The Mak Collection (62 page)

The boys were only seven when their mother packed her suitcases and left them and their father. Their dad was still at work at the time. She had left with a black eye and she had never come back.

“Take care of Danny now, Roy,” their mother had said with tears in her eyes. “Protect him. He’s the weaker one. He needs you. I’m leaving you in charge, okay? Don’t you let him out of your sight. And don’t you let your father touch him…”

Roy looked back up the wall towards the antlers and the place from where the locket had fallen. As his
eyes slowly adjusted, he noticed more things hanging there, jewellery—women’s jewellery. There were three gold and silver rings looped over one of the points, and a pendant hanging from another horn.

Roy heard sounds in the cabin—shuffling, movement, a clanging. Someone was awake. It had to be Danny. Perhaps he could explain the jewellery? Perhaps he could explain why Roy had woken up in his bedroom? Perhaps Danny could explain why he felt so horrifically off?

“Danny?” Roy called out, alarmed by the slowness of his mind and body. Then he thought he heard the movements stop. He called out, “Danny?” again, more loudly, and this time his cry was met with the sound of footfalls in the hall.

Soon the door was pushed open and he saw his brother.

“Ah, you’re up,” he said simply.

“Danny…?”

“Don’t worry. I’ve taken care of everything,” he said.

Danny was dressed head-to-toe in black. He wore a zip-up jumpsuit and a vest with various pockets. On his feet were lace-up black army boots. Roy thought he looked like a cat-burglar or some jewel thief from the movies.

The jewellery…

“I got rid of her. I got rid of Ann,” Danny said.

Roy tried to comprehend what his brother was telling him.

“We won’t have any trouble,” he went on. “We won’t have to run. It’s all taken care of.”

“What? What are you saying?”

“I got rid of Ann. We won’t have any trouble with her.”

Roy’s head spun once again and he pressed his hand to his forehead. His palm felt cold and clammy against his skin.

“Danny, what did you do? What did you do?” he shouted.

Daniel’s eyes went to the locket on the bed, and they lit up.

“I’ll show you.”

“Do you know where my daughter is?”

Andy blinked and looked at the digital alarm clock in his hotel room. It was twelve twenty-five.

“I said, do you know where my daughter is?”

Andy’s voice cracked when he tried to speak. He had been woken out of a dead sleep. “Is this Mr Vanderwall?”

“Yes. Do you know where Makedde is?”

Andy wanted to ask why he was calling at such an hour, but the question did not seem appropriate. There was alarm in the former detective inspector’s voice, and his tone didn’t have the air of a social call.

“We tried to contact Makedde earlier tonight, but with no luck,” Andy admitted.

He refrained from telling Makedde’s father that they had wanted to ask her about a possible murder suspect she may have been dating. They had eventually packed it in for the night, thinking that they would
have to wait till morning to ask her what she knew about a man named Roy Blake.

“She’s not with you?” Les said in a slightly accusatory tone.

“No. She’s not. Is something wrong?”

“My daughter is missing. She’s not home. She’s not at Ann’s house.”

“Les, hold on, what are you saying? Who is Ann?”

“Ann Morgan is a lovely dear friend of ours who was attacked tonight. She’s in hospital now, drugged to the gills. Makedde’s purse was in her living room. Her car is parked outside. She’s gone.”

Oh Christ,
Andy thought.

“I want to know where she is. I’ll be touching down at the helipad near the Trade Center in thirty-five minutes and I want you there. It’s not far from your hotel. Any cab driver will know it.”

“Les, I’ll be waiting for you when you arrive,” Andy promised, flinging back the sheets even as he set down the phone.

“ We have to do this right,” Daniel Blake said, eyes ablaze with excitement. “I can’t show you unless you do it exactly right.”

“Okay,” Roy agreed, unsure of what else to say.

Though Daniel was Roy’s mirror image, his other half, and the closest person to Roy’s heart, there was something foreign about him at that moment. There was something in him that was unsettling, and that Roy had not seen for a long time. It was something he had thought, or hoped, had been banished.

Roy and Daniel knew each other so well. They were twins—split from the same egg, and they were alike in ways that no other person could be. Yes, Roy was the “older” one, born two minutes before Daniel, and he had always taken on the big brother role, but still they were one, they were brothers, they were blood, and they had an unbreakable bond.

Now Roy did not know what to do. This was
something else. When Danny was like this, it was as if he was not Roy’s brother at all.

“Zip it up,” Danny said.

Roy himself was now dressed in identical head-to-toe black hunting gear. He zipped it up as his brother told him.

They had gone out in day gear this way before, but never at night. Roy didn’t even know his brother owned such outfits, but he was willing to play along with Danny’s wishes so that he could find out exactly what was going on.

“Here,” Danny said, passing him a hunting rifle. Roy took it.

“Danny,” he finally dared to ask his brother, “how can we go hunting at night? How will we be able to see?”

“It’s okay. I’ve got everything we need. I’ll show you. I’ll show you how I do it.”

Roy considered the consequences of what his brother may have done, the consequences of what he had let his brother do.

Will we have to go south and start again? Or north? We could get jobs in Alaska and no one would ask questions up there. Whatever he’s done, we could leave it all behind and start again…

The twins walked down the hall, Roy tagging along behind, still in shock, and still suffering some
after-effects from the small dose of Rohypnol his brother had given him. Before long Danny brought them to the door of the den.

When the door opened, Roy saw that a woman was handcuffed to a metal chair in the centre of the room.

The woman was Makedde Vanderwall.

Mak heard footsteps.

He’s back.

But she could have sworn she heard two sets of feet. Her heart rate sped up as she watched the doorknob turn, and when the door finally opened, Makedde couldn’t believe her eyes.

Two Roy Blakes.

Two.

Identical.

Both in matching black commando gear. Both armed with rifles.

Holy fuck.

Okay, stay calm. You are looking at twins, Makedde.
She fought to keep her breathing even, to slow the panicked racing of her heart. Ann told you Roy has a brother. So, Roy’s brother is a twin.

But which one is Roy?

The one she’d fought at Ann’s place, the one who had punched her in the eye, the one who had driven her here—had that been Roy?

If she had been dealing with one of them all along, she had to try and keep track of which was which. She had to try to regain his sympathy.

Stay calm. Just try to stay calm.

Gradually, the initial shock passed and she noticed that one of them seemed more animated than the other. Yes, the one on the left was looking at her with absolute bewilderment. Why?

He grabbed the other by the elbow, “Come with me,” she heard him say gruffly, and he pulled his twin out of the room.

“What the hell is she doing here!?” Roy exclaimed.

“The girl? She was a witness,” Daniel said plainly. “I had to take her, and she’s a pretty one, too, isn’t she?” He smiled. “It was a perfect stroke of luck. Now, my brother, I get to show you what I do with the girls. It’s great fun. You’ll see…”

Roy felt ill.

“My God, Danny, that’s Makedde!”

His brother’s expression was blank. The name meant nothing to him, Roy had not told him about Makedde. In fact, Roy had not told him much about any of the girls he had seen over the past few years, for fear that it would make him jealous or cause some discontent. After all, he wanted his brother to be safe and happy up at the cabin, not thinking about what he was missing in the big city, and not feeling as if he were losing his brother to someone else.

“I know her. I know that woman,” Roy tried to explain, shaking his head with disbelief. “What have
you done? What have you done by bringing her here?”

Makedde had been kidnapped. She had witnessed Daniel do whatever it was he had done to Dr Morgan. She had seen all of it, and he knew that his brother’s plan was to kill her now. And if they didn’t kill her, she would have them both in jail for the rest of their lives. He will have ultimately let him and their mother down in the worst possible way.

If they didn’t kill Makedde now, they would be locked up forever, and worst of all, they would be separated.

Andy could hear the helicopter. He stood on the bridge that led to the floating helipad, bracing himself against the cold Canadian wind.

Where is she?

He hoped to God that they were all overreacting. He hoped to God that Makedde was okay. Perhaps she was with this man—this Roy Blake—and she was sleeping peacefully, and he was guilty of nothing more than driving around the Nahatlatch and being a security guard at her university. Andy tried to imagine her safe in the man’s arms, but his jealousy would not allow it.

The helicopter descended over the water, causing it to ripple into small waves. His hair whipped, with the turbulence and the sound of the blades was deafening. Andy stood with his hands in his pockets, his jaw tensed, wondering how his life had come to this moment; watching a helicopter land in the middle of the night carrying the father of the woman he
loved—a woman who did not love him back…a woman who might well be in danger yet again.

Makedde sat up when the Blake twins entered.

Here we go…

They filed in, one behind the other, and she met their eyes with a steady glare. They stopped less than two feet from her chair, one of them standing slightly behind the other. Her gaze flicked back and forth, trying to find some familiarity, trying to figure out which one of these horrible, identical men was Roy Blake.

Boy I can pick ’em. Or they can pick me.

Can’t handle rejection, can you?
Makedde thought.
You can’t handle anything where you are not in control, you psychopathic bastard.

She chose the one she thought might be Roy—the less confident one who was standing back a touch, and she shot daggers of hate at him with her eyes. “So you think you could pick a psychopath, then?” he had asked her. Did he know that’s what he was? Was that some kind of perverse test?

The two of you combined don’t even equal half of a real human being, she wanted to say, but the rifles gave her pause. She would say it before she died, she decided, if that’s where this was headed. When the time came, she would say anything she wanted, but she should just observe now. She would watch what they did, she would look for an opening. It wasn’t over yet.

The one she guessed was Daniel walked around behind her. She watched the other one again.
What are you two up to? What comes next in this little charade?
The other one appeared to be looking at whatever his brother was doing behind her back.

She heard a door open and close. She wondered where that door could lead. The outdoors? No, there was no draft. A closet space? A bedroom? What was he doing?

Both twins disappeared behind her. She heard something metallic clink, then felt the hard shape of a gun barrel between her shoulderblades. One of the twins bent down in front of her, and she felt the urge to kick him in the face. He reached his hands around her ankles. “You be good now, and we won’t have to kill you…”

Bullshit.

Her legs were free, but she did not move. She watched them carefully. They would have to undo her arms before they did anything else. The same twin, be it Roy or Daniel, went around to her back, and she
felt his hands on her wrists, twisting them, and then the handcuffs came off; a momentary tightening, and then release. Her hands were free.

“Get up.”

This is what they did to all of them,
she thought with grim surety.
This is when they kill them. This is when they kill me.

“Get up. If you cooperate, you’ll have a chance.”

They will lead me into the woods and execute me. It’s not so messy in the woods. They won’t want to kill me in here—not with that shotgun. I would mess up their precious rugs and trophies.

A numbness had taken the place of everything else. She wondered if her nerves had been fried, if she had become incapable of feeling. She decided that this new-found serenity in the face of horror was a proud and beautiful thing that she would hold dear forever, whether it be in this life or the next.

“So what’s your game, then? Why the charade? You know me, so talk to me.”

One of them went to open his mouth, and the other stopped him. “Cuff her.”

He grabbed her wrists and shackled them together again.

Damn.

Fuck you. Fuck you and fuck your brother, and fuck the Stiletto Killer and all the wuss-bags like you who are afraid to act like real human beings.

“Walk.”

She hesitated. “You’re making a big mistake. You were seen with me.” She directed it at both of them. “Talk to me. Tell me why you are doing this. I want to understand.”

Don’t let them get you outside. They’ll shoot you in the back like the others the moment you’re away from their precious home. Think of another way. Your legs are free. Run. Run somewhere.
She wanted to turn her head to see the door behind her, to see where it led, and as she turned she was bumped hard in the back with the rifle.