aterovis_bm_reapthewhirlwind.p65 (38 page)

I nodded but I didn’t move. With all the death that had surrounded me over the last several months, I had never actually seen anyone die. I wasn’t looking forward to my own father being the first. Even with everything that had happened between us, he was still my father and I loved him. And now I was about to lose him forever.

As I stood there, immobile, I felt a hand slip into mine and pull me gently forward. It was Killian.

“Come on,” he said softly, “I’ll go with you.”

I guess it made sense that Killian would be the least affected by the idea of seeing someone die. He had been witness to more death in his short life than most people ever saw; he’d lost several friends and had almost been killed himself. He had faced death and survived. Somehow, his courage and his presence gave me the strength I needed and I stepped forward.

Mom looked up as we came in. She was sitting next to Dad’s bed, his pale, limp hand in hers. Her hair was disarranged and there were dark circles under her red-351

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rimmed eyes. Aunt Deb, Asher’s mom, stood behind her with her hands on Mom’s shoulders. She seemed surprised to see Killian but didn’t say anything.

Mom gave me a shaky smile, then turned back to Dad’s still form.

“Will’s here,” she said to him. “We’re all here now.”

There was no response from Dad. He looked like he was already dead. Wires and tubes came from every direction and were connected to various machines. They all attested that despite appearances, he was still alive, at least for now.

“Now that Will is here you can let go, Lowell,” she said, her voice thick with emotion. I clutched Killian’s hand tighter. “He knows you love him. I know you love me. And we both love you. It’s okay; we’ll be okay. You don’t have to stay here for our sake any more.”

She broke down and began to weep silently. I felt like I was watching a movie with the volume turned off.

Her body was wracked with huge, shuddering sobs but not a sound was heard. It was the most disturbing sight I had ever seen. I quickly knelt down next to her and hugged her. Aunt Deb bent over us in an awkward embrace.

Suddenly a nurse ran into the room, followed closely by a second. We were quickly and efficiently herded from the room.

“What’s going on?” Mom demanded.

“Ma’am, you and your family will need to wait out here. A silent alarm went off and we need you to wait here until the doctor can talk to you.”

“What alarm? Please tell me what’s going on.”

Just then a doctor in a white coat came rushing past us and into the room.

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“Excuse me,” the nurse said, “I need to get back in there.”

She left us alone in the hall. Aidan, Asher, Laura, and Gabe quickly joined us and I saw Asher and his mom having a whispered conversation. We stood awkwardly in the hall, waiting. I paced and Mom sat on a bench rocking back and forth. After several minutes, the doctor came back out. Mom quickly stood up and positioned herself in front of him.

“Doctor?” she said.

“Mrs. Keegan,” he began. He looked very tired, as if it had been a long night and it wasn’t about to get any better. I knew what was coming. “I’m very sorry. Your husband suffered another severe heart attack. The damage was so extensive that there was nothing we could do. He passed away. I’m so sorry.”

He continued talking but I didn’t hear him anymore.

It was as if the world was slowly spinning away. The last thing I remember hearing was a horrible inhuman keening coming from my mother, and then everything went black.

When I came to, I was lying in the hallway with a nurse waving smelling salts under my nose.

When she saw my eyes flutter open, she asked, “Are you okay?”

I thought that was an incredibly stupid thing to ask someone whose father had just died, but I somehow refrained from saying so. I simply nodded and sat up.

Aidan was at my side in a flash to help me up. Killian and Asher were now occupying the bench, and Mom was crying on Aunt Deb’s shoulder. Laura and Gabe had moved away, I guess to give us some space.

There were a few formalities, papers to be signed, 353

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arrangements to be made, but Aunt Deb took care of most of those and it didn’t take very long. We left the hospital and went back to Mom and Dad’s house, or I guess it was just Mom’s now. Laura and Gabe just went on home after expressing their condolences. Once we arrived at the house, there really wasn’t anything to do.

Mom took some sleeping pills that the doctor had given Aunt Deb and she fell asleep within minutes. Finally, Aidan insisted we go home so I could get some rest too.

Killian and Asher decided to go home with Aunt Deb and come back to pick their car up tomorrow.

We arrived back at the apartment building just after 2 AM. Nikki’s door flew open as soon as we stepped off the elevator. As soon as she saw our faces, she threw her arms around me in a tight hug.

“I’m sorry, sweetie,” she murmured in my ear, “as if you haven’t been through enough already, now this. I couldn’t sleep I was so worried. Every time the elevator came up, I was out the door. Caitlin came by; I told her what was going on and she said she’d be back tomorrow, or well—I guess later this morning. Listen to me babbling on, as if you care about all this right now.

You need to rest. Don’t even think about coming in to work tomorrow. You take some time off. We’ll get by without you.”

She gave me a quick peck on the forehead and then she was gone, her door shut. I stood for a minute, feeling rather like Dorothy must have felt after the tornado had dropped her off in Oz.

“Caitlin,” Aidan said under his breath, a frown pulling down the corners of his mouth.

“What about her?” I asked.

“Never mind,” he said and went to our door. As he 354

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slipped the key into the lock the door swung open at his touch, it wasn’t even shut all the way.

“They must have forgotten to lock it,” he muttered as we stepped in.

My mind was so numb that it took a minute for it to register that all the wedding decorations were gone and the furniture had been replaced. The tree had been left up but other than that, you would have never known a wedding had taken place in this very room only hours before. My mind kept going back to the name Aidan had uttered in the hall, Caitlin.

Aidan came up behind me and began to massage my shoulders. Then he kissed the side of my neck.

“Why don’t you go get in bed?” he said softly. “I’m going to get myself a drink and I’ll be right there.”

“Why did you say Caitlin’s name just now, in the hall?” I asked.

He sighed. “It’ll wait till morning.”

“No it won’t. I want to know now. Is this something to do with that phone call tonight?”

“Yeah, it is. Look, you know Killian and I had our doubts about Caitlin. Something just didn’t ring true.

So we’ve done some checking around.”

“You what?” I asked as I turned around to face him.

“I thought you suspected Laura?”

“We did; we checked up on both of them. Laura was the easiest. I called her and confronted her. She admitted to it right away. She was really shaken up. She said she called Robbie that night because she was mad at Gabe for not telling her about him and she wanted to be the first to talk to him. He wouldn’t talk to her, since he’d just talked to you. He hung up saying someone was at the door and he had to go It was probably 355

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the killer.”

A shiver ran up my spine.

“Caitlin was more of a challenge,” he went on. “We made some phone calls. Killian found out she deliberately told the reporter at your big show that night that she was your fiancée. So then we wondered what else she was lying about. I managed to find out what her home address was from a friend in admissions at school and I called her parents. It turns out they’re just fine, they’re still together, and they aren’t strict at all. Definitely not Mormon. They had no idea that she was pregnant. There’s more, but there’s no point going into it now.”

“But why—”

“Would she lie? I’ve been trying to figure out the same thing.”

“Do you think she’s the killer?”

“I don’t know, Will. It’s possible. She had time while you were in the bathroom to have killed him and then gone to the front yard. Or maybe she’s just nuts. But one thing’s for sure, there’s nothing we can do about it tonight. Let’s go to bed, okay?”

I nodded and stumbled off down the hall, my mind reeling. I pushed open our bedroom door and stopped abruptly just outside. The hairs on the back of my neck suddenly stood on end and a deep sense of foreboding filled me. I’m not sure what it was, whether my sub-conscious noticed something and sent me an inner warning or whether it was something on a deeper level, but whatever it was, I knew with perfect certainty that something horrible waited in the darkness of that room.

“Who’s there?” I called out.

“What?” Aidan answered from the kitchen.

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I took a step backwards, away from the room, as a voice snaked out of the shadows.

“Stop,” a seemingly disembodied voice ordered.

I froze.

“Will?” Aidan called. “Do you need something?”

“Don’t speak,” the voice hissed. “Go across the hall to the other bedroom.”

At first, I didn’t move, but then a hint of movement in the gloom caught my eye and slowly a gun material-ized. It was followed by an arm and at last, the killer.

My heart stopped. Everything stopped. It seemed like time itself simply ceased to move forward. And then everything made a horrible kind of sense.

“Caitlin,” I said sadly.

She cocked her head to one side.

“You don’t seem surprised,” she said.

“Somehow I’m not.”

“You’re not as smart as you think you are,” she growled. “You never even suspected me. I even tried to warn you, but you wouldn’t listen. I told you I would do anything to protect my baby and I meant it. I don’t want to do this. You’re different from the others. I like you, maybe I even love you, but I don’t have a choice.”

“Yes, you do have a choice. You don’t have to do—

whatever it is you’re thinking about doing.” I couldn’t bring myself to say the words.

“I’m going to kill you, Will, you and Aidan. And you’re wrong. I don’t have a choice. I have to protect my baby.”

“There’s always a choice. How is killing me going to protect your baby? I’m going to help—”

“Enough with the lies already, Will!” she interrupted angrily. “I already told you I figured out your little scam.

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You’re not getting my baby.”

“I don’t want to take the baby away from you, Caitlin.

I just want to help.” I desperately wanted to look and see where Aidan was, but I couldn’t tear my eyes off of that gun.

“Get in the bedroom, now. I’m tired of playing games.”

I backed up until I felt the door at my back and opened it without turning around.

“Come on out, Aidan,” she yelled suddenly. “There’ll be no last minute heroics from you unless you want me to kill Will right now.”

Aidan stepped calmly out of the kitchen but stayed at that end of the hall.

“I know the truth, Caitlin,” he said in a reasonable tone, as if he was commenting on the weather or mentioning that night’s TV schedule.

“What truth?” Caitlin said. It was obvious his attitude was unnerving her.

“I talked to your dad earlier tonight, nice guy.”

“You’re lying.”

“He told me the whole story. You see, some things didn’t add up to me, I got suspicious. So I called him.”

“You’re a lying bastard.”

“Really? Then how would I know that you’ve been in and out of mental hospitals all your life. Emotionally unstable is the phrase I believe he used. He told me about the time you killed the family dog when you were ten because you said he kept chewing your dolls up.

And the time you attacked your friend at school because she cheated with your boyfriend. That one was pretty serious; she could have died. You were in the hospital 358

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for quite a while that time. He also told me how the doctors had finally said you were stable enough to be released and how he and your mother fought it, but they released you anyway. They haven’t heard from you since…until now. Are you even enrolled at Pemberton?”

“I’m going to kill you, and I’m going to kill Will, and then I’ll go away and start over somewhere where nobody can hurt me or my baby.”

“You’re not going anywhere, Caitlin. I’m not the only one who knows this. They’ll find you and the very thing you’ve been afraid of all along will come true; you’ll lose the baby.”

“Oh sure, what am I supposed to do then? Stay here and wait for the police? I don’t think so. This is all Joey’s fault. He’s the one that kept telling me to kill our baby.

Kill it! Can you believe it? I never intended to have an abortion. I would never kill my baby. I didn’t mean to kill Joey. It was a mistake. I’m not sorry though. I’m glad he’s dead.”

“What about Blake and Robbie?”

“They had to die. They knew about me. If they had told anyone, I would have lost my baby. Everything I’ve done has been for the baby. I have to protect my baby. That’s what I’m doing now. That’s why you both have to die. Get in the room, now.”

“No,” he said flatly.

What was he doing? I let my eyes dart his way for a second. He was standing at the end of the hallway, leaning against the kitchen doorway, backlit by the bright light from the kitchen since I hadn’t turned on the hall light. He looked almost angelic, as if he were glowing from within.

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“Don’t play games with me, Aidan?” her voice was getting shrill. It was obvious she was losing what little control she had. Why didn’t Aidan just do what she said, before he got us both killed? If he were closer maybe, we could both rush her at once.

“I’m not the one playing games. You’ve played us all along, lied to us, manipulated us, and all the while you were a killer.”

She shook her head. “Shut up!”