Page 63 of The Murder Inn

Gold light speared through the room from the bullet holes in the door. I fired back and heard a scream I recognized. In my terror, I saw a flash of blond hair through the bullet holes as Susan collapsed outside the door.

CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN

MY HANDS WERE numb as I ripped the slide bolt down, yanked open the door, and found her there. Nothing made sense. The hallway was empty except for Susan, who was crumpled against the wall, gripping the hole I’d put in her upper chest. Somehow, I was aware of the wail of horror that was coming out of me, but I was unable to stop it. I gathered up my girlfriend and held her against my chest. Down the hall, I spied the open window Driver must have slipped out of.

“I thought you were him!” I screamed. Susan’s face was white and rigid with shock. Her hands were tangled in my shirt. She gave a little nod, like yes, she’d thought the same thing of me. That Driver had indeed anticipated our plan and gone into Neddy Ives’s room to wait for me. I held her and growled in fury at myself, just for a second, unable to stop the regret leaving my body in a long, animalistic sound.

Then I picked her up and ran for the stairs.

CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT

NORMAN DRIVER EDGED his way along the side of the darkened inn, gripping a gutter with his stubby fingers and shuffling his boots along a ledge beneath the window.

He was out. He’d had enough.

Even before Bill Robinson and the blond woman had boxed him in at the top of the stairs, he’d decided it was time to cut and run. Whatever Karli Breecher’s promise had been to him about a share in a million dollars cash hidden somewhere inside the Inn by the Sea, that seemed to be over. Driver had been searching a linen cupboard crowded with towels and sheets when he heard two pops on the first floor. He’d gone down and found his two men dead and Breecher and the others nowhere to be seen. Weird. He’d figured he would keep searching the upper rooms, at least until he heard tires on the road outside. But what he discovered in those rooms had only furthered his unease. The room with the obvious murder investigation going on in it had beenfollowed by what looked like a psychopath’s room: a pull-up bar, bed, gun case, and nothing else except what seemed to be an enormous rat wearing a pet collar. It was all too much. All too unexplainable. Driver had decided to hightail it, and deal with the problem of Shauna Bulger and the box of evidence another time, when he spotted Bill and the blonde sneaking up to the laundry door.

Driver got to the awning over the porch, clambered down onto the railing, and dropped to the ground. More gunshots upstairs. He didn’t stick around to find out who’d shot who. He took off running through the woods, following the road but sticking off it by a few yards, just to be safe. With every step, his heartbeat eased. He was beginning to think ahead, to collect himself. The long, dark stretch of woods before him and the rhythmic beat of his boots on the earth lent itself to calm planning. He’d get out of town for a few days. Reevaluate. Sure, he’d lost guys. He’d underestimated the old woman and her loopy friends. But every boxer worth his salt took a couple of unlucky bops in the ring before they landed the big KO. It was just how fights went.

And then she was there.

It was as though his very thoughts had summoned her. Driver stopped running and stood in the dark like a rabbit in the crosshairs, gaping at her, the woman who had brought him so much trouble and pain and humiliation. She was like a ghost outlined in white moonlight, the rifle hitched against her shoulder confidently, her features set as she watched him approach like she’d known all along he was coming. Driver felt his entire body shrink into itself with terror as she dropped the forestock of the rifle into her palm, slid back the bolt with her other hand.

Theclunksound of the bullet locking into the chamber and the crunch of the slide bolt settling back into its housing seemed deafening to Driver. They were the brutal sounds heralding his final moments.

She didn’t say anything.

She just eased her finger onto the trigger and pulled.

CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE

NOTHING HAPPENED.

Driver waited, his breath seized in his chest. The old woman lowered the weapon, clicked the trigger again, listened to something within the instrument grinding impotently. The gun had jammed. Driver released the breath trapped in his lungs and rushed forward as Shauna Bulger tried jimmying and shoving the locked slide bolt.

The rifle went off right next to Driver’s ear as he plowed into her. He felt the bones of her rib cage crunching and twisting as their bodies came together, the air leaving her in a whoosh by his cheek as they hit the ground. Despite how small she was, she scrambled and twisted under him without even taking a second to recover from the blow. She was somehow unstoppable, unkillable, though her breath was rattling and her eyes bulged with pain.

Driver had heard people say their life flashes before theireyes as they approach the edge of death. He’d always found a similar phenomenon to be true: when he took a life, the lives of those he’d already taken came to him, encouraging reminders of conquests past. There was Georgette there in the old woman’s eyes, but also a string of other women and girls. Drug dealers and loan sharks who had crossed him, a couple of crooked cops who got too big for their boots. Shauna Bulger did what all the women he’d killed did: she reached for something, anything, to blind him with. He saw the handful of dirt coming and caught it, pinned her wrist to the ground. But a heavy boom and a flash in the distance distracted him, and he turned away at just the right moment, and didn’t see the rock she’d clutched in her other hand coming at his face. Driver caught the rock in his left eye socket. His whole face clanged with pain, the agony seeming to shimmer and echo through him, like his bones were made of iron. He got up and stumbled back, wiping blood from his face. His boots hit the dirt road, and he turned in time to be blinded by a set of huge gold headlights only a few yards away.

CHAPTER SEVENTY

NORMAN DRIVER TOOK the full force of the car’s bumper in the front of his legs. I caught a glimpse of his shocked face as I came roaring up the dirt road from the inn. I’d grabbed the keys to Vinny’s sedan from a hook in the hall. The car was old and powerful and had a lot of weight behind it. Susan screamed in the passenger seat beside me, her strength failing and the life draining out of her, but not enough to disguise the crash from her senses. Driver’s shoulder collapsed the windshield in front of us, and I heard his body tumble over the roof of the car, thumping onto the road behind. I slammed on the brakes, threw the car into park, and leaped out. But by the time I reached his body, I knew it was too late. His back was twisted unnaturally, his breathless, hairy chest exposed through his torn shirt.

I looked into the woods, spying movement. Shauna was standing there, a rifle in her hands, heaving with exertion. Theurgency with which I’d moved since shooting Susan was still with me. I reached out to Shauna, even as I was backing away, retreating to the driver’s seat of the car.

“Come on!” I called.

I was offering her one final out. A peaceful surrender. She could come with me and end this dark journey she had begun. Yes, it would mean jail time. It would mean facing her son, her friends, her family through the chipped and scratched glass in the prison visiting room, probably for the rest of her life. It would mean being punished for being a punisher, for taking revenge, for stepping outside the law just exactly as her husband had. I knew those were terrifying prospects for Shauna, or for anyone. But if she did not come with me now, wherever she was going could only be more frightening.

I left my hand hanging for a second, maybe two.

Shauna didn’t budge.

I pulled the door of the car closed and drove away.

CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE

NICK CRAWLED. THE sound of the phone dinging became more distant, but never slowed, a one-note piano tune stuttering through the night. In time he stopped and gripped his shattered knee, bit down against the pain for long moments as Breecher stood by silently, only part of her silhouette visible against the glowing ocean. He could hear the waves now. Tiny, three- or four-inch-high slaps of white foam illuminated in the moonlight. He stopped in sight of the tree.

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