Page 74 of Half the Summer's Night
“I’m coming for you next. And trust me: you won’t get away this time.”
A click and the line goes dead.
You won’t get away this time.
No. No, this can’t be Olivia’s murderer. Nameless killed him. Iknowhe was dead. I saw the fucking body twice—once in my foyer, then again on my examination slab. And he only killed Olivia, anyway.
So who’s the second victim?
I wish, with a horrible tightness in my chest, that Nameless hadn’t left me alone.
Suddenly, my fax machine in my computer printer kicks on, the whir loud and mechanical in the silence. I shriek and drop the phone receiver; I’d forgotten that stupid thing was still hooked up. I’d never bothered to disconnect the number after Uncle Vic died, even though I never use it. I certainly receive faxes.
And yet I can hear the paper getting sucked into the printer, the whir of the ink. Something’s coming through.
I creep forward, my heart racing. It looks like an image: blurred, smeary colors. Dark with spots of light, like fireflies. And then something else. Something brighter than the rest.
A shock of blonde hair.
I fight back nausea as the picture slowly rolls out, revealing itself inch by inch.
A blonde woman, screaming.
Naked.
Tied up.
The image drops into the tray, and I force myself to pick it up, although my hand is shaking so badly that the paper shakes, too.
There’s something written underneath the photograph, a scribble in thick dark ink:
This is what she looked like before I fucked her…
The fax kicks on again, whirring and whining. I scream and stumble backward, fighting the urge to unplug it. I know evidence when I see it.
I look down at the picture again, my vision blurry with tears. The screaming woman. She looks familiar?—
A split second later, the realization hits me like a punch.
It’s Heather Staunton.
“No,” I scream, the paper dropping to my feet. The next picture is already half in the tray, but I know what I’m going to see. I know, because I’ve seen it before, when I went to the gazebo in the town square.
And yet I still take slow, shaking steps over to the fax machine. I still look down at the horror sliding into the tray.
It’s Heather Staunton, kneeling in the dark, her head split in half at the jaw.
And the text, scrawled out in the same cruel hand:
…And this is what she looks like now.
You’re next, bitch. You and your little guard dog.
28
ROWAN
Istare at this woman, Charlotte, feeling as wary as a prey animal being hunted out in the open.
