Джеймс Паттерсон - The Inn

In the parking lot, sweat seeping into the arms of his coat, he saw a black blob lumbering between the vehicles. He recognized her from the ER. Cline walked up behind the woman and stuck the gun in the back of her neck. She froze against her flamingo-pink coupe, the cardboard box of fluffy, shiny treasures in her hands pinned against the window.

“Russell Hamdy,” he said. “Where is he?”

She turned, and Cline stepped back. Yes, this was the one he’d seen at the triage desk once when he’d come to speak to Locke in the ER; he remembered her ridiculous yellow claws and regrettable pink eye shadow. Bess was her name, he thought. A big buffoon in a clown outfit. She didn’t even look at the gun.

“I thought you’d come.” She smiled, shifted the box in her hands. “When they brought Mr. Hamdy in, I knew it was connected to you. That’s what happens when someone like you comes into town. First you get the overdoses, then you get the suicides, then you get the kneecaps blown to dust. And people like me who won’t shut up about it, who won’t stand by and let you keep on killing—we get sent packing.”

Cline looked at the box she was holding. He could see a novelty mug with a little crown on it that said SASSY SINCE BIRTH.

He thought about asking her again where Russ was stashed, but the defiance in her eyes told him he was wasting his time.

Cline raised the gun in both hands.

CHAPTER SEVENTY-NINE

SUSAN SEEMED TO know my purpose, though to my knowledge she had no idea where Monica Rink lived. I exited the car without waiting for her and started walking up the pebble driveway. Cline had offered to tell me what happened the night Siobhan died, and I’d refused to hear it. But his words had started a fire in me, one that was threatening to consume me. I couldn’t wait any longer.

An orange cat fled out of my way, leaping into a hedge, as I advanced toward the door.

“Bill, stop.” Susan grabbed my hand as I went to knock. “You don’t know what you’re—”

I knocked. We waited, Susan still holding my hand. I looked at her and realized she was scared, frightened for me, perhaps, and the heartache I was about to put myself and Monica through. A figure in a green T-shirt, maybe expecting someone else, bounced to the door and opened it.

I recognized her from the photographs in the paper after my wife’s death. Her mouth was big and expressive, turning before my eyes from an expectant grin to an uncomfortable grimace. She knew exactly who I was. Monica grabbed her flame-red ponytail as though for comfort and glanced back into the empty hall.

She couldn’t speak, so I did. “I’m not here to cause trouble,” I said, putting my hands up.

“I can’t—” She tried to shut the door, but my foot was in the way. Susan tugged on my arm.

“Bill, this isn’t a good time,” she said. “You’re upset about Malone. It’s been a rough week. You need to just—”

“No, you need to just.” I pointed a finger at Monica. “Just tell me the truth. It’s been long enough. I can’t take it anymore.”

The young woman hesitated, looked back into the hall again. I wondered if there was a boyfriend or some friends there whom she was mentally begging to call the police. I could imagine them, a posse of twenty-somethings slumped in beanbags waiting for pizza or more friends to arrive so they could watch a horror movie and cuddle together. Generally enjoying their lives, the way Siobhan had once. Siobhan had been a twenty-something, and then she had grown, matured, married me, created a dream of running an inn by the sea and falling asleep to the sound of waves on the shore and wind in the leafless trees. I held the door just in case Monica thought she could kick my foot away.

“It has been a rough week,” I said, locking eyes with the woman whose very house made my stomach shrink. “I’ve lost some people I love, and I’ve learned that not only are there terrible things behind me, but more of them are coming my way. I’m taking this moment to cut the bullshit.” I squeezed Susan’s hand. “I want answers. What happened that night? What happened to my wife?”

Monica drew a deep breath. Her lips worked around silent, agonized stutters. “I h-hit your wife accidentally. Siobhan Robinson. I was alone in the car. There’s nothing more for you to know except that I’m … I’m … I’m so sorry.”

I looked at the girl before me and knew she was lying. Susan pulled on my arm again, and I almost let her lead me away. I was telling myself that I had all the answers I was going to get when a figure stepped into the hall behind Monica Rink.

She was smaller than Monica. Same fiery hair and lean, waiflike frame. A little sister, seventeen, maybe a touch older. She yanked white earbuds from her ears at the sight of me. I looked at the young girl across the miles between us and knew the truth. Monica took advantage of my shock and slammed the door in my face.

Susan put an arm around my shoulders and led me toward the car.

“That young girl—” I began.

“I know,” Susan said.

“She was the driver,” I said. I could feel that my eyes were wild as I tried to take in everything about this moment, not thinking of the horror or comfort that it might bring. I looked at the stars as we reached the car. “The younger girl was the driver. She’d had a couple of drinks. The vodkas open in the footwell of the car. She hit Siobhan and called her sister for help. Monica Rink covered for her little sister.”

“That girl couldn’t have been old enough to drink.” Susan gripped me by the shoulders, her dark blue eyes square on mine. “She did something incredibly reckless and stupid. She killed a woman on the side of the road. Monica probably covered for her to save her from the stain on her record or … I don’t know. The shame. The stories. Bill, you saw that little girl’s face as well as I did. She’s never going to escape what happened.”

“I want to go back.” I turned toward the house. “I need to tell her it’s okay. I’ll tell them both it’s okay. That I forgive them. They didn’t mean to do it.”

Susan pulled me to her and pressed her lips against mine. I put my arm around her waist and drew her closer, sought that safety in her embrace that I’d experienced once on the beach, that sealing-off from the world. There were tears on her cheeks or possibly mine; I couldn’t tell. I held her to me and breathed her in.

“Let’s go home,” she said.

CHAPTER EIGHTY

SUSAN AND I walked around the side of the house, knowing we were probably being tracked by Effie’s gun, and sneaked up onto the end of the porch in case Vinny was camped out near the dining-room windows. Like naughty children, we crept through the hall and the kitchen, pausing at the sink to push and grab at each other, moaning between kisses, her hands fumbling at my belt. Someone came halfway through the kitchen door, saw our tangled silhouettes, and backed out quickly. We froze and listened to the retreating steps, laughed guiltily.

I didn’t want to rush things. We were hot in each other’s arms, sweating with anticipation, shivering with excitement. There was a strange relief tingling in my body at Susan and I finally knowing, at least in this moment, what we wanted from each other. Maybe I was high from having looked my wife’s killer in the face, knowing after so many nights worrying that it had all been an awful accident, a mistake. I took a bottle of cold water from the fridge, and we both drank from it, looking at each other in the golden light, smiling.

We went to her room and I shoved her onto the bed, listened to her laughing in the dark.

CHAPTER EIGHTY-ONE

A FOREIGN BED. The unfamiliar pattern of Susan’s soft breathing. Creaks and groans in the house that I did not recognize from my time sleeping in the basement. I lay awake for hours thinking about Cline, about how he had crept into my life and taken it over. There was no doubt in my mind that for all the terror and heartache he had inflicted on the people sleeping in the rooms around me, I was the one who’d allowed him through the door to our world. I had been the one searching for a purpose. Wanting a fight. If I’d just stopped Winley Minnow trashing his family’s house and not taken things any further, Marni might still have been alive. As would the men Cline had taken out for failing him. When my stirring seemed to be drawing Susan out of her dreams, I crept down to my room in the basement.