The Bone House - Brian Freeman [133]
Hilary clapped the phone shut. She let it fall from her hand to the ground.
'Don't be stupid,' she told Jensen. 'The police are already coming. You may as well let us go.'
She watched his face. His eyes darted between them, and his hand squirmed on the gun, which slipped in his sweaty fingers. She realized he was paralyzed. He didn't know what to do.
'Give it up,' she urged him. if you harm us, you only make it worse.'
At Hilary's feet, her cell phone began ringing.
'See?' she said. 'They know we're here. They're already tracking the pings on the phone. It won't take long.'
Jensen squatted and took the phone in his hand. He flipped it open, not taking his eyes off the two of them, and switched the phone off.
'Get on your knees,' he said. 'Both of you.'
Amy glanced at Hilary, who nodded. They slid down to their knees on the bedroom floor, next to each other. Jensen towered over them, shifting the gun back and forth between their faces.
'You killed Glory, didn't you?' Hilary asked, stalling for time, praying for the police to hurry. 'That's what this is all about.'
Jensen laughed, but it was manic and strangled, like a man who laughs at things he can't see in the darkness. Things that scare him. He pointed the gun at Hilary's head.
'Please don't do this,' she said.
The gun trembled in his hand. His finger moved on to the trigger, and she knew she had to jump for the gun. If she jumped, if she got in his face, then she gave Amy a chance to survive.
Hilary thought about Mark. She saw his face and felt his touch, as real as if he were here with her. She thought about the faces of the children they would never have. She thought about how you can go from life to death in an instant.
She readied herself to leap, but before she did, she spotted movement in the hallway behind Gary Jensen. She didn't dare look away from Jensen's eyes, but in the dim light beyond the doorway, she realized that someone was creeping down the hallway toward them. A teenage girl stalked Jensen's back with a finger pressed over her lips for silence.
It was Katie.
* * *
Chapter Forty-Nine
The shot went wild, careening into the treetops.
Troy cursed silently to himself. He'd heard Bradley's voice in the woods above the beach, but he was aiming like a blind man. His nerves made him careless. Now, with a foolish shot, he'd warned Bradley away.
He hiked up the dirt road away from the beach. He hoped the patter of the rain covered the slow crunch of his footfalls. He had the uncomfortable feeling that he was being watched, but he couldn't see anything in the darkness, and he was confident that no one could see him. Even so, he didn't feel alone. The woods seemed alive. He told himself that it was his imagination creating monsters in his head, but every scrape of tree branches as the wind blew made him twitch with fear.
He wanted to quit. He wanted to hike to the main road and call his buddy Keith, who would pick him up and smuggle him on to the ferry in the morning. They could spend the night in Keith's basement, drinking beer and playing pool and surfing porn. Forget about Mark Bradley. Forget about the gun in his hand.
He thought: Glory's laughing at me.
Maybe she was the one watching him; she was the spirit he felt. Her ghost. If he listened, he could hear her voice. You can't do anything right.
He was angry at Glory. Angry at himself. All of that anger still had a focus that made him stay where he was, rooted to the ground. Mark Bradley. He wasn't going to give up while Bradley was alive.
'Where are you, you bastard?' he murmured aloud.
Like the answer to a prayer, Bradley revealed his location. No more than two hundred yards away, Troy saw a stream of light splash through the woods. It was deep in the trees in the campground between the beach and the cemetery. He stayed on the road and hustled, eating up the space between them. Based on the direction of the light, Bradley was heading toward the graveyard, and Troy realized he could get there ahead of him and be waiting for him