about three seconds. Troy, however, had decided to adopt the poor sonofabitch and, after months of loaning him money and watching him lose it, had cut a deal with him to repay his debt by launching that ridiculous hypnosis show.

“We need a headliner,” Troy had said. “And
Ricky and His Red-Hot Horns
aren’t cutting it anymore.”

“I’m not a performer,” Pope had told him.

Troy responded with a statement that made it clear that he wasn’t about to take no for an answer. “Then I guess you’d better learn.”

Within a month, Ricky and the Horns were history. Sharkey had to admit that, despite Pope’s reluctance, he handled himself pretty good onstage. As ridiculous as it was—drunken morons jumping around like they were possessed by bigger, louder, drunker morons—the show managed to bring in a good-sized crowd and nearly doubled casino traffic, thus solidifying Troy’s belief that he was some kind of genius.