Stirred

The door busted in.

I turned, expecting cops, but it wasn’t the police.

Instead, a horribly disfigured woman stood in the threshold clutching a gun in a three-fingered hand.

I’d never met her, but I knew this was Lucy. Donaldson’s partner.

For a second, it looked like she and Luther were going to shoot each other. But neither made a move.

“There’s another cop on the ward,” Lucy said. “We fire, no one gets out alive.”

“What makes you think I want anyone to get out alive, Lucy?”

“Don’t be stupid, Andrew. You’re too self-absorbed to want to die here.”

Andrew?

And then it hit me.

The pieces all coming together at once.

Andrew’s missing fingerprints.

Luther’s contact lenses and wig.

The odd ALONEAGAIN comments.

How he’d lured the agent, Cynthia Mathis, to Michigan.

The reason for putting Thomas’s books in the bodies.

The maniacal obsession with Dante.

Holy shit.

The man I’d known as Luther Kite was really Andrew Z. Thomas.

I looked at the bed. At the emaciated man lying there.

That wasn’t Andrew Z. Thomas.

That was…

“Hi, Luther,” Lucy said to the man on the bed. “Been dieting, I see.”

“Do we know each other?” he asked.

“I’ve had some cosmetic work done since I last saw you back at that convention. I’m Lucy. Remember? You got me out of that jam.”

The man on the bed—the real Luther Kite—smiled a hellish, toothless smile. “I remember, angel. Good to see you again. Is Andrew here responsible for your appearance?”

“Mine and yours.”

I turned and stared at…what was I supposed to call him?

“You’re the writer,” I said to the man pointing a gun in my face. “You’re Thomas.”

“That was a lifetime ago. I don’t write anymore. I pursue different forms of artistic expression. As you so well know, Jack.”

“How?” I asked. “How did this…?”

“Luther,” Andrew said, pointing his knife at the man on the bed while the gun stayed on Lucy. “He broke me. Just like I was trying to do to you, Jack. That was seven years ago. There was torture, of course. But the thing that changed me was what he made me do to Violet.”

I recalled Violet King. The burn scars on her arms.

“You did that?”

Andrew nodded. “Luther told me if I did, he’d free her. But then I got the upper hand. I gave as good as I got, didn’t I, Luther?”

“Yes, you did, Andrew. And then some. You’ve become quite accomplished. You’re a better me than me.”

I chanced another nervous glance at the door, wondering where the hell the cops were.

“It’s so strange, Jack,” the real Andrew said. “Suddenly realizing you have these…appetites, but not knowing how to satisfy them. I didn’t have the benefit of starting young, learning as I went along. I had to take a crash course in becoming a predator.”

His eyes were glazed, manic, like someone on speed. I thought about making a try for the gun, but his finger was tight on the trigger.

“So I studied other killers,” Andrew continued. “Studied their methods. Tried them on for size to see if they fit. I spent many long, intimate hours with Luther, picking his brain, coaxing out his secrets. In order to drain his bank accounts—his family was quite rich—I had to impersonate him. And I found that I liked it. Stepping into his cowboy boots and black jeans, putting on the wig and the contacts, sucking those god-awful Lemonheads he likes so much. I realized the best way to be me was to be him. So we switched places. Let him be Andrew Z. Thomas, and then I could be Luther Kite.”

This guy wasn’t just broken. He was wrecked beyond repair.

“Look, Andrew,” I said, “we need to—”

The shot was so sudden I didn’t know where it came from. A bright muzzle flash, the smell of gunpowder.

It was followed by another, and another.

Andrew crumpled on the floor, both knees blown out, his gun arm disabled, his curved knife skittering under the bed, Lucy standing over him, aiming a 9mm at his stomach.

“You used to be my hero,” she said. “I once drove six hundred miles to see the famous mystery writer Andrew Z. Thomas. Just to get an autograph. I used to be beautiful. And you turned me into a freak.”

Andrew groaned on the floor, struggling to reach his gun.

“This is for Donaldson,” she said, shooting him between the legs.

“Lucy!” I yelled, taking a step forward. “Stop it!”

“Back it up, lady.” She pointed her gun in my face while Andrew groaned and writhed on the floor. “I’ll deal with you in a second.”

I held out my hands. “He’ll rot in prison. You don’t have to do this.”

“Actually, I do.”

Where was that goddamn cop? “Please, Lucy. He took my baby.”

“Sucks to be you.”

“Lucy!”

The gun went back to Andrew. “Should have finished me off when you had the chance,” Lucy said.

“See…you…in hell,” Andrew croaked.

“Hell doesn’t exist, you dumb ass.”

She shot him in the head as he cowered beneath her.

“No!” I rushed forward.

Before I got to her, Lucy turned the gun on me again. “And now, for the encore.”

“Don’t,” Luther rasped, trying to sit up in bed. “She saved me, Lucy. Let this one go.”

“I’ve heard about her. Supposed to be a real badass. Why take a chance? You sure?”

“I’m sure.”

Lucy bent down, tugged the pair of handcuffs off of Andrew’s utility belt, and then forced me at gunpoint toward the open door leading into the bathroom.

“Get in the shower, Jack.”

I stepped inside, and she tossed me the cuffs. If she’d killed me at that moment, I wouldn’t have cared. When Andrew died, so did my hopes of finding my daughter.

“You know what to do,” she told me.

“Lucy—”

“Bitch, I am ru

I snapped a bracelet onto one wrist and clamped another to the shower handrail.

Then Lucy disappeared back into the room. I couldn’t see what she was doing, but it sounded like Luther was struggling up and out of bed. I heard her say, “They’re going to be here any minute.”

“Hold on. Push me to the bathroom.”

Lucy appeared in the doorway, Luther in a wheelchair. He stared up at me, his eyes black as night.

“Andrew lost his humanity,” he said. “But not completely. That’s why he failed. He left too many survivors. Survivors have a way of coming back and biting you in the ass.”

“Do you know where my baby is, Luther? Please.”

He paused, said, “Andrew always regretted what he did to Violet. To Violet and her son. That’s how a lot of us go astray. We all break things. But sometimes…” His tongue shot out, licking his thin, pale lips. “Sometimes we try to fix the things we broke.”

My last glimpse of them was Lucy pushing him away.

Then the door opened and shut, followed by shouts and another gunshot, causing my heart to skip a beat.

Phin’s guard?

Had he gotten Lucy?

Had she gotten him?

Or…God forbid…one of my boys?

I didn’t call out. There was no point. The shots had been heard by everyone in the adjacent floors, and word would be spreading fast around the hospital.

Less than a minute later, Harry and Herb were in the bathroom, both holding guns.

“Phin?” I asked.

“Safe,” said Herb. “You got a dead cop outside the door. Place is going crazy. What the hell happened?”

“Find a handcuff key.” I held up my arm, frantic to be freed. “We need to get out of here, Herb. I think I know where my baby is.”

• • •

After hearing Andrew’s story, it made perfect sense.

There was a risk to not calling the authorities first. A risk that weighed heavily on me during the long car ride. I didn’t want the SWAT team storming in, guns blazing. I’d seen that end badly before.

I just had to keep telling myself that my baby was safe, and that I’d get her back unharmed.

The boys had insisted on coming with me, even though they were in bad shape. The hospital made us all sign release forms saying we left against doctors’ orders. Phin was especially fragile, but keeping him away from going after his daughter was like holding back a flood with a single sandbag.