Allan Leverone - Mr. Midnight

But the boarding area was quiet. The only people at the gate were a youngish man and woman, college kids perhaps, dozing side by side on two of the hard plastic chairs, clearly waiting out a long layover. Cait turned left and began the long walk through the terminal building with Kevin a step behind. He was deep in thought, still clearly bothered by Victoria Ayers’s sudden change of heart and the resulting strange phone call.

Cait didn’t see the problem. People changed their minds all the time, especially where momentous, life-altering events were concerned. She had put herself in her mother’s shoes for a moment while sitting on the airplane and quickly realized getting contacted out of the blue by your long-lost daughter after three full decades would certainly have to qualify as life-altering.

She slowed to allow Kevin to catch up and they walked side by side, not talking, each lost in their own thoughts. Outside the terminal they hailed a cab and climbed into the backseat, settling in for the ride back to Everett and their second meeting with Cait’s mother in two days.

This one would go better than the first. Cait was sure of it.

This time when Cait rang the bell it was with a genuine smile of pleasure on her face rather than one of nervousness. She still had no idea what might have changed her mother’s mind—Kevin was right about one thing, Victoria had been dead set against ever seeing her again the last time they talked—but at the same time, she didn’t really care. The important thing was that the telephone call represented real progress.

The door swung open and Cait’s mother stood on the other side, just as before. Something was wrong, Cait could see that immediately. Her mother’s face was pasty-white, her lips set in a straight bloodless line. She looked even frailer than before, if that was possible. It seemed to be taking all of her willpower to…what? Avoid screaming? Look Cait in the eyes? Welcome them into her home again?

But it didn’t make sense. She was the one who had called Cait and invited her here. She was the one who had pulled them off the airplane just as it was about to take off. Had she changed her mind again, and now didn’t want to see her? Maybe the woman was just plain crazy; who the hell knew? It wasn’t like Cait had any history to go on. They had just met twenty-four hours ago.

Cait wrinkled her forehead. “Are you all right?”

That was when she noticed the blood.

Victoria Ayers’s right hand hung limply by her side, unmoving and apparently forgotten as the woman gazed at Cait with dead, empty eyes. A slow but steady drip-drip-drip of thick maroon-black blood gathered at the tips of two of her fingers and fell to the floor in a steady rhythm, dropping first off one finger and then the other. It seemed to be a fair amount of blood. It wasn’t a river, exactly, but it fell in a continuous pattern, like the beginning of a soft summer rain, and was gathering into an impressive little pool on the hardwood floor.

“Oh my God, what’s wrong?” Cait asked as she stepped through the door, overcome by her natural impulse to help the elderly woman. She felt Kevin hang back, still concerned about whatever had been bothering him since the phone call on the airplane. He had stepped one foot through the door, resting it on the interior floor, but his body hovered half in and half out.

Kevin grabbed Cait by the elbow as she was reaching for her mother’s injured hand, pulling her insistently backward, trying to drag her out the door and away from her mother, who clearly needed help! Cait resisted, struggling, pulling in the other direction, but she was no match for his superior size and strength. She opened her mouth to complain. What the hell did he think he was doing?

And then a man stepped out from behind the front door. He moved smoothly and quickly behind Victoria, wrapping one arm around her waist, gently, like a lover, and the other around her throat, a long knife pressed to her skin. The blade glittered and winked in the light, drawing Cait’s attention. She froze, her anger at Kevin forgotten.

Her heart stuttered and her stomach flip-flopped. It took only a second to recognize the stranger; his face was burned indelibly into her brain. It was the man from the horrible Flickers of the last couple of days. The man who had tortured the poor girl strapped into the blocky wooden chair. The cold-blooded killer who had begun haunting her dreams.

This was the man.

And he was holding a knife to her mother’s throat.

The intruder offered up an easy smile, the smile of a man comfortable in his surroundings. In control of the situation. “Please, come in,” he said, directing his attention at Kevin, who had stopped tugging on Cait’s arm and now stood unmoving.

Cait tore her eyes from the intruder and glanced back at her boyfriend. She had known Kevin a long time and instantly recognized he was reverting to cop mode, sizing up the situation, trying to determine what action he might be able to take to neutralize this unexpected threat. He instinctively grabbed at his hip, but of course his gun wasn’t there. His gun wasn’t within a thousand miles of there. It was locked safely away in the closet of his apartment in Tampa.

The intruder watched Kevin with dead eyes and a smile flickered across his face and disappeared. “No, really, come in,” he repeated. “I insist. We insist, isn’t that right, dear?” He waved the knife theatrically in front of Virginia’s face before replacing it against the wrinkled alabaster skin of her throat.

“Don’t hurt anyone,” Kevin answered, raising his hands in a calming gesture, his voice steady and reasonable. “If it’s money you’re after, I’m sure we can get some together for you, maybe not as much as you’d like—none of us is rich, as I’m sure you can tell—but we will all be happy to contribute to the cause.”

The man laughed. The sound was unexpected, Cait thought, and blood-chilling. His knife jittered against Virginia’s throat as he chuckled and she let out a gasp either of fear or pain, Cait could not tell which. So far there was no blood besides the droplets that continued to drip steadily off the ends of her fingers. “This isn’t about money,” the man said coldly.

“Then what is it about?” Kevin asked. He eased his right foot inside the door and stepped fully into the house. As he did, the man pulled Virginia Ayers an equivalent distance back down the hallway. The intruder was being careful to maintain a safe distance from Kevin, a precaution that struck Cait as utterly unnecessary. As long as that razor-sharp blade remained pressed to Virginia’s throat, there was nothing Kevin or anyone else could do. It would take but one flick of the man’s wrist and Cait’s mother would bleed out within minutes.

“What is it about? It’s about her, ” he answered, directing the business end of the knife at Cait for just a second. At that moment she thought it looked more like a dagger than a knife.

“Cait?” Kevin answered in surprise. It was clearly not what he had expected to hear.

“That’s her name? Cait? What a pretty name. A pretty name for a pretty girl. A pretty, bad girl. A pretty, bad girl who’s going to suffer.”

In that instant everything clicked in Cait’s mind. The phone call on the plane. Her mother’s sudden, unexpected change of heart. The plea to return immediately. The man had been here, brandishing his knife, injuring her fingers badly enough to make them bleed, forcing her to bring Cait and Kevin back here. What she didn’t understand was why.

Kevin continued to move slowly and unthreateningly forward until he stood next to Cait. She knew he was trying to place his body between her and the lunatic with the knife, partly to put himself in a position to help Virginia, but mostly to remove Cait from as much of the danger as possible. “What has Cait done that requires her to suffer?” He kept his tone conversational, like two neighbors discussing the weekend’s football matchups.