Stealing Faces - Michael Prescott [93]
And suddenly she knew something was wrong.
She didn’t know what, precisely. She knew only that the window, open and welcoming, was a stroke of fortune too good to be believed.
She had learned suspicion over the past twelve years. She had learned to trust the tingle at the back of her neck, warning her of danger.
She felt that tingle now.
Get away, she told herself. Get away now, run, hide—
She turned from the window, and the lights came on.
Two lights from the arbor where the mockingbird had sung, the mockingbird that had not been scared off by any predator, except the human kind, the kind that hunted her.
Flashlights.
A pair of them, beams wavering through a scrim of leaves, and from the shadows—a voice.
“Don’t move, Kaylie. Just stay where you are.”
42
Past shock, past panic, she knew she’d heard that voice before, and she remembered where: at the motel this afternoon, while she hid in an alcove and a man entered the manager’s office, announcing himself as Detective Shepherd.
He was here, and this was some kind of trap, and Cray—
Cray was part of it, was in on it, was helping the police to catch ...
“No,” she whispered, and she waved her arms at the lights in a frantic effort to make them disappear, make this stop happening. “No, you can’t, you can’t!”
“Don’t move!”
The flashlights swam toward her, two dark figures limned in their backsplash—Shepherd in his dark suit, and another man, a deputy, tan shirt and brown pants and a gun belt.
Closing in.
She had to run, her every instinct insisted that she run, but there was nowhere to go. She was cornered, her back against the garage wall and the two men drawing near, pinning her in the wavering circles of light.
“No, please,” she said, speaking not to them but to whatever justice there might be in the universe. “Please, this isn’t right.”
“Calm down, Kaylie.”
That was Shepherd, Shepherd who was showing her a smooth, false smile, the smile she had seen on doctors’ faces, on Cray’s face, and why not? Cray and Shepherd—they were in league together, allies united against her, smiling killers working hand in hand.
She felt the pressure of a scream welling in her throat.
“Kaylie ...” Shepherd said again in his deceitful, soothing voice.
“Not my name,” she whispered, and then the scream broke out of her in a rush of furious words: “That’s not my name, I’m not Kaylie, stop calling me that, stop calling me—”
Abruptly they were all over her, their hands, their hot breath—too strong for her—the deputy and Shepherd overpowering her frenzied resistance, twisting her around, then grabbing her arms, wrenching them behind her back, pain in her shoulders, metal on her wrists, handcuffs, they were cuffing her, and she was struggling, thrashing, refusing to surrender even as they pressed her face to the wall and wood splinters pricked her cheek.
“Christ, she’s a fighter,” the deputy said.
Shepherd answered, “Just hold her down.”
She whipsawed wildly under their restraining hands, but she couldn’t break free, and what she had to do was talk to them, talk quietly, try to persuade them, maybe they would believe her, or at least pretend to believe....
“Search his house,” she gasped. “Search his house.”
“Cray’s house?” Shepherd was leaning close, his voice loud in her ear. “Why?”
“You’ll find ... you’ll find their faces. The women. He kills them and ... Like Sharon Andrews.”
“You need help, Kaylie.” He sounded so kind, but they always did.
“Just search. He keeps them there. I know he does.”
“Kaylie ...”
“For God’s sake, wasn’t it enough—what I gave you? The satchel? The knife? How much more do you need?”
Gently: “There wasn’t any satchel, Kaylie.”
The words reverberated in some hollow part of her, nonsensical words.
“I left it for you,” she said blankly. “At the phone.”
“There wasn’t anything there.”
This was impossible. “They didn’t look hard enough. Or they went to the wrong phone or ... or Cray ... he got there first and took it....”
“How could he do that?”
“I don’t know. It doesn’t make sense. But he’s the one you want. He’s the one who