The Comfort of Black (32 page)

“Yeah, little girl. I'm going to do to you what you wanted but couldn't do to me. See, I got a spare can of gas in the trunk of my car, and I got a lighter in my front pocket. It's going to make things easy, because I'm gonna torch this whole place. They might be able to figure out who you and your boyfriend are, but it's not going to be easy. Have to do some of that DNA testing on your charred bones.”

When she was in her twenties, Hannah had gotten into meditation. This was soon after she had met Dallin and years before the use of meditation to help her with her stress was replaced by a wine bottle. She remembered one particular teaching that was focused on pain relief, and the teacher had said how by controlling one's thoughts and by focusing deep within the self, a person could block out any amount of pain. It was a practice dating back to India some 2,500 years ago, and it had been used throughout the centuries to withstand the most brutal of torture. But very few could maintain the focus needed in those most dire of circumstances in the face of such pain.

Hannah always remembered that. Always shuddered at the thought of needing a skill like that. But now she could be minutes away from an unbearable pain and she was certain she would be unable to block any of the agony as she burned alive.

“Why did you always hate me so much?” she asked. “If you're going to kill me, at least tell me that much. You beat Mom, but
that just seemed like an outlet for you. Your real hate was always directed at me. What did I ever do to deserve that?”

Billy seemed to think about this for a moment. He looked on the verge of telling her something other than what he ultimately said.

“Because you were always different,” he said. “You just didn't fit in, and you knew it. You thought you were too good for us.”

“That's not true,” she whispered. “I just wanted out. How could I possibly want to stay any longer in a house like that?”

“Like I said, too good for us.”

“I didn't deserve your hate,” Hannah said. “None of us did.”

“Well, Hannie, that's the thing about life, they say. Not a lot of fairness spread around.” Billy walked back over and grabbed her cuffed hand, yanking it against the radiator until Hannah thought her wrist would snap inside the cuff.

“Yeah,” he said. “You ain't going anywhere. Be right back, darlin'.”

Still holding Hannah's gun, Billy then collected the rifle from the floor and went outside, leaving the door open. Hannah was at an angle where the partially open door blocked her view, but she felt cool air around her waist, just as she had from the open window. That air represented the outside, the vast woods, freedom. And it was just beyond her reach.

She yanked against the cuff until the skin chafed into a bloody ring around her wrist, but it didn't do anything but transfer pain from her broken hand to the other side of her body. The radiator didn't budge a millimeter.

Her mind fired thoughts at her almost faster than she could process them.

He's not bluffing. But will he torture me first, hoping for the account number, or will he just set me on fire and watch me burn? I can't scream. He doesn't deserve that satisfaction. I'll suck in the smoke. That's how people die in fires, right? Smoke inhalation. Suck in as much as I can as fast as possible. Maybe I'll die from that before the fire eats my skin. But he wants the account number. I don't have it. Don't even know how to get it. Black transferred the money to the
new account and now that died with him. Will Billy believe me, or will he keep hurting me until I say something?

Then she heard a sound, soft but distinct. It was the sound of an approaching car, and she probably wouldn't have heard it except for the fact the front door was open. The road leading to Black's cabin ended there, she knew, so any car coming here was either lost or coming here specifically.

Peter
, she thought. Peter was supposed to be here already. It must be him.

She heard a car door open and then close.

Then Billy. “The hell you doin' here? I told you to stay put.”

And then silence for what seemed like a lifetime. In that silence her imagination spun at a frenzied pace, and perhaps it was all in her mind, but her hearing seemed to suddenly become superhuman, picking up on the slightest of sounds outside the cabin. A distant bird calling to another. The spiny needles of the pine trees brushing each other in the late-fall breeze. A deer stepping delicately around rocks as it foraged for food.

Then laughing. A low chuckling. Mocking.

“That's about right,” she heard Billy say.

More silence, though the air seemed filled with the electric current preceding a lightning strike.

Then a sharp crack. Hannah jumped at the sound, yanking her hand against the cuffs, further tearing the skin around her wrist.

Gunshot
.

The echo lasted longer in Hannah's ears than it did in the air, rippling through her brain, fading only to a dull, distant drumbeat. Adrenaline surged through her, heightening every sense, studding her flesh with goose bumps and raising the hairs on her arms.

Footsteps, slow and cautious. Two steps. Stop. Two more. Stop.

A low moan. The scraping of dirt.

Finally, a shadow stretched along the inside of the cabin, a few feet past the front door. A long alien head and body created by the low sun in the sky. Something in one of the alien hands. Hannah
knew in that instant that the person casting the thin, stretched shadow wasn't Peter.

The door was silent as it fully opened.

Hannah looked up to the figure of her sister standing with the morning light streaming in behind her. Then her gaze flicked to the gun in Justine's hand.

“I killed Dad.”

Justine's face was cloaked in shadow and the sunlight lit the long strands of blond hair that draped her shoulders. She just stood there, swaying slightly, like a steel suspension bridge in high winds. Hannah didn't know if her sister was drugged, drunk, or in shock, but there was a weakness in her stance, as if the slightest touch would topple her.

Hannah tried to focus her hearing, listening for any sign of Billy in front of the cabin. Justine remained silent, looking down at her older sister, saying nothing else after her murder confession.

Hannah finally spoke.

“He's really dead?”

Justine's answer was simply to walk a few more steps into the cabin and gaze around blankly.

“Justine, did you shoot him?”

Justine finally focused her attention on her sister.

“You dyed your hair,” she said.

“Justine, listen, whatever you think of me. No matter the reason why you hate me, we need to work together right now.”

“Is Dallin here?” Justine asked, dazed. Again she craned her neck, scanning the room, but now Hannah could finally see her sister's eyes, and it was clear she was firmly detached from reality.

“Justine, I'm going to ask you again. Did you
kill
him? Because if not, he's coming back in here to kill me.”

“That was what I wanted all along,” Justine said. Hannah had never seen her sister in such a fugue-like state. She wondered how she had been able to drive over here and find the cabin, much less shoot someone. “I wanted you dead,” Justine continued. “Out of
the way. It's what Daddy wanted, too, but I was the reasonable one. I knew if you were dead it would be a problem. The next best thing was to have you run away.”

“Justine, listen very closely to me. There's a key to these handcuffs in Billy's front pocket. I need that key. Can you get it for me?” Hannah was edging closer to hopefulness, which she warned herself away from. She had no idea if her sister would simply raise the gun and put a bullet in her skull at any moment. “Justine, get the key, and then we'll talk this out. I'll tell you where Dallin is.”

Justine's eyes widened for a moment at the sound of Dallin's name.

“I need him,” Justine said.

Hannah's sense of massive betrayal at the hands of her sister was supplanted by her need for survival, so she didn't respond to Justine the way she wanted to. She just said, “I know you do. So go out and get me the key, and then I can tell you where he is.”

Justine's face held a near-catatonic lack of expression. She didn't nod, smile or frown, didn't look at her sister with disdain or distrust. She asked nothing, not even if Dallin was still alive. After a few seconds of silence, Justine turned and went back out the door.

In the moments that followed, Hannah pictured Billy finding that last bit of strength to overpower Justine, just like Grizzly had done with her. He would grab her ankles and pull her down, and Justine, in her zombie-like trance, would topple easily. Billy would take her gun and put a bullet in her head, and then he'd drag himself back inside the cabin to finish off his other daughter. Billy would not allow himself to die until he took everyone else out first.

But it was Justine who finally came back through the open doorway. She held the little silver key in her left hand, and her knuckles were painted in Billy's blood. She tossed the key to Hannah, which clinked a few times on the ground
before coming to rest against her leg. Hannah immediately reached for it, pain searing through her broken hand as she tried to squeeze the key between her fingers. She didn't want to ask Justine for help—hell, she wasn't sure Justine even
could
help in her state—so she gritted through the pain until she was able to use enough force to grasp the key and turn it inside the locking mechanism.

The cuff broke open, releasing her left hand, and that moment of release gave Hannah her first sense of hope. She stood and moved for the door, knowing that by doing so her sister would be standing behind her. But Hannah needed a weapon.

She looked outside. Billy was about fifteen feet away, lying facedown in a pool of blood that spread around his torso. His rifle was on the ground next to him, and Hannah ran over and snatched it off the ground, pausing only a moment to check for movement from the body on the ground. There was none.

She looked over at Black's car, remembering the keys were in his pocket.

Hannah held the rifle with both hands and walked back toward the front door. A few steps away she stopped and examined the weapon. She wasn't very familiar with rifles, though Black had one he'd shown her while teaching her about handguns. She put the safety on, pulled back the bolt, and saw the gleam of the round lodged inside. She slid the bolt back in place and removed the safety.

Hannah raised the weapon to eye level as she slowly made her way inside the cabin.

Justine was still standing where Hannah had left her, staring in the direction of Black's body, but seeing through him. Seeing somewhere either far away or deep within.

“If Dallin is dead,” Justine said distantly, “go ahead and shoot me.”

Hannah didn't need to use the sight on the rifle. At this distance, Justine's head was an easy target. Hannah's finger kissed the trigger of the rifle, teasing it with the lightest of touches.

“He's not dead,” Hannah said.

Justine turned, and the smile on her face was the first emotion she had shown.

“Promise?” she asked.

“My God,” Hannah said. “You really love him, don't you?”

Justine nodded.

“So what came first?” Hannah asked. “Your love for him or your hate for me?”

“I don't hate you, Hannah. I just need you out of my way.”

The woman in front of Hannah was unrecognizable, or perhaps Hannah was seeing her truly for the first time. All they had been through together, every verbal assault, every bruise their mother wore, every night spent huddled on the floor against a bed, wondering what sound would come next from the other room. All those years, and Hannah never knew her sister.

“You think I won't pull the trigger,” Hannah said. “You destroyed my life, and now you're just standing there, like I wouldn't do something about it.”

“I saved your life,” Justine said. “Daddy would have killed you.”

“Peter. Where is he?”

“Dead,” she said. “Daddy's plan was to come out here well before the meeting. He waited about a mile down the road to make sure no one else was coming to the cabin. I saw Peter's car when I was driving here. It had smashed into a tree on the side of the road. Bullet hole in the windshield. His body was in the front seat. Daddy killed him.”

Hannah squeezed her eyes shut for a second and tried to shake off the horror of how easily Justine told her this.

“Stop calling him
Daddy
,” Hannah said. “He's not a daddy. He's a fucking monster.”

Justine didn't even seem to hear her.

“When Black called and said he had Dallin, Daddy lost his mind. Said he knew you two were working together and that the money might not be coming. He told me to stay put, but I knew he was coming to kill you. I…” She looked down again at Black's
body. “I almost listened to him. Thought how easy it would be. He'd come here. Kill the both of you. Find Dallin. And then I'd have everything I wanted.” Hannah noticed a tiny bubble of spit on her sister's lower lip, which bobbed as Justine spoke. “I waited too long, but I came. Saw the directions he'd written. I came, but I was too late to save Black. Too late to save Peter.” Her gaze shifted back to Hannah. “I'm sorry.”

“Put the gun down, Justine.”

There was no hesitation. Justine's hand opened and the gun that had been hanging by her side clattered to the floor.

“Kick it to me.”

Justine did. Hannah picked up the gun and left the rifle on the floor. The gun felt more familiar,
assuring
.

“Why, Justine?” Hannah held the gun at her side, knowing Justine was no longer a threat. “Why did you do this to me?”

Justine shook her head softly and looked at the floor. “Because you took away everything I had.”