At the Quiet Edge(84)

Zoey would take care of Everett, wouldn’t she? Zoey would take her boy and love him, because she loved everyone. Grief twisted through her, wanting to scream.

Mendelson climbed off, then yanked Lily to her feet by her hair. She scrambled up, trying to ease the searing fire across her scalp.

“You’ve got one more chance to show me, you whore. You’re not going to like your next punishment, I promise.”

Lily nodded and pointed her body in the right direction, hating the tight hold of his hands on both her arms as she walked him through the vehicles. Hating the sharp ache in her ribs and her shoulders. Afraid to imagine how much more pain was coming. She couldn’t think about that. She had to stay blank and focused on keeping him far from her son.

“This is it,” she finally gasped, slowing in front of the RV’s door. “Right there.”

He reached for the handle and pulled it open, then shoved her inside, banging her knees hard against the metal edge of the step. She scrambled in and cowered against the kitchenette.

Mendelson walked up the two steps, seeming to grow impossibly tall above Lily in the small space. A giant. A demon who’d lost his angel. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

“You did know. You knew exactly what you were doing.”

He pulled the door shut behind him and withdrew a flashlight, then stepped toward the little bed that made up most of the room. When he reached out to reverently touch the bare mattress, Lily’s face crumpled because this man wasn’t in his right mind. Not at all. No wonder Amber had been so scared. His eyes looked too big, too wild, taking in everything and nothing. In the dimness of the RV, his irises looked black and bottomless.

“Where’s my girl?” he asked quietly, calmly, then in the next breath he let loose a terrifying roar. “Where’s my girl?”

“I don’t have any idea!” Lily babbled, raising her hands to cover her face when he lunged toward her.

“Give me your phone. Where is it?”

He began slapping at her, a couple of slaps to the side of her head before he worked his way down her body. He tugged up her sweatshirt, then stuffed his hands into her pockets, nearly pulling off her pants. “Where is it? You have her number. You know where she went.”

“I don’t know!” she shrieked. “I don’t know!”

He grabbed at her, rougher now, yanking her up so he could scream in her face. “Where’s my wife and son?”

But she couldn’t answer, because his hands were around her neck then. She tried to speak, then she tried to breathe, and then she only tried to pry his fingers open as her lungs caught fire and began to eat her alive. She burned for air, and then the world turned red, then gray, then, finally, black.

Lily floated. Nothing hurt; she didn’t even feel that sad, really. Her deep, dark sorrow was a phantom she couldn’t touch from this high up.

“I’m sorry . . . ,” she heard vaguely from somewhere far away. A spirit, maybe, leading her up? Or perhaps she was about to be pulled down beneath the earth and deeper still.

“I’m sorry I did that,” the voice purred. “I just need you to tell me the truth. We have to find Amber; it’s very important. If we don’t find Amber, very bad things will happen.”

Yes. Yes, she knew that. Very bad things were already happening.

Lily drew a deep breath that scalded her throat and sent her into a violent, wrenching coughing fit. When that finally cleared, every breath burned, but she could see gray light stealing past the edges of the ugly curtains above the sink. How much time had passed? Was Everett awake?

“I took her somewhere,” she croaked. Because she knew what she had to do now. She needed to lead Mendelson off the grounds so he could kill her somewhere very far away from her son.

“What?” he asked, leaning closer.

She coughed again, harder, until he finally got up to search through the cabinets until he found a water bottle. “I took her somewhere,” she tried again, and this time she knew he heard it, because he smiled.

And Lily immediately wished she were in the black void again.





CHAPTER 32


Everett was having a dream about being in a boy band, which was odd because he didn’t like boy bands. They all looked like cartoon characters to him.

But not his band. He was a member of a singing group of guys from his old soccer team, and they all wore their soccer stuff onstage. He was so frantically stressed about the new song he’d forgotten to memorize he felt nothing but a gasp of gratitude when his alarm woke him up.

Granted it wasn’t so much gratitude that he jumped out of bed. He had already fallen back asleep when a crack of lightning hit somewhere close, and he woke again with a start. He glanced at his clock and realized he’d now passed his second alarm. He must have hit SNOOZE during one of the dream’s dance numbers.

“Shit,” he cursed, then threw a wince at the door in case his mom was standing there.

She wasn’t. His door was still closed tight. Weird.

Getting up, he pulled on jeans that weren’t too dirty, then grabbed a pair of socks to head straight toward the bathroom to pee and brush his teeth. The whole apartment was dark, and the bathroom light didn’t respond when he hit the switch. “Mom?” he called, pausing for a moment in the doorway.