Tess Gerritsen - The Keepsake

She remembered what her mother once said: If someone really wants to find you, he only needs to wait for you to make one mistake.

And lately, she had made so many.

The night had fallen strangely still.

It took her a moment to register just how still it was. She had fallen asleep to the steady chirp of crickets, but now she heard nothing, only a silence so complete that it magnified the sound of her own breathing.

She rose from bed and went to the window. Outside, moonlight silvered the trees and splashed its pale glow onto the garden. Staring out, she saw nothing to alarm her. But as she stood at that open window, she realized that the night was not entirely silent; through the thump of her own heartbeat she heard a faint electronic beeping. Did it come from outside, or from somewhere inside the house? Now that she was completely focused on the sound, it seemed to intensify, and with it her sense of uneasiness.

Did Gemma hear it?

She went to the door and peeked into the dark hallway. The sound was louder out here, more insistent.

In darkness she navigated up the hallway, her bare feet silent on the wood floor. With every step the beeping grew louder. Reaching Gemma’s bedroom, she found the door ajar. She gave it a push and silently it swung open. In the moonlit room, she spotted the source of that sound: the fallen telephone receiver, a disconnect signal issuing from the earpiece. But it wasn’t the phone that caught her gaze; it was the dark pool, glistening like black oil on the floor. Nearby a figure crouched, and she thought at first it was Gemma. Until it straightened to its full height and stood silhouetted against the window.

A man.

Josephine’s startled intake of breath made his head snap around toward her. For an instant they faced each other, features hidden in the shadows, both of them suspended in that timeless moment before predator springs on prey.

She moved first.

She turned and sprinted for the stairs. Footsteps pounded behind her as she scrambled down the steps. She hit the first floor hard, with both feet. Ahead was the front door, gaping open. She ran for it and stumbled out onto the porch, where broken glass pierced her skin. She scarcely noticed its bite; her attention was focused only on the driveway ahead.

And on the footsteps closing in behind her.

She flew down the porch steps, her gown flapping like wings in the warm night air, and ran headlong up the driveway. Under the moonlight, on that exposed gravel, her nightgown was as visible as a white flag, but she did not veer into the woods, did not waste time seeking the cover of trees. Ahead lay the street, and other houses. If I pound on doors, if I scream, someone will help me. No longer could she hear her pursuer’s footsteps; she heard only the rush of her panicked breaths, the whoosh of the night air.

And then, a sharp crack.

The bullet’s impact was like a brutal kick to the back of her leg. It sent her sprawling to the ground, palms scraping across the gravel. She struggled to stand, warm blood streaming down her calf, but her leg gave out beneath her. With a sob of pain, she collapsed to her knees.

The street. The street is so near.

Her breaths reduced to sobs, she began to crawl. A neighbor’s porch light glowed ahead, beyond the trees, and that was what she focused on. Not the crunch of footsteps moving closer, not the gravel biting into her palms. Survival had come down to that lone beacon winking through the branches and she kept crawling toward it, dragging her useless leg as blood left its slick trail behind her.

A shadow moved in front of her and blotted out the light.

Slowly, she lifted her gaze. He stood before her, blocking the way. His face was a black oval, his eyes unfathomable. As he leaned toward her, she closed her eyes, waiting for the crack of the gun, the punch of the bullet. Never had she been more aware of her own beating heart, of the air rushing in and out of her lungs, than in the stillness of this last moment. A moment that seemed to stretch on endlessly, as though he wanted to savor his victory and prolong the torment.

Through her closed eyelids, she saw a light flicker.

She opened her eyes. Beyond the trees, a blue light pulsed. A pair of headlights suddenly veered toward her, and she was trapped in the glare, kneeling in her pitifully thin nightgown. Tires skidded to a halt, spitting gravel. A car door swung open and she heard the crackle of a police radio.

“Miss? Are you okay, miss?”

She blinked, trying to make out who was speaking to her. But the voice faded and the headlights dimmed, and the last thing she registered was the slap of the gravel against her cheek as she slumped to the ground.

Frost and Jane stood in Gemma Hamerton’s driveway, staring down at the trail of dried blood that Josephine had left behind in her desperate crawl toward the street. Birds chirped overhead and the summer sun shone down through dappling leaves, but a chill seemed to have settled in this shady patch of driveway.

Jane turned and looked at the residence, which she and Frost had not yet set foot in. It was an unremarkable house with white clapboards and a covered porch, like so many others that she’d seen on this rural road. But even from where she stood in the drive way, she could see the jagged reflection of a broken porch window, and that bright shard of light warned: Something terrible happened here. Something you have yet to see.

“Here’s where she first fell,” said Detective Mike Abbott. He pointed to the start of the bloody trail. “She made it pretty far up the driveway when she was shot. Landed here and started crawling. It took a hell of a lot of determination to move as far as she did, but she managed to get all the way to that point.” Abbott indicated the end of the bloody trail. “That’s where the patrol car spotted her.”

“How did that miracle happen?” asked Jane.

“They came in response to a 911 call.”

“From Josephine?” asked Frost.

“No, we think it came from the owner of the house, Gemma Hamerton. The phone was in her bedroom. Whoever made the call never got the chance to speak, though, because the receiver was hung up immediately afterward. When the emergency operator tried to call back, the phone had been taken off the hook again. She dispatched a patrol car, and it got here within three minutes.”

Frost gazed down at the stained driveway. “There’s a lot of blood here.”

Abbott nodded. “The young woman spent three hours in emergency surgery. She’s now laid up in a cast, which turns out to be lucky for us. Because we didn’t find out till last night that Boston PD had put out a bulletin on her. Otherwise, she might have managed to skip town.” He turned toward the house. “If you want to see more blood, follow me.”

He led the way to the front porch, which was littered with broken glass. There they paused to pull on shoe covers. Abbott’s ominous statement warned of horrors to come, and Jane was prepared for the worst.

But when she stepped in the front door, she saw nothing alarming. The living room looked undisturbed. On the walls hung dozens of framed photos, many of them featuring the same woman with cropped blond hair, posing with a variety of companions. A massive bookcase was filled with volumes on history and art, ancient languages and ethnology.

“This is the owner of the house?” asked Frost, pointing to the blond woman in the photos.

Abbott nodded. “Gemma Hamerton. She taught archaeology at one of the local colleges.”

“Archaeology?” Frost shot Jane a Now, that’s interesting look.

“What else do you know about her?”

“Law-abiding citizen as far as we know. Never married. Spent every summer abroad doing whatever it is that archaeologists do.”