After throwing his restraints toward the center of the room to mingle with her own, Gaby curved Luther’s left hand around the knife hilt. She squeezed his fingers to imprint his identity. His natural reflexes kept the knife lax in his hold.
Next she put his gun into his right hand. As testament to the core of Luther’s nature as a lawman, he grasped it on his own. Even unconscious, he was one with the weapon.
Standing behind Luther, Gaby took aim, and from that distance, shot the aunt in the head, the uncle in the throat. By ensuring her and Luther’s safety, an instantaneous lifting of her rage-fueled intuition left her depleted. With the threat from evil ones obliterated, she’d completed her calling.
Gaby knew that she’d done the right thing, moral or not, but that wouldn’t help her in a world of legality.
Roused by the blasts of gunfire, Luther mumbled again, his voice stronger this time, and his gun hand flinched, lifted, dropped back to rest on the tabletop. To finish her chore, Gaby went to her knees beside him, put her head on his thigh, and rested.
She’d protected Luther, but at what cost?
Would he believe the setup? Or would this be the final straw in testing his gullibility?
A short time later, Luther came to with alacrity. He lurched into defensive mode, and Gaby hoped he wouldn’t drop the knife and slice her throat by accident. She kept very still, ready to play her part.
Ready to do whatever necessary to insulate Luther from the ugliness of her purpose in life.
Chapter 16
Throbbing pain jerked Luther from his drugged slumber. A subconscious urgency prodded him to open his eyes, but at first, he saw only a great blur. His gun hand raised and at the ready, he willed himself to full awareness.
Little by little the fogginess cleared, showing him foreign surroundings.
What the hell?
He started to lift his other hand, felt a heavy knife falling, and found himself fumbling with two weapons, a knife and his gun.
He had no recollection of drawing either one.
“Jesus.” Shaking his head to clear it didn’t help much; he didn’t understand any of this.
What had happened?
The last thing he recalled was sitting on the grass in front of his house with Gaby. He’d wanted to make love to her, had planned to work around to exactly that.
Now he sat in the shadowed, dank darkness of a basement, and a foul stench—the fetor of death—burned his nostrils on every breath.
A scene of utter carnage surrounded him. Blood sprayed the walls. Brain matter, gore, covered an area of the floor.
In the middle of it all . . . a dead boy? He wasn’t sure of the age or sex, only that, given the lifelessness of the body, whoever it was had expired. Farther away, an older couple lay in tangled, bloody demise.
Luther looked at the gun in his hand. His head pounded as memories intruded, and he squeezed his eyes shut.
This was the room Bliss had described to him, but how had he gotten here? Manacles hung from the wall, nooses from the ceiling. Makeshift cages held restraints of all kinds; it didn’t take great intuitiveness to know that innocent people had suffered great and immeasurable pain here.
Where was Gaby? What had happened to her? His chest hurt and his guts cramped. No, he wouldn’t think the worst.
He wouldn’t. He had to figure this out, and fast.
Hearing nothing and no one, but unsure of any other threats, Luther started to stand. A warm weight shifted against his leg. He glanced down—and found Gaby slumped beside him.
“Oh my God.”
When her head lolled to the side, his heart threatened to burst. More scared than he’d ever been, he put aside the weapons and cupped her shoulders. “Gaby?”
She mumbled, but didn’t awaken.
Luther shook her. “Gaby!”
Sliding off the chair to his knees, he gently laid her onto the floor and checked her over for wounds. Her arms were badly bruised, and a nasty rope burn encircled her pale throat.
His muscles coiled in fury. “Fuckers. I’ll kill them all.” Drawing a ragged breath, his hands trembling, he smoothed back her hair. “Honey, talk to me, please.”
Her eyes opened.
To Luther’s astute gaze, they appeared clear, bright with perspicacity. She frowned. “Luther?”
He shoved aside his suspicions to help her into a sitting position. “Are you all right?”
With sluggish inelegance, she put a hand to her head and looked around.
Eyes narrowed, Luther watched her. She showed no signs of shock at the tableau of horror. No signs of shock.
Eyes direct, voice unshaken, she turned to him and said, “My God, Luther.”
He swallowed hard. “I know.”
Her beautiful blues didn’t blink. “It’s amazing.”
“It is?”
“Well, yes. Look at what you did.”
He drew back, uncertain, confused, no memory of doing . . . anything.
Gaby wrapped her arms around him. “You killed them all, and you saved us. The city should give you a commendation or something.” Her warm breath touched his neck. “It’s over, Luther. Finally, it’s over.”
After Luther made a call, it didn’t take long for authorities to arrive. They swarmed the place, filling the upscale community with flashing lights and a flood of officials. Affluent neighbors came out to their porches, disgruntled by the disturbance to their peaceful and prosperous lives.
As more uniformed men shoved past her, Gaby asked, “Who the hell are all these people?”
“Detectives, crime scene technicians, medical examiner, photographers . . .” Luther shrugged. “It takes a lot of people to lock down a crime scene and gather the evidence the right way.”
“Seems like a lot of ballyhoo to me when it’s already clear what happened.”
His gaze sharpened on her. “And that is?”
Gaby shrugged. “Sick freaks grabbed us, you killed them all, you’re a hero—end of story.”
Luther didn’t buy that. He ran a hand over his head, a little pained, a lot disgusted. Hands on his hips, he turned away from her to stare at the bodies. “You were right.”
“About what?”
“He’s not a boy.”
“Well, duh.” Gaby shook her head. “He’s not even a he.”
“How did you know?” Luther flexed his jaw in frustration. “You were so certain about it, when no one else knew. So how did you know?”
Time to tread carefully. Gaby tried for a look of indifference. “He’s the same kid I saw in my area way back when, that’s how.”
“Before Lucy was taken?”
“Yeah. You remember. You asked me why I was chasing him, and I told you then that I didn’t know for sure.”
“But you knew that he—strike that—she was suspect even then?”
Gaby didn’t like where the questions were leading. “He/she looked too clean-cut and uppity to be hanging out in my neck of the woods, that’s all. I just sensed that something was off.”
“And as always, you were right.”
“Lucky me.” She, too, glanced at the body. “You know,” she said softly, “she prefers to be addressed as he.”
“He is dead, so what does it matter what he prefers?”
It didn’t, not really. But still . . . She glared at him for confusing her more. “Look, Luther, it was him and his two twisted relatives there—”
“How do you know they’re relatives?”
Good grief. Would he grab on to her every word trying to find plot holes?
Trying for a patience she didn’t possess, Gaby inhaled. “Okay, here’s how it went down. Are you paying attention?”
Luther stiffened. “Just spit it out.”
“They—the warped relatives—stuck you with the drug before they got to me, so you probably don’t remember as much as I do. But before that, before they drugged me, I heard a lot. The lady who likes to impersonate a boy is called Oren, and the other two are his aunt and uncle.”