She twists free.
Hard.
Her scalp rips. She hears it before the eye-watering pain hits—a sickening crackle, like nailed carpet pulling free—and she drives her body forward, out of his grasp. His finger hooks on Shawn’s sterling silver locket. The chain snaps.
Far away, Deek watches, screaming, pounding his window.
She hits the floor. A gloved hand grasps her ankle, sausage-fingers tightening—but she kicks and scoots away from him, knocking the tripod telescope over with a teetering crash. The lens shatters. Her back thuds against the window. Trapped by glass.
The towering Chucky doll advances, his piggy eyes locked on her, still carrying a knot of her hair. With his right hand, he flicks his katana. The three-foot blade whips snakelike, too fast to see, casting a fine spray of blood to the floor at her feet.
In hopeless defense, she raises her own weapon.
A hammer.
Then a supernova of light. As blinding as concert stage lights, filling the room with a thousand watts of vivid rainforest-green. The sound arrives, as sharp as artillery fire. Against her tailbone, she can feel the plate glass vibrate in its frame.
The killer halts mid-swing. He’s startled, off-balance. Glancing out the window over her shoulder, toward the sudden and dramatic brightness.
He’s puzzled.
Emma isn’t.
She knows exactly what it is.
A second starburst explodes over Deek’s house: fiery orange. It pierces the night sky, drawing acres of dune grass in perfect detail as sizzling cinders fall back to earth with the rain. Fireworks, her neighbor’s last-ditch distraction.
It’s enough.
Thank you, Deek—
Howard Grosvenor Kline recovers fast and slashes again, but she’s already seized her moment and scrambled away, his blade a half-second behind her. She’s running for the kitchen.
Thank you, thank you, thank you—
Fireworks bloomed outside as he chased her toward the kitchen. One thunderous blast after another, a kaleidoscope of racing shadows.
Even in the adrenaline of the moment, he recognized Emma’s split-second cleverness. She knew that running farther to the barricaded front door would be a fatal error; that moving the table and unlocking the latch would cost time she didn’t have. Her options were tight. Instead she skidded at the kitchen’s edge, pivoting hard, and bolted downstairs into the basement. He followed her down into a mouth of clammy blackness, albeit in no great hurry. There was no other exit from the cellar.
She’d cornered herself.
The stairs were rotting, soggy underfoot. At the bottom of the staircase, he knew exactly where to stoop to avoid bumping his head on the low copper pipe. This ill-advised bottom floor was nearly five hundred square feet but crowded with sagging cardboard boxes and generations of furniture mummified in plastic wrap. Moth-eaten relics draped in bags. The foundation walls seemed to sweat odorous water, dripping to a moldy cement floor.
Down here, it was pitch-black. Impossible to see. He knew his prey could be hiding anywhere in the cloying, damp space.
And . . . he knew the basement had a light switch on the wall to his immediate left. Two feet away. Waist height. He didn’t need to grope for it; its location was already hardwired into his muscle memory as he reached with a confident hand.
Emma swings the claw hammer with all her strength.
Even in total darkness, she remembers exactly where the light switch is. Which means she knows exactly where he must stand. And, most crucially: exactly where he must place his hand to flip it.
Direct hit.
She swears she can feel the bones in his gloved fingers crunch like dry sticks. The basement lights strobe like lightning. He shrieks through gnashed teeth, a girlish scream.
It barely hurt.
He didn’t scream or even grunt. Howard had always been a well-muscled and capable close-quarters fighter with an exceptional pain tolerance. Even while ambushed in the basement, he was already smoothly counterattacking. She’d struck his right hand, yes, but at a fatal cost—she’d forgotten entirely about his left hand. In it, he swung his katana.
Directly into Emma’s face.
The sword stops inches from her cheek. Her eardrum rings with impact. The steel blade vibrates, lodged at least an inch into the house’s load-bearing column beside her.
It looks like luck.
It isn’t.
Emma didn’t flee to this basement in terror. She chose this basement. Right here, in this cramped space where Howard’s sword has little room for an uninterrupted swing. She knows she won’t stand a chance in a straight-up fight—he’s bigger, stronger, and armed. So she’s lured him to a setting where she has the advantage, where she can strike from the shadows. Hit and run.
Howard howls in agony, the bones in his right hand hopefully shattered. His good hand leaves the sword’s grip—still cleaved deeply into the support column—and plucks his black pistol from his trench coat.
But she’s already broken contact and is racing upstairs.
Attack.
Hide.
Repeat.
She hears his injured scream bellowing up the dark staircase after her. He’s slowed. Humiliated. Enraged. It’s all happened in seconds. He knows he’s lost this round despite every advantage, and Emma is already upstairs, preparing her next ambush.
With his uninjured left hand, he twisted his katana out of the post. The steel edge screeched free. Over years of home training, he’d practiced numerous killing strikes using his nondominant hand. Now he would draw upon those skills.
With gritted teeth, he peeled the Ninja latex glove off his right hand. His fingers were already starting to swell. A later medical examination would determine that his middle digit’s proximal phalange was fractured, as well as two metacarpals. Despite Howard’s exceptional pain tolerance, it was inarguably one hell of a hit. Perhaps it gives Emma Carpenter some posthumous satisfaction to know that despite her death, her hammer blow in that pitch-black basement couldn’t possibly have struck truer.
Upstairs, the battle would continue.
The living room.
That’s where she’ll attack him next.
The top of the stairs is too obvious. The kitchen, with the still-warming water on the stove, will be his second focus. By the time he’s searched both of those areas, he’ll start to worry she’s already outside and running to Deek’s house for help. On his way into the living room, he’ll be focusing on the windows. He’ll be vulnerable to an attack from this blind corner.
It’s perfect.
Emma stands flat against the wall, controlling her breaths. In her grip now: Jules’s rusty flathead screwdriver. When Howard rounds the corner, she’ll deliver a piercing stab to the face and end the night for good.
She thinks about Prelaw. And Psych.
Whatever their real names must have been. It’s wishful thinking, but she hopes somewhere the two women are looking down on her and smiling. That maybe, somehow, all of Howard’s past victims are cheering her on tonight, celebrating her wins, grieving her losses. She must be the first victim to break one of his bones, at least. Worst-case scenario: she’ll make Murder Beach one hell of an H. G. Kane novel. Best-case: he’ll never live to write it at all.
Let’s see if you can do better, he’d growled at her through the door.
Indeed.
Let’s.
Another artillery crash from Deek’s house—the old man must be furiously lighting off his entire stash, one after another. Anything to interfere with the killer’s hunt, to confuse his senses, to grant Emma a fighting chance. The room fills with light—marine blue now. Dizzying shadows race over the floor, up the walls. It all feels like a fever dream.
Her heart pounds. Her cheeks are flushed hot.
Standing in silence, she considers running outside and making a break for Deek’s house—maybe she’s gained enough of a head start—but then she hears wet boots on tile. He’s already emerged from the basement. Soon he’ll be close enough to smell again.
Another strobe of falling purple light. Then darkness again. She listens to the author’s boots squeak through the kitchen, into the dining room. He’s just a few steps away. Right around the corner. She hefts her flathead screwdriver, edge out. She knows she’ll need to stab hard. With her other palm braced behind it.
A quarter mile north, Deek detonates another firework.
Bloodred.
In a strobe of arterial light, she can see Howard’s black shadow trace across hardwood at her feet. It’s startlingly clear. She can see he’s walking cautiously, carrying his pistol left-handed. This is good. She’s crippled his dominant hand. His accuracy will be lessened.
She holds her breath.
You can do this, Shawn whispers in her ear.
Predator and prey are separated by only a blind corner now. She hears a metal click, alarmingly close. It’s a pistol’s hammer cocking. No more playing with swords. He’s slain a bystander, he’s wounded, and he’s desperate. She’s challenged him, all right.
She tightens her grip on the screwdriver.
Don’t be afraid. You can do this, Em.
Like painting a plaster mountain. Trust your instincts.
I know you can.
But as always, the reality is more complicated. The model railroad had slowly faded from their lives as the monthly struggle to become pregnant overtook their evenings and arguments. She can’t remember the last time she saw Shawn run his trains. Bit by bit, little parts broke and were never glued back together. When the plumbing in the second-floor bathroom burst last April, the tracks rusted and the mountain she helped build collapsed with water damage. Neither of them had dared to examine the full toll. It’s easier, to not look.
The last red embers burn out.
The house sinks into darkness. But she can hear the author’s boots, creeping closer on brittle floorboards. She waits for the next flash of color. That will be the moment. She’ll have one chance to strike his face. She can’t miss.
You won’t, her husband tells her.
The room falls silent.
Only darkness.
Deek must finally be out of fireworks. This means she’ll have to attack Howard in the dark. This is fine. Not ideal, but fine. Now he takes his final step to the corner’s edge and stops.
I’ll see you again, Shawn whispers. I’ll meet you there.
Deal, she vows.
It’s silent but nonetheless startling when Howard Grosvenor Kline’s black form peers around the corner. Inches away. Searching the wide living room, scanning pools of shadow for his prey. Whatever he expects to see, it sure as hell isn’t this.
She stabs the flathead screwdriver straight into his face.
“That’s for Prelaw and Psych, asshole.”