Hope's Peak (Harper and Lane #1)(56)

Her palms are sweaty on the steering wheel as she weaves through the traffic.

All she can think is, He won’t wait.



Lester strokes Ceeli’s hair. He is naked but for his head. The torn hood is on; the belt is pulled tight, held in place with the buckle.

He pulls Ceeli’s head back and strokes his cock in her puffy face, rolling his eyes with the thrill of it, the tingle in every fiber of his being at performing such an act.

Lester pleasures himself, reveling in the moment, knowing it will come to an end. Ceeli will have to be moved. He’ll have to burn her body the way he burned Mack’s. But for now, it is glorious.

I feel like a new man.

He once watched a program on television that showed a pupa sealing itself in a cocoon, emerging some time later as a beautiful butterfly. A different beast altogether. After all these years, Lester knows it is his turn.

The man Mama wanted me to be.

Lester’s grip tightens on Ceeli’s hair, and his head jerks back, groaning, as wave after wave of euphoria washes over him . . .



Stu rings the doorbell and waits. When nothing happens he presses it again, tries to see through a dirty, dusty window if there is movement in the house.

None that he can see.

He takes out his gun and walks around the side. There’s a gate there and he has to reach over the top to unlatch it. It squeaks on its rusted hinges, and Stu’s hand flexes on the gun. The backyard is trashy, overgrown in places. There’s a rusted swing. Old trash cans. Stu looks at the house. The door is open a shade, swinging back and forth on the frame as the breeze nudges it.

Someone’s home.

There is a shed in the yard, but he dismisses it. Lester Simmons has to live here and, chances are, he’s in the house.

He moves toward the door.



Lester hears the squeak of the gate and watches from one of the shed windows as a lawman stalks across his yard, heading straight for the house.

His mother’s voice tickles like hairy spider legs inside his ear.

We don’t have no truck with people invadin’ our property lester baby you go get him you teach him a lesson he won’t soon forget . . .

“Yes, Mama.”

When the man’s slipped inside the house, Lester bounds across the lawn and goes after him.





15


As she drives, Harper’s head is foggy, awash with trepidation and a hundred different emotions.

“You alright, sugar?” Ida asks her. “You look ill.”

“I’m okay,” Harper lies. She feels sick to her stomach with worry. She wishes Stu were different, that he’d wait. But she knows he won’t. It just feels right that the last name on that list is the name of the killer.

Ida looks at the phone on the dash. “Don’t look like we’ve got much longer to go.”

“Say, Ida, do you think things will change for you when this guy is caught?” Harper asks her, just to get her mind off what they’re driving toward.

“Perhaps,” Ida says mysteriously. “I think that maybe they might.”

“Would you ever sell your house? Move closer to the town?”

Ida looks out the window, her face unreadable. “I don’t know. That’s a lot.”

“I know it is.”

When Harper thinks that Ida won’t say anything more, she does. “I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.”



He can hear the man walking farther into the house. Lester lifts the axe he keeps by the fridge and adjusts his grip on the worn handle. He creeps from the kitchen to the main entrance, where the man stands with his back to him. Lester’s bare feet on the dusty floor make no sound; he holds his breath and is silent as a shadow.

The man is deciding whether to go to the other side of the house or straight upstairs. But he spends too long thinking it over. In the seconds he has hesitated, Lester has closed the gap.

A noise—Lester’s foot scrapes the hard, cold floor as he raises the axe—makes the man turn around, gun coming up. Lester hacks down. The axe slices through the front of the man’s chest. He staggers back, fires his gun to the side. Thunder fills the inside of the house, and Lester has to resist the urge to clamp his hands on his ears.

No. Finish the job.

He brings the axe down again, this time into the man’s shoulder. The heavy blade hacks into him and gets wedged in his shoulder blade. The man lets loose a gargled scream that dies as he falls to the floor. Blood spews from where the axe juts up from his convulsing body.

Lester kicks the man’s gun away. It skitters across the floor. He puts one boot against the man’s chest, and tries to pull the axe free with both hands.

“That’f it,” Lester says, grunting with effort. “Come to Papa.”



Harper lowers her window, pulling up alongside Stu’s car. “Damn . . .”

A bloodcurdling scream pierces the silence. Ida grabs Harper’s hand and squeezes, hard.

“Oh no,” she gasps, looking up at the house.

Harper throws her door open. She passes Ida her phone. “You know how to work a cell phone, right?”

“I can figure it out.”

“Go into my contacts. Find Dudley. Call him. Tell him to get here. The address is on that piece of paper. Tell them everything that’s gone down here.”