“He didn’t kill your friend,” I said.
“Oh no?” asked Sutton. “And how do you know that?”
“He wasn’t bloody,” I said. “Anyone who did that much damage to someone would be covered with blood, but he didn’t have a drop on him.”
“He had blood on his shoes,” said Agent Harris. “The rest could have been caught by a smock or a jumpsuit.”
“Did you find one?” I asked. “I assume you’ve checked his car and the garbage and everywhere else?”
“We haven’t found it yet,” said Sutton, “but that doesn’t mean we never will, and that doesn’t mean he’s innocent.”
“Simon Watts tried to drown me a few days ago,” I said. “He may have also drowned Kathy Schrenk. This kind of ritualized corpse is not his MO, and it’s not the Dark Lady’s.”
“So, she told him to stay here to throw us off,” said Agent Harris.
“He’s definitely some kind of a message,” I said. “It just depends on what she knows about who’s chasing her.”
“Well, we know about the Withered,” said Sutton.
“Yes,” I said, still probing at the cuffs, “but does she know that you know? If she thinks you know nothing, then she’s probably trying to hand you an open-and-shut case: blood on his shoes, acting deranged, boom. Another visionary killer locked up, and you all go on your way, and she carries on unmolested.”
“But what are the odds of that?” asked Sutton. “It’s more likely that she knows everything.”
“Everything, everything?” I asked. I found a part of the lock that seemed to move when I levered the shard of pen against it and tested it cautiously. “If she knows about everything, then this is a declaration of war. She can’t be handing us a suspect because she knows that we know that it can’t actually be either of the obvious suspects: it’s not Watts and it’s not the Dark Lady herself.”
“How do we know it’s not the Dark Lady?” asked Agent Harris.
“Because you have me,” I said. “And I know how she and her … thralls, or whatever … actually function. Like I told you—they came after me once already. So, because I am here, I can tell you what I know, and she wouldn’t bother trying to misdirect us after that. Which means she’s calling us out.”
“Like Rack did in Fort Bruce,” said Sutton. “Find the investigators and target them directly.”
“That’s why I asked for backup,” said Agent Harris. “We need all the help we can get.”
“No we don’t,” I said. The mechanism in the lock felt like it would probably work—all I had to do was push on it and it would pop open. Which would probably make an audible click, so I had to wait for the right time. I kept the plastic lock pick in exactly the right place, waiting, and kept talking. “You’re not thinking this through. That was the scenario where we assume she knows everything, but I don’t think she does. I don’t think she knows you have me.”
“Come on,” said Agent Harris, “how could she not know that?”
“Assume she’s done her homework,” I said. “She knows about Rack and Fort Bruce. She obviously knows that I exist because she sent Watts to drown me. And she definitely knows about you because A) the FBI’s been hunting the Withered for decades and B) you’ve been asking about me all over town. If she has even one mind-controlled thrall on the police force, she knows that you’re here and that—this is the key—you and I are not working together. All she saw today was you looking for me and me leaving town. And by the time we got together Agent Murray was already dead. Even if that homeless woman in the desert is one of her thralls and is somehow reporting back to her, a murder like that takes a long time, and whatever message the Dark Lady was trying to send to us was already in place.”
“Yeah,” said Sutton, “I can see where you’re going with this. If the Dark Lady didn’t know we had access to your information, then leaving Watts here to misdirect us is the most plausible scenario. He tells us he did it on her orders, and we have no reason to doubt him. Which means she’s trying to make it look like she did it, which … means she probably didn’t. What?”
“So there’s another Withered,” said Agent Harris. “The Dark Lady is covering for someone else.”
“Exactly,” I said. “But why? Why try to hide that there’s another Withered in Lewisville?”
“Because concealing information is always valuable,” said Sutton. “Why did Jehoshaphat Hamsterlicker here try to hide his real name from you? Deception is valuable for its own sake, especially in a war.”
“First,” I said, “I love you. Second, I don’t think it’s that easy. And even if it is, we shouldn’t be content with an easy answer. Yes, she’s gathering an army, but is she ready to start a war? The only other Withered we know for sure she brought here was Assu, the fire guy, and he’s dead. This … this almost feels like Rain’s trying to throw us off while she gets some more pieces in place.”
“Rain?” asked Agent Harris.
“The Dark Lady,” I said. “That’s her name, or at least a name she’s known by.”
“Why would she try to throw us off by painting a target on herself?” asked Sutton. “There’s no way.”
“But she did,” I said. “And we have to consider that. Profiling a killer isn’t about denying what doesn’t make sense, it’s about finding the circumstances where the parts that don’t make sense actually do.” I paused. “What if the other Withered she’s covering for was not acting under her orders?”
Agent Harris grunted.
I nodded, though they couldn’t see me. This made sense. “If she really wanted us to think this was her, she would have tried to make it look like one of the others; like a drowning. That’s what brought you to Lewisville in the first place. But she didn’t, which might mean that the killing was not sanctioned, just like Minaker wasn’t sanctioned. It was another Withered, acting without oversight, drawing undue attention where it shouldn’t be drawn. She had to do something to throw us off, and Simon Watts was a half-measure—the best she could do under the circumstances. So, there’s an uncontrolled Withered in the mix, and that is very, very not good.”
“You’d rather have them working together?” asked Agent Harris.
“The Dark Lady is gathering an army,” I said. “Two Withered working together would be frightening, I’ll grant you, but who knows how many we’re going to get by the time she’s done. And if she can’t control them, who knows what’s going to happen. Assu came because she called him, but he wasn’t in any hurry to buckle down and start taking orders. There could be dozens more, all in one place, and all just as uncontrolled and dangerous as whoever killed Agent Murray.”
“So what else do you know about her?” asked Sutton. “All we’re doing is scaring ourselves—we need solid info that we can actually act on.”
I nodded again. “Her name is Rain, like I said. ‘Run from Rain.’”
“Run from Rain,” said Agent Harris.
I looked up. “You’ve heard that before?”
“What?” he said. “No, I was … just thinking about something else. We’ve got the old transcripts from Elijah Sexton, the Withered you questioned in Fort Bruce, and on one occasion, talking about Rack, he grouped him in with another Withered named Ren. Rack and Ren.”
“Wrack and Ruin,” said Sutton.
I froze, terrified by the implications that my brain was slowly working through. “We need to get out of here.”
“We can’t leave,” said Agent Harris.
“What do you know?” asked Sutton.
I stood up. “Our historian in Fort Bruce, Nathan, he theorized that Rack was an original name—not a title, like some of the Withered used, but the old, old, ten thousand-year-old name that Rack had had back when he was still human.”
“Still human?” asked Sutton.
“They started as humans and gave something up to become Withered,” I explained. “We still don’t know how they did it, but Nathan’s theory is that Rack as a proper name eventually became the proto-Indo-Europea
n word for king. Rex and rey and who knows how many others. That he was so powerful so long ago that our word for a ruler is literally just his name. And I was so distracted by Rain meaning ‘rain’ that it never occurred to me it might mean ‘queen.’”
“Reina,” said Sutton. “Regina. Damn it all to hell, Sam, this isn’t just a Withered—it’s the Withered queen.”
“We can’t leave,” said Agent Harris.
“The soldiers are still a few hours out,” said Sutton. “I’m going to call them off. If there’s a mind-controlling demon queen in town, the last thing we want are a bunch of guys with guns.”
“Thank you,” I said. “Did I tell you that I love you? You’re officially the smartest FBI agent I have ever worked with.”
“I don’t want to,” said Agent Harris.
“You don’t want to call them off?” asked Sutton. “Are you kidding?”
I stretched out to try to look around the corner. “You didn’t call them off in Dillon and look what happened.”
“I don’t want to,” he said again.
“Agent Harris?” said Sutton. “Sam, are you all right?”
My heart skipped a beat. If he didn’t look all right, and he was saying the things he was saying …
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he said. “But the Dark Lady says I have to.”
“Sam!” shouted Sutton.
And then someone fired a gun.
CHAPTER 15
I dropped to the floor, covering my head, barely half a second before the wall behind me exploded in a shower of splinters and drywall dust. My ears rang, and I was dimly aware of more gunshots—I couldn’t hear them because I was still deafened from the first one, but I could feel them, like deep, distant thuds that seemed to rattle my bones. I tried to move toward the bathroom, thinking the tub might give me better cover, but I was still cuffed to the pipe—and I’d dropped my lock pick. I looked around wildly, scattering the debris from the gunshots, flicking aside another cockroach that I hadn’t even seen was there. I found the plastic fragment just as the wall next to me shook with another impact, but it wasn’t a gun this time. The two agents were grappling.
I shoved the pick into the handcuff lock, trying desperately to find the tiny mechanism I’d found before. Where was it? The wall shook again, dislodging more plaster, and I could see flashes of movement through the bullet holes. My hearing came back slowly, and bit by bit the physical hits and thuds became audible as well—a crack as a body hit the wall. A grunt as someone absorbed a blow. A high-pitched cry as Sutton either gave or received a powerful punch. Where was the catch in the lock? I’d found it before. I had to find it again or—
“I don’t want to hurt you!” shouted Harris. “Please stop me!”
Somebody grabbed the phone off the desk—I didn’t see who, just a hand in a suit coat sleeve that could have been either one. The hand yanked the phone away faster than I could discern any details, ripping the cord out the wall, and I heard it ring suddenly—not a long, controlled trill from an incoming call, but a short metallic tone as some internal piece of metal rebounded off a solid surface. Behind the ring was a crunch, and then a thud as a body fell to the floor.
“I didn’t want to do it,” said Harris. He was crying. “Please don’t make me do it.”
Footsteps. A long, gravelly scrape as he dragged a chair across the floor. He was coming for me now. The table moved, clearing his final path to come around the corner.
And the handcuff sprung open.
I leaped to my feet, stumbling backward into the bathroom. Was he getting his gun? Did he have any bullets left? His hand came around the corner, holding the black telephone like a club, and I kicked the door closed to buy myself time. They’d taken everything, right down to the flimsy plastic garbage can … but they’d forgotten one thing. I jumped up and grabbed the rod for the shower curtain, hanging all my weight on it; it was barely attached, one more chance for the motel to pinch another penny, and it snapped down from its place on the wall just as Harris kicked the door open. I swung the shower rod with all my might, trailing the curtain like a flag, and caught him in the side of the head before he’d even come into the room. The force slammed his skull against the door frame, and he dropped to the floor like a stone.
I stood in the bathtub, my ears still ringing, my heart still pounding. Sam Harris. I wanted to hit him again, to feel that one perfect moment of crunch as the metal broke the bone—no, I wanted to stab him. It was always my favorite, so sharp and bloody and perfect—
No.
I didn’t want to do any of it.
I wasn’t out of control, and I wasn’t under Rain’s control, either. I was me. And I was in charge.
I dropped the rod and it clattered to the ground in a billow of beige plastic sheeting. I stared at the body and swallowed. Was he alive? Was Sutton? What should I do? I could hear shouting in the distance; someone had heard the fighting, or more likely the gunshots. Were the cops still here? What would they think when they found me here, the only one left standing?
I stepped out of the tub and over Agent Harris’s body. His legs trailed out past the sink, and on a sudden impulse I bent down and slapped the open handcuff around his ankle. He wasn’t evil, but if Rain had gotten her hooks in him, I couldn’t have him following me. I stood up, and then realized I hadn’t even stopped to check his pulse—I was so concerned about stopping the bad guy, I hadn’t thought to save the good guy. Even when it was the same person. I went back and put my fingers on his neck. His heart was beating. I moved out of the alcove and into the other room, finding Agent Sutton slumped along the floor and pausing to check her pulse as well. She was alive, but the bump on her head from the telephone was already as big as a golf ball. Both of their guns were on the floor as well, but I didn’t know how to check if they still had bullets. I kicked them under the bed and left Sutton with her stun gun. If she woke up before Harris did, she’d need it.
I grabbed Agent Harris’s keys from the top of the dresser and opened the door. If anyone was watching, they were too far out in the dark for me to see; everyone else was probably hiding from the gunshots, and there were no police in sight. They’d left from their first investigation here tonight and hadn’t had time to respond to this new one yet. I jogged across the parking lot, climbed into Harris’s SUV, and drove away.
The roads were dark and the sky was lit with streetlights and neon. I stopped at the first traffic light, still trying to catch my breath. What should I do? I had the means to leave again, and to get so much farther than before; they’d track the SUV, but I could abandon it in another town, or, better yet, give it to someone and head off in a different direction. That could throw them off for days.
But the problem was here. And I didn’t want to feel again the way I’d felt when Mills—when Harris—had found me. Like I’d abandoned the people who needed my help. The light turned green, but I didn’t move forward. The problem was here. Jasmyn had said once that everyone was worth saving.
So, I guess I had to save them.
I took my foot off the brake and turned the wheel to the left. I knew Jasmyn’s address—I wouldn’t be much of a paranoid obsessive if I didn’t—and it was just a few miles away. If Lewisville really was filling up with Withered, and if Harris really had called for reinforcements, this town was about to be another war zone, maybe even worse than Fort Bruce. I still didn’t know where Rain was, but I knew where my friends were, Jasmyn and Margo and Harold. I could help them, at least, maybe get them out of town before the real trouble started. I checked the mirrors compulsively as I drove, expecting at any moment to see lights and hear sirens behind me, but nothing came. I pulled into the parking lot of Jasmyn’s apartment complex and looked at the clock: 3:38 A.M. I left the SUV running as I jogged up a flight of old cement stairs to Jasmyn’s apartment, and I knocked on her door.
And waited.
I knocked again. Could she even hear me? Maybe she slept with earplugs or something, or a white-noise machi
ne to drown out ambient sound. I pounded on the door harder and counted to ten as slowly as I dared, then pounded again and shouted.
“Jasmyn! Wake up!”
“Shut up out there, it’s the middle of the night!” The voice had come from another building across the parking lot. I ignored it and banged on the door again.
“Jasmyn!”
“Robert?”
I heard a bolt scrape in the door frame, and then the door opened about two inches, stopped by the chain. A bleary-eyed face appeared in the crack of light, but it wasn’t Jasmyn.
“Al!sha?”
“Robert, it’s the middle of the night. What are you doing here?”
“You need to get out of here,” I said. “You and Jasmyn both. Is she awake?”
“She’s not here, she said she had something to do.”
Crap. “Do you know where she went?”
“Robert,” she said, “are you okay? Is Jasmyn okay?”
“Do you know where she went?”
“She went to work,” said Al!sha. “It was like midnight or something. I don’t know why.”
“Okay,” I said, “I’ll go there. Do you have a car?”
“You can’t have my car.”
“I don’t want your car, I want you to get in it and drive away. Anywhere you can go that’s not in Lewisville—family, friends, whatever, just get out. Will you do that?”
“Why would I do that? What did you do?”
“I haven’t done anything,” I said, “but somebody’s going to. Get out now.” I turned and ran back to the SUV. Al!sha called after me once, but only once, and then she closed the door. I didn’t know if she believed me or not, but I didn’t have time to wait around. If Jasmyn was headed to the mortuary then maybe …
Wait.
Jasmyn.
I got into the vehicle and closed the door, then sat there, thinking. Withered were incredibly hard to identify because they usually just looked like normal people—Rack being the obvious exception. But there were two things about the Withered that were usually true:
First. If a Withered could shape shift they could be anybody, but if their powers swung more toward body stealing—and a lot of them did—it was easier to steal teenage bodies. Teenagers were turbulent enough as it was; the foods and the music and the people they liked could change from week to week, or even day to day, so a Withered could step into their life and assume their role without raising a ton of questions. They could do an imperfect impression of the person they were trying to imitate, or even a flat-out terrible impression, and the people in their life would chalk it up to puberty or hormones. So there was that.