A Rush to Violence (22 page)

Startled, Emma took a step forward, the gun held low, the laser’s beam a dancing red dot weaving within her aunt’s hair. Was she unconscious? Dead? She couldn’t tell. Grace’s face was turned away from her. But if she wasn’t unconscious and was aware that she was lying in her brother’s blood, Emma had no question that Grace would be on her feet. Or at least trying to.

“Get up,” she said.

Nothing.

“Come on, Grace. Up.”

Silence.

Is she dead?

Panic swelled in her. She knew Grace hit her head hard. She saw it and she heard it. If she was dead, she’d never pull off the next step, which Emma had to see through. Grace was key to all of it. She needed her to be alive. She nudged her aunt’s back with her foot and the woman’s hand slipped off her thigh and fell to the sticky red floor. The way it fell looked lifeless. It just sort of slid and sagged and slumped into the glaze of soapy blood.

She wished she could see her aunt’s face, but she couldn’t. Holding her gun as steady as she could while keeping it poised on Grace, she walked down the length of her body, waited for any trace of movement, and then peered over her when she felt reasonably secure.

Grace’s eyes were open, fixed and staring at nothing. Her jaw was slack and there was blood on her mouth. What Emma couldn’t tell is whether it was her blood or her uncle’s blood? Either way, she looked dead.

But looking dead wasn’t the same thing as being dead. She might only be unconscious, which she prayed was the case. She needed to make sure. She started to walk back toward Grace’s head so she could check her neck for a pulse when Grace Miller, a former debutante known for her poise, delicacy and good manners, viciously sprang into action.

In one swift arc, she railed her legs around, smashed them against the side of Emma’s feet and knocked her over with such force that the gun sprang out of her hand, popped into the air and fired when it hit the ground at the same instant Emma fell on her back.

For a moment, she couldn’t see anything. Her eyelids fluttered and when the room revealed itself to her, the ceiling was spinning.

Her vision was blurred and her head hurt. But even through the rush of blood humming in her ears, she could hear what sounded like a struggle. A kind of dragging. As her vision cleared, she turned and watched Grace trying to get to her feet. The palms of her hands were on the side table where her uncle had left his pack of Sobranie Cocktail cigarettes, in all their pastel colors, before Emma shot him dead and his head exploded on the wall, the curtains, the chairs and the table itself.

The table was sticky with his blood, bone and brain matter. And because it was sticky, it actually helped Grace get to her feet more quickly than she otherwise would have been able to do. The congealed blood was something like a glue. There was no slippage. Grace had traction and she was using it.

Emma turned onto her side. Looked for the gun. Couldn’t see it. Forced herself to focus. She pushed herself up into a sitting position and scanned the room for it. Nothing. Did Grace have it? She shook her head in an effort to focus, and looked over at her again. Both hands were on the table, but now she had one of her legs under her and was pushing herself up.

No gun.

But does she know where it is?

With youth on her side, Emma stifled the pain and stood. She was unsteady on her feet, but she nevertheless walked over to Grace, grabbed a handful of her hair in an effort to pull her down, and took a fist in the face when Grace spun around and slammed her hard with a left hook.

Emma skidded across the floor. When she looked up, Grace was standing above her, her once-pretty face now flushed and twisted into such a rage, she barely was recognizable.

Her blonde hair hung in her face, so damp with sweat, the tips were brown. The left side of her face was smeared with her brother’s blood. She looked like the monster she was. Her mouth began to work, but instead of words coming out, she let loose one mother of an inhuman scream.

She jerked back her foot in an attempt to kick Emma, but in spite of the pain Emma felt in her nose, which might be broken, and the blood she tasted in her mouth, likely from a split lip, she was able to grab that foot as it came toward her and turn it hard to the right.

Grace flipped in the air. She spun around and fell hard on her stomach.

Emma turned onto her side to get away from her and when she did, she saw the gun resting beneath the chair she’d been sitting in earlier. She scrambled toward it.

Tried to scramble toward it.

Grace reached out and hooked one of her legs with her hand. “I’m going to kill you, bitch,” she said. “Murdered my brother. Come in here with your gun and your lies and your sick little games. Just like your filthy mother. I’m going to kill you and I’m going to like it and I’m going to spit on your grave when they drop you in it.”

Her grip was tight. Emma struggled and flailed. She kicked back, but Grace was riding an adrenaline high. As small as she was, she was surprisingly strong and she wasn’t letting go. She knew the gun had to be somewhere close. She dropped her other hand on Emma’s leg and anchored herself to it.

And then she did something Emma never expected. Grace Miller bared her capped teeth and was about to sink them into the meat of her niece’s calf when Emma let her have it in the face with her other foot. She smacked her aunt high on the forehead, Grace reeled back in shock and in pain, and Emma started to crawl with an urgency she’d never known before.

Using her elbows, then her hands and finally her knees, she moved clumsily toward the gun. She wiggled and writhed. She reached under the chair, felt for the gun, couldn’t find it, reached deeper. She heard Grace get to her feet. Heard Grace start to come for her. Heard Grace grunt and huff. Felt for the gun, found it and grabbed it. Swung around on her back and pointed it at Grace, who looked as if she was about to dive on top of Emma when she stopped because of the gun. Defeat and disbelief stamped themselves on her face, but fury was the undercurrent that ignited her eyes.

“Get back!” Emma said.

Grace took a step back.

“Sit there. In that chair. You sit.”

Grace moved back to the chair splattered with her brother’s remains and sat on the very edge of it.

Emma got up and made every effort to steady herself. She couldn’t look weak. She had to look strong. She touched her nose with the back of her hand. Not broken. Bruised. She licked her bottom lip and tasted blood. Split. She pointed the gun at her aunt, who sat unmoving.

“You and I have some business to tend to,” Emma said.

Her aunt was breathing hard, as was she.  “And what’s that, Emma?”

“You’re going to get on the phone.”

“Am I?”

“You are.”

“And who am I calling? Surprise me.”

“You’re calling the rest of them.”

“I said to surprise me.”

“You’re bringing them here. Tonight. All of my aunts and uncles. Right now. You’re calling them, you’re going to bring them here and then you’re going to wash up.”

“Still waiting for that surprise, Emma.”

“How about a bullet in your head, Grace? Think I won’t do it? You know better. Now, get up. Over to the phone. Catch your breath. Then call all of them.”

“What would you like me to say to them? I’m sure you’ve thought of something.”

She hadn’t, but it wasn’t exactly difficult. “You and Scott were on the phone. He collapsed. You came here and found him dead. Warn them against calling the police. The place needs to be cleaned first. There’s porn everywhere. Got to save the Miller name from embarrassment. I’m sure they’ll be all over
that
. Now, get up and do it, or I swear to God you’ll die in ways that won’t be as fast as your brother died. It’ll be slow and it will be painful and it will make you regret everything you did to my grandfather.”

“I did nothing to my father.”

The laser’s red beam cut the distance between them and appeared in a red dot between her aunt’s legs. “Right. Just like I didn’t kill my uncle.” She took a step closer and watched her aunt look down at the red dot dancing on her crotch. “Don’t give me any trouble, Grace. I’ll do it. I’ll put the bullet right there and blast through the cobwebs that have been building up over the past ten years. Get over to the phone and call them. And when you get them on the line? Take my advice. You better sound overwhelmed. You better have grief and surprise in your voice. But most of all, you better not fuck it up.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Nestled tight among the others, Gloria Spellman sat hunched low against the stone foundation while the ridiculous argument over who was going to get coffee raged above them on the stairs to the left.

She was angry, worried and frightened. She looked over at the man her daughter murdered and once again was startled by how seamlessly Beth had pulled off such a meticulous act of violence.

She knew she never would fully process what her daughter had done and she wasn’t sure if she even wanted to know the details of how she had done it, but with the murder still so fresh, Beth’s actions thrummed in the room, filling it to capacity with a hive of unanswered questions. How did she conceive it? Why did she take such a personal risk? How did she know the hammer was there? Or was she just hoping to find something on the bench that she could use against him? The questions were endless.

Gloria could sense everyone trying to understand what Beth had done, even Katie, who continued to rock beside her while the men above them shouted at each other. Beth always had been the bolder of her two children, but who knew she possessed the kind of mind that could sort through such a complicated situation and devise a plan to murder someone under the kind of pressure they were under now? It didn’t make sense to her. She still viewed her daughter as a child, her little girl, but what she pulled off was the act of an adult and Gloria knew now that Beth was far shrewder than she ever gave her credit for.

But by acting so violently, what had Beth created?

She looked over at Jack, who was watching the staircase and waiting for the moment he would have to act because everyone knew that moment was at hand. The rifle was concealed against the side of his right leg. His hand was on it, ready to retrieve it when needed. Brian Moore was beside him, his own gun, pilfered from the dead man’s calf strap, held behind his back. Everyone looked tense but focused. On their faces was a sense of dread she’d never seen before. She caught Jack’s eye and shook her head at him. He winked at her in an effort to reassure her, but that moment was broken when the shouting stopped and the door above them slammed shut.

It startled all of them.

Katie stopped rocking and faced the stairs. Did he leave? Were they alone? The sound of footsteps on the floor above them were louder than ever and they were followed by the distinct sound of another door swinging shut with such force, they could feel it even below ground.

In that next second before their lives changed forever, Gloria wanted to believe that they’d just bought more time. The maternal part of her that would do anything to protect her children reached out and snatched the possibility that they were safe, even though she knew she was telling herself a lie. That door slammed shut on an argument between two men. It didn’t slam shut because of anything that had to do with them. She gripped Beth and Katie’s hands, and listened to the loudness of the silence. She could hear Jack breathing, and she knew he was listening right along with her.

A foot fell on the stairs and she tightened her grip on her daughters’ hands.

“Mikey?” the man said.    

It was a question, not a statement. When the door shut, he would have been expecting his colleague to say something. Hell, when they were arguing, he would have expected Mikey to tell them to take it elsewhere.

“You need a break?”

He stood there, not moving. Gloria could hear the stairs creak as he shifted his weight on them. He was too bright to reveal himself before he heard from the man named Mikey, but Mikey wasn’t talking, which was a problem.

“Mikey,” he said, a new note in his voice. “Answer me.”

“He can’t hear you,” Beth said. “You obviously didn’t hear him calling for you earlier, probably because of your stupid argument over who was going to get coffee. He’s in the bathroom taking a shit, to use his words. Your Mikey is a real class act.”

Horrified, Gloria looked at Beth, whose face was cast in the bulb’s light. In anticipation, she was looking up at the staircase. Her eyes were bright and intense—sparks that flew into the darkness and soared across the distance between her and the stairwell. She looked over at her stepfather and Brian Moore, and nodded at them to be ready as another foot fell on another stair.

“Mikey!” the man called out.

Nothing.

“Mikey!” Beth called out and when she did, she used the distraction of her voice ringing out in the room to slide her hand behind Brian Moore’s back, snatch the gun he was holding and stand with it.

Gloria reached out to pull her back, but quickly thought otherwise when Beth glared at her and put a finger to her lips.

“I also need to use the bathroom,” she said. “But he won’t take us. He’s making us sit here. My sister has messed her pants because of him. We’re doing everything you people have asked of us, so why can’t we use the bathroom? What’s the point of denying us that? When he comes out, would
you
at least take me to the bathroom? I can’t hold it in much longer.”

She was doing it all over again. It had worked for her once and she was betting it would work again. Gloria looked over at the others and saw her own fear reflected back on their faces.

Beth had the gun held out in front of her. She had crouched into a low position, likely knowing that if he came down, he’d have his gun with him and be prepared to shoot. Turning herself into a smaller target was smart, but Beth was no marksman. Her father had taken her shooting a few times on those weekends when he had the girls, but she was far from being a professional. A complete amateur was more like it. If she went up against any of these men in a gunfight, Gloria was certain she’d lose.