Maggie wondered if it was the gun he had used to kill Quentin's friend Joey.
"Bobby," Annie murmured sadly, "you hurt me, Bobby. Why did you hurt me?" She glided into the circle of light, facing him. Confronting him. The nightgown she wore was fine linen, and thin, and her feet were bare. "Why did you hurt me, brother?"
He made an odd, harsh sound.
"Bobby," Maggie called, moving toward them slowly. "Bobby, I didn't mean it when I said you weren't a man. I didn't mean to laugh at you." She cast a quick glance toward the bed and flinched at the blood-soaked mattress, the pale, thin body that was bruised and battered. The missing eyes.
She couldn't tell if Tara was dead or alive.
For an instant, her control wavered, and she felt a jolt of pain so intense it nearly doubled her over. Desperately, she struggled to shore up those inner walls, to close out the suffering she couldn't afford to share this time.
"Bobby." Annie glided another few steps toward him, holding out her hands beseechingly as she drew his attention away from Maggie. "I've been trying to find you, Bobby. I miss you so much…"
He made another choked sound and this time ripped off the mask and wig. Maggie recognized him from the pictures Christina had shown her. He was an ordinary man with brown hair, a high forehead, and pale grayish eyes. Slender but with wide shoulders and those oddly incongruous, outsize hands, their power obvious even gloved. Especially gloved.
But otherwise an ordinary man.
"You're dead," he said hoarsely to Annie.
Maggie moved into the light. "We're both dead, Bobby. You killed us. You killed us a long time ago." She was terrified she was wrong about this. Terrified of not being strong enough to destroy his evil. Terrified of dying.
He swallowed hard, staring at her now. "Deanna… I killed you. Why won't you stay dead?" His voice cracked. "Why in hell's name won't you stay dead?"
Annie uttered a sweet laugh. "We're stronger than you, Bobby. We always have been. Didn't you know that?"
Shattering the quiet, he fired two times directly at her.
The bullets hit the crate behind her, splintering wood. She smiled at him. "We're stronger, Bobby. We'll always be stronger."
"No! I'm stronger! I can kill you! I can kill you all!"
"You didn't kill me, Bobby," Hollis said as she stepped out of the shadows a few yards to Maggie's right.
He let out a sort of wail and backed up until he was up against the worktable and could retreat no farther. "No. No, I can kill you. I did kill you…"
Without planning to, Maggie said, "And it doesn't do any good to blind us, Bobby. We see you. We always see you."
"Always," Hollis echoed as she took another step toward him. Her eyelids were reddened and the marks of the attack were only half healed on her face, but blue eyes gazed at him, clear and steady, and she wore a small, contemptuous smile. "Did you really think you could take my eyes, Bobby?"
"I did," he muttered. He laughed suddenly, his own eyes gleaming with tears or madness. "I did. I took them. I cut them out. I did. I know I did. I put them in a bowl and watched them float. I took your eyes, Audra. I took-they were brown eyes. I remember that. Brown eyes. And I took them. And you couldn't see me."
"I see you now." Her voice was flat, cold. "I see you, Bobby. We all see you. You'll never be able to hide from any of us ever again."
"No," he mumbled, the gun wavering, his wide shoulders hunching. "No, please."
"We see you," Annie repeated.
"We see you," Maggie echoed.
He laughed-a strange, high sound-and watching him, Maggie saw his eyes change. In those flat gray depths, something was coming apart, disintegrating. She felt a peculiar sensation, as if some force, some energy, had blown past her, pressure more than air, nearly causing her ears to pop.
It all happened within the space of seconds, and then, before she could move or react, that wavering gun pointed at her, steadied, and he whimpered, "No-"
Maggie had a split second to gaze into eyes that now held nothing but a kind of dumb hatred, and then a third shot echoed through the warehouse.
She expected pain, waited for it. But the pistol in Simon Walsh's hand clattered to the floor, and he crumpled almost soundlessly.
It was over. It was finally over.
Before Maggie could do more than catch her breath, John was there, holding her hard with one arm while the pistol in his free hand remained pointed toward Walsh.
"Maggie-"
"For a minute there," she heard herself say with astonishing calm, "I thought you were going to be too late."
"He nearly was," Quentin commented, moving out of the shadows near where Annie had been. He went to warily check for a pulse in Walsh, keeping his own gun at the ready but relaxing when he found no heartbeat. "I didn't have a clear shot from my angle, so it was all up to him."
"Tara-"
But Quentin was already moving toward the bed and seconds later looked at them with grim eyes.
"She's alive, but just barely." He took out his cell phone to quickly summon an ambulance, while Hollis joined him at the other side of the bed, helping him to gently untie Tara Jameson's wrists and murmuring soothingly to the terribly injured woman.
"You two took a hell of a chance," John said, his voice jerky. "Jesus, Maggie-"
Maggie sent a fleeting glance around, unsurprised to find Annie gone, then smiled up at him. "I know. It was just something I-"
"Felt you had to do. Yeah, I got that." He flicked the gun's safety on, then stuck the weapon inside his jacket and put both hands on her shoulders. He didn't shake her, but the desire to do so was evident in the way his fingers tightened. "Want to tell me how you thought you could win this little confrontation without so much as a big stick?"
She shook her head. "I knew my face gave me an edge, that it would catch him off guard to see me here. It gave me the control, at least for a little while. I thought… maybe the only way to fight his evil would be to shatter it-or at least the mind holding it. To have one of his victims face him, knowing all his secrets. It was the only thing I could think of to do. I had to try, John."
"Just don't ever do anything like that to me again."
"No, I won't." She looked at him searchingly.
"I won't have nightmares about killing him," John assured her. "And no regrets. When you put a mad dog out of his misery, you're only doing him a favor."
"You had no choice," she said anyway.
"I know." He pulled her into his arms. "Are you all right? Even I can feel the pain in this place."
Maggie considered, then smiled at him. "When you touch me, all I feel is you."
"Good," John said, and kissed her.
Nearly an hour later, Andy stood outside the warehouse with the others waiting for his forensics team to arrive and said, "So that was what evil looked like. I wasn't impressed."
"No," Maggie said.
He gazed at her with lifted brows. "No?"
"No. That was just the shell evil lived in for a while."
"You mean because he's dead now?"
"Because the evil was destroyed this time before the flesh was."
Andy blinked, looked at John and Quentin, then shook his head. "Never mind. I don't think I want to know what it was all about."
"Wise of you," Quentin murmured.
Scott joined them, saying, "The Caddie is parked in that shed over there. A '72, looks like. Just what your friend Joey described, Quentin."
He smiled faintly. "Yeah, he always did know cars."
Jennifer asked, "How the hell did Hollis Templeton get here?" Since Hollis had left in the ambulance with Tara Jameson, she asked the question of the others.
Maggie shrugged. "She said… a little voice told her she should be here. So she came. Didn't say how."
"Jesus," Scott said.
Andy looked at him, seemed about to say something, and then obviously thought better of it. He settled his shoulders with the air of a man deciding things.