Exposure (27 page)

Robotlike, Kaycee obeyed. The old wooden chair was light. She slid a look toward the closed door. Hannah had quieted.

“Sit down.”

She lowered herself to the chair. Her ankles shook.

Rodney ran his tongue between his lips. He remained standing beside his chair, arms folded. “On the phone you talked to Tricia about dreaming of the dead man. You heard screams and footsteps. You saw a dark yellow floor.” His words were clipped, terse.

The sense of those eyes upon her — in her own home. Kaycee’s skin flushed. “How did you know?”

“I tapped your phone.”

“Why?”

His expression blackened. “Answer the question!”

“Wh – what question?”

“You heard screams and footsteps.”

“Yes.”

“Just in the dream? Or also while you were awake?”

“I — both.”

His mouth flattened in a cold smile. “And you ‘saw’ a dark yellow floor under the dead man.
Before
you saw it in the picture on your monitor.”

Kaycee’s fingers curled around the front of her seat. “How’d you get that picture on my computer?”

Rodney shot her a withering look. “Do you think I am incapable? I’ve studied technology for years. I’ve planned this. It’s nothing for me to get in and out of your house with a motion-sensored camera. I only added a few seconds’ delay to it. As for hacking into a computer, that’s rudimentary. The TV was harder, but far from impossible. I have special toys that can interrupt a signal. And yes, I can develop a photo so it fades in sunlight.” He slapped both palms on the table and leaned toward her. “I’m your ‘they,’ remember? Your worst fear come true. I live in your walls. I see what you do and hear what you say. You’ve sensed me since you were a child. Known me practically all your life. So why now do my abilities surprise you?”

Kaycee’s neck arched back until it started to cramp. “I . . . you’ve been watching me, for real, since I was a child?”

He shook his head, as if disgusted with her slowness. “Only in the last year since I found you.”

“You’ve lived in this cabin for a year?”

“Do you think I’m that tasteless? No, no, I’ve saved this lovely abode just for you.”

A year he’d been watching her. The knowledge jarred her bones. A year ago Mandy had died, and Kaycee’s own downward spiral began . . .

Understanding glimmered. “Those times I went to the police in Wilmore. When I thought I saw somebody . . .”

He gave her an evil smile. “Part of my plan to make you look crazy. They
don’t
believe you, you know.”

Maybe not before. They did now.

But now was too late.

Slowly Rodney straightened, leaving two smeared handprints in the dust. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to proceed.” He swiped his palms together to clean them. “I want to hear about everything you’ve been sensing.”

So he could make sure all those fears came true?

Kaycee’s mouth dried out. She needed water.

Rodney yanked up his T-shirt and reached for his gun. “Tell me if you want Hannah to live!”

She jerked. “Yes, I saw the dark yellow floor. I felt a dark, closed space where I could barely breathe. I heard screams and footsteps and saw bright light. And I smelled blood.”

Kaycee’s words cut off. She eyed Rodney’s hand on the gun.

He drew it away. “Anything else?”

She shook her head.

He swung toward the kitchen, reached in a tilted cabinet, and withdrew a large manila envelope. His movements thrummed with dark, excited glee. At the table he pulled out the envelope’s contents and slapped them down.

Eight-by-ten color photos. The top one was the first one she’d seen of the dead man. The close-up. Kaycee recoiled.

Rodney thumped a forefinger on the dead man’s face. “Who is he?”

Kaycee looked away, sick. “The policeman in the barn.
You
killed him.”

Rodney made an impatient sound in his throat and flicked the picture off the stack. The next photo showed the man on the blood-smeared dark yellow floor. Rodney jabbed at it. “That look like a barn floor to you?”

Kaycee’s shoulders drew up. “I don’t know.”

He flicked away the picture to reveal a third. The same man, looking into the camera very much alive. “Who
is
this?”

“I
told
you. Why do you keep asking me, what do you want me to say?”

“You want to help your little friend in there?”

“Yes!”

“Then
think
!” He picked up the top photo and smacked it down to the side. With both hands he spread all the remaining pictures except one, which he left hidden. “Look at them.”

Kaycee’s vision blurred. She knew what the final hidden photo would show. Mark, dead.

“Look!”

“I am!” Kaycee hitched a breath and wiped her eyes.

“Here.” He smacked his fingers on the close-up face of a young woman. Blue eyes, long strawberry blonde hair.

Kaycee stared at it, her mind on the unseen photo. “Who is she?”

“You don’t know?”

“I’ve never seen her before.”

“Look again.”

“I don’t
know
her!”

“
Give him what he wants
,
and he’ll let me go home
.” She couldn’t help Hannah. They were trapped. Kaycee felt sweat pop out on her forehead. Why was he doing this?

Rodney hit the second photo. “This one.” The same man and woman, standing side by side, smiling.

“The policeman and his wife?”

An angry vein throbbed in the side of Rodney’s neck. “This one.”

Some dingy-looking apartment living room. An old couch, cheap curtains. “I don’t know this place.” Kaycee’s voice flattened. “Please. I don’t know it.”

“I have one more to show you.” Rodney raised his eyebrows, his face a mask of contempt. Kaycee dug her heels into the floor. “Close your eyes.”

Her lids slipped shut. Kaycee’s chin lowered, silent sobs battering her chest for release. She heard the soft whisk of one slick paper against another.

“You will know who this is.”

Oh
,
dear God.
Kaycee pressed the back of a hand against her mouth.

“Now look.”

Muscles like steel, Kaycee opened her eyes.

Her heart wrenched. Not Mark’s dead face.

It was a little girl with long unruly red curls. She’d never seen herself so young. “That’s me,” she whispered.

Something foreboding and deathly clanked in Kaycee’s head, as if the ancient cover of a deep well shook loose its rusty chains.

“What do you know, she gets one right.” Rodney lifted a leg around his chair and sat. He listed over the table with expectation, pushing the picture toward her. “Looky here, it’s little you, just turned four. It’s time you two met. Time you learned your real name. Kaycee Raye? No.” He tapped the photo one, two, three times.

“Tammy Giordano.”

Tammy. Tammy.

The name glistened like water drops at the bottom of that dark, dried well.

Tammy Giordano.

Kaycee’s startled gaze rose to Rodney’s face. He turned his head, considering her askance. “You remember, don’t you.”

She swallowed, her eyes dropping to the picture of the woman. In her brain a pale light flashed. She leaned closer to the photo, examining the eyes, the lips. “That’s my
mother
.”

“Yes.”

“But my mother had dark hair.”

“Only as far back as you remember. She dyed it to hide her identity.”

Kaycee stared at him, uncomprehending.

“Think, Tammy. Did you ever see pictures of your mom before you were in elementary school? Pictures of her childhood, your parents’ wedding? Even
one
photo of your father?”

The well opened up before her. Black, deeper than ever imagined. How had she not known it was there? Kaycee’s eyes widened. She shook her head.

The picture of the couple pulled at her gaze. Her mother — and the man.

“M – my father?”

“Yes.”

Kaycee drank in the handsome face, the dark hair. Sudden longing swept through her. The father she had never known —

But he was the dead man.

Kaycee gasped. No. None of this was right. “My father died when I was a baby. He was in a car accident.”

Rodney separated his lips with a small popping sound. He picked up the manila envelope and stuck his hand inside. “I have one more picture.” He looked pleased with himself. Out came an eight-by-ten of her father and her — at the same age she was in the other picture. Kaycee shook her head. “No — ”

“Your father died when you were four.”

“No. When I was a baby. My mom told me. And he
wasn’t
shot!”

“Your mother told you lots of things.”

“But I don’t even
remember
him!”

“You did then.” He pointed to Kaycee’s picture. “Until your mother — Lorraine Giordano — changed your life and your name and your memories. Until she filled your head with lies.”

“Why? Why would she do that?”

Rodney’s fingers scrabbled through the stacked photos. He yanked out the close-up of the dead man. “See this?
I
did it. I shot him when you were four.”

Kaycee jumped up, knocking into the table. She stumbled sideways. “You’re lying.”

Rodney leapt to his feet and ran around the table. He caught her by the neck and shoved his face in hers. “I. Shot. Him. You were there, you and your lying mother. She hid you in a closet. Remember that? Remember, Tammy? The darkness. The heat.” With one hand he snatched up the picture of the dead man and the blood-smeared floor. Shook it before Kaycee’s eyes. She tried to jerk away, but he held her neck with a rocklike grip. “You
saw
this with your own eyes, Tammy — when your mother let you out of the closet. You saw your daddy dead on the floor. You threw yourself at him, got his blood on your hands, your clothes. I saw it all in the police report. That pig’s blood I smeared on the picture in your car is nothing. In your head it’s your father’s blood you’re smelling!’

A sob burst from Kaycee. She wrenched her head away. “No.
No!
”

Rodney let her go. She fell sideways, wobbled, then sank to her knees.
No
, she yelled silently, but she knew the truth. A gush of water, newly tapped, poured into the well within her. Her mother had lied to her. All these years, nothing but lies.

The water rose — and Kaycee felt the darkness of the closet. Her little hands beating against her mother’s chest.
“Let me go!”

Vaguely Kaycee registered Hannah calling her name from beyond the door.

“Shut up!” Rodney spat toward Hannah. He strode to Kaycee’s side and leaned over her. “You’re so close. I’ve given you everything you need. Now
remember
.”

Kaycee covered her face with her hands. The well filled more, and she heard her panicked footsteps running.
“Daddy!”
Horror shot through Kaycee. She doubled over, head sinking. The dead man’s gruesome face flashed in her mind — Tammy’s mind. Kaycee felt her four-year-old knees hit the floor, saw her pudgy fingers reaching for her daddy’s face. They came away red, and they smelled tinny and sweet . . .

Kaycee’s muscles lost all strength. She lurched sideways and fell, grinding a cheek against dirty wood. Her limbs curled into a ball. The smell of blood filled her head, and she shut down her nostrils, sucking air through her mouth, but it did no good. Kaycee groaned from deep within her stomach. Hands closed around Tammy, and her mother caught her up and ran, her shaking body bouncing up and down against her mother’s chest, and a door opened, and sunlight poured in, and her mother ran outside, screaming, and she was screaming, and they tipped back their heads and lengthened their throats and shrieked louder, and somebody shouted, and a man came running, and the sky broke into pieces and hurtled to the ground . . .

Kaycee clawed the dusty wooden floor of the cabin and sobbed.

“Get up, Tammy.” Rodney shoved a foot against Kaycee’s leg. “We’re not done.”

She lay on her side, shallow-panting, tears spent. The well had filled, and the memories bobbed on the surface, taunting.

Hannah had fallen silent.

“I said get up.” Rodney kicked her in the thigh. Pain shot through her muscle. Kaycee gasped. With effort she pushed herself to a sitting position.

Rodney dragged a chair over to her and sat. He leaned toward her, anticipation curling one side of his mouth. “You see it now.” It wasn’t a question.

Kaycee narrowed her eyes, hating the man. “Why did you kill him?”

“He helped me steal seven million dollars from the bank where he worked. He knew too much.”

She stared blankly, her emotions saturated. His crazy words would not soak in. “Why Hannah?”

“She got in the way. But how convenient when she came up that road. More persuasion for you.”