life.
She had no idea how he’d gotten here, no strength to ask. Later she would make him tell.
Later.
“Kaylie? You all right?”
He had crawled to her. Blinking, she looked at him.
“I’m fine,” she said, as if it were a summer day and she had merely responded to a casual pleasantry. “Just fine.”
He released a long-held breath. “Thank God.”
“Cray’s dead.”
“I know. Let’s get out of here.”
“Cray’s dead,” she repeated for no reason.
“There’s an exit to the roof.” Shepherd took her hand, gently coaxing her forward, away from the dead sprawl of John Cray. “Come on.”
She eased free of Cray’s loose, boneless limbs. “I know about the exit,” she whispered. “I used it to escape from this place once before. But… not really.”
Abruptly she lifted her head, searching for Shepherd’s gaze in the faint light, wishing to make eye contact, feeling suddenly that it was very important for him to understand about the years of running, the scared-rabbit hiding, the night dreams and daytime fears.
“I never
Shepherd tightened his grip on her hand. “This time you did.”
Epilogue
“How did you find me?” Kaylie asked.
It was ten days after the events at Hawk Ridge, and she was sitting in an armchair by the window of her hospital room, a book in her hands.
Shepherd stopped just inside the doorway. “No hello? That’s the first thing you say to me?”
“Hello comes later. I have to know.”
“Well, at the sign-in desk the nurse told me you were in room three-twenty-two.”
“I meant that night, when I was in the air duct with Cray. You showed up and saved me. How?”
He smiled, circling the bed to approach her. The day was clear, the view through the window green and bright. He had not expected the grounds of Graham County’s medical center to be so nicely landscaped.
“You mean nobody’s told you in all this time?” he said, teasing her by withholding a reply.
“Nobody seems to know. I was in too much of a daze to ask you that night. The stuff Cray was giving me…” She put down the book and hugged herself. “I was half out of my mind.”
“Taking that much methamphetamine every day would make anybody crazy.” The smile slipped off his face. “How’s your treatment coming?”
“I’ve gotten over the addiction. The withdrawal symptoms weren’t too pleasant. But I can’t really complain.” She spread her arms to take in the room, with its sterile bedding and gleaming countertops, its private bath. “This place is a lot nicer than my previous accommodations — and I’m including the motels I used to stay in, not just Hawk Ridge.”
“You have the room all to yourself.”
“The institute’s paying for it.” She raised a mischievous eyebrow. “They’ll be paying for quite a few things. That lawyer Anson hired is pretty darn good.” Then she frowned. “You still haven’t answered my question.”
“First I’d like an answer to one of mine.” He took a small manila envelope from the inside pocket of his jacket. “I want you to look at this.” He unclasped the envelope and removed a photograph, then hesitated. “It may upset you.”
“After all that’s happened to me recently, I’m past being upset.”
Even so, her hands trembled slightly as she studied the photo during a long, thoughtful silence.
“It’s her,” she said finally. “The one in the garage, twelve years ago.”
“We thought it was. She’s the only victim who disappeared in the right time frame. This is her yearbook photo, senior year.”
“Who was she?”
“Rebecca Morgan. Age nineteen when she was reported missing. She was never found. She got into a fight with her boyfriend and went out to the highway to thumb a ride home.”
“And Justin picked her up. Justin… and Cray.”
“They must have.”
Kaylie nodded slowly. “Nineteen. My age at the time. I wonder if Justin would’ve gotten around to hunting me before long.”
Shepherd didn’t answer.
“When I saw her,” Kaylie went on softly, “she was only a face. Like a mask. A rubber mask. That’s what I thought it was, at first, until I touched it, felt the texture…. Justin had preserved her with some sort of tanning oil, and pressed her between two plywood planks, like a dry leaf pressed in a book.”
“Cray used a different method later on,” Shepherd said, but she didn’t seem to hear, and he knew she was not in this room, but in the garage of the house she’d shared with her young husband, the garage with its secrets, its insanity.
“I went in there,” she whispered, “because Justin was always ordering me to stay out, mind my own business. I knew he was hiding something, and finally I couldn’t stand it anymore. But I never imagined — until I found that… trophy…”
“And then he found you.”
Her eyes closed briefly in confirmation. “He’d gone out that night, in his camouflage fatigues. Normally when he went hunting, he didn’t return for hours, even days. I thought it was safe to poke around. But that time he came back only a few minutes after he’d left. He’d forgotten something, I guess. He walked right in on me — while I was holding it in my hands — that girl, Rebecca Morgan — her face in my hands—”
Shepherd stepped beside the chair and touched her shoulder gently. She managed a weak, faltering smile.
“I guess you were right,” she said. “I guess I am still capable of getting upset. It’s just that I’ve dreamed about it so often in the years since. Nightmares, awful ones. And seeing her picture now just brings it all back.”
“I’m sorry. But we needed to confirm that last detail.”
“I’ll be okay.” She remembered the photo she was holding, and handed it back without another look. “Anyway, I’m glad to know her name. For all these years she’s been a mystery to me. She didn’t live in Safford, did she?”
“Miles away. A whole different county. Justin and Cray must have been cruising far from home when they gave her a lift.”
“That’s why I never heard about her disappearance. If she’d been local, I would have known. As it was, I only knew she was some stranger Justin had murdered, and he’d kept part of her — kept it the way he kept the antlers and hides of other things he’d killed. And later… later I began to think he hadn’t acted alone.”
“Because the evidence vanished. There was nothing in the garage when the police searched the house.”
“It was all gone. The girl’s face, and the jars of blood, the tapes with Indian chanting on them — everything. So nobody ever believed a word I said. They didn’t even listen.” She shook her head. “If I’d been thinking clearly, I would have taken some of it as proof, gone straight to the police. But I couldn’t think at all. After I shot him…”
The words trailed off, and for a moment Shepherd thought she wouldn’t speak again, but then she lifted her head, determined to finish the story.
