The Bone House Part 37

Cab got out, bringing his flashlight with him. As he walked toward the house, he lit up the Ford Explorer parked diagonally on the edge of the clearing and then the ground surrounding the truck. His light glinted on something shiny, and he saw a set of keys dropped in the mud. He picked them up, shook off the dirt, and deposited them in his pocket. He saw a mess of footprints in and out of the house. When he turned the flashlight toward the front door, he saw it standing open.

's.h.i.t,' Cab muttered.

He was too late. He reached inside his jacket pocket and slid his Glock into his hand.

He took a chance by shouting. 'Bradley!' Then a moment later, he called, 'Tresa!'

He listened, but no one answered. Water dripped through the trees, and wind rushed in whistles through the branches. He used the flashlight again, hunting on the ground and in the woods. He knew what he was looking for in the sodden earth. Bodies. He was relieved when he found none.

Cab called again. 'Bradley!'

He followed the perimeter of the house, tracking footsteps along the eastern wall. He came upon the screened porch at the rear of the house, and through the mesh, on the other wall, he saw another open door and the jagged splinters where the lock had been yanked out of the frame. He circled the porch and let himself inside through the broken door. The house was cold where the night air had been blowing through the open s.p.a.ce. There was no smell of fresh blood. He checked the kitchen, then illuminated the hallway in the cone of light.

He spotted an open bedroom door and tightened his grip on his gun as he moved inside. He checked out the closet and saw clothes lying in piles on the floor. The bed was made, but the comforter was rumpled. On the wall, half under the bed, he spotted a cell phone, and he squatted down and flipped it open to look inside. The photo on the screen showed a girl in the wind, her long red hair blowing across her eyes, her face sad and contemplative.

Tresa.

Tresa had been here. In the bedroom. He half expected to smell the musk of s.e.x lingering in the air, and he realized that the relationship between the two of them was still a mystery. He didn't know if the affair between them had been real or a product of the girl's erotic imagination. All he knew was that she'd come to the island as soon as she found out that Hilary was gone for the night.

Now Tresa and Mark Bradley were both gone.

He also wondered for the first time: where was Hilary? Why wasn't she here?

Cab slid the phone into his pocket and got to his feet.

As he turned, the air around his head whistled with motion. He flinched instinctively, knowing what was coming. Something rock solid hammered the base of his skull, where bone met muscle. The blackness of the night turned hot and orange behind his eyes. He had an instant of pain, and then he was falling, but he was unconscious before the weight of his body collapsed on the floor.

Ten minutes pa.s.sed, and Katie hadn't returned.

Hilary got out of the Taurus and walked through the mushy gra.s.s to the trees near the road. She took cover and eyed the dark house across the street. She saw nothing. She heard nothing. She danced with impatience and indecision. When she checked her watch, more time had ticked away.

Katie might be inside, in danger. Or maybe, like the smart, manipulative girl that Hilary suspected she was, Katie had never gone inside at all. She might simply be hiding outside, waiting for Hilary to call the police.

Hilary started across the street. The light overhead cast a yellow glow in a pool on the asphalt and turned her shadow into a black giant. She pa.s.sed through the light quickly. At the corner, under sagging telephone wires, she studied the brick house, which was almost invisible behind the trees. She sheltered herself under the low-hanging branches. On the front wall, a faint light glowed behind the curtains upstairs and downstairs.

'Katie,' she whispered.

If the girl was nearby, she was silent. Hilary fingered her phone.

She hiked toward the rear of the house. Beyond the bushy arms of a huge arborvitae, she found a gravel driveway and ducked into it, steps away from the downstairs windows. The curtains were drawn here, too; she couldn't see inside. She saw the garage ahead of her, its white door shut. The driveway was lit by a dim fluorescent bulb, and she felt exposed standing there. If anyone looked outside, she was visible.

Hilary crept around the side of the garage. The brick wall was built with a single window, tall and narrow, and she put her face close to the gla.s.s and peered inside. As she stood, framed by the window, the garage was flooded by light.

Gasping, Hilary threw herself to the ground. She heard the grinding of the garage door and the click of a car door as it opened and shut. An engine caught. She kept her chest tight to the wet ground, and she saw a Honda Civic back out of the garage toward the street. Its bright beams pa.s.sed over her head. The car turned into the street, and as it headed east toward Highway 57, she heard the garage door groaning downward.

She acted on instinct before her brain could stop her. She pushed herself off the gra.s.s and ran for the corner of the house. Only six feet separated the bottom of the garage door from the concrete floor. She got to her knees and rolled under the door, sc.r.a.ping her hands on loose rock. The old door didn't have a safety mechanism. It slammed shut, nearly pinning her leg, which she scooted into the garage under the metal skirt at the last second.

Hilary was alone in the empty garage.

She hurried to the door leading to the interior of the house and turned the k.n.o.b silently. She pushed it open and felt warm air and saw the darkness of the kitchen. She listened, not knowing if the house was empty. She didn't hear voices or the sound of a television, only the hum of the furnace. The kitchen smelled like burnt tomato sauce.

Hilary crept inside. A voice in her head screamed: What the h.e.l.l are you doing? What the h.e.l.l are you doing?

She swallowed down her fear. She'd given herself an opportunity to see if Amy was in the house. Katie was right. That was something the police couldn't do.

Where was Katie?

Hilary had a sickening thought, as she considered the possibility that Katie was in the back of the Civic that had just left. Tied up. Or dead. She'd been a fool not to stop her. One domino fell, and suddenly the others began to fall, and you couldn't prevent them from tumbling down.

She left the kitchen through swinging doors and followed the hallway to the living room. The hearth smelled of a recent fire. The television was on, which made her freeze with concern, but the sound was muted, and the room was empty. It occurred to her: Jensen wasn't going to be long. Jensen wasn't going to be long.

She rushed through the downstairs rooms. The dining room. The bathroom. The library. The pantry. It was a big house with odd corners and Victorian s.p.a.ces. There were nooks and crannies where you could hide things. Everywhere she went, the curtains were closed. The house felt Gothic. Haunted. Even so, the rooms were empty and innocent, as if she'd made a mistake.

She found the bas.e.m.e.nt. Her heart was in her mouth as she descended the wooden steps. Here, below ground, she felt comfortable enough to turn on a light. The sprawling underworld was twisted, with concrete block walls, pipes and ductwork nestled among pink insulation, and corners and turns that mirrored the layout of the house above it. She practically ran, conscious of time pa.s.sing, of minutes ticking away before Jensen came back. The bas.e.m.e.nt was like a maze, and she had to open steel doors and peer behind stacks of boxes and into crawl s.p.a.ces to make sure he hadn't built a killing ground for himself in the cold dampness down here.

Nothing.

Hilary returned carefully to the main floor. She breathed heavily as she ran up the twisting staircase to the second story. There was a hallway that broke off like a Z in several directions, and the doors were all closed. Too many doors. All she could do was check them one by one. She went left and tore each door open and swung it shut. Bathroom. Linen closet. Nursery. Master bedroom.

She began to think this was all a fool's errand. A misunderstanding. She had to get out.

Hilary retraced her steps and quickly investigated the other side of the house. Bedroom. Bathroom. Bedroom. All of them empty and mostly unused. She found a spur hallway leading to a last bedroom that overlooked the rear of the house, and as she headed for the closed door, she heard a sickening noise.

The rumble of the garage door. Gary Jensen was back.

'Oh, no,' she murmured, freezing in her tracks.

She almost quit right there. She almost didn't open the door, so she could run downstairs and let herself out the front of the house before Jensen made his way inside through the kitchen. Instead, she twisted the k.n.o.b and pushed her way into the last bedroom, and immediately something was different.

She smelled a pungent mix of sweat, urine, and perfume. It all added up to fear. Someone was here in the darkness.

Hilary turned on the light, and her hands flew to her mouth. She was there. Spread-eagled, tied to the bed. Gagged. Eyes wide. Pleading. Awake. Alive.

Amy.

Chapter Forty-Seven.

In the dark shelter, Mark heard only the hushed in-and-out of Tresa breathing and the rustle of her clothes as she shivered. They were both wet and freezing. Sharp pain shot from his ankle to his calf the longer he stood, and when he couldn't lean against the metal wall anymore, Tresa got up and forced him to sit down. She sat down again too, balanced on his knee. She wrapped her arms around his neck and buried her head in his chest. He couldn't see her at all. She was invisible. He could only feel her huddled against him, her fingers clinging tightly to his skin, her damp hair nestled against his chin.

'I'm sorry,' she whispered. 'This is my fault.'

'Don't say that.'

He didn't think anyone would hear their low voices through the stone walls. They were in a black coc.o.o.n, just the two of them.

Tresa was silent, and then she said, 'I still think about it, you know. You and me. On the beach.'

Mark knew exactly what she meant. Weeks before Delia Fischer found her daughter's diary, before his life began to crash down, there had been the kiss. It had happened not far from here. They'd been on the beach in the moonlight behind his house, warmed by flames licking from a fire pit. Hilary had left them there as it got late and gone to bed. She trusted him, the way she always did, more than he trusted himself. He and Tresa had talked for two more hours, well past midnight, although Tresa was the one who did most of the talking. She told him about her dreams, fantasies, life, guilt, hopes, fears, and loneliness. Then, as they stood up and he poured dirt on the fire, she'd stood on tiptoe and kissed him, not a girl's kiss, not an innocent kiss, but a kiss with all the eroticism a teenager could bring to it.

She'd said what she wanted: 'Will you make love to me?'

Now, holding her, he could feel her arousal again, the heat through her clothes. This was romance to her, not life and death. Her rescuing him. Him rescuing her. He felt her shift on his lap, and though he couldn't see her face even an inch away from his own, he knew that her cool lips were about to find him with the same urgency, the same pa.s.sion, as they had a year earlier. She wanted him to touch her. Undress her. She wanted to be the heroine in the novel.

He stopped her with a gentle pressure on her cheek. 'We can't.'

Tresa tensed. He felt her disappointment. She eased away from him and stood up in the cramped s.p.a.ce.

'I've tried not to love you,' she murmured, 'but I can't help myself.'

'Tresa, don't.'

'I'm not a kid. This isn't a crush. I know I can't have you, and I know I'm a fool, OK? I never meant to hurt you and Hilary. That was the last thing I wanted. Really. Except here I am, doing the same thing all over again.'

Mark said nothing.

'At least tell me you were tempted, huh?' she went on. 'A little?'

'Tresa, there isn't any way that I would have let something happen between us. It's not just that I love my wife, and it's not because you aren't a sweet, beautiful, amazing girl. It's because I care about you too much. A girl like you falling in love with your teacher is absolutely innocent. A teacher who perverts that love for his own ends is sick. I wouldn't do that to you.'

'Oh, s.h.i.t, you think I'm a child,' Tresa murmured, with a grievous hurt in her voice, as if it were the worst thing he could have told her.

'That's not what I mean.'

'You're wrong,' she told him. 'I'm not innocent. Do you think I didn't know exactly what I wanted on the beach with you?'

Her voice grew loud and he worried she would be heard outside.

'You read what I wrote in my diary,' she said. 'I know the positions, OK? I know where things go. I know I was asking you to cheat on your wife. I still am, and I hate myself for it. I don't care. I'd take off my clothes for you right now and get on my knees. That's me being innocent, Mark.'

He realized he was making the same mistake with Tresa all over again - treating her like a girl in woman's clothes when it was the other way around. She could be naive and seductive all at the same time. Just like Glory.

'All right, yes, of course, I was tempted,' he told her. 'I'm human, but I wasn't going to wreck both of our lives. OK?'

'Say yes now.'

'You know I can't do that.'

'It doesn't have to be anything more than right now. One night.'

'Tresa, no.'

He felt her bitterness and disappointment emanating out of the darkness. When she spoke, her voice was thick with betrayal. 'Were you human with Glory?'

'What?'

'Did you say yes to her?'

Mark heard the echo of Glory whispering to him on the beach. No one will ever know. No one will ever know.

'Nothing happened between me and her.'

'You were out there with her, though, weren't you? Just like everybody said. You and Glory. Together.'

'It wasn't like that.'

'Be honest with me.'

'Yes, I saw her on the beach,' he admitted. 'That's all.'

'Did you arrange to meet her?'

'No. It was an accident. I went for a walk, and I found her there.'

'Did she try to seduce you?' Tresa asked quietly.

Mark hesitated. 'Yes.'

'That b.i.t.c.h. I knew it.'

'She was drunk. She was upset. It wasn't deliberate.'

'What did she do to you?'

'It doesn't matter.'

'Did she kiss you? Did she go down on you? What?'

'No, nothing like that.'

He could hear the rattle in her voice as she battled between anger and tears. 'You know what, Mark? You know what I really think? I think you f.u.c.ked her, and you don't want to admit it to me.'

'That's crazy.'

'You're lying, aren't you?' she demanded breathlessly. 'Glory got whatever she wanted. It's true, isn't it? Everybody's right. You had s.e.x with her, and then you killed her to cover it up.'

'No.'

'I don't know what's worse. The idea of you killing my sister, or the idea that you wanted to have s.e.x with her, not me.'