Last Safe Place, The (23 page)

She finally shook hands with the reality that she was reacting in some visceral way to the presence of evil itself, an evil she had created. Or had called forth from some great source of evil. One or the other; she didn’t know which. Did it matter?

What is it they say—when you realize you’re in a pit, the first thing you should do is stop digging. But she hadn’t stopped digging. Garrett’s death had knocked her off the world and down into a deep place that was below the planes of the universe, a place where the usual laws of reality didn’t apply. And she sat down in the muck at the bottom of that pit and kept digging, deeper and deeper, until she found herself staring into the bottomless dead eyes of total Despair. It spoke to her in a voice like the hiss of serpents and the cries of dying children and she embraced it, gave it free rein in her heart. The Despair within her spawned images that her immense talent, her great gift, turned into words on a page.

For days unnumbered, she breathed only because it happened without her willing it, ate only because food was set in front of her, connected to
nothing and nobody in the real world, survived by going through the motions of life. And then slowly, agonizingly slowly, the motions began to have meaning again. The relentless darkness began to recede, the great open wounds that caused such agony if she touched them scabbed over and she started to heal.

Maybe she would have continued to heal until she became a normal human being again. But the thing, the evil she had created—or encountered or somehow
awakened—
lived and breathed in the pages of her book. Even before Yesheb, she feared it. He gave it human form, but the fear of what loomed in the shadows beyond Yesheb—not fear for her life and her son’s life but the mindless terror of evil incarnate—
that
overwhelmed her.

That was the real Boogie Man.

Gabriella took a deep, trembling breath. There was something freeing about facing reality at last, however awful. She sank back into the chair, temporarily at peace. Pulling the Snuggie up to her chin, she closed her eyes.

She awoke with a start, momentarily disoriented, in the chair on the deck. The sun had cleared the mountains across the valley and rode high in the sky. It had to be ten or eleven o’clock at least. Theo and Ty had let her sleep.

She got to her feet and stumbled into the house to take a shower. When she passed her dresser, she stopped, captured by the beauty of the rock that rested on top of it, the lone possession she had brought with her from Pittsburgh. She picked it up and gazed at its crystals. Surely there was no rock anywhere on the planet as stunning as this one. It was perfect. That’s what the old jeweler had said, too. Perfect and utterly impossible. And she wondered as she had wondered for almost as long as she could remember where the rock had come from and what had happened to the other half of it.

After a quick shower, she toweled her butter-colored hair dry and shook her head—the natural curl would take over as it dried. It certainly didn’t take her long to get dressed here on the mountainside. No long hair to straighten, and she didn’t bother to hide her scar behind makeup with no one to see it but Ty and Theo. By the time she was ready to face the day, the image of the rock in her mind had been replaced by a different image. Not a beautiful one. The gun, the .38 Theo’s friend had left for her in the
glove box of their getaway car. Every day since the day after she arrived at St. Elmo’s Fire, she had faithfully practiced with it until the weapon felt as comfortable in her hand as a blow dryer.

By mid-afternoon, Theo was seated in his rocker on the back porch and she stood just beyond it. Ty had drawn a bull’s-eye on a shoebox lid—that already had holes in it,
hmm
—and was setting it up in the meadow behind the cabin. Gabriella’s accuracy was improving. And though she harbored a totally irrational fear that it would take more than a mere bullet to stop Yesheb, being proficient with the gun made her feel a bit safer.

She’d just finished reloading when she heard Ty cry out. He stood alternately shaking then holding his right hand.

“Mom!” he shouted and started to cry.

Gabriella’s heart was in her throat as she raced to him. It couldn’t be a poisonous snake! Rattlesnakes didn’t venture up this high. But she carried the pistol along with her as she ran, pointed away from her and at the ground. She intended to kill whatever had bitten him!

By the time she got to him, tears were streaming down Ty’s face and his eyes were red and swollen. He was crying so hard he could barely catch his breath.

“It hurts!” He held out his hand. She examined it as he hopped around in pain. There was a nasty red welt on the back of it but no puncture wounds. She leaned closer and saw a tiny black hair sticking …

“It was only a bee,” she said.

Relieved, she held up the pistol, found the safety and engaged it.

“Come on, Honey, we need to put some ice on ...”

When she saw his hand, she stopped. In the few seconds she had looked away, the swelling had traveled down to his fingers and puffed them out like sausages.

She lifted the crying boy’s chin and looked at his face. His eyes weren’t red and puffy from crying; his lips were swelling, too. And the raspy breathing was getting worse.

“That boy must be allergic to bee stings.”

She hadn’t even realized Theo had followed her into the meadow until he spoke up at her side, voicing the fear that had expanded as quick and huge as a Navy dinghy in her chest.

Benadryl. If only she had some Benadryl!

“You got to get this boy to a doctor!”

Gabriella dropped the pistol in the grass, scooped Ty off his feet and ran as fast as she could with him in her arms toward the jeep. Theo hobbled awkwardly along behind her.

* * * *

Bernie hadn’t bothered to check the Rebecca Nightshade fan page in three days. What was the point? It was patently obvious his magnificent plan had blown up in his face.

What had he been thinking? If he’d reasoned it out instead of leaping in with both feet, it might have occurred to him that half a million dollars was the tiniest bit excessive. He’d have been a whole lot better off if he’d offered say … $100,000 instead. But even that was enough money to drive most people bonkers. And the half mil offer he’d posted had chucked thousands of fools completely over the edge.

He’d gotten more than 250 messages in the first half hour after he posted the reward offer.

Rebecca Nightshade was absolutely working as a short order cook in a diner in San Francisco.

Oh, no, no, no. Rebecca Nightshade was dating a shrimp boat captain in Louisiana.

Oops, wrong again. The
real
Rebecca Nightshade was on a tourist bus in the Catskills.

And the messages kept coming.

The most exasperating part was that Bernie was absolutely convinced a genuine Gabriella sighting was hiding in there
somewhere
in the herd. Somebody really had seen her and had sent in her location like a good little doobie. But the sighting had been lost in the avalanche of people who were either sincerely mistaken or con artists trying to milk the system.

He glanced over at the computer screen. Knowing she was in there somewhere and he couldn’t get to her made him want to pull all his hair out. If he’d had any hair.

So much for a transplant. Lean over and kiss the “new man” goodbye, Mr. Phelps. Sayonara, Sucker.

Gabriella flew down the jeep trail with such reckless abandon she could barely keep the vehicle on the road. Theo sat in the backseat cradling a gasping Ty in his arms. They’d ignored P.D. and the dog was too well behaved to hop into the jeep uninvited. But nobody told him to stay, either, and Gabriella saw him in a side mirror, running behind the jeep. He raced around the switchbacks or cut through the trees between the higher and lower roads. At one point, he scrambled out of the brush just as the jeep passed and came close to getting crushed under the tires. She had no time to stop for him, and there was nobody to hold him in the bouncing jeep if she had. The vehicle leapt into the air when she hit rocks and tree stumps and slammed down into potholes with teeth-jarring force. She made herself keep her eyes on the road, only occasionally snatched quick glances at Ty in the backseat. The boy’s eyes were so swollen she was sure he couldn’t see. He gasped for every breath.

She roared under the sign into Heartbreak Hotel with her hand on the horn to announce her presence. The lotions, potions and elixirs van was nowhere in sight. Two teenage girls, a blonde and a redhead, stood on the porch of the large building. The blonde had her phone out taking pictures of the redhead posed on the porch railing.

Gabriella skidded to a stop in a spray of dirt, killed the engine, leapt out of the jeep and was two steps up the sidewalk before the blonde girl said. “If you’re looking for Grandpa, he’s not here.”

“Where is he?”

“In St. Elmo at a birthday party.”

Gabriella turned, ran back to the jeep and jumped in. As she cranked the engine, she spotted P.D. standing behind the jeep panting. She made the “get in” hand motion and the dog leapt up into the seat beside Theo. They’d be on smooth road the rest of the way.

T
HE REDHEADED GIRL
noticed the dog running along behind the jeep before it skidded to a stop. Cheyenne loved golden retrievers. Her little brother back home in Cleveland got one for Christmas—just a puppy. The woman who was driving the jeep jumped out and the girl saw an old, black man in the backseat cradling a little boy about the age of her brother. The
kid’s whole face was puffy, he had a rash and his breathing was noisy and labored. His eyes were swollen, but not shut. He looked terrified. She knew instantly that the little boy had—

When Mary Beth said their grandfather wasn’t home, Cheyenne dragged her gaze momentarily away from the choking little boy and noticed the woman who’d gotten out of the jeep—saw her face. Saw the
scar
.

After the woman ran back to the jeep, Mary Beth turned and gestured for Cheyenne to lean back against the railing again, but Cheyenne reached out and snatched the phone from her cousin’s hand.

“What are you do—?”

“I need this,” Cheyenne said, focused and intense. “I have to do this
right now!”

The woman in the jeep motioned for the dog to get in. When she did, she turned her face momentarily toward where the girls were standing. The huge scar on the right side of it was plainly visible.

Cheyenne raised Mary Beth’s phone and punched a button.

* * * *

Most people didn’t consciously think about learning from their mistakes, but Bernie Phelps did. He bobbed and weaved his way through life, went to school on what he did wrong so he’d be more clever next time.

That’s why he was sitting at his computer in his underwear and bathrobe on a Saturday afternoon scrolling down the huge list of Gabriella sightings. Not because he actually believed he’d find the needle in the monumental haystack he’d created. He was there as an exercise in self-discipline, using this colossal blunder to teach himself a lesson about going off half-cocked, being impulsive, not considering the possible ramifications of his decisions. This was an expensive lesson. It was going to cost him millions so he wanted it to count.

And there was no better way to do that than to force himself to face the result of his poor judgment.

So he sat and scrolled.

Didn’t read the postings, of course. It’d take weeks to read them all! Oh, every now and then he’d spot a word or phrase and he’d pause, see if the comment was unique in any way. Because in addition to teaching himself
a lesson, Bernie was doing what he did best—making life’s lemons into lemonade.

The idea had come to him at his lowest moment, which is when he sometimes did his best work. And he’d been coming down off a coke, high, too.

All those people out looking for her; Gabby could move the masses when she wasn’t even there!

In a flash, he had the perfect advertising campaign for her new book—which she’d better turn in on deadline or he and Hampton Books would sue her for every dime she’d ever made. The campaign would center around the overwhelming response to the contest and how it demonstrated her popularity with her readers.

He planned to—

There was a ding and a new sighting posted. He glanced at it, then stopped and read it. “I’ve seen her and her dog. I’ve got a picture to prove it.”

…
and her dog.

There was no mention of a dog anywhere on Gabriella’s fan page or website. She was private about her personal life. Wouldn’t allow him or her publisher to use pictures of her family or private information about her. Bernie had made lemonade out of that lemon, too—portrayed her as a mystic, a seer, reclusive and inscrutable.

Oh, he was sure if you wanted to know bad enough, you could find out about P.D. Google was the Wicked Witch of the West’s magic ball—it would show you whatever you wanted to see. But it wasn’t like Gabby’s dog was common knowledge.

He shook his head, then. Yeah, but if he’d been the guy on the other side of this offer looking to make half a million bucks, he’d have found out how many fleas Rebecca Nightshade’s dog had!

Still …

So he clicked on the link to a photo website in the message. He expected to see some vague outline of a woman and a golden retriever—as dark and blurry as pictures of Sasquatch or the Loch Ness Monster.

But he didn’t. He saw Gabriella. Not P.D., just Gabby. The picture was obviously taken with a cell phone, an older model. The face was angled away from the camera. But the scar! It was perfectly clear and unmistakable. And if anybody knew what that scar looked like, it was Bernie Phelps!

Bernie would never admit it, of course, but he had become morbidly fascinated by Gabriella’s injury. In the beginning, when she first got out of the hospital, Bernie had stared at her ugly wound with macabre interest, captivated by how her face had …
dissolved,
the skin and tissue. He was both horrified and mesmerized by how her beauty had melted like candle wax. Over the ensuing months, he’d watched the wound heal, noted the pits and lumps of the resulting scar, its texture, how a thick vein of it pulled up centimeters short of her eyelid. She’d come perilously close to losing an eye! He knew exactly where her eyebrow stopped, burned off.