Shadowkiller (36 page)

Just like Allison's father.

So many coincidences . . .

Too many.

“Just a few more miles,” Agent DiCaprio tells him.

Mack nods and goes back to staring out the window.

A
faint buzzing sound reaches Allison's ears.

Opening her eyes, she sees a bright light at the end of the long tunnel.

I'm dying
, she thinks.
Just like they did.

Winona's body is cold now, slumped beneath Allison, providing a layer of protection above the bones.

For a long time, she tried to stay on her feet. But the pain in her legs and her rib cage was gradually eclipsed by an agonizing sting in her left hand where the spider had bitten her. It got so bad that she finally did what she'd sworn she wouldn't do: she allowed herself to sink to the ground.

The last thing she remembers is feeling for Winona's pulse with her right hand, and finding none.

Now . . .

I'm dying.

The buzzing grows louder, and she blinks.

The bright light, she realizes, is the sun; the tunnel is the hole.

Daylight lies beyond it. As she gazes at it with longing, something crosses the patch of blue sky overhead.

An airplane, a small one, flying low.

That's Mack, looking for me
.

It's a crazy thought. Mack wouldn't have the first idea where to find her.

Yet, he would try. If he knew she was lost, he would do whatever he could to find her.

“Mack,” she whispers. “I'm here.”

She manages to get to her feet, stretching, reaching up toward the light. It illuminates her left hand and she sees that it's bright red and horribly swollen, as though her wedding ring is trying to burn its way through her skin.

The plane is passing her by, and Allison is buried alive in this hole, with no way to let anyone know that she's here. They'll never see her.

“Help!” she cries hoarsely. “Help! Help! I'm down here!”

But of course, they'll never hear her, either. The plane is too far away, the roar of its engines drowning her weak, small voice.

If only Winona's flashlight had fallen into the hole with her, so that Allison could signal—

Wait a minute.

She lowers her right hand and reaches into her pocket.

No. It isn't there. It must have fallen—

No. She remembers now: she picked it up with her left hand after she dropped it on the floor of the car near the brake; probably put it into her left pocket.

Now her left hand is useless. Twisting, she strains to reach her right hand deep enough into the left pocket. Her fingertips graze something round and hard.

Trembling, triumphant, Allison pulls out the compact her girls had given her for Mother's Day.

She fumbles with it, one-handed. It snaps open at last and she thrusts it up, high over her head, tilting the mirror into the sunlight that lies just beyond her fingertips.

Back and forth, back and forth . . .

“Y
eah, I hear you,” Agent DiCaprio says into his mouthpiece. “Give me the coordinates.”

“What is it? What's going on?”

Agent Fink, the woman who joined them at the end of the dirt road where they parked the SUV, motions for Mack to be quiet.

Ignoring her, he asks DiCaprio, “Did they find something?”

“ . . . and latitude 44.369. Okay, got it.” DiCaprio finishes writing on the small pad in his hand and looks up to meet Mack's questioning gaze. “I don't know.”

“You don't know . . . what?”

“The flyover pilot thought he saw something.”

I
t's getting harder to breathe now.

Tremors wrack Allison's body; every muscle is clenched with intense pain.

Lying in the bottom of the hole on top of Winona's corpse, she drifts in and out of consciousness, waking every time to the same tunnel of light—grateful every time to see that it's still just sunlight at the top of the hole.

She may be dying, but she isn't dead yet.

And the sun . . .

It's there. That's what counts, right? That's what she told herself months ago, when Maddy made that Mother's Day card for her.

You weather the inevitable storms, and you take the sunshine wherever you can get it—even if it's lying in the grass.

It seems so long ago, but it was just weeks, really. A few days, only, since they were back home. And just hours since she last saw them all.

Mack . . .

Hudson . . .

Maddy . . .

J.J. . . .

Home. I want to go home
.

She thinks of her brother. Brett. She was so close to seeing him again, so close to apologizing for the distance she'd put between them, so close to forgiving him for what he'd said to her all those years ago, when she tried to find her father.

He's not Allen Taylor . . . that couldn't have been his real name.

He didn't want us to know his real name, or where he was born, or when.

All this time, Allison realizes now, some part of her had resented Brett for that. Some part of her had wanted to believe that it was a lie; that her father was who she always thought he was, despite what he'd done, despite the way he'd left.

Now she knows Brett was telling the truth—but she knows something else.

Her father hadn't left her by choice. His love had been real. Maybe he was capable of terrible things—maybe he'd done terrible things to Winona, and to Mom, and to Allison herself—but he hadn't walked out on her in the middle of the night without looking back.

For some reason, despite the horror of it all, everything that had happened—that makes a difference.

Why do people lie?

To protect themselves, or someone else . . .

And because they have something to hide. Something dark, or damaging, or ugly.

Another life.

Another wife.

Another daughter.

Now her broken body cradles Allison's as she struggles to draw another breath. Just one more.

Please.

I don't want to die.

I don't want to leave them.

Please . . .

What will they do without me? My girls . . . they need me.

But they'll go on, of course. Just as Allison did when she lost her own mother.

Your daughters are survivors, Mrs. MacKenna
, Dr. Rogel's voice echoes in her head.

Then she hears another voice.

Faint, but real.

The sound of Mack's voice, calling her name.

“Allison!”

She fights for another breath, fights to find her voice.

She's so weak . . .

But you can do it.

It comes back to her now: the other thing Dr. Rogel said that day, about the girls.

They're blessed with extraordinary strength—as is their mother.

Yes. You're strong.

Your strength is strength, remember?

Mustering every bit of it, she drags air into her lungs, finds her voice at last. “Mack!”

She hears a shout.

Running footsteps.

Then, incredibly, she sees her husband's face, haloed in golden sunlight.

Epilogue

Nebraska

July 12, 2012

“H
appy birthday to you . . . Happy birthday, to you . . . Happy birthday, dear . . .”

The chorus of voices, singing in unison until now, diverge.

Some sang “Allison,” some sang “Mommy,” some sang “Aunt Allison,” and one—J.J., on her lap—just babbles.

It's all music to her ears.

“ . . . Happy birthday to you!”

Smiling, she leans forward to blow out the thirty-six candles on the triple-layer chocolate cake her sister-in-law made for her.

“But Mommy's only turning thirty-five, Aunt Cindy,” eagle-eyed Hudson protested as they lit the candles.

“I know, but we always put one candle for every year, and an extra one for good luck.”

“I'll take all the extra luck I can get,” Allison told her.

“I think you're the luckiest person I've ever known,” her brother said, sitting next to her at the big redwood picnic table he'd built with his own hands. “But you better watch out, because tomorrow is Friday the thirteenth.”

Thinking of Randi and the big party she's throwing tomorrow, Allison grinned. Her friend has called her every day for the past week and a half, just making sure she's okay.

“She must really love you,” Cindy-Lou said after the latest call.

Allison smiled. “She really does.”

A lot of people do.

“Make a wish, Mommy.”

She closes her eyes, makes a wish, and blows out the candles in one big breath.

“What was the wish?” Maddy asks, as everyone claps.

“She can't tell you,” Hudson says, “or it won't come true.”

“Guess what? It already did,” Allison informs her daughters.

Gazing at the people gathered around the table, with Mack's arm resting on her shoulders, she really does feel like the luckiest person in the world.

True to the promise she made to herself years ago, when she was in her early twenties and thinking about what she wanted out of life, she's never taken her husband and daughters and son for granted. Back then, she swore that if she were ever fortunate enough to have a family,
I'll be there for them, and I'll hold on tight, no matter what, because nothing in this world is more precious.

What she failed to realize at the time was that
all
family ties are precious.

But she figured it out the moment her big brother Brett walked into her hospital room in Sioux Falls, where she'd been taken to recuperate from her injuries and the poisonous spider bite.

The hefty blond man in the doorway didn't look anything like the boy who once ran along behind her bike, and let go.

But he was her big brother. She knew it the moment she saw the relief in his eyes. He cared about her. And so did the pleasantly plump woman who came up behind him, holding a vaseful of bright yellow blooms she'd cut from her garden.

Sunflowers. They couldn't have been more fitting.

There are more in a red tin milk pitcher sitting on the blue and white checked tablecloth, along with the remains of a decadent, deep-fried dinner doused in creamy country gravy.

The table is perched not on a deck or a fancy flagstone or brick patio, like the outdoor dining furniture tends to be back home, but on the wide stretch of lawn behind the big white farmhouse. The warm air is sweetly scented with freshly mown grass, fireflies are flitting about, cicadas have taken up a steady chatter in the fields, and a pale slice of waning moon has appeared in the wide open purple-blue sky.

“Samantha,” Cindy-Lou says, “will you please run into the kitchen and get the ice cream I made to go along with the cake?”

“I'll help!” Hudson is on her feet immediately.

“Me too!” Maddy follows suit, and the girls trail their pretty teenage cousin into the house. They've been doing that from the moment they met her, and good-natured Samantha seems amused by it.

The screen door squeaks and bangs, a homey sound that made Allison jump every time she heard it for the first few days. She's used to it now. She likes it.

“You made homemade ice cream, Mom?” Jeff, a quiet boy with his father's gentle disposition, lights up.

“Remember, we have company, so you can't eat it all yourself like last time,” Brett tells his son, and Jeff reddens.

Allison smiles, bouncing J.J. on her lap and imagining a time when he'll tower over her the way Jeff does over Cindy-Lou.

She feels Mack's arm tighten around her shoulders and she looks up to see him smiling. He might be thinking the same thing. Or he might still be marveling at how very lucky Allison is.

It's been more than a week now since the ordeal she survived at the hands of Winona, the half sister she'd never known existed—the wife Mack had thought was dead. With the help of Rocky Manzillo back East, they had pieced together the tragic details of her life, and the path she'd followed into Mack's life—and Allison's.

Strangely, despite all the evidence that her father was a selfish scoundrel living a double life, Allison feels more capable of forgiving him now than she ever did before.

“It's because you have closure,” Brett told her when she mentioned it one day, as they went walking over his property at sunset. “You were such a daddy's girl when you were a kid. He took good care of you when he was around. I know why it broke your heart when he left.”

Daddy really hadn't left Allison, though. Not by choice.

But he
had
left Winona. Had the emotional pain she'd endured turned her into a monster? Or was she just wired differently than most people—capable, as she was, of unthinkable, rage-driven acts?

It's going to take some getting used to—this new version of an already troubled family history.

But Allison is willing to work on accepting what is, and letting go of what can never be. She's ready to lay the ghosts to rest and start looking ahead from now on.

Tomorrow morning, she and Mack and the kids will bid farewell to this peaceful farm where they've spent more than a week of vacation that was, if not entirely restful, then at least healing.

Allison is sorry to say good-bye, but they've already made plans to visit again next summer. Anyway, it's time to set out for home.

To think she was feeling unfulfilled, just weeks ago, with her life there. Questioning her choices, bored and restless, what-if
-
ing her days away.

The screen door squeaks opens again and bangs shut.

I'm going to miss that sound.

“Mommy! Aunt Cindy-Lou made ice cream!” Hudson announces.

“And cones, too!” Maddy puts in.

“You are really quite something, Aunt Cindy-Lou,” Allison tells her sister-in-law.

“Can we make ice cream when we go back home?” Hudson asks.

“And cones?”

“Sure,” Allison tells her girls.

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

Mack looks at her. “Better not make promises you can't keep.”

“I never do.”

From where she sits, looking at the summer days ahead, she can't think of anything better than licking homemade ice cream cones in the bright sunshine with her children.

Mack leans closer to her as Cindy-Lou and Samantha dish up dessert for everyone. “Are you ready to go home, Allie?”

“Definitely.”

“We've got a long road ahead of us.”

“Not as long as the one we took to get here.”

Resting her cheek on her husband's shoulder, Allison smiles contentedly, watching the fireflies dance like stars across the night sky.