Winter (Four Seasons #1) (39 page)

Horror is my
new best friend. I shiver, kicking myself when I remember Chloe
plucking the hair from my jacket back at the station when she
invited us for dinner yesterday. Such an innocent gesture then is
creepy as hell now. Chloe stands up, rocking back on her heels,
looking me over.

“
I’ll let you
watch the rest of the video, and then we can get on with
it.”

“
No! I don’t
want to see!” I scream. I lash out with my feet, trying to kick
her, but she’s out of reach. My shouting flicks a switch in Chloe’s
demeanor. She lunges towards me, brandishing the Taser, and presses
it into my neck. I see stars for the second time, realizing that
this is how she brought me down outside. I’m retching when she
removes the conductors from my skin.

“
Shut your
mouth, you silly little bitch,” she hisses, leaning so that her
face is inches from mine. “You’re ruining everything. This is all
your fault, you know. Your dad would still be alive and I wouldn’t
have gotten angry and killed the others, either, if it wasn’t for
you. Everything got so messy.” She shifts, coming even closer. “All
your fault,” she spits. Her furious expression vanishes, a sudden
void taking over. She straightens up. “But maybe you’re right,
though. We don’t want to see all that mess again. And we’ve waited
long enough.”

Chloe goes
into her pocket and draws out a slim, black box, and my heart
starts hammering again. She mentioned Adam’s machete, and then
drowning and fire, so that means… that means her method of killing
was poisoning.
Is
poisoning.
Strychnine. It’s a
convulsant. Both girls asphyxiated. These were the two last
killings before they stopped altogether, and they were also the
only ones with the fourth symbol on their palms.
Luke’s words come back to me, unwelcome. Chloe
opens up the box in her hands and a syringe lies within, alongside
a small vial of clear liquid. She removes both items from the foam
protector and pops the cap off the syringe.

“
If you’re a
good girl, I’ll make you look pretty afterwards, okay?” She sinks
the needle into the small vial, adept and practiced, and I let rip.
No sense in holding back now.

“
HELP!
SOMEBODY HELP ME!”

Chloe looks
unimpressed. My shouting wouldn’t bother her at all if it weren’t
for the sudden rumbling overhead. I know that sound well, used to
listen for it nearly every weeknight when I was waiting for dad to
come home from work. A car has just pulled up outside the house.
There’s someone here, someone who might actually hear me
hollering.

“
HELP!”

“
What the
hell?” Chloe mumbles. She sets the syringe down and rushes to the
stairs, staring up them into the kitchen above. The kitchen door
must still be off its hinges, and there are lights blaring out into
the darkness. Whoever is up there will definitely know something’s
up if they take the time to walk around the back of the house. A
car door slams above us, and Chloe runs back to the stool that the
projector sits on, snatching up the sharp hunting knife she was
carrying earlier.

“
Be quiet,”
she snaps, pointing the knife at me. “If you make a sound, I’ll
kill whoever’s up there. Don’t think I won’t.” I don’t doubt that
she’s mad enough to follow through with her threat. It takes every
scrap of will power I own to keep my mouth closed. I sit, listening
intensely and praying. I’ve never prayed so hard or so much in
entire life.

I’m holding my
breath again, when I hear a voice upstairs. “Iris? Iris, you here?”
It’s Luke. I let my head fall forward, my chin pressing into my
chest, and I start crying.

Chloe tugs off
her loose black shirt to reveal her police uniform underneath. She
tucks the knife into her waistband and shoots me a warning glare.
“I’ll kill him,” she hisses, and then she’s off up the stairs.
“Luke!” she calls. “It’s Chloe! We got a break in call up ‘bout
half an hour ago, but there’s no one here!”

Clever
bitch.

“
Chloe? Iris
tried calling me, too. When I rang back, the line was
dead.”

Chloe cut the
line? Relief and horror races through me. If she hadn’t done that,
Luke probably wouldn’t have come. But now that he’s here, he’s in
very grave danger. I need to see up the stairs into the kitchen. I
need to see what the hell is going on. I shuffle my feet as far
forward as I can, a mere two inches from the chair legs, and shunt
myself forward. The chair makes a scraping against the tiles, and
my heart explodes in my chest. She said not to make a sound, and
that definitely qualified. I sure as shit don’t want to die but my
need to keep Luke safe outweighs my own desire for
self-preservation. I don’t try it again. Instead, I lean as far
forward as I can, bending double at the waist. From that position,
I can see a bolt of yellow light up in the kitchen—along with a
pair of black police issue boots and a pair of scruffy Chuck
Taylors with the bottoms of wet jeans cuffed up around
them.

“
Was the door
like that when you got here?” Luke asks. He sounds perplexed,
worried. Panic tinges his voice, although I can tell he’s trying to
rein it in.

“
Yeah, there
were footprints in the snow. Signs of a struggle. Did anyone know
she was up here alone?” Chloe asks.

Only you
knew, you crazy bitch!
I pull on the zip
ties binding my hands behind my back but there’s barely any point.
Chloe has had years of practice in making sure people don’t escape
from these things. I’m not going anywhere.

“
No. No, I
didn’t even know until she called from here. We…we had a
fight.”

Silence fills
the kitchen. And then, “She find out about your dad?”

“
No.” Luke
lets out a long, heavy sigh. His feet turn around and then turn
back again. I can picture the look on his face as he anxiously
surveys the kitchen. “I was going to tell her, but...”

“
S’okay, I
understand. No sense in adding another body to the list,
right?”

“
It’s not
that. I just—” he breaks off abruptly. “The dead should stay dead.”
He pauses. One breath. Two. There’s an edge to his voice when he
asks, “Why were you in the basement?”

Chloe takes a
step backwards and a pulse of adrenalin floods through my body.
This is it. He’s figured something out. He knows. Is she going to
kill him? The world tips sideways.

“
Lights were
on down there. Don’t think anyone’s been down there,
though.”

More
silence.
Oh, come on, Luke! Work it out,
work it out!
I screw my eyes shut and hold
my breath, waiting, praying, hoping that everything snaps together
inside his head and he rushes down the stairs. But he
doesn’t.

“
Okay, I’ll
run a sweep upstairs. You take the downstairs?” Luke says, his
voice firm. Determined. Like his confidence has been bolstered now
that he thinks he’s got help. That Chloe is his backup and not the
psychotic bitch who orchestrated this whole thing. My hopes plummet
when Chloe agrees.

“
Sure thing.
Holler if you find anything.”

Luke’s Chucks
squeak as he turns and leaves the kitchen, and I hear him racing up
the stairs, calling out my name. I want to scream out for him, but
by the time he reaches me, even if he hears me two floors down,
Chloe will have charged down here and slit my throat. I keep quiet,
the taste of blood fresh in my mouth from where I’ve bitten my lip
so hard. Chloe’s boots pause at the top of the stairs before she
hurries back down into the basement, the knife back in her hand.
She looks crazy. Crazier than before.

“
We don’t have
time for pleasantries anymore, Miss Breslin. I’m afraid we’re going
to have to rush through procedures. I hope you don’t
mind.”

“
You can’t be
serious? You can’t honestly think you’re going to be able to kill
me and get away with it when Luke’s upstairs?”

A twisted
smile develops on Chloe’s face. She calmly walks to the small stool
where she left her syringe and the poison and carefully withdraws
the needle again. “Luke isn’t the brightest of boys, Iris. He’s
been spending more time singing in cafes than he has concentrating
on his work recently, or so I hear. And this will only take a
second. Besides, it’s about time I received some recognition for my
work.”

Bile bubbles
in my throat. Recognition for her work? Luke’s words replay in my
mind, and I finally realize that I’m doomed.
Serial killers usually want to get caught. Typically they’re
proud of their handiwork. They want to claim responsibility in the
end.

There is no
way out of this for me.

Chloe paces
forward, a small smirk playing over her lips, and goose bumps burst
out over my skin. There’s no point in keeping quiet now. I tug with
all my might against the zip ties, the narrow plastic biting
angrily into my skin, and I scream.

“
Luke! In the
basement!
LUKE!
”

Chloe tuts,
standing right in front of me. “Pathetic. Really pathetic.” She
roughly pulls up the sleeve on my shirt, exposing my arm. I try to
shy away from her touch but there is nowhere for me to go. She
brings the tip of the needle to my arm, bending in concentration as
she searches for a vein. And that’s when I notice Luke running down
the stairs behind her.

“
Chloe, what
the fuck! Chloe, no!” Our eyes meet for a second and the emotions
pouring out of him are overwhelming. Fear. Panic. Anger. His terror
hits me hard—makes me see how bad the situation looks. He doesn’t
think he’s going to reach me in time. And he doesn’t.

The sharp burn
of the needle tears through me, forcing its way upwards, cold and
unstoppable. The pain that follows is worse. Far, far worse. It’s
instant, like a bomb going off inside my head. The crippling
sensation spreads through me, polluting me, and an uncontrollable
trembling follows behind it. Luke crashes into Chloe, sending her
sideways and ripping at the needle, tearing my skin. Their bodies
hit the ground hard, but the needle remains hanging out of my arm.
I watch as Luke reaches back and swings, punching Chloe in the face
as hard as he can. The utter despair on his face destroys me, but
pretty quickly I’m not worrying about his despair. I’m worrying
about my own. My head snaps back as every single muscle in my body
tightens and I start convulsing. The spasms that wrack through my
body are so strong I can hardly breathe, the force pushing down on
my body refusing to let my diaphragm contract enough to pull in a
single draw of oxygen.

My eyes roll
back into my head, and another kind of pain lances through my body
as something hits my leg. Instead of a spiraling, deep pain, this
new pain is a bright stinging, burning pain, radiating up my leg. A
terrifying scream builds inside me but I have no means of letting
it out. My body is now convulsing so hard that I can feel where the
zip ties have cut all the way through my skin, the wet sensation of
my blood running over my hands and dripping from my
fingers.

A loud,
echoing bang fills the basement, along with Luke’s shouts, and the
chair I’m sitting on takes a heavy impact. I want to open my eyes
to see what’s going on, but I can’t. My body is no longer my own;
it won’t respond to my will. A pressure starts to build in my
chest, my heart laboring, beating way too fast. The pressure
builds, builds, builds until my heart pauses and then hiccups in my
ribcage, beating once really hard and then racing away again. The
pressure starts rising again, and I know the poison is doing its
work, trying to tighten its chokehold around my vital organs so
they can no longer function. I don’t have long left.

Another huge
impact rocks the chair beneath me, more shouts and screams ringing
off the tiled walls of the basement, and the world starts to tip
all over again. But this time it’s real. The sick sensation of the
ground coming up to reach me floods my stomach, and suddenly I’m
back in my room in my apartment. I’m falling backwards onto my bed,
but this time it’s not Noah standing over me; it’s Luke. He’s
laughing as I squeal, and I’m laughing, too. I’m safe, I’m warm,
I’m protected. When the fall ends, my bed cushions me, softening my
landing, and for a moment everything is normal as Luke looks down
on me, smiling, warmth and adoration in his eyes.

“
Love you,” he
whispers.

I smile back.
When I open my mouth, words forming on my lips, water fills my
mouth. Cold, rushing, persistent. I can’t figure out why water
would be rushing into my mouth, but I make sure I finish telling
him how I feel. Somehow, I know this is the last time I’ll be able
to.

“
I love you,
too, Luke. I’m so sorry.”

Thirty Two

Steel

MY EXISTENCE
is a dream. Time has no real meaning for a while—I drift and fade
from a world where everything is too bright, too loud, into
something less tangible, something less painful, until I can’t
really tell the difference between what’s real and what isn’t
anymore. The beeping sound at my head is the only means of counting
time. Eventually, I don’t even notice the beeping. Sometimes a
rough hand in mine brings me back to the soft bed I lay in, and
sometimes it’s gentle words from familiar voices that tempt me back
into my body. For a long time, the pain of returning is just too
much to bear and so I flee from it, preferring the abyssal peace of
the dark places inside my mind. It’s comforting there.