Paranoid(45)

Nope, there was no love lost between him and his ex-father-in-law.

But that still wouldn’t keep him from talking to Ned about Luke Hollander’s murder. He glanced at the newspaper lying on the coffee table and read the article about the homicide again.

This piece was pretty straightforward, just the facts as they had been reported and, to Mercedes Pope’s credit, she didn’t embellish the facts, or report rumors, or write anything that was too inflammatory.

But what was next? How could Mercedes sustain a series about the homicide and keep readers interested by merely repeating what everyone already knew?

By changing her reporting and inflating the petty drama?

And embellishing the story of Violet Sperry, a girl who’d been at the scene of the homicide, whose testimony had been crucial in the trial of Rachel Gaston, and who was now dead, the victim of another homicide, twenty years to the date of the first one.

Surely that new mystery wouldn’t hurt circulation.

Not that Cade believed Mercedes Pope was behind either of the murders.

He was just damned sure she’d exploit them in order to sell a few more copies of the Edgewater Edition.



Click-click.

Shivering in the darkness, the air rushing through the building cold as death, Rachel squeezes the trigger.

Click-click-click-click.

She shoots again and real bullets whizz through the old cannery, though the muzzle of her gun remains dark as she squeezes off the rounds.

Bullets keep flying. Not pellets, as Luke had promised.

Her insides freeze.

This wasn’t right.

Click-click.

Luke had said it was safe.

Luke had lied to her, but why? This was a game. It wasn’t supposed to be real.

“No,” she whispers, but she can’t stop shooting; she just keeps squeezing and the damned gun goes off, round after round.

Click-click.

“No!” Rachel cries. She turns, trying to run, trying to throw the gun away. Down the chute to the river, that’s it. Her heart thundering, her teeth gritted, she hurls the damned gun, throws it into the chute that opens to the Columbia. Hears it clatter against the rusting metal sides.

But when she looks at her hands again, the gun is still clutched in her fingers.

The same pistol?

Or another?

Real?

Or fake?

Panic strangles her.

She hears a sound behind her, the scrape of a shoe.

Spinning, she fires again, and again, and again.

Click. Click. Click!

Luke appears before her, staggering back.

No!

He is bleeding as he falls, his face ashen.

“Oh, God. Luke! No, no, no!” She watches in horror as she sees the light in his blue eyes dim, his lids close.

“No . . . no . . . I didn’t mean to—” Sobbing, she kneels beside him. He can’t be dead, can’t be. She feels as if her soul has been scraped raw as she touches his face. Cold. So cold. “I’m sorry. Oh, God, Luke, I’m so, so sorry.”

At that moment, his eyes open and he stares at her. “Where did you get the real gun?” he whispers.

“From you. You gave it to me.”

“Did I? I don’t think so.” Before her disbelieving eyes, his face begins to rot, his skin curdling away from his teeth, blood oozing, his nasal cavity exposed, his eyes bulging.

She screams and scuttles away, across the old plank floors, scrambling to her feet as she hears the others. Laughing. Screaming. Running.

Yet over it all the decaying, horrific thing lying before her whispers in a hoarse voice, “I forgive you.”

What? No!

“Stop!” She pulls the trigger. Hard. On purpose. Aiming for the creature that had been Luke.

Click. Click. Click!

“I forgive you,” the thing says again, his hideous voice a rasp, yet somehow ricocheting off the walls of the cannery.

“Stop! Just stop!”





Rachel’s eyes flew open.

Her own words echoed in her head even as they jarred her awake.

Sweating, breathing hard, her heart pounding a frantic tattoo, she was lying in her bed, not at the cannery. Twenty years had passed. Luke was long dead. She was safe in her own bedroom. There was no gun. She wasn’t going to shoot anyone, ever again. There was no gun. She wasn’t going to shoot anyone. Not ever!

Pushing her hair from her eyes, she felt beads of sweat on her forehead. In fact, her entire body was moist. Get a grip. For the love of God, Rachel, pull yourself together.

At the foot of the bed Reno was curled in a ball, but he’d lifted his head to stare at her. As he always did when the onslaught of night terrors caused her to cry out. “Sorry,” she said as if the dog could understand.

But she was sorry. So damned sorry. For everything that happened that night. If only she hadn’t gone to the cannery. If only she hadn’t gotten separated from Lila. If only she hadn’t had the wrong gun.

What was it Luke had said in the nightmare? When she’d accused him of giving her the deadly, real pistol.

Did I? I don’t think so.

She’d wondered about that....

If only she’d known more about guns.... Hell, she’d been a policeman’s daughter. She should have had some insight into what was real and what was not. But the truth was she’d never held a pistol before that night. Ned Gaston had seen enough damage with firearms to never allow one in the house. He’d even kept his own service weapon at the station.