Heather Graham - Dying Breath

But it hadn’t been before. She’d heard a bump. And her phone...

She could remember—at least she thought she could remember—putting it down upstairs.

“It’s because I’m scared silly, little one—freaking here. I’m about to call my mommy!” she said to Noah, trying to smile all the time.

He laughed at her.

And then turned and laughed and clapped again, seemingly seeing someone else there.

“Okay, I’ve had it!” she said. “Kid, we’re going to head into the kitchen. Nice and cozy there, and we have a door—”

Her words broke off. She heard something. For sure this time. From upstairs.

Then suddenly she screamed. There was something right in front of her. What—she didn’t know. At first, it just seemed like clouds forming in air. Then there seemed to be a face, and then a form, and a full figure. Her mouth opened; she felt like fire and ice in one. Terror ripped through her with a painful vengeance.

And she heard the sound again. Something up the stairs. As if someone was moving, as if they were close to the stairs, perhaps to come down them...

And in front of her...

The figure and face had formed. Her gaze jerked up to the pictures above the mantle. She looked at the portrait of Dylan Ballantine.

And she looked at the strange thing that had formed out of the air before her.

“Go!” she heard. It was a rustle; it might have been leaves.

It might have been the terror that ruled her brain.

And it might have been the ghostly image of Dylan Ballantine standing before her now.

And still, she heard that sound...someone moving furtively, taking a step on the staircase, moving in a way she could sense...

And then...

She felt as if she was suddenly slapped hard by an icy hand.

“Get Noah and get out!”

Like a whisper, like a whisper, like a sound that played only in her mind...

“Move! Move—now!”

At that point, she acted. She grabbed the baby. She forgot about his ultrawarm knit hat and his mittens and his outside shoes.

She held him to her chest, raced to the front door, threw it open and raced out into the street.

It was dark and it was cold and no tourists were traveling the Freedom Trail. She heard a pounding behind her.

She was terrified to look back.

She did.

A man was there, behind her, coming after her. A man with a gun.

She turned and ran again—toward the Paul Revere House.

There were still people there! A group milling, talking about where to go to dinner.

“Help, help!” she cried.

Someone heard her! A tall Boston policeman had suddenly appeared on the sidewalk.

“Down, miss, down!” he shouted.

She gripped Noah even more tightly to her and ducked low.

She heard an explosion and a scream at the same time. Turning back, she saw the man with the gun on the ground.

He had fired, but he had apparently tripped over his own two feet. His gun had gone off... But his bullet had aimed into the sky. He was struggling up, taking aim again...

But he’d been shot.

The young policeman had fired at almost the same time.

Standing next to the collapsed man was the image of the boy she had seen in the house. Dylan Ballantine, dead nearly three years, dead before his baby brother had been born.

The policeman rushed by Vickie and the baby, his own weapon aimed at the man—the convict!—who had evidently tripped...

The man on the ground screamed as the cop’s bullet exploded again; his gun went flying from his hand. He was disarmed, bleeding.

But only because he had tripped over the leg of a dead boy! Over Dylan Ballantine.

And as she continued to stare back in terror, the image of Dylan Ballantine began to fade.

And then he was gone.

The icy darkness of the wintry night began to settle in, and Noah began to cry at last.

1

Boston, Massachusetts

The North End

Summer

Griffin Pryce ran hard and as fast as he could, ahead of Jackson Crow by maybe ten feet. Not that it mattered. The clue had led them to the historic old cemetery, but once there, they’d have to look.

Thankfully it was summer. There was no abundance of multicolored autumn leaves to cover the ground; they would hopefully find an area that had been disturbed easily enough.

This was the first time the kidnapper/killer known as the Undertaker had actually left his victim in a cemetery. At least, so Griffin believed.

He was known to box his victims, nail them into wooden coffin-like crates.

Now, the box might well be a coffin.

There—behind dozens of slate stone markers, few really over the bodies they memorialized anymore and even fewer that had been rechiseled so that the words honoring the dead were legible—he saw where the ground had been ripped up.

He raced to the area—then swore when he hit a soft spot in the ground and went down—straight down—a good four feet.

“Here!” he shouted, though, of course, shouting was rather inane since Jackson surely recognized that Griffin had fallen into some kind of a pit.

Not so strange, he knew. In 2009, a woman had fallen into the stairway of a long forgotten tomb at the Granary cemetery. Time had a way with slate seals and old granite and the earth. Thousands had been buried here throughout time; all kinds of vaults lay beneath the surface.

He just prayed that they had found the right place, right now; that they were in time.

He heard Jackson coming up behind him as he frantically worked to dislodge more dirt from underneath himself. He doubted that the kidnapper would have had enough time to dig too deeply.

Thank God, he hadn’t. He found the poor wooden coffin in which the victim had been buried alive. As he worked to remove heavy clods of dirt and bracken, Jackson was already on the phone calling for backup and an ambulance.

Backup wasn’t far behind them. But before others arrived, Jackson joined him in the hole. They pried open the coffin lid.

And found Barbara Marshall.

She was pale beyond death; her lips were blue.

For a split second, Griffin and Jackson stared at one another. Then Jackson braced the coffin as Griffin pulled the woman from it, crawled from the hole with her in his arms, eased her gently to the ground and began resuscitation. He counted, he prayed, applied pressure and tried to breathe life into the woman.

Even in the midst of his efforts, a med tech arrived; Griffin gave way to the trained man who moved in to take his place.

“We may have been too late!” he said, the words a whisper, yet fierce even in their quiet tone.

“Maybe not,” Jackson said.

The emergency crew worked quickly. Griffin stood there, almost numb, as Barbara Marshall was moved, as a gurney was brought, as lifesaving techniques went into play with a rush of medical equipment.

Then she was whisked away, and he and Jackson were left gasping for breath as their counterpart from the police department arrived, while uniformed officers held back the suddenly growing crowd—and the press.

At last, with enough breath, Griffin looked at Jackson. “Think she’ll make it?”

“She may.”

“Think he’s watching?” Griffin asked.

“Hard to tell. Whoever is doing this is also leading the semblance of a normal life,” Jackson said.

“So he—or they—could be at work, picking kids up from school, or so on,” Griffin murmured.

“But I think that, yes, watching will be part of the pleasure, whenever they can watch,” Jackson said.

Griffin stood, fighting anger and disgust, and looked around at the buildings that surrounded them.

Boston was, to him, one of the most amazing cities in America. Modern finance and massive skyscrapers dominated the downtown area—along with precious gems of history. Boston Common, King’s Chapel, Faneuil Hall, the Paul Revere House, the Old North Church and more were within easy walking distance. Centuries of history within blocks. Colonial architecture, Gothic churches, Victorian; Boston was a visual display of American eras.