The Betrayer (18 page)

The front door to the Halls’ home was ajar by less than an inch.

Cat wasn’t far from the end of the pathway leading to the house when she noticed this. She paused immediately and hoped that it meant Elizabeth Hall was at this moment on her way out with the key to Jeremy’s mailbox. She listened closely but heard nothing, nor did she sense any motion from inside the home.

After a moment the silence and stillness struck her as odd. Another moment more and it seemed a clear indication that something was wrong. Very wrong. Finally, Cat continued toward the door. When she reached it, she peered through the narrow opening.

All she saw at first was an empty and dimly lit foyer. The ornate light mounted on the ceiling directly above the door was off, but enough light was spilling in from an adjoining room for Cat to make out the bloodstain on the floor.

Removing her Sig from its holster and thumbing the safety to the off position, she held the weapon with both hands and eased the door open just a little bit more with her shoulder.

She paused again to listen, but heard nothing. The opening was wide enough now for her to view the rest of the foyer, but there was nothing more to see. She took a breath, then slipped through silently, her heart pounding, her mouth suddenly dry and her throat tight.

Looking down at the polished wood floor, she saw a trail of smeared blood leading toward the source of the dim light — the living room. She followed that trail to an entranceway of open double doors. Stopping just outside it, she scanned the room.

She didn’t have to look far.

The trail led directly to a body sprawled facedown on the floor. A male, judging by the clothing and the size. Despite the fear that gripped her, Cat moved quickly and crouched down beside him. She reached out with her left hand, seeking the pulse point on the neck, but she knew just by the coldness of the skin beneath her fingertips that this man was dead.

Returning her left hand to the butt of the Sig, Cat rose and stepped away. Her mind was racing now, adrenaline pulsing through her arms and legs. It took all she had to push through the chaos and think clearly.

She saw that this room was lit by only a single reading lamp, the kind of weak light set at a low angle that created more shadows than it illuminated. In fact, much of the room was still dark. There were two easy chairs and a sofa — the shadows they cast were three places someone could be hiding.

Cat quickly positioned herself with her back to the wall and began to skim along it toward the corner opposite the entranceway. This was how she would make her way through the room — skim this wall to one corner, and from there skim the second wall to the door that led farther into the house.

As she moved deeper into the room, she was able to see behind the first easy chair. Nothing. Continuing on, she could see into the larger shadow cast by the sofa. It, too, was empty.

The last shadow in which someone could be crouched unseen was behind the second easy chair, on the far side of the sofa. Cat leveled her weapon as she approached it, her finger resting on the trigger, her breathing now, despite all her efforts, shallow and rapid.

It was in this shadow that Cat spotted someone. A new wave of fear — gut-wrenching fear — rushed through her. She was about to speak, to order the person in the shadow to show his or her hands and stand, when she realized that person was not crouched in waiting but, rather, slumped against the wall.

Even in the weak light Cat immediately recognized Elizabeth Hall. First from her clothing, then by looking at the woman’s face — and immediately wished she hadn’t.

It was bloodied from a recent beating. One eye was swollen shut, the other open but lifeless.

Cat moved to the woman and knelt down beside her. She didn’t need to check for a pulse, however. The lifeless eye revealed more than enough.

So, too, did the gaping wound at the back of Elizabeth Hall’s skull, and the spray pattern on the wall directly above and behind her head.

It took a moment for Cat’s eyes to move away from that, and, when they finally did, she saw that something was in Elizabeth Hall’s lap.

A semiautomatic handgun; Cat didn’t immediately recognize the make.

The weapon was in Elizabeth Hall’s right hand, index finger still inside the trigger guard, the remaining fingers curled loosely around the walnut grip.

Cat instantly understood the setup. An argument between a husband and his wife — his straying wife — had turned violent. The husband beat the wife, the wife shot the husband as he was about to leave, after which the husband crawled into the living room, where he finally succumbed to his wounds and where the wife, for some reason, placed the muzzle of the gun with which she killed her husband into her own mouth and pulled the trigger.

Cat understood the setup, yes, but she also wasn’t buying it. Not for a second.

What was clear to Cat was that she needed to get out of there. This was a crime scene, but, more important than that, the person responsible for this double homicide set up to look like a murder-suicide was likely still in the vicinity.

Possibly even still inside the house.

Cat stood slowly, gun held up and out. Everywhere she looked from now on would be through the sights of her Sig. She made her way across the room in the same cautious manner, then paused before entering the foyer. Passing through it, careful to step around the bloodstain, she paused at the front door, then slipped through it and paused to survey the open yard — such thick surrounding woods, she noticed now — before stepping onto the pathway and hurrying toward her Mustang.

She was vulnerable here — the Halls’ killer could easily be hiding in the woods, watching her, maybe even taking aim at her. She expected at any moment for the quiet night to be shattered by a gunshot, and was halfway along the pathway when her fast pace turned into an outright run.

It was only as she reached her vehicle and pulled open the driver’s door that she allowed herself to lower her weapon from the ready position. She got behind the wheel, thumbed the safety to the on position, and tossed the Sig onto the passenger seat. She was reaching for the keys dangling in the ignition when she realized she wasn’t alone.

She saw a face first, framed in the rearview mirror, out the corner of her eye only.

Then Cat looked directly into the mirror and saw only a pair of eyes.

Eyes that were locked on her.

And then she made out the face. It was one that Cat recognized and yet it still baffled her, if only for a second.

It was the face of the woman she had seen in the coffee shop.

Cat’s first instinct was to reach for her weapon, but there simply wasn’t time for that. The woman in the black field jacket lunged forward and with the swift, precise movements of an expert, slipped something over Cat’s head.

Cat knew at once what it had to be.

As the garrote cord began to close, Cat managed to raise her right hand up and slip the tips of three fingers between the cord and her throat.

The woman in the field jacket leaned back, and the cord cinched as tight as a noose. She pulled on the garrote with all her weight, tugging Cat back into the driver’s seat.

Cat knew that she only had seconds before she would lose consciousness.

Six or seven, tops.

Johnny was eyeing the speedometer.

The sedan was two blocks from the entrance ramp to the expressway when the red needle reached thirty miles per hour.

“We’re not in a hurry,” the man seated behind Haley said to the driver.

“Don’t tell me my job,” the driver replied.

“It’s my job to tell you your job.”

“Says you.”

The needle hovered halfway between thirty and forty.

“Look, the speed limit is twenty-five. The last thing we need is to get pulled over.”

“There are never any cops around here.”

“Fine, if we’re late because we got pulled over, or don’t make it at all because we got busted, you’re the one who’s going to explain why to Big Dickey.”

The driver looked into the rearview mirror and glared at the man seated to Johnny’s right.

Johnny focused on the speedometer. Either out of spite or because the driver wasn’t paying attention, the needle rose quickly, then crossed the forty-mile-an-hour mark.

Johnny saw his chance and said to Haley in a calm voice, “
Tiens le coup
.”

Hold on
.

The driver’s eyes shifted quickly to Johnny. There was a look of alarm in them. Maybe this one spoke French — the other two didn’t, Johnny had made certain of that — but it didn’t matter now. The man wouldn’t have time to warn the others.

Lunging forward, Johnny grabbed the driver’s ponytail with his left hand. He didn’t lean back again, but rather shot forward even farther, pulling the ponytail as he did to crank the driver’s head to the left.

He felt the hands of the men seated beside him clutching at his legs, but Johnny had already grabbed the steering wheel with his right hand. One of them managed to reach up and grab hold of Johnny’s belt, but before he could begin to pull, Johnny jerked the steering wheel sharply.

The vehicle swerved and came close to flipping, but didn’t. And though Johnny lost his one-handed grip on the steering wheel as he was quickly pulled back by the two men, he still had a firm hold on the driver’s ponytail, was still turning the man’s head to prevent him from seeing what was ahead.

The driver tried to frantically correct the vehicle’s course, but he was doing so blindly, and anyway it was too late.

Johnny managed a quick look at Haley and saw that she had brought up her hands to protect her face and head, like a boxer bracing against a flurry of blows.

The daughter of one boxer, and the sister of another.

Virtually the same instant Johnny saw this — the same millisecond — the sedan plowed nose-first into the back of a parked car.

Cat’s eyes were beginning to water, pressure building in her head.

With her right hand trapped beneath the tightening cord, the Sig on the passenger seat was hopelessly beyond her grasp, so she began to reach with her left hand for the keys hanging from the ignition. She had to move her hand through the steering wheel and turn her wrist to get access to them with her fingers — an awkward motion even under the best of circumstances, an utter struggle now.

She managed to grip the ignition key between the tips of her thumb and forefinger — a clumsy hold, but enough for her to turn it from its locked position.

The woman behind her must have known what she was up to, because Cat felt herself being pulled even deeper into the driver’s seat. As she spun the key in the ignition, Cat floored the accelerator. The engine caught, revving to the red line immediately. The roar inside the car was deafening. Letting go of the key, Cat reached next for the shifter beside her right leg.

Her eyes were fluttering as she gripped the knob. Another awkward, unnatural grip, but it would do. She thumbed the release and pushed the shifter back. At first she fell short, landing not in Drive, but Neutral. The engine screamed even louder, but she barely heard it now. Her eyes were beginning to roll back, her oxygen-starved brain on the verge of blacking out. Unconsciousness was just a second away. Gasping, she pulled back on the shifter a final time. and it found a gear.

The Mustang took off like a rocket, its tires kicking up gravel.

The last thing Cat saw was the quickly approaching garage door straight ahead.

The last thing she felt was the sense of being flung through space.

The sedan stopped abruptly, but its contents did not.

At forty miles an hour, a collision carries a surprising amount of energy. The force of impact is roughly the same as that of a vehicle being dropped nose-first from a height of five stories. Johnny knew this because the accident that had shattered his ankle occurred in a vehicle traveling at that same rate of speed.

And here he was, bracing for a nearly identical crash.

One that he had caused.

But what other choice did he have?

The driver of the sedan wasn’t buckled in, and he was first to receive the brunt of the sudden impact. Colliding with the steering wheel just inches from his sternum, he all but folded around it, then struck the windshield with his forehead.

Johnny could hear the sickening thud over the terrifying sound of folding metal.

The man directly behind the driver’s seat sailed over the bent driver and passed through the windshield. But he only made it part of the way through; his legs got caught on what remained of the shattered glass. The man seated behind Haley — the man who had been holding Johnny by the belt — was luckier; he was only thrown against the back of the bench seat.

Johnny, however, did fly over the seat, but the man holding onto his belt actually helped slow him down enough so that even when the man lost his grip — the multiple g-forces were simply too great — Johnny wasn’t cast toward the partially intact windshield but rather he collided back-first with the dashboard.

As quickly as the violent crash had begun, it was over. Johnny was crammed in between the driver and Haley, his side curved around the transmission hump. He could feel his senses failing, feel himself being enveloped by a dusk that was too familiar.

It was from somewhere beyond the edges of the twilight world growing around him that he heard Haley saying his name.

“Johnny…Johnny…”

His took a breath and felt tremendous pain.

It was just what he needed to clear his head.

Cat was stumbling through darkness.

She could remember the Mustang lurching toward the garage door but not the crash itself. She was coughing, her throat burned, and the laceration around her neck stung. At first she didn’t know where she was — a gravel driveway, a strange house, a dark yard bordered by darker woods. But then it all came back. Cat stopped her aimless stumbling and turned to look back at the Mustang. It had crashed through the wooden door, half in and half out, and would have been swallowed up completely by the two-car garage had it not struck the center support beam nearly head-on. Its driver-side door was open, and somehow it was the sight of this that caused Cat to remember the woman in the black field jacket.

She quickly looked around, scanning in every direction, but her surroundings were dark and the woman was nowhere to be seen.

Had I really been unconscious long enough for her to make her way out of the crashed vehicle and take off? And why hadn’t she killed me? Had she thought I was dead? Or had the crash injured her badly enough that she had no choice but to leave her job unfinished?

It was then that Cat remembered her Sig Sauer on the passenger seat. She hurried back to the vehicle, her head reeling, her legs weak. She felt and probably looked drunk. But that didn’t matter. All she wanted was the gun. It was probably on the floor of the Mustang, maybe under the passenger seat, but Cat would find it, had to find it. What she would do after she grabbed it wasn’t important, not at this moment. She just needed the gun in her hand. Once she had it she would figure out what the hell to do next.

She was just feet from the rear bumper of the Mustang when the passenger door suddenly swung open.

Cat froze; it was all she could do. The woman in the black field jacket was pulling herself through the door. Blood was pouring down her face from a cut across her forehead. She was moving quickly but clumsily, as disoriented and drunk-seeming as Cat. Still, it only took a matter of seconds before she had emerged from the vehicle and was standing.

Cat could see, though, that the open door, which the woman was leaning against, was helping her stay up.

She could see, too, that something was in the woman’s hand.

And she recognized it at once.

Despite her condition, the woman still had the presence of mind to grab the Sig from the floor of the Mustang.

Cat knew that she had two choices, both of them instincts possessed by all living things — run or fight.

But run where? Across the open yard and into the surrounding dark woods? And if she made it to the woods and found her way through them to the road, where then?

No, fleeing wasn’t an option.

So that left only one thing to do.

Without hesitation Cat bolted forward, closing the distance between herself and the woman as fast as she could.

Before the woman could raise Cat’s weapon and fire.