Silent Victim - C. E. Lawrence [142]
She looked up at her captor. He remained on his feet, standing over her, vigilant, peering down the trail behind them, as if afraid they were being followed. His hand holding the walking stick twitched, and he was sweating.
“Where are you taking me?” she asked.
His answer was brusque and businesslike. “To the sacred waters.” His voice gave nothing away, but she thought she saw a flicker of vulnerability pass over his face. She decided to take advantage of it—it might be her only chance.
“Why, Eric?” she said softly. “Why are you taking me all the way up here?”
He avoided looking at her. “Because it’s my sacred place. This must be done in my most sacred place. We must go to our fate together—then our transformation will be complete.”
“What transformation, Eric? What are you talking about?”
He still refused to look at her. “My name is Caleb.” “Is that what Martin told you?”
His face reddened, and he tightened his grip on the hiking stick. “I don’t care what he told me—he lied to me.”
“About what, Eri—Caleb? What did he lie about?” He kicked at a pebble, sending it sliding and bouncing down the trail. “Everything.”
“Like what?”
“He told me my mother would come back—that her spirit would be reborn in another person.”
She tried to figure out what this meant. Her brother never spoke with her about his patients. She made their appointments, and let them into the waiting room, and occasionally brought them tea, but that was all. She knew little or nothing about their lives, their hopes, their disappointments—or why they were in therapy.
And Eric was a relatively new patient—he had been seeing Martin less than a year. She had seen him in the waiting room, spoken with him once or twice on the phone, but that was all. She knew next to nothing about him. She decided to take a stab in the dark.
“You miss her very much, don’t you?” she said.
His face began to soften, and then it was as though a dark filter passed across his features, hardening his countenance into something stony and heartless and cruel.
“She was—a whore,” he rasped, spitting out the words as if they burned his tongue.
“But—you loved her, didn’t you?” she cried desperately. The air itself seemed to turn colder, as a chill wind blew up out of nowhere, scattering dry leaves in little gusts. They seemed to scurry from it in terror, as if they shared her sense of alarm. A few drops of rain spattered against the leaves, flattening them, cutting off their escape. A hollow, panicked feeling gnawed at the pit of her stomach.
“Miss her?” he said, his voice flat and mocking. “I hate her. I hate you.”
A thin cruel smile turned up the corners of his mouth, and she knew she was lost.
CHAPTER SEVENTY
“Good God,” Detective Butts said, wiping sweat and rain from his forehead. “I thought there weren’t any goddamn mountains in Jersey.”
They had been hiking for close to an hour. The rain had let up for the time being, but there were sinister rumbles of thunder in the distance. Lee’s side was aching, and he felt as if he could feel each of the seventeen stitches in his arm.
“We must be near the top,” Diesel commented. “I’m pretty sure we’ve gone nearly two miles.”
“I think you’re right,” Lee agreed. “Shouldn’t be too much longer.”
“We’d better be there soon, or someone’s gonna have hell to pay,” Butts muttered. “Oh, Jesus!” he gasped suddenly, doubling over and clutching his side.
“What’s wrong?” said Lee, dropping down beside him.
“Nothin'—got a—stitch in—my side,” Butts groaned,