Killing Me Softly (26 page)

Swallowing hard, Dawn turned and started toward the stairway, but she froze in place when Olivia shouted, “No!”

“Olivia,” Dawn pleaded, “just—”

“No!” the other woman cried again. “What's he going to do, shoot me where I stand? That would ruin his little plan! Wouldn't it, Nick? Your neatly staged little crime scene would be all messed up. Shooting me wouldn't fit into the story you're weaving. So what are you gonna do?”

He surged across the room at her, swinging the gun as he went. Dawn lunged to get between them, but she was too late. He brought his hand around and clocked Olivia with the pistol butt. She hit the floor hard, landing on her knees, one hand pressing to the side of her head, which was bleeding. She'd landed so close to Rico's body that her fingertips were almost touching his blood. She jerked backward when she saw that and raised her head slowly. “No man will ever hit me again and live to tell about it.” She started to get up, and Dawn knew she was going to attack him.

He raised his hand again, and Dawn wedged herself between them, arms on his shoulders. “Don't! Just don't! She's going to cooperate, okay?”

“The hell I am!”

“The hell she is.” He repeated it deadpan, then shrugged and pushed Dawn out of the way, then
crammed the gun barrel into the back of Olivia's neck. And then he shoved the little black case he'd been carrying at Dawn. “Carry this up the stairs. You miss one step, I blow her head off. Got it?”

Dawn nodded, her motions jerky.

“Move.”

She moved. Nick bent over Olivia, who tried to scramble backward, crablike, but she was up against the wall and there was nowhere to go. She sent Dawn a pleading look.
Help me.

Dawn tried to send her a silent promise, then turned away and marched up the stairs, leaving Nick trying to get a solid grip on the twisting, writhing Olivia with one hand while holding his gun in the other.

Dawn reached the top of the stairs and turned toward her bedroom—where there was a shotgun in the closet.

“Hey!” Nick shouted. “Hey, where are you going so fast? You wait for me, Dawnie!”

She didn't turn to face him. There were only two more steps to the bedroom door. She lunged, turning them into one, and lurched into the bedroom, slamming the door behind her, throwing the lock. She hurled the little black vinyl case away from her as if it were contaminated and spun toward the closet, yanking it open and wrestling the shotgun into her arms. Bullets, bullets, bullets, where the hell were the— Top shelf!

Something slammed into the bedroom door. “Don't fuck with me, Dawnie Jones. Don't even try!” Nick bellowed, and then he hit the door again.

Dawn reached the box of slugs, ripped it open, spilled half of them, but managed to slide two into the pump-action shotgun.

He slammed into the door again. It would break with one more blow. There was no more time. She worked the pump action, pulled the gun up to her shoulder, leveled it at the door and waited for him to burst in, so she could blow him away.

But he didn't. Silence came from the other side. She was shaking so hard she could barely hold the gun in position. Where was he?

A car door slammed. Had someone else arrived? Was help here at last? She lowered the gun only slightly and ran to the window to look outside.

The Thunderbird sat there in the rain, red and white and dripping wet. Nick was leaning into the back and tugging something out. Feet. Legs. He held a rope that was tied around his captive's ankles and kept pulling.

The torso slid out of the car, then the shoulders, arms pinned behind the body. She stiffened, knowing it was Bryan even before his head dropped from the edge of the seat, hitting the side of the car and then the muddy driveway. He didn't fight; his eyes were closed as the rain beat down on him. Unconscious? God, she hoped he was only unconscious.

Nick stopped and looked up at her in the window. “You gonna keep fucking with me?” He screamed the question so loudly that she could hear him clearly over the storm and through the closed window. She lifted a trembling hand to her lips as he slammed Bryan's legs
to the ground, stomped to the car and returned with a tire iron. “Are you?” he shouted, lifting the iron and bringing it down hard across Bryan's lower legs. “Are you?”

She lifted the gun to take aim, wondering even then if she would hit Bryan by mistake. But even as she did, Nick lifted his own gun and pointed it at Bryan's head.

“No!” She screamed the word, then leaned the gun on the wall and flung open the window. “No, Nick! Please don't hurt him!”

“He's gonna kill him, anyway,” Olivia said. Her words were slurred. She'd apparently made her way up the stairs and spoke from the other side of the closed bedroom door. “We've got to get out of here.”

Sniffling, Dawn went to the door and opened it. “I figure you've got about five minutes before he realizes you're gone,” she said.

Olivia lifted her brows. “Gone where?”

“Back door, down to the dock, there's a rowboat. Take your phone. Go, try to get help. Row out to the middle and you can get a signal. I'll try to stall him long enough for you to get clear.”

“I can't leave you!”

“He's gonna kill you first, remember? Besides, I'm not leaving Bryan. Get the hell out. You're our only hope, Olivia. Please!”

Nodding, Olivia turned and stumbled dizzily back down the stairs. Dawn turned toward the open window. “I don't know what you want me to do, Nick,” she called,
raising her voice so he could hear. But as she spoke, she picked up the shotgun and examined the bed where he would kill her, if he got that far. The bed where he would strangle her.

With the memory of Bette's death playing through her mind, she leaned the shotgun up against the headboard, on the opposite side from where he had stood to murder Bette, and then she adjusted her floor-length Blackberry Inn bathrobe over the bedpost to cover it. She reminded herself to stay near that side of the bed when he tried to do her in.

“What the hell do you want me to do?” she called, searching the room and spotting his stupid black case again. “I can't just let you kill me. I'm not a sheep, and I'm not a victim. I'll fight for my life, Nick. I don't think I could do otherwise, even if I tried.”

He would choke her unconscious, she realized, as she moved to where she'd thrown the case, picked it up, opened it and saw the black silk stocking, the bottle of Glasgow Gold and the shot glass inside. And then he would wake her and pour that burning whiskey down her throat. And finally he would choke her again, so she drowned in the liquor.

“The hell you will,” she whispered.

He didn't answer her, and she got worried. She took the shot glass and the whiskey bottle with her to the window, and glanced down even as she went to hurl the bottle out. And then she would flush that damned stocking down the toilet.

Bryan wasn't lying on the ground by the car anymore. Where was he? God, where was he?

She'd paused with her arm in midswing, and then a powerful wet hand snapped up from outside to clasp her wrist, and with a low growl Nick pulled himself, dripping, up over the windowsill and into the room with her.

“No! No, dammit, no!”

He backhanded her. “Don't even try to outsmart me in my own fucking house! We're
doing
this! We're doing it
now!
Where's that bitch Olivia? Where is she?”

He was still holding her wrist, pulling her arm above her head, but she was still clutching the bottle in her other hand. Furious, she brought it around hard and smashed it against his head. She watched it explode. The glass shattered, and the whiskey soaked his face and hair, and spilled onto the floor, forming an amber pool on the hardwood.

He swore a blue streak, but he didn't let her go.

“I asked you where Olivia is,” he said, his tone dangerous and deep.

“She's right where you left her, you animal! She's dead. She was your friend, and she's dead! You killed her, just like you killed Rico, and just like you killed Bette and all the others. You're a murderer, Nick. You're a cold-blooded killer, and this stupid plan of yours isn't going to work. It'll never work, because you're wrong. Your whole theory is wrong. You can't stop. You can't control it. Not ever.”

“I can stop. I stopped before.”

She pulled and twisted, and he tried to hold her, but she managed to get her foot near enough to the shot glass to kick it against the wall, where it broke into several large chunks.

“You're ruining everything!” he shouted. “And you're wrong. I can stop whenever I want. I
did
stop.”

“You
didn't
stop, Nick! You're still killing. How is that stopped?” She was shrieking at him, shouting more loudly than he had as she methodically tried to shake him from his cool, calculating state of disassociation. She knew that state, had seen it in her own father. You had to rattle them, get to them, make them feel some thing. That was when they were weakest.

“I stopped for sixteen years.”

“You paused. You took a break. But you
never
stopped being a serial killer. A predator. An animal.”

“Shut up! Shut the hell up!”

She'd found his weak spot. She knew it and pressed on. “You can't control it, Nick.
It
controls
you
. That beast inside you,
he's
the one in charge. You don't even have any say in the matter. You're too weak to have any say. You don't have enough man in you to beat it.”

“You're wrong. I'm in charge.”

“Are you? Then why the hell did you kill Bette?

Why, Nick?”

He threw her backward on the bed. “I didn't have a choice!”

“Why? Because Bryan took out those files on the original case? Because you thought he was on to you?
Is that why? So you killed his girlfriend, Nick? How much sense does that make?”

“Shut up! Shut up!” He punched her in the face, and she wasn't expecting it. Her head snapped back, hit the headboard so hard it left her dizzy, weak, near the edge of consciousness.

Then he turned, scrambling for something on the floor.

Rolling onto her side, she reached up, toward the gun, but he was back before her fingers found it, shoving her down again.

“Wouldn't it have been easier just to kill Bryan? Maybe even make it look like an accident? Why start this whole Nightcap bullshit all over again? You couldn't have picked a more complicated way to cover your tracks, Nick, don't you realize that?”

He straddled her body and slid the black stocking around her neck, even as she gripped it with her hands, holding on for dear life. He pulled it tight, and she kept her fingers between it and her skin, fighting hard to loosen it, kicking her feet at him in a vain attempt to buck him off.

“And all the time you didn't even
need
to cover your tracks, because Bryan didn't suspect anything. He took those files to honor you, you asshole. Not to nail you.”

He released the stocking, backhanded her across the face, then grabbed it again, jerking it tight so hard and so fast this time that it nearly broke her fingers. She felt her own knuckles sinking into her throat, into
her windpipe, helping the silk to crush it. She couldn't breathe. She couldn't taunt him anymore. Her eyes watered, her heart pounded hard, but no matter how it tried, it couldn't get oxygen to her brain.

He pulled tighter. “Die, dammit!”

 

Bryan managed to get himself into a sitting position on the ground beside the house, where Nick had dumped him, his hands still cuffed behind him, legs tied together at the ankles, rain pouring down on his already-soaked body. He didn't know where the hell Nick had gone, but he knew the man's ultimate goal. He was going to kill Dawn—just the way he'd killed Bette. And Bryan would be damned if he would let that happen.

He'd heard a gunshot just after they'd arrived and Nick had gone inside. And up until just a moment ago, when he'd heard Dawn's voice taunting Nick from the bedroom window, he'd been unsure she was still alive.

Nick had done him a huge favor by dragging him out of the locked car. The bastard had given him a fighting chance. Now he lay on his side and curled up as tightly as he could, finally finding the knotted rope with his teeth. It was damn near backbreaking, but he worked it, tugging the knot, pulling it until his teeth seemed on the verge of coming loose, but finally it gave. He got the knot untied and his legs were free. Next he braced his back against the wall of the house and forced his cuffed hands downward, over his buttocks and under his
thighs; then, twisting his knees to one side and bending almost double, he worked and worked, trying to get the cuffs past his feet, one at a time, so at least his hands would be in front of him rather than behind. He twisted and pulled until the metal cut into his wrists and his shoulders were straining against their sockets. Blood flowed, staining his shirtsleeves, and the muddy, wet ground made it hard to get any leverage. But still he pulled and contorted himself despite the pain.

Finally one foot snapped through. The second was easier, and then he was up on his feet, and running toward the car. He quickly opened the front door, then the glove compartment, where he found exactly what he'd known he would find. A .44 Magnum. Nick always carried a spare weapon in the glove compartment.

No handcuff key, though.

And no time.

He backed out of the car, leaving the door open, and ran toward the house. Up the steps to the front door. It was ajar, and he peered through, gun at the ready. When he didn't see anything, he pushed the door wider and stepped inside, and then he saw a nightmare.

Rico!
Oh, hell, Rico. He barely restrained himself long enough to look left and right, then raced over to Rico, but he knew his friend was dead even before he knelt beside him. Goddammit. That bastard Nick had killed his best friend.