There was a click, then a strobing flash of light accompanied by an electronic blast of alarm. The twisted man jerked and spun slightly toward her, the knife dropping a few inches away from Shanna’s throat.
Clare threw all her weight against him, reaching for Shanna at the same time.
The man grunted, losing his grip on her as his balance disappeared. He slipped down a stair, sweeping an arm out and grasping the railing.
In one motion Clare yanked Shanna out of his reach and pistoned her leg out, her foot connecting with his chest as he lurched back toward them.
For a second he was suspended there, arms cartwheeling, feet on the edge of the top stair. The knife swung out and cut a line of fire in Clare’s forearm as their eyes met, and Clare saw surprise mixed with pure hatred in his.
Then he was plummeting backward, his neck and head cracking into a step’s edge, feet coming up and flipping over again before his body slammed into the landing below.
Shanna shuddered against her and Clare pulled her close as they looked down at the slumped form.
The twisted man climbed to his feet and started back up the stairs.
Two steps up he paused, swaying, and looked down at his empty hands. A pattering sound filled the stairwell and the lower half of his shirt and beltline began to sodden with red. He reached down and touched the handle of the knife where it protruded from his right side, just beneath the ribs, but didn’t attempt to pull it out. He raised his head to look at them and opened his mouth as if to say something before stumbling backward and sitting down hard on the landing, his back against the wall. His chest heaved twice and he was still.
When the man didn’t so much as twitch, Clare turned to Shanna and began checking her over with shaking hands.
“Are you okay? Did he get you?” Clare heard herself ask. Shanna stared at the man’s slumped form at the bottom of the stairs and wouldn’t meet Clare’s gaze. Wouldn’t answer any of her questions. She might as well have been asleep with her eyes open.
When she was sure her sister hadn’t been cut, Clare examined her own wound. There was little blood, the gash not nearly as deep as she’d feared.
“Come on,” she said, guiding Shanna away from the stairway. She found her hand and held it, and didn’t let it go even after she was sure the sound of sirens wasn’t only in her head.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Clare stared at the stain on the wall and stroked Shanna’s hair.
They were on a lumpy couch in one of the interview rooms at city hall. Shanna lay along its length, using Clare’s lap as a pillow. She’d been asleep for nearly an hour—since Hughes had left in the company of two very serious-looking city detectives. She glanced at the clock hanging near the door. 6:00 A.M. They’d been in this room for the better part of eight hours now and the walls were closing in.
Her eyes returned to the stain across the room like a tongue seeking out the newly formed hole of a missing tooth. It was dark, as if the hand that made it had been covered in grease, and curled in a spiral. Like the tail of a lizard. A chameleon, perhaps.
Chameleon, that’s what the twisted man had been.
She recalled the coldness of his hand on her arm and took a deep breath, fighting back the urge to begin counting. At least for now. Ever since Hughes had deposited them in this room she’d been scanning through the timeline of the last week, searching for another instance she’d noticed the twisted man lingering near their house or on the college campus, but there was nothing. She believed now it wasn’t that he hadn’t been there, only that she hadn’t seen him. And what did it mean for everything that came afterward? He’d already been watching her when Shanna escaped early Saturday morning. Already disguised as a vagrant. Already waiting. Already . . . in place.
Her mind slipped and skidded over various questions but kept coming back to the fact that she’d begun having the hallucinations almost exactly the same time as everything else was happening. She didn’t know how that was possible outside of chance . . . yet a part of her believed it wasn’t. That everything was tied together in a way she didn’t yet understand.
And the twisted man was dead, so there would be no answers from him.
She shifted slightly, trying to find a more comfortable position without disturbing Shanna.
Someone passed quickly by outside the door, their footsteps fading. She wondered when either the detectives or Hughes would return. She’d repeated her statement to them at least four times in the early morning hours after being brought here from the hotel. Each time they’d asked her to go over it again while Shanna sat beside her, silent, catatonic. Dr. Latten had been called in and spoke with them both as well, but even his calm demeanor and placid voice couldn’t bring any response from Shanna. She’d retreated somewhere within herself—somewhere, Clare guessed, locked tight with years of barriers and fortifications. There would be no drawing her out until she was ready.
Clare glanced at her cell phone lying on the table. She’d called Eric in the early morning hours between interviews, waking him from a dead sleep. Despite trying to assure him they were okay, he’d panicked. The first time she’d ever heard him leave the stable, shallow end of the pool where he normally stayed and go off the deep end. It had taken her the better part of ten minutes to calm him down, feeling a strange sense of juxtaposition. Was this how Eric normally felt dealing with one of her many rough patches? It was bizarre doing the comforting instead of being comforted.
When he’d finally calmed down he began checking for earlier flights but there hadn’t been any before his previous booking at eleven. For the meantime, his itinerary would stay the same.
“I knew something like this was going to happen,” he’d said shortly after she’d explained what had transpired at the hotel. “You and Shanna need to get the hell out of that town. Come home.”
But she explained that if she were to leave, she’d be leaving alone. Shanna wouldn’t abandon her son until she knew his fate, one way or another. He must have known better than to ask Clare to leave her behind because he’d grudgingly relented, telling her if he were able to arrange any earlier travel, he’d let her know.
Now she willed her phone to ring. For it to be Eric saying he’d caught an earlier flight and was already in Minneapolis, on his way north. In that moment she wanted nothing more than to have his arms around her and feel the strength of his love as he spoke reassuringly in her ear.
The urge to call Adam came and went after she’d spoken to Eric. She’d gone so far as to pull up his number before putting her phone away. He’d made his choice and she didn’t want him coming back out of a feeling of obligation now.
Shanna drew in a stuttered breath and shifted on Clare’s lap. A second later she opened her eyes, blinking at the harsh fluorescent glow. She sat up slowly and looked around the room as if she had no idea how she’d gotten there.
“Hey,” Clare said, smoothing a few errant strands of hair behind her sister’s ear. “Feeling any better?”
She was sure Shanna wouldn’t say anything, would go on residing behind her internal walls, but her response was almost immediate. “A little. I dreamed it all again. But it really happened, didn’t it?”
“Yes. It happened.”