DON’T EVER TELL 347
“I wish we could.”
She twirled around to face him, hooked her fingers into the belt loops of his jeans. Standing on her tiptoes, she kissed him lightly on the lips.
“We’ll have plenty of time later,” she said.
“Of all the times for us to start feeling horny, why now?” “I think it’s because we feel so alive. I mean, I’ve hardly
gotten any sleep in the past three days. I should be passed out on the floor. But I’m positively crackling with energy.” She snapped her fingers. “Aren’t you?”
“I’m hyped, ready to roll.”
“Even though we know Dexter is probably coming soon,
I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else in the world right now.” He reached for the tape, cardboard, and the knife. “Nice secret weapon,” he said.
“Dealing with him, we can’t be too prepared.” She turned
around. “Tape this knife to the cardboard, and then fix the whole thing to the small of my back, please.”
He did as she asked. She put on her jacket and tested it a few times. She was able to tear the knife away from the cardboard backing with only a quick, forceful tug.
He checked his watch. It was a few minutes to five. Darkness was stealing over the island, and the strengthening winds were battering the palmettos and live oaks that surrounded the house.
The lights flickered for a moment, and then came back on.
“Time for the lamps,” she said. She lit two of the kerosene lanterns, and double-checked that their flashlights were functional.
He sat on the sofa in the living room. He had the .357 on his hip, a flashlight dangling from his belt, and the Molotov cocktail strapped over his shoulder in a pillowcase.
She sat next to him and turned on the television to the local news. A storm warning flashed at the bottom of the screen.
“I think we’re ready for anything now,” she said. “Storms— and Dexter.” She uttered a humorless laugh. “Not much difference between the two.”
“So now,” he said, “we wait.”
The wind continued to increase in strength and velocity. It swept over the house, tearing at the eaves, howling around the walls, and hammering the windows like a barrage of fists.
Sitting on the sofa, Joshua kept his finger on the flashlight, waiting for a blackout. The lights flickered several times, but remained on.
Rachel put her hand on his arm. “What time is it?”
“Almost six,” he said. “You think the ferry would’ve still run in this wind?”
“It would take something much worse than this to keep the ferry on the mainland. A lot of people depend on it for their livelihood, you know. Children go to school on the mainland, all of the jobs are there ...trust me, the boat ran, and if Dexter was going to come today, he would have been on that last one.”
Quietly, he nodded. He happened to glance at her hair, and on impulse, touched it.
“I found out that your natural hair color is auburn,” he said.
She gave him a curious look. “How’d you find that out?” “Tanisha told me.”
“She would know, she dyes it for me. My hair used to be halfway down my back. I cut it and started to color it after I left home. It was part of my disguise, along with the glasses.”
He ran his fingers through her soft, dark curls. He thought about his dream of the beach, and her auburn mane flowing in the sunlight.
“I’d like to see it how it used to be,” he said.
She started to answer, but then the electric lights dimmed, quieting her. Another gale shrieked around the house.
Adrenaline sizzled through his veins.
“This is it. Lights out.”
As soon as he finished the sentence, the lights died, the TV screen fading to black. The power didn’t come back on.
She had placed one of the kerosene lanterns in the living room and the other in the kitchen, giving them pale light, but the blackness that devoured the rest of the house was so thick it might have been a solid substance.
On a sparsely populated, mostly undeveloped island, there were no street lamps to light the neighborhoods, no big buildings blazing in the night. He had lost power at their home in Atlanta yesterday, but that had been nothing compared to this.
Here, the darkness was breathtaking.
They switched on their flashlights.
After a short bout of tense waiting, Joshua removed the .357 from his holster and thumbed off the safety. Rachel followed suit with the .38.
The wind wailed for a few seconds... and then faded. In the well-deep silence that followed, he thought he heard a soft tinkle. Like breaking glass.
It came from somewhere outside.
“That’s him.” His pounding heart felt as if it had crawled into his throat. “Rachel, I want you to go upstairs.”
“What? No way.”
“You’ll be safe up there. You’re the one he really wants. Hide in one of the bedrooms.
Please.”
The wind spoke again, an insistent keening. The house creaked, groaned.
Guns drawn, they moved to the staircase. She paused on the first step.
“What’re you going to do?” She had lowered her voice to a whisper.
“I’m going to stay down here and hold him off. Cut him down, if I can.”
“You sure about this?”
“Totally. Go on.”
She gnawed her bottom lip. Then, holding the gun and the flashlight in front of her, she climbed the stairs.
He watched the darkness above swallow her. He stepped away from the staircase, sidled into the hallway, and extinguished the kerosene lantern in the living room. He slipped into the kitchen and doused that lamp, too.
From outside, though the blinds were drawn, Dexter might have glimpsed light. He wanted Dexter to think that they had left the living room, to lure him into attempting to enter through the front door.
Angling the flashlight beam to the floor, he returned to the hallway. There, he waited in darkness. Heart knocking. Finger curled around the trigger.
She hated being separated from Joshua. His strength and clarity of purpose had bolstered her confidence, and leaving his side brought back all of her old fears and worries about Dexter.
She would’ve run, if there was anywhere else to run to. She understood running was not a solution, but it would have delayed the inevitable confrontation.
Her old scars itched, as if remembering her last violent encounter with Dexter.
I won’t have to fight him this time. Joshua’s going to keep him away from me.
She wanted to believe that was true, but her nightmares were fresh in her thoughts. Nightmares were not necessarily prophetic—they were sometimes only manifestations of deeply held fears—but it was impossible for her to push them out of her mind. This entire evening had the quality of a terrifying dream.
The second-floor hallway was pitch black. She’d spent some of the best times of her life in this house, but her fear was so sharp that she might have been wandering through a foreign place, where every shadow held a latent threat.
She panned the flashlight around. Joshua had asked her to hide. But no room—nowhere on the entire planet—was safe from Dexter.
She was so damn tired of running, of living in fear. She wanted to kill the man. She’d never wanted to harm another human being, but she would hurt him, eagerly and gratefully.
Don’t think like that, girl. You’ll lower yourself to his level, and then where will you be?
A spare bedroom was on the right that her aunt had often used for prayer and Bible study. It was a chamber of peace that held nothing but comforting memories.
She would hide in there.
Joshua’s finger twitched on the revolver’s trigger. Dexter was outside—he’d heard him. But the asshole hadn’t tried to break in yet. What was he doing?
Perhaps he wasn’t going to come through the front. Perhaps he was looking for another way inside the house.
Joshua cut off the flashlight. He moved to a window on the right of the doorway.
With one finger, he lifted one of the slats in the blinds, giving himself a narrow side view of the porch.
A large tree branch had landed at the bottom of the steps, in the midst of glittering glass shards and dead leaves.
Where had the glass come from?
He backed away from the window.
Then, he cocked the hammer of the .357 and flung open the front door.
Cold wind gusted inside and struck him like a manyarmed beast. But there was no attack from Dexter.
Silvery moonlight illuminated the porch. Checking both ways, he went down the steps. At the bottom, his shoe crunched on the blend of glass slivers and leaves.
He kicked aside the offending branch, swung around, and looked up.
The dormer window, which led to the attic, was broken.
On the threshold of the spare bedroom, she played the flashlight beam around. It was bare but for a chair, bookcase, and desk. All clear.
She locked the door, leaned against it.
Then, she pulled the chair from the desk and levered the top of the seat back underneath the doorknob, for a little extra reinforcement.
Beyond the white cone of her flashlight, the room was tomb-dark. Earlier, they had closed the Venetian blinds on the big window, which gave a stunning ocean view.
She decided to open the blinds. It would make her feel better to be able to observe the ceaselessly rumbling tides. As if she weren’t trapped.
She pulled the lift cord, raising the blinds to the top of the windowpane. Pale moonlight fell inside. On the beach below, the waves, lashed by strong winds, crashed violently on the shore, as if some gigantic sea creature were thrashing to the surface to devour her.
Disturbed by the sight, she was about to close the blinds again, preferring the comfort of the flashlight to this, when she heard a sound behind her. Like creaking metal hinges.
In the far corner of the room, there was a rectangular ceiling panel that granted entry to the attic. As she watched, it opened slowly, a set of retractable wooden stairs lowering from the attic to the floor, like the widening jaws of an immense beast.
He’s already in the house, oh, Jesus . . .
Terror bolted her feet in place. She wanted to run. But she couldn’t order her muscles to work.
There was a thud: the weight of a body dropping onto the hardwood floor.
“I kept my word, baby,” a familiar voice said, which had an effect on her like an ice pick piercing her spine. “I found you.”
Run
, she thought, wildly.
Run, run, run.
But she couldn’t. She wouldn’t.
Not any more.
She aimed the flashlight in front of her.
Dexter looked mostly the same, like the man who had haunted her nightmares for so long. The only difference was that he appeared crazier, if that were at all possible.
Madness and blood thirst gleamed in his eyes.
“Aren’t you going to run?” He nodded toward the doorway. “There’s the door. Make me chase you, baby, make it sweeter for me. You know I love it when you run.”
“Then I’m happy to disappoint you, asshole.”
She dropped the flashlight, raised the gun, and pulled the trigger.
He got in through the attic,
Joshua thought.
Why didn’t I think of that?
Dexter had out-foxed him. The man had a singular, twisted brilliance.
He rushed up the porch steps and through the front door. Like a fool, he had sent Rachel upstairs thinking that he was going to protect her from harm.
But he might as well have sent her away to die.
“Rachel!” He took the steps two and three at a time. “Rachel! Where are you?”
From a room upstairs, gunfire rang out.
Joshua had told her that when he’d fought Dexter, Dexter had taken two rounds point blank from a .38 and had gotten up only a few minutes later and walked away, because he was wearing a bulletproof vest. She should have known that shooting him anywhere but in his head would be a waste of energy and ammo.
But terror trumped rational thought.
She fired, scoring a direct hit in his chest, and he only rocked backward on his heels, as if she’d merely punched him.
“Try again.” He thundered forward.
Outside the room, Joshua was shouting her name.
She aimed again, but Dexter was charging forward so fast that he got within range and swiped at her, knocking the gun out of her hand.
She screamed, spun to the doorway.
He seized her arm and threw her across the room as if she weighed no more than a doll. She smacked against the wall, rapping her head hard against the plaster, and slid to the floor.
As if from a great distance, she heard Joshua pounding on the door, calling her name.
I’m sorry, baby. I’m so sorry for everything.
Dexter descended on her like a spider that had trapped a fly in its web. He put his cold hands around her neck, and started choking.
The gunshots came from a bedroom. Joshua tried frantically to open the door, but it was locked.
“Rachel! I’m coming!”
He took a few steps backward, and then lowered his shoulder and rammed against the door like a bull. He hit the door hard enough to rattle his teeth. Wood splintered, and the door buckled in the frame, but it remained intact.
She screamed.
He thought of using the .357 to blow the door open, but his father had warned him that the .357 was such a powerful caliber that a round could punch through walls and kill someone inadvertently. What if he shot at the door, blew away the lock, and hit Rachel, too?
He couldn’t risk it. He had to knock the door down. He was strong, a big man. He could do this. He had to. She needed him. His baby needed him. His future lay in that room, his only hope of lasting happiness, and this was his last chance, his only chance, to take hold of the future and blast away the darkness forever.
He slammed against the door again. And again. And again. . . .
Dexter was choking her.
“Where’s my fucking money, bitch? Where did you hide my fucking money?”
Through her dimming vision, she could see the murderous intent in his lunatic eyes, could feel his overwhelming desire to kill her in his powerful hands.
Across the room, Joshua was banging against the door, attempting to knock it down, but the chair wedged under the doorknob was holding him back.
Above her, Dexter grinned maniacally. Darkness pulled at her, a fathomless darkness that would never relinquish her once she surrendered to it.
“Gonna fucking kill you...” he said, his hot breath washing over her. “Give me my money...”
Her arm was twisted behind her. Her fingers brushed against the handle of the knife she’d had Joshua tape to the small of her back. Her secret weapon.
“Simple matter of respect, bitch...”
Using the last of her remaining strength, she ripped the knife away from her back, brought it around, and plunged the blade deep into Dexter’s throat.
Dexter bellowed like a speared lion.
Struggling to breathe, she screamed at him.
“I gave away all of your money, asshole! All . . . of it! Every. Last. Penny!”
Blood arched from the wound in his throat. He fumbled to tear out the blade, and when he did, more blood spouted.
She coughed violently, scooted away, and shakily rose to her feet.
Still, she shouted at him, her voice raw. “Battered women shelters... domestic violence centers . . . churches...I gave it all to them. I thought hard about it . . . and decided I didn’t
want
your filthy blood money.”
He tried to rise. Screaming, she kicked him in the ribs, and he doubled over, groaning.
“And I didn’t need it!”
On Joshua’s seventh or eighth try, the door gave way. He stumbled inside, a chair spinning away from the door.
Dexter and Rachel were on the other side of the room, revealed in the pale moonshine and the backsplash of the flashlight that lay on the floor. She was on her feet, hunched over, chest heaving. Dexter lay on his side, gasping, bleeding copiously from a knife wound in his throat.
She’d stabbed the bastard. Joshua felt a flash of savage triumph.
Dexter saw him, and hatred twisted his face. He struggled to his feet.
And drew a gun.
But Joshua had already honed the .357 on him, clutching the weapon in his good hand.
He fired, and the gun’s report was like an explosion in the small room. A round blasted Dexter’s shoulder, and he swayed.
But he did not fall.
Joshua fired again, and this one shaved across Dexter’s head, ripping away half his scalp and shattering the glass on the big window behind him. Another round in the head drove Dexter backward, reeling.
But he didn’t fall, didn’t die. His dark eyes held on stubbornly to life.
The man had the strength and determination of the murderously insane.
Stepping forward, Joshua fired the last two cartridges. They tore through Dexter’s throat and chest and sent him hurtling through the window, and falling to the beach below.
Standing at the shattered window, cold wind swirling around him, Joshua peered down at the sand. Dexter lay sprawled on the ground, bits of glass sprinkling him like party glitter.
He wasn’t moving. He appeared to be dead.
Joshua went to check on Rachel. She leaned against the wall, breathing laboriously and massaging her throat.
“You okay?” he asked.
She nodded, and asked in a raw voice, “He dead?”
“He hasn’t moved.”
“Better make sure.”
He had left the Molotov cocktail in the hallway. He retrieved it and returned to the window.
Lying on the beach, Dexter appeared to twitch, but that might have been due to the brisk wind.
Rachel made her way to the window. She had picked up her gun.
“Let’s end this,” Joshua said.
He waited a moment for the wind to subside, and then he thumbed the Bic lighter, conjuring a flame, and touched it to the oil-soaked wick of the hand grenade. The fire tasted the rag, and began to devour it hungrily.
He let the bomb drop, the flaming wick fluttering like wings as it arced through the air. The bottle struck Dexter and exploded in an orb of flames and glass shrapnel, the heat so intense that Joshua felt it sear the sweat on his face from his vantage point fifteen feet above.
Dexter howled. He rolled across the sand and clambered to his feet, covered in rippling flames from soles to crown, but somehow, still alive.
He lurched blindly toward the ocean.
“Oh, shit,” Joshua said. “He’s gonna jump in the water and put out the fire.”
“No, he’s not.” Rachel raised her gun, teeth gritted in concentration.
Stumbling, Dexter was less than ten feet away from the roaring tide, perhaps thirty feet away from them.
Rachel pulled the trigger.
Dexter wobbled as if slapped upside the head. He dropped to the sand, out of reach of the tide.
At last, he lay still.
“That was for everything you took away from me,” Rachel said softly.
She lowered her head, whispered a prayer, and cast the gun onto the floor.
Joshua put his arm around her and pulled her close.
On the beach, the wind fanned the flames, keeping the dark of night at bay.