The Severed Pines Page 12

  Through the kitchen window, Delilah Snell loaded dishes into the dishwasher. Kat seethed, watching her go about her post-dinner task.

  That stupid bitch. All of this was her fault. If Taylor hadn’t been so constantly paranoid about her finding out, he wouldn’t have pushed Kathryn away. He would have been able to give his heart to her. And she would have been able to forget about William. Her poor, sweet William, disappeared and missing for the last five days.

  Without Delilah, none of this would have happened.

  As the snow continued to fall and muck up the windshield, Kat let her eyes unfocus, and she pictured that magical night with Taylor. Making love atop the catwalk above the Estes Park High School stage.

  When they finished, they held each other, sweaty and panting, and then they scurried across the catwalk and down the spiral stairs. Naked, rapidly getting cold as their heart rates returned to normal. Their clothes were on the stage, thirty feet down below them.

  Their energy expenditure had sobered them somewhat, but Kathryn was now drunk on the endorphins of sex. When they reached the bottom of the staircase, a door opened at the back of the theater. Their chatter and laughter ceased, like a needle ripping off a record.

  A light flicked on at the back of the theater, and a moment later, the door shut again.

  The back of the auditorium became silent. A moment before, they hadn’t known or cared. And now, the after effect of the sudden appearance of a foreign sound was like the echoing crack of thunder across an endless plain.

  “What the hell was that?” Taylor whispered.

  “No idea,” Kat said. “Security? I don’t know.”

  For a few more seconds, they held in place, naked, frozen, not wanting to move or make any sounds.

  The brush with danger—seemingly over—then whipped her into a frenzy of feeling. So alive, so full of danger. Her entire body hummed with intensity. She wanted to throw Taylor to the ground right there and start all over again. But, no sense in being foolish. Maybe they had survived this encounter, but staying here a moment longer would be a bad idea.

  They collected their clothes and dressed as they rushed toward the back, giggling all the while. As Kat slipped on her shoes, she watched him, fumbling with the zipper on his pants. At that moment, seeing him under the eerie green light of the EXIT sign at the back of the room, Kat knew she was in love. And, her love had peaked. Never before had she experienced a feeling like this.

  In the parking lot, they sprinted to the car and jumped inside. Once there, in the safety of the vehicle, they turned to each other and embraced so tight, Kat couldn’t breathe for a few seconds. She didn’t want to. She wanted to merge with him, and nothing in her mind told her she would ever have to not be with Taylor, ever again.

  But all of that had been a lie. A lie Taylor had been forced to perpetuate because of his family. Without them, he would have no reason to reject her, and she could feel those feelings once again.

  Kathryn popped the glove box and removed the revolver. The cold hunk of metal felt solid in her hand. “This isn’t over,” she said, running a finger up and down the barrel of the gun. “No matter what you say, Taylor, it’s not too late. There’s still time for us.”

  She also removed the baggie of cocaine and dribbled a sizable pile onto the barrel of the gun, then she ripped her nose across it. It burned, then made her throat thick. She choked it down.

  In an instant, her eyes opened wide. She was ready to do this. Ready to even the score. Ready to remove Delilah from the equation and put things back to the way they had been before.

  She was ready to kill to get Taylor back.

  Reese Goodall piloted the rental car through the streets of Estes Park, on a path toward the national park, which was a mile beyond the edge of the town. The rental car was a beast, an SUV with an oversized steering wheel and a turning radius he had to think through each time he put on the turn signal. Turning felt like trying to maneuver a school bus. Plus, his knees throbbed and his head was a little foggy from the pain medication they’d given him at the hospital. Not bad enough to prevent him from driving, but he definitely wanted to sip a beer in his trailer and then fall asleep.

  And he would have, except for Ben’s cryptic plea to return to the park as soon as possible. He wasn’t sure what he could do to help in his limping and quasi-drugged state.

  What a day. The last two seconds before the car crash played in his head over and over on a loop. The cliché is that time slows down before a big event like that, but Reese hadn’t experienced it that way at all. Just a turn of the head to see metal and chrome flying at him. A sudden spike in all his brain chemicals shielded him from the immediate pain. Then, a bang so loud it jarred his brain. The strangest part was how he felt his body tilting, as if the car had bent perpendicular to the road. Inertia had thrown him against the seat belt, leaving a huge red mark across his chest. Better than taking a flight through the windshield, for sure.

  The doctor had said the fact that Reese hadn’t tensed up at the moment of impact probably had a lot to do with why he hadn’t snapped his neck while the car was tossing his body to and fro. Reese didn’t feel the need to mention that he’d smoked a joint about fifteen minutes beforehand. That info could remain confidential, but damned if he didn’t now believe weed had saved his life.

  As he drove up North St. Vrain Street, he noted water rushing downhill along the gutters. Busted sewer pipe up ahead, with construction crews and the street blocked off. With the snow now plummeting from the earth in fat, white flakes, visibility both high and low had turned into a complete mess.

  So, he took a detour toward Stanley Avenue, through neighborhoods. Estes park was a town small enough that they didn’t have much of an evening traffic rush, and the bulk of the traffic came the other way, leading out of the national park. So, with streets mostly empty, he zipped right along. He didn’t know exactly what Ben’s emergency was, but he kept thinking of his friend’s voice in his ear.

  Just get back here. Text me when you’re near the park.

  Reese took his phone out of his pocket and held it out to unlock it. He tried to drive with one hand and text with the other, but he was having trouble hitting the right keys.

  Then, his foggy mind recalled that this was the neighborhood where Superintendent Taylor Snell lived. And then, he had to do a double-take when he saw red-headed Kathryn emerging from a car on the other side of the street, directly across from Taylor’s house. She was walking, blank-faced, as if in a trance, toward Taylor’s back door.

  And she was carrying a gun.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Ben leaned forward and gripped the dashboard as Taylor pulled into the far end of the dirt area marked off to be the future parking lot at Wild Basin Visitor Center.

  A lone car was at the far end, next to the frame of a building. Avery’s. Maybe this had been a terrible idea. Ben and Taylor weren’t trained for this sort of thing. They didn’t have handcuffs or guns or much beyond their simple determination to stop Avery from getting away.

  None of that mattered. Avery had to be stopped before he could do any further harm. Plus, Reese would be here at any moment.

  “He’s here,” Ben said.

  Taylor shifted the car into park. “But what is he doing?”

  “I think William’s body is here. Stashed somewhere in all this construction. Avery’s come to move it. That’s why he lied about going out of town, so he could get us all off his back while he made a plan to escape with it.”

  Taylor sat, frozen, mouth agape, staring through the falling snow at the moonlit structure of wood and concrete before them. In the darkness, it seemed like a haunted house, imposing and impenetrable.

  “If he goes,” Ben said, “I think we might never see him again. We’ll never find your nephew’s body, that’s for sure.”

  Taylor gritted his teeth. “Son of a bitch.”

  The lack of preparedness now weighed heavy on Ben’s mind. Coming here had been impulsive,
rash, and something they’d both felt had to be done. But, they had a real problem on their hands. Ben popped the glove box and fished through it. He didn’t find anything inside that seemed sturdy enough for self-defense or that might intimidate Avery. Just paperclips and fast food napkins and other glove compartment paraphernalia. “Do you have a tire iron in your trunk?”

  Taylor nodded. “I have a couple, actually.”

  “Perfect.” Ben opened the door and met Taylor around the back of the car. Taylor opened the trunk and removed two tire irons from underneath his spare tire. Both of them heavy, curved at the end. Ben hefted his and swung it through the air. In his hands, it felt solid. He could crack someone’s skull open with this thing.

  He didn’t want to crack any skulls, but he had to prepare himself for the real possibility that he might have to do just that. Maybe even in less than a minute or two from now.

  Taylor stared down at the weapon in his hand. “I’ve never done anything like… I don’t know how.” He paused, wincing. Tears formed at the corners of his eyes. “This is all my fault. I did all this. I made it happen because I wasn’t paying attention.”

  Ben stepped forward to break Taylor’s gaze. “Do you have cell service here?”

  “Yes. Yes I do.”

  “Call the cops. Then all you have to do is keep him from leaving. If he wants to put William in his trunk and leave by car, he’s going to have to take this road out of here. There’s no other way.”

  Taylor looked at the road leaving out, dark under the light of the patchy clouds and the sliver of moon above their heads. “I’ll move the car. I can do this.”

  “I know you can. We’re going to stop him. It’s time to do something about all of this and set it right.”

  Ben hoisted the tire iron and patted Taylor on the shoulder before walking away, leaving Taylor to his task. Of course, Ben wasn’t a machine-gun spraying action hero, either, but he didn’t see any reason to tell Taylor about that.

  Instead, he gripped the tire iron and proceeded across the dirt lot toward the frame of a building. Each step sent him further into a surreal sort of panic, but he swallowed it down as best he could. No time to wait for Reese. Ben would have to hope his friend would show up soon. He slipped his phone out and, with one bar of service, sent a text to Reese:

  At Wild Basin. Danger. Avery is the killer. Come right away. Police inbound too.

  When Ben reached the edge, he crouched and peered into the area. Some of the walls were nothing but wooden frames, and he could see about five thousand square feet of open air construction. Spots for plumbing and a concrete structure for stairs. But some of the hallways and rooms were already covered with drywall, which made at least half the building hidden to Ben’s gaze.

  Avery could be hiding anywhere in those blank spots.

  He turned around and eyed Taylor, who was standing with his phone against his ear. Ben had to assume the cops wouldn’t be here for at least five minutes. Maybe ten. Taylor could hide out, move his car to block the road, and wait for them to show up. No reason for him to come into any direct danger.

  Ben didn’t want to put himself in harm’s way, but he told himself he had no choice. If he was correct and Avery was here to collect William’s body, Ben couldn’t let him get away. Couldn’t simply wait for the cops.

  Avery might drag William up into the hills behind the building. He might leave him as bait for bears and mountain lions to destroy.

  No body, no crime.

  Couldn’t let Avery get away.

  So Ben stepped up onto the concrete slab that would become the first floor of the future site of the visitor center.

  And when he dipped around the first bend in a hallway, he saw Avery at the other end, lifting a shape out of a giant steel barrel.

  And Avery saw him. He dropped the body, which bent back in half, floppy arms scraping the ground. William, bloated and still. The steel barrel tipped over, clanging on the bare concrete surface below.

  Avery’s eyes shot open, full of fire.

  Also, he had a pistol in a holster attached to his belt. Ben sucked in a rapid breath at the sight of the firearm. He hadn’t expected the assistant superintendent to be packing heat today.

  There was still time to deal with it. He could cut the distance between them, before Avery had a chance to get off a shot. This had to happen. No matter how dangerous, Ben couldn’t let Avery escape with William’s body.

  And as Ben raised the tire iron and spurred himself into a run, Avery drew the pistol, pointed the weapon at Ben, and pulled the trigger.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Reese jumped out of his rental car and slammed the door behind him as Kathryn opened the door to Taylor’s house and disappeared inside. Pistol in one hand, pointed forward. She’d been like a zombie on her way to the house, snowflakes filtering through the air all around her.

  Reese could see Taylor’s wife Delilah through the living room window, wiping a smudge of food from a toddler’s face. She had no idea a woman was about to greet her with a gun. And Reese didn’t know for a fact that Kat was there to kill Delilah, but something in his gut told him that’s why she was there.

  He couldn’t take that chance.

  Kathryn could kill them both with two quick pulls of the trigger. Reese could tell something was off by the look on her face. Her dead eyes, the strain of her jaw.

  Reese bounded across the street, despite the throbbing in his knee and the buzzing in his head from the pain medication. He had a hard time keeping his body fully upright as he moved, like the outside air had been filled with beads of gel that kept knocking him off course.

  In his pocket, Reese’s phone dinged with the text message notification sound, but he didn’t have time to check that right now. Probably Ben, wondering where he was. But Ben would have to wait.

  “Sorry, buddy,” Reese said, and his voice sounded strange. His latest round of pain meds were definitely kicking in.

  By the time he reached the front door, he felt like his body was on a Tilt-a-Whirl. Nausea spiraled up from his stomach into his throat, and he had to steady himself against the front door. Go, he told himself. Get in there and do something.

  Then a scream from inside reverberated through the door, and he steeled himself. He flung back the door without another moment’s hesitation.

  Inside, he saw Kathryn waving the pistol around, bellowing at the top of her lungs. She was standing, leaning over the edge of a couch. Her non-pistol hand had curled into a claw, and she had one fingernail longer than all the others. Her pinky nail.

  Kat was a cokehead. That explained so much.

  Across the room, huddled on top of a train set, were Delilah Snell and a small child. Delilah, tears streaming down her face, clutched the child to her chest, burying his face against her neck. At their feet, a small plastic train ran along the tracks, twisting and turning around the path. The train had a headlamp, pushing a small yellow beam of light around the floor as it hurtled along the tracks.

  Somewhere, music played from hidden speakers. Something upbeat, drowned out by Kat’s shouting and Delilah’s weeping.

  “What the hell are you doing!” Reese said, shouting over the music. The sudden expenditure of breath made him woozy all over again.

  Flinching, Kathryn pivoted toward him, pistol raised. The gun went off.

  Reese felt some part his right ear explode as his eyes forced shut and the air on the right side of his body turned into a whirlwind. Gunshot. Hit him. The bullet had hit him.

  His eyes snapped open a half second later to see Kathryn pointing the pistol in his direction, a mist of smoke or vapor rising from the tip of the gun. Her eyes were like white marbles streaked with red. Her mouth had dropped open.

  But despite the horror and surprise on her face, Kathryn’s finger again closed around the trigger. Her eyes lowered as she raised the pistol up a few inches, toward her eye level.

  Reese reacted. No time to think. He lunged forward, setting his sights on Kath
ryn’s waist. He was dimly aware that a chunk of his right ear was missing as wetness flowed down his neck and the air whistled on that side of his body. Flying across the room brought a strange coolness to the blood seeping across his skin.

  The gun went off again, this time, high above him. Bits of the ceiling broke and fluttered through the air, like confetti.

  Kathryn staggered backward, the pistol now pointing toward the ceiling. She tried to turn and scurry away from him, but Reese became single minded. He was three steps away. Almost there. His hands spread out, ready to seize her.

  He would tackle her and get that damn gun away, no matter how many times she pulled the trigger. No matter what.

  Reese leaped over the couch, using it as a springboard. His arms folded around her waist and he dragged her to the ground, using all his leverage to force Kathryn down.

  Her head smacked on the carpeted floor, and then her shoulders and arms followed a split-second later. The gun came loose from her grip, spinning, landed a few feet away, closer to the door. It skittered across the carpet and came to a stop next to a shoe rack.

  Kathryn moaned and tried to push herself up. Reese grabbed hold of her arms and slammed them back down, pinning her to the floor. “Don’t move,” he growled. “You are done, hear me?” He turned his head to the side. “Mrs. Snell!” He wasn’t sure how loud he’d said the words, because the ringing in his ears drowned out almost everything else. A pistol blast from ten feet away was like a jet engine taking off inside his head.

  “Yes?” Came a meek reply.

  “Go call the police. Call them now. I’ve got the attacker, but we need to get the cops here as soon as possible.”

  He thought she’d mumbled agreement, but he couldn’t be sure. He was focused on keeping Kathryn pinned to the ground. The young would-be killer underneath him went blank, her eyes fixed on a faraway point above their heads. Tears streamed down her face.