Until Dark - Mariah Stewart [119]
“She thought you were dead, Zach,” Kendra pointed out.
“Even after she found out I was alive, she wouldn’t change it.” He jammed his hands in his pockets. “Bitch. Why couldn’t she have done that much for me? She never did a damned thing for me my whole life. And you know what the first thing she said to me was, when she saw me? She said, ‘Where’s Ian?’ ” He sniffed and wiped at his nose with his shirtsleeve. “Five years I’m gone, and the first thing she says is ‘Where’s Ian.’ ”
“What did you tell her?”
“Oh, I showed her. Showed her where the cave was. She wanted to know how I pulled it all off.”
“What did you tell her?”
“Same thing I’ve been telling you.”
“You didn’t finish the story.”
“There isn’t anything left to tell.”
“Where did you go after Ian? How did you get there?”
“I walked most of the night. I figured I could hitch a ride and get to California once I got out to the road. The kid followed me, but I had to leave him when I got a ride with some college kids who were on their way to Sacramento. He was still crying but I told him someone would come along and pick him up and take him home. These kids, they took turns driving straight through the next couple of days, and after they dropped me off, I got a ride with a trucker to San Francisco. I lied and told him my dad lived there. And once I got there, I found a lot of kids, just like me, and that’s where I stayed, mostly. And then I was Ian. No more Zach.”
“There’s a man serving two consecutive life sentences in prison in Arizona who was convicted of killing you and Ian,” she told him.
“Yeah, I read about that.” Zach laughed dryly. “Dumb shit pedophile. I know all about what those guys do. You have no idea what they . . .” He shuddered, as if something terrible had touched his soul. “He belongs in a cell. They all belong in jail. I hope he rots there.”
“He may belong in prison, but not for the crime he was convicted of.”
“So what? What difference does it make, what crime he’s in for? He hurt little boys, you have any idea what that means? You think he deserves to be out walking the streets?” Zach took on a decidedly righteous expression.
“It matters, if he’s being held for a crime he didn’t commit. It’s wrong, Zach.”
“I don’t care. They’re all creeps and they all deserve to die.”
“Why didn’t your mother call us after she found out that you were still alive?”
“Because by that time she, too, had gone to that big Smith reunion.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that right after she and I had our little chat,” he glared at her, his eyes blazing, “she took a little tumble off the side of the hill.”
“You pushed her.” Kendra shook her head. She’d begun to think there was nothing Zach could say that could shock her after learning how he’d gleefully listened to her brother’s agonizing death. How many more terrible secrets could this man possibly harbor?
“Let’s just say accidents happen and leave it at that.”
“Why? Why would you do such a thing to your own mother?”
“Sierra, as you now know, was hardly June Cleaver,” he said coolly. “Not exactly Mother of the Year material.”
“But all those other women you killed, they were.” Kendra’s stomach lurched every time she thought of the beautiful young women, the loving young women, who had been so devoted to their children, so brutally taken from them.
“Yeah, and you think those kids appreciated them? Those kids had everything. They got to do everything, go to school and everything. They got to play baseball. Soccer. Had friends to play with. Bikes to ride. They had nice houses to live in.” His voice rising, he turned to her with the eyes of an angry, spiteful child. “I watched them. They did not appreciate what they had, Kendra. And you know what happens when you don’t appreciate what you’ve got, don’t you? It’s taken away from you, that’s what, because you don’t deserve to keep it. They didn’t deserve.” His words began to free-fall from his mouth in a jumble. “They did everything for their kids, you know that? Everything.