The Last Thing She Ever Did(95)

She’d tell them.

“Honey,” she said, lifting him into her arms, “I’ll take you home. I’ll take you to your mommy now.”

Blood oozed from her shoulder, but she paid no attention to it.

“Auntie Liz,” he said, “Dan’s hurt.”

“I know,” she said. “I’m sorry. I’ll call for help when I get you home.”

Carrying Charlie, Liz opened the basement door facing the river. Adrenaline coursed through her body. Her world was about to change. Carole was on the porch, watching the river. It would be over now. Liz would go to jail for kidnapping or something along those lines, but she had not killed Charlie. She was not a murderer.

Not the killer of a little boy.

Dr. Miller? Well, that was another matter.

“Carole!” she called over the water, her voice charged with emotion. “He’s alive! Charlie’s alive!”

Carole ran down to the river’s edge. She was frantic. Even from a distance, Liz could see that Charlie’s mother understood what was happening, that her son was about to be returned to her. That everything she’d prayed for had come true.

He was Jaycee. He was Elizabeth. He was the trio of Cleveland survivors . . .

The water was high and moving swiftly. Carole was about to go in when Liz stopped her.

“No, Carole!” she called out. “Don’t go in the water. Meet me on the bridge. Call 911. Dr. Miller had him the whole time. I think I killed him, Carole. I killed Dr. Miller!”



“Mommy! Mommy!”

Liz would never forget the expression on Carole’s face as she put Charlie in his mother’s arms on the footbridge over the Deschutes. It was a look that somehow expressed disbelief and shock and fear and relief and gratitude all at the same time. Liz took several steps back, leaving them to it. Mother and son stood in the center of the span, the water of the Deschutes running beneath it a gray scarf being pulled out from under them.

Tears streamed down Carole’s face.

“Charlie,” she said over and over.

“Mommy,” he said, “I was calling for you. Why didn’t you come?”

Carole held him tight. She breathed him in.

“Honey,” she said, “I was looking for you. I was looking for you everywhere. I didn’t hear you. I didn’t hear you call me.”

“Liz hurt Dan,” he said.

Carole noticed the blood on Liz’s shirt, then the gash on her shoulder. “Liz, you’re hurt.”

“I’m okay,” Liz said.

“We need a doctor,” Carole said. She gripped her son but kept her eyes on her friend. “We need help for both of you. She saved you, Charlie. Liz saved you.”

By then Liz was reeling. She could barely stand. She’d killed someone. This time she really had. Her heart was pumping so hard that her rib cage ached. Inside, she felt as lonely as she ever had. Her secret had eaten away at her, and she imagined she was hollow inside.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” she said, trying to find the words. “There’s something I need to tell you.”

Carole pulled her gaze from her boy for just a moment. “You saved him,” she said. “You saved Charlie. Let’s go.”

Still searching for the right words, Liz wanted to say more, but Carole wasn’t having any of it.

“We need to get him to a doctor,” she said. “God knows what’s been done to him.”

“Okay,” Liz said. “Yes.”

Liz watched as Carole nuzzled her son as they walked to their side of the Deschutes. Sirens could be heard in the distance and people had started to gather along the river to watch the stunning reunion between mother and child. The onlookers stayed mostly silent as police vehicles and ambulances converged on the scene.

“That’s the missing boy,” a woman said.

“It’s a miracle,” said another.





CHAPTER SIXTY

MISSING: NO MORE

Dan Miller’s basement was a prepper’s dream. The old man had outfitted the space with a pantry loaded with canned goods, a chest freezer full of food, and a storehouse of potential weapons gleaned from the garden shed and the kitchen. Knives. A saw. Hammers. It was a bunker of sorts. The techs had processed the scene, and the body had been removed. With just Esther and Jake left, the space seemed to echo.

Clean and spartan.

“What was he doing?” Jake asked, picking through the strange assemblage of weapons. “The End Times or something?”

Esther wasn’t sure. “Maybe something else.”

They made their way through the main living space. The couch had obviously been used as the doctor’s bed. A pillow was placed squarely on one end, a crisply folded Pendleton blanket on the other. Shoes sat polished and waiting for his feet to slip inside. Everything was in order—except for a large bloody smear that indicated where he’d fallen and cracked his skull on the polished concrete floor.

“Never regained consciousness,” Jake noted.

“Paramedics said he murmured something before flatlining en route to the hospital,” Esther said. “Not sure what it was. They think it might have been something about Diamond Lake.”

A startled look flashed on the young man’s face. “That’s where his kid drowned.”