Kill Her Again (A Thriller) Read online

  There was a locket dangling from the rearview mirror. It looked like it was open, but the reflection from the window made it kinda hard to see, so Jillian bent down a little to get a different angle.

  Inside was a photograph. A really old one, from the looks of it. A faded black and white. Jillian had seen pictures like it in her history book, from back when cameras were first invented and everybody stared into them like they were possessed by the Devil or something.

  The girl in the photograph looked that way, too. Was probably about fifteen or sixteen, with curly black hair and really big dark eyes. Her skin looked brown, like she’d spent a lot of time in the sun, and she had a shawl on her head.

  She was probably one of the most beautiful girls Jillian had ever seen. And there was something familiar about her. Like maybe she was somebody Jillian had known once.

  The girl looked like a gypsy. At least the gypsies Jillian had seen in the movies. And Jillian wondered if she was the driver’s great-grandma or some other relative, long dead, because if she was still alive, she was bound to be as wrinkly as a sun-dried fig.

  Jillian squinted at the photo a moment longer, then stood upright and moved to the rear passenger window. Nothing in the backseat or on the floor except for a crumpled McDonald’s bag that looked like it had been there for weeks. Jillian was about to move on when her attention was drawn to a familiar sight in the back windshield.

  That was weird.

  Down in the bottom right corner was a Big Mountain parking sticker. One that said: EMPLOYEE.

  Craig had one on his car, too. So whoever was driving this old heap worked for the same company that Craig did.

  Jillian suddenly got an oogy feeling. Could the driver of the car be Craig himself? She’d never seen him with a cigarette, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t a smoker.

  But why would he be driving this old hunk of junk? And how could he have been in the car sitting outside her bathroom window when she knew very well that he’d been in the living room with Mom?

  No, somebody else drove this car, somebody that worked with Craig.

  And then a sudden thought occurred to Jillian.

  Could Craig have hired someone to follow her? To watch her? To maybe even . . .

  No, that was crazy.

  Or was it?

  What if Craig wanted Mom all to himself, wanted them to be a team, so he could spend night after night on the sofa with her, watching The Fall Guy or whatever crummy TV show he felt like watching? Wouldn’t it be nice not to have Jillian around to make a stink about it?

  She knew there was a reason not to like the guy. Him with his happy smiles and free passes to Big Mountain. Maybe that’s why the place had made her feel so creepy. Maybe whoever he’d hired had been watching her even then.

  She tried to think back to the night they’d gone there, trying to remember when she’d first gotten that feeling. Mom and the TV hog were off doing their own thing, while Jillian and Suzie rode the Log Jammers and the Big Mountain Express and just about any other ride they could get on. Craig had given them VIP passes, so they were always able to go to the front of the line without having to have a wheelchair or a cane.

  By the time they’d gotten off of their fifth or sixth ride, they had decided to get some cotton candy and sit down for a while. They found a bench across from the Miner’s Magic Mirror Maze, and that, she realized, was when she’d gotten the feeling. The creepy feeling that someone was watching her. Someone inside.

  Could it have been the guy from the Rambler?

  “Come on, Jillian, let’s go,” Suzie said. “Somebody’s gonna come.”

  Suddenly feeling creepier than she’d ever felt before, Jillian decided that her friend was right. It was time to go and they’d better go right now. She turned and headed back toward Suzie, grabbing her friend’s hand when she reached her.

  She wanted to tell Mom about Craig and the Rambler and about how she thought he might be trying to kill her. And the sooner she did, the better she’d feel.

  “Race you home,” she said to Suzie. Then they broke away from each other and ran.

  26

  “THIS IS RIDICULOUS,” Jake said.

  Pope turned sharply. “You promised not to interrupt.”

  “Come on, Danny, are you really falling for this nonsense?”

  Pope looked at McBride, but she hadn’t stirred. Although she had been responding to his questions clearly and without hesitation, there seemed to be a part of her that wasn’t even aware he was asking them. In fact, she was so deep into her trance, so immersed in the world of this little girl, that he thought it might be tough to bring her out again.

  “I just told her partner to take a hike,” Jake continued. “Maybe it’s time I suggest she do the same thing. You hear me, McBride?”

  “Knock it off, Jake.”

  “Who does she think she’s kidding? A mysterious car? A gypsy girl? Another goddamn house of mirrors? She’s making this stuff up as she goes—”

  “Stop,” Pope said.

  And to his surprise, Jake did.

  They sat in silence a moment. And in that moment, Pope realized that Jake looked a little rattled. Maybe the rock-solid foundation he’d been standing on all of his life was starting to show a few hairline cracks.

  “I’ve been doing this a long time,” Pope said, “and I’ve seen my share of phonies. Believe me, she’s not faking it.”

  “And you know that how?”

  “Instinct and experience.”

  Jake shook his head. “You may be good at what you do, Danny, but you’ve always been too quick to trust people.”

  He was right, of course. One of the people Pope had trusted was sitting in jail right now. But that didn’t mean McBride was some kind of con artist. Pope knew, without even the slightest hint of uncertainty, that what she had described to them was no fantasy.

  They were beyond recall and imagination now. Way beyond. And despite his cousin’s yearly subscription to Naysayers R Us, Pope was pretty sure Jake knew it, too.

  “You’re fighting this too much. Like you’re afraid Santa Claus might exist after all.”

  “Ho, ho, ho,” Jake said, rising from the sofa. And Pope could see that he wasn’t about to give up without a fight. “Your new girlfriend is either seriously screwed up or she’s playing with our heads something fierce.”

  “You don’t believe that,” Pope said.

  “No? I can sure put it to the test.”

  “How?”

  “While you kids continue your little charade, I’m going to my office to do some real police work. Feed Jillian Carpenter into the system, see if I get any hits.” He started for the hallway. “Ten to one, I come up empty.”

  “I’ll take that bet.”

  When Jake was gone, Pope returned his attention to McBride. The interruption hadn’t fazed her. Not in the slightest. And he wondered how much deeper she might go.

  Touching her arm, he said, “Talk to me, Jillian. Tell me where you are.”

  THEY RAN OUT of steam near Mercer Street, laughing and out of breath. With each block they’d run, Jillian had started to feel a little better about things, thinking she may have gotten all worked up over nothing.

  It wasn’t like Craig was a bad guy. Not really. At least not bad enough to want to kill her. All he was interested in doing was hanging around with Mom—and who could blame him? She was pretty cool.

  And who cared if that old car was parked outside of Carl’s? Who cared if it had a sticker from Big Mountain? There were probably a lot of Big Mountain people who lived in the area. They had to live somewhere. And just because she’d seen the car more than once didn’t mean anybody was following her.

  Did it?

  She and Suzie took their usual shortcut through the alley behind the Mercer Street Laundromat. They were halfway through it when Jillian said, “Do you think Craig would ever try to hurt me?”

  Suzie spun around, walking backwards in front of Jillian. She was working on another Pixy
Stick. Cherry. “I dunno. I don’t think so. Why?”

  Jillian shook her head. “I’m just being stupid.”

  “Has he ever tried?”

  “No. He’s always nice. Too nice.”

  Suzie tilted the Pixy Stick, tapped cherry powder into her mouth, then swallowed. “Then I don’t know what you’re getting all freaked out about. Besides, anybody who can get us free tickets to Big Mountain can’t be all—”

  Suzie stopped in her tracks, looking past Jillian’s shoulder, her eyes going wide.

  “What?” Jillian said, and turned.

  Her stomach dropped as she looked toward the mouth of the alley.

  The Rambler was turning in, moving toward them. Slowly. The reflection of the sun on the windshield made it impossible to see the driver’s face, but Jillian could tell that he was wearing a baseball cap. A red baseball cap.

  And she knew, instinctively, that this was no accident. He was here for her.

  Turning, she grabbed Suzie’s arm. “Run,” she said, and the two took off, hauling it toward the end of the alley.

  The car’s engine revved behind them—he was picking up speed—and Jillian poured it on herself, trying to keep hold of Suzie’s arm.

  “Come on!” she shouted. “Don’t slow down!”

  But Suzie was breathing really hard now, sobbing, and Jillian could feel her starting to fall behind.

  The car’s engine grew louder and Jillian wanted to turn and look, to see how close he was, but she didn’t dare, because she knew that would only slow her down.

  Then she lost her grip on Suzie’s arm and had no choice but to look. The car was directly behind them now, Suzie stumbling in front of it, tears streaming down her face.

  “Help me,” she shouted. “Help me!”

  But it was too late. The car revved and picked up speed, its bumper hitting Suzie, knocking her back and over the hood of the car and into a row of metal garbage cans—

  —and suddenly Mr. Stinky and his encounter with the bus came to Jillian’s mind—

  —but Jillian didn’t have time to be thinking about such things, because the car was bearing down on her now. And just as it reached her, she grunted and dove to her left, straight into a pile of discarded cardboard boxes—

  —as the car roared past her and squealed around the corner.

  The boxes went flying as Jillian plowed through them, landing hard on the ground beneath them, the impact knocking the wind out of her—what little wind she had left.

  She lay there for a moment, trying to breathe, trying to figure out what had just happened, when she heard a soft moan coming from the trash cans behind her.

  Suzie.

  Dragging herself to her feet, Jillian saw that most of the cans were lying out in the middle of the alley now, but Suzie was crumpled up against a wall.

  Jillian staggered over to her, knelt beside her. She was alive, but her nose was bloody and one of her legs was twisted funny.

  “It hurts,” Suzie said.

  “I have to go get help.”

  “No. Don’t leave me here. He might come back.”

  “I have to. You can’t walk like this.”

  “It’s all your fault. You shouldn’t’ve been looking in his car.”

  “I’m sorry,” Jillian said. “I’m sorry.”

  But she knew that looking in that car had nothing to do with the attack. She had been right all along. Maybe not the part about Craig—that was just stupid—but she knew that the man in the baseball cap had been following her. Watching her. Ever since they sat outside that house of mirrors.

  What she didn’t know was why.

  And for some reason, the photo from the locket came into her head. The gypsy girl with her big brown eyes.

  Who was she? What made her special to him?

  Suzie’s face was streaked with blood and tears. “How am I gonna go to Big Mountain like this?”

  “Will you shut up about Big Mountain already?”

  “You don’t have to yell.”

  “I hate that place,” Jillian said. “I hope they close it down and burn it to the ground. I don’t care if I ever go there a—”

  Suzie’s eyes went wide again and Jillian froze.

  Someone was behind her.

  Suddenly an arm wrapped around her—that same arm she’d seen dangling from the Rambler’s window—as a hand came up to her face carrying a damp, greasy rag. It covered her mouth and nose, and before Jillian even had a chance to resist, she sucked in a deep, frightened breath—

  —and everything went black.

  27

  “JILLIAN?”

  MCBRIDE didn’t stir. Was so still, in fact, that Pope wondered if she was breathing.

  He touched her wrist, feeling for a pulse.

  The beat was there, but erratic. Should he bring her out? “Jillian, talk to me. Tell me what’s happening.”

  Still no response.

  “Jillian, can you hear me?”

  Nothing.

  What was going on inside there? Why wouldn’t she respond? He’d never seen anything like this before.

  “Anna, it’s Pope. Listen to me. I’m going to start counting again. And when I get to ten, I want you to open your eyes and—”

  McBride’s eyes flew open. “He has me in his car.”

  She was trembling. Frightened.

  Pope thought she might have spontaneously emerged from her trance, but quickly realized that she was still under. He waved a hand in front of her face, but she didn’t react, blind to the real world.

  “I’m in his car,” she repeated.

  “Where, Jillian? Where is he taking you?”

  “I-I don’t know, I . . . He put tape on me. On my mouth and my hands and feet. He’s going to hurt me. I know he’s going to hurt me.”

  “Don’t worry, I won’t let him. Look around. Tell me what you see.”

  McBride’s head turned, her eyes searching blankly.

  “The shadows. Tree shadows. He’s taking me into the . . . no, wait. I’ve seen this place before. I’ve been here. It’s a park. We used to bring Mr. Stinky here.”

  “Who?”

  “My dog. He died when I was . . .” She stiffened. “Oh, god, he’s stopping the car.”

  “It’s all right,” Pope said. “Tell me what you see. Tell me everything you see.”

  “I want my mom. Please call my mom.”

  “Easy, Jillian, it’s okay.”

  “He’s opening my door now. Please. You have to make him stop.”

  Pope got to his feet and stood over her. He’d let this go on too long.

  “Anna, listen to me carefully. It’s time to let Jillian go.”

  “You have to stop him! Somebody has to stop him.”

  “Anna, I need you to listen to me.”

  But McBride was oblivious. “He’s pulling me out of the car, he’s got the shovel now!” She started thrashing in the chair, as if fighting off an invisible force. “Help me! You have to help me!”

  Pope took her by the shoulders. “Anna, it’s me, it’s Pope. You need to let her go. Let her go now. I’m going to start counting from one to—”

  “He’s dragging me into the middle of the park!” Anna shouted. “He’s got a suitcase with him. He’s pulling something . . . Mommy! Mommy, help me! He has a knife! He’s going to—”

  “What are you doing to her?”

  The voice was shrill, angry.

  Startled, Pope spun around, surprised to see Evan standing stiffly at the mouth of the hallway. He was staring straight at them, but only the whites of his eyes were showing.

  “What are you doing to my Anna?”

  But the voice coming out of him was not his. It was older. More mature.

  A woman?

  “He’s hurting me!” Anna shouted. “He’s got his knife out and he’s cutting me! He’s cutting my finger!”

  Evan moved toward them. “Don’t you see what you’ve done, you fool? You’ve opened a door. You have to bring her back! Bring
her back now!”

  Pope looked from one to the other, feeling as if his mind were about to astral project straight out of his body. This had to be the most surreal moment he had ever experienced in his thirty-eight years of life.

  “Wake her up!” Evan shouted. “Before it’s too late!”

  There was noise from the back of the house and Ronnie came running, followed by Jake, both of them exchanging looks with Pope, their faces stretched in alarm.

  Worthington stared at Evan in utter disbelief. “What the hell is going on?”

  “Anna, wake up!” Evan shouted. “You have to come back!”

  But Anna kept thrashing, crying out in pain. “He’s hurting me! Make him stop!”

  And suddenly Evan was at her side, his blank white eyes staring at her as he grabbed her hand, trying to calm her. “It’s me, darling. It’s Mama. Listen to me carefully. You have to come back to me now. Let go of the past and come back.”

  But Anna didn’t respond. Was still thrashing uncontrollably. She began to grunt as if she were being struck by blows.

  Knife blows?

  She continued to thrash, crying out in pain. And then, to Pope’s horror, she fell still in the chair and the light in her eyes began to grow dim.

  Oh, good Christ, he thought, she’s dying.

  But how could that be? This was nothing more than a hypnotic trance. People don’t die under hypnosis.

  Evan kept talking to her. Almost cooing now. “Come back, Anna. Come back to Mommy.”

  But she didn’t respond.

  “Anna, let the little girl go and come back to me. You need to come back.”

  When she failed to respond again, Evan did something so unexpected that Pope had to wonder if this was simply a bizarre, twisted dream.

  He began to sing, in a low, sweet voice:

  Every little star

  Way up in the sky

  Calls me

  And to Pope’s surprise, Anna stirred. She could hear him.

  Heaven in my heart

  Wishing I could fly

  Away

  Anna jerked her head in Evan’s direction. “Momma?”

  Drift off to sleep