Run to Me (21 page)

The man was closer. He’d reached the couch and was inching around it. Suddenly his eyes flicked upwards. Zack’s heart stopped as their gazes met.

He nearly shrieked when the woman grabbed his arm and pulled him away. ‘Stay back,’ she hissed, then immediately returned her attention to the floor.

He watched her hands. She was doing something to the top of the ladder, to the screws that anchored
it to the loft. Nothing that could possibly save them. And even if it was, she’d never get it done in time.

He stole another glimpse over the edge again. This time his query was met by a burst of machine-gun fire. Bullets hit the ceiling directly above them. Which meant they had come from directly below.

‘He’s on the ladder! He’s coming up!’ Zack grabbed her arm and tried to pull her.

She fumbled
the file and snatched it up again. ‘Get behind me!’ She shoved him towards the back of the loft.

Where did she expect him to go? Out the window? Leave without her? He was just reaching out to grab her again when the gunman’s face appeared over the edge.

Incredibly the woman ignored him. With dogged focus she kept to her task.

Another rung and the man’s shoulders came into view. ‘Like fish in
a barrel.’ He started to swing his weapon around.

Shyler dropped the file and threw herself back. Bracing her foot to the top of the ladder she kicked out with all her strength. The gunman’s smile turned to surprise as his support teetered. He made a grab for the edge of the loft but she kicked his hand away.

The silence was shattered by a startled shout. Followed by a crash of splintering wood.

As Zack sat clutching the woman’s arm another sound emerged through his shock. Someone screaming. But it wasn’t the man who’d just done a back flip off the ladder. This noise was coming from outside the cabin.

When the woman pulled away from him he followed her forward. Side by side they crept to the edge of the loft and looked down.

The gunman lay sprawled on what remained of the kitchen table,
now collapsed to kindling beneath him. His head was twisted at a weird angle and a sliver of the table leg stuck through his neck.

Shyler reached down and grabbed her rifle off the picture hook. She sat back and took Jesse’s face in her hands. ‘Are you all right?’

He nodded, eyes wide.

‘Right, let’s go. We have to get out of here.’

‘But the ladder –’

‘This way.’ She crawled to the window,
pulled it up and knocked out the screen.

She eased her head through the opening and listened. No more shooting. No one in sight. Had it really just been the two of them? Screams were still coming from the rear of the house so at least she knew where that one was.

She turned back to Jesse. ‘Get up on the sill and give me your hands. I’ll lower you onto the lean-to roof.’

Shyler jumped down and
motioned for Jesse to slide towards her. When he neared the roof’s edge, she shouldered her rifle then reached up and lowered him to the ground.

They ran for the garage diagonally opposite. At the door she stopped to survey the interior, rifle poised. Except for the pick-up,
the shed stood empty. To the sound of the man still yelling out back she helped Jesse into the passenger seat then circled
and got in behind the wheel.

The spare key was beneath the mat where she always left it, but when she turned the ignition nothing happened. With a silent prayer, she tried again. Nothing. What had they done to it?

‘Wait here,’ she said and climbed out again, then froze at the silence. The man had stopped his yelling. Did that mean he was on the move? Had he found his dead friend? Was he coming
for them?

In the clearing just ahead she spotted the Chevy. Their last chance gone. The tyres were slashed.

Gunshots resounded from the rear of the house. She leapt inside and pressed back against the garage wall.

Breathless, quaking, she felt the paralysis taking hold, stripping her reason, shutting her down. All at once she knew it was over. The monsters were here. Fish Hook. Puppet. Beret.
Scarecrow. She could see their faces, their sneers, their scars –

Small arms clamped around her waist. With a gasp she looked down. Jesse stared up at her, his wide frightened eyes drawing her into a place of stillness and sudden clarity. With every second she stared at his face her courage returned. She pressed a trembling hand to his cheek. No, the monsters hadn’t won yet!

Hugging him close,
she turned for the door, glanced at the sky – twilight streaking the clouds with gold – then into the woods. They hadn’t a chance against five armed men and they weren’t going anywhere in either vehicle. But in another hour it would be fully dark.

And no one knew these forests better than she.

Chase pulled his Land Rover to the side of the quiet suburban street and shut off the engine. He sat staring out at the green shingled, two-storey Queen Anne with its manicured shrubs and cottage garden. A blue sedan was parked in the driveway. He climbed from the car and started up the path.

On the open front porch he rang the bell. After a moment a shadow appeared behind the glass
panel that flanked the door.

‘Mrs O’Neil? It’s Doctor Hadley. I called this morning regarding Shyler. I still haven’t been able to locate her. I wonder if I could ask you a few more questions.’

The shadow lingered but the door didn’t open.

‘I’m concerned about her, Mrs O’Neil. It’s important I find her.’

The door cracked an inch. ‘I thought you said there was nothing seriously wrong with her.’

‘There’s nothing seriously wrong with her physically, but I’m worried . . . Look, do you think I could come inside and talk to you? It’s not the sort of thing –’

The door opened wider and a woman’s face appeared, thin and hard-featured. Chase could barely see the resemblance.

‘I told you I can’t help you. I haven’t spoken to my daughter in years.’

‘That’s okay. At this stage all I want to do
is find her. I know she’s living in the Deadwater area, I just don’t know where.’

The woman stared back as though debating. ‘The cabin.’

‘Yes, someone said something about a cabin, but they didn’t –’

‘It’s on the north side of town, off one of the old logging tracks. We used to vacation there when Shyler was young. She and her father built the place and when he died he left it to her.’

‘Mrs
O’Neil, I’m new to Deadwater. It would be a tremendous help to me if you could draw me a rough map to find the place.’

More debating. ‘All right, come in.’

A flight of stairs leading to the second floor lined one side of a wide hallway. As she moved to the desk beside the door, Chase saw the picture frames covering the walls.

‘I really appreciate this,’ he said, stepping closer to scan the
photos. Most were of the same young girl at various ages. For someone who claimed not to care about her daughter, Patricia O’Neil kept a lot of mementos.

‘These pictures are all of Shyler growing up?’ He pretended not to notice the completed map she was holding out to him.

‘Yes.’

‘She’s an only child?’

‘That’s right.’

He leaned to take in a particular shot, more to buy time than anything
else. How could he get this woman to open up?

She lowered her hand. ‘Go ahead and ask your questions, Doctor. It’s clear I won’t get rid of you until you do.’

Where to begin? How did he ask about an experience that might have destroyed a young woman’s life? Perhaps by approaching the subject indirectly.

‘I see Shyler used to play the piano.’

‘Yes. She was very talented.’

‘Is that so?’

‘By
age six she was playing the Bach Inventions. Mozart, Chopin and Brahms by high school. She could have gone to any music school in the country. I would know, I was her teacher.’

The pride in her voice was unmistakable. ‘Could have? So it didn’t turn out that way?’

‘Shyler was talented at a good many things. She could have done anything she wanted with her life. Gone to any college, pursued any
number of challenging careers. Instead she fell pregnant and married the father.’

His head snapped towards her. ‘Shyler’s married?’

‘They’ve since divorced.’

He waited but she didn’t elaborate. She seemed to be struggling to meet his gaze. ‘Was that when you stopped having anything to do with her? When she got married?’

She looked away. It was answer enough.

‘How did your husband feel about
it?’

‘He agreed with me. We refused to see them, even after the baby was born. It wasn’t until –’

‘Until?’

‘When the boy turned five, Robert, my husband, came to me and confessed he had contacted Shyler. It was the one and only time he ever disregarded my feelings on the issue. On any issue, for that matter.’

‘What changed his mind?’

‘He said he’d been having . . .’ She swallowed with effort.
‘That he had some health problems and wanted to get to know his grandson before . . .’

Chase could fill in the blanks from there. ‘Your husband was dying.’

‘I didn’t know it at the time but, yes.’

She drew herself up and fixed her attention on one of the photos. ‘Shyler had always been close to her father. The two of them were much alike – similar natures, similar interests. When Robert told
me he wanted Shyler back in our lives . . .’ She closed her eyes. ‘We fought about it. A terrible argument. And we never fought normally. If I’d only known . . . If he’d only told me . . .’ She covered her mouth.

‘Mrs O’Neil?’

‘Robert collapsed. A heart attack. That was the health problem he’d been keeping from me.’

‘So your husband died while the two of you were fighting. Which you wouldn’t
have been doing if not for Shyler.’ Chase took a quick mental stock of the facts. Had he stumbled onto part of the problem? If Shyler felt responsible for her father’s death, a parent she adored, a man she’d unwittingly forced to choose between her and her mother . . .

‘I . . . I’m sorry, Doctor, you’ll have to excuse me. I’m very busy.’ She tried to urge him towards the door.

Chase stood his
ground. ‘Mrs O’Neil, are you aware Shyler is exhibiting symptoms of a possible psychological disorder?’

‘I . . .’

‘Did you tell her how you felt all these years? That you blamed her for her father’s death?’

‘Blamed her! I never blamed Shyler, I blamed myself. If I hadn’t been so – I’m sorry, Doctor, I’m really not well. You’ll have to leave.’

He stepped reluctantly out on the porch. ‘Your
estrangement wouldn’t be the only cause. I’m sure if you saw her . . .’

‘I tried. If you only knew how . . . But Shyler refused and I couldn’t blame her.’

‘Things may have changed. She could feel differently now.’

She shook her head, noticed the map still clutched in her hand. Snatching a pencil from the desk she scrawled a few lines and handed it to him. ‘This is her ex-husband’s name and
phone number. He can help you better than I.’

She swung the door towards him, then pulled it back.

‘Please, Doctor Hadley, help my girl.’

Zack fell gasping to the ground. For a while the woman had helped him along, held his arm, half supporting him. But ten minutes back she’d pulled out in front and had been getting farther and farther ahead of him. With darkness rapidly closing in, soon he wouldn’t be able to see her at all.

‘Hey, wait up!’

Her footsteps halted in the gloom ahead, then resumed, coming back to him.

‘Jesse, what is it? What are you doing?’

‘I need to rest.’ He’d given up trying to tell her his name.

‘We can’t. It’s not safe. We have to keep going.’ She crouched beside him. In the ghostly half-light her eyes were wide.

‘But we got away. There isn’t anyone after us. See.’ He indicated the trail behind them. ‘If they were coming they’d have caught up to us by now, don’t you think? We haven’t
been going all that fast.’

She took a deep breath and swung down to sit on the ground beside him. ‘I suppose we can rest a little while.’

He slumped in relief. She hadn’t been trying to leave him behind. Despite his doubts about her sanity he’d much rather be with her than alone.

‘You were pretty cool back there,’ he said once his breathing had slowed. ‘I thought we were history but man, you
beat them, you really did. The way you pushed that guy off the ladder. That was awesome!’

‘Jesse.’ Her tone was gently admonishing, as though she didn’t like him talking that way.

‘What, you think I’d be freaked out by something like that? No way. That dude had it coming.’

They sat in silence, straining to hear any sounds of movement or approaching footsteps above the burble of the nearby stream.
Until she noticed he was shivering. ‘Here, put this on.’ She took off her jacket and draped it around him. Her warmth and scent gently enfolded him. She felt his brow, then his cheek, but kept her judgments to herself.

‘So, that other guy. The one who was screaming.’ Zack swallowed. ‘What happened to him?’

She peered around at the deepening shadows. ‘We should keep moving.’

‘You did something
to him, didn’t you? Planted some kind of booby trap or something.’

She got to her feet. ‘Come on. If you can’t walk I’ll carry you a ways.’

He sighed in defeat. ‘I can walk. Just not so fast, all right?’

She helped him up then immediately turned and started off.

‘Hey!’ he called.

She stopped and looked back.

‘It’s getting kinda weird not knowing your name. What do I call you?’

‘Silly. You
call me Mom, of course.’

Shyler went back, wrapped her arm around his shoulder and held him close as she ushered him along. It had to be the fever coming back that was making him ask such peculiar questions.
He hadn’t felt hot when she’d checked him just now but he would be soon. The shock of what had happened, the exertion and cold would all take their toll. And as if that wasn’t bad enough
. . .

How could she have forgotten the antibiotics? He wasn’t nearly recovered enough to go without them. As soon as his last dose wore off his infection would flare and resume its spread. Even in her panic she should have remembered!