“I’ll rest among the clouds, with the Chosen! I’ll have Eternity in beauty while you rot in the putrid fires and ashes of hell! They’re coming, they’re coming...all the Horsemen, they’re coming!”
Hunter heard Amy swear; she lunged toward the blond kid, who was already trying to get his hand to his mouth.
Luckily, he was shaking too badly.
Amy was able to wrest the pill he was about to swallow from him.
The blond hadn’t wanted to die.
“Artie, you’re a wuss! Worse—a betrayer of the Divine Leader! You...you won’t see Eternity, you won’t...you’ll rot in the fires in the deepest bowels of hell!” the dying kid screamed. “You...you spawn of the devil! You—”
His words were choked off in a cough; he was foaming at the mouth.
Hunter dialed Emergency, even though he knew it was too late.
But they had the blond kid, Artie. Amy had pocketed the pill she’d grabbed from him. He was obviously deflated and terrified now—because they had him, or because he was going to the deepest bowels of hell, Hunter didn’t know.
Still, Amy was cuffing him, dragging him to his feet, while Ryan helped Patty up. She flew to her husband, who reached out his arms to her, white and shaking so badly that the two had to stumble to the couch and crash down on it.
Patty sobbed; Martin held her.
Hunter looked at Amy, a question in his eyes.
“I’m fine,” she assured him. “But I must say, you two had impeccable timing. Thank you.”
The sound of sirens filled the night. Emergency response teams arrived along with the van from the coroner’s office.
Hunter called in to his supervisor; Amy called in to hers. They’d both discharged their weapons, but no one had been killed with them. Still, someone had died, and there would be paperwork to fill out. He knew they had responded by the book.
But there had been a death.
By then, they had Artie out in the back of Hunter’s car. Hunter had tried to talk to him, but the boy had clammed up completely.
Amy had a softer touch, so Hunter had left her to it, but so far, all the kid had done was cry.
His ID showed that he was Arthur Claymore. He was eighteen, so it wasn’t necessary to reach his parents before he was questioned.
To Hunter’s surprise, it was Dr. Carver who came out with the response teams. His first words to Hunter were dry.
“Really? Tonight?”
“What the hell are you doing out here? The county has other medical examiners.”
“I asked to be sent out on anything to do with this case. The powers that be agreed. Figure I’ll get a break when this is solved. You do plan on solving all this, right?”
“We won’t stop until we do,” Hunter assured him.
“It’s a shame. This kid.”
“He meant to kill Amy, and yet, you’re right—it’s a shame. He was a kid. What did he take? Cyanide?”
“That would be my guess. You can smell it,” Carver said.
“We have one of the pills. The other kid didn’t manage to get his in his mouth,” Hunter told him. “It’s in an evidence bag.”
“Well, we’ll get it to the lab,” Carver said. He looked at the dead boy he’d bent over just moments before. “And we’ll get him to the morgue.”
“How the hell do these kids have cyanide pills?” Hunter asked, shaking his head.
“I’m not the detective or the investigator,” Carver said, “but even I can speculate that adults—with finances to pull this all off—are behind it.”
“Pharmaceuticals,” Hunter murmured.
“What?”
“If you have big money in pharmaceuticals, I guess you can get what you want. Anyway, I have to report in, and Amy is going to have to report in, and the paperwork is going to be endless. I’m hoping she’s getting something from our suspect. I’ve been ordered to take him down to our Miami offices, where he’ll stay held until charges are determined.”
* * *
So much for a few hours of desperately needed sleep.
Patty and Martin were barely coherent, but even in that, they thanked Hunter, Amy and Ryan, certain the young people would have killed them.
“Maybe not the blond kid. I don’t think he knew it would go so bad,” Martin said. “But that dark-haired boy, he was like...possessed!”
Patty sobbed again. “We’re alive! We’re alive!”
Victor Mulberry arrived, a little late to the scene, looking a bit rumpled and bleary-eyed. “I might as well move out here. What the hell is going on? People all seem to have lost it!”
“Letting someone convince you that killing is a way to reach God...it’s hard to understand,” Hunter told him.
“I won’t lie,” the detective said, watching Carver instruct his assistants on securing the body of the dead boy. “I’m scared of how far this might go.” Mulberry then turned to Hunter. “All right, then, I’ve got this. You do what you need to do.”
Ryan walked over to Hunter.
“Mr. and Mrs. Sanders have asked if I can stay for the rest of the night.”
Hunter nodded. “Fine. Amy and I will get Artie down to Miami.”
A few minutes later, he was finally in the car with their bags. Artie remained handcuffed in the back seat.
Amy was still sitting next to the boy. “I think I’ll just stay back here for the drive,” she said lightly.
Hunter glanced at her, wondering if she’d gotten anything from him at all. She didn’t speak, and he knew they’d have a chance later to talk. He nodded.
Soon after they started out, the boy wailed, “I want to die! I need to die. Why was I such a coward? I’ll never reach the clouds, the heavens—I’ll never come to divinity. I’m going to be caught in the fires that are coming, lost forever, burning, hurting... I’m such a coward!”
“You’re not a coward. You’re a sensible young man,” Amy told him. “Artie, in your heart, you know all this is wrong. You didn’t want to hurt Mrs. Sanders. You were just more afraid of Hank than you were of me—of us—of the truth.”
The boy started sobbing.
Hunter kept silent. Amy had built up a rapport with Artie. He meant to let her build on what she had started.
“Artie, whoever has been telling you all this is lying,” Amy said.
“No, no, because...because what Hank promised me came true before. It will come true again,” Artie said.