The figure was carrying a gas-powered camping lantern. Its fiery mantle hissed in the darkness. As it moved closer, the smaller figure appeared to be woman.
'We're over here!' Jenna called out.
'Shut up,' Dylan said.
Emily rested a hand on her daughter and tried to feel for the steel bar. How far had he kicked it away? She tilted her head to look into the streaming light.
'Don't even think about it,' he said.
To Emily's relief, the light ran over the startled face and tiny torso of Olga Morris-Cerrino. Her eyes were round and terrified. It was just a quick strobelike image, but Emily could see that Olga's gun was drawn.
From near Emily's feet, Nick moaned.
Olga lowered the lantern. 'Are you okay?'
'We're all okay,' Emily said. 'But he needs a doctor.'
Olga stared at the crumpled boy while Dylan moved the gun barrel around the room, unable to see where anyone was.
'Let us go!' Emily yelled. 'Olga, be careful. Dylan has a gun'
The lantern was steadier, casting a ghostly light over the bunker. Olga could see the little tableau now. Jenna was crouching down low, crying softly a few steps from Nick, who was on his side curled in the fetal position. His hair was matted with blood. His eyes were slits of white. The light swung again slowly, including Dylan and Emily in the composition.
Hang on. This isn't over.
'You miserable piece of garbage,' she said in a low rasp.
'Wow, scary,' Dylan answered with his washed-up, hasbeen, serial killer laugh, underscoring his contempt.
Emily shifted her attention to Dylan. She meant to distract. 'Look what you've done. None of this was necessary. What's the point of it all?'
'Mom, I'm scared,' Jenna said. 'I want to go home'
'You're all going now,' Dylan said, in a still, uncertain voice. 'But not home. You messed with my legacy.'
A cry came from the floor of the bunker. It was Nick.
'I hate you!' Nick pulled himself up, leaning on his palms, turning a bloodied face to his biological father.
'You ungrateful kid,' Dylan yelled back.
'Why did you let her hurt me? You told me you'd protect me if I did what you wanted'
'You get your stupidity from your mother's side of the family,' Dylan said. There was no irony in his statement. Just a cold hard comment.
Olga dropped the lantern and rolled it toward Emily, spinning light in the cavernous space like a cop's strobe. Emily aimed the trigger at Dylan's chest and she fired. No warning. Just three bullets firing in rapid succession.
Pop. Pop. Pop.
Dylan slumped down onto the cold floor.
'You shot me, you bitch!' he said, a gurgling sound coming from his windpipe. Blood trickled from his mouth slowly, like red candle wax. 'Three times! You shot me. You didn't even tell me to drop my weapon!'
Emily took one step over and kicked the gun away from Walker. Then turned back to Jenna and Olga.
'Yeah,' she said. 'One time for Kristi and'-looking at Olga-'one each for Lorrie and Shelley. I hope you feel each one, you piece of garbage'
'Call an ambulance!' Dylan coughed out. 'Please!'
Emily lifted Jenna to her feet, and then when she was steady, she turned to Olga. It was as if Dylan Walker was already gone.
'Thank God you got here,' Emily said. 'How did you? How did you know where we were?'
Olga smiled. 'A smart guy who thinks the world of you told me'
Emily smiled back. She knew it had been Chris. He'd always promised to look out for her.
'Mom, I love you' Jenna wrapped her arms around her mother. 'I knew you would come for me. I'm so sorry. I was so stupid. I shouldn't have gone off with Nick.'
None of that mattered. 'Honey, we're all okay. You're okay.'
'What about me?' It was Dylan Walker again, weak and pathetic on the cold, hard floor. 'I need you to get me help!'
Olga shrugged. She no longer had a smile on her face. 'We'll call all right,' she said. 'After you've died.' Olga looked over at Nick Martin, now unconscious. 'What about him?'
Emily shook her head. 'He's a basket case. He's pretty badly beat up, too. But he'll live and he'll go to trial.' She looked at Dylan Walker as he slowly writhed. Life seeped from him. She stared at him. Kristi. Lorrie. Shelley. Jenna. All victims past and yet to be flashed through her mind.
'Emily?' Olga asked. 'You all right?'
Snapped back into the moment, Emily put her arm around her daughter and pulled her tighter.
'Yes,' she said. 'Let the monster die.'
Epilogue
Six months later, Cherrystone, Washington
It had been months since The 'sexiest killer alive' had been dispatched for eternity in the dark confines of the bunker. Media attention had died down. 'He died instantly and thank God for retired Detective Cerrino. Without her intervention we'd have all been on his gristly tote board,' Emily said when she talked to People magazine about her daughter's kidnapping and the connection between Dylan Walker and the murders in Utah, Washington, and Iowa.
'Nick Martin told his lawyers that you and the detective purposely let Dylan die. You didn't get him help because you wanted revenge,' the magazine reporter said.
Emily sighed. 'Poor Nick, he's such a mixed-up kid.'
Olga had been over to Cherrystone twice; her friendship with both Emily and Jenna was built on a terrifying night in utter darkness that the three of them shared.
'No one will miss him,' she said to Emily over coffee at the kitchen table one afternoon during a visit to the old house on Orchard Avenue.
'Except his Internet fan club,' Emily said. 'I feel sorry for those people.'
Olga's flinty eyes sparkled. She suppressed the urge to smile.
'Dylan got what he deserved'
Emily nodded. 'Guess so'
Olga sipped her coffee. 'My girls, Lorrie and Shelley, can rest easy now. So can Kristi.'
Emily looked over at Jenna who was watching TV in the living room. She swirled some artificial sweetener in her coffee. 'We all can'
In many ways, they could.
Nick Martin was in county jail awaiting trial for his role in kidnapping Jenna Kenyon, but mental health advisors said he wasn't sane enough to stand trial, and figured he'd be a shoo-in for an insanity defense. The kid was screwed up. If he was aware of what he was doing-which they implicitly denied-the defense was sure it was the result of a mental breakdown brought on by the murders of his family. He had no hand in the events that brought him to the bunker. He wasn't a murderer. Bonnie and Dylan had cooked it all up.
The rental car from the Spokane Airport tied Bonnie to the locale, though the tornado had swept away any real trace that she'd done it or if Dylan had been with her. The same had been true with the Utah and Iowa murders-a paper trail indicated Bonnie, not Dylan Walker.
Yet Emily knew that Dylan Walker never worked alone. Olga was able to pry some information out of Nick Martin that suggested supposed suicide victim Tyler Ticen had, in fact, been involved in the double homicide of the two college girls from her jurisdiction. But those cases would never be officially solved. The Ticen suicide was a cover, she was sure, a way for Walker to silence his accomplice.
Using schizophrenic Reynard Tuttle had been a master stroke. Handsome, brilliant, and evil: the trifecta of
