There was a sudden rustling sound nearby, a flash of movement through the trees—
— and it wasn’t the wind.
Blackburn stopped and swept the flashlight around, illuminating the darkness. “What was that?”
Tolan turned. Abby?
Another rustling sound, this time coming from the opposite side of the clearing. Higher in the trees, like the flutter of bat wings.
Blackburn pointed the flashlight toward it, but caught nothing in its beam. It was an unguarded moment and Tolan wondered if he should jump to his feet and run—
— but Blackburn quickly brought the light down again and shone it in his face.
“You can try,” he said. “But you won’t get very—”
Another sound abruptly cut him off.
A thudding sound.
Blackburn exhaled sharply and went down, the flashlight tumbling to the ground in front of him.
Tolan watched him fall, then looked up to see Lisa standing over him, a thick tree branch in hand. She tossed it aside and crouched over Blackburn, prying the gun out of his fingers. He was either out cold or dead.
“Get up,” Lisa told Tolan. “You heard what he said. Your precious Abby is loose, and I’ll be damned if I’ll let her hurt you. We need to finish what we came here to do.”
Blackburn stirred and Lisa pointed the gun at his head, about to pull the trigger.
Tolan sprang to his feet. “Lisa, no!”
“I have to,” she said. “He saw you. He knows.”
“No, it’s one thing to want to help me, to clean up after me, but you’re not a murderer. Don’t do it.”
“What difference does it make?”
“More than you can know,” Tolan said. “Trust me on this. I’d give anything to take back the things I’ve done.”
There was a flutter of movement again.
In the trees behind Lisa. A flash of white.
Abby?
Crossing to Blackburn, Tolan picked up the flashlight and pointed it, seeing nothing.
Then, another flutter, off to his right. A faint whisper:
“A lie stands on one leg, the truth on two…”
He and Lisa exchanged quick looks as he swept the beam toward it.
Again nothing.
“A lie stands on one leg, the truth on two…”
“Oh, my God,” Lisa said, panic filling her eyes.
Another flutter, off to the left now.
“A lie stands on one leg, the truth on two…”
Tolan swept the light in that direction—
— and there she was, crouched at the base of a pepper tree, looking out at them with dark, feral eyes. Not the product of a deluded mind, but real. Very real.
“Abby,” he said, feeling a sudden, overwhelming ache, accompanied by an unbridled sense of relief.
She was alive. She was alive and she was back and she didn’t look dangerous at all. She was the same woman he’d met five years ago, the same woman who had taken him into her bed, into her heart.
His lost soul.
“Oh, my God,” Lisa said again in a trembling voice, and brought the gun up to fire.
“No!” Tolan shouted, hitting her arm with the flashlight. The gun cracked, the shot went astray, and when Tolan returned his gaze to Abby—
— she was gone.
56
“Jesus,” a voice said. “What the hell happened to you?”
Blackburn had a mouthful of twigs.
He opened his eyes and spit, then realized he was lying on the ground. His head felt as if it had ballooned to twice its size.
Turning on his side, he looked upward toward the source of the voice. All he could see were two overlapping circles of a light.
Double vision.
Shit.
“Somebody sure did a number on you,” the voice said.
Then hands grabbed him, pulling him upright.
Clayton Simm crouched next to him, aiming a flashlight toward his head, fingers immediately going to the butterfly bandage, then moving to a spot just above Blackburn’s temple.
There was something wet there and Blackburn winced, pain shooting through him.
“This is bad,” Simm said. “You don’t want to be moving around too much.”
“What are you doing out here?”
“Fire alarm. Some of our patients got loose. I thought I heard a gunshot. Did one of them attack you?”
“No,” Blackburn said, fighting confusion. “Maybe. I don’t know.” He squinted at Simm. “You picked the perfect time to finally show up.”
“Yeah, thanks for dragging me out of bed, then disappearing on me. I figured if I’m awake, I might as well be doing something useful.”
“Good, then help me to my feet.”
“I don’t think you should be—”
“Just do it.”
Simm stood up, then reached a hand out and pulled Blackburn to his feet. The world started spinning and Blackburn grabbed ahold of Simm’s arm to steady himself.
“I told you. You might want to sit back down. I’ll go get you some help.”
Blackburn said nothing, thinking he might toss his cookies. He tried searching the ground, but the double vision persisted. “Where’s my Glock?”
Simm swept his flashlight beam around the area, but came up empty. “Don’t see it.” Then he spotted something and stooped to pick it up.
Blackburn swayed again and Simm quickly caught him. “You drop this?”
It was a scrap of newspaper. The article on Anna Marie Colson that Kat had found in Tolan’s house. It must’ve slipped out of his coat pocket when he fell.
It was wet, but not soaked through. Simm shone his light on it, staring at the photograph of the college roommates. Blackburn looked too, trying to get his vision to clear, the image swimming before him, then finally coming into focus.
He stared at the fresh young faces, surprised by what he saw. Something he hadn’t noticed before. One of the roommates looking away from the camera, not at it, wearing an odd expression.
“Is that Michael?” Simm asked.
Blackburn shifted his gaze to Tolan’s smiling face, then snatched the article away from Simm and stuck it back in his pocket.
“I need to get up to the old hospital.”
“What the hell for?”
“Just help me get back to the trail. I’ll be fine after that.”
“Not likely,” Simm said. “I let go, you’ll fall flat on your face.”
Blackburn brushed a wet leaf off his cheek. “Wouldn’t be the first time.”
Tolan weaved in and out of the trees, finally clearing the last of them, then stepped onto the grounds of the old hospital, where the rain came down hard, turning the battered driveway to mud.
After the shot, he thought he’d seen Abby again, several yards in the distance, and had taken off after her without looking back, leaving Lisa in his wake.
“No, Michael! You can’t trust her! She’s not what you think she is!”
But Tolan didn’t listen. Nothing she could say could stop him. Not after he’d seen that face. That beautiful face with its striking brown eyes.
All he wanted was to make things right. To put his arms around Abby, to hold her, to tell her how sorry he was for what he’d done.
But now, as he stood at the edge of the forest, rain battering his face, he saw no sign of her, and the glimmer of excitement he’d felt only moments ago began to morph into the first seeds of despair.
From across the drive, the wide black mouth of the hospital’s main doorway seemed to call to him, beckoning him to enter.
He shone Blackburn’s flashlight toward it.
Was she inside?
A sudden feeling of déjà vu washed over him. A memory of Abby standing in the darkness of that doorway. Like something from a dream.