90
Montvale, Virginia
Salem ignored his silent threat and ran to her mother.
She wrapped her arms around Vida, who fell against her. Her skin felt hot and loose.
“Mom?”
Vida was too heavy to hold, but it was a sick weight, the heaviness of infection and swelling and pus. Salem slid her to the ground as gently as she could.
Vida’s eyes fluttered open.
“Mom? It’s Salem. Mom!” A sob escaped Salem’s lips. She felt hands at the back of her pants, sliding out the papers. She didn’t care. Her mother was burning, her skin a purple-green all over. Her clothes were matted to her, bloody, melding and scabbing into her flesh.
“Salem!” Bel was climbing out of the hole.
Salem felt the sudden pressure of a blade against her neck as a response. The killer turned her around, never easing up on the pressure at her throat. He was deceptively strong. She knew in that moment that Grace Odegaard was indeed dead.
Bel seemed to realize the same thing, her whole body melting to the ground as her eyes traveled from the man to Salem to Vida and back to Salem.
“Noooo,” she breathed.
Ernest climbed out next. He glanced over at Ronald and paled. He stood to his full height, pulling Bel to her feet, careful of her shoulder.
“Wonderful,” the man with the blade said. He was the same person who’d tried to take them outside the Dolores Mission, the friend of the fat-fingered man. His voice was velvet and cream. Salem thought she detected a slight Southern accent underneath.
He kept his knife pressed to her throat as he shook out one of the pieces of paper he’d pulled from her jeans. “The land deeds exist. Not for long, eh?” He laughed, the good-natured sound you make when a friend forgets something that you could have easily forgotten yourself.
Ernest stepped forward. The blade pressed deeper into Salem’s throat, opening an edge of flesh with a tiny pop. Warm blood trickled down her neck.
“If you want to live two more minutes, I invite you to tell me exactly what else is in that vault. I’ll find out in any case after I kill you.”
“Gold.” Bel’s voice was scoured steel. “Jewels. Pearls.”
“The master list of Underground members?”
“That too,” Bel said.
Salem’s eyes shot up to Bel. The list was on the computer back at Lu’s. Why would Bel lie about that? They were going to be dead in two minutes, all of them, and the killer would find out the truth. So why lie?
Salem read the answer in Bel’s face loud and clear: Because fuck him.
There is one basic rule of Krav Maga: use your opponent’s strength and weight against them. With a knife at your throat, that means your enemy is pushing into you. He expects you to hold still as a rabbit. It’s instinct. It doesn’t occur to him that you might push back.
You have a second’s lick before he regains his balance.
Salem didn’t think. She rolled backward, away from her mom, away from the knife and into her captor, knocking him off balance hard enough that he let go of her, stumbling back a step. He readjusted quickly and turned toward Salem, murder in his eyes, the knife thrusting toward her in a blow meant to kill, not capture.
Ernest launched himself with an incoherent yell. The killer turned his blade to the more immediate threat, slashing the knife in a vertical arc that sliced through Ernest’s throat with buttery ease. Ernest’s eyes widened in shock as a gout of red spurted out from the gash below his chin. He slumped to the forest floor, solid and motionless, as the killer swiveled on Salem, who lay on the ground.
Bel had hurled herself into motion the same time as Ernest, but swifter and sleeker. She flew underneath, grabbing a rock the size of her fist, and slammed it into the killer’s brain stem before his blade could claim Salem.
The killer fell toward Salem. She pushed him away, screaming. He landed on his back next to her. Bel hurried to check his pulse, rock still in her hand. She was panting, her eyes wild.
“He’s dead. Look at his face.”
It was a horrifying patchwork puddle of melting flesh.
Salem was panicked, confused. “Did you smash the rock into the front of his skull?”
Bel shook her head, her pupils huge and black. She couldn’t pull her eyes off the man’s pooling face as she went through his pockets. She discovered no ID, only a set of knives in an intricate sheath, a silver locket, a hank of blond hair, and the papers he’d snatched off Salem. She took all but the hair.
Salem crawled over to Ernest. “Help me turn him over!”
The earth was sucking greedily at the blood pumping out of Ernest’s throat, absorbing the pool before it could form. Salem pressed her hands over the wound, the heat of his life pulsing against her, growing softer.
“Mercy.” The word cost him. Blood sprayed from his mouth. “Protect Mercy.”
“Bel! Go get help.”
Ernest wheezed, and his breathing stopped.
Bel clasped Salem around the waist, straining to pull her away.
“What are you doing? He’s still alive. He’s still got a heartbeat.” Salem looked away from Ernest to search Bel’s face. It was a tapestry of sadness.
“We have to get Vida to a hospital, honey. We can send an ambulance for Ernest, okay?”
Salem glanced over at her unconscious mother. She appeared so frail, so vulnerable. But Salem couldn’t leave Ernest, not when his heart was still beating.
He pumped blood for one more minute.
He never spoke another word.
A humid fog had settled into the forest.
Salem realized that she was sitting in a cloud.