Darkness Follows Read online

Symon only gripped Eva tighter and backpedaled faster.

  “Daddy!” Eva yelled.

  Symon shook her and told her to shut up.

  “Let her go,” came the order again.

  Symon did not answer. He felt he had the upper hand here, and if Travis hadn’t taken the shot yet, he wasn’t going to.

  “I love you, Daddy.”

  Symon squeezed his captive harder, so hard she squealed. “Shut up, Eva. I mean it.” At last his heel bumped the doorjamb. The door was still open, and he ducked inside, around the corner from Travis’s line of vision.

  Sixty-Seven

  SAM CURSED HIMSELF FOR NOT TAKING THE SHOT. HE’D PUT the crosshairs on the nut’s forehead and had the angle, but the guy was moving around too much and holding Eva high and pressing that pistol to her head.

  That pistol. The sight of it caused Sam’s breathing to become erratic, hitched. His nerves were stretched wires, ready to snap. The shot was too risky. He’d only get one chance, and it had to be dead-on, had to be perfect to shut down the brain before it could send a signal to the trigger finger.

  And now they’d disappeared into the house.

  Panic clamped a vice around Sam’s lungs, making it even harder to breathe. The rain was coming down faster now. His hair was stuck to his head, and he had to wipe at his eyes to clear the water from them.

  Leaving the car door open and engine running, Sam headed from the stolen vehicle for the house. On the porch he paused and listened, hoping to hear Eva’s voice inside.

  Met by silence, he stepped through the doorway, past a small woven rug bearing a family crest of some sort. The two-story foyer echoed the sound of water dripping off Sam’s elbows and striking the hardwood floor. The only other sound in the cavernous house was the soft ticking of a clock in another room. No breathing, no footsteps, no Eva.

  He held the rifle chest high, ready to aim and fire in a fraction of a second. Cautiously, with his wet shoes squeaking on the varnished floorboards, Sam followed the hallway toward the back of the house. To his right a curved staircase led to the second floor. He doubted the psycho would take Eva there. That would be a trap, no escape route. To his left glass-paned French doors led to a formal dining room, and a glance revealed that it was empty. He passed a large kitchen and reached a great room on the right.

  Still no Eva.

  Sam stood on the carpet so that the sounds of his dripping clothes were muted. The ticking clock, he realized, was in this room, an ornately carved grandfather clock tucked into a corner. The television in the other corner was on the floor, its cracked screen facing up.

  Fanning off from the great room was a wide sunroom. The transition from original house to this addition was seamless. Beyond the glass walls recently harvested fields stretched toward a pond and—

  Movement on his right caught Sam’s eye. There, more than halfway across the field already, the abductor had Eva in tow, practically dragging her along.

  Sam ran out onto a brick patio and lifted the Winchester Model 70 to his shoulder. They were close to three hundred yards away by now, a difficult shot under the circumstances, with his heart tripping in his chest and the rain beating on his face. It would test every ounce of his skill.

  You’re a natural, Sammy.

  Sam sighted the man in the scope, put the crosshairs on his head.

  As if anticipating the impact of a bullet, the man flinched, stopped, and spun around. He faced Sam now, holding Eva’s wrist with his left hand and the pistol to her head with the right. For a moment he stared at Sam across the field, his face slack, mouth slightly agape. Then he turned, still holding the gun to Eva’s head, and walked with a hitched, clumsy gait toward the tree line another four hundred yards away, a good seven hundred yards from the house. In these conditions, an impossible shot for Sam.

  Sixty-Eight

  MOLLY FELT AS THOUGH SHE’D CLIMBED OUT OF HER SKIN and into someone else’s a thousand miles away. This wasn’t happening, wasn’t reality. But she’d already tried waking herself from the nightmare and met only disappointment.

  It was all too real.

  She stood in the parking lot of the motel, the Americana, where Sam had registered under a phony name, taken a shot at a senator and presidential hopeful, and fled in a stolen car. Sam … her husband, the man she’d married and loved and trusted and shared her life with. The man she’d nursed and cared for when he couldn’t even dress himself or wipe himself on the toilet. And if that weren’t enough to knock the air out of anyone’s lungs, her Eva had been abducted.

  Thankfully, Beth and Lucy had been found by a state trooper, Beth teetering on the edge of a coma, Lucy in hysterics. But it only underlined the danger Eva now faced. Molly’s world was crumbling, and she had no footing, no handhold, no purchase. She was losing it.

  She stood beside a police cruiser, umbrella in hand. Activity buzzed around her. US Capitol police, local cops, state troopers, anyone in a uniform or with credentials of some sort. Her mind kept going to Eva—Lucy said she’d been abducted, taken in Beth’s Volvo. Then to Sam—her husband gone off the deep end. She had no more tears to cry. She was numb, in shock, maybe even in denial.

  She thought of her baby girl in the hands of some creep, some demon …

  Her husband, once so strong, so sure, her rock, now …

  Molly chewed on a nail and looked around. Law enforcement officials talked to each other, into phones and radios, and shouted orders. It was all a blur to her, the motion, the activity, like one massive organism rather than a thousand different moving parts. A chopper whizzed overhead, circled the area. Flying low, it flogged the ground with its powerful downwash, spraying water every which way and beating the air with its wump-wump-wump. Then a tall man in a suit was walking toward her, a phone to one ear and his hand against the other. He was leaning forward, squinting. He lowered the phone and bent low to meet Molly’s eyes under her umbrella.

  “Mrs. Travis?”

  She nodded, unable to speak.

  “They found ‘em.”

  Sixty-Nine

  SAM KNEW THIS WAS HIS BEST CHANCE. THE MAN WAS TAKING Eva farther away, headed for the tree line. He had to take the shot before too much distance was put between them, but he was shaking from the cold and rain and adrenaline. The crosshairs bounced around on the back of the man’s skull. Sam couldn’t risk jerking the rifle and putting Eva in its sights. He had to be sure.

  She turned and looked at him, her eyes wide and sad, her hair soaked. Her skin was pale, almost translucent. Her mouth dipped at the corners in a pitiful frown. He remembered her words, the words of Jacob.

  Jacob said Daddy’s going to do something bad.

  He’d done something bad all right. He’d failed his family, failed his dear Eva, rejected her love, and proven he was everything she feared he was. He’d failed Molly as well, cast her aside like yesterday’s leftovers, and treated her worse than an enemy. He should turn the gun on himself right now and end it all, save everyone from further heartache. His life was ruined anyway.

  Behind him a voice called his name, then another. He didn’t turn. He had to keep the psycho with his daughter in the crosshairs.

  “Sam Travis,” the first voice said. It was a man’s, deep and authoritative. “This is Officer Richardson of the Gettysburg Police. Put down your weapon.”

  Sam knew he had to act quickly. They’d found him, the man they believed had taken a shot at the senator with intent to kill, and they wouldn’t wait around for him to explain himself and his circumstances.

  “Sam.” It was Richardson again. In the distance, the thrum of helicopter blades grew louder. “Put the weapon down and let us take care of this.”

  Within seconds the chopper was there to his left, hovering no more than thirty feet off the ground.

  Eva’s abductor stopped his forward progress and swiveled around.

  Sam choked on his own saliva and nearly dropped his rifle.

  No!

  The psycho was Tommy. He was older
now, his face more mature and angular, but there was no mistaking him.

  Why hadn’t Sam noticed this earlier? Because, of course, this was impossible. It wasn’t Tommy; it couldn’t be. Tommy was long dead. He rubbed the water from his face and let out a guttural moan. He found the duo in the scope again. It still appeared to be Tommy, and he was still holding that pistol to Eva’s head.

  Through the scope Sam detected the fear in his daughter’s eyes. But behind the fear he saw love, deep love. He’d heard it on the phone earlier, yet to see it for himself was indescribable. In spite of all he’d done to her and all he’d become, in spite of how low he’d sunk and how despicable he’d acted, there was still love there.

  She said something and he read her lips: “Daddy.”

  Richardson was still talking, his voice just audible above all the racket. “We’ll handle this, Sam. Let us handle it.”

  The Tommy figure pulled Eva in front of him, pressed the barrel of the pistol harder against her head, and shook her. He yelled something that Sam couldn’t hear over the pounding chopper blades and downpour. To his left the helicopter landed and cut its engine. The blades continued to beat at the air but slowed.

  Sam put the sight on…

  … Tommy’s forehead. It was there in his scope. It was a nearly impossible shot, unlike any he’d ever taken. At this distance, through a pane of glass, it would require a miracle to pull it off. And besides that, my goodness besides that, this was his brother he was taking aim at, his blood, his kin, his big buddy. They’d played, laughed, listened to music together, hunted, camped, worked, gotten spanked and grounded together. He thought of the time they’d shot Old Man Gruber’s dog by accident. He’d shot at the same groundhog the dog was hunting. The dog lived, but when they got home Dad was waiting with his belt and delivered a pair of whoopin’s like never before or after.

  This was his brother he was going to pull the trigger on. Only it wasn’t Tommy. It was something much worse. Tommy was already gone.

  Sam steadied his hand, his darn shaking hand, drew in a long breath and held it. Tommy was still choking Mom while looking directly at Sam, taunting him, daring him to take the shot.

  And Sam did.

  He squeezed the trigger real steady, and that Winchester 70 popped and kicked back against his shoulder. Tommy’s head snapped so violently that for a second Sam thought he’d blown it clean off, but then it came back up, and Tommy stood there motionless, the left side of his cranium missing and his skull teetering on his neck like a bobble-head doll. He wore a stupid grin on his face. A heartbeat later, Tommy buckled at the waist and fell forward, landing on Mom and rolling off to the side.

  Freezing cold, Sam dropped his rifle and ran for the house. His legs were so weak and wobbly he almost went down more than a couple times. His arms hung numbly at his sides. When he reached the house, he heard Mom whimpering and coughing and sputtering inside. From the doorway he could see Dad lying in the hallway, his head a bloody mess. Sam rounded the corner into the dining room and found Mom on her knees over Tommy. Her face was tomato-red, smeared with tears and snot and Tommy’s blood. She was rocking back and forth, her hands on her oldest son’s back.

  “Mom,” Sam said. His voice seemed small, almost a whisper.

  She looked at him through glassy eyes, twisted her face, and screamed, “You killed him! You killed my son.”

  “Sam, don’t.” The voice was muffled but familiar. Molly.

  Sam didn’t look at her, didn’t pull his eyes from Tommy and Eva, but her voice burned in his ears. Tommy smiled at him—that same stupid grin—then tightened his grip on Eva’s arm and shook her again.

  “Please, Sam. Please.” Molly sounded like she was crying.

  “Sam, we can take care of it.” Richardson. “Put down the weapon.”

  But he couldn’t. Not now. He was the only one who could take the shot, or at least that’s what he’d convinced himself of. He was the only one who had to take the shot. As if Tommy knew Sam’s intentions (of course he knew, they were brothers), he crouched low and hid behind Eva. There was no shot now, not without a huge risk of hitting Eva.

  Behind Sam Molly groaned, a pitiful sound squeezing through tight vocal cords.

  He had to do something, but he had only one option. He thought of that shot he’d taken all those years ago, the impossibility of it, and weighed his chances of pulling it off again. He might be a good shot—You’re the one, Sammy—but not that good. It’d be like hitting a soda can at four hundred yards in the pouring rain … and the can was on his daughter’s head. His baby girl. There was no margin for error. Even the slightest movement, the smallest of muscle twitches, could be tragic.

  That was it. He couldn’t do it. He started to lower the rifle.

  Molly’s voice stopped him. “Sam, wait.”

  With the rifle still against his shoulder, he pulled his eye away from the scope. He looked down the barrel at the psycho with his daughter in the middle of the open field. The rain fell in sheets now, harder than it had all day.

  “You can do this. You can save her. Eva.” Molly’s voice quivered like she was freezing. “God loves you, Sam. He loves you so much. You have to trust Him.”

  Trust was something Sam hadn’t thought much of in the past months. He hadn’t trusted anyone, let alone God. But Eva’s love had changed that today, a lifeline lifting him out of that pit of despair and reassuring him there was one thing in this world that was OK to trust—unconditional love. How, though, could God still love him?

  Do you know Jesus loves you?

  How could that be? Sam had done nothing to earn such love. In fact, he’d done everything to reject it.

  And yet he did know it. He’d known it since he was a kid.

  Sam pressed his cheek against the rifle stock, blinked away the rain, found his brother and daughter in the scope. Tommy was on his knees behind Eva, one arm around her shoulders, the other holding the pistol to her head. Only a sliver of his face showed, one eye and an ear. He was trapped and desperate, a cornered wolf with its teeth at the neck of a rabbit. Any hint of a threat, and he might pull that trigger. It’d be suicide, but someone like Tommy might see that as the only way out.

  Sam would only get one shot. If he squeezed off a round and missed …

  He blinked again. Then he saw it, his shot. It was his only hope. But it was an impossible mark and way too risky.

  “Trust him, Sam.” Molly’s voice was hoarse, but to Sam it was a shelter in the midst of the deluge. “He loves you.”

  Sam matched his breathing to his rapid heartbeat. God, I trust You. I trust You. Jesus, help me.

  “I love you too, Eva,” he whispered, and during the pause between two beats he pulled the trigger.

  Seventy

  THE BULLET PIERCED SYMON’S PALM LIKE AN AWL THROUGH leather, throwing the Beretta behind him. He spun to his left and fell back on his haunches, shaking his hand in an effort to ward off the imminent pain. First he noticed the blood, then the agony of white-hot jolts that shot up his arm to his elbow. Grabbing his mangled appendage, he curled onto his side and moaned.

  Molly saw the rifle kick back against Sam’s shoulder before she heard the blast. By the time she realized what had happened, Eva’s abductor was spinning around and crumbling to the ground, holding his hand. Eva had broken loose and was on her way toward Molly and Sam.

  Molly let out a shrill scream and took off for her daughter.

  Symon lay still, processing what had just happened, letting the drizzle cool his face. His hand had been shot, nothing more. The pain was severe, yes, and reminded him of … of something, of the flashes from the pistol the big guy had in the trailer. That was the last time Symon had been shot. But it also reminded him of something else …

  A voice said his name. The woman, kneeling over him, looked into his eyes. Her lips mouthed it this time. His name.

  “Albert.”

  His name was Albert. He was Bethany’s father. He was somebody. Albert, Bethany’s
daddy.

  Albert.

  Cradling his aching, bleeding hand, he propped himself up on his right elbow and found the Beretta in the wet grass not five feet from him. To his right the girl was running. She was in a full sprint and looked so much like his Bethany that it brought tears to his eyes. She was running from him, his Bethany. He couldn’t lose her again. Albert scrambled to his feet, slipped on the slick grass, went to one knee, and got his feet under him once more.

  Eva—Bethany—turned and looked back at him. There was sadness in her eyes. Deep sadness. She didn’t want to leave him.

  He wobbled and swayed, then took one step toward his Bethany. He had to go after her. He would risk everything to be with her again.

  Something punched him in the chest, and he stumbled backward. Bethany and her mother both flinched and ducked their heads. Beyond them Albert saw a line of men in dark uniforms. He stumbled backward, felt another blow, this one higher up on his chest and to the left. It corkscrewed him around so that he lost his balance, went to his knees. His vision blurred, and he suddenly felt very heavy and tired.

  He’d lost her, lost his Bethany.

  Sam lay on his back on the patio, rain spattering his face. He opened his eyes, squinted. The tears were coming now, faster than the falling rain—tears of relief, of joy, of sadness, of emotion unimaginable. He saw a police officer bending over him, and …

  … with one hand on Sam’s shoulder, the officer squeezed.

  “You OK, son? You all right?”

  Sam tried to talk but couldn’t. What had he just done? What horrible crime had he committed? Had he really shot his own brother? He looked at his mother bent over the dead body of Tommy, and her tear-stained, reddened face filled him with such remorse that it nearly buckled his knees. He steadied himself against the door frame.

  And nodded absently.

  The cop patted his shoulder. “You did what you had to do, son.”