Erica Spindler (33 page)

H
unter crouched behind the partially gutted wall, sweating, listening to Avery and his brother.
Three minutes. Shit
.

He squeezed his eyes shut in an attempt to force out what lay in the adjoining room. Cadavers. Murder victims.

Ones his brother thought were alive
.

If he focused on that, he would be defeated. If he focused on what his brother had become, he would be defeated. If he allowed himself to dwell for even a minute on Avery strapped to that chair, he would lose it.

He needed a plan. Reasoning with Matt was out, that had become obvious. What was left? Charge in, guns blazing?

It sucked. It was all he had.

“Time's up, Avery. Are you with us or against us?”

Hunter tensed, waiting for the right moment, praying for it.

“Please, Matt,” she begged, “listen to me. You're in the grip of some sort of paranoid delusion. There is no war. Your generals are corpses, victims of murder. You need a doctor, Matt. A psychiatri—”

He cut her off. “So be it.”

Hunter launched himself into the doorway, .357 out,
aimed at his brother's chest. “Drop the fucking gun, Matt! Now!”

Avery cried out his name. He didn't look at her, didn't take his eyes off his brother.

“The cavalry arrives,” Matt said, then laughed, moving neither his gaze nor his aim from Avery. “In a last-ditch effort to save his true love's life.”

“Drop the gun.”

“And why would I do that?”

“Because it's over, Matt. Because I'll kill you if you don't.”

“And I'll kill her. So I guess it comes down to who's the better, faster shot.”

“I'll take my chances.”

“That's your right, of course. But how are you going to feel watching her die? Always wondering if maybe, just maybe, you could have saved her.”

He was right, dammit. Every minute could be the difference between life and death. Avery's life or death.

Hunter's gaze flicked to Avery, then back. Matt saw it and laughed. “Reading you like a book, bro. Always could.”

“Cherry and Mom are going for the police.”

“Bullshit.”

“They know you killed Dad.”

“You're grasping at straws.” His features tightened. “Let's stop fucking around. Lay down your piece.”

“You won't get away with this,” Hunter warned. “Too many people have died. After this, you won't be able to cover your tracks.”

“I already have, actually. You're crazy, Hunter. On a murder spree. You hate Cypress Springs and your family. Everybody knows that. Tom Lancaster's Tulane student ID will be found in your apartment. As will Luke McDougal's class ring and Elaine St. Claire's crucifix. You discovered Elaine St. Claire's body and McDougal's vehicle. Your voice is on Trudy Pruitt's recorder…thank
you, Avery, for alerting me to that. And to the paper with Gwen Lancaster's name and room number on it.”

Fury rose up in Hunter. “Everything nice and neat, just like Sallie Waguespack.”

“Just like,” he agreed.

Hunter tried another tack. “I just realized why you went into law enforcement, Matt. So you can hide behind your gun. The badge.”

“If that helps, believe it.”

Hunter laughed. “You never fought unless you knew you could win. And you can't win without the gun.”

“I could always take you. I still can.”

“Prove it, then. You throw yours, I'll throw mine. Just you and me, no hardware. Winner takes all.”

Matt narrowed his eyes. “You think you can take me, bro? You think you're that tough?”

Hunter bent, laid his gun on the floor. He took a step toward his brother, hands up. “I'm willing to give it a try. How about you?” When his brother hesitated, Hunter clucked his tongue. “Or when it really counts, are you just a yellow-belly chicken?”

The tension crackled between the two men. Matt glanced at his silent generals as if for their okay, then nodded. “All right.” He crossed to the table and laid his gun on top, then faced his brother, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. “Come on, let's dance.”

They advanced, circled each other, both waiting for the right moment to throw the first punch.

“Don't chicken out now, Matt,” Hunter taunted. “Hate to have the cops arrive and see you're both yellow
and
crazy.”

Matt lunged. Only then did Hunter see the knife. Avery did, too, and screamed a warning. Hunter threw himself to the right. But not fast enough to avoid contact with the blade. Matt buried it in his shoulder, lost his grip on it and his footing.

A shot rang out. They both went down.

Cherry stood in the doorway, a shotgun to her shoulder. She had it aimed at them, though even at this distance Hunter saw how unsteady she was. That she was crying.

Hunter silently swore. She hadn't gone for the police. Secrets had won again.

Matt's expression went slack with surprise. “Cherry?” he said.

“You killed Dad, Matt.” Her voice broke. “How could you do that? You shouldn't have done it.”

“Dad turned on us, Cherry. He turned on the family. He sided with an outsider against us. He had to be eliminated.”

She shook her head. “Family sticks together. They always stick together.”

“That's right,” Matt murmured, tone coaxing. “I taught you that.” He got to his feet slowly. “You're my baby sister, but you always took care of us, of all of us.”

He took a step toward her and she took a step back. “Don't come any closer.”

“He's trying to trick you,” Hunter said to Cherry, following Matt to his feet. He grabbed the knife and yanked it out of his shoulder. He went momentarily light-headed at the pain, at the whoosh of blood spurting from the wound. “He's out of his mind. Look around—”

“Don't listen to him.” Matt's expression became pleading. “He's not one of us. He left us, remember? He broke our hearts.”

“I remember,” she whispered. “The two of you fought that night. Something about school. And Avery. It always scared me when you got like that, Matt. When you got like…this.”

Her gaze flicked to Hunter. “Dad was working. Mom had been on edge all day, then had gone out. I went to bed but couldn't sleep. I was scared. It felt like…everything was falling apart.”

She drew in a broken breath. “That's when I heard Mom. She was crying. I crept out of bed…I saw the blood. Heard everything. About Dad…his girlfriend…that Mom had…hurt her. Matt told her not to worry, that everything would be all right. I saw him get his car keys.

“I sneaked outside, climbed into the bed of his pickup. Pulled the tarp over me. There…I sneaked in after Matt. I saw what he did.”

She'd only been ten at the time, Hunter thought. He imagined her terror. Her confusion. If only he had been home, she could have come to him.

It all made sense now. The way they had withdrawn from him, shut him out. They'd all been a part of the same secret club.

It all made sense
.

“I kept quiet.” She shifted her gaze from Matt to Hunter. “I wanted to tell you, but I was afraid. I didn't know what would happen if I did. They'd split us up. Send Mom and Matt away.”

Hunter ached for his little sister, alone with her terrible secret. Frightened and vulnerable. No wonder she had been so angry with him.

“I'm so sorry, Cherry,” he said. “I didn't know. I didn't know you needed me. If I had, I would have been there for you. I promise.”

“But he wasn't,” Matt said sharply. “He abandoned you. Abandoned us. While I stayed. What I did was for all of us.”

Cherry turned the shotgun on Hunter. “It wasn't his fault, Hunter. Don't be angry with him. I was there, I saw. He was pushed into doing what he—” Her words cracked on a sob. “That woman was awful. A cheap whore who had stolen my daddy.

“When Avery came back, I was so happy. I thought, if she and Matt got back together, if she would just stay and love him, everything would be okay. The way it was
before. But now…I wish she'd stayed away. I wish you had both stayed away. You've ruined everything!”

“It's not true,” Hunter said quickly. “Nothing's been okay since that night. And nothing could be. You've been living a lie, all of—”

“It's all their fault,” Matt cut him off. “They're outsiders. Traitors to the family. To Cypress Springs.”

“Ask him about Karl,” Avery called out, voice high, desperate-sounding. “He didn't go to California! He's here, in this room. Ask Matt if it's true.”

Cherry looked at Matt. “What's she talking about?”

“I need you, sis. You take care of me. Of all of us. Don't abandon me now, not when I need you most.”

“He killed him, Cherry!” Avery struggled against her restraints. “Like he's going to kill all of us. Ask him about Karl and the cause.”

“Matt?” Cherry whispered, voice shaking.

“He put the cause before love, sis.” Matt held a hand out. “You can't hold that against him. The cause is everything.”

Matt glanced toward the table as if for verbal confirmation from the other man. Cherry followed his gaze to the circle of the silent, a look of horror crossing her face. She took a step back, her hold on the shotgun slipping.

“No.” She shook her head; her voice rose. “No!”

Matt used the moment and leaped forward. Hunter shouted a warning and dived for his own gun. Avery screamed.

A blast shattered the quiet. Hunter turned in time to see the force of the shot propel his twin backward. Matt seemed to hang suspended a moment, standing yet weightless, before he went down.

The shotgun slipped to the floor. Sobbing, Cherry fell to her knees beside their brother.

I
n the next instant the room filled with the sound of police sirens. Minutes later, a contingent from both the state police and the West Feliciana Parish Sheriff's Department stormed the factory.

Avery had learned that Lilah and Cherry had called the state police; it had taken some convincing, but they had agreed to send a trooper to the cabin. While waiting, Cherry had remembered that her father carried a shotgun in the trunk of his cruiser. She had retrieved it and gone to back up Hunter.

If she hadn't, Avery knew, she and Hunter would be dead. Like Gwen. Buddy. Her father. And so many others.

Avery and Hunter had been transported by ambulance to West Feliciana Parish Hospital in St. Francisville. She'd required fifty stitches to her face and head. A CT scan had revealed neither blood nor swelling to her brain, but the doctor had decided to keep her overnight for observation anyway. Considering, she had come through relatively unscathed.

Unscathed
. Tears flooded her eyes. She would never be the same. She hurt deep down, in a way no amount of pain medication, no doctor's skill, could relieve.

“Hello, gorgeous.”

Avery turned her head toward the doorway. The pillowcase crackled with the movement. Hunter stood there, fully dressed, smiling at her. “What are you doing up?” she asked.

“Been released.”

“No fair.” She winced, thinking of Matt's knife sinking into Hunter's shoulder. “Are you all right?”

“Just a flesh wound. Real ugly, lots of blood. No real damage.”

“That's not what I meant.”

“I know.”

His gaze held hers. In his she saw reflected the horror of the past hours. Hers, she knew, reflected the same.

“The police talk to you, too?” he asked.

“Yes.” She had been questioned by both the state police and sheriff's department. She had answered questions until her words had begun to slur from fatigue and pain medication. The doctor had stepped in then, firmly insisting that the rest of their questions would have to wait until morning.

“You want to go for a ride?”

“A ride? Are you busting me out of here?”

“That's an idea, but no.” He disappeared; a moment later reappearing pushing a wheelchair. “I've got a surprise for you.”

He rolled the chair to her bedside. After locking the chair's wheels, he lowered the bed rail and helped her into the seat.

“You know I don't need this thing.”

“I know no such thing. And quit being so independent. It was hard enough getting the nurse to approve this trip.”

She looked up at him, ready to argue. He stopped her by pressing a quick kiss to her mouth.

Hunter rolled her out of the room and down the hall, toward the nurses' station. The night nurse smiled as they went past. They moved by the empty lounge, with its
drink and snack machines, then stopped at a patient's room. The door stood ajar.

Hunter nudged it the rest of the way open and wheeled her in. A woman lay in the bed. Dangerously pale, hooked up to monitors and by IV to all manner of bags and drips.

But alive. She was alive.

“Gwen?” Avery said, her voice a husky croak.

The woman's eyelids fluttered up. She looked their way, staring blankly at Avery a moment, then her mouth curved into a weak smile. “Avery? Is that…really—”

“Yes, it is.” Tears of joy flooding her eyes, Avery climbed out of the chair and moved slowly to the other woman's side. She caught her hand, curled her fingers tightly around Gwen's. “Matt told me you were dead.”

“He thought…I was,” she managed to say.

Her voice fading in and out, she recounted being shot, going down, then managing to get to her feet and making it to the road. There, she collapsed.

Gwen's eyes closed and Avery looked up at Hunter. “How did you know she was here?”

“I heard the emergency room nurses talking about the woman brought in with a gunshot wound. Apparently, a motorist found her unconscious by the side of Highway 421 and brought her to the emergency room. They rushed her into surgery.”

“A motorist?” Avery questioned Hunter. “Out there, at that time of night?”

“A miracle,” Hunter murmured. “The hand of God at work.”

Her thoughts exactly
. She turned back to the other woman and found Gwen looking at her, eyes wet. “Is Matt, is he—”

“Dead?” She nodded, bent and kissed her forehead. “I'm so glad you're alive.”

“That's enough, you two,” the nurse said quietly from
the doorway behind them. “Ms. Lancaster needs her rest.”

“Can't I stay?” Avery asked, not wanting to let go of Gwen's hand, afraid, irrationally, to leave her. “I promise to be quiet.”

“You need your rest as well.” The woman's expression softened with understanding. “She'll be here in the morning, Ms. Chauvin.”

In the morning, Avery thought. No three words had ever sounded so sweet.