He stepped up and did something with a set of tiny tools—lock picks, she guessed. She expected an alarm, but when the door swung open, she didn’t hear a thing. A house like this, there had to be an alarm….
McCallister stepped inside and checked a keypad next to the door. “It’s off,” he said. “Come in.” He closed and locked it behind her.
She immediately caught the unmistakable smell of decomposition—ripe, sickly sweet, and dense. She wavered, and exchanged a wordless look with him.
“Bryn,” he said. “Let me do this. You don’t need to—”
She shook her head, waited to let her senses adjust, then went forward through a spotlessly kept white tile kitchen, down a hallway. The stench got more intense. She was achingly aware of McCallister sticking close beside her, silent now.
No turning back.
She expected a horror show, but there was nothing in the large, gracious living room, although a big-screen TV was still playing with the sound turned down. There was a glass of what looked like Scotch sitting on a coaster on the coffee table, and a book spread open, facedown, as if someone had put it away for just a moment.
McCallister touched her shoulder and pointed. She followed him out into the marble-tiled foyer. A curving staircase led upstairs.
The smell was worse here, and increased as they ascended. Halfway up, Bryn heard the first hum of insect activity. She hesitated just for a breath on the last step, gathered herself, and stepped over a busy line of ants that marked a trail right to where she had to go.
McCallister was right behind her, silent and solid. He was the only thing that gave her the necessary strength to keep going.
The bedroom door was shut, and Bryn touched the knob gingerly first, as if it might be hot. Instinct, trying to stop her from doing this. Seeing this.
She took a deep breath and opened the door.
The noise exploded in an angry buzz, and flies whizzed past her, heading out into the open air. She ducked. So did McCallister. He coughed and put his hand over his mouth; it was the first sign of weakness she’d seen from him.
Bryn stepped into hell.
The first thing she saw was the dead man, sitting in a deep armchair at the end of the bed. There was a bullet hole in one temple, and a giant exit wound on the opposite side. The gun still lay on the carpet next to his feet.
He’d been gone for days.
The woman lying on the bed wasn’t much of a human being anymore. She was covered in a moving blanket of flies, wriggling pale maggots popping through the slipping, discolored stretch of skin, and ants busily carrying away pieces for the good of the colony.
Her eyes were open. Clouded, discolored, decomposed, but
alive
.
Oh,
God
, still alive. They moved, very slightly, toward Bryn. The lipless mouth moved, but there was no sound, could be none. The phone receiver lay on the pillow next to her, and one desiccated finger was still resting on the redial button.
“Mother of God,” McCallister whispered behind her. He sounded shaken, stunned, more human than he’d ever seemed. Bryn, on the other hand, felt … remote. Unte-thered. That was shock, she guessed. Useful thing, shock, at moments like these.
“Give her the shot,” she said.
“Bryn—it won’t work.”
“Give her the shot.”
He shook his head, but he opened his bag and took out the syringe. She saw him hesitate, trying to find enough muscle to inject, and watched as he did his best.
The liquid oozed back out through her skin and soaked into the bedding.
They waited for long moments, and Bryn finally turned to McCallister.
“She’s too far gone,” he whispered. “End stages. The drug won’t help.”
Then there was only one thing to do.
Bryn dropped her canvas bag, opened it, and took out a gown, a mask, surgical gloves. She handed those to McCallister, then took a second set for herself. They dressed in silence. The mask didn’t block the eye-watering stench. There were ants crawling on her feet, over her legs, but Bryn didn’t think about that. Couldn’t think about that.
She took out a surgical saw.
McCallister took a step back. “What are you—”
Bryn didn’t answer, because she couldn’t. Talking required some kind of cognition she didn’t think she was capable of at this point. There was only one thing that was important, one thing that had to be done.
She had to stop the woman’s pain. There was no walking away from this, no choice. It had to be done.
She had to be the one to do it.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered to what was left of Violetta Sammons, and stared into those clouded, desperate, terrified eyes for a second before she put one hand on the mandible of her jaw, pushed up, and exposed the rotten column of her throat.
It didn’t take more than three strokes. The saw was very sharp. As the head rolled free, Bryn saw the life desperately continue in those filmed eyes, and then dim … and then, finally, mercifully, depart.
Byrne dropped the saw, staggered, and put her back against the wall.
That’s me. That’s me on the bed. That’s me.
Not yet, but it was coming, as inevitable as death itself.
Across the bed, Patrick McCallister stood frozen, watching her. He finally reached down and grabbed the canvas bag, retrieved the saw, and took her arm. “Out,” he said. “Come on.”
Leaving that room was like walking out of a grave, and Bryn ripped the mask away from her face and gulped in deep breaths. She’d thought the air out here tainted before, but it smelled sweet now. Sweet as roses.
Her legs had gone numb, but McCallister helped her down the steps, past the line of ants, past the silent living room with its TV still playing, Scotch waiting.
Outside, into the clean breeze, and the sun.
Bryn collapsed against him, put her arms around his neck, and wept as if her heart were breaking. “Oh, God,” she whispered. “Oh, my God. I had to do it; I had to.
I had to
.”
And Patrick McCallister held on just as fiercely. “I know,” he whispered back. “It’s all right. It’s over.”
“No.” She gasped, and fisted her hands in the collar of his suit. “That was me. Going to be me.”
“No. Bryn, you’re alive; hear me? And I won’t let that happen to you. I won‘t. I swear it.”
“What if—”
“Don’t.”
“You saw; she could still feel—”
His voice turned fierce. “
I won’t let it happen
. I will never let you suffer, Bryn. Believe that, even if you never believe anything else about me.”
She did believe him. She believed that if he had to, Patrick McCallister would take up that saw and end things for her, once and for all. He had the strength of will.
She’d never thought she did. Not until the moment when she’d had to choose.
That terrified her, the fact that something like that was hiding inside her—something so strong, so cold, so
capable
. She didn’t want to know that about herself.
She didn’t want to know what it was going to be like in the end, either. She’d looked into her future, into the ruined, screaming eyes of Violetta Sammons.
McCallister held her until his security team arrived to sanitize the scene of the crime, and she was glad he did.
Fifteen minutes after they’d started the … removal proceedings, McCallister stepped back into the house. He donned an extra pair of coveralls stored in Bryn’s go bag, a ball cap, a thin Windbreaker that had the Fairview Mortuary logo on the front, and said, “I’m going with you. You shouldn’t be alone.” His team had their orders. They also had come in disguise as renovation workers, with their own van, tools, coveralls—they even put a sign out by the curb. Anyone looking out would see nothing but normal life, although what was going on was far, far from sanity in there. “We need to get the van out of here. It’ll raise questions.”
The Fairview logo was small and discreet, but he was right; it was visible to anybody who really looked. Bryn, who’d finally gotten feeling back in her arms and legs, started to unlock the driver’s-side door.
McCallister took the keys from her. “No. I’m driving.” She didn’t feel able to argue the point. It felt good to let someone else take charge, at least for the moment.
Maybe the protocols are kicking in again
. But she didn’t think so. It was just shock, and the drugged exhaustion that followed extreme emotional stress.
“Is it safe for you to do this?” she asked in a remote, tired voice as he piloted the van back toward Fairview. “What if he’s watching?”
“He probably is. And yes, it’s risky. But you go through staff quickly at the assistant level, so new faces aren’t unusual. I’ll keep my head down.” He glanced her way. “You still with me, Bryn?”
“Yes.” She could hardly keep her eyes open, but when she tried to let them drift closed, she saw jolts of images. Ants. Maggots. Flesh. Eyes. “I think I need a drink.”
He laughed softly, and a little shakily. “That, Miss Davis, is a vast understatement. There has never been a single moment in my life when I more needed a drink, and I wasn’t the one—”
Holding the saw
, Bryn finished silently. He let it go. “I heard your sister is staying with you.”
“I thought you’d be angry.”
“I was. It seems a little beside the point right now.”
“Annie’s okay,” Bryn murmured drowsily. “She’s just a kid; that’s all. And we push her too hard.”
“We?”
“The fam. Especially Mom, and my sister Grace. Grace is kind of a bitch. Not as bad as George, though.”
“George is a girl?”
“George is a pissy little bitch of a man. He’s not gay, which is too bad; he’d be a lot more fun that way. He’s just a jerk. He runs a pharmacy in—” Her brain finally caught up to her mouth. “You already know all this. I told you all about them, in the car.”
McCallister shrugged. “I like hearing you talk about them.”
“Remember Kyle?”
“The one who’s three years into a fifteen-year sentence for armed robbery?”
“Kyle is still more fun than George.”
“Ouch.”
Her brain was waking up. Small talk, it seemed, did wonders. “Anyway, Annie just wanted some space, so I’m letting her stay a few days. It’s not a big deal, and I won’t tell her a thing.”
“She’s a walking, talking security breach, and you should have run it by me, but what’s done is done. I’m just concerned for your safety.”
“From
Annie
? She grew up wanting to be a fairy princess. She’s not exactly dangerous.”
“That’s what I’m concerned about.”
She couldn’t work that out, tired as she felt, so she let it lie. “You got me to talk about my family,” she said. “But you never return the favor.”
He glanced over at her, frowning, and shook his head. “It’s not the time, Bryn.”
“Come on. Humor me.” She needed something else in her head besides …
that
. Besides the smell, the insects, the desperation in Violetta’s eyes. The rasp of the saw. “Tell me about your brother.”
“I can’t.” He paused, then let out a sound—not a laugh, more of a sigh. “
Can’t
. That doesn’t sound right either, considering … it’s just words. All right, if you really want to know. Jamie was … different. My parents couldn’t see it. He was a charmer, but he was cold inside. A sociopath with no real empathy or connection to anyone else. Including me. And I was his favorite target.”
“You.”
He shrugged. “I learned to cope. I had to. Jamie’s little games were often meant to maim or kill. I couldn’t complain; when I tried, he blamed it all on me, said that I was the bully. They believed it.”
“My God.”
“By eighteen, I wasn’t going to let it go on anymore. I went to my father, but he didn’t want to hear it. So I left. I went straight into the marines, enlisted as fast as I could, and got the hell away from the whole family.”
“You told me Jamie … died.”
“By the time I came home, eight years had passed. I think he was truly surprised. He fully expected me to die in the line of duty.” McCallister’s eyes were unfocused now, looking into something far away and not at all pleasant. “He was out on his own by then, with his own house out in the country. I came back from deployment and intended to just stop in and try to mend fences with him, as much as possible. But when I got here, he was … He’d found a new hobby. One that suited his personality.” He swallowed, a visible bob of his Adam’s apple above his collar. His hands gripped the steering wheel a little too tightly. “I found out later that he’d made a business of it, but I didn’t know that at the time. I just knew that when I went looking for him, I found him upstairs in one of the rooms with cameras and a victim. I shot him. I had to, to save her life.”
“What was he—”
“No,” he said. “Don’t make me tell you. Please. We’ve had enough today” He let the silence fall for a moment before he continued. “I’m not sorry I killed him. I’m just sorry that I let him walk away when I was eighteen. It would have saved lives if I hadn’t been … weak.” He smiled, but it looked painful and false. “My mother was already gone by then. My father passed on soon after that, thinking I was a murderer. Thinking that I’d set Jamie up and killed him in cold blood. I was written out of the estate, of course. I didn’t really mind.”
Bryn thought about her own family, with all its problems and squabbles; she might not totally love many of her siblings, but at least they weren’t sociopaths. And, although he wasn’t saying it outright, murderers. It brought back the haunting question of what had happened to Sharon, all those years ago.
Maybe she ran into another McCallister. The wrong McCallister
.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry for making you tell me that.”
“No,” he said. “No, you needed to hear it. And I guess I needed to say it, too. It’s all right. Now it’s done.”