42

Past shock, past panic, she knew she’d heard that voice before, and she remembered where: at the motel this afternoon, while she hid in an alcove and a man entered the manager’s office, announcing himself as Detective Shepherd.

He was here, and this was some kind of trap, and Cray—

Cray was part of it, was in on it, was helping the police to catch ...

“No,” she whispered, and she waved her arms at the lights in a frantic effort to make them disappear, make this stop happening. “No, you can’t, you can’t!”

“Don’t move!”

The flashlights swam toward her, two dark figures limned in their backsplash—Shepherd in his dark suit, and another man, a deputy, tan shirt and brown pants and a gun belt.

Closing in.

She had to run, her every instinct insisted that she run, but there was nowhere to go. She was cornered, her back against the garage wall and the two men drawing near, pinning her in the wavering circles of light.

“No, please,” she said, speaking not to them but to whatever justice there might be in the universe. “Please, this isn’t right.”

“Calm down, Kaylie.”

That was Shepherd, Shepherd who was showing her a smooth, false smile, the smile she had seen on doctors’ faces, on Cray’s face, and why not? Cray and Shepherd—they were in league together, allies united against her, smiling killers working hand in hand.

She felt the pressure of a scream welling in her throat.

“Kaylie ...” Shepherd said again in his deceitful, soothing voice.

“Not my name,” she whispered, and then the scream broke out of her in a rush of furious words: “That’s not my name, I’m not Kaylie, stop calling me that, stop calling me—”

Abruptly they were all over her, their hands, their hot breath—too strong for her—the deputy and Shepherd overpowering her frenzied resistance, twisting her around, then grabbing her arms, wrenching them behind her back, pain in her shoulders, metal on her wrists, handcuffs, they were cuffing her, and she was struggling, thrashing, refusing to surrender even as they pressed her face to the wall and wood splinters pricked her cheek.

“Christ, she’s a fighter,” the deputy said.

Shepherd answered, “Just hold her down.”

She whipsawed wildly under their restraining hands, but she couldn’t break free, and what she had to do was talk to them, talk quietly, try to persuade them, maybe they would believe her, or at least pretend to believe....

“Search his house,” she gasped. “Search his house.”

“Cray’s house?” Shepherd was leaning close, his voice loud in her ear. “Why?”

“You’ll find ... you’ll find their faces. The women. He kills them and ... Like Sharon Andrews.”

“You need help, Kaylie.” He sounded so kind, but they always did.

“Just search. He keeps them there. I know he does.”

“Kaylie ...”

“For God’s sake, wasn’t it enough—what I gave you? The satchel? The knife? How much more do you need?”

Gently: “There wasn’t any satchel, Kaylie.”

The words reverberated in some hollow part of her, nonsensical words.

“I left it for you,” she said blankly. “At the phone.”

“There wasn’t anything there.”

This was impossible. “They didn’t look hard enough. Or they went to the wrong phone or ... or Cray ... he got there first and took it....”

“How could he do that?”

“I don’t know. It doesn’t make sense. But he’s the one you want. He’s the one who killed Sharon Andrews. He tried to kill me. I know it sounds crazy. I know you think I’m insane.”

“We just want to help.”

She was crying. “Well, don’t. Don’t help me. Just let me go. You’re no good at helping, any of you. You just make things worse. You never believe me and you never do anything, and now you’re working with him, with ...”

Cray.

Approaching out of the dark at a fast stride. Behind him, other deputies.

She heard herself moan.

“It’ll be all right,” Shepherd told her, and God, she hated him for uttering those words—such a stupid, meaningless thing to say.

Then she saw something in Cray’s hand. A black kit of some kind. The satchel?

It had to be the satchel, he was carrying it in plain view of everybody, and in a spasm of excitement she nearly opened her mouth to alert Shepherd and the others—but no.

No, it was a different sort of bag, not the one he’d carried into her motel room last night. A doctor’s bag, that’s all, and if she started yelling about it, she would only look that much more foolish and desperate and crazy.

Cray strode into the outer ring of the two flashlights’ glow, his face lit from below, his eyes in deep wells of shadow. “Congratulations, Detective,” he said crisply. “Your plan appears to have proven an unqualified success.”

Shepherd shrugged. “Not much of a plan. Just common sense. Either she would follow you—or she would stay behind and try to get inside the house. And she broke in through the garage window once before.”

But I didn’t, Elizabeth almost said, but she knew her protest would be wasted. The broken window was part of Cray’s scheme, in some way she couldn’t quite understand. He had laid a trap for her, he and the police together.

She said nothing, merely stood trembling, her wrists cuffed behind her, the garage wall hard against her shoulders, and Shepherd holding on to her left arm with a steady hand.

“Well,” Cray said, inspecting her from a cautious distance, his gaze cold and sly, “she had to slip up eventually. In the acute phase of her illness, she’s not capable of thinking clearly.”

This broke her silence. “You piece of shit,” she breathed.

Cray ignored her. “She’ll do better once she’s on a program of medication and intensive therapy. She’ll get the best care here.”

Here.

She stiffened. They couldn’t leave her here ... with Cray.

She opened her mouth to say so, but remarkably Shepherd said it first.

“I’m not sure that’s such a good idea,” he said quietly.

“Oh, but it’s the only way, Detective. She needs psychiatric help. Surely you can see that.”

“Under the circumstances, don’t you think some other doctor at a different institution—”

One of the sheriff’s men, who seemed to outrank the others, cut Shepherd off. “Afraid there isn’t another institution in this county, Roy. Oh, I guess the county medical center handles a few psychiatric cases, but the ones that can’t be treated on an outpatient basis are always transferred here to Hawk Ridge.”

Cray smiled, charming as a snake. “Undersheriff Wheelihan is entirely correct. We’re the only show in town.”

Shepherd wouldn’t give in. “She could be remanded to a Pima County facility.”

Elizabeth listened, aware that her fate would be decided by this conversation, this casual exchange among men free to go home to their beds and their wives tonight.

The one identified as Wheelihan shook his head. “I doubt a judge would go for that idea, Roy. Not unless Dr. Cray were to testify it’s necessary.”

“And I won’t,” Cray said. “Institutionalization at Hawk Ridge is the best thing for her. She needs to confront her fear, deal with it. Only by seeing that I pose no threat will she begin to recover from this paranoid delusion.”

“Don’t listen to him,” Elizabeth whispered in a voice so low that only Shepherd could hear.

“Really, Detective,” Cray said, “there’s no other option.”

“Don’t listen ...” Elizabeth’s voice dropped to a hiss of breath, inaudible even to her.

There was a pause, a stillness, everything suspended, and then very softly Detective Shepherd said, “I suppose you’re right.”

She’d lost.

Cray had her.

She was his patient again, his prisoner.

No escape this time.

His prisoner forever.

A wave of fear broke over her, and she was screaming.

Shepherd grabbed her, said something, more words that didn’t matter, more protestations of helpfulness and compassion, but she wasn’t listening anymore, couldn’t hear him or hear anything except the ululant glissando of her own voice as she screamed and screamed and screamed, Shepherd and the deputy holding her fast, and Cray rummaging in his bag and now coming toward her, and in his hand, in his hand ...

A syringe.

Gleaming.

She saw his lips move, his thin bloodless lips.

This will calm her, he was saying. This will make her sleep.

She didn’t want to sleep. Sleep meant darkness, and she was afraid of the dark.

Her screams became speech, a last plea thrown at the uncaring men around her and the vast night beyond.

“Don’t let him do this, please don’t let him, he’ll kill me, he’ll kill me—”

Cray reaching for her, the needle rising, huge and shiny and as terrifying as the gun he’d trained on her in the Lexus last night.

“He’ll kill me!”

Flash of pain in her neck, the needle biting deep, and at once all strength left her, and where there had been screams, there was silence.

Silence and the onrushing dark.

Silence and falling, a steep plunge, nothing at the bottom.

“She’ll be fine now.” Cray’s voice, so far away, a voice from the shadows that swam around her and inside her, everywhere. “We’ll look after her, I assure you. We’ll give poor Kaylie the very finest care.”

Kaylie.

Not my name, she wanted to say.

But of course it was. It had always been her name, and though she had imagined she could run from it, in the end it had caught up with her, as it must.

Elizabeth Palmer was dead. Paula Neilson, Ellen Pendleton—the other people she’d been—they were all dead. Only Kaylie was left.

It’s who I am, she thought as shadows folded over her. Can’t fight it. Not anymore.

I’m Kaylie ... again.