The thought of it panicked me. If someone found the camera, the pictures I’d taken would show the world who the Ursulina really was. So I went back to the killing ground to search. Norm hadn’t found the bodies yet, and when I saw the trailer again, I felt a wave of horror knowing what was inside, as if the ghosts of the corpses would rise up and surround me. I wasted no time. I looked everywhere, I spent hours, but I had no idea where I’d dropped the camera. There was simply too much ground to cover.
So I sweated out the next few weeks, terrified that someone else would find it and that my secret would be revealed. But no. The knock on my door never came. Even after deputies went through the woods. Even after Ben’s Ursulina hunt with all his volunteers. No one showed up to arrest me. As the time went by, I began to believe I was safe.
I never dreamed when I met Ricky that he’d already found the camera, developed the film, and decided to collect me like a rare breed of carnivorous butterfly. He found me at a time when I needed to pretend that I was still an ordinary woman, not a killer, not a beast. I needed to punish myself for what I’d done. So no matter what Ricky did or said to me, I kept the Ursulina locked away as the sentence for my crime.
That was my life for six years. A gray, loveless life that probably would have gone on forever.
Until Gordon Brink came back to town.
Until the Ursulina came back.
At that point, sweetheart, I had no idea who Brink was. My mind had a face, but no name. And obviously, Brink was terrified of running into me. I can only imagine the horror he’d felt when Ajax told him about the murders. He’d assumed that Kip and Racer had buried me in the forest along with his sins. Instead, he knew there was a woman in Black Wolf County burning for vengeance, a woman who would never forget his face.
Maybe, if not for the pig’s blood dousing his wife, he and I never would have met again. She called the sheriff’s department without telling Gordon, and I was the one Jerry sent to investigate. Fate. When we saw each other, he didn’t miss the surge of violence on my face, the shock that became blinding rage. He knew I’d be back for him. He knew. That Sunday before Christmas, while the town and my husband were at the 126 watching Jamie Lee Curtis take off her shirt, I was knocking on Gordon Brink’s office door out in the woods.
He was no fool. He had a gun, because he assumed I was there to do to him what I’d done to Kip and Racer. It was kill or be killed. But I tried to put him at ease. I told him that too much time had gone by, that neither one of us wanted the truth to come out. I said I was there so we could come to some kind of arrangement. Money. A lot of money. I suggested we drink on it.
As he poured the whiskey, I hit him in the back of the head.
When he was unconscious, I dragged him to the bed. I could feel the beast in my bloodstream, putting me into a kind of fugue where I wasn’t even aware of what I was doing. When I awoke from my transformation, I was soaked in blood, the meat shredders in my hands. Gordon Brink lay on the bed with the look of someone who’d seen the face of hell before dying.
The message from the beast was already painted on the wall.
In that moment, Shelby, I thought — I swear I thought — I was free. It was over. Done. I’d purged the beast. The past was the past, and it had given up its grip on me. But of course, no evil deed comes without consequences.
There was a horrific price to be paid for my revenge, a bloody trail of grief, loss, and death that followed in my footsteps. Will paid the price. Jay paid the price. Even Ajax did, though that one was by Ricky’s hands, not mine. And in a way, Ruby, Penny, and so many others, they all paid for what I did, too.
So did you, Shelby.
You most of all.
In the end, the Ursulina claimed us both.
Chapter Forty
I waited until the Xanax did its work.
Ricky didn’t understand at first what was happening to him. Right to the end, he was a fool. His mind spun like a merry-go-round; his muscles grew thick and heavy; his words slurred. When he finally realized what I’d done to him, he came at me in a clumsy charge and wrapped his hands around my throat. Despite my plans, he nearly won. I kicked and fought him, but even drugged, he had the steel-strong grip of a mine worker. I was already blacking out when his fingers finally loosened from my windpipe, and he fell backward.
I stood over him, coughing and choking, as he lay unconscious on the floor. In his ridiculous costume, he was more beast than man. A bully. A brute. I felt no mercy toward him. I thought about him holding you by the neck, Shelby, and my heart turned ice cold.
I didn’t hesitate. I took my gun, and with two shots to his head, I made sure he would never hurt you again.
Afterward, I burned the photographs and negatives from seven years earlier. I brought my old camera to the lake and threw it out into the water as far as I could. There would be no evidence to tie me to the Ursulina murders. No headlines about the girl who became the monster, no publicity, no magazine covers with my face, no new Ben Malloy documentary on NBC. Actually, Ricky did me a favor by taking out his revenge on Ajax using my own disguise. No one would believe that Rebecca Colder, not even a month away from giving birth, had vivisected Ajax. So no one would believe I’d committed the other murders, either. They would remain unsolved. Four victims of a monster whose legend would only grow with time.
That was what everyone wanted. They wanted the myth.
Of course, that didn’t mean I was free. I knew that. I was still a killer.
When I got back to the trailer, I took a chair outside to wait for Darrell. I was calm at that moment. Serene. It was the middle of a bitter fall night, with snow swirling around me, but I didn’t feel cold. I breathed crisp air into my lungs and listened for the Ursulina, but the beast had gone away. I was my own woman again, ready for what came next.
Darrell arrived at dawn.
I could see his headlights approaching on the dirt road through the dusting of snow. He got out of the car, and when he saw me, a huge grin broke across his face, and he exclaimed in relief, “Rebecca, thank God! I’ve been looking everywhere. Are you okay?”
He rushed toward me, but he stopped when he saw the revolver at my feet. His smile vanished.
“You’ll want to bag that,” I told him. “It’s evidence.”
His eyes took on a stricken look. His face turned ashen. Without saying a word, without picking up the gun, he ripped open the trailer door and ran inside, and a moment later, I heard his howl of despair. The entire Airstream shuddered as Darrell pounded his fists on the walls.
When he came back outside to confront me, tears were rolling down his cheeks. He shook his head over and over. “Rebecca, why?”
“You know why. He was going to kill me. He was going to kill Shelby. Nothing you did would ever keep him away from us.”
“I would have put him in jail.”
“For how long, Darrell? Six months? A year? Then he would have gotten out and come back.”
“Rebecca, I can’t hide this. This is murder. I can’t protect you from it.”
“I would never ask you to. I knew what I was doing. I made a plan and carried it out. I drugged my ex-husband and shot him in the head. I’m guilty. I accept the consequences.”
With another awful groan, Darrell fell to his knees in front of my chair. He reached out and hugged me tightly, and I hugged him back. I felt miserable, seeing his disappointment in me. This was my sin, my crime, but he felt responsible, like a father who’d failed his child. Somehow, he should have been able to save me. Keep me from harm.