Tami Hoag - Dark Horse

In the background I could hear pounding, like someone banging on a door.

"Molly?"

And then a strange and terrible keening sound that ended with her name.

"Hurry!" Molly said.

The last thing I heard before the line went dead was an eerie voice: "I only ever wanted a nice life… I only ever wanted a nice life…"

Okay," Landry said. "Here's how we're playing it. I'm going in first with the uniforms."

I let him talk, not caring what he said, not caring what his plan was. All I could think of was Molly.

If someone had harmed that child…

I thought of Chad and Erin running at large. If they had come back to the house-

"Elena, did you hear me?"

I didn't answer him.

He turned in at the driveway and ran the car onto the lawn. A radio car turned in behind us. I was out of the car before it was stopped.

"Dammit, Estes!"

The front door was open. I went through it without a care to what danger might be on the other side.

"Molly!"

Landry was right behind me. "Seabright? It's Landry."

"Molly!"

I took the stairs two at a time.

If someone has harmed that child…

L andry went toward Seabright's home office. The house was eerily silent, except for a small, faint sound coming from beyond the office doors.

"Seabright?"

Landry moved along the wall, gun drawn. In his peripheral vision, he saw Elena bolt up the steps.

"Seabright?" he called out again.

The sound was growing more distinct. Singing, he thought. He sidled along the door, stretching his arm as long as he could to reach the doorknob.

Singing. No, more like chanting. "All I ever wanted was a nice life."

Molly!"

I had no idea which of the closed doors belonged to her. I stood to the side and opened the first one I came to. Chad's room.

If someone has harmed that child…

I shoved open another door. Another unoccupied bedroom.

"Molly!"

If someone has harmed that child…

The third door opened an inch and hit something. I shoved at it.

"Molly!"

If someone has harmed that child…

The doors to the study fell open, revealing a gruesome tableau. Krystal Seabright stood behind her husband's desk, covered in blood. Blood streaked her bleached hair, her face, the pretty pink dress she had been wearing when Landry had seen her earlier. Bruce Seabright was slumped over his otherwise immaculate desk, a butcher's knife sticking out of one of perhaps fifty stab wounds in his back, neck, and head.

"Jesus God," Landry murmured.

Krystal looked at him, her eyes glassy and wide.

"I only ever wanted a nice life. He ruined it. He ruined everything."

I f someone has harmed that child…

I pulled back, took a deep breath, and rammed the door with my shoulder as hard as I could.

"Molly!"

The block on the other side of the door gave a few inches, enough for me to wedge into the opening and shove it a few inches more. Someone had piled half the furniture in the room as a blockade.

"Elena!"

Molly ran into me full force. I fell to my knees and caught her in my arms and held her as tightly as I had ever held anyone in all my life. I put my arms around Molly Seabright and held her while she cried, and held her for a long time after that.

For her… and for myself.

All I could say to Molly as I hugged her tight was that it was over. It's over. It's over. It's over. But that was a lie of such grand proportions, all lies that had come before it were dwarfed in comparison. Nothing was over for Molly, except having a family.

Krystal, fragile in the best of times, had shattered under the pressure. She blamed her husband for what she believed had happened to Erin. The kidnapping, the rape. Landry told me she had suspected Bruce of sending Paris Montgomery to her to rent the Loxahatchee house where the whole drama had been staged.

She had reached her limit. In the end, one might have tried to put a nobler face on it and said Krystal had defended her daughter, had taken revenge for her. Sadly, I didn't believe that at all. I believed killing Bruce had been punishment not for ruining her daughter, but for ruining her fairy tale.

I only ever wanted a nice life.

I wondered whether Krystal would have stayed with Bruce if she had found out that what they had all been put through had been orchestrated at least in part by her daughter. I suspected she would have put the blame squarely on Erin and no one else. She would have found a way to excuse Bruce's sins and keep her pretty life intact.

The human mind has an amazing capacity for rationalization.

Landry sent Krystal to the Sheriff's Office in a cruiser, then drove Molly and me to Sean's farm. Not a word was said about calling Child Protective Services, which was standard operating procedure in a case like Molly's.

We rode in silence most of the way, drained of our emotions and our energies, weighed down by the magnitude of what had gone on. The only sound in the car was the crackle of Landry's radio. An old familiar noise for me. For a moment I felt as nostalgic for it as I ever had for any song from my adolescence.

As we turned in at the Avadonis gate, Landry used his cell phone to call Weiss at the airport. There was still no sign of Van Zandt, and the plane was ready to taxi onto the runway.

Exhausted, Molly had fallen asleep leaning against me in the backseat. Landry scooped her out and carried her into the guest house. I led the way to the second small bedroom, thinking what an odd family unit we made.

"Poor kid," he said as he and I walked back outside onto the little patio. "She'll grow up in a hurry."

"She's already done that," I said, sitting down sideways on a delicate iron chaise with a thick cushion. "That one was a child for a minute and a half. Do you have kids?"

"Me? No." Landry sat beside me. "You?"

"Always seemed like a bad idea to me. I've watched too many people screw it up. I know how badly that hurts."

I knew he was watching me, trying to read into me, into my words. I looked up at the stars and marveled at the vulnerability I had just shown him.

"Molly's great, though," I said. "Figures. She raised herself watching the Discovery Channel and A and E."

"I was married once," Landry offered. "And I lived with a woman for a while. It didn't work out. You know: the job, the hours, I'm difficult. Blah, blah, blah."

"I never tried. Go straight to 'I'm difficult. Blah, blah, blah.' "

He smiled wearily and produced a cigarette and a lighter from his pocket.

"Car pack?" I asked.

"Gotta get that corpse taste out."

"I used to drink," I confessed. "To cleanse the palate."

"But you quit?"

"I gave up everything that could dull pain."

"Why?"

"Because I believed I deserved to hurt. Punishment. Penance. Purgatory. Call it what you like."

"Stupid," Landry proclaimed. "You're not God, Estes."

"A welcome relief to all true believers, I'm sure. Maybe I thought I should beat Him to the punch."

"You made a mistake," he said. "I don't believe the Pope is infallible either."

"Heretic."

"I'm just saying, you've got too much good in you to let one bad mistake shut it all down."

The half smile tugged at the corner of my mouth. "I know," I said. "I know that now. Thanks to Molly."

Landry glanced back over his shoulder at the house. "What are you going to tell her about Erin?"

"The truth," I said on a sigh. "She won't stand for anything less."

The prospect drove me to my feet. As exhausted as I was, still I was restless, frustrated at the injustices of Molly Seabright's life and the inadequacy of my people skills. Crossing my arms against the damp night air, I walked to the edge of the patio.