Sense of Evil - Kay Hooper [122]
But when he reached a stop sign, he found himself hesitating, looking not east toward Grogan's Creek, but west toward Rosemont.
There was no reason to worry, of course. She could take care of herself. Besides which, she wasn't alone. Hollis was with her, and Dean.
He started to turn the wheel toward the east, then hesitated again. “She's okay,” he heard himself say aloud. “She's fine.”
Except that his gut said she wasn't.
His gut—and the blood on his hands.
Rafe stared at the reddish stains, shocked for an instant because it had happened so suddenly.
But then, just as suddenly, he knew the truth. He understood what it meant.
And he knew Isabel was in deadly danger.
He turned the wheel hard, heading west, and reached for his phone to call Dean.
19
“MALLORY—”
“You still don't get it, do you? Mallory doesn't live here anymore.”
Gazing into eyes that looked dead and empty even when the lightning flashed in them, Isabel fought to keep her voice calm. “So who are you?”
With an amused little chuckle, Mallory said, “This isn't some split-personality deal, you know. That's a bunch of bullshit, what you read in the books. I was always the stronger one. Always the one who had to take care of Mallory, clean the messes after she screwed up. Always. We were just twelve when it happened the first time.”
“When what happened?” Was Hollis alive? Isabel couldn't tell. And what had happened to Dean?
“When I had to kill them. Those bitches. All six of them.”
“You were— Why? Why did you have to kill them?”
“Are you stalling?” Mallory asked, interested. “Because Rafe isn't coming, you know. Nobody is coming.”
“Well, then,” Isabel said, her mind racing, “it's just you and me. Come on, impress me. Show me all the signs I should have seen along the way.”
“The only thing you and that Bishop of yours got right was gender. Male.”
“Trapped in a female's body?” Isabel was deliberately flippant. “I think that's been done.”
“Oh, no, I was male first. Always. I kept telling Mallory, but in the beginning she wouldn't listen. And when she did listen, she got confused. She thought she was a lesbian.”
Recalling the riot of emotions and hormones of adolescence, Isabel said, “When she was twelve?”
“Those girls at camp. In her cabin. There were six of them, all giggly and girly. The one who slept with Mallory started touching her one night. And Mallory liked it. It made me sick, but Mallory liked it.”
“So what happened?”
“I heard them the next day. All six of them, giggling and looking at Mallory. They knew. All of them knew. The one who'd touched her had told the others, and they were going to tell too. I knew they would. They'd tell, and everybody would know Mallory wasn't normal.”
“What did you do to stop that?”
“I killed them.” Her voice was eerily Mallory's and yet . . . not. Deeper, rougher, harder.
Isabel told herself what she smelled was the lightning, not brimstone. But she knew the truth.
Nothing this side of hell smelled quite like brimstone.
Except for evil.
“See, they weren't supposed to take the boats out onto the lake, not without one of the counselors. But I made Mallory talk them into it. So they took a boat out, way out, and I made sure there were no life jackets. And then I turned the boat over. None of them made it to the shore, but I got Mallory there, of course. So sad, those other girls drowning like that. Mallory was never the same afterward.”
Rafe found Dean Emery slumped over the wheel of his cruiser. He knew nothing could be done for him, but he called for backup and an ambulance, then hurried through the gates of the cemetery, gun drawn, reaching out desperately with every sense he possessed, old and new.
To hell with the goddamned shield.
Mallory shrugged. “That was when her parents moved here to Hastings. So nobody would know what had happened and she could get over it.”
“But she didn't.” Isabel was dimly aware of the voices, whispering louder,