Together always (26 page)

'*Why would you want to kill me because of Mike? He's dead." He was barely aware of what he was saying. All his concentration was on the ropes at his wrists but it seemed hke a good idea to keep Smith talking.

*'I know he's dead." There was real regret in the words. "I killed him. I didn't mean to kill him. At least not so soon. I had other plans. It was supposed to be you, you know," he said with a touch of petulance. Trace wondered if he should apologize.

"I had it all planned. It was going to be you and then the girl and then his son. I left his son for last because I thought that might hurt the most. Besides, I knew it might be difficult to find him. He seems to move around so much. I thought he might come home to comfort his father over your deaths and then I'd kill him. Neat, huh?"

Smith didn't seem to expect a response, which was just as well. He picked up a box of .38 shells and began taking them out of the box and setting them on the rickety table in front of him, lining them up in neat little rows.

**I had it all figured out and then I drove by the liquor store and saw your car parked out front. It was so perfect. I thought you were opening up the store and it seemed so neat to kill you there, Mike might even have been the one to find your body.

"I went in and saw it was Mike and I just couldn't stop myself. I knew I shouldn't do it. It wasn't part of the plan,

' I couldn't help it. I pulled the trigger and then I couldn't pulling it. He knew it was me. I was the last thing he ^..Lvv. The very last face. Even after all these years, he recognized me. It was almost worth ruining my plan to see the look in his eyes."

His hands had stopped moving and he was staring at the wall, clearly seeing other things. A trickle of saliva ran down his chin, unnoticed. Trace looked away, swallowing hard on the acid taste of bile that filled his throat. The picture Smith painted was vivid. He had no trouble im.agining Mike's last few seconds. His realization of who his killer was, the desperate need to leave some clue, some message so that his knowledge wouldn't die with him.

The answer had been right in front of them all the time. Mike had been trying to get to his wife's picture, trying to tell them that Maryann's murderer was also his own.

"But then, after he was dead, I realized that I'd spoiled my plan." Smith reminded Trace of a child who'd just broken his favorite toy. The comparison was nauseating. "I'd wanted to watch him suffer, the way I suffered all those years in prison. I watched my whole life drift away. I couldn't do that to him. But I could destroy his life. Everyone who meant anything to him."

He started methodically arranging the bullets again. *T spent a long time planning all this. I didn't really have anything else to do, you know. I'd have done it as soon as they let me out but that would have been too obvious. I don't want to go back to that place. I won't go back. So I v/aited and watched. I learned all about you and Lily, how Mike had taken you in.

"It was really a perfect plan and then I had to spoil it all by killing Mike first."

Trace froze as the madman turned to look at him. The bonds at his wrists were giving. His hands were slipping out of them, their path softened by the blood that was oozing downward from his raw skin. The pain was negligible, unimportant.

"I thought for a while that I'd ruined everything. I was very depressed. With Mike already dead, there didn't seem

to be much point in killing the three of you. And then it hit me!" He smiled, his eyes alight with insanity. "Do you believe in the afterlife?"

Trace nodded warily and Smith's smile widened. "I do, too." He turned back to the bullets. '*So you see, it's going to work out after all."

Trace went back to twisting the ropes, keeping his eyes on Smith's profile. "I'm not sure I understand."

"It's obvious. If you believe in an afterlife, then you've got to believe that Mike knows what's happening in the world he departed. So even though he's not here, he'll know what's happening to the people he loved the most." He stopped, frowning down at the tidy rows of bullets. "It's not quite as pleasant as my first plan because I don't get to see him suffer, but it's still quite good. Now I can imagine his pain. And after all, one has to make the best of things. When life hands you lemons, you make lemonade and all that."

Trace felt a moment of dizzy unreality. The homey little saying had no place here. Not in the midst of murder and madness.

"What do you plan to do with me?"

"Well, I've changed my plan a bit. Even after Mike died, I was going to stick with the original idea and kill you one by one, but then I thought about it and that seemed rather unkind. Then the three of you would suffer watching your loved ones die. After all, I'm not trying to punish yow and it seemed unfair that you should be made to suffer. So I set the car bomb yesterday. That was supposed to kill Lily. I thought it only fair that she should go first and therefore suffer the least. Then I was going to kill the two of you last night.

"Only the car bomb didn't work so I decided that it might be easiest just to get all three of you in one place and kill you

all at once. While you were taking your little nap, I called your two friends and told them that I had you. I suggested that if they wanted to see you alive again, they should meet us here."

''Only you have no intention of them seeing me alive, do you?" Trace got the words out between gritted teeth.

"Certainly I do." Smith threw him an indignant look as he picked up a blued-steel .38 and began stroking a cloth over the barrel. "I always keep my promises. They'll get to see you alive, right before you all die."

Trace was barely listening. His right hand slid free of the ropes, scraping skin all the way. After that, it was only an instant before his left hand was loose. The rope dropped to the floor behind him with a whisper-soft sound. Pain flooded his wrists and he ground his teeth together, fighting the need to move his arms and massage the blood back into them. Until he figured out just what he was going to do, it was imperative that Smith not know he was no longer tied.

He had to do something soon. Lily would come for him. He knew it as surely as he knew that he loved her more than life itself. No matter what the danger to herself might be, she'd come to him. And John would follow her. Even if they called the police first, they were walking into a trap.

Smith's plan was full of holes, but in some ways the very weakness of it gave it strength. No one would expect such a simple flawed plan.

Smith continued to babble, sometimes humming to himself, sometimes repeating some particular portion of his plot. All the time he stroked the cloth lovingly over the .38, caressing it as one would a lover.

Trace watched for an opportunity, racking his brain for a plan. Something—anything—that would stop Smith before this madness went any further. His feet were still tied.

Whatever he came up with would have to take that into account. There had to be something.

But he was suddenly out of time.

"Trace?" Lily's voice came from the other side of the door, fear lending it a sharp edge. Smith's head jerked up and he stared at the door, seeing the culmination of all his plans, all his dreams. Trace saw the moment as if it were frozen in time. Lily was on the other side of the door, a few feet away from death. No matter what, he couldn't let that happen.

*'Trace? Are you in there?"

Without Lily there was nothing. In an instant he saw how foolish he'd been. No matter what, he should have taken every moment he could have had with her. He should have done everything he could to make her happy. It was his pride that had come between them, that had kept them apart. And now, in a dingy room, he saw his second chance slipping away. He could lose everything, including Lily's life.

Smith stood up, the gun drooping loosely in his hand. Trace tensed, knowing he had to move npw, knowing he didn't stand a snowball's chance in hell of succeeding. Smith took a step and Trace lunged upward, pushing himself up with all the strength in his arms. He hit Smith at waist level, heard the man's startled cry and the heavy thud of the .38 as it hit the floor, and then they crashed against the table.

The table served only to break their fall. The thin legs gave way and the two of them fell to the floor with a crash of splintered wood. Still tied at the ankles, Trace fought to keep his hold on Smith. Fear for his life and Lily's lent him strength, but Smith's was the power of insanity and he wasn't hampered by ropes.

They rolled back and forth, their breath coming in guttural grunts. Trace struggled to get a better grip on the other

man, using his weight to try to pin him to the floor. Smith clawed at him, his fingers groping for Trace's eyes. Trace jerked his head back, loosing a precious fraction of his hold.

He could hear Lily calling his name, her tone more and more frantic, but he couldn't spare the breath to call out to her, to tell her to get back. Smith pulled one hand loose and groped over their heads. Trace could hear his fingers scrabbling against the floor and he knew what he was looking for. The gun. He'd dropped it and now he was trying to find it amid the wreckage of the table.

Trace got a grip on the front of his opponent's shirt and jerked him forward, slamming his forehead into the other man's. His own ears rang with the impact, but Smith, unprepared for his action, went limp. It was only for a fraction of an instant but it was all Trace needed. He rolled away, his right hand brushing across the gun and then grabbing it.

Smith screamed in rage, his eyes glittering wildly. Like a bizarre punctuation mark, the door crashed inward, the lock shattered by a well-placed foot. John lunged through the doorway, an automatic in his hands.

Smith moved and Trace's eyes came back to him. The madness in the other man's face was terrifying. Spittle dribbled down his chin and the sounds he was making were not even human anymore.

**Give it up. It's over." The words rasped out of Trace's throat. He was half lying on the floor, braced on one elbow, his bound feet in front of him, but the .38 was absolutely steady.

Smith looked from Trace to John and back again. Neither gun wavered. In the distance the wail of sirens drew ever closer. Smith was crouched on the floor, all humanity drained from his face, hell looking out of his eyes.

"Never! Never!" Without rising to his feet, he flung himself toward the sofa, his movement blindingly fast. Trace saw his hand slide under a cushion and then the ghnt of Hght on a barrel. There was only a fraction of a second in which to react. An instant in which to make a choice. And there wasn't a choice.

The sharp bark of the .38 blended with the heavier boom of John's .45 into one deafening sound. Bright red blossomed on the front of Smith's shirt. A gun dangled from his fingertips for an instant before failing to the floor. He stared at Trace, his eyes full of shock and a strange look that could almost have been relief. There was a long frozen moment where eternity seemed to walk the room and then Smith toppled forward, his madness stilled forever.

Trace dragged his eyes from the body and looked up at John. "Nice timing," he said hoarsely.

Before John could answer, there was a movement behind him and Lily flew through the doorway. She stopped abruptly, her eyes on Smith's body for an instant before jumping to Trace.

"Trace." In one word, everything was said.

"I told you to stay out of the way until I called you." John's chastisement was absently given and ignored.

"Are you all right?" Lily asked.

Trace nodded, sitting up and tugging at the ropes that held his feet. "I'm all right."

The ropes fell away and he clim.bed to his feet wearily, feeling decades older than his years.

"I thought you were going to die." Lily's words came out on a sob and she took a step toward him. Trace raised his head to look at her. She was everything in the world to him. All that mattered, all he ever wanted or needed. In the past few days they'd almost been parted in the most final of

ways. All his doubts and fears seemed petty in the face of that.

He opened his arms to her and she flew across the room to him. She buried her head against his chest, sobs shaking her slender frame.

**I thought I'd lost you."

He bent his head over hers, his expression full of such tenderness that John looked away, feeling as if he'd intruded on a very private moment. Outside, the sirens screamed to a stop. There was going to be hell to pay as soon as the cops got up here. He glanced at Smith's body and then looked at Trace and Lily before turning and walking out into the hall, his gait a httle stiff.

Neither of them noticed his departure. For them, there was nothing in the world but each other. Trace nuzzled her hair, his arms holding her so close that not even a whisper could have slid between them.

*'Don't cry, sweetheart. I love you. I love you."

She shifted her head, her eyes the color of a stormy sea, all gray green and damp. "You said it. You really said it." Happiness began to come up in her eyes like the sun after a shower. "Oh, Trace, I love you so much and I was afraid you were never going to see how right we are for each other."

He brushed his thumb over the dampness on her cheeks, his smile a little twisted. "Nothing in the world is ever going to convince me that I deserve you but I could work on it."

"You don't need to work on it, but I don't care if you want to try. Just so long as we're together."

He glanced over her shoulder at Smith's body. It had come so close. So very close. Trace put his arm around Lily's shoulders and led her from the room, walking away

from a past that had held too much darkness and toward a future that held nothing but light.

"Didn't I always promise you that we'd be together? Always, Lily. Always."