“Again,” ordered Iris. No hint of sympathy in her voice. Was she as ruthless with her students? Was this the way real warriors were honed, without mercy, pushed beyond their limits?
“The keys,” said Iris.
Jane took a deep breath, tensed, and sprang up. Again she landed on her feet and wobbled, but the wall was right beside her. She propped her shoulder against it as she waited for the cramp in her calf to ease. “I’m up,” she said.
“Get to the far corner. That’s where the door is.”
Another hop, another wobble. She could do this. “Once we get free, we still have to get past him,” said Jane. “He has my gun.”
“I don’t need a weapon.”
“Oh, right. Ninjas just fly through the air.”
“You don’t know anything about me. Or what I can do.”
Jane hopped again, landing like a kangaroo. “Then tell me. Since we’re probably going to die, anyway. Are you the Monkey King?”
“The Monkey King is a fable.”
“It leaves behind real hair. It kills with a real sword. So who is it?”
“Someone you want on your side, Detective.”
“First I want to know who it is.”
“He’s inside you and me. He’s inside everyone who believes in justice.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s as much as I can tell you.”
“I’m not talking mystical mumo jumbo,” Jane panted and hopped again. “I’m talking about something real, something I’ve actually seen. Something that saved my life.” She paused to catch her breath. And said quietly: “I just want to thank him—or her—for that. So if you know who it is, could you pass that message along?”
Iris answered, just as softly: “It already knows.”
Jane made one last hop and her forehead banged against a door. “I’m here.”
“It’s hanging about the level of your head. Can you feel it?”
Brushing her cheek against the wall, Jane felt metal suddenly bite into her skin. Heard the soft clink of the hanging keys. “Found it!”
“Please don’t drop them.”
Jane gripped the keys in her mouth and lifted the ring off the wall hook. We’re going to do this. We’re going to beat them …
The squeal of the opening door made her freeze. Lights blazed on, so bright that she shrank back, blinded, against the wall.
“Well, this is a complication,” said a voice she recognized. Slowly she opened her eyes against the glare and saw Mark Mallory standing beside Patrick. It has always been the two of them, she thought. Hunting together. Killing together. And the bond that linked these men was Charlotte. Poor Charlotte, whose every interest, every activity, had introduced predators to their prey, turning something as innocent as a tennis meet or an orchestra performance into an opportunity for killers to glimpse and choose fresh faces.
Mark grabbed the key ring and wrenched it from Jane’s mouth. Gave her a shove and sent her toppling to the floor. “Does anyone know she came here?”
“We have to assume so,” said Patrick. “That’s why we need to get rid of her car. We should have done it hours ago, if only you’d gotten back sooner.”
“I wanted to see if anyone would show up.”
“No one came for her?”
“Maybe the tracker’s broken.” He looked at Iris. “Or maybe no one cares about her. I waited for four hours, and not a soul turned up.”
“Well, someone’s going to be coming for this one,” said Patrick, looking down at Jane.
“Where’s her cell phone?”
Patrick handed it to Mark. “What are you going to do?”
“It looks like her last text message was to her husband.” He began to tap out a new message on Jane’s phone. “Let’s tell him she’s headed to Dorchester and won’t be home for a while.”
“Then what?”
“It has to look like an accident. Or a suicide.” He looked at Patrick. “You made it work before.”
Patrick nodded. “Her gun’s up in the dining room.”
“My husband will know,” said Jane. “He knows I’d never kill myself.”
“The spouse always says that. And the police never believe them. Do they, Detective?” said Mark, and he smiled.
If her limbs had not been trussed, she would have been on her feet and pummeling him, fists slamming into those perfect teeth. But even with rage fueling her muscles she could not tear free, could do nothing but watch as he finished the text message and sent it into the ether. She thought of how it would probably happen: a bullet to her head to kill her, followed by a second gunshot to plant residue on her hand, the way Wu Weimin’s suicide had been staged. What Mark said was true: It was too easy to ignore the denials of a victim’s family. She’d been guilty of it herself. She remembered standing over the body of a young man who was missing half his head from a shotgun blast. Remembered the mother sobbing, He’d never kill himself! He’d just turned his life around! And she remembered her own remark to Frost afterward, about clueless families who never saw it coming.
“You’ve made so many mistakes,” said Iris. “You have no idea what’s about to happen.”
Mark turned to her and laughed. “Look who’s talking. The lady chained to the wall.”
Iris regarded him with an eerily calm gaze. “Before it all ends for you, tell me. Why did you choose my daughter?”
Mark crossed toward Iris until they were face-to-face. Though he was far taller, though he held every advantage, Iris revealed not a flicker of fear. “Pretty little Laura. You do remember her, Patrick?” He glanced at the older man. “The girl we picked up as she walked out of school. The one we offered a ride to.”
“Why?” said Iris.
Mark smiled. “Because she was special. They all were.”
“We’re wasting time,” said Patrick, stepping toward Jane. “Let’s get her out of here.”
But Mark was still looking at Iris. “Sometimes I chose the girl. Sometimes Patrick chose. You never know what will catch your eye. A ponytail. A cute little ass. Something that makes her stand out. Makes her worthy.”
“Charlotte must have known,” said Jane, looking up at Patrick in disgust. “She must have realized what you were. Jesus, her own father. How could you kill her?”
“Charlotte was never part of this.”
“Never part of it? She was at the center of it!”
Jane’s cell phone rang. Mark glanced at the caller’s number and said, “Hubby seems to be checking on his wife.”
“Don’t answer it,” said Patrick.
“I wasn’t planning to. I’ll just shut this off, and let’s get her in the car.”
Iris said, “You think it will be that simple?”
The men ignored her and bent down to grab Jane. Patrick picked up her feet and Mark hauled her up under her arms. Though Jane squirmed, she could not resist them, and they easily lifted her and carried her toward the door.
“You’ve already lost,” said Iris. “You just don’t know it yet.”
Mark snorted. “I know who’s chained to the wall.”
“And I know who followed you back here.”
“No one followed me—” His voice suddenly cut off as the lights went out.
In the pitch black, both men released their grips on Jane and she fell to the floor, skull slamming against concrete. She lay stunned, trying to make sense of what was happening in a room where she could see nothing, where the darkness was chaotic with curses and panicked breathing.
“What the fuck?” said Mark.
Iris’s voice whispered through the gloom: “Now it begins.”
“Shut up! Just shut up!” Mark yelled.
“It’s probably nothing,” said Patrick, but he sounded unnerved. “Look, maybe we just blew a fuse. Let’s go upstairs and check.”
The door banged shut and their footsteps faded up the stairs. Jane heard only the thumping of her own heart.
“You must lie very still and stay cal
m,” said Iris.
“What’s happening?”
“What was always meant to happen.”
“You knew? You expected this?”
“Listen carefully to me, Detective. This is not your battle. It was planned a long time ago, and it will be fought without you.”
“Fought by whom? What’s out there?”
Iris did not answer. In the silence, Jane felt, rather than heard, the brush of air against her cheek, as though the wind had whispered into the room and was stirring the darkness. Something else is here with us.
She heard the soft clatter of handcuffs falling free. And a whisper: “Apologies, Sifu. I would have come sooner.”
“My sword?”
“Here is Zheng Yi. I found it upstairs.”
Jane knew that voice. “Bella?”
A hand was pressed across her lips and Iris murmured: “Stay.”
“You can’t leave me like this!”
“You’re safer here.”
“At least cut me free!”
“No,” said Bella. “She’ll just cause trouble.”
“And if you fail?” said Jane. “I’ll be trapped down here, and I won’t be able to defend myself. At least give me a fighting chance!”
She felt a tug on her hands, heard the hiss of the blade slicing through her duct tape bindings. Another slice freed her ankles. “Remember,” Iris whispered into her ear. “This is not your battle.”
It is now. But Jane stayed silent and still as the two women melted into the darkness. She could neither see nor hear their departure; all she sensed was the kiss of air again, as if they had dissolved into wind and had whispered through the door and up the stairs.
Jane tried to rise to her feet, but dizziness sent her staggering blindly in the dark. She sat back down again, her skull aching from being dropped on concrete. That and the lingering effects of the drug left her weak. She reached out, felt the wall nearby, and once again tried to stand, this time propping herself, as unsteady as a newborn foal.
A gunshot made her chin snap up.
I can’t be trapped down here, she thought. I have to get out of this house.
She felt her way to the door. It was unlocked and softly creaked open. Somewhere upstairs, she heard heavy footsteps running. Two more gunshots.
Get out now. Before the men come back for you.
She started up steps, moving slowly, afraid to make a sound. Afraid to alert anyone to her presence. Without a weapon, without any way to defend herself, she could not join this fight. She was the noncombatant trying to slip through a war zone to safety, wherever that might be. Find the exit, get out of the house. She didn’t have her car keys, so she’d have to run to the neighbors. She tried to picture the property. Remembered the long driveway, the woods and lawns and the tall hedge that surrounded it all. By daylight, it had looked like a private garden of Eden, enclosed to keep the world out. Now she knew that the gate, with its spiked posts, was not meant just to keep people out, but also to keep them in. This was no garden of Eden; it was a death camp.
She reached the top of the stairs and felt another closed door. Pressing her ear against it, she heard nothing. The silence was unnerving. How many gunshots had there been? At least three, she thought, enough to have taken down both Iris and Bella. Were the women lying dead, beyond that door? Were Patrick and Mark now on their way back to the cellar to find her?
Her hand was slick with sweat as she grasped the knob. The door swung open soundlessly, to darkness that was every bit as thick as in the cellar. She could not make out any shapes or shadows. This floor, too, was concrete, and as she slowly inched her way across it, arms outstretched for unseen obstacles, she heard something small and metallic skitter away from her shoe. She collided with an edge that hit her hip and she halted, trying to discern what it was. It felt like a table, coated with dust. Jagged metal suddenly bit her fingers and she pulled back, startled. It was a table saw. She shifted a few feet farther into the darkness and hit another obstacle. This time, a drill press. This was Patrick’s woodworking shop. She stood among the power tools, thinking of saw blades and drills, wondering if mahogany and maple were the only things this equipment had sliced into.
Renewed panic sent her fumbling in the darkness for a way out. She touched a wall and followed it to a corner.
More gunshots. Four in a row. Get out, get out!
At last she located the door and wasted no time slipping through it, to find yet another set of steps to climb. How far belowground had she been?
Deep enough so that no one would have heard my screams.
At the top of the stairs, she exited through a door and found herself in a carpeted hallway. Here she could barely make out shapes in the darkness, and a balustrade to her right. Hand brushing across a wall, she inched ahead. She had no idea if she was moving toward the front or the rear of the house; all she wanted to find was a way out.
On the second-floor landing above, footsteps creaked and started down the stairs.
Frantically she ducked through the first open doorway to her left, into a room where moonlight glowed through the windows, reflecting off a desk and bookshelves. An office.
The footsteps had reached the first floor.
She scrambled forward, seeking a hiding place in the shadows, and her shoes crunched across broken shards of glass. Suddenly her foot snagged an obstacle and as she went sprawling, she put out a hand to catch herself. Her palm slid through something warm and sticky. By the glow of moonlight, she stared at the dark form lying on the floor right beside her. A body.
Patrick Dion.
Gasping, she scrabbled away, sliding backward across the floor. Felt something heavy spin away from her hand. A gun. She reached for it, and the instant her fingers closed around the grip, she knew it was her own weapon. The gun that Patrick had taken from her. My old friend.
Footsteps creaked behind her and came to a halt.
Trapped in the light of the window, Jane was framed by moonglow that seemed as bright and inescapable as a searchlight. She looked up to see Mark’s silhouette standing above her.
“I was never here,” he said. “When the police come to talk to me, I’ll tell them I was home in bed the whole time. It was Patrick who killed all those girls and buried them in his yard. Patrick who killed you. And then he shot himself.”
Behind her, hand concealed in shadow, she clutched her weapon. But Mark already had his gun pointed at her. He would have the first shot, the best shot. There’d be no time for her to aim, no time to do anything but squeeze off the last bullet she would probably ever fire. Even as she lifted her weapon, she knew she was too slow, too late.
But at that instant Mark gasped in a startled breath and turned away from her, his attention shifting, his gun swinging toward someone—something—else.
Jane brought up her gun and fired. Three shots, four. Her reflexes on automatic. The bullets slammed into his torso and Mark staggered backward, collapsing against an end table. It gave way in a crash of splintering wood.
Pulse whooshing in her ears, Jane rose to her feet and stood over his body, her weapon aimed and ready should he miraculously spring back to life. He did not move.
But the shadows did.
It was just a whisper of air, utterly soundless. A flutter of black against black at the periphery of her vision. Slowly she turned toward the figure that stood cloaked in darkness. Though she was clutching a gun, though she could have fired, she did not. She simply stared at a face crowned with silvery fur. At jagged teeth that gleamed in the moonlight.
“Who are you?” she whispered. “What are you?”
A breath of wind brushed her face, and she blinked. When she opened her eyes again, the face was gone. Frantically she glanced around the room, searching for whatever had been standing there, but she saw only moonlight and shadow. Was it really here, or did I imagine it? Did I create a creature out of darkness and my own fear?
Through the window, a movement caught her eye. She looked out at
the moonlit garden and saw it, then, darting across the lawn and vanishing into the cover of trees.
“Detective Rizzoli?”
With a start, Jane whirled around to see the two women in the doorway, Iris sagging heavily against Bella.
“She needs an ambulance!” said Bella.
“I am not as young as I once was,” groaned Iris. “Or as swift.”
Gently, Bella lowered her teacher to the floor. Cradling Iris in her lap she began to murmur in Chinese, words that she repeated again and again, as though chanting a magical spell. Words of healing.
Words of hope.
JANE STOOD AMONG THE JUMBLE OF BROOKLINE PD AND BOSTON PD vehicles parked in Patrick Dion’s driveway and watched the sun come up. She had not slept in twenty-four hours, had not eaten since lunch the day before, and her first glimpse of dawn was so dazzling that she closed her eyes, suddenly dizzy, and swayed backward against a police cruiser. When she opened her eyes again, Maura and Frost had emerged from the house and were now walking toward her.
“You should go home,” said Maura.
“That’s what everyone tells me.” She looked toward the residence. “You finished in there?”
“They’re bringing out the bodies now.”
Frost frowned as Jane bent down to pull on shoe covers. “You know, you probably shouldn’t go in the house,” he said.
“Like I haven’t already been in there?”
“That’s the point.”
He didn’t need to explain; she already understood. She’d been the one to take down Mark Mallory, and it was almost certainly her gun that had fired the bullet into Patrick Dion’s brain. Her weapon was now in the custody of ballistics, and she missed its weight on her belt.
The front door opened and the first stretcher came out, bearing one of the bodies. In silence they watched it roll toward the waiting morgue van.
“The older man had one bullet wound. Right temple, close range,” said Maura.
“Patrick Dion,” said Jane.
“I have a feeling we’re going to find gunshot residue on his right hand. Does that remind you of another crime scene?”
“The Red Phoenix,” said Jane softly. “Wu Weimin.”