Virtue Falls (57 page)

CHAPTER NINETY

It was midnight when Sheila let Elizabeth and Garik into the Honor Mountain Memory Care Facility. In a low voice, as she led them down the corridor, she said, “He’s been waiting for you. He wouldn’t go to sleep until you got here.”

“He was a hero today.” Garik was euphoric. “If I hadn’t taken him, we’d have both died. And Joe, too, poor guy. He’s still in the hospital, glad to be alive.”

“Let’s not make a habit of stealing our patients, though, hm? And don’t keep Charles up too late. He’s … fragile.” Sheila stopped in the doorway of Charles’s room. “Here they are, Mr. Banner, safe and sound.”

Charles was resting on the pillows, the nightlight dim above his head, and when he saw them, his face lit up with joy. “Children. I was so worried.”

Elizabeth ran to him, hugged him, pressed her face into his shoulder, and wept.

Garik didn’t blame her. After today, he was feeling pretty sentimental himself.

“Now, dear.” Charles patted her back. “How are you? Are you hurt?”

She couldn’t answer, so Garik said, “We’re fine. A little battered”—an understatement—“and Elizabeth had to get a haircut.”

“I see that,” Charles smoothed her head. “It’s very attractive.”

Elizabeth touched the short, cropped cut and cried harder.

“She has to go into Seattle for surgery on her hand,” Garik said.

Elizabeth sat up, sniffled, and blew her nose. She held up her palm completely encased in gauze and tape, her fingers sticking out, swollen and bruised. “And Garik’s left arm is broken in two places.”

Garik lifted his cast.

Elizabeth continued, “But thanks to you, we survived.”

“Garik did his part.” Charles offered his hand.

Garik shook it. “
You
killed him.”

Charles’s amiable expression faded. “I owed him.”

“I understand that.” Garik had never understood anything so well in his life. “Is Misty happy about this?”

“I haven’t seen her lately,” Charles said. “Not since my first seizure.”

Garik and Elizabeth exchanged glances.

Garik hadn’t realized Charles knew he had seizures.

“She’ll be back, I’m sure,” Elizabeth said, then looked confused and concerned, a woman who steadfastly didn’t believe in ghosts and had just reassured her father he would be visited again.

“I don’t think so. Not in this lifetime, anyway. She had to move on sometime, you know.” Charles tried to smile, but his voice echoed with loneliness.

“The next time we come, we’ll bring a reporter, name of Noah Griffin. You can tell him the story of you and Misty,” Garik said. “He wants to write a book.”

“No, don’t bother.” Charles reclined against the pillows, and he closed his eyes, rejecting the idea.

“But you’ll be a hero,” Elizabeth said.

“I never wanted to be a hero.” Charles gaze opened his eyes to gaze at her. “I wanted to be a good husband and a good father.” With one finger, he stroked Elizabeth’s cheek. “I missed out on most of that, but I’m proud of the wonderful young woman you’ve grown up to be.”

“I’m proud of you, too, Daddy.” Elizabeth’s voice grew hoarse from tears and emotion. So much deep-felt, never-before-experienced emotion.

“Will you be wearing a wedding ring again soon?” Charles asked.

“As soon as possible,” Garik said firmly. “Although I imagine this time Margaret will want to host the wedding at the resort, invite the whole town, make it a big event with all the trimmings.”

Elizabeth’s spine straightened. “I can’t do that. I don’t have time. I’ve got a tsunami to research!”

“You tell a ninety-one-year-old woman that” Garik said.

“And break her heart,” Charles added.

The men grinned as they watched Elizabeth reach the obvious conclusion—she was stuck.

The room eased into silence, into the quiet camaraderie of people who had together fought a battle, and won.

Then, in the doorway, Sheila said, “It’s late, and it’s been a very exciting day for Mr. Banner. Garik and Elizabeth, why don’t you two come back in the morning after he’s had a good night’s sleep?”

“Of course.” Elizabeth rose from her place on the bed, and pressed a kiss on Charles’s cheek. “Good night. Sweet dreams.”

“You, too, my darling girl.” Charles smiled tremulously into her face. “Your mother said that after you were born, I would think you were even more beautiful than her. No one could be more beautiful than Misty, but like her, you have a spirit that shines from inside, and I love you dearly.”

Elizabeth cried again—she didn’t seem to be able to contain herself tonight—and kissed him. “I love you, too, Daddy.”

Garik shook Charles’s hand again. “Good night, Charles. We fought the good fight today. Now it’s time for the wounded warriors to enjoy a good night’s sleep.”

“Wounded warriors.” Charles’s smile blossomed. “Yes. I like that. That describes us all perfectly.”

Elizabeth hugged him again.

Garik shook his hand again.

Sheila escorted them out the door and toward the exit.

Garik and Elizabeth slid their arms around each other’s waists, taking care not to hurt each other more, and both staggered with weariness as they crossed the parking lot to his truck.

Tonight, the resort seemed exactly like home.

*   *   *

In his room, Charles sighed with happiness and closed his eyes.

Today had been the day he had never dared imagine could happen. He had served justice on the man who had killed Misty.

That seizure today in Garik’s truck … had been the worst ever. Charles had been frozen, aware and yet helpless. In the prison of his brain, he knew that this was his only chance to take revenge on the man who had hurt Misty, who had destroyed their family—and he could not move.

Then, thank God, the seizure had ended. He’d been released. He could move. He had eased himself out of the truck, pushed open the front door, and seen Bradley Hoff holding a pair of scissors to Elizabeth’s face.

A cold, clear rage had possessed Charles.

Remembering that moment, he laughed a little to himself. Who knew that in all those prison years, he had actually learned a few things about how to handle a knife? Yet he had, for he scooped up the pocket knife that glinted on the floor and with a panache that surprised even him, he—

Charles caught his breath.

His fists clenched.

His spine arched.

No
. He fought.
Not another seizure.
Not tonight. Not so soon.

Pain. Pressure.
His feet kicked at the covers. His body spasmed …

A burst of light.

The symptoms disappeared. Just like that, they were gone. No more pain. No more pressure. He relaxed and opened his eyes.

And there she was, his Misty, standing next to the bed and smiling at him with such delight. “You did it.”

“I know. I killed him. He deserved it for what he did to you, and for what he wanted to do to Elizabeth.”

“Yes…” She took his hand in hers. “That’s what you were sent back to Virtue Falls to do.”

“Was it? Then I’m glad I was a success in that, at least.”

“You are the man I have always loved.”

“Then I want nothing else from life.”

“Do you remember our wedding? We promised each other eternity.” She waved an arm, and he realized he had left his room.

He stood on a wide plateau. The sun shone on his skin, but there was no sun. The green grass waved in the wind, but there was no breeze. Flowers grew in colors that saturated his senses. Nearby was a clump of trees, and they murmured of the land, the water, the light. The scent of Misty filled him to the brim with joy.

Taking her in his arms, he looked down at her, his kind, gentle, loving wife, and he said, “Only eternity? Is that all the time I have with you?”

Misty laughed, a chime of happiness.

And they were beyond.

CHAPTER NINETY-ONE

On the day they buried Charles and Misty Banner, in a fitting tribute, the earth shook so hard Garik and Elizabeth had to hold onto each other to stand erect beside the gravesites.

Despite the solemnity of the occasion, they laughed.

CHAPTER NINETY-TWO

When Garik, Tom Perez, and the FBI agents broke through the locked door at the back of Bradley’s studio, they found a long, narrow, windowless room, lined with paintings of Bradley’s victims. He had rendered each portrait with chilling skill, creating a visual rendition of a murderer’s pleasure and a victim’s growing pain and terror—and attached to each canvas with glue and paint was the lock of blond hair Bradley had collected.

As experienced with murder as the agents were, still those paintings shattered them with horror.

The paintings of Misty were glorious, breathtaking, classics. In one, Bradley Hoff delineated a beautiful woman at the height of her seductive power, looking with longing at a hazy horizon at the far end of the ocean.

Only on Misty’s portrait was the hair bloodstained.

Bradley’s work as Nature’s Artist would soon fade, but these works of exquisite terror spoke to everyone who saw them, and they would hang in the world’s finest museums forever.

Bradley would be famous for all eternity.

As Margaret pithily put it, “Too bad for him he’s going to burn in hell for exactly that long, too.”

CHAPTER NINETY-THREE

On the first anniversary of the great Washington earthquake, Lt. JG Luis Sánchez pushed Kateri’s wheelchair over a rutted, grassy trail to the top of the highest cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean. He had tried to convince her to stay in town and mingle with the locals and tourists who had come in for the first annual earthquake celebration, but she had a reason for returning to Virtue Falls today, and it was not to be pitied by her former friends. So she fixed her eyes on Sánchez and ordered him to bring her up here, where the salt breeze would blow away the memory of a year of pain, betrayal, and heartache.

And he, who had so faithfully called, visited, and encouraged, reluctantly agreed to take her away from the festivities. Now he set the brake on the wheelchair and squatted beside her. “Glorious, isn’t it?” he said.

To the north, Virtue Falls Harbor was awash in construction cranes as the idiots rebuilt as if the tsunami had never happened. To the south was Virtue Falls Resort, where after the quake Margaret Smith had thrown money around to bring her inn back to its revered excellence, and now did a brisk business. All along the coast, pocket beaches spread out their white sands for the tourists who assured each other another tsunami could not happen so soon.

Here was between.

Out there, in the ocean, islands of stone harbored seals and sea lions who basked in the sun, and waves blasted the great rocks stacked in mighty pillars and arches. Young seabirds rode the warm wind, and wheeled and swooped, exuberant with the joy of their new wings.

For one who had grown far too used to the sterile smell of antiseptic, the salt, dirt, and crushed grass mixed to form a heady perfume.

Kateri breathed, listened, and watched.

Those were functions of living most people took for granted.

She did not. Nor did she take her memories for granted. Too much of this year had blurred into a mess of pain, stress, futile anger, and … more pain. Here, she was away from all that. Here, she was home. She told Sánchez, “This place is the reason I fought my way into the Coast Guard and just about killed myself getting through the Academy.”

“You got a raw deal.” He meant it, too.

She shrugged. “The Coast Guard couldn’t keep me, not in the shape I’m in, and especially not after the accusations of incompetence. I can’t go back to dealing cards at the casino—funny, but the players want a pretty girl who hasn’t been dragged through a glass window, drowned, and broken into little bits.” She lifted her arm; her elbow had never set right and her lower arm twisted to the side. Her little finger skewed inward, and pale scars tracked across the skin on the back of her hand. “This is what happens when the doctors are so busy saving your life they consider the shape of your bones to be secondary.”

“I think you’re beautiful,” Sánchez said.

“I think you’re full of shit.” She didn’t give him time to come up with some compliment about her character shining through her face. “My mother always told me, ‘Life ain’t fair.’ She was Native American. She knew what she was talking about.”

There wasn’t much Sánchez could say about that, so wisely he kept his mouth shut.

Abruptly she said, “Luis, go away.”

He looked up at her, his big, brown eyes stricken and worried.

She cupped his cheek; her shattered hand made a horrible contrast to his healthy, tanned skin. “Go away. I promise not to wheel myself over the cliff. I simply want to be alone for as long as it takes me to celebrate a year of life I should never have enjoyed.”

He knew she was being sarcastic, and like the generous Latin gentleman he was, he took her hand and kissed it.

She shouldn’t pick on him. Just because he was handy didn’t mean he deserved a dose of her bitterness. She shifted to fully face him. “Luis, I need some time alone. That’s all. Between the doctors and nurses and physical therapists and lawyers, I haven’t been alone for a whole year, and to come back here, to the place where it happened—I need a moment of reflection.” That sounded good.

Civilized.

Quite the opposite of how she felt.

Sánchez wasn’t fooled. He looked her dead in the eyes and said, “You swear on the graves of your ancestors that you won’t in any way, shape, or form fling yourself off this cliff and into the ocean?”

“Wow. Pin me down, why don’t you? I promise. I simply have something to say and I can’t when you’re here.”

“You’re talking to who?”

“The frog god.”

“Oh. Okay.” Luis rose to his feet. “I’ll be back in ten minutes. That’s all you get. Ten minutes. You’d better get it all said in that amount of time, because after that we’re going down to listen to the art auction.”