Page 88 of The Night Before (Savannah 1)

“Well, it won’t be for long, now will it?”

Up yours, you bitch! Cricket thought, her mind disjointed. It seemed as if she’d slept, or been knocked out, but she didn’t know; she resided in a kind of netherworld that was foul smelling and dark. It had been a long while and she was thirsty and thought she might have wet her pants . . . her bladder had been full and now wasn’t.

If she had the chance she’d kill the bitch, but so far she hadn’t had the opportunity or the strength. Any time her mind had cleared and she’d thought about trying to lash out at her attacker, she’d suddenly been overcome with drowsiness. She was being drugged, no doubt about it. But if she ever got a clear head . . . the bitch was dead. Dead!

“Here we go. I thought you might be lonely.” Atropos squatted near Cricket’s head and flipped on a flashlight, the narrow beam showing off old rotten wood and bits of broken glass. There were bottles as well and what looked to be rat poison on a shelf. Oh, no . . .

Atropos placed an old glass milk jug on the floor. It seemed to be moving, breathing inside, growing.

Cricket began to sweat. Couldn’t take her eyes off the milk bottle. Her heart was pounding, adrenalin laced by fear, kicking through her bloodstream.

“Watch this.” Atropos trained the flashlight’s beam directly on the jar. Inside were nests of spiders, cottony-looking drifts and lacy webs, crawling with hatchlings, tiny spiders moving everywhere, elder arachnids as well, their many eyes ever watchful, some with front legs upraised, ready to eat each other’s young. “I’ve been incubating them for weeks,” she explained.

Cricket began to shake.

Atropos retrieved a smaller vial from a pocket in her jacket and placed it in the light. Within, atop a cotton ball, were insects . . . no, not just insects. Crickets. Three or four of the dark bugs.

Oh, for the love of God! Cricket’s guts turned to water.

Carefully, Atropos unscrewed the lid and then, using a pair of tweezers, pulled one of the tiny pests from the jar. It struggled against the tight forceps, but it was no use. Adeptly Atropos retightened the lid, opened the milk jar, held the cricket over it for a heart-stopping second, then opened the tweezers and let the cricket fall.

Horrified, her gaze glued to the milk jar, Cricket watched the cricket land in the cobwebby pit, where it was stuck on a web.

It struggled but a second.

The spiders pounced.

With new terror, Cricket watched the spiders fight over the struggling insect, a large brown arachnid becoming the victor and piercing the cricket’s tiny body with deadly fangs.

Cricket recoiled in terror. Her heart was pounding. She wanted to throw up, but she was gagged in this macabre place with its broken bottles, dark corners and sick, sick inhabitant.

“Mmmm. Not a pretty sight,” Atropos said as she tied a braided cord—red and black strands—around the neck of the milk jar, then rescrewed the lid. “Oh, well, show’s over. Now remember, ‘sleep tight and don’t let the bed bugs bite.’ ”

Atropos flipped off the flashlight and walked up stairs that creaked and moaned.

Cricket was

plunged into darkness once again.

With the jar of spiders only inches from her nose. She didn’t have to be a brain surgeon to guess what fate Atropos had decided for her. Tears filled her eyes; terror stole through her heart.

And, in the darkness nearby, the spiders waited.

Did you do it?

Did you try to murder Amanda?

The horrid voice in her head, sounding so much like Kelly’s, was at it again, pushing Caitlyn as she drove through the city streets. Distracting her so that she nearly ran a stoplight. She bit her lip, turned up the radio and switched on the headlights. It didn’t help. The damning voice couldn’t be sidetracked.

What about Josh? Did you kill him . . . it’s just so damned convenient that you can’t remember.

You dream about seeing Josh dead and slumped over his desk. So what about Amanda? Don’t you remember being in her garage? Running your fingers over the smooth finish of her little red sports car? Fingering the tiniest tear in the rag top?

Then there’s Berneda’s attack. The doctors are saying that she didn’t get her medication, that there was no trace of nitroglycerine in her body, though Lucille swears Berneda took her pill after the angina attack. You were there the other day. You helped say good night to her. You saw the bottle of nitroglycerine pills on the bedside table. You even touched the bottle when you reached for a tissue . . . did you do something else? Something you’ve tucked into one of those holes in your Swiss cheese of a brain? What kind of person would try to kill her own mother?

Heart in her throat, recriminations echoing through her mind, Caitlyn pulled into the small lot off the back alley. She looked up at the elegant old Victorian house that was now cut into private offices. From the car she found the windows of Adam Hunt’s office, the very rooms that Rebecca Wade had used. The third floor, near the roof line, with only the dormers of the attic above. It was near evening. She’d been at the hospital most of the day, but Adam had agreed to meet her after the scene at Oak Hill, and the shadows of the buildings and surrounding trees were lengthening, promising dusk and twilight.

Could Adam not be trusted? Could he have some kind of ulterior motive in seeking her out?

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