She crumpled to the floor beside the body. She clutched her husband’s limp hand. And his fingers very slowly curled around hers.
“James!” Maryanne wept. “James! He’s breathing. Oh my darling, you’re still alive!”
“Shhh,” Bobby and Catherine said instantly. “He’s going to come back.”
“Who’s coming back?”
“Richard Umbrio.”
“Isn’t that the man who kidnapped you, Catherine?” Maryanne was bewildered. “That was years ago. What would he possibly want with us?”
“Maryanne,” Catherine said steadily, “where’s Nathan?”
The closet was dark, but not totally dark. Nathan couldn’t stand totally dark, especially now, when he was already really scared. He’d let the puppy go. He wished he hadn’t done that now. He missed its warm little body, its sandpaper tongue licking reassuringly at his hand.
Now he was very much alone.
He’d seen the bad man do bad things. Then he’d heard his grandfather holler, “Run!” so he’d run. The other way. Far from everyone, because he didn’t like his grandfather, who kept demanding Nathan go home with him, even when it was clear his mommy didn’t want him to.
So Nathan dropped the puppy and ran in the other direction, away from everyone, including the bad man.
Then he’d seen this closet, with the shuttered door. It was small, filled with blankets and pillows and piles of bedding. He wished he were bigger. He wished he were stronger. He wished he were a normal healthy boy, because a normal healthy boy could probably climb all the way to the top of the closet, where he could hide above the bad man’s head.
But Nathan couldn’t do that. So he simply dug his way to the back of the tiny space. He closed the door. He covered himself with down pillows and did his best not to sneeze.
Now he waited. All alone. In the dark.
The bad man was coming.
Nathan whispered, “Mommy …”
Catherine had finished tying the pillowcase around Bobby’s bleeding shoulder. It looked and felt ridiculous, but it was the best they could do. Both handguns rested next to Bobby on the bed, within easy reach if Umbrio should return. Looking at Bobby’s mangled shoulder, however, Catherine wondered if the guns would really do much good.
Next, Catherine crossed to James, still prostrate on the floor. Blood pooled beneath him while from his lungs came an ominous whistle, like a balloon losing its air.
Maryanne had his head on her lap, her hand stroking his cheek. She was crying huge soundless tears. As Catherine approached, Maryanne raised her head. Her gaze was beseeching, but there was nothing Catherine could do. The judge was dying. They all knew that.
The judge gazed up at Catherine. For the longest time, the two simply stared at one another.
Catherine waited to feel something. She wanted to feel something. Triumphant. Victorious. Satisfied. But all she felt was an emptiness that went on without end.
“I know what you did,” Catherine said at last, her voice curiously flat. “A geneticist finally diagnosed Nathan—my son suffers from a rare disorder that only occurs in families with a history of incest.”
Maryanne made a small squeaking sound, belatedly covering her mouth with her hand. Catherine looked at the woman. And then she finally felt an emotion—icy cold rage.
“How could you not tell me? The minute Nathan showed signs of illness, how could you not think—”
“I’m so sorry—” Maryanne began.
“Are you cousins?” Catherine interrupted angrily.
“Half siblings,” Maryanne confessed, then threw out in a rush, “But we were never raised together, we never even knew each other as brother and sister. After James’s mother died, his father sent him off to military school, you see. They had a bit of a falling-out, and James decided to stay up north. But as the years passed, my father finally made an attempt at reconciliation. He invited James back to visit his new family. I was turning eighteen. My parents threw a magnificent party. And then I saw the most handsome man enter the room.…”
James’s hand spasmed in hers. Maryanne immediately bent to brush his cheek, but there was something in the tender gesture that now left Catherine feeling sickened. They had been siblings?
“He murdered your family,” Catherine told Maryanne.
“Don’t be ridiculous. There was an accident—”
“James made that ‘accident’ happen, Maryanne. He arranged for your whole family to die, just so he could have you. Like he killed your firstborn so the doctors would never discover your little secret. Like he released a convicted pedophile to murder Nathan and me. Why do you think everyone around you dies, Maryanne? Can you really be so naive?”
Catherine’s voice had risen dangerously. Maryanne shook her head against the onslaught, while on the floor, James moaned feebly.
“I … loved her,” the man rasped out.
“Love?” Catherine spat. “You murdered innocent people. Was it easy the first time? Tamper with your father’s brakes, tell yourself accidents happen.”
“You don’t … understand.”
“After that you were free to come up to Boston, make a fresh start where no one would ever know your dirty little secret. Except then you had a child. And genetics found you out. Did your first son have Fanconi-Bickel, as well? Maybe a very severe case. Always sickly, always suffering.”
“I don’t understand,” Maryanne whispered brokenly. “Junior died of SIDS.”
“Or because someone pressed a pillow over his face.”
“James?” Maryanne whimpered.
“I … love you,” the judge said again, but there was something pleading in his tone now. Something even more damning than guilt. Maryanne started to cry again.
“Oh no … oh no, oh no, oh no.”
Catherine, however, wasn’t done. “You turned Jimmy against me. You filled his head with awful ideas, and forced me to do unspeakable things. How dare you! We could’ve worked together to help Nathan. Maybe we could’ve been happy.”
“My son,” James said clearly, “was always … too good … for you.”
“James!” Maryanne gasped.
“You idiot,” Catherine said coldly. “You released Umbrio, and now he will kill us all.”
“Police … will come,” the judge murmured.
But then, from down the hall, they all heard Umbrio’s voice: “Nathan, Nathan, Nathan. Come out wherever you are.”
Bobby said quietly to all of them, “Not soon enough.”
Mr. Bosu was tired of this game. Coming to the judge’s hotel had seemed a good idea. Threaten the judge in person and get a little money, or hey, kill the judge in person and get a little satisfaction, that had been the plan. Mr. Bosu was flexible.
But nothing had turned out that way. Yes, he’d gotten to exercise a little vengeance. But that hadn’t felt as good as he’d expected. Maybe even murder got boring after a while. He didn’t know. But the wife was still running around and the kid was running around and now Catherine was here and, with her, another man.
Mr. Bosu wanted to feel excited. But mostly, he just felt tired. Screw killing all of them. He’d settle for one last target. The one that would inflict the most damage of all.
He wanted the boy.
Just the boy.
Then he was out of here.
Mr. Bosu had already completed a search of the left side of the palatial suite. He’d found the master bedroom, raided the wife’s jewelry box, and found a wad of cash. Now, he turned his attention to the right-hand side of the suite. If he were a four-year-old boy, where would he hide?
Someplace cozy, someplace dark. No. Wait. The boy had all those dozens of night-lights. The kid was scared of the dark.
Mr. Bosu’s eyes fell upon the louvered door of the hall closet. Of course. Mr. Bosu began to smile.
Chapter
40
“We need a plan,” Catherine said. Her gaze fell to Bobby. He nodded, struggling to sit up straighter on the bed.
>
“What are we going to do?” Maryanne whimpered forlornly from the floor. “James is injured. You’re injured. What are we going to do?”
“I can fire a gun just fine,” Bobby said levelly. “I drill with my left hand all the time.”
Catherine nodded. She picked up both nine-millimeters off the bed and handed him one. “All right. You take a gun, I’ll take a gun.”
“You can’t shoot worth shit,” Bobby said seriously.
“Well then, I’ll just have to make sure I get close enough. Do we hunt him? Is that how this game is played?”
Bobby immediately shook his head. “I don’t want us split up. Two against one is better odds, plus I don’t want the risk of one of us accidentally hitting the other with cross fire.”
“We’re not going to have much element of surprise, two of us blundering down a hall.”
“No, we won’t. Which is why we’re going to make him come to us.”
“And how do we do that?”
Bobby looked her in the eye. “Well, Catherine, you know him best.”
She nodded slowly. “Yes,” she said after a moment, “I guess I do.”
Mr. Bosu was on the prowl. He spotted the target. He yanked back the closet door. He thrust deep with his knife. And ripped into a pile of terry cloth towels. What the hell?
“Shit!” Mr. Bosu roared.
He tossed out the pile of towels. Then the shelf of toilet paper, then a collection of bathrobes. Empty, empty, empty. Where was the boy?
“Shit!” he roared again.
But then he saw it. Farther down the hall, another louvered door. Mr. Bosu stalked forward.
“Richard.”
The voice stopped him, the name, too. Mr. Bosu turned, feeling slightly confused. It had been years since anyone had called him Richard. Prison guards didn’t use it, neither did his fellow inmates. He was Umbrio or, in his own mind, Mr. Bosu. He had not been called Richard in over twenty years.
Catherine stood alone at the end of the hallway. Taller than the image implanted in his mind, and yet in many ways still the same. Those dark, dark eyes. That tangled mass of black hair. He wished she were wearing a red bow.
Pity that girls should grow up at all.
“Catherine,” he said, and gestured with his bloody knife. “Did you miss me?”
He grinned at her. She had her shoulders back and her head up, trying to appear strong. But he could see how hard she was breathing by the rapid rise and fall of her chest.
She was terrified.
That old feeling came back to him, nostalgic and swift. It was twenty-five years ago, and he was scrambling through the woods, heading happily for a small clearing made distinct only by the large piece of plywood that appeared to be lying on the ground. Next to it were a tall stick and a section of chain that, only upon closer inspection, became a ladder.
He raised the plywood, supporting its edge lean-to style on the stick. Then he was leaning over the gaping hole, preparing to drop down the chain.
Her face appeared below in the gloom. Small, pale, dirt-streaked. Desperate.
“Are you happy to see me?” he called down. “Tell me you’re happy to see me.”
“Please,” she said.
He flew down the ladder, grabbing her into his arms. “What shall we do today?”
“Please,” she said again, and just the sound of that word made his heart burst in his chest.
“Are you going to beg?” Umbrio asked now, genuinely excited. “You know what I like to hear.”
“No.”
“You should. I’m going to kill you and your son.”
“No.”
“Come now, Catherine. You of all people know how powerful I am.”
“You put me in a hole for twenty-eight days, Richard. I put you in prison for twenty-five years.”
Mr. Bosu scowled. He didn’t like that thought. In fact, he didn’t care for this whole conversation. He took a step forward. Catherine held her ground. He took another step, then came to a sudden halt. Wait a minute.
“Show me your hands,” he ordered.
She obediently lifted them up.
“Where’s the gun?” he asked suspiciously.
“I gave it to Maryanne. I already tried it and you and I both know I can’t shoot.”
He frowned, still not liking this. “So you’re just going to attack me with your bare hands.”
“No.”
“What then? Why’d you come out? Why’d you leave the room?”
“To buy time for my son. The police are going to come, Richard. They’re going to be here any minute. And frankly, I don’t care if you hack apart every inch of my body, just as long as you don’t touch a hair on Nathan’s head.”
“Oh.” He considered it. “You know what? It’s a deal.”
He sprang forward and Catherine bolted down the hall.
Catherine ran. Not too fast. That was the hard part. Her heart was pounding, her nerve endings screaming. Adrenaline pumped through her veins and commanded that she run, run, run.
But she had a role to play. They all had a role to play, and this was suddenly the biggest stage of her life.
She could hear him thundering down the hall behind her. In all of her nightmares, Umbrio rarely had a face. He was a giant black shadow, an impenetrable force that always mowed her down. She was tiny and insignificant. He loomed like a dark, vengeful God.
She had tried telling herself over the years that it was a child’s perspective on things, a young girl versus a grown man, a child versus an adult. But seeing him now, she realized she’d been wrong. Umbrio was huge, a muscled mountain of a man. He had terrified her then, and he terrified her now.
So much of her life he’d taken from her. So many pieces of herself, which had gone into that hole and never emerged again.
Now she ran from him. She ran and she cried, out of fear, out of sadness, out of rage. She hated Richard Umbrio. And she missed the woman she might have become if they’d never met that one horrible day.
He was closing in. She picked up her pace, letting her control slip, letting the panic kick in. He was upon her, he was reaching for her. He was going to grab her by the neck and throw her to the ground and then …
She burst into the sitting room. Her gaze flew to the coffee table. Bobby was lying behind it, his nine-millimeter propped up on the edge as a makeshift rifle stand, his left hand on the trigger.
“Now,” he ordered.
She dropped like a rock. Behind her, Umbrio came to a screeching halt. He waved his arms wildly, trying to slow his own momentum.
Bobby pulled the trigger. Pop, pop, pop. One-two-three.
And Umbrio fell like an oak, crashing to the ground. His hand twitched. Then he was still.
Catherine pulled herself up shakily. Flat on his back on the floor, Umbrio was staring at her. Blood creased the corners of his mouth. He smiled.
“Now what?” he whispered.
She didn’t understand.
Then he grabbed the corner of her skirt.
Catherine screamed. Beside her, she heard Bobby pull the trigger but receive only an empty metal click. The guns, Catherine realized. She had swapped them when handing them out, with Bobby receiving the one she’d already fired a dozen times. Bobby swore violently just as Umbrio heaved forward and grabbed Catherine’s knee with his big meaty fist.
Then Catherine simply stopped thinking.
Umbrio was going to get her. His hands would wrap around her throat. He would squeeze and she would die, just as she was supposed to have died twenty-five years ago. She was in the hole. She was in the ground. She was all alone.
Vaguely she was aware of movement. Bobby was on his feet. Yelling something. She couldn’t hear. The room had lost sound. The moment had lost crispness.
Umbrio now had his hand on her hip. He was crawling his way up her body, leering at her with a mouth of bloodstained teeth as his right hand reached for her throat.
She fumbled frantically. And then she fou
nd what she’d been looking for, stashed beneath the sofa.
Umbrio’s fingers were closing around her neck.
Bobby was rising beside him, arm swinging back.
And Catherine shoved the barrel of the nine-millimeter right into Umbrio’s mouth. For one split second, he appeared very, very surprised. Then she pulled the trigger.
Richard Umbrio was quite literally blown away.
He collapsed as a massive weight upon her smaller body. And Catherine started to weep.
Bobby pulled the body away. His arm went around her, cradling her against his chest. “Shhh,” he murmured. “Shhhh, it’s all right now. It’s over. It’s all done. You’re safe now, Cat, you’re safe.”
But it wasn’t over. It wasn’t done. For a woman like her, it would never be done. There were still too many things Bobby just didn’t know.
She cried, feeling her first real tears streaking down her face. Bobby stroked her hair. And she cried harder because she knew, better than he did, that it was only the beginning of the end.
The police came. Hotel security, too. They burst through the door in a flash of badges, guns, and shouts. In contrast, Bobby quietly surrendered his gun to D.D., who took the nine-millimeter from Catherine as well. Medics came for the judge. An EMT tended Bobby’s shoulder. The coroner’s assistants carried Harris and Umbrio away.
They were still inventorying the damage when a uniformed officer finally located Nathan.
The little boy appeared in the hallway, clutching a rumpled puppy against his chest.
He saw Catherine, who’d been forcefully detained on the sofa despite her pleas to look for her child.
“Mommy?” he said clearly, in the growing din.
Catherine stood. She moved toward her son. She held open her arms. He released the puppy, flying into her embrace.