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  Ellen was shaking again. “You promised you wouldn’t hurt me.”

  “Look around you, Ellen,” Marcy snapped. She eased her finger off the trigger, but kept the Glock’s barrel pressed to Ellen’s head. “I really don’t want to hurt you. I do love you. But I’m not feeling very stable right now and you don’t want to upset me. Do you understand that?”

  Ellen nodded. “Yes. I’m sorry. I’ll go with you.”

  “Just remember, sister, you put all this in motion when you came running to me with your sob story about the bitch attacking you in the bar.”

  Ellen started crying again, her thin shoulders heaving beneath her black blouse.

  Marcy lowered the Glock and stood up. “I’m sorry, Ellen, but that’s just the way it is. I need you to see that we’re in this together from the beginning to the very end. Do you see that?”

  Ellen continued crying, but she managed a weak nod. “I do.”

  “Good.” Marcy didn’t doubt Ellen’s sincerity. She was too scared to lie. “I’m going to take care of some loose ends and clean up. You’ll hear one more shot. You know what that will be.”

  Ellen nodded again. “Yeah.”

  “And while I’m busy, you’ll need to pack a bag for the road. Make sure to bring as many clothes changes as you can. And any hair care products you have. We’ll be wanting to cut and dye our hair wherever we stop tonight.”

  “Okay.”

  Marcy held out her free hand and Ellen slipped her own hand into it, allowing her older sister to haul her to her feet. “Come on.”

  They walked hand-in-hand out of the living room and into the hallway. Marcy saw Ellen flinch at the sight of the first boy she’d shot. He apparently hadn’t died instantly. There was a trail of blood along the hallway carpet to the place where he’d ultimately expired, just a few feet shy of the kitchen archway. Marcy turned her sister away from the sight and led her in the opposite direction. She relinquished Ellen’s hand when they arrived at her bedroom. Ellen slipped into the room and began rummaging through her closet. Marcy watched her a moment longer. She was pretty sure she wouldn’t have shot Ellen. As sure as she could be given the way this insane day had developed. She did, however, feel a tremendous relief as she watched the younger girl make preparations for departure. An acquiescent Ellen would make the whole process so much smoother.

  She turned away from Ellen’s door and continued down to her own bedroom. The door was standing open, as she’d left it. The black-haired woman was still asleep. Marcy drew in a steadying breath and entered the room. She was going to get this over with now. Put the gun to the cunt’s head and pull the trigger. But as she strode into the room she was immediately aware of something not right. The door swung shut behind her and Marcy spun about, raising the gun and applying pressure to the trigger. But her finger froze before squeezing off a shot.

  Her mind reeled at the sight of the intruder, a shapely black woman in a slinky black dress. The woman was alive and smiling, but she looked like a walking corpse. Maggots wriggled from the corners of that hideous smile, falling onto the black dress and the bare tops of her bloated breasts.

  Marcy took a step backward. “Holyjumpingjesusfuckingshit!”

  The black woman laughed and more maggots tumbled out. “Yeah. About sums it up, I guess.”

  Marcy’s hands were shaking. “Stay away from me!”

  The black woman chuckled and took a step toward her. “I’m not afraid of you, Marcy.”

  Marcy squeezed the Glock’s trigger. The gun boomed and the bullet punched a hole in the door behind the woman. The black woman didn’t flinch. She never stopped smiling. “I’m not afraid of you, Marcy,” she repeated. “And the reason for that, in case you haven’t already figured it out, is that I’m already dead.”

  Marcy was shaking her head and moving backward again. The backs of her legs met the foot of the bed and she stopped. “No. That’s not possible.”

  “Oh, it’s possible, all right, thanks to that bitch tied to your bed.”

  Marcy frowned. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  The black woman pried the gun from Marcy’s suddenly numb hands and tossed it on the bed. “I was her best friend back when I was alive. But then I died. Which should’ve been the end for me, but she conjured me back to…undeath, I guess you’d call it.”

  Marcy was shaking. She turned her head away from the dead woman’s rancid breath. “This is insane. It can’t be happening.”

  The black woman slapped her. “But it is. It’s real as a motherfuck. Hell, I’m getting more real by the goddamn minute. You didn’t see me last night, but I was here all the time.”

  Marcy couldn’t deal with this. It felt like the very fabric of the world was unraveling. Soon she would go spiraling away into some unfathomable void. Which would kind of be okay at this point.

  The black woman grinned again. “And speaking of insane, that was some wild display of batshit crazy you just put on, girl.”

  Marcy felt bile rise in her throat. “I shouldn’t have done it. Any of it. Something’s really wrong with me.”

  “Don’t you second-guess yourself, baby.” The black woman wrapped her arms around Marcy and pushed her rotting flesh against her. “You did what you had to do, and you know it. Hell, it’s the main reason I’ve decided not to kill you.”

  Marcy shivered in the dead woman’s sickeningly intimate embrace. “What do you mean?”

  The black woman laughed softly. “We’re all going on a very long trip together. Just us girls on the road. Won’t that be fun?”

  “Where are we going?”

  “To a bad place, Marcy. A very bad place.” She smiled in a way that might have been intended to reassure, but the effect was offset by the sight of more wriggling maggots. “But along the way we’re going to have big fun and see many wondrous things. You have my word on that.”

  Marcy frowned. So much for an escape to a tropical paradise. She felt a vague instinct to fight against this, but she recognized the idea as futile and it quickly withered. And anyway, maybe this was the true unescapable destiny she’d sensed was waiting for her beyond this place. “So when are we leaving?”

  The black woman’s smile widened. “Oh, soon. Now give me a kiss.”

  Marcy sucked in a breath. Then the dead woman was kissing her.

  Maggots fell into her mouth and slid down her throat.

  Marcy closed her eyes and prayed for an end to the nightmare.

  CHAPTER NINE

  The old Ford pickup slowed as it passed a green highway sign announcing the last rest station for fifty miles. When its turn signal began blinking, Chad flicked on the Lexus’s blinker and glanced at Allyson. She looked disheveled and tired. They’d talked very little during their three hours on the road, with Allyson sitting very still the entire time and staring straight ahead at the unfurling highway.

  He supposed he couldn’t blame her for not wanting to talk. She was a young woman from the suburbs used to a life of relative peace and quiet. Chad, however, had some experience with sudden, shocking violence, mostly from his time in the place called Below, the cavernous underground prison beneath the House of Blood. Even now, three years later, nightmares of that time still occasionally jolted him out of sleep.

  And now Allyson, who had swept into his life like some divine angel of mercy, had likely been condemned to years—and perhaps a lifetime—of similar nightly tortures. The thought of it made him grip the steering wheel harder as his anger began to build again.

  He hadn’t known the dead men in his kitchen; Jim seemed sure they were emissaries of the long-missing Ms. Wickman. And Chad had believed him. Which was why they were on the road now, bound for some vague destination Jim had assured them would be a safe haven. Citing “security concerns,” he refused to specify the precise location of the place, asking that they instead follow him to wherever it was they were going. It wasn’t that Jim didn’t trust Chad and Allyson with the information. Rather, he refused to allow even the re
mote possibility of the location being extracted from them via torture should more of Ms. Wickman’s agents intercept them en route to the place. Which was paranoid as hell, but Chad didn’t blame the man.

  The old Ford slowed some more and eased off the highway onto the curved white lane that led to the rest station. The parking lot was about half full. People were milling about around the vending machines and talking to each other on the long sidewalk. Other people were having lunches at the nearby picnic tables. A dog ran across the sloping lawn to the left of the rest station, chasing a yellow Frisbee that arced across the sky. Chad felt the knot of tension in his gut ease a bit. After the long, silent hours on the road, it felt good to be among people again. Normal people doing normal things.

  He followed Jim’s brown-and-tan truck to the end of the lot. Then he shut off the Lexus and twisted in his seat to look at Allyson. She still had that stunned animal look, her eyes dull and staring at nothing at all.

  He put a hand on her shoulder and said, “Honey? Let’s get out and stretch for a bit, okay?”

  Her head swiveled toward the sound of his voice. The corners of her mouth dimpled, a smile so soft and weary that it made Chad’s heart ache for her. “Sure.”

  She unbuckled her seat belt and reached for the door handle, stepping out of the car before Chad could reply. She threw the door shut and moved rapidly to the sidewalk, where she paused to stretch her arms and neck. Chad remained behind the wheel a moment longer and watched her, enjoying the simple, supple grace of her lithe body. She caught him looking at her and smiled. Chad smiled back as she reached into her handbag, retrieved a pair of black sunglasses, and slid them on. She waved at Chad and headed for the rest station’s main building.

  Chad watched her go, the slight sway of her hips beneath the thin fabric of her dress making his heart race just a little faster. She slipped into a small throng of people standing beneath the building’s pavilion and disappeared from sight.

  Then he got out of the car and threw the door shut. Jim was leaning against the side of the old Ford, one booted foot raised and braced against a rust-flecked door. He was wearing dark sunglasses and smoking a cigarette. He turned his head slightly and blew a stream of smoke up at the clear sky. “Nice day.” He tapped the cigarette and ash fluttered to the faded asphalt.“When I was young, days like this would inspire me to write poetry.” He smiled. “Or chase girls.”

  Chad raised an eyebrow. “Yeah?”

  Jim chuckled. “Oh, yeah. That or get drunk. Or all three at once.”

  Chad grinned and shook his head. “Sounds a little tricky. You know, there are still times when I can’t get over the fact that I know you. Did you ever see that movie made about you, the one where that pretty-boy actor played you?”

  Jim smiled. “Yeah. Wasn’t bad…for such a load of shit.”

  “Yeah, well, I was a kid when that came out. I saw it a bunch of times. There was a scene in there—”

  “You should believe only ten percent of any given scene in that film. There’s some truth, sometimes just a grain of it, but much of it embellished and manipulated for dramatic effect.” Jim flicked away the cigarette butt and reached again for his Winstons. “I don’t mind, of course. It’s what filmmakers do with works based on the lives of real people. The same thing happens in real life. People tell stories intended to convey a particular image or idea about themselves. From what we might call white lies, basically harmless fictions, to wholesale, malicious untruths meant to dupe the victims of con artists and other criminals.”

  A frown stole across Chad’s face as he listened to Jim’s seemingly incongruous oratory about truth and lies. “Um…what’s this got to do with the movie?”

  Jim took a drag on his fresh cigarette and said, “Can I ask you a question?”

  Chad hesitated. He had a feeling he knew what was coming, but he didn’t want to hear it. It was something insane, a thing he’d attempted to relegate to the darkest, remotest recesses of his mind. But it had remained just beneath the surface, a niggling nag of a notion that kept trying to capture his attention. He wanted more than anything to keep pretending it wasn’t there, and he certainly did not want the idea verbalized. But an image that made the ground beneath him feel slippery intruded on his thoughts—Allyson shoving an overstuffed black travel bag he’d never previously seen to the back of the Lexus’s trunk, then quickly covering it with two more hastily packed bags.

  He sighed. “Ask me.”

  Jim removed his sunglasses and nailed Chad with his piercing dark eyes. “How well do you really know Allyson?”

  Chad felt dizzy. He put a hand to his head and said, “I have to sit down.”

  Jim nodded in the direction of the picnic tables. “Over there. We’ll get out of the sun and talk this out.”

  He flicked away the cigarette and set off toward the tables.

  Chad numbly followed.

  Allyson brushed past a pair of doddering elderly ladies and banged open the restroom door. It was a long room with a line of gleaming silver stalls against one wall. Nearly all the stall doors stood open, indicating disuse. Two of the nearest were closed. A woman in her thirties leaned over the basin, checking her makeup in the long mirror. Allyson kept her head down and strode quickly to the very last stall, stepped inside, and shut the door behind her. She sat on the toilet seat, fished her cell phone from the depths of her pocketbook and thumbed the red power button.

  She’d turned it off at some point after killing the intruders, fearing a call she wouldn’t be able to explain to Chad and the annoyingly suspicious old rock star. A displayed message informing her she had received seventeen missed calls and had three voice mail messages. She was not surprised to find each call was from the same number. Allyson’s heart pounded as she pressed the button to dial her mailbox. She drew in a calming breath and raised the phone to her ear. The first message was a brief burst of shrill panic. “What the fuck is going on out there? Call me back.”

  The caller’s voice was more relaxed during the second message. But the content of his message sent a bone-scraping chill winding through her:“Ms. Vanover, we know you have betrayed us. This is not a very smart thing you have done. Those who betray us are always made to pay the highest price. Rest assured, I mean to hunt you down and exact vengeance personally. I have a lovely picture of you right here, by the way. It appears to be a still from a pornographic movie. Your hair was different then, but the image is unmistakably that of Allyson Vanover. Or as you were known then, Sinthia Fox.”

  Allyson felt the earth shift beneath her. She closed her eyes and gripped the phone tighter as the man’s calm voice continued. “I’m going to show this picture and others like it to your boyfriend just before I go to work on your delectable body with a knife. I wonder what he’ll be thinking as he watches you suffer and die. Will he be crying out for blood and revenge when I shove the knife up your cunt? Or will he still be too stunned by the images of double penetration and girl-on-girl pussy-licking to care?”

  The message ended and Allyson sat there shaking for a time before working up the nerve to hear the last message. She didn’t want to hear the man’s insinuating tone again, but she knew she had to hear what he had to say. So she pressed a button and heard the following:“I imagine you are very frightened now. Afraid not only of what’s coming for you, but hoping against hope that Chad doesn’t begin to piece some things together. But he will, Allyson, and you know it. He’s a smart man. Even now he is thinking hard about many puzzling things, and in time he will ferret out the truth about you. And when that happens, you will be tossed out like the trash you are.”

  There was a silence then, the recording continuing as he paused long enough to allow her time to think about what he was saying, the obvious truth of it. She worked hard to imagine an alternative possibility, but every time she tried to see a happy future with Chad the forced images glimmered with a plastic sitcom phoniness for a fragile moment before dissolving.

  Then the man drew in an audi
ble breath and slowly exhaled. “Not a pretty picture. But you know what, Allyson? I’m feeling generous today. I’m going to offer you a way out of this mess.”

  Allyson tensed and closed her eyes again.

  “Call this number when you arrive at your destination. Tell us where you are, then slip away when no one’s watching. If you do this, your death sentence will be rescinded. You will not be getting the hundred thousand dollars originally promised you, but you’ve probably already figured that out. You’ll get to keep the ten grand we fronted you…if there’s any left, that is. Which I doubt, if you’ve still got that nasty porn star coke habit. So that’s the deal, bitch. Take it or die. Remember …before sundown.”

  The message ended and Allyson pressed a button to delete it. She did not dismiss out of hand the offer she’d been given. It was a simple way out of a very complicated situation. One phone call. She could do that and haul ass out of Jim’s “safe haven,” whatever or wherever the hell that was. She still had every penny of the ten-thousand-dollar advance. She’d shed her coke habit prior to coming to Georgia and had successfully resisted every temptation to dip into the fund. Ten thousand dollars wasn’t as comfortable a stake as the one hundred thousand dollars upon which she’d based her original plans, but it would be more than enough to start a new life somewhere else.

  Allyson flipped the cell phone open and punched in a number. She held the phone to her ear and listened as it rang. The man answered on the second ring. “Hello, Allyson. Have you accepted my offer?”

  Allyson allowed a moment to pass before responding. She was still thinking. Still unsure. She didn’t know what she would say until the words came out of her mouth. “You’ll never find us, you son of a bitch,” she said, voice emerging without even a slight quaver. “And there’s not a threat in the world you can make that scares me. I’ve told Chad everything and he’s forgiven me. And even if you do figure out where we’re going, I’ll kill anyone you send after us, just like I killed those men last night.”