She shouldn’t look back, shouldn’t look back, but she did, and there he was, scrambling in pursuit, the flashlight in one hand, knife in the other.
She heard his fast, hysterical breathing, or maybe it was her own.
Forward. Go.
There was nothing for her then but a smeared impression of her elbows and knees in furious motion. Speed and panic and pure darkness ahead, red death behind.
She’d done this before — crawled like this, through this ventilation duct — crawled when she escaped from Hawk Ridge. Only then no monster had been chasing her, and she had crawled slowly, silently, afraid of being heard. Crawled to the midpoint of the ward, the bend in the L, where a vertical shaft intercepted this duct and rose a few feet to an opening in the roof.
Ahead she saw a faint fall of starlight, the roof exit, her one way out, her last chance.
Yards away.
Too far.
Cray was closing fast, and she wouldn’t get there.
She kept going, terror drumming in her chest. She was all fear now, nothing but fear, as Cray was nothing but hunger.
He grabbed her ankle.
With a gasp of panic she shook loose. Drove herself forward, pawing at the shaft, her hands gummy with old dust, the light from the rooftop opening still too far away.
Behind her, Cray sped up.
He had her scent in his nostrils now, the flavor of a fresh kill tingling in his mouth, and with feral quickness he came on fast, chuffing hard, the flashlight abandoned, the knife bared like teeth, and Kaylie almost in range for the final, lethal pounce.
She crawled for the light, the exit, and then the light was gone, blotted out — she didn’t understand how, and there was no time to think about it, because she heard Cray snarl, a low indrawn sound packed full of menace, the sound a dog would make in the instant before it leaped, and she knew he was tensing for the kill.
Directly ahead, something dropped into the shaft.
A human figure.
Twisting toward her — a man — and in his hand, a gun which rose for a shot he could not try, because Kaylie blocked the target.
“Take it!” he shouted, and he pitched the gun at her, a handgun, sliding along the shaft.
A gun that was just an illusion, like the man himself, a mirage out of nowhere.
Cray sprang.
The pistol completed its slide, spinning into Kaylie’s grasp, and remarkably it was real — as tangible and solid as the gun that had killed Justin many years ago — and with the gun in both hands she twisted onto her back, face to face with Cray as he fell on her, and she fired one shot directly into his heart.
Cray shuddered all over. Kaylie looked up into his eyes in the dim ambient light, eyes that widened with sudden intelligence, the shocked awareness that somehow, impossibly, she had beaten him.
Then she saw darkness filling those eyes, a flood of darkness, extinguishing the light, and Cray saw it too, she knew he did. He saw the dark tide that was fast flowing in to wash him away, and for the first time he was frightened by the dark, afraid like a child, afraid and alone.
She saw all this, in the moment when their gazes locked for the last time, and then the last living part of him was devoured by the dark, and everything was gone from his eyes, forever.
Cray sagged, a limp, dead thing, the knife in his hand as harmless as a toy.
Kaylie let go of the gun. It clattered in the vent with a hollow sound.
She made no further movement. She couldn’t feel anything, couldn’t think.
“Kaylie?”
A familiar voice. She’d heard it before, but when? Oh, yes. On the night of her arrest.
It was Detective Shepherd’s voice. He was the man who’d materialized out of nothingness and saved her life.
She had no idea how he’d gotten here, no strength to ask. Later she would make him tell.
Later.
“Kaylie? You all right?”
He had crawled to her. Blinking, she looked at him.
“I’m fine,” she said, as if it were a summer day and she had merely responded to a casual pleasantry. “Just fine.”
He released a long-held breath. “Thank God.”
“Cray’s dead.”
“I know. Let’s get out of here.”
“Cray’s dead,” she repeated for no reason.
“There’s an exit to the roof.” Shepherd took her hand, gently coaxing her forward, away from the dead sprawl of John Cray. “Come on.”
She eased free of Cray’s loose, boneless limbs. “I know about the exit,” she whispered. “I used it to escape from this place once before. But… not really.”
Abruptly she lifted her head, searching for Shepherd’s gaze in the faint light, wishing to make eye contact, feeling suddenly that it was very important for him to understand about the years of running, the scared-rabbit hiding, the night dreams and daytime fears.
“I never really escaped,” Kaylie said quietly.
Shepherd tightened his grip on her hand. “This time you did.”
Epilogue
“How did you find me?” Kaylie asked.
It was ten days after the events at Hawk Ridge, and she was sitting in an armchair by the window of her hospital room, a book in her hands.
Shepherd stopped just inside the doorway. “No hello? That’s the first thing you say to me?”
“Hello comes later. I have to know.”
“Well, at the sign-in desk the nurse told me you were in room three-twenty-two.”
“I meant that night, when I was in the air duct with Cray. You showed up and saved me. How?”
He smiled, circling the bed to approach her. The day was clear, the view through the window green and bright. He had not expected the grounds of Graham County’s medical center to be so nicely landscaped.
“You mean nobody’s told you in all this time?” he said, teasing her by withholding a reply.
“Nobody seems to know. I was in too much of a daze to ask you that night. The stuff Cray was giving me…” She put down the book and hugged herself. “I was half out of my mind.”
“Taking that much methamphetamine every day would make anybody crazy.” The smile slipped off his face. “How’s your treatment coming?”
“I’ve gotten over the addiction. The withdrawal symptoms weren’t too pleasant. But I can’t really complain.” She spread her arms to take in the room, with its sterile bedding and gleaming countertops, its private bath. “This place is a lot nicer than my previous accommodations — and I’m including the motels I used to stay in, not just Hawk Ridge.”
“You have the room all to yourself.”
“The institute’s paying for it.” She raised a mischievous eyebrow. “They’ll be paying for quite a few things. That lawyer Anson hired is pretty darn good.” Then she frowned. “You still haven’t answered my question.”
“First I’d like an answer to one of mine.” He took a small manila envelope from the inside pocket of his jacket. “I want you to look at this.” He unclasped the envelope and removed a photograph, then hesitated. “It may upset you.”
“After all that’s happened to me recently, I’m past being upset.”
Even so, her hands trembled slightly as she studied the photo during a long, thoughtful silence.
“It’s her,” she said finally. “The one in the garage, twelve years ago.”
“We thought it was. She’s the only victim who disappeared in the right time frame. This is her yearbook photo, senior year.”
“Who was she?”
“Rebecca Morgan. Age nineteen when she was reported missing. She was never found. She got into a fight with her boyfriend and went out to the highway to thumb a ride home.”