“Where?” she asked.
“The corner of 219 and Grauter’s Road… Can you find that? I can get there on my scooter in about fifteen minutes.”
“Yes,” Erin said. “I’ll be there.”
He hung up. Done.
Now, get to Hilltop House. Hurry, but not too much. Mann considered Maggie a suspect; Sims hadn’t denied that. And Rodney knew Mann well enough to know that if he’d caught a whiff of something at Hilltop, cops would be watching. Rodney didn’t dare go wheeling in there like a sighted man. Keep up the guise, just for a little while longer.
So he put Rebecca’s mask in a bag, checked the cartridge of his gun, and stuck his folded white cane in the basket on the scooter. Put on his dark glasses and tooled
in slowly to the back entrance like he always did, then swept his cane back and forth along the path to go inside.
He took off his dark glasses and tugged on a pair of gloves. The gloves were unnecessary in the long run—sooner or later they would know it was him. But wearing them would buy him enough time to meet Erin and lay a trail for Nick Mann. After that, he’d be gone, on to a new life without any fucking angels watching him.
“Maggie?” he called, walking into the foyer. She came in, looking drawn and exhausted, yet still carrying that ethereal beauty shared by only one other person in the world.
“Rodney,” she said. She seemed surprised that he’d come back to the inn. “There’s no need to work today. No reservations or gues—” She stopped and tipped her head, looking at him oddly.
Rodney met her gaze head-on. No glasses, no looking off into the distance. He pulled out the pistol. “I’m sorry, Maggie. I hoped it wouldn’t come to this.”
Nick flew into the command room with one thing on his mind: Margaret Calloway.
The forces had gathered—the bulk of Hopewell’s deputies, a half-dozen members of the Tactical Arms and Snipers Unit, and four Feds. A sniper was on his way in from Carroll County. Canine unit standing by.
Nick dove in. “I’ve had surveillance on Margaret Calloway since this morning: We think she kidnapped Rebecca. At this moment, she’s inside the inn at Hilltop House.” He pointed at three deputies, who each had the blank stare of someone trying to believe what he’d just heard, and at a woman who was a Fed. “You. Sling a net around her until we can get there. Keep it loose so she
can’t see it. If she goes
anywhere,
consider that she may be leading us to Rebecca Engel.”
“Margaret?”
Jensen asked, even as the four of them grabbed for coats and guns and started moving.
“We’re operating on the assumption that Rebecca is alive and we need for Margaret to keep her that way. Don’t spook her.”
They left and Nick turned to everybody else. “Search warrant’s on its way. Here’s the Hilltop layout.” He slapped an aerial map against the wall and Bishop jumped up to help hold it. “We’ll take positions here, here…”
He got everyone up to speed. When he was finished, one of the Feds raised his hand and addressed Feldman. “Whose command are we?”
Feldman stared him down like a dog. “This one belongs to Mann. We all work for him.”
Nick gave Feldman a nod. Okay. Everyone on the same page, then.
He said, “Go. Keep your positions until I get word the warrant is signed. Then we’re gonna fucking tear that place apart.”
“Wh—Wait…” Maggie backed up a step, her face clouded by shock. “Rodney, what are you doing? You can…” She looked more closely. “You can see?” And one realization led to another, and horror washed across her face. “You?” she asked, on a hush.
“I don’t have any choice now. Nick Mann will be coming. Soon, he’ll know everything.”
But by the time he does, I’ll be gone.
“What will he know?” she asked, her eyes probing his. For a moment, he wondered what she was seeing there, in eyes she hadn’t seen for years, the dark lenses always
standing between him and the world. “John?” she asked, and dread filled her gaze. “You killed John?”
“Fuck John,” he snapped. “He was never good enough for you. Or for me.”
Something Rodney didn’t recognize seemed to hit her in a wave. “Oh, dear God.” It looked as if her knees threatened to give way. “Rodney,” she said, on a hush. “He was your father.”
Rodney’s breath stopped.
Father?
Her voice shook with emotion. “Dear God, he did everything for you. He built his life around being with you. Even marrying me, a woman who would never—”
She stopped, but Rodney barely noticed. The world was out of tilt.
“Oh, Rodney,” Maggie said.
“Shut up,” he barked, and she blanched. This wasn’t right. “If he was my father, why didn’t he tell me?”
“Because you hated him for the accident. You never hid that. He couldn’t bear to tell you.”
“Then where was he all those years?”
“Claire didn’t tell him. Not until she made her decision to—” she broke off.
“Kill herself and leave her son.”
Maggie swallowed. “She sent him a letter the day she died. He received it three days later. That was the first he knew about you.” She stopped, glancing down at the gun and up again. “He couldn’t change the lost time. All he could do was try to make a life for you. We tried. Together, we tried.”
The rage jumped him. “Together? He was never a husband to you.”
“Oh, Rodney,” she said, in the saddest voice he’d ever heard. “I didn’t want him. I’ve never wanted a man, not like that. It’s the reason your grandfather detested me so.”
Rodney stared, then shook his head. This was crazy. It was like a roller coaster set free at the top of a steep hill and there was nothing he could do to stop it. It kept on running, twisting and turning and picking up speed. Going by too fast for him to make sense of anything.
Maggie stared at him, her voice quavering on her lips. “How many?” she asked. “Besides John, how many?”
Rodney looked behind her at the grand display of masks. “Not enough,” he said. “But I’m not finished yet.”
He straightened the gun, and Maggie stiffened. Kill her, kill her, he told himself. But this was Maggie.
She looked at him. “He knew, you know,” she said, as if she were figuring it out herself for the first time. “All this time, he must have known. That’s why we left Virginia. It’s why he set up everything with Dorian. The names, the identities, the money all set aside. I never understood. I thought he was afraid of Erin Sims. But all along, he was protecting you.”
Rodney frowned. No. It couldn’t be true. John was greed and lust and betrayal, and a murderer in his own right.
Maggie’s eyes dropped to the gun. They glistened with tears.
Kill her. It’s almost over.
“Rodney, put the gun down. You can’t fix it now. It’s over.”
But it wasn’t over—not until the last angel. He glanced up at the blind masks on the wall behind Maggie, and could feel the porcelain of the last figurine in his pocket, cold against this leg. Still watching. No choice now.
He had to finish.
Maggie must have seen it in his eyes. She turned to run but he caught her, twisted her around and spun her back against his chest, pressed the gun to her temple. She cried out but he didn’t dare stop. Roller coaster going fast.
Her left hand grabbed at his arm and a thought sprang up. Rodney shifted positions, correcting himself—Maggie was left-handed. He bullied her to his other side and transferred the gun to his left hand, brought it to her temple, and fired.
Fwp.
Maggie dropped.
He straightened, looking down at her. A fleeting image of his mother gripped him and for half a second, he was ten years old again, in the dark, alone, his mother’s blood leaking between his fingers and the scent of death rising from her chest, and him smoothing on her makeup with bloody hands. He buried the image and stared down at Maggie, his chest an empty pit. Dead, and no time to even grieve for her.
Because Nick Mann was watching.
Mann
had made him do this. Fuck Mann. Fuck him, fuck him, fuck him.
Fury kicked in and with it, the clarity to set the stage. Rodney spent thirty seconds setting it up: gun in Maggie’s left hand, mask of Rebecca in her right. He left her where she had dropped, tentacles of blood creeping through the rug beneath her head and Rebecca’s mask face up, her eyes now empty and seeing nothing.
He backed away, and a thought popped in the back of his mind. Rebecca wasn’t dead. He hadn’t finished her yet. He’d heard someone upstairs and panicked, and there were so many other things…
He looked at his watch, the clock beating down on him. He glanced around the foyer at the set-up: It would take a little while to sort through, but not enough that he dared to go back to his cabin. God willing, the sheriff’s department would be held up here long enough for Rebecca to take her last breaths. She’d been on that table almost two days already, so she wouldn’t last much longer. Dehydration,
exposure, pneumonia, what with the clay she’d sucked into her lungs.
It was more important to go meet Erin Sims. And let her deliver Mann.
He took a deep breath, straightened his jacket, and put his glasses back on. Walked out the back door of the inn the same way he’d entered, got on his three-wheeler, and drove slowly into the woods like he’d done hundreds of times before.
Nothing to see, bastards.
Erin went outside to the surveillance car. “I need to go to Rt. 219,” she said, her cell phone calling up a map. “You’re supposed to be my escort, right?”
The agent in the driver’s seat—Fisher, Erin remembered—blinked. She was pretty sure he’d been dozing. “Uh, yeah.”
“I don’t want to leave Katie in there alone, but I need to meet someone.”
“I’ll stay here,” said the agent in the passenger seat. “I can call another car.”
Erin went around the car and took his seat. “Take care of her, okay?”
He nodded. “Will do.”
And Fisher turned the ignition. “Tell me where.”
T
HE TEAM GOT INTO
position around Hilltop House. They held for five minutes, then Nick got the call: “You got your warrant.”
Nick gave the command. At once, small herds of law enforcement broke through every cavity of Hilltop’s inn, barn, and carriage house. In twelve seconds, fifteen law enforcement officers were inside; two minutes after that, each of the buildings was cleared.
Except for Margaret, who lay dead in the foyer.
“Ah, Christ, Christ,” Nick said. He pounded a fist on the wall, set the masks to rattling.
“Fuck,”
he said, even as the team around him started roping off the area. He felt as if his gut had been sliced open and tied into knots. “Damn you, Margaret. Goddamn you.”
There was nothing at the intersection of Grauter’s Road and 219. Nothing but Rodney, his light hair glowing like a moon in the settling dusk.
Fisher said, “Wait, I’ll go with you,” and Erin sat in the car until he came around to open her door. He walked at her side as she approached Rodney.
“Rodney,” Erin said, “it’s me. Erin Sims. This is Agent Fisher.”
His chin cocked a little to the side. His eyes, behind the glasses, aimed somewhere in the vicinity of the two of them. “An FBI agent,” he said. She didn’t know if he sounded humored or put off. “You were afraid to meet me alone?”
Erin ignored that. “You said you have something for me to prove my brother didn’t kill Lauren McAllister.” She couldn’t help the bitterness that came. “Why didn’t you come forward with it sooner?”
“I didn’t know. How long have
you
known that Margaret was the killer? I just found out myself.”
Erin’s unease slipped a notch. He was right; it was all just now beginning to come to an end. “What do you have that will help Justin? Give it to me.”
He patted his jacket and reached inside. Fisher lifted his hand, ready, but didn’t pull his gun. Rodney was blind.
And through the pocket of his jacket, Rodney shot him.
Erin screamed. Dear God. She ran but Rodney was on her in three strides. He tackled her on the gravel of the shoulder, taking her down. The air
whooshed
from her lungs and for a few terrifying seconds, she couldn’t catch a breath. He shoved her down with one hand on the back of her neck, the other pressing the gun against her shoulder blade. She felt the weight of his knee in her back and struggled to breathe, spitting grit and gravel. For one shining second, the hand on the back of her head lifted and she came up, trying to dislodge him, but then something white flashed in his hand. A sound—
pzzt
.
And that was all.
The search for Rebecca at Hilltop House changed gears: Now, it was also the scene of Margaret’s suicide.
A crime scene unit took apart the foyer an inch at a time. Nick stood on the stairwell above Margaret’s body, waiting for Martin Gamble to take a temperature reading. Quent stepped through the front door.
“Anyone here?” Nick asked.
“Rosa and Calvin. They’re scared, but okay. Weren’t expecting cops to bust through their apartment door, that’s all.”
Nick closed his eyes, wondering if anyone in his town would ever sleep soundly again.
“Sheriff,” Gamble said. “You want to look at this?”
Nick stepped down to floor level but Gamble stopped him, saying, “Gloves,” and a crime scene techie held out a box. Nick took two of the thin rubber gloves, handed a pair to Quentin, and they put them on. Gamble handed him the bare mask that had lain beside Maggie, beneath her right hand.
Nick’s first thought was that it was more fragile than he expected. Unfired, a delicate bisque.
“Should’ve broken when she fell,” Nick said.
“Yeah. And—” Gamble’s face had gone pasty. “Doesn’t Rebecca Engel have a jewel in the side of her nose? A stud?”
Nick frowned. He didn’t understand.
“Look inside.”
Nick turned the mask over and looked into the back. Shock washed over him.
Two columns of clay rose high inside the nose, sucked upward. And on one side, the imprint of a jewel, just above the left nostril.
Nick gasped. “Ah, God, God,” he heard himself say, but beyond that, he couldn’t speak.
Quentin whispered, “That’s Rebecca?”