She was puzzled that he hadn’t tied her up. He seemed preoccupied. He watched Alvin drive off, then gestured for her to go ahead of him into the kitchen, which was at the rear of the house.
“I’m hungry,” he said. “Make me a sandwich. You’ll find stuff in the refrigerator.”
It felt completely surreal making a sandwich for this monster. He appeared, now that he had her, to be in no rush to exact his revenge. He clearly craved her company and not just sexually. He wanted someone to talk to.
She put his sandwich on the table and poured him a glass of milk, then moved away and sat in a chair by the window.
DeMaio put his gun on the table and sat down. He began to wolf down his food. “You’re a smart woman, Kitty,” he said, waving one hand holding half a sandwich. “Probably one of the smartest I ever had. Lots of beautiful women out there, but not too many you can carry on an intelligent conversation with.”
“Am I supposed to be flattered?” she asked.
He shrugged. “Just stating a fact. We both know the main thing you are good at. I missed it when you stopped doing the flush. Maybe we can work on that.”
She shuddered at this reminder of their recent past. Somehow, she forced herself to maintain her composure. If there were ever a time in her life that she needed to think clearly, it was now. “How … how did you come to set this whole thing up?” she asked. “I mean with Global Resources.”
He considered her. “Ever the reporter, eh? Truth is, it was so long ago, it’s almost hard to recall precisely. I started out pretty far down on the totem pole. Worked my way up to CEO. By that time, I’d pretty much figured out how things worked in the power game. It was absurdly easy to get a hold on the board members. They were all corrupt to begin with. I just started documenting what they did. In time, I had complete control. No one dared to oppose me.”
“That when the brainstorm of using an oil rig as a brothel came to you?”
He didn’t answer. He finished eating, got up and went over to the door, opened it, and looked out on the expansive meadow. It was twilight. The sun had set and the shadows of the trees ran like accusing fingers across the hayfield. He held the gun in his hand.
“I had a pretty good run,” he said. “Aren’t many men who wouldn’t have traded places with me if they could. I underestimated you, though. You ruined it all for me.” He closed the door. Three weeks without a woman had been an eternity. “Time to pay the piper for that, Kitty.” He went back to the table and began to finish his glass of milk.
Kitty suddenly realized two things. First, that the door was not locked and second, that what he wanted more than anything was a reprise of their sex together. He’d actually missed her. Which meant there was no way he was going to shoot her until he’d had his fill of her.
The moment this sank in, she moved so quickly DeMaio was surprised and dropped his glass, which shattered on the floor.
She was out of her chair and through the door in an instant. She bolted straight across the big meadow. There was a cry of rage behind her and she expected to feel a bullet in her back at any instant. But she’d been right. He wasn’t going to kill her before he enjoyed her.
He came after her, but Kitty felt more sure of herself now. She’d been a runner her whole life, track in high school and college, lots of miles at lunchtime along the streets of Halifax. She was good. Tireless. Not many men could keep up with her.
But she didn’t want him to realize this too soon. If she started to leave him behind, he might decide he had to shoot her as his only option. So she slowed just enough to make him think she was tiring. She cursed that she’d bolted out the rear door of the house and run in a straight line, her only intent to get away from him. The only way out of the secluded spot was back down the front drive. Now, she could see in front of her nothing but the approaching edge of the meadow and thick spruce all around.
Once she ran out of meadow, she’d lose the advantage of her speed. But there was nothing for it. The meadow narrowed toward the back and if she turned to circle around, the angle would make it easier for him to catch her.
She hit the woods at full speed and practically dove into the underbrush. The trees were close together, a maze of branches grabbing at her clothing and piercing her skin. She cried out as a sharp branch hit her in the forehead and she staggered, looked back. He was coming.
She twisted and turned, trying to find a way through. Her size helped. She could make it through tighter spots than her stockily built pursuer.
Suddenly, she was at the edge of a steep hill. She lost her footing and tumbled down the slope. When she recovered, she looked back and couldn’t see DeMaio.
She tried to catch her breath. Running through the obstacle course of the trees was more work than just running on the flat, and the adrenaline coursing through her system made her heart race. Then she saw him.
He didn’t know where she was. He was standing still, looking away from her, trying to listen for her. She held her breath, tried even to stop her heart from its frantic and seemingly drum-like beating. She flattened herself against the ground, moved to take advantage of a fallen tree to hide her further. The light was dimming, and it was becoming harder to see in the dense woods. She just might pull this off, she thought.
Then her heart sank as he turned and began to angle back in her direction. He’d clearly decided she must have gone down the hill. She watched him like the chicken watches the fox. She gauged the path he would probably take, slightly to one side of her, to take advantage of a small opening in the trees. He’d be looking for her to be standing or moving, not lying flat. She hugged the ground tighter still.
He was going to come very close to where she was. She groped with one hand and it closed on a thick branch. There would be time for only a single effort.
Then he was right beside her. She could smell his sweat from exertion. He stared intently at the ground a few feet to her right, then turned slightly to look back up the hill.
She leaped to her feet and swung the branch as hard as she could, hitting him on the side of the head as he swiveled, hearing her move. He grunted, staggering, arms flailing. The gun flew off into the brush. Then he fell and lay still on the ground.
67
W
HEN SHE STUMBLED BACK TO
the meadow, Kitty was uncertain what to do. DeMaio was still unconscious. She couldn’t move him. He was too heavy. If she’d had any sense at all, she would have hit him with the branch until he was dead or at least far enough along in that direction that she needn’t worry about him coming after her again.
As she stood in the near darkness, a figure suddenly loomed up in front of her. She cried out and took a step back before she heard a voice.
“Kitty? Is that you?”
Lonnie. She cried out, ran to him and fell into his arms. He held her so tightly she couldn’t breathe and she didn’t ever want it to stop.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Sorry it took so long. The damn GPS locator got me to the house, but then I couldn’t figure out which way to go. I’m sorry I ever left you. I should have known DeMaio would find some way to get to you. He’s a master manipulator. I just never thought he’d go after Sarah.” He stopped and looked at the woods. “Where is he?”
“I’ll show you,” Kitty said. “I don’t know if he’s alive or not. I hit him over the head.”
Lonnie smiled. He looked like a gigantic Cheshire cat in the late twilight. “You’d think the asshole would have thought better about facing off with you and Sarah again. I guess some men never learn.”
It took Kitty a few minutes to find her way back. DeMaio was where they’d left him. Lonnie knelt and felt for a pulse. Then he grunted. “Good,” he said. “Still alive.”
“What’s good about that? Even after all he’s done, the man’s still got enormous resources. He’ll hire the best solicitors in the world. He might get off, like O. J. Simpson.” She stared down at the silent body. At this moment, she wanted nothing more than to hit him again and again until there was no doubt.
Lonnie picked the body up like it weighed nothing, but then had to struggle to get his massive girth through the tightly packed spruce. It took half an hour to get back to the house, where he deposited his load on the couch in the living room. By this time, DeMaio had begun to stir.
Lonnie drew Kitty aside. “Do you believe in retribution being given to those who deserve it?”
She nodded.
“I could kill him now,” he said. “I’d have no regrets, but it’s not enough for him. Robs him of his just punishment.”
She stared at him. “What are you saying?”
“I mean there’s another way.”
“What other way?”
“A way that doles out punishment, definitively and over time. Without having to inconvenience the legal system.”
“I still don’t understand.”
“You remember what you told me DeMaio said to you after he’d raped you for three days and was about to turn you over to a string of men?”
“I’ll never forget it. He said I should accept it. That I’d get used to it.” She frowned at the memory. “But I still don’t understand …”
“Life in prison, even if it was certain, would be too good for this guy. Killing him outright would be even less just. He doesn’t deserve a quick death after the hundreds of women he’s abused.”
“What other way is there?’
He stared at her. He couldn’t believe how much he loved this tiny firebrand of a woman. “There’s my way.”
“Which is?”
“You go home now. My car’s in the driveway. Keys are in it. I’ll take care of everything else.”
She realized she was holding her breath. She let it out and went over and hugged him. “You won’t get in trouble will you?”
“Who—me? Of course not.” The big man smiled.
“I don’t think I want to know about it right now,” Kitty said. “But will you tell me some day when I’m ready?”
“Scout’s honor.”
She grinned. “You were a Boy Scout?”
“Lasted two weeks. Always had a thing about authority.”
Epilogue
I
T WAS LATE OCTOBER. THE
last hurricane of this busy season had come and gone. Bits of Lighthouse Point oil rig continued to wash up on shore and the outer islands. Roland had developed a side business scavenging the most marketable pieces. Global Oil’s Board of Directors had been purged, and Wade Preston was under indictment for harboring a fugitive.
The Eastern shore drug pipeline dried up. No more young girls washed up on shore either, or were found in the holds of fishing boats. Garrett knew it was only a temporary reprieve. Someone else in the business would soon take up the slack.
Ecum Secum Haven for Troubled Youth tottered, but remained open under new management. The parents of several children under Lloyd’s thumb brought suit against the province. It was uncertain if the establishment would survive the publicity of an extended, and very public, lawsuit.
Life went on in Misery Bay. Roland agreed to sell the spruce-covered hill behind his house to his neighbors. Garrett hired a general contractor to level the floors in the old house. While the work was going on, he moved in with Sarah, an arrangement that soon felt like it might outlast the contractor. Lila and Ayesha started school in Sherbrooke. Their first report cards were good, and both girls were granted permanent status to live with Sarah. Ayesha’s father appeared uninterested in spending money for a solicitor to get her back.
Old Man Publicover buried his fifth wife.
Garrett enlisted Lonnie to help him put down yet another layer of roofing over the central part of the old homestead, which still leaked when it rained heavily. It was a leisurely pursuit, consisting of nailing a few rows followed by a break and a beer and then a few more rows.
Lonnie had no more trouble with heights than he did with claustrophobia. In truth, Garrett had never known anyone with fewer phobias. Still, he consigned his cousin to being gopher, to hauling flats of shingles up the ladder and only working on rows he could reach without actually getting on the roof.
“Roof’s too old,” Garrett said. “Won’t take your weight. When Roland and I were teenagers, my dad hired us to put on some new shingles. First time Roland got up here, the rafters gave way and he fell right through onto the kitchen floor. You can still see the dent in the linoleum where he hit.”
“That’s an image I’ll always treasure, Gar. He’d probably be even more likely to fall through now.”
Roland had put on twenty pounds since Grace started teaching him how to cook more interesting meals. And he went to the gym and lifted weights as well. He looked good, not great, but he was making progress.
“Not sure weight was the problem,” said Garrett. “It’s a matter of being careful where you step. Roland has always been accident-prone.”
Lonnie lifted the final row of flats onto the roof. He paused at the top of the ladder and stared across the meadow. “I told Kitty what happened to DeMaio the other day. She said she was ready to know.”
Garrett ceased pounding and looked down at him. “Wouldn’t care to share it with the rest of humanity, would you? Whole world’s still looking for the creep. It’s as if he disappeared off the face of the earth.”
“I could never get past what he told Kitty about becoming a sex slave, that she should just accept what was happening to her. That she’d get used to it.”
Garrett shook his head. “What a crazy thing to say … or even think.”
“One good thing came of it. It gave me an idea about the sort of punishment the man deserved.”
Garrett stopped, hammer poised in the air. As a police officer, he wasn’t sure he was going to like this.
“He’s in prison, Garrett.”
Garrett’s eyes widened. “Prison? Where, for God’s sake?”
“Turkey.”
“What? How on earth did you manage that?”
“Called in a favor. I once helped out the current president of the country before he went into politics, back when he was still in the military and got into a little trouble on shore leave.” He looked away for a moment, as though briefly considering the vagaries of life. “So, DeMaio has been disappeared into the Turkish prison system, one of the most notorious in the world.”