Buried in a Book (30 page)

“Welcome, Ms. Wilkins. We’re looking forward to having you join us for dinner. Trey should be back soon.”

“Oh. I was hoping to take a walk with him.” Disappointment deflated my shoulders. “Is Iris around?”

“She’s checking on our beehives, and Trey’s gone to the creek to fill up some canteens. You can meet him there if you’d like.” He pointed to a path leading away from the campfire pit. It was the same one Iris had used to take me to Marlette’s cabin.

“I’ll do that, thanks.” I started off in the direction of the trail.

Jasper raised an arm as I passed. “Be sure you stay on the path,” he said with a smile. “We don’t want you turning an ankle on a root.”

As I hiked along the trail, the shadows lengthened. In the gloom, the foreboding I’d experienced earlier returned, but I tried to ignore it, knowing I’d be meeting up with Trey soon.

After a few minutes, I spied the laurel bush where Marlette had left poems for Iris. A narrow path veered off to the right, and I recognized it as the way to Marlette’s cabin. I decided to explore, figuring that Trey would know to look for me there.

I hastened down the trail, brushing aside overgrown bushes and low-hanging boughs. Twigs cracked under my feet, and branches raked my arms. I was hot and sweaty and had to constantly swat at aggressive mosquitoes as I trudged through the shrubbery. As I stopped to scratch a painful bite, I heard the distinct snap of a twig to my left.

I froze, my disquiet returning full force. I called nervously into the greenery, “Trey? Is that you?”

A crow cawed and a squirrel chattered from the canopy overhead. Other than that, it was quiet.

I peered into the woods to my left. Thin trees and scraggly shrubs cast elongated shadows, but I saw no movement. I hurried the rest of the way to the clearing where Marlette’s cabin stood.

In the dusky light, Marlette’s abode looked decrepit and far too isolated. A fire pit was overgrown with weeds and lent an extra dose of abandonment to the grassy area outside the cabin. The stream echoed a forlorn sound in this lonely place, and I called out Trey’s name again. My voice was swallowed by the woods, and I received no reply. Certain that I’d hear my son when he came nearer, I approached the cabin.

A spiderweb stretched from a tree to the frame of the cabin door, blocking my way. Its creator sat in the center, fat and sinister, busily wrapping the corpse of a dead moth in a sticky, silken coffin. I wiped the strands away and moved forward.

The soiled yellow canvas flap that acted as a door fluttered in the breeze like a phantom. The darkness inside made it difficult to see, and I berated myself for not having brought a flashlight. Perhaps if I fastened the canvas flap open, the light would chase off the largest of the shadows.

I rolled the canvas to the top of the doorway, discovering as I did so that a cord was sewn into it. I tied the knot, imagining Marlette doing the same thing so he could sit on his wooden crate and pen his novel on the makeshift table. A rustling behind me made me spin around, only to see a chipmunk dart across the clearing. I exhaled, mumbling to myself to stop being so jumpy.

On the wall opposite the entrance, a ray of sunshine drew my attention to the cabinet and the books cluttering its shelves. I approached it, moving deeper into the cabin. Suddenly a shadow blocked the doorway. I turned to see who was there, my throat tightening.

Silhouetted in the opening stood a man, his dark figure exuding menace in the backlight of the waning day.

It was not Trey.

“So nice of you to come,” uttered Carson ominously, and then he entered the cabin, untying the tent flap.

The material fell across the opening, shutting out any illumination and inviting terror in with the darkness.

CARSON DIDN’T HAVE TO SAY ANOTHER WORD FOR ME
to know that his intentions were wicked. Every cell in my body was buzzing in alarm. The blood rushed through my veins in an attempt to keep my heart pumping at its frenzied pace as my mind tried to comprehend what was happening.

In movies, when an attacker confronts a helpless female, the action always seems to take place at lightning speed. He lunges, she screams and runs, and the scene moves rapidly forward. But in this moment of terrifying discovery, I was rendered immobile. My limbs felt like anchors, and I could not take my eyes from Carson’s face, painted in shadow and utterly devoid of any emotion.

I don’t know how long we were frozen in our places like two prehistoric creatures encrusted in ice, but when he finally took a calm, unhurried step deeper into the cabin, the spell his arrival had put me under lost its power. My hand, which had been on the rough surface of Marlette’s
makeshift table, could once again register the feel of its coarse texture. I took in a fortifying breath of pine and damp soil, which seemed to invoke Marlette’s presence with such intensity that I felt as though he could be standing right next to me. It was as if he were in the cabin, wordlessly reminding me that he had been murdered, cautioning me to wake up and act.

My fingers reached out and closed around the walking stick leaning against the desk, but I never broke eye contact with Carson.

He took a second step toward me, his mouth curving upward into a chilling smile.

I wondered if Luella had seen the same smile the day she’d died. I didn’t need Carson to tell me what had happened—the cold gleam in his eyes and the hulking shape of his shoulders served as his confession. He was a killer.

Carson’s hands curled into loose fists at his sides, becoming twin cobras waiting to strike.

He had not come to talk.

He had come to see that I would never speak again.

Marlette’s walking stick had a polished knob at its crown, and it fit perfectly against my palm. I took comfort in its solidness and then slid my hands down the shaft, positioning my arms so that I could lash out with the knob the moment Carson reached for me.

“Now, Lila.” His predatory gaze turned smug. “Do you really think you can stop me with that thing?”

I gripped my weapon tightly and answered him in a voice made steady by anger. “I’m sure as hell going to try. You can’t sneak up on me. I’m not turning my back on you like Luella did.”

He laughed a dry, brittle laugh, the expectant glimmer
in his eyes shredding my confidence. “I didn’t think I had it in me, you know. To take someone’s life. But she forced my hand. All this time she’s hidden things from me. Her real name. A copy of the bum’s manuscript. Not the original, of course, but she told me the photocopied manuscript was her insurance and that after I paid her a ridiculous amount of money, we’d burn it in her fireplace and make love as it went up in flames.”

I frowned in distaste at the warped relationship those two had shared and waited for him to move within striking distance. Luella had been a fool to think she could go on mani-pulating Carson once he discovered her duplicity. Her arrogance had no bounds.

“You were beautiful, Luella. Oh yes, I enjoyed our time together, but I never loved you.” He glanced over my shoulder, no longer seeing me. “You thought I was in your control, but I will never be anyone’s puppet again. No one’s employee. No one’s errand boy. Even though I never found that damned copy, you haven’t won.
I’ve
won!” He reached behind him with his left hand and pulled out something from his back pocket. Even in the dimness, I recognized that it was a notebook with a red cover.

“You have Marlette’s notebook?” I asked breathlessly, feeling as though I’d been punched in the stomach.

Flipping the pages irreverently, he let loose a haughty snort. “Of course. Luella took the original manuscript from Jude’s file cabinet, and I put that fat stack of pages through a shredder at the copy center. Bye-bye, evidence. And as far as Luella’s insurance? I’m not worried about some supposed photocopy. I certainly made sure that she could never breathe a word about it to anyone. Ever.” He wiggled his long fingers. In the shadows, they resembled the spindly legs
of a tarantula. “After I got rid of both the original manuscript and Luella, I came back here to search for any other incriminating tidbits, and I found this.”

“Why did you keep it?” My eyes darted to the book. “Why not destroy it, too?”

He stroked the red cover affectionately. “The bum outlined a sequel.
The Babylonian Society
. I can hire a ghostwriter. Despite what you may think, this isn’t over for me. This is just the beginning. Too bad you won’t be around to see me living the life of a rich and famous author.”

I shook my head incredulously. “You’re going to get caught.”

“The cops don’t have enough on me. So they find my prints at Luella’s place. So I admit that I was her lover. That’s as far as it will go. If anything, keeping me in jail for a few days will make me more of a media draw.” He grinned greedily. “More press means more sales. More money for me. I am
never
going to be poor again. This is the end of shithole apartments and rusted-out cars. The end of cheap clothes and crappy food. It’s my turn. I’ve waited long enough for this break.”

Carson’s eyes had filmed over with a temporary madness, and I dared to look at the doorway to see if I could get by him and outside before he surfaced from his trancelike state. The moment I tensed my body to spring forward, he blinked and pointed at me with his index finger.

“Tsk, tsk. Naughty Lila. No running, no screaming.” His gaze bore into me, and his right hand sank into his pants pocket and drew forth a loaded syringe. Tossing the notebook aside, he held up the needle. The last rays of the sinking sun caught the splinter of steel, and it winked like Christmas tinsel.

This image sent my thoughts careening into the past, and a dozen Christmases flickered in my memory. Trey in footed pajamas, Trey dumping out his filled stocking onto the living room rug, Trey sipping hot chocolate as I read him ’
Twas the Night Before Christmas
, Trey singing carols in the school choir, his rosebud mouth forming a perfect O, Trey barreling into my arms to thank me for the remote control dump truck he had wanted so badly.

These memories fueled my courage. “You’re not going to take me down with bee venom, Carson. I’m assuming that’s what you’ve loaded into your little syringe, because you’re not creative enough to think up an original murder weapon.”

Carson’s features twisted with fury, and then he abruptly laughed again. “Who needs to be original? I don’t want to make a mess, and Luella proved how easy it is to kill someone with this stuff. She was more than willing to bump off that old piece of human trash.” His smile turned into a leer. “And then
you
had to stick your nose where it didn’t belong.
You!
” He spat the word. “A pathetic, middle-aged intern. A nobody.” His speech slowed to a crawl. “You ruined everything.”

“But I’m not allergic. It won’t kill me.” I clung to the hope that this would stop him, or at least give him doubts.

His eyes flashed. “You don’t have to be allergic. Ever heard of mass envenomation?” He tapped the syringe. “This contains the equivalent of a thousand bee stings and can easily kill a healthy human. You’ll die of renal failure.” He shook his head in mock sorrow. “Such a terrible way to go.”

His mercurial shifts of emotion revealed a person the likes of which I’d never known. In the shadows multiplying inside the cabin, Carson seemed less and less of a human
being. His nonchalance when referring to his plans to plunge a hypodermic into my neck lent him an alien crookedness. He had turned into a nightmare creature with a dark face and angular limbs. And what could I do against him? Stall for time. For what, I didn’t know, but it was an instinctual defense. I was the cornered rabbit, trying to distract the cat before it could spring.

And then, without a whisper of warning, he lunged.

I reacted instantly, swinging the walking stick in a powerful arc toward Carson’s head. He dodged, nimble as a boxer, and my blow connected with his shoulder instead.

He grunted in pain and hesitated, allowing me the opportunity to hit him again. This time, he stepped away from the stick, but the knob came down hard on his wrist, and in a spasm of agony, Carson dropped the needle.

Seeing it skate across the floor, I knew this might be the only chance I’d have to escape, so I jumped over his crunched-up form and moved to break into a run.

I didn’t even make it to the doorway.

Carson’s uninjured hand shot out, his fingers locking onto my calf like a vise. He was incredibly strong, and I cried out as he yanked me backward, drawing me into his chest like a spider retrieving the stunned fly.

I screamed as loud as I could. My mind emptied of all thought, and my body took over—kicking, twisting, shouting—and when Carson clamped a hand over my mouth, I wrenched my face to the side and bit down hard on his finger.

It was as if he could no longer feel anything but the desire to silence me, to spend his wrath robbing me of life. He pushed me down onto Marlette’s pile of blankets, sending mini hurricanes of dirt and dust into the air. Then, to my horror, he held up the syringe once again.

Seeing the needle sent me into a frenzied panic. I bucked and howled, clawing at him, kicking him, squirming to the left and right, but he straddled my chest with his legs and pinned down my arms. He leaned forward, crushing me under his full weight. My breath was forced out of my lungs, and without fresh oxygen, I had no strength to fight back.