“How did you know I’d even come to the shack?”
“How could you not? It was very helpful of you and your partner to keep me in the loop on the investigation. And I asked discreet questions here and there, if you recall. So I knew you suspected my father. And I also knew that you had found out about this place. And if you didn’t show up here, I’d have reappeared all beaten up and disheveled with a perfectly believable story of kidnap and assault with little Ty in my arms. And he can’t talk, so he couldn’t dispute one word. And then I would have killed you another time. But you did show up. Like I knew you would.”
“And did you kill all those other people? The ones the FBI is here about?”
“Well, practice makes perfect, Will. I’ve always believed that. And old horny men and young, stupid, and greedy women? Well, I already told you how I feel about that. So relieving the world of a few? I consider it time well spent. The gap in between the last killings in Arkansas and here? I met your father, got married, got pregnant, and had Ty. That all takes time.”
“You committed murder,” he said. “You can’t explain that away.”
She pointed her gun at his head. “What about you? You told me you loved me? And yet you never came for me. Explain that!”
“You didn’t show up. I went to your house. I saw you in your room.”
“My locked room. My father found out what I was planning. He beat me, and raped me, and locked me in that room. I escaped long enough to go see what had happened to you. And that’s when your father said what he said.”
“Laura, if I had known what he was doing to you I would have broken into the house and taken you with me.”
“Bullshit! You should have known I would have been there for you if I could. You should have rescued me. But, no, you just left. Because you wanted to.”
“I thought you had changed your mind.”
“People in love don’t just change their mind. You wanted a life without me, like your father said. That meant you didn’t really love me. That meant you lied to me.”
“Damn it, that’s not true. I…wrote. And, and phoned. I left messa—”
She sent a round ripping past his ear so close he could feel the wake of the bullet. He ducked down.
She looked at him stonily. “Letters? You wrote me letters? And left phone messages? And you really thought that was good enough? My father made sure I received none of them. You should have known that.”
Robie straightened. “I tried, Victoria. I really did.”
“Well, you didn’t try hard enough.”
Robie calmed. “So how does this end?”
She looked over at Ty. “Jane Smith was a genetic freak, thanks to Daddy. Ty, now Ty was mine. And he doesn’t even talk.” She shook her head. “It must be me, Will. I had always blamed things on my father, but maybe I was the problem.”
“You can kill me, but don’t hurt him, Victoria. He’s just a little boy.”
“I can’t say that I don’t have feelings for Ty. I actually do. I don’t want to hurt him. He’s nice enough. But he’s a freak, Will. Just like Jane. Just like dear old Dad. Hell, just like me.” She pointed her gun directly at Ty’s head.
“Laura, don’t do this,” Robie said quickly.
“Don’t call me that,” she screamed.
“Okay, okay, I’m sorry. Victoria. Please, please, don’t.”
“Begging? So weak. So…unattractive, Will. I would have expected so much better from you. But then my taste in men? Not so good.”
She swiveled her gun around and took aim at his head.
“When you see him in the world of shit, tell Daddy I said hello.”
The scream destroyed the silence of the night so completely, so jarringly, that Robie nearly collapsed and Victoria almost dropped her weapon.
It was Ty.
His mouth was open and he was screaming so loudly it was as though he had been saving all of this up during his nearly three years of life to unleash it now.
Quick as a flash Robie grabbed one of the pieces of wood and hurled it at Victoria. She fell back against the lantern, knocking it over and throwing them all into darkness. But she struggled back up, rubbing the blood off her face where the wood had hit her.
By the time she had regained her footing, however, Robie had snatched up Ty and raced through the doorway. The next moment his feet hit dirt, and he was sprinting toward the woods.
Chapter
77
A hundred yards from the shack Robie hit a tree root and sprawled on the dirt, cutting his face on a bush with leaves sharp as knives as he went down. Then his shoulder hit something hard and he felt a pop. Tyler flew out of his grasp and rolled along the ground. Robie clutched his arm, which was bleeding where the scar tissue had reopened. He could barely raise the limb now. It might be broken, too.
He picked up Tyler again and, holding him in one arm, ran on.
Cradling Tyler against his chest, he managed to pull out his phone and dialed 911. The call did not go through. He glanced at the upper screen.
No service.
He heard movement behind him.
She was coming.
And as he looked back Robie could see that she had a flashlight.
He ran to his left, knifed between two trees, and then ran a zigzag route toward where he knew the Pearl River was.
As a boy and then a teenager, he had sought out the serenity of the water when his father had driven him to near tears.
Now though, there would be no peace at the Pearl.
But there might be escape.
He redoubled his efforts. He had listened for but had not heard a gunshot. He prayed with all his heart that Reel was still alive. He didn’t really have a plan for going back to get her, but he knew that that was the ultimate goal. Yet he and Tyler had to survive first.
The terrain here had changed over the course of two decades, and he found himself stumbling and nearly falling time and again.
And then the clouds parted, allowing the full moon to illuminate his surroundings better.
That was good. And bad.
Good that he could see.
Bad that it would be easier for Victoria to find him and Tyler.
He had not even had time to think about the astonishing fact that his high school sweetheart was now his stepmother. Or that she had been the killer they’d been searching for this whole time.
Ordinarily, Robie would have simply attacked and killed his opponent.
But he had no weapon, a useless limb, and a two-year-old in his one good arm.
And a partner who desperately needed medical attention.
And an armed serial killer right behind him.
He cleared the last line of trees and reached the mossy, wet bank of the Pearl.
He looked left, then right, and then straight ahead. The river here was barely a hundred yards across. But as he stepped closer Robie could make out a pair of eyes just above the surface of the water glinting in the moonlight. As a native Mississippian he knew what that was.
A gator. Gators could hunt pretty much anytime, but night was when they did their real damage.
He looked behind him. The steps were growing closer. He could see shafts of her flashlight cutting through the trees.
When Victoria reached them she was going to just shoot them. He didn’t know which one of them she would kill first, him or Tyler.
He looked down at the little boy, who was shaking so badly it was like he had been plunged into Arctic waters. Robie had no idea how much emotional trauma all this had caused the two-year-old, but he knew it had to be a lot.
He took another step toward the water, drawing within a few feet of the bank. The pair of eyes slowly slid out of sight. As they did so he was able to see part of the body, including the tail. The thing was just waiting, and praying — if gators did so — that Robie would step into the water. That battle wouldn’t take long. Even with two good arms and no little boy in tow, Robie would be hard put to fight off what looked to be a full-sized gator on the blood hunt. In his current situation, it would be hopeless.