She was looking at him again. For the first time, he saw more than pain in her eyes. They were clear and focused. She was analyzing him. Looking for an angle. “You can’t kill me.”
Raymond blinked. “I…”
She shifted again and a fresh jolt of agony made her cry out. Then her eyes were on him again, hard and unflinching. “She’ll know. She’s inside me, and she’ll fucking know. And she’ll come get you. Make you fucking pay.”
Raymond swallowed hard and stared at her. The fierce conviction evident in her eyes made him waver for a moment. Maybe Cindy was right. Maybe Lamia would come for him if he killed the broken golden girl. But instinct told him otherwise. Lamia wouldn’t have put her on his tail in the first place if she was really all knowing and all seeing. A theory had been formulating quietly in his subconsciousness and now it surged to the surface.
Lamia was powerful. Extremely. Of that he had no doubt at all. She was something very old. Something not human. A force of nature beyond the ability of men to comprehend. But she was not the goddess she claimed to be. She was instead a magnificent manipulator. She displayed her admittedly impressive abilities only when it suited her. When it benefited her. She terrorized people into following her, bullied them into believing she controlled everyone and everything. Well, maybe she could control one person at a time. Maybe two or three. Four or five. Maybe more. But nothing close to everyone in town. Yet he understood why her followers believed she could. Until today he had believed it, too.
Cindy squinted at him. “Whatever you’re thinking is wrong.”
Raymond wiped sweat from his brow. “I’m sorry, Cindy, but I don’t think so.”
Cindy sneered. “You’re dead. Fucking dead. You’ll see. Lamia will fix me and I’ll dance on your fucking grave.”
Raymond opened his mouth to respond, but the words never made it out.
The door to the anteroom flew open and banged against the wall. Raymond’s eyes went wide as Penelope strutted down the stairs and into the garage. She wore a tight, see-through white blouse and a beige miniskirt that revealed almost everything. It was not normal workday attire, but as Penelope had informed him before leaving for work this morning all the normal rules had been suspended. She could do whatever she wanted and no one would lift a finger to stop her. She was drunk on what she saw as her elevated new station in life. Lamia had fooled her as effectively as she’d fooled anyone.
She saw Raymond and scowled. “There you are! Where the fuck have you been, Raymond? Why didn’t you show up for work this morning? I told you-”
Then she was standing next to him and looking down at the trunk. “My God…” She looked at him. “What have you done?”
Raymond’s emotions were complex in that moment, a mixture of guilt, terror at being caught, and self-directed anger at allowing the situation to slip out of his control.
“Penelope…” The plaintive, strained tone returned to Cindy’s voice. “Please help me. He kidnapped me. I think he was going to rape me.”
Penelope chortled. “Oh, please. Raymond likes a bit of slap and tickle, but he doesn’t have the cojones for hard-core stuff.” She looked at Raymond again. “What really happened?”
Raymond felt deflated. He’d been caught. Found out. It was all over. There was even a kind of relief in knowing he wouldn’t have to make like some kind of tweed-wearing Rambo. “It was an accident. She came after me.”
“An accident, huh?”
“Yeah.”
Penelope smirked. “I can see that, I guess. And you brought her here, not knowing what else to do. Figured you’d finish her off in private and…then what?”
“I don’t know.”
“Of course not.” She slapped him. “That’s for being such a fucking pussy. You expect me to believe you would’ve offed this chick while she was still awake and talking to you?”
Raymond was silent. He didn’t have an answer for that.
Cindy let out another little cry of pain. “Penelope…please…”
“Shut up.”
Penelope spun on her heel and stalked toward the workbench. There was a clank of metal as she sifted through the various implements there. When she returned, a long iron spike was gripped in her right fist. It was a rusty thing, something Raymond had found in the yard years ago after construction was finished on the house.
It had a very sharp tip.
Cindy saw it and whimpered.
Penelope sat on the lip of the trunk and leered at Raymond. “She’s no use to Lamia like this, so I’ll do what you weren’t man enough to do.” She reached inside the trunk and ripped the flimsy and shredded halter away from Cindy’s body, exposing the girl’s tanned torso. She directed another leer at Raymond. “Look at her. Still a hot young thing from the waist up, Raymond. Sure you don’t want to have a bit of fun with her before I do this?”
Raymond’s face twisted in disgust. He took an unconscious step away from her. “You sick bitch. You can’t be serious.”
Penelope’s eyes gleamed with amusement. “Oh, but I am. Think about it. You can’t tell me you never fantasized about getting nasty with Miss Hot Stuff here. This is your big chance, Raymond. You’ll never get another.”
Raymond had indeed fantasized about Cindy Wells. Her and many other young girls throughout his career at Rockville. The memory shamed him now. His voice was tight as he said, “No. And don’t ask me again, you psychotic bitch.”
Penelope’s leering smile faded. “Very well.” She looked at Cindy and a hint of mirth again twitched at the corners of her mouth. “Time to say good night.”
Cindy moaned. There was terror mingled with the agony in her cries now. “No…please…please…please…”
Penelope raised the spike over her head and slammed it down. Raymond saw the tip of the spike punch through Cindy’s quivering stomach and cringed at the sound of the girl’s scream. It was astonishingly loud in the closed garage, seeming to shred his ears. Nearly as awful was the sound of the spike thunking against the trunk floor after passing through the girl’s body. Penelope yanked the spike out and slammed it down again. Another puncture. Another fountain of blood. Raymond forced his eyes away from the girl’s ravaged body, but what he saw now was perhaps more disturbing. Penelope slammed the spike down over and over. A dozen times. More. At some point Cindy stopped screaming and Raymond knew she was finally dead. But Penelope just kept slamming the spike down. And she was laughing, her mouth open in a broad, almost manic grin. She glanced at Raymond once with delight radiant in her eyes. She bobbed her head, as if in time to a jaunty tune only she could hear. Her formerly white blouse was splattered with crimson.
And in the midst of Penelope’s murderous frenzy Raymond rediscovered his resolve.
Penelope was distracted. She was obscenely absorbed in the act of mutilation.
Raymond quietly opened the Lexus’s rear door. He removed the Glock from its box and loaded it the way the gun-shop clerk had showed him. He moved to the rear of the car again and aimed the gun at the back of Penelope’s head. She continued thrusting the bloody spike into the dead girl’s very still body.
He waited until she was done.
She dropped the spike in the trunk and looked at him. She didn’t flinch at the sight of the gun.
She smiled.
And licked flecks of blood from her lips.
She took a step toward him, swinging her luscious hips seductively. “A gun, Raymond? Really? Put that thing away before I-”