The Final Victim(114)

Oakgate is her home.

Just as it always should have been.

Just as it always should be.

Surely he should have seen that.

But her brother didn't leave her the house.

He didn't leave her anything at all.

It doesn't matter now.

Tucked beneath Jeanne's mattress is the orange plastic bottle of Gilbert's sleeping pills, pilfered from his medicine cabinet weeks ago.

She was dismayed to find that the prescription must have been almost due for a refill.

In and of themselves, there weren't enough capsules in the bottle to do the job.

But Eleanore's lethal recipe called for one other ingredient, and unwittingly Melanie agreed to provide it "Your hands are shaking pretty badly, Jeanne," Aimee observes. "How are you going to shoot me? It takes steady hands to shoot a gun. Believe me, I'm aware of that. Do you know why?"

Jeanne doesn't reply, just struggles to keep the gun trained on her target.

"I'll tell you why. Because I spent the last two years-two years, Jeanne-in marksmanship training. I can hit a terrorist on a predesignated freckle on his arm from a block away." She emits a short laugh. "Or I can hit a regular Joe in the leg from just across the street, and, thanks to my medical background, be sure to take him down… without permanent damage."

Jeanne's jaw drops. "Are you talking about Royce?"

"Royce?" she echoes. "Sure, we'll call him Royce for a little while longer if you like. But we don't have much time."

"For what?"

"It's almost over, Jeanne. You've lived a long life. Is there anything you want to tell me?"

"What… What do you mean?" 'You know… anything you'd like to share, before you die. People like to do that, Jeanne. And I like to listen. It was part of my job, and I kind of miss it, you know?"

Aimee moves to take a step forward, believing that Jeanne might be so engrossed in her story that she won't notice.

"Stay there!"

Aimee obeys Jeanne's sharp command. But she keeps talking.

"I'm a nurse. Did you know that? Just like your friend Melanie. So I know all about people like you."

"And I know all about people like you. "Jeanne glares at her.

Ignoring that, Aimee goes on, "I used to take care of lonely old people. Some of them didn't have anybody else in the whole world who would take care of them, or anybody to leave their money to. A few of them actually left it to me, not that they had much. Still, it was nice of them, don't you think? And you'd be surprised how many of them had lots of cash hidden right there in their houses."

Jeanne thinks of the wad of twenty-dollar bills, now sealed in an envelope with Melanie's name on it Just yesterday, Melanie finally revealed that her benefactor was a married congressman. He died a few years ago, leaving her with only the condo he bought for her.

So Melanie can use Jeanne's birthday money-meager a sum as it is. Along with the cash, she's leaving Melanie a note: a suicide note, as it were, to thank Melanie for all she did, and apologize for what Jeanne has to do.

"A lot of old people don't believe in banks. Do you, Jeanne? Oh, wait, I guess it doesn't matter. I guess you don't have any money to start with."

Jeanne's finger tightens over the trigger.

"But my favorite part of the job was just listening. Some of those deathbed confessions can be really interesting. Take Silas Neville's, for instance."

Silas Neville?

The vaguely familiar name seems to hover before Jeanne in a fog.

Then Jeanne plucks the recollection from the chasm of lost memory. He was a friend of Gilbert's, she now recalls. Ever since he was a boy.

"Remember him, Jeanne?" Aimee smiles. "His was the most interesting confession of all. And I was the only one who heard it. Just like I'll be the only one to hear yours. So, Jeanne, do you have any final requests? Any profound last words?"

Jeanne swallows hard, staring into green eyes-unnaturally green-that are ablaze with madness.

"No?" Aimee asks, after a short pause. "Then I'd say it's time to call it quits."

In one abrupt movement, she reaches for her pocket.

She's going for a gun, Jeanne realizes.

Then a deafening blast swoops her to a place where there can be no more pain.

"Lianna!"

Her stepfather's voice is faint, drifting to her ears from someplace above her, up in the house.

Cowering on the stairway in the damp, dark tunnel concealed behind the wall of her room, she wonders if she should go down and try to escape through the basement after all.

She decided against it earlier, afraid that somebody would see her through one of the windows as she tries to flee the house-or, even more frightening, that she might be lying in wait in the cellar.

Royce's daughter.

Aimee.

Thinking again of what she saw upstairs in the master bedroom, Lianna closes her eyes to shut out the disgusting vision of father and daughter-in each other's arms.

So engrossed were they that they never even realized they had been seen.

Not that Lianna lingered in the doorway for more than a nauseating split second.

That was all it took for her to realize that her stepfather isn't the man she and her mother believed him to be…