Ultimate Supernatural Horror Box Set

Chapter 42

Loose gravel pinged the undercarriage of Sophie’s Trailblazer as it slid to a stop next to a black CR-V.

A derelict cabin loomed straight ahead, surrounded by hemlocks.

Front windows busted out.

Too dark to tell if anyone was inside.

Sophie killed the engine and watched the Caprice approach in the rearview mirror. When she’d asked for backup, she’d envisioned more force than one lonely Statie. Then again, what could you expect in the sticks?

The Caprice pulled up beside her.

She grabbed a fresh magazine from the glove box and climbed out.

Slammed her door as the trooper stepped out of his cruiser.

Crisp blue suit.

Flat-brimmed hat.

Tall, rail-thin, blinding smile.

“Sophie Benington,” Sophie said. “So it’s just you?”

“Trooper Todd. But Bob’s plenty. What’s the dealio?”

“There was supposed to be a black van here. Three men abducted a fifty-nine-year-old patient from a psychiatric hospital in Kirkland. He’s violent. They brought him here was my understanding.”

“In the black van?”

“Exactly.”

“And how did you come by this information?”

“One of the other suspects called me when they arrived. That’s her car.”

“What’d she do?”

“I’ll have to get back to you on that.”

“We gonna go say hello?”

Sophie studied the cabin.

Curls of smoke plumed out of the chimney and up into the branches.

“I am.”

“I got a shotgun in my trunk.”

“This isn’t gonna end that way.”

“No offense, ma’am, but that’s not always up to us.”

“Why don’t you go around back. Make sure the van’s not there. Cover the back door.”

“When do I bust in?”

“You don’t. Not unless you see my gun. We clear on that, Bob?”

He released the button snap on his holster, grinned.

“It was a joke.”

Bob high-stepped his way through the overgrowth and disappeared around the corner of the cabin.

Sophie thumbed off the snap on her holster and started toward the covered porch.

Mist was forming across the clearing.

She’d been drive-off-the-side-of-the-road tired just moments ago, but now she was fully awake, all systems go.

As she climbed the steps onto the porch, she remembered Grant telling her about this place. It wasn’t the rose-tinted family retreat she’d expected. Or the weekend fixer-upper Grant had played it off as. If it hadn’t been in the middle of nowhere, the county would have condemned it years ago.

The front door stood open a half-inch, but she knocked anyway, her palm resting on her Glock.

“Seattle Police.”

She heard footsteps approaching.

They stopped on the other side, but the door didn’t open.

“Sophie?”

He sounded so tired.

“It’s me, Grant. Everyone okay?”

“We’re fine. How’d you find this place?”

“Who’s in there with you?” she asked through the door.

“Just the three of us—Paige, me, my father.”

“What about our other friends?”

“Gone.”

“Gone?”

“Yeah, they left a little while ago.”

“Would you open the door please?”

Nothing happened.

“Grant.”

The door swung open, but it caught on the floor and stopped after only a foot.

Grant looked burnt-out, confused, on edge.

The dim interior trembled in the firelight behind him. Sophie craned her neck to see inside, but he blocked her line of sight.

“Gonna invite me in?” Sophie asked.

Grant took a step back.

She squeezed through the opening.

Eyes slow to adjust.

Paige by the hearth.

Old man who was a dead ringer for Seymour’s receipt portrait sitting on a disgusting couch.

“This your father?” she asked.

“Yeah. Hey, Dad, meet my partner, Sophie Benington.”

Jim Moreton said, “A pleasure.”

“Are you injured, sir?”

Jim shook his head.

“I was at the hospital,” she said. “I tried to stop those men from taking you. I’m sorry I couldn’t.”

“It’s quite all right. I’m with my children now. How could things get any better?”

“Your condition isn’t exactly what I expected,” she said.

“He’s had a remarkable recovery,” Grant said.

“I’m sorry, I’m just confused. Those four men kidnapped you from the hospital just to bring you back to the old family cabin. Didn’t harm you in any way. And once they delivered you here ... they just left?”

Grant said, “Sophie, relax—”

“I’m all done relaxing. I’m ready for answers now.”

She moved past Grant into the gloom of the cabin, fixed her stare on Paige, said, “You called me here, honey, said—”

Grant fired a look at his sister.

“—you were scared. That the van was here, and you didn’t know what was going to happen. You asked me to come. I came. So could you or somebody at least extend me the courtesy of explaining what the fuck is going on?”

Paige said, “Grant, I’m sorry, I didn’t know what was waiting for us in this cabin. You weren’t talking to me. Those men were here. I didn’t know what else to do.”

Grant turned back to Sophie.

“I wish she hadn’t done that.”

“That’s all you got for me, partner?”

“I wouldn’t know how to begin ...”

She’d been simmering since her epiphany in Bothel, but with that, she felt it all boil over.

“You asked me to trust you. I did. Now Art’s in the hospital with a concussion. Seymour’s injured. I’ve been shot at. You kidnapped me. And Don ...” She felt a tremor enter her voice, steadied it. “Just so you know, I called Rachel. Forensics is at Paige’s house right now.”

Grant’s jaw had gone slack.

“How is she?” he asked.

“How do you think?”

“I’m glad you called her. So ... what? You’re here to arrest me?”

“I came first and foremost to make sure you and Paige were safe.”

“And after that?”

“To make sure you do the right thing.”

“Which is ...”

“Let me bring you in.”

“Bring me in.” Grant smiled. “And how exactly do you see that playing out?”

“I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. People are dead. Hurt. Missing loved ones.”

“Face the music time, huh?”

“Tell the truth. Tell your story.”

“Nobody wants to hear my story. I’ve sat in that interview room for thousands of hours. I can’t ever remember wanting to hear someone’s story, whatever that even means.”

“Grant—”

“I wanted to hear something that would help me make a case. You look me in the eye and tell me I’m wrong.”

She couldn’t.

He continued, “Our job is not about finding the truth. We want someone we can hand to the DA so they can throw them under the bus. Order restored. Citizenry comforted. I know how this will go down, and so do you.”

Grant looked over her shoulder through the space between the door and the doorframe. Of course he’d seen the highway patrol cruiser.

She said, “I know you’ve been through a lot. I know you’ve seen things that don’t make any sense. I don’t even dispute what you’ve said. But it’s time. You know that, don’t you? And don’t you also know that I will do everything in my power to support you?”

Grant looked at Paige, at his father.

“I want this to be over as much as you do,” he said.

“Then let’s end it.”

“Not happening.”

Everyone in the room turned to Paige.

She stepped toward Sophie, away from the hearth. “Walk me through this, Sophie. You show up at the precinct with the three of us in tow. We roll up to the front desk where some tired kid who drew the short straw is half-asleep because it’s Saturday morning. He looks up from his Sudoku puzzle and sees you standing there with three suspects in handcuffs. Are we in cuffs? I don’t know how this looks in your head. And then Grant steps forward and says, ‘I’m here to turn myself in for the crime of’ ... what? What does he confess to? What’s he guilty of?”

“Nobody said he, or you, or your father are guilty of anything.”

“Then why are we with you?”

“Because a man died. In your house. Because shit happened that has to be answered for.”

“What if there are no answers? At least none that fit neatly into your playbook?”

“Like I just told your brother, you will have my full support.”

Paige was still moving toward Sophie, now reaching into her gray coat.

“I’m sorry,” Paige said, “but that’s just not good enough for my family.”

It was the last thing Sophie had expected, and she was utterly unprepared to react.

One second Paige.

The next second Paige with a gun pointed at her face.

Grant spoke first.

“Paige—”

“She thinks you did it. Or I did.”

“Did what?”

“Killed Don.”

“Of course she doesn’t think that. Put the gun down.”

“I certainly don’t think that,” Sophie said, her heart rate escalating, the back of her throat threatening to close.

“I don’t believe you.”

Grant caught Sophie’s eye. “Please don’t do anything. Just give me a minute to shut this down.”

He took a step toward Paige.

“We’re leaving, Grant.”

“Paige—”

“I’m done. Two weeks a prisoner in my own goddamn home to have it end like this? To be treated like a criminal?”

“Put it down.”

“I didn’t do anything wrong.”

Jim Moreton had begun the long, painful journey to his feet.

He said, “Not this way, Paigy. It’s my fault.”

“Stop it, Daddy. Grant, go take her gun away from her,” Paige said.

“Paige, you draw down on law enforcement, you get shot. Put—”

Sophie saw it a split second before everything went to hell.

Everyone frozen.

A tableau of ruination.

Grant intense, lips together forming the P in “put” and leaning toward his sister, already on the balls of his feet, like he might be on the verge of making a play to stop this.

Jim standing by the sofa, eyes on Paige.

And Sophie herself, tongue grazing the roof of her mouth as she began to scream the word “no” because of what she had just glimpsed out of the corner of her eye—a tall, slim streak of blue standing in the kitchen behind the muzzle flash of a Smith & Wesson M&P40.

Sophie was too late.

Paige still had the gun trained on the center of her chest, eyes averted to Grant, and her face just beginning to screw up in pain as the bullet punched through a rib on her right side.

The sound of the trooper’s gunshot filled the cabin.

She smelled gun smoke.

Paige dropped her gun and stumbled sideways.

Her legs buckled.

The trooper screaming at everyone to lay down, spread out their arms.

Paige sat on the floor, her eyes narrowed, a perplexed expression expanding across her face like she was trying to come to terms with what had just happened.

Grant knelt beside his sister. He was saying her name over and over as she lay across the rotting hardwood, eyes open, blood already beginning to pool beneath her, a line of it running a meandering course over the uneven floor toward Sophie.

She hadn’t drawn her gun.

Hadn’t moved.

Todd started across the cabin toward the chaos, pushing Jim Moreton back down onto the sofa as he passed.

There was a lot of blood.

Too much.

Oh God.

The trooper coming around the sofa.

Screaming at Grant to get down, screaming he was about to get shot like his sister.

Grant’s arm came up.

This time, she saw it happening. What was about to happen. Could have stopped it. Maybe. No. For sure. She could have stopped it by shooting Grant. She eased her Glock an inch up out of her holster, finger in the trigger guard, but she didn’t draw.

Just stood there watching as Grant shot the trooper and charged, crashing into him like the vengeance of God.

She did nothing.

Not as Grant straddled the trooper.

Not as he beat his face in with the butt of Paige’s revolver.

Three devastating blows.

But he didn’t kill him.

Grant struggled onto his feet, his face dotted with blood.

He turned and stared her down.

She thought she was dead, but still she didn’t pull.

Jim Moreton already struggling to move around the sofa to his daughter, and when Sophie blinked, Grant was at his sister’s side again.

Paige was moaning and he was telling her everything would be okay but there was so much blood.

Grant lifted Paige in his arms.

Sophie heard herself say, “I’m so sorry.”

She felt out-of-body.

Immoveable.

She had responded to the fear at the psychiatric hospital, but this was something else entirely.

Paige shot.

A trooper shot.

She was paralyzed.

Too much to process.

Grant was standing now, holding his sister, blood running down his arm and dripping off his elbow onto the floor.

He said something to his father that Sophie missed completely.

She called his name, and for a split second, he looked at her, his eyes so troubled, so distant.

She said, “Let me help.”

“Either shoot me or get out of my way.”

He pushed past her.

Ripped the door open a few more inches, worked his way through the opening and out onto the porch.

Jim Moreton shuffled after him.

They were already climbing into the car by the time Sophie stepped onto the front porch—Grant in back with Paige, his father struggling to install himself behind the steering wheel.

The engine cranked and roared, tires slinging gravel as Jim whipped the CR-V around and floored it down the road into the trees.

Sophie sat down on the weathered steps.

Her hands shook so badly she could barely pull the phone out of her jacket.

A single bar of 3G.

Her voice sounded so calm, so even making the report. Like she was giving her social security number to her credit card company.

“Do you know where the suspects are going?” the dispatcher asked.

“A hospital I would assume.”

“One moment ... Closest is in Leavenworth. It’s a level five trauma facility. Thirty-five miles east of your location. I’ll alert the local police department.”

“Thank you.”

“And I can tell them you’re en route?”

“Yes.”

She slipped back into the cabin and checked on Trooper Todd. He was still unconscious, but there was very little blood—the bullet had just grazed him.

Back outside, she hustled down the steps toward her car.

On some level of consciousness, she was becoming aware that everything about her life had just changed. That from this moment forward she would be a different person. That her only hope of survival lay in finding a way to live with the fact that she had utterly failed everyone in that cabin and probably cost Paige her life.

She should’ve stopped the trooper.

She should’ve stopped Grant.

She sped down the one-lane road between the hemlocks.

Turned out onto the highway.

Accelerated through the freezing fog.

Her eyes kept filling up with tears and she kept blinking them away.

The fir trees looked like somber ghosts streaming past on the shoulder of the road, and she couldn’t see anything beyond three hundred feet.

The road was climbing now.

The fog thickening.

She punched on the headlights.

The clock read a little past seven a.m., but it didn’t feel like morning.

It didn’t feel like any time she had ever known.

Her phone vibrated.

She didn’t answer.

Her ears popped.

She steered through switchbacks and there were reefs of dirty snow on the sides of the road that grew taller the higher she climbed.

The road straightened out.

One last burst of optimism and purpose.

She was going to Leavenworth. Grant would be there. Paige was going to be okay. She would do what she had to, and no one else would get hurt.

She was nearing the crest of the pass when she saw it. Her foot came off the gas pedal, and she brought her TrailBlazer to a stop in the middle of the road.

“Oh, God,” she said. “Please, no.”