When You See Me (Detective D.D. Warren #11)(109)

I crash through the swinging door into the kitchen. More wind whips around my face, tears at my hair. I want to be angry at them. Stop picking on me. Attack him instead.

But I get it. Even in death, they are afraid. I would be, too.

I snap on the commercial dishwasher. Once it reaches temperature, it’ll fill the kitchen with steam as boiling hot water sprays from inside the hood. I’ve worked with the dishwasher. I know how to withstand its spray. Does he?

I want a knife, but I’ve already been through that. Waving a butter knife at him. Only to have him attack, disarm, then carve me up with his much larger blade.

He’s so big, so strong. He stood behind Mrs. Counsel and squeezed the life out of her without breaking a sweat. He took out my blond protector in a single tackle, leaving her broken on the floor. Then dashed upstairs and killed a second armed deputy in a matter of minutes.

I feel a fresh hitch in my throat, panic rising, choking me. In desperation, I yank open the door to the broom closet. The mop sits inside, long handle protruding from its rolling yellow bucket. Maybe I can use the wooden handle to hit him, like the older woman attacking D.D. with the poker. The handle is long enough, maybe I can stay out of reach of his blade.

Then I see the bottle of bleach and am seized by a second idea.

I grab the bottle, unscrew the cap, douse the mophead liberally. I just finish emptying the bottle when the kitchen door bangs open. The Bad Man looms before me, his face flecked with blood, his hunting knife still dripping.

The room goes still. No more wind, restless spirits. We are all, living and dead, equally terrified.

“Did you miss me?” he asks.

I tighten my hands on the mop handle, and prepare to make my last stand.





CHAPTER 45





KIMBERLY





WHAT THE—” KIMBERLY ARRIVED AT the stone chamber first, the sheriff on her heels. Somewhere behind them, Keith and Flora still labored through the tunnels.

It took Kimberly a moment to absorb the scene. The secret doorway was now partially blocked by the giant oak table. And propped up against the doorframe was Franny, her pale blue sweater covered in blood. She was gripping her right shoulder. Then she saw the sheriff and promptly moaned.

“Sheriff, Sheriff, please help. That Yankee detective went crazy. She shot me.”

Kimberly ignored the woman, picking up the fire poker that lay at Franny’s side. She made out blood and a blond hair.

She turned to Sheriff Smithers, pointing to the single hair in the room’s dim light. His expression was equally grim.

“Franny,” said the sheriff sternly. “What did you do?”

“Why, nothing at all. I was just standing down here, waiting for your return, and the detective, I swear she went a mite wild—”

“Bill Benson’s dead.”

“I shot him myself,” Kimberly volunteered.

Franny paled. Her lower lip quivered.

The sheriff shook his head. “You did this, Franny. You and Bill. Why?”

The woman looked up. “I’m just a mom, Sheriff, doing whatever it takes to protect my son.”

“Told you so,” Kimberly informed the sheriff.

Just as bang, bang, bang. Gunshots. From the hallway.

“You got her,” Kimberly ordered the sheriff. Then she was sprinting out of the room, .22 in hand.





CHAPTER 46





D.D.





D.D. HAD BEEN STANDING. SHE remembered that much. She’d been upright, holding her firearm at her left side, with her bruised right arm tight against her torso.

The hallway was dark, but she could hear plenty. A scuffling sound she bet was Bonita, hobbling ahead. Followed by harder, angrier footsteps stalking in her wake.

Then her flashlight had found its target. A huge shadowy figure that looked as wide as a cement truck and as tall as a grizzly bear. A demon—Bonita had been exactly right. Something less man, more beast. D.D. had widened her stance, issued her first warning. Then the monster had turned and charged her.

She’d fired her weapon. A good officer reacts on instinct. But she had no memory of aiming before she was slammed against the hard stone floor, the air leaving her body in a giant whoosh, as the flashlight rolled free, and her firearm . . . Was she holding it, not holding it?

No time to think before a large serrated blade flashed down toward her chest. She twisted enough to take the first strike in her shoulder, the blade skittering across her bone. Then the knife jerked up, spraying blood, her blood, before preparing for a fresh descent. D.D. brought up her left hand to beat at him, fingers digging for his eyeballs, the soft part of his throat. He was straddling her body, pinning her in place. She couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe.

The knife flashed down.

A gun fired. Not D.D.’s but from somewhere behind her. Sheetrock exploded on the wall. The second round sprayed stone chips in her face.

Abruptly, the demon man sprang to his feet. Except he had both hands wrapped around D.D.’s shirt, dragging her up with him as if she were no more than a doll, her feet dangling inches off the floor. He held her directly in front him. A human shield.

“I will kill her first,” the beast whispered in her ear. She knew he meant Bonita. “The way I should have killed her, in the desert years ago. Her mother thought she could get away, as well. But they never do. I always win in the end.”