All Seeing Eye (37 page)

“You killed Charlie.” Hector sorted through it all to home in on what had started it all. The project breakdown, giving Fujiwara enough time to gather all of the data about it. She couldn’t have foreseen what would happen with Charlie, who wasn’t quite as dead as she’d hoped, but what a lucky break for her. Charlie had caused more confusion and crippled the project even further. Until I came along, everything was as sweet as those blackberry pancakes she’d made me. And even then, I hadn’t been a threat to her or Fujiwara, who deserved an Oscar for his acting skills. But Eden was as competent a killer as she was a nurse. No sense in taking chances. It was only after three failed attempts outside the infirmary that she was willing to risk taking a run at me inside it. I imagined that if she’d gone through with it, she’d already be in another country by now with the information Fujiwara had gathered. This plan—my house equipped with the weapons of the
past—was nice for cleaning up a few loose ends like Hector and Thackery, who might eventually have figured things out about Fujiwara, but it hadn’t been strictly necessary.

But some killers embraced the better-safe-than-sorry standard.

And so did some scientists.

Hector wasn’t waiting for more talking—if there was going to be more, which I highly doubted. Eden was happily polite in her murdering ways, but she was one for getting things done. The shotgun in Hector’s hand, put there by Tess I now knew, wasn’t pointed at Eden, not specifically. The muzzle was tipping halfway between waist high and the floor as he faced her. It wasn’t a chest shot, but right then, any shot would do, and he took it.

The roar of the gun firing came at the same time as she disappeared, lunging to one side. Standing as she had been in the doorway, that put her outside and out of view, either with shattered legs or unhurt but not nearly as cheerful as before. Hector started for the door, pumping the shotgun as he went. I was right behind him, a little slower, as he’d already used it on me, and the pain of that didn’t fade like a scraped knee. It only grew more white-hot with every passing minute.

That didn’t stop me from grabbing a handful of his shirt and yanking him off his feet as I dove toward the floor. The faint shadow of the gun I’d seen through a window filmed in red dirt turned into an
explosion of glass and three bullets that passed over our bodies to embed themselves in the wall. Hector growled and this time was at the door long before me, out into the sun and gone. I did follow, but I couldn’t catch up. Shot once today, shot once the day before with a broken rib to show for it, it took the marathon out of my running. But I kept moving doggedly through the grass growing taller into fields I still recognized from sixteen years ago, following a path I’d once run as the colors of the day all faded to black and white behind the horrible truth I’d known.

It was in that tall grass that I found Hector, down and swearing, with a bullet hole through his upper leg. “Go after her,” he gritted between his teeth. “She missed the femoral artery, but she hit the damn bone. It’s broken. Don’t let her get away, Jackson. Not after all she’s done.” He held the shotgun up to me.

She’d killed Charlie. She’d arranged for Meleah to have her throat sliced, me to relive something no one should relive, and my friend to be shot. No, she wasn’t fucking getting away from any of that.

I started after her, and Hector snapped, “No, you son of a bitch. You take the damn gun. Take it, or she will kill you, do you understand that?”

I shook my head. Everything in my life had changed or was trying to change since Hector had shown up, but this never would. “I don’t need a gun.” And for some reason, I believed it. Hector
yelled that I was a “Suicidal bastard!” but I honestly believed it. I didn’t need a gun for Eden. It was crazy, completely insane, I knew that, but it wasn’t suicidal, because I knew. I just knew. Eden would be taken care of, no gun needed.

I was still running, my hand covering the slow bleeding where the Kevlar had failed me, when I saw her far ahead. Her hair was the brilliant shine of chestnut streaked with red and gold under the sun, and she ran like a gazelle. I didn’t say anything, but she must have heard me stumbling through the grass. Her head turned to take me in. I couldn’t see the green of her eyes, she was too far off, but I could see her smile. All triumph. Still running, she brought her gun up and over her shoulder to aim dead on me. I could feel the weight of it as heavily as the sun’s heat that pressed down. Eden’s smile widened.

And then she was gone.

I slowed down to a walk then. I hurt, and with every breath, my broken rib stabbed at the surrounding flesh. There was no hurry, anyway. I knew where Eden was, and she wasn’t going anywhere.

When I finally reached the well, it was quiet. Not a bird flew in the sky. The incessant hum of insects had turned to the quiet of a church. I looked down into the dark water that was a bare glitter and gleam thirty feet below and saw nothing else. No pale smear of a hand raised up. No body floating on the surface. Eden had gone to the depths … of a well
that had been plugged with concrete by the county sixteen years ago after a young girl named Tess had drowned there. There was no concrete now and no sign that there had ever been.

Wasn’t that a mystery?

Her nine-millimeter was balanced on the edge of the stone, deadly as a water moccasin. I nudged it with my foot and dumped it into the well. With the distant splash, I murmured, “You forgot something.” Then I walked away and back to Hector. When he asked about Eden, I shrugged and answered.

“She wasn’t much of a swimmer.”

A month later, I was doing my version of cooking: microwaving four cheese pizzas, one after the other. While some things changed in life, the combination of me and an oven remained a catastrophe of nuclear proportions. I also had bowls of chips and dip and a case of beer in the refrigerator. Abby had promised to bring cheesecake for dessert. Houdini was intrigued by the smell of so much extra food, but he was suspicious, too. He wanted to believe that it was all for one big Houdini-and-Jackson buffet, but sometimes even dogs know when something seems too good to be true.

I gave him a slice of pizza and pointed toward his couch. “When Hector gets here, he’ll probably try to con you out of a seat whining over his broken leg. Don’t give an inch.”

Chuffing curiously, he trotted over, jumped up, and went to work on his dinner. He’d be surprised when Hector and Meleah, now engaged, showed up along with Abby. Abby he was used to. Add two more people to that, and, well, that was two more
people than he’d seen in the house. As I’d thought, things change, and he’d probably adjust faster than I would. But adjust I would. I didn’t have much choice after what I’d seen, although half the days I still spent firmly lodged in denial. Blood loss, hallucinations, a statewide secret project to unplug abandoned and dangerous wells—possibly for population control—who knew? But there were the other days, and those days had changed me.

“I was perfectly fine the way I was, right, Hou?” I said aloud. “What’s not to love about cynical and sarcastic?”

The dog knew his cue when he heard it and gave a strangled rumble of agreement around his mouthful of cheese. That’s when a knock at the door came, and as he had almost two months ago when Hector had shown up on my doorstep, Houdini looked as shocked as if the roof had suddenly fallen in without notice. Once maybe, but twice? Insanity. He’d get used to it, and so would I. Fingers crossed.

I opened the door without bothering to put on my gloves. Hector, Meleah, Abby—they all knew by now why I wasn’t a handshaker. They were careful. I didn’t have to be on guard with them. But it wasn’t Hector, Meleah, or Abby who waited for me.

“Finally,” Glory said impatiently. “I am so sick of this thing, you have no idea. I was almost busted by the cops when I tried to sell it. It’s a complete leech on my social life. It’s nothing but trouble. And now, big brother, it’s
your
trouble.”

She pushed the blanket-wrapped bundle into my hands so quickly I almost dropped it. As the skin of her hand touched mine, I pulled the warm weight against my chest automatically before I nearly dropped it again.

Since the moment of our childhood separation, Glory had never let me touch her, and she had never touched me. No brother-sister hugs, even when she’d shown up on my doorstep after I’d given up on ever seeing her again. I learned later that she’d checked me out first, to see who I was, if I had enough money to make it worth her while to come calling to take me for everything that wasn’t nailed down. I didn’t know if she believed that I was psychic or was just Glory being Glory and taking no chances when it came to her uniting with a potential pile of money. With each visit, few that they were, she’d been as careful every time.

Now I knew why.

When her hand touched mine, I saw it.

She saw it, too, in my eyes.

“God, yes, it was me. I wouldn’t think you’d need to be psychic to figure
that
out.” Her smile was the cruel smile of a five-year-old brat not getting her way. “She wouldn’t give me those stupid pink shoes, and I wanted them. They would’ve looked cute on me.” Her red-blond hair was pulled in deceptively cute if Lolita-esque pigtails and she twirled one, as casual as a high school cheerleader. “If she hadn’t been so stubborn. Mine, mine, mine—that’s all she
could say.” She gave a shrug delicate and far too pretty to belong to a born monster. “So I took them. Or I tried to. I did get the one, but she fought and screamed, and it just wasn’t fun anymore, having a twin. The well was convenient and into the well she had to go.” Blue eyes identical to her sister’s but as empty as Tess’s had been full of every emotion under the sun. “My biggest regret was that I didn’t get the other shoe before I pushed her in. But there’s always something bright and shiny and new around the corner. You know that, Jackie.”

I’d known Glory, the last of my family, was a sociopath the same as Thackery. I’d known she’d done bad things as a teenager, bad things as an adult, and would keep doing them. Bad to worse. But I hadn’t thought that at the age of five … I’d never thought that a monster was already a monster that young.

“Don’t look all grim and holier than thou.” She snorted. “You killed Boyd for something he didn’t do. Or did you kill him for something he did do? Like stab our bleating sheep of a mother in the throat. She was worthless. I could see how he was tempted. I guess in the end, it’s really no one’s fault. Can’t make an omelet without breaking some eggs, and can’t get a pair of pink shoes to save a life.”

She was right. I had killed Boyd for something he didn’t do … and something he did. But my mother wouldn’t have attacked him if I hadn’t assumed he’d murdered Tess. That one assumption had triggered an avalanche of bloodshed that might
not have happened otherwise. Boyd had been an abusive son of a bitch with the potential for murder, but I was the one who’d brought that ugly potential out in the open. Glory had killed Tess—killed our sister—but I’d killed the rest of the family. I had done that. I had brought us all down.

No.
Hell,
no.

I’d read Hector and told him he judged himself too harshly. Was I going to lay a far worse blame on a fourteen-year-old boy? A kid who’d just seen the body of his sister? Boyd had raised a fist to me more than often enough to know what curled in him, dark and gloating, without needing any psychic assistance. He could’ve taken the knife from my mom. She didn’t weigh a third of what he had. Even in her fury, she wasn’t a match for him. He didn’t have to kill her. And I didn’t have to blame myself for shooting him as he tried to do the same to me as he’d done to her.

I didn’t have to carry that responsibility at all. Anyone who lived with Boyd, knew Boyd, they would’ve thought the same. It went wrong and it went bad, but life can. There isn’t anything anyone can do to change that. I was right. It was like an avalanche—a horrifying act you couldn’t stop or prevent. You could only ride it out and hope to be around when it was done.

Glory … that knowledge didn’t involve notions of blame or responsibility. Boyd or no Boyd, no one could’ve guessed or known about Glory. It was
nearly impossible to know it now with the confession still hanging before happily curved lips. The last of my family, as dysfunctional as I’d discovered her to be over the years, and now she was gone. Worse, the sister I’d taken care of until she was five, she hadn’t existed. That sister had been a lie.

Tess was dead and Glory had never been.

This woman was a stranger and her smile was the smile of a beauty queen as she said, “Have fun with
that.
” With a fingernail painted pearlescent white, she gave a disparaging flick to the blanket. White. The color of purity. Or in some cultures, the color of death. “But don’t think it’s free, big brother. The only reason I didn’t toss it in a Dumpster is knowing what you’d be willing to pay me for it.”

It. She only called the bundle it. I suppose that’s all she could see.

She named a price and I was certain she’d ask for more in the future, over and over, unless she finally met someone worse than she was. If there was such a thing. It didn’t matter. I’d pay the money and I wouldn’t miss a penny.

“Call and leave an address. The money will be there in two days. Don’t come back here again. Call. If I see your face again, I’ll think the river that runs through my front yard is as convenient as any abandoned well.” Would I? I didn’t know.
Could
I? Yeah, I thought I could. Self-defense I’d done. Defense of the innocent trumped that.