Hide & Seek - James Patterson [97]
“We’re not doing anything you say!” I yelled at Will, just as Jennie had. “We all hate your guts!”
“We hate you!” Jennie screamed at him.
“We hate you!” yelled Allie in his tiny voice.
Jennie suddenly flew into Will’s side, and I reached for the gun. I pulled on his wrist as hard as I could. Both hands! The strength of a madwoman!
At the same time, I brought up my knee—as hard as I could—into Will’s groin.
Will woofed out air. He groaned. The gun actually came free, and I had it.
I had the gun in my hand. Now what? Now what?
I backed away from Will as quickly as I could. A lot of fast steps in a hurry.
So did Jennie and Allie.
“C’mon, c’mon. Get out of here now. Jennie, call the police. Call nine-one-one. Hurry. Please. Go!” I told the two of them.
Will looked at me and seemed confused, as if this wasn’t in his playbook. Then he smiled again, the smile I remembered so well, the one that had always been so effective for him. Killer smile, right.
“Isn’t this something,” he said with a heavy sigh. “Not exactly the way I planned it. But. A good scorer, a striker, has to improvise. I know you never wanted to follow soccer, Maggie, but for a great striker, there’s no team, there’s no win or lose, there’s nothing but the goal.”
“Will,” I said to him, “now you shut up.”
“Do you know what my goal was tonight, Maggie? Do you really get it?”
“Yes, I do. To kill us. Jennie, please go. Allie, go! I mean it. Now! Call the police, Jennie.”
“Mom,” Jennie said, and she was talking very softly, very slowly, “you come with us. Back out of the door with the gun. Come with us.”
“Do you know the rest of my goal, Maggie?” Will continued to speak to me. “I think I have this figured out.”
I thought I did too. I thought I understood him real well.
“To kill us, and then to kill yourself,” I said.
Will slowly clapped his hands together. Applause from the great man.
“Mom, please come with us,” Jennie begged. “Please.”
Then Will started to walk right toward me.
“Can you do it, Maggie?” he said. His eyes were pinned onto mine now.
“I can do what I have to do,” I said.
“Mom, please.”
“Can you really do it, Maggie? Can you start this nightmare all over again? Or would you rather die? Can you pull the trigger?”
Will kept walking.
The striker.
Advancing on goal, just as he’d said. No team concept. Just Will—the loner. The ultimate loser.
There was no good answer to his question. There was no easy way out of this.
But maybe there was a way. Maybe there was.
Will kept walk in toward me. He held eye contact. Then he smiled again.
I fired!
“Mom! Mom!”
He grabbed his leg, and nearly went over, nearly went down.
“Oooohh!” he moaned. “Jesus Christ, Maggie. You’re quite the tiger, quite the defender.”
Will started to move forward again. It was as though he hadn’t even been hit.
The striker.
The attacker.
The best in the world at this.
Unstoppable once he started toward his goal.
To murder me and the kids, right here in our house.
Will took a knife from his shirt. Big knife, hunting knife. He raised it toward me. He lunged.
I fired a second time.
EPILOGUE Night Songs
CHAPTER 121
SOUTHERN CONNECTICUT IN early November. Four and a half months after the shooting. Will and I were finally off the front pages of most newspapers and magazines.
There was just one more story to tell.
It was a bright and crisp fall afternoon—high school football weather. Only to me, peering out the tinted Plexiglas windows of my car, it seemed a gloomy day, a day meant for unfinished business.
Norma had come along with me, but I drove. I needed to be in control. I thought that I was. We’d see about that soon enough.
I was trying to be brave, to survive this final test.
I hadn’t done anything wrong—not ever. I’d just protected what was important, my family. Sure, I had made mistakes, but who doesn’t. With Will, I’d been a victim for his obsessions. He had lied so brilliantly, right from the start of our relationship.
Norma and I talked everything through again during the drive from Bedford. Finally, I pulled