The Last Thing You See (17 page)

“Come on, you piece of shit.”

My car didn’t respond to the urging, the underpowered engine was already doing as much as it could, revving almost as fast as my heart was beating.  If ever there was a situation where I wished I hadn’t bought a car on a strict budget, this was it.  I needed anything with more power.  A tank or a monster truck maybe.

Wavering between blind panic and a desperate need to think clearly, there was one thing that kept my thoughts on track.  Harper
needed
me to think clearly.

I’d be no good to her if I never made it to that psycho’s house, so I forced myself to concentrate on the road.  I tried to make sure I wasn’t going to crash into anything or anyone but paid no heed to the speed limits.  I hoped to catch the attention of a bunch of police and bring an entire convoy of them with me, but so far I hadn’t seen a single one.

City lights whipped by on either side, first downtown and then more residential areas.  I’d memorized the first part of the drive while I came down in the elevator, but there were a few lefts and rights that I would still need the map for near the end.

I could see the white of the paper my map was printed on out of the corner of my eye, weighted down by the gun on the passenger seat.  A car, thankfully seeing the speed at which I was approaching the intersection, hesitated and I blasted straight through, hearing their horn change pitch as I raced past.

“No, no, no, no…”

My hands gripped the steering wheel tight enough to make my knuckles turn white.  Try as I might to keep myself under control, there was an undeniable sense of the very worst kind of history repeating, and I muttered my denials through clenched teeth into the empty car.

I couldn’t lose Harper.  I.  Could not.  Lose.  Harper.  The possibility of slipping back into that gray existence, that life without a future, was horrifying.  I didn’t think I could make the journey through that particular hell again.

The driver in front of me saw me coming and instead of getting out of the way, I saw the brake lights come on.  I tried to move into the right lane to overtake them, but they moved lanes at the same time.  I swerved back to the left, blasted the horn, and let out a stream of expletives that they couldn’t possibly have heard.

The flush of rage at the other driver was like a tiny prod that started a snowball running down a hill, making my mind bounce and rumble ever more chaotically as it gathered speed and momentum, spinning crazily.  Lights of cars and buildings alike took on a blurry quality, and I realized I was crying as the thoughts shouted for attention in my head.

I remembered when Harper came to visit me in the hospital, when she wriggled into my life and fit like we were made for each other.  Her smile, her voice, everything she said and did was like a splash of vivid color that spread out from her and made everything heartbreakingly beautiful.

How could I see those colors and then have them taken away?  How dull and derelict the world would look, like an abandoned city covered in volcanic dust.

“Don’t take it away,” I said to nobody.

I turned off the main road, the setting becoming more suburban with every building that swept by until it was all houses, most of which were completely dark.  The occupants of those houses were probably sleeping peacefully, with no idea that the most important person in my world was at the mercy of someone who might hurt her.  Or worse.

The streets were, mercifully, almost entirely abandoned by the time I was a few blocks from the main road.  I took a left and then reached the end of the route I had managed to memorize before getting into my car.

Without looking, I pulled the printed map out from under the gun and transferred it to my hand holding the steering wheel.  Reaching up, I flicked on the cabin light and hurriedly stole glances at the page in front of me while still driving at breakneck speed down the poorly lit street.

I shot through one intersection and took a right at the next before dipping my eyes to the map again.  Third on the right, that was Walter Lambert’s street.

A terrible thought fought to the forefront of my mind.  What if he hadn’t taken Harper back to his house?  What if he had somewhere else to go?  What could I do then?  I’d be as helpless then as when I’d come back to find Christie already missing for weeks.

I decided I’d jump off that bridge when I came to it.  I had no choice really.  The first thing was to get to his house, kick that front door off its hinges, and pistol-whip him to within an inch of his life if he’d hurt Harper.

If I was too late… there was no telling what I would do.  Given enough time before the police showed up, there was the possibility that nobody would ever find Walter Lambert.

I squinted at the map in the dim light, trying to read the name of the last road on the right before I was supposed to turn off.  Dabney Street.

Ahead, I could see the blue street sign and focused on it as I rushed closer and closer, praying I hadn’t taken a wrong turn, that I was in the right place.  It definitely started with a ‘D’.

Dabney!  I was close.  My heart leapt and I forced the accelerator against the floor even harder, drawing just a little bit more gas into the engine.  My car was momentarily lit up by the headlights of some other vehicle driving into the intersection from my left just as I crossed the stop line.

There was no sense of pain upon impact.  The whole world just turned into blaring, crunching, screaming, metallic noises.  My vision seemed to whirl, I had no idea if my car was in an uncontrollable spin or if I’d been hit on the head.

I caught a glimpse of my lap covered in little pieces of broken glass, then my car slammed into something on the passenger side and everything fell into silence.  Warm fluid flowed down the side of my face and I fumbled for the release on my seatbelt for a moment before a dark fog flowed in from the periphery of my vision.  I was still desperately searching for the button when the fog covered everything I could see and I went numb.

I was so close.

From somewhere in the distance, the sound of screeching tires was quickly followed by a couple metallic crunching sounds before silence resumed.  Walter, who had just begun to advance on me with the dagger in his hand, went to the window and peeked out from between the curtains.

I almost cried out in relief at the delay, like a prisoner in the electric chair who sees the executioner with his hand on the switch go to answer the phone.  I gasped in hitching breaths, pulling desperately at whatever was tying me to the chair and only succeeding in making the binds dig into my skin even more.

Walter turned back to me and shrugged.  “Dumbass kids again.  They’re always racing around in the middle of the night, drunk or high or something.  It was only a matter of time before they had an accident.  Not our problem.”

“I don’t want to die!  I don’t want to die!” I sobbed.

“No! No, no, Harper, you’ve got it all wrong.  This is how we live forever.  You and me.”

“You’re crazy!”

Walter’s face changed about as quickly as if a button had been pushed somewhere, his hopeful smile disappearing as his lips thinned and his brow furrowed.  “You… you be quiet!  You sound just like
them
… it’s… you’ve… you hit your head.  I cleaned it all up because I love you.  You hit your head, that’s why you’re talking like that.”

I looked on in horror as he came at me with the dagger, pushing backwards against the chair as if there was somewhere to escape to.  The thin knife glinted in the light and Walter circled to my right side before dropping to one knee and putting his left hand on my shoulder.

He pressed the tip against my chest.  I could feel the sharp point through my shirt, poking against my skin just below my sports bra.  It may have been a replica of a movie prop… but it was probably going to be all too functional.

I squirmed and sucked in my stomach, knowing how futile it was but unable to stop myself from trying to get away.  There wasn’t going to be any moment of calm, any last defiant look.  Dignity was out the window.  I wanted to
live
.

I wanted to live and see that future I’d seen in Nick’s eyes.  The future was supposed to be
ours
.  He gave me back my past and I wanted us to have our future.  It wasn’t fair!  We were so
close
to it.

Walter hesitated.  “From what I’ve read, this should be quick and painless as long as I get it straight into the heart.  You should hold still.”

My head slumped forward and my eyes squeezed shut as the hopelessness of it all washed over me, threatening to wipe out my inner light as surely as a dagger to the heart would.  Then I thought of Nick.  I thought of my birth mom.

They
would fight to the end for love, tooth and nail, with everything they had.  But what did I have?  I opened my eyes to see the dagger still pressed against me, Walter taking deep breaths to psych him up just to my right.  I had one thing left.  Maybe.

Do it, Harper.  Do it if you want to live.  You’re an actress, right?  So act.  Or die.
  My internal monologue had never been so blunt before, but it was right.  Act or die.  I blinked and shook my head as if clearing the cobwebs.

“Wait,” I said, looking at Walter with dawning recognition.  “Walter?”

“Huh?”

“I’m sorry, Walter, I didn’t recognize you.  I hit my head?  It hurts.”

“Yeah.  Yes… uh… you did.”

“Sweetie, I’m so sorry.”

Walter looked like a dog that had just been petted for the first time in its life, wary but unable to stop its tail from wagging.

“Sorry about what, Harp?”

“All this.” I nodded at the dagger.  “You’re right.  Of course you’re right, it’s so romantic.  We’ll be together forever.  Like Romeo and Juliet.  But there’s just one thing…”

“What is it?”

I leaned my head over and raised my shoulder, bringing the back of his hand to my cheek.  Walter looked mesmerized and licked his lips.

“It’s just that, well, we’ve waited so long, Walter.  We’ve waited
so long
to be together.  Shouldn’t we… enjoy ourselves for a while first?” I asked.

“What… what do you mean?”

“We should go somewhere, like a honeymoon… don’t you think?”

“A honeymoon?”  Walter looked like somebody who had prepared a Valentine’s Day dinner for a new girlfriend but forgot to ask first if she was a vegetarian or not.

“Yeah.  I’ve always dreamed of going away somewhere, just you and me.  Somewhere nice, away from the crowds.  Somewhere we can just be ourselves, talk about everything, maybe spend some days in bed…”

Walter almost visibly broke out in a sweat when I said the word ‘bed’, and I felt the tiniest bit of pressure relieved from the tip of the dagger as his lower brain processed what that might mean.  My skin crawled as I watched his eyes traverse my body, almost as if I could feel his gaze like fingertips on me.

“W-where would we go?” he stammered.

“Oh… some deserted island maybe?  I’d pack almost nothing but bikinis.  Let’s go, Walter.  Tonight.  Now?”

Walter’s hand slid from my shoulder to my chest and I fought against every instinct to flinch away, instead pushing my breast against his palm.

“Yeah… all of that… just cut me loose and we’ll go now, OK?”

My captor’s eyes drooped shut, and his lips parted as he savored the sensation of what he was feeling, something he’d probably imagined a thousand times or more.  He pulled the dagger away and wiped the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand before standing up and moving behind me again.

“We’ll go!  We’ll go!” he said.

“Yes, Walter, I love you!  We’ll go now!  Just cut me loose!”

My excitement leaked into my voice.  I couldn’t help it.  I might have bought myself a bit more time.  I might have bought myself the freedom of my arms and legs.  I might have bought myself a chance.  The blade of the dagger slipped between the skin of my wrists and whatever was restraining me, cable ties maybe.

I waited for the sweet release of pressure around my wrists, but it didn’t come.  Walter held the dagger there for what felt like a million years.

“Wait a minute.  You’re just tricking me…”

“No!  No, I mean it!  Let’s run away together, please…”

An open-palm slap from behind caught me completely unaware and made my ear ring as it rocked my head to the side.  The dagger was pulled back, and I felt the sting of a cut on my wrist.

Walter paced to the other side of the room near the window, his hands over his ears, breathing heavily.  His face was almost as red as my blood that now stood out bright on the blade.  He was muttering something about me being just like the others.

I tried to regain his trust, stay in character, salvage the scene, but I was too scared.  The feeling of hope, so close but snatched away, robbed me of the thin veneer of confidence I’d been relying on to
almost
pull it off.  I was still pleading with him when he dropped his hands to his sides and looked at me with murder in his eyes.

“Shut up.  We’ll die tonight.  Together.  And in time, you’ll learn to love me.  Nobody else needs to know what you tried to do.”

He advanced on me again, and I couldn’t think of anything else to do but try to keep the images of Nick and my family in my mind.  There was a hell of a lot of unfinished business in my life, but I wished things hadn’t ended on a day like this.  I hoped they all knew I loved them, really.  I loved them so much.