Don't Make a Sound (Sawyer Brooks #1)(64)

It was a while before Malice felt good enough to come to her feet. She wasn’t sure how long she’d been outside. But the screams had stopped, and her stomach was no longer roiling, so she decided it was time to make her way back inside. She glanced at her watch as she headed back. Lily would be here in a few hours to relieve her.

Malice stepped through the warehouse door. It was much cooler inside than outside. Thinking her eyes were playing tricks on her, she froze in place, didn’t move a muscle.

Psycho had taken up where Malice had left off and was making a pot of coffee.

And Otto, ever so quietly, was creeping her way.

How could that be? They had chained him to the pipe. The answer was in his hand. He must have broken through the pipe while he was screaming. No wonder he’d been so loud. He’d been covering up his attempt at escaping.

Her heart raced as she reached for the rifle, careful that the butt was up against the crevice of her shoulder and her nonshooting elbow was directly below the barrel. She had to focus. She had no choice. She pushed the bolt forward and down and set her sight on her target.

Both Psycho and Otto must have heard the noise, because they pivoted so that they were looking right at her.

The only difference was that Psycho dropped to the floor.

Malice pulled the trigger. The blow sent her stumbling backward into the wall. Her ears were ringing, her eyes gritty. She looked ahead, wasn’t sure what she was seeing through blurry eyes.

The gun held at her side, she stepped forward, trying to see, her body tense as she worried Otto would attack at any moment.

As her vision cleared and the ringing in her ears lessened, she saw Otto facedown on the ground. Only that wasn’t the ground. Psycho grunted as she pulled and clawed her way out from under the man.

Malice wanted to help her, but she was afraid to set the gun down. She had no idea if the rifle held more than one bullet, since she couldn’t remember what Lily had said about loading the weapon. She waited for Psycho to crawl out from under the man. “Is he dead?” Malice asked.

Psycho came to her feet, pushed the hair out of her face, and reached for Otto’s wrist. After a moment, she let go. His lifeless arm thumped against the ground. “He’s dead.”

Relief and dread flooded through Malice.

“Put that thing away, will you?”

Malice leaned the weapon against the wall, then came back to where Psycho was examining Otto’s head. “A clean shot right through the skull,” Psycho pointed out.

“I’m a murderer,” Malice said.

“You saved my life,” Psycho said as she pulled her cell phone from her back pocket, pushed a button, and held it to her ear.

“Who are you calling?”

“Lily,” Psycho said. “We need you to bring a shovel or two. Yes, right away. Okay. See you soon.”

Malice looked at Psycho as if the woman had grown two heads, which she might as well have, considering she was covered in blood like something out of a horror movie. “Shovels?”

Psycho nodded. “We’re going to need to bury him.”

“We’re not going to call the police?”

“Are you nuts?”

Yes, Malice thought. I just killed a man. I am definitely nuts.





CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Early Monday morning, Sawyer lay in bed, thinking about Uncle Theo. Seeing him like that had been shocking. Over the years, she’d envisioned Uncle Theo dying in hundreds of gruesome scenarios. But for some reason she was still scared. Afraid he would find a way to get her.

She heard the sound of gravel popping under tires as a car drove off.

She sat up and looked around. It took a second to realize she’d left her bag along with her cell phone in her car. She slipped on her shoes, made her way outside and through the side yard to the front of the house.

Her purse was still sitting on the passenger seat. She grabbed it and walked back to the cottage, her arms covered in goose bumps. The mornings in River Rock were chilly, shaded by trees, everything crackling with icy morning dew.

Back inside the cottage, she pulled out her phone. It was dead. She plugged it in to let it charge as she went about collecting her things and using the bathroom. She grabbed the key to the main house and headed that way. The kitchen door was locked. She unlocked it and stepped inside. Everything was neat and tidy, as usual. You wouldn’t know anyone was living in the house.

She left the key on the counter where her parents would see it.

Wanting to give her phone time to charge, she exited the kitchen and walked down the hall and into the room where her parents had sat her down to talk. The chair in the middle of the room had been tucked back under a beautiful Revival-style card table. Her mom did have a gift for collecting unusual antiques.

She would never set foot in this house again, and for that she was glad.

She thought of Gramma, and her friend Rebecca, and Isabella. She would still write a story, but it would be as much about Isabella as it would be about all the other lost souls of River Rock. She would turn this little town on its back and expose the sad, disgusting underbelly that floated through the air and moved through underground pipes like poison.

Sawyer walked around the room, brushed her fingers over an old settee with its sloping, upholstered arms. She touched the wall and a table too, realizing she had no connection to anything in the house. It was a weird feeling, knowing she’d spent half of her life within these walls and felt nothing but sadness and grief.