Chapter 43
Mountain Brook
Annette parked the sedan she’d borrowed from Kim Schaffer along the side of the deserted road.
She stared through the darkness. Light glowed from the two windows on the front of the shack where Maxwell West resided.
His old pickup truck stood to one side of the shack. She didn’t see any sign of Max.
With her cell phone tucked into her pocket, she opened the car door and got out.
She listened for several seconds. Too quiet.
Where were the rants of a mentally ill man?
No sounds of things being tossed around inside his house though half an hour ago he had been in a desperate rage, according to Carson.
He could have injured himself. Could be dead.
Fear snaked along the column of her spine.
Walking quickly, she made her way along the gravel drive. Her heels crunched, jarring the silence pressing in around her. She glanced back to the car twice, three times, her fingers wrapped tightly around the cell phone in her pocket.
Annette wasn’t usually so jumpy. But this could very well be a setup. She wasn’t sure Carson had considered that possibility, but she sure as hell had. Even if it weren’t, it was unfamiliar territory.
She understood how to handle her sister’s outbursts, but this was a man with an entirely different problem set. He would be far stronger than Paula. Once Annette reached the small porch, she moved a bit more stealthily. If he had worn himself down, fallen asleep, she didn’t want to startle him.
At the door she tried the knob. Not locked. Annette braced herself and slowly, noiselessly turned the knob. The locking mechanism clicked as it moved to the open position. She flinched. Stay calm. Be ready. Then she opened the door.
The room was well lit.
The Spartan furnishings were turned upside down. Items had been ripped from their shelves, cabinets, and drawers. Photographs had been torn into pieces. But no sign of the man who had carried out such destruction.
She listened a few moments more. Nothing. “Max?”
Silence.
Her nerves jangled. She squeezed the phone in her pocket tighter. “Max! Carson sent me to see if you needed any help cleaning up.”
“Shhh!”
Annette whirled toward the door.
Max West grabbed her, held her close to his body. “Shhh,” he hissed in her ear. “They’ll hear you.”
Her heart thudding against her chest wall, Annette nodded. He must have been hiding behind the door.
“They’re gonna get me this time,” he muttered. “I know it.”
Annette turned her face up to his. That was about the only part of her body she could move at the moment. “What do they want?” Instinct told her to play along. If the man was delusional, arguing wouldn’t work.
He stared down at her, his face a mask of confusion and frustration. “Me, of course!”
She nodded. “We should make a run for it.” The idea gained momentum quickly. “I have a car. Should we go get help?”
Max moved his head from side to side in a slow, resolute manner. “If we go out there, they’ll get us for sure.”
“I understand.” She glanced around the room. “We should find ourselves weapons.” She looked back up at him. “Maybe prepare something to hide behind. Like that couch over there.”
He seemed to consider her suggestion, then shook his head adamantly. “We can’t touch anything. It’s all evil. That’s why I had to fight it.”
“Carson is worried about you.” She didn’t know what else to say. “He wants me to—”
“Where is that boy?” Max demanded, his tone loud and gruff. “He should’ve been home by now. The last time he did this . . .”
Annette’s insides froze. Was he referring to the night Carson’s family was murdered? Or some other night that had suddenly flashed through his muddled gray matter? “What happened last time?”
Max shook his head hard. “I can’t say.”
Annette lowered her voice to a more soothing tone. “You can tell me anything, Max. I’m Carson’s friend. He trusts me.”
He looked away from her as if he’d heard someone else speaking to him. “She’s not Carson. I can’t tell her,” he said to the voice only he could hear.
“No,” he screamed. “I won’t tell her!”
“It’s okay, Max,” she urged. “You don’t have to tell me anything. Let’s just stay calm and be quiet so they won’t hear us.”
He snapped his mouth shut, surveying the room as if he fully expected to see someone else standing nearby.
“I can’t tell her,” he growled.
His arms tightened around her, and Annette felt the first glimmer of panic.
“Where’s your medicine, Max?” she asked tentatively.
He lowered his mouth close to her ear. “It’s evil. I can’t take it.”
She was going to have to disable him. There appeared no way around it.
“I Will Not Tell Her!”
Annette cringed at the words screamed so close to her ear.
When her ears had stopped ringing, she studied the man’s face. Whatever was going through his head, he was scared to death. “Max, can you show me what you’re afraid of?”
If she could distract him from the voice, that might be helpful.
He stared at her a moment, then started ushering her deeper into the shack. Bedroom. The panic bloomed larger. Images and voices from her past whispered in her whirling thoughts.
She forced the memories away. This was Max . . . not her mother’s boyfriend or one of her foster fathers.
The coppery odor of blood yanked her full attention back to the moment a split second before the crimson trailing up the tousled bedcovers registered. As her sluggish brain grappled to wrap around what it all meant, her gaze locked on what was lying in the center of the bed.
Blood. Something gray or black. Long tail.
A raccoon.
Her stomach roiled. The raccoon had been mutilated. Had bled out in Max’s bed. Judging by the odor it had been there a day or two.
She swallowed back a gag. “Max, is that your raccoon?” Damn, anyone who would kill a helpless animal had to be seriously twisted.
“It was in my trash can,” a female voice announced calmly.
Before Annette could crane her neck around and see beyond Max’s shoulder, to see who’d spoken, he started to howl and cry. He pushed Annette away and ran to the corner. He huddled there with his knees to his chest, his arms wrapped around his legs.
Annette faced the woman who had appeared seemingly out of nowhere.
Patricia Drake.
The gun in her hand was the next thing Annette became aware of. Well now, this was certainly an unexpected development. The senator’s wife definitely wasn’t anyone Annette would have considered a threat.
“I couldn’t tell her!” Max cried. “She’s not Carson!”
Patricia sent a glare in the old man’s direction. “Shut up! I need to think.”
Annette mentally shook off the surprise and evaluated her situation. This woman intended to kill her. The certainty with which she understood that reality made her pulse react.
Annette’s mouth went dry.
Could Patricia Drake be responsible for Dr. Holderfield’s death? For the senator’s? Surely she wouldn’t have killed her own husband.
The way the two had doted on each other in public. Patricia was always so meek and mild. An uncharacteristic tremor of fear rattled Annette. But . . . if she had killed her husband, she damned sure wouldn’t have any qualms about killing Annette.
For the first time in over a decade Annette had no idea how to fix a situation.
She was screwed.
“Carson’s dear uncle Max has a message for his nephew,” Patricia explained in a haughty voice.
“He was in his sister’s house that night.
He committed the murders. Carson needs to hear that so this nuisance can be put to rest once and for all.
That’s the way it should’ve been handled from the beginning.
” Patricia inclined her head and glowered at Annette. “But Carson isn’t here. Where is he?”
There had to be a way to turn this around. “He’s with the FBI.” Annette looked the other woman straight in the eyes and went for broke. “He’s telling them his suspicions about you and your son. We found Dane. He told us everything.”
Patricia laughed. “Don’t be foolish, you ridiculous whore. Carson has no idea what really happened to his parents. Dane would never tell. Never. He loves his sister too much. Besides, I don’t think Dane has been talking to anyone.”
“You,” Annette argued, fury bursting inside her at what those cruel words undoubtedly meant, “should have gone to the police about Dane years ago. Why did you let Carson live in hell all those years?” What kind of person could do that to another human being?
The front door flew open. Annette hoped it would be help. But her hope was short lived.
“Mother! What’re you doing?”
Elizabeth.
Well if she hadn’t been screwed already, Annette certainly was now. This was what happened when she tried to do something nice.
Patricia pointed a disapproving look at her daughter. “Stay out of this, Elizabeth. I have everything under control.”
Elizabeth ignored her mother, unleashed her fury on Annette. “You’re a fool. You should have left town while you had the chance.” Then she wheeled on her mother once more. “Answer me, Mother. What are you doing?”
Annette considered her chances of survival if she took a dive at Elizabeth right now. Too risky. Patricia Drake might not hesitate to shoot—even in the direction of her daughter.
“I told you,” Patricia snarled, “I have this under control. All will be exactly as it should be very soon.”
Elizabeth’s face puckered into an expression of disgust. “What is that smell?”
“I used the raccoon to scare him,” her mother explained impatiently. “Max is going to confess to Carson. That story makes far more sense than that ridiculous Stokes scheme. It should have been done this way years ago. Wainwright’s an idiot.”
Patricia killed the raccoon? What a sick bitch. Hearing Wainwright’s name was no surprise. Annette had known Wainwright was in this up to his eyeballs. The bastard. She hoped he got his. If she were lucky maybe she would live to see it.