Heart of Ice

Chapter Seventy-two

Michael Barton emerged from the powder room and found the young women waiting in the foyer. Jenna was by the door, which was still slightly cracked open. Cool spring air poured inside.

“Thanks for the use of your bathroom,” he said.

“No worries.” Jenna smiled. “That’s the kind of place Cherrystone is.”

Shali held out her cell phone. “Use mine to make your call. I have unlimited minutes.”

He reached over to take the phone with his left hand. The flash of a piece of metal—a knife—caught Jenna’s eye.

She screamed. “What are you doing?”

As if in slow motion, Shali turned her head and looked at Jenna, then back at Michael as he plunged the knife into her stomach. A pool of blood the size and color of one of Emily’s dark red dahlias formed. Shali gasped and slumped to the floor.

“What did you do?” Jenna dropped to her knees. Shali grabbed at her own stomach and started to gag, then coughed up blood.

“Jenna, help me,” Shali said, gasping.

“Drop your phone,” he said. “Drop it or I’ll cut off Shali’s head right now.”

It was so fast. So frightening. The blood just kept coming. Shali went completely white. Her body slumped backward against the door, slamming it shut.

Jenna dropped her phone. It started to ring. She could see it was her mother calling.

“Mom, help me. Something’s happening. Mom,” she said in a loud voice inside her head, a voice that no one could hear.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” Michael said, surprised that lying was so easy, even in the midst of utter chaos and crisis. He hoped it would somehow disarm her. It was a fantasy, a dream. Just do as I say and none of this will hurt so bad, he thought.

“What do you want?” Jenna asked. “My friend needs a doctor! We have to call an ambulance.”

“I came for you, Jenna. I’m sorry about her.”

Jenna was terror-stricken and confused. “Came for me?”

His eyes were like a reptile’s, devoid of compassion for what he’d done as Shali’s blood oozed around them.

“Yeah you. You were the third of the bitches that trashed my sister.”

Jenna tried to take a step backward, but there was nowhere to go. Her eyes moved rapidly from Shali to the man with the dripping knife.

“What are you talking about?” she asked. “I don’t know you! I don’t know your sister.”

“Sarah Barton.”

Jenna’s face stayed blank, pinched in horror. Tears ran down her cheeks. “I don’t know her.”

“Sarah Cleary was her name. Sarah Barton Cleary.” Michael taunted Jenna with the blade. “You said she wasn’t good enough to be in your stupid club. You, Lily Ann, Tiffany…the three of you. You told her that she wasn’t smart or pretty enough. Do you even have a clue how much you hurt the girls who want into your little club?”

Jenna racked her brain, but things were happening so fast she couldn’t grab on to any memory of any Sarah Barton. “I don’t remember Sarah, I’m sorry. I’m sure she was a nice girl.”

“You set her up. You told her she was ‘in’ and then you took it away from her. You crushed her. You have no damn idea what her life was about, how much she struggled.”

Jenna continued scanning the room for a way out, a weapon. Anything. “I really am sorry. Please. We need to get Shali a doctor.”

“She’s collateral damage. I came for you. I missed you once at Dixon University and I’m sorry about Sheraton Wilkes. But you two look alike and she was wearing your damn coat and she was in your room.”

Jenna remembered how Sheraton had borrowed her coat that night at the restaurant, how she’d vacated the chapter’s guest room for the sleeping porch the night Sheraton was murdered.

“You deserve this,” he said.

Emily Kenyon turned the unlocked knob on the front door and pushed, but something was in the way. She pushed a second time, a little harder.

Shali Patterson’s unconscious body was blocking the door. Each time she pushed, a smear of blood grew larger across the hardwood floor, but she couldn’t see it.

Dear God, what’s going on here? She pushed harder, this time using her shoulder like a battering ram.

Chris Collier’s rental car pulled up and he ran across the driveway to Emily, who was hunched low by the front door.

“Something terrible is going on here,” she said, her words hushed, and her face awash in worry. “You cover the backyard. Shali’s hurt.”

“Where’s Jenna?” he asked.

“I don’t know. Call for help. We need an ambulance and backup.”

“Already called. I’ll check out the back of the house.”

“Be careful,” she said.

Chris Collier rounded the backyard with such haste that he nearly fell over a planter on the patio. He steadied himself, bent down low, and peered into the living room window. What the? He could see Jenna walking backward toward the kitchen, a man with what looked like a knife moving toward her. He could see a slice of light come through the front door as Emily pushed and pushed from the outside of the front door.

Emily stuck her head inside and screamed. “Jenna!”

The man with the knife started to lunge for Jenna and Chris did what he knew he had to do. This has to be the cleanest shot I’ve ever fired, he thought. He aimed his gun and fired at the man in the hoodie. The window shattered and glittery pieces of glass rained down all over. For a second he couldn’t see what, if anything, he’d done.

“Jenna! Emily!” he called out.

“I’m all right,” Jenna said.

Chris rolled his body through the broken window and ran to Jenna just as Emily came inside. Shards of glass clung to his chest and pant legs.

“Mom,” Jenna said, pulling her mother toward her in a desperate embrace. “We have to help Shali. That freak stabbed her.”

Emily hugged her daughter as tightly as she could. “The EMTs are coming, honey. They’ll take care of her.”

Tears rolled down Jenna’s face. “Mom, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have let him in.”

She squeezed her daughter with the kind of hug that promised to never let go. “Don’t blame yourself.”

Chris bent over Shali and told her in a gentle voice that she’d be all right.

“You’re a fighter, Shali Patterson,” he said. “Fight this one. Hang on.”

Sirens screamed down the street, growing louder as they came toward the Kenyon house.

Jenna was crying and shaking. She was nearly inconsolable, the kind of breakdown that happens when one feels safe enough to just let go.

“He said he killed Lily Ann, Tiffany, and Sheraton,” she said.

Emily held her with the might of a mother’s love. “I know. I know. Baby, it’s all over.” She looked over at the dead man on her living room floor. A puddle of bloody water formed around him. Michael Barton had been shot in the chest. The knife was still clutched in his hand. For a second, Emily felt the look on his face wasn’t anguish or menace.

It was a dead man. A sick man. A monster at peace.