Fatal Strike (McClouds & Friends #10)(117)

It was a large SUV. It parked near the RV. It took a couple of seconds to recognize the haggard woman who got out of the driver’s seat. Anabel had aged thirty years since Spruce Ridge. Dull skin, stringy hair, caved-in cheeks, shadowed, sunken eyes.

She jerked open the back seat, leaned in, and grabbed something, heaving it out with some effort, letting it flop heavily onto the ground.

That thing proved to be a person swathed in duct tape, in a long, olive drab wool army coat, a multicolored knitted cap, a tangled mop of long, wavy dark hair. Levis. Purple lace-up kicks. Oh, Jesus. Lara.

His artificial calm exploded from within, like it had been mined.





She swam up through the dark, lungs screaming. Wondering if she’d be better off falling back down into the thick, viscous darkness. Just ending the fight, and falling back into sleep. Endless sleep.

She would have, if it weren’t for the lantern glowing in her head. She had no words in this dark place in her mind, but the closer she came to the surface, the more words, thoughts, images came back. Fear and pain, too. Throbbing in her head, her arm. Twisting in her middle.

Miles. He was her lantern, her beacon. Her star in the darkness. She wanted to call out to him, but she couldn’t visualize images in this condition. She couldn’t see the control room, the computer screen.

She felt numb, frozen. Mute and helpless.

She forced her eyes open. Her head hurt, like it had been whacked with a splitting maul. Arms still bound. She moved slightly, and almost screamed, though her throat was too swollen to make much sound. Oh dear God, that hurt.

She rolled onto her side, and raised her head.

She was in a small, blind room. It had shiny, reflective metal walls. She became gradually aware of a whirring sound. Movement, currents. A fan, pumping air. The room was filled with large, irregular shapes, wrapped in white drop cloths. Like stiff, unmoving ghosts.

The one closest to her was an elongated, irregular box, about three feet high. She fussed at it with her feet until the dropcloth was loose, and then turned, grabbing the edge with her uninjured hand. The cloth unwound, and the thing wrapped in it spun, wobbled, and fell.

She gaped, astonished. It was one of her own sculptures. Pandora’s Box. It had been bought for a tidy sum, the very day before they came for her. She vaguely remembered celebrating in a bar with some friends that same evening. The Pandora figure stared at her sidewise, as if Lara herself had put that horrified, oh-what-the-f*ck-have-I-done? look on her glazed ceramic face.

It gave her a bad moment of stomach free-fall, as if the place was a surreal antechamber to her own private, personal hell.

But that human-shaped thing in the corner. That was not hers. She’d never made anything of that size and shape.

She forced herself up, gasping at the needle jabs of agony in her head, her wrist. Oh, ouch. Hung over from their junk, as usual.

She stumbled over to the statue, worrying it with her teeth, then with her good hand behind her back. She yanked at the bungee cords wrapped around it. The hooks came loose, the dropcloth fell.

Greaves. It was a bronze statue of the guy himself, snapping a photo and smiling. Yes, this was definitely hell.

It was the statue from her visions. She’d never seen its face, since it had always been covered by rivulets of birdshit, but she recognized the pose, the camera.

The vortex took her so fast, she didn’t even try to fight.

She stood in that strange, empty town square, staring at the stained statue. A huge, forbidding black crow was perched on the hand that held the camera. It shook its wings, and regarded her sideways, with one beady, unfriendly eye. Gray skies, wind sweeping pine needles across the paving stones, but the grass was higher than the last time. An elk strode through the trees of the park as she watched. A fountain stood, bare and dry, encrusted with lichen. Behind her, on a park bench, was a man she had seen in an earlier vision. She’d seen him lying down, his head on a newspaper, as if he were sleeping.

He wasn’t sleeping now. A weather-beaten skull now lay on the grayish lump of paper. Shreds of rotten clothing fluttered on his bones, his shriveled flesh. One of his legs had been detached, and various pieces were scattered around. A shoe lay not far from her foot. Bones protruded from it. Some carrion eater had gnawed upon him.

She turned away, sickened. There were other scattered lumps, chunks of bone, probably cadavers, too. She tried not to focus on them.

She looked around, shivering. She’d never seen the entire phantom town square before, only pieces of it, like a disjointed dream. But today, she did a full three-sixty, and saw a big marble building that faced one side of the square. It was weather-beaten and discolored. The doors gaped wide and hung askew on its hinges. Drifts of leaves and garbage had collected against the fa?ade. As she watched, a rat came out of the open door and scurried into a crack in the wall.

Above the door, carved in stone, was “Greaves Museum of Modern Art.”

Her neck tingled, and she whirled around, heart pounding. It was the boy, but this time he was even younger than before. Maybe five. He held a ragged teddy bear by the foot. He was terribly thin, hollow-eyed, dressed in the same ragged, filthy pajamas.

He looked so lonely and desolate in that dead place, her heart felt squeezed and crushed. “What are you doing here, all alone?”

The boy shook his head and stuck his thumb in his mouth.

“Do you have something to tell me?”

His eyes widened. He held out his hand, waving with the limp teddy bear toward the nearest bundle of what looked like dry white twigs and rotten fabric, as if to say, This isn’t enough for you?