Linger: Dying is a Wild Night (A Linger Thriller Book 1) (18 page)

“No,” Kate said, and she couldn’t stop shivering.

When I died that night, Cassie told me it wasn’t my time. That I had to go back because the Beast wasn’t done killing. That he would never be done unless someone stopped him. She said my blindness would help me see without filters, and that others would help me understand what I saw. People who knew the pain he caused…

“No…” Kate said.

She stayed with me and held me and told me about her little girl. And about the boy who was still with her.

“…What?”

She was carrying your brother inside her the night she was killed. Your baby brother. I could feel his heartbeat as she held me.

Kate got to her feet. “Stop. Stop right now.”

You need to hear this, Kate. You need to know what he took from you. All of it.

“
STOP!” she shouted. “Please stop!”

He’s a beast. That’s what she called him. The Beast. And when I woke up in the hospital and realized I was still alive, I knew that she was right. That he had to be found. That he couldn’t be allowed to go on, doing what he’d done to her and her baby and to me… And to you.

Kate said nothing, her mind reeling, her heart thumping.

She was done asking how any of this was possible. She was done talking at all. The thought that her mother—her
pregnant
mother
—
was the catalyst behind all this had crippled her, rendering her speechless.

I’ve been trying to find you ever since that day, Kate. To find Cassie’s little girl. But she’s never told me how. She’s never even told me your full name. She helps me see things, but it’s like she wants me to find my
own
way, too.

Kate was stunned. Still unable to speak.

Then a few nights ago when Noah left me in our room in Reno, I heard a news report about the Branford murders. And even though I knew those murders had nothing to do with the Beast, I heard a policewoman on TV asking for viewers to come forward with information.

And I recognized her voice. It felt and sounded just like Cassie’s voice.

But I knew that wasn’t possible, so I told Noah to bring me to Santa Flora, and I could feel that alley calling to me. And the moment we went there I knew that my instincts had been right. That that alley was where the Beast had killed Cassie. And that the voice on TV wasn’t hers—wasn’t Cassie’s—but her daughter’s.

I had found Cassie’s daughter.

And that’s why I’m here, Kate. That’s why I’m here.

They heard a beeping sound and the door opened and Weston came into the room with a key card in one hand and a bag full of take-out boxes in the other.

He stopped when he saw them, took one look at Kate’s face and said, “The British have a name for that expression. They call it gobsmacked.”

“I
WAS ALL SET TO
leave the moment they brought the Rambler,” Weston said.

They sat across from each other on opposite beds, Christopher in the bathroom with the door closed.

Kate’s mind was still reeling, but her heartbeat had slowed to a manageable pace. She felt distracted, not quite in the room, thinking about her mother’s pregnancy—her brother on the way—and wondering why her father had never mentioned it. Wondering why it wasn’t mentioned in the autopsy report.

“I didn’t care what Chris wanted,” Weston said. “There’s too much drama here and I wanted to put you and this town in our rear view mirror.”

Kate blinked at him. “So what stopped you?”

“Chris told me what he just told you. About what happened the night he died. He’s never shared that with me before.”

“I almost wish he hadn’t shared it with me.”

Weston shook his head. “Don’t talk like that. You aren’t some random victim in all of this. You’re part of it. That’s clear to me now. You were destined to be.”

“Don’t be so sure.”

“I didn’t say I like it. You’re rude and you’re stubborn and you jump to conclusions like every other cop I’ve encountered. But I understand why he came looking for you.”

A toilet flushed and a few seconds later the bathroom door opened and Christopher came out wiping his hands on his pants. He looked small for his age, and defenseless, but he was proof that what you see is not always what you get.

He fixed his eyes on Kate.
I want to help you.

She still felt off-balance. “…With what?”

I want to help you find the man who killed those people.

Kate hadn’t given the Branfords and the Sorianos a single thought since she got here. That part of her world had been relegated to her work brain, the section that understood and processed all that was mundane, like sex and blackmail and cops nicknamed Kojak who went off the deep end and committed multiple homicides.

“I told you, I don’t want to expose you to that.”

And I told you I’m not a baby.

“No, but you’re eleven years old.”

(Although at the moment he seemed like the old man in the room.)
That doesn’t matter. Let me help you find him, Kate. I know I can do it. We can do it together. Take me back to the place where those two men were killed.

She shook her head. “Even if I agreed, there are people who live in the other apartments and the media is probably knocking on their doors as we speak, so there’ll be cameras all over that place. And if someone sees me take a kid into that apartment—”

Then take me to the house instead. The Branford house.

Kate paused, remembering the first moment she saw him through the window, standing in their living room. Less than twenty-four hours had passed since that moment, yet she felt at least a decade older.

I was already there once
.
What will it hurt to go again?

“He’s got a point,” Weston said. “You interrupted him before he could do much in the way of gathering, so another try might give you exactly what you need to find this guy. Especially if you can process the images the way you did today.”

Kate shivered. “I’m not sure I want to go through that again.”

“It isn’t a matter of what you want. Do you think I wanted to be painting pictures on my living room wall?”

“You’re saying I don’t have a choice?”

“There’s always a choice. But the wrong ones tend to come back and bite us in the ass. And you know what Chris is asking is the right thing to do. This nonsense about traumatizing him is just an excuse.”

“For what?”

“To keep from going to a place in your mind that scares you. Because that’s the bottom line, here. You’re afraid of all of this. Believe me, I know exactly how you feel.”

Christopher approached her now, then reached out and found her hands.

Let me help you, Kate. Let me help you catch him. There’s more than one kind of beast out there, and we should always do what we can to stop them.

“
Who are you?” she asked. “Where do you come from?”

He smiled and squeezed her hands.

The only thing that matters is where we’re going.

T
HEY TOOK THE RAMBLER, WESTON
looking pleased as he slid behind the wheel, as if he’d been reunited with an old friend.

They said very little on the drive into Oak Grove, as Kate tried to put the night’s revelations into some kind of perspective, knowing the task was futile. What was happening to her could not be analyzed or catalogued or weighed with any real logic. She was in an emotional and intellectual free fall now, where anything was possible.

They took the 33 into the valley past Amelia’s Oak, then made the turn onto Cartham Road, which wound through the woods thick with oak trees. There were only a few houses in here, the Branford home the most isolated of them all.

Kate wondered what had compelled Thad and Chelsea Branford to transform themselves into Mike-n-Maisey, and decided to chalk it up to a case of simple economics. She had no idea what kind of money a custom cabinet maker pulled in, but all of the businesses in the area had been hit hard by the recession. And during the slow, laborious recovery that followed, the extra income may have been crucial to their survival.

Bree’s
involvement, on the other hand, was still a cypher. Her “good girl” act was clearly just that, but Kate had to believe that, like any sixteen-year-old, she could be easily manipulated by the right guy.

Not that any of it mattered at this point. They had all gone into the darkness and the man who had sent them there was still walking free.

A man that Kate might know.

And Christopher was right. The killer may not have been the beast that he and Weston were after, but he was, without a doubt, a beast.

One who needed to be put away.

As Weston nudged the wheel through the twists and turns in the road, Kate looked out at the trees lit up by the moon, and wondered how much they had seen that night. Or worse yet, how much pain and suffering and violence had they witnessed over the course of their ancient lives?

She braced herself as they took the final turn toward the Branford house, wondering what she was getting herself into, wondering if she’d be able to handle the visions any better than she had this morning—and not all that anxious to find out.

Then a voice in her mind said,
It’s okay, Kit Kat. You’ll be fine.

But it wasn’t Christopher she heard.

It was her own voice, filtered through her memories of her mother.

∙ ∙ ∙

They were less than a block from the Branford house when she saw it.

“Pull over,” she said suddenly. “Kill the headlights.”

Weston did as she asked, the brakes squeaking faintly as they came to a stop at the side of the road. She reached for her bag and pulled out the Steiner binoculars she always carried with her.

She put them to her eyes and pointed them at the Branford house, looking for the light she thought she’d seen coming from that direction. She saw only darkness at first, then there it was again, the faint beam of a flashlight, bobbing and weaving for a moment before it disappeared.

Someone was inside the house.

“What’s going on?” Weston asked.

“We have an intruder,” Kate said, then turned to Christopher, who sat on the back seat. “Did you know about this? Is that why you wanted to come here?”

I wasn’t sure. But yes.

“A word of warning would have been nice. Is it the man we’re looking for?”

I think so.

Kate felt her pulse quicken. Weston had characterized the boy’s accuracy as hit and miss, and she had no idea what his track record was like, no data to rely on, but her own intuition—her own experience with him—told her he was right about this.

And whoever was in there was undoubtedly hoping to find something else that she and her team had missed. Something incriminating.

A homemade porn video?

A compromising selfie with an underage girl?

Kate considered her options, the stupid cop/dead cop mantra once again tumbling through her mind. She knew she should call for backup. Get Linkenfeld and MacLean out here, or maybe Clark and Donahue or even their requisite weirdo of a night man, Billy Zimbert, who would just be coming on duty.

But what if it was one of
them
inside that house?

If this guy was someone she knew, a phone call to the wrong person would warn him that she was out here, and that wouldn’t be good.

She lifted the binoculars again and studied the area. No cars in the driveway. None on the street. Whoever it was had probably parked on one of the other access roads and taken a hike through the woods to reach the house.

Kate put the binoculars back in her bag and touched the grip of the Glock holstered at her side. The magazine was full and she always kept a round in the chamber.

Not that she wanted it to come to that.

“I need you two to listen carefully,” she said. “You do
not
get out of this car. Okay?”

Weston’s brows went up. “You’re going in there alone?”

“We can debate the pros and cons when this is over, but believe it or not, I have a bit of experience on my side.”

Then again, if the intruder was a cop, so did he.

She turned to Christopher. “Do you have anything more to tell me? Any feelings you want to share?”

He shook his head.

“Be sure now, because you’re not all that forthcoming sometimes. You might want to work on that.”

Just be careful.

She nodded and opened her door and the interior lamp came on, lighting them up. She quickly got out and closed it again, hoping the intruder wasn’t watching, but they were nearly a block away, and chances were good he was too busy concentrating on his search.

She took a moment to assess her situation, then started to move.

She didn’t want to take the direct approach, so she stepped sideways, into the woods, dodging broken branches as she worked her way toward the house. There was just enough moon tonight to make the journey possible, but she stumbled a couple of times and was tempted to unclip her mini-mag for the extra light.

Resisting the temptation, she forced herself to slow down. She was nearly to the house when she stopped and studied it, seeing nothing but darkness inside, and wondering if she’d taken too long.

Was the intruder gone?

Had he found what he was looking for and headed back into the woods?

She heard a faint crackling sound behind her and stiffened.

She heard it again—like boots trampling twigs—and pulled her Glock free as she spun around and saw a silhouette looming in the darkness.

“Don’t move,” she said, then unclipped her mini-mag and turned it on, shining it into the face of Noah Weston.

Shit.

She quickly doused the light, heart pounding, and kept her voice low. “What the hell is wrong with you? You were supposed to stay in the car.”

“You think this is my idea? Chris was worried about you, and when he worries, I pay attention.”

“And in the meantime, if our guy’s still inside and he saw that light, we may have scared him away.”

“I think we’re okay,” Weston said. “Take a look.”