around her ankles now, icy cold. But finally the gate was raised enough to let a body through.
It wasn’t going to be easy. She would be fighting the stream—and with only one arm to paddle with. But she had no choice. Wesley would return and kill her.
Phoebe snagged a breath and plunged through the opening. Within seconds she was totally underwater, and the cold force hit her with a wallop. Water rushed up her nose. She struggled futilely to raise her head above the surface. Swim, she commanded herself. She kicked hard and scooped the water desperately with her right arm. Finally her boots scraped against something, and she realized they were dragging against the ground. With her lungs ready to burst, she shoved her head above water. She could see now. She was in the stream just to the right of the building, and above her the sky twinkled with stars. A sob of relief broke in her throat.
She crouched in the water, still gasping for breath, and peered through the darkness. She had begun to shiver. The security light on the end of the building illuminated the edge of the parking lot. Phoebe could see the outline of a single car in the lot—it was hers. Wesley’s car was definitely gone.
But there was no point in trying to reach her own car. She didn’t have her purse with her car key in it, and even if she did, she knew it would be risky to cross the lot—Wesley might come back at any moment. She turned and searched the area behind her with her eyes. There was an embankment on this side of the stream that reached up to an area of ragged shrubbery. Phoebe staggered out of the stream, her wet clothes sucking at her body, and struggled up the embankment. Each step jarred her elbow, making her moan in pain.
As she reached the top, she realized that the small town of Springville was behind her, opposite the direction she was moving, but there were two houses ahead, each just off the road. One was dark, except for a bulb burning on the front porch, but lights were on throughout the other one. Phoebe stumbled toward it. She was shivering forcefully now, and her heart was beating hard from the effort of climbing. Water ran into her eyes. She reached up to wipe it from her face and smelled that it was actually blood.
As she neared the house, Phoebe could hear a TV going inside, and through the window she saw an older couple plopped on the couch, faces aimed at the TV and their expressions listless. She dragged herself up the steps of the porch and knocked hard on the door. You have to seem sane, she told herself. Or they will never let you in. Through the window she saw the shapes of both people rise from the couch and move toward the door, hesitant and uncertain.
“Who is it?” the man called without opening the door.
“I’m a teacher at Lyle College,” Phoebe yelled through the door. “And someone tried to kill me. I need your help.”
There was no reply, though behind the door she could hear the couple squabbling. Finally the door opened a crack, with the chain still in place. All she could see were two spiky white eyebrows.
“We’ll call nine-one-one,” a man’s voice said. “Just wait on the porch there.”
The road was just ten yards behind her, and Phoebe heard a car shoot by. When Wesley returned and saw the water in the pit, the first place he would look for Phoebe would be along the road.
“Please,” Phoebe begged. “I’m afraid he’ll find me out here. Can you let me in?”
She heard the woman tell the man no, but the man argued, and finally there was the sound of the chain bouncing against the doorframe. The door swung open, and the man ushered her inside. Phoebe stumbled into the hallway. The woman gasped in shock, and Phoebe sank slowly to the floor. She could see in the light that her left sleeve was soaked in blood.
The man commanded the woman to call 911 and then grab a blanket. He stooped to the floor, scanning Phoebe’s body with his eyes.
“Your husband do this to you?” the man asked solemnly.
For a brief moment Phoebe felt like laughing. She was tempted to tell him, between chattering teeth, Yeah, we got into a domestic spat using a garden hose, but she knew she was lucky he’d let her in and she shouldn’t rock the boat.
“No,” she said, “not my husband.”
A few minutes later the woman scurried back with the blanket and laid it over her. The shivering began to slowly subside. It took about fifteen minutes for the ambulance to arrive. Until then Phoebe lay in the hall, eyes closed, with the couple murmuring endlessly nearby. They never asked if she wanted to move to a chair or couch. As far as they know, Phoebe thought, I could be a lunatic. She kept wondering if Wesley had returned and would come banging on the door of the house, suspecting that’s where she had escaped to.
Only when she was in the ambulance did she feel safe. She let her mind go nearly blank, except to think about the pain.
There seemed to be tons of people waiting when they reached the hospital, though their faces were mostly a blur. Phoebe guessed it was the same hospital she’d been taken to before. After she was lifted from the ambulance, she found the eyes of one of the nurses who now moved along the side of the stretcher.
“Please call Glenda Johns,” Phoebe murmured, “at Lyle College.”
“Hey,” Phoebe muttered back.
“How do you feel, Fee?”
“Like hell. What’s going on?”
“You remember that they operated on your elbow, right? It was shattered, and part of it was poking through your skin.”
“Right,” Phoebe said. She closed her eyes again, trying to wedge the memories free. She pictured herself being wheeled into the recovery room. A nurse comforting her. Then she remembered the water and plunging through it. And before that, being hurled into the pit.
“Wesley?” Phoebe whispered. “Did they catch him?”
“Yes, they nabbed him,” Glenda said. “Craig says they’re putting the pieces together.”
At the mention of the detective’s name, another memory shoved its way into Phoebe’s brain: Michelson and a colleague—someone other than Huang this time—floating above her while she was still in the ER.
“What about Blair—and Gwen?” Phoebe asked.
“We’ve heard through their lawyers that they’ll probably be released soon. I imagine the cops are waiting to be sure that Wesley is their guy.”
“Wait—and
“Don’t worry, I arranged for your lovely cleaning woman to let me in, and the dog’s with us. Brandon hasn’t let her out of his sight.”
Phoebe tried to scooch herself up in bed without much success. Glenda located the button that automated the bed and raised the back.
“Don’t overdo it, okay?” Glenda said. “By the way, the doctor said they ended up putting a pin in your elbow. The healing time’s a bitch, but it should be as good as new eventually.”
“I’m just lucky that I struck the paddle wheel first,” Phoebe said. “That managed to break my fall. If I hadn’t, I’d probably have broken my neck when I hit the ground.”
“Do you feel up to telling me what happened?” Glenda asked.
Phoebe sketched out the basic details, and also filled in some blanks about Wesley. When she was finished. Glenda stroked her good arm.
“So is Wesley a serial killer, then?” Glenda asked. “Is that how you’d define him?”
“He probably didn’t wake up each day with an urge to commit a horrific murder. But when someone got in his way—like Trevor—he killed without any regrets. He’s a sociopath, I’m sure—a Scott Peterson type who on the outside looks and acts like the boy next door but inside is hollow and emotionless.”
“Did you ever have even a hint?”
“There was just one tiny moment. After I met him at the diner and he told me that Blair had actually been at Cat Tails the night he’d ended up in the river, something started nagging at me. But I could never put my finger on it. I think what bugged me deep down was how convenient it was for him to suddenly recall that Blair had been in the bar. He was starting to scramble a little, and I sensed it on some level.
“Of course, I could kick myself for missing the truth, but it’s easy for guys like him to fool you,” she added. A phrase Duncan had used surfaced in her mind. “They wear the mask of sanity. Like a few damn actors I’ve known.”
