A wild, unthinking animal came alive and roared inside Angie’s chest. In her mind she saw Drummond’s body on that morgue slab, Faith Hocking’s corpse cut wide open. She saw in her head what he’d done to them. Because they were women. Because they fit his sick sexual fantasy.
I came to you because you said that you cared. And I believed you...
She’d let Merry Winston down.
And all those other girls before Merry ... and Ginny and Maddocks ...
And suddenly, there she was again—the little girl in a wash of luminous pink. She floated with the mist in the trees. The forest was completely dark again—had night fallen once more?
Words—like a rushing river, like the wind, like the sound of crashing ocean surf—boomed into Angie’s head. The noise seemed to come from within her skull, from the forest all around her, from the cloud ...
Come um dum ... dem grove ... come ...
The little girl chuckled, turned, and raced up into the trees, behind Addams.
Angie could see nothing but the pink glow. It tugged her forward, as if with strings attached directly to her heart. Panting, she scrambled and staggered and fell and crawled and got up again and again as she was pulled forward by that pink glow and her desperate urge to protect it, to stop it from getting any closer to the evil that was Addams.
She reached the top of the incline. And saw him.
Addams.
He sat on a rock, holding his thigh, his head bent. His weapon lay on the ground by his boots. She’d wounded him.
“Spencer Addams!” she screamed.
His head shot up.
She saw his face, white in the light of her headlamp. His eyes met hers. He remained motionless for a moment. She raised her rifle stock to her shoulder, oblivious now to pain, to any physical sensation at all.
“Step away from that weapon—get down on the ground! Now!” She moved forward as she yelled. “On your stomach!”
Very slowly, with his gaze locked onto hers, he moved, lowering himself to the earth.
The little girl ducked behind him, behind his rock. Angie blinked, trying to keep focus. Rain and sweat leaked into her eyes. He kept looking right back at her, just kept looking. Time stretched and warped. “Move it! Now!” she yelled, her voice cracking. Her finger curled tighter around her rifle trigger. That tinny nursery rhyme music began inside her head—quiet and distant at first, then loud and discordant and crashing, like a bad fairground ride ...There ... were once two little kittens. A-a-a, a-a-, two little kittens ...
Angie swallowed. Her finger was tense on the trigger. She kept staring into those devil’s eyes as reality seemed to blur. He moved suddenly, snatching up his rifle. He rose into a squat. She squeezed.
His head blew back. He dropped the gun. His body seemed to hang motionless as he kept looking at her. Blood, black in the light of her headlamp, bloomed white around his mouth, making him look like a mad, laughing clown. He slumped backward.
Panting hard, she moved quickly toward him.
He was on his back, just in front of the rock, writhing in the mud. She’d hit him in the jaw, on the left side of his mouth. He reached a hand out to her, like a claw, as if to plead for mercy, to grasp onto her. He was saying something ... yelling something with that bloody maw ... trying to scoot and wriggle backward in the mud.
Ice filled her heart. Rage mushroomed through her body, stealing all logic that remained in her exhausted mind.Two little kittens ... there were two little kittens ...
Angie raised her gun. She fired. Again. Into his face. And again. And again. She emptied the rest of her ten-round magazine and dropped to her knees in the mud, shaking.
Tears streamed down her face.
CHAPTER 77
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER20
Angie became gradually aware that she was lying in a bed. Her body hurt. She tried to open her eyes. Light was bright—pain. She shut them again quickly, nausea washing into her stomach. Her mouth felt dry, tasted bad. Confusion swirled thick in her brain. The memory struck her suddenly. Her pulse quickened.Spencer Addams.
Hunting him through the woods.
Her eyes flared open wide, heart racing. Hospital—she was in a ward. Angie struggled to sit up. Dizziness swirled, and she collapsed back onto the pillow with a groan.
