At the Quiet Edge(87)

So Everett set the phone on the ledge of the roof, and he spoke quietly toward it, even as he placed his foot on the first rung.

“I’m Everett Brown, I’m at Neighborhood Storage on Ranch Road, and there’s a crazy cop here threatening to shoot my mom. Please send help.” As he descended past the lip of the roof, he raised his face toward the phone. “He’s a detective, but I can’t remember his name, and he has my mom handcuffed to a truck! He’s going to kill her! Send help, please! Please!”

Then Everett scrambled down the ladder and threw himself straight into the sights of a monster.





CHAPTER 33


He’d gotten away. Thank God Everett had gotten away.

After she’d pounced on Mendelson, he’d punished her by punching her temple so hard she’d seen nothing but stars. But Everett had gotten away, so she’d let herself be dragged to a truck and handcuffed to the frame.

The sound of Mendelson screaming for Everett loosed a deep primal roar of joy inside her own body. That meant he didn’t have him. That meant her son was free.

She managed to twist her feet to the side. When she tried to brace herself more thoroughly against the truck so she could stand, his shouts were dulled by the scrape of her shoes on gravel. Her head pounded with pain. She got her feet under her, but had no strength left in her legs.

Then she made out some of the words Mendelson was screaming into the sky, and her joy dried into dust. “No,” she whispered. Then she screamed, “No!”

He couldn’t come back for her. He wouldn’t, would he? He’d stay hidden and safe. He’d stay alive. He had to. She didn’t care if she was shot; Everett had to stay gone.

Mendelson’s footsteps moved away. She prayed. She cried. She yelled, “No, no, no!” as if the words would float up to Everett on a gust of wind. But the wind had died down. The sun emerged.

“Mom?” she heard an impossibly tiny voice say, and her heart exploded into a thousand bits of torn and bleeding grief.

“Evvie?” she sobbed. “Evvie, no!”

Then he was crying too, his voice pitched back into childhood instead of the young man he was so close to being. “Mom, he said he’d shoot you if I didn’t come back. I’m sorry.”

He stumbled into view, her perfect little baby. When Mendelson shoved him, Everett cried out, throwing out his hands to keep from falling onto her face. “Mom? Are you okay? You’re bleeding.”

When he curled his body around hers, all she could do was cry and say, “I’m sorry,” over and over. Because she was so, so sorry she had done this to him.

It was her fault. All of it was.

“It’s okay,” she whispered into his keening throat. “It’s okay, baby. Shhh.”

“No, it’s definitely not okay,” Mendelson sneered. “Where’s the phone?”

He shook his head against her, then yelped when Mendelson grabbed him by the back of the neck and pulled him off.

“Leave him alone!” Lily yelled.

“Where is the phone?” he ground out through clenched teeth.

“I-I don’t know. I dropped it when I was running. Then I didn’t know what to do; that’s why I came back.”

“Liar. You called it in, didn’t you?” He shuffled his hands roughly over Everett’s body, patting him down for the phone.

“I didn’t!” Everett cried.

“Let’s find out.” Mendelson flashed an evil smile, then pulled a police radio from his belt. The radio flared to life with a crackle and a grating explosion of digital voices.

He scowled at it for quite a long time while Lily kissed Everett’s head and breathed in his smell, wishing she could just put her arms around him.

Mendelson finally looked up with a little chuckle that raised the hair on Lily’s neck. “Looks like you were telling the truth, kid. Nothing on the radio. Aren’t we lucky? Regardless, it’s time to go.”

“Go where?” Lily pressed.

“Wherever I say.”

She cringed back when he crouched next to her to unlock the handcuffs. She could see from the genuine warmth of his smile that he liked her flinching and afraid. After locking her wrists behind her, he slapped her thigh and winked when she nearly jumped from her skin.

“Please don’t,” she begged. “I swear I’ve told you everything.”

“I don’t believe you,” he countered calmly. He sneered at Everett as he gestured toward Lily. “Christ, what a crybaby. Get her up.”

Everett scrambled to his feet and grabbed Lily beneath her arm right where Mendelson had hurt her.

“I’m sorry,” he said at her gasp of pain as she did her best to stand. “I’m sorry, Mom.”

“Let’s go,” Mendelson ordered, as if it were her fault she could barely move. Lily imagined he’d barked at his wife this way after he’d beaten her, annoyed with the very suffering he’d caused, irritated that she was bothered by his violence. But his anger served its purpose, and Lily’s muscles surged with adrenaline. Finally, she was on her feet.

Everett tucked himself beneath her chin, and she kissed his head over and over. “It’s okay,” she repeated.

Mendelson waved them forward. When Everett took a step, that bastard grabbed his shoulder to swing him around before he pulled a zip tie out to restrain her son’s hands behind him.