Hawkins followed the sound of the voice and directed the SureFire light at the bloodied figure of a graying man with a mustache, wearing a brown business suit, chained to a seat. Squinting, the man gasped in pain from a shoulder wound, his body sagging with weakness.
“Sir. Help is coming,” Hawkins said. The wound didn’t look fatal, but Hawkins couldn’t tell how much blood the man had lost or if he’d suffered other injuries. He looked about as old as Hawkins and was at risk of going into shock or cardiac arrest. According to ID in the man’s wallet, he was a doctor at Smith’s Grove, Ranbir Sartain. “Stay with me!”
Abruptly, Sartain looked up, revived, as if suddenly remembering something of the utmost importance. Eyes wild, he asked, “Did he… Did he escape?”
Judging by the man’s alarm, Hawkins suspected one man had been responsible for no less than three murders here tonight.
“Who?” Hawkins asked and got no response. “Who? Did who escape?”
Sartain’s eyelids drifted down, the spark that had temporarily revived him fading, succumbing to unconsciousness.
Hawkins heard the approaching wail of sirens.
12
October 31st
In addition to a strong cup of coffee, Dana relied on a hot shower to start a new day, otherwise she stumbled through her morning a muddle-headed mess. Unfortunately, the budget motel’s water pressure wasn’t quite up to the task of revivifying lethargic muscles. Or maybe she should blame the generic showerhead. Its default setting—the only setting—could best be described as gentle rain. She’d spent a fair amount of time shampooing her long red hair, and it was taking a godawful amount of time to rinse out the lather. If she didn’t skip the conditioner, she’d probably run out of hot water.
Head bowed directly under the showerhead, she closed her eyes and stood still, letting the water course through her hair. She tried to speed the process by wringing suds and water at the ends with a twist of her hands.
A slight sound—a creak—not of her own making caught her attention.
She raised her head and turned toward the translucent shower curtain, blinking the misty spray from her eyes. Steam billowed up from her shower, spreading through the bathroom beyond. Thinking her imagination had begun to run wild, she almost turned back toward the showerhead but froze. The rectangular shape of the door shifted several inches, opening.
Had she heard the twist of the doorknob? The squeak of a hinge?
A moment later a shape moved through the doorway, a vague silhouette—at first. As it took several steps closer, the indistinct figure resolved into the shape of a man who then stood still, waiting. Something about the silhouette disturbed her on a subconscious level. Something not quite… human.
Incipient fear gnawed at her, stealing her voice, catching her breath.
Abruptly, the figure’s arm rose, hand gripping the edge of the shower curtain and yanking it aside, revealing—
A naked man—save for the pale Michael Myers mask with its shock of brown hair that hid his face—stood before her. Her scream died in her throat, flushed away with a surge of relief. Even with his face hidden, she recognized his tall physique.
“Room for one more?” Aaron asked.
Dana laughed. “Take that hideous thing off.”
Aaron reached around to the back of the mask and tugged it off.
“God, Aaron,” she said. “You scared me half to death. Thought you went out for coffee.”
“That was ages ago,” he said. “You have any idea how long you’ve been in here?”
She smiled. “Ages, I would assume.”
“Sounds about right,” Aaron said, then looked down thoughtfully at the mask. “When I wear this, there is a certain tendency or… inclination that the legacy of the mask seems to inspire.”
“Please don’t murder me.”
Aaron laid the mask on the counter. Then he took her hand and raised it to his lips like a nobleman greeting a lady in a Regency romance novel—except for the little detail of their both being nude, one soaking wet and a bit soapy.
“I would never,” he said. “I need your smile.”
“Get in here already,” she said, laughing. “I’m getting cold.”
Aaron stepped into the shower, pulling the curtain behind him to lock in the heat and steam. His hands held her waist, sliding down to the swell of her hips as he brought her close to him.
With the bathroom door open, Dana heard the murmur of voices coming from the television, which Aaron had left on in the other room. A reporter mentioned something about an empty bus abandoned the previous night on the side of the road. She couldn’t hear any more and, as Aaron pulled her in for a lingering kiss on the lips, the intimate confines of the shower stall held her full attention.
As she felt him firm against her, she murmured, “Who needs coffee?”
Allyson leaned into her run, a slight forward tilt of momentum that propelled her through her morning miles. A new day. A new start. Her grandmother had talked about a reset. But each reset had a bit of a rewind built into it, a tendency to make the same mistakes all over again. Can’t change the past, Allyson thought, so you might as well look forward to new choices, new experiences.
Karen couldn’t stop blaming Laurie for her mistakes. And Laurie couldn’t escape the rut of old, destructive behaviors. Allyson wanted them to stop dwelling on the dysfunction, to be better—different—if that was even possible for them. But she was starting to believe neither one of them could change, which broke her heart.
As Allyson passed the community garden on her morning route, she noticed a shape out of the corner of her eye, someone moving in the shadows. She slowed and turned her head to look back. But she saw nobody, not even the woman in the saree, the apparent caretaker for the garden. Maybe she’d imagined the movement. With a shrug, she picked up her pace and moved on.
Less than a minute or two later, she noticed a few people congregating near the large tree whose roots had tilted several slabs of sidewalk from below, creating a tripping hazard for walkers and runners alike. She made a habit of running on the shoulder of the road when she approached that tree, rather than faceplant for a second time.
God, that had been painful! She’d scraped her palms raw and sprained her ankle. Bobby Hall, who had been delivering sandwich orders for a local deli in his dinged-up PT Cruiser, had laughed his ass off. She did her best to ignore the jerk, but felt her face flush, probably beet red. And she couldn’t confirm but wanted to believe smoke curled from her ears to express her silent fury. She’d tried to hobble home but gave up and called her mom for a lift.
Now she wondered what had caused the commotion at her tree of shame. Everyone there seemed to be looking at something in the tree. Curious, she veered over to the group, slowing to a jog.
Somebody said, “Who in the hell would do this?”
Another voice commented, “It’s awful.”
“Horrible,” a third person agreed. “Somebody should call the cops.”
Allyson stopped, sidestepping to locate the object of their interest. She gasped. Their attention was focused not on the tree, but on something hanging from a branch. Someone had killed a dog, then hogtied it and hung it upside down. Its swollen tongue, stippled with blood, protruded from its twisted mouth, black lips flecked with spittle. The rope creaked softly as it moved in the breeze. A moment of sympathetic grief over someone’s slaughtered pet transformed into something more personal as Allyson realized she recognized the brown-and-white dog as the one that had lunged at her yesterday, barking and startling her as she passed by its wrought-iron fence.