She was dreaming. Of daffodils.
It was a clear cold night and the moon was full over the bay. A cone of soft white light left a sheen over the towers of lower Manhattan, a flowery light on the dark water all the way to the bridge.
Almost like daffodils.
She waited for the call.
The call that would let her soul finally breathe easy. That the boy was all right, and the bastard who had taken him to protect that animal who had killed her Deirdre had been dealt with. Then it was what to do with the one who had done this. Who had opened the gates and let in all this hell.
But the call never came.
Around two, her eyes grew heavy and she had to close them for a moment. She didn’t even put her two fingers to Tom’s picture on the night table as she did every night. Or recite a Hail Mary to the memory of her daughter, which she’d done before she closed her eyes for the past twenty-two years.
Sheila had drifted off, to a sleep as sweet as any she’d had in years, daffodils falling from the sky and landing in the palm of her little baby’s hand—maybe five then—when she first heard the noise.
Just a creak, at first. On the floorboards downstairs. She didn’t even open her eyes. The house made a million noises. The walls seeming to shift with every change of the wind.
And there were surely no looters around here, though the house lay partially open. With so many cops and firemen, you had to be crazy to come here with malice on your mind.
She drifted off again and was almost back in the same sweet dream when she heard it again.
This time on the stairs. Closer. She opened her eyes and checked the clock. Ten after two. Still no word. Maybe soon. She listened, and then there was nothing, nothing for a long time but the wind and the flapping of the tarp fastened to the roof.
Again she shut her eyes.
Her daughter’s face was the prettiest thing she ever saw. Who knew what she could have done in life? She wanted to be a vet. She might have gone far. Most of all she was happy. She had a smile like green meadows peeking through a cover of clouds, like the sun shining, Sheila fell back into her dream, on the pretty hill with—
This time her eyes jumped open. She felt something, a creepy presence that knifed through her like a chill. In the room.
This time the creaking of the floorboard went right through her. Sheila spun around and tried to let out a scream.
It never got out. There was a person directly above her on the edge of her bed and he cupped his hand tightly over her mouth.
She knew him—his face was like an indelible image in her mind since she had first seen it, first heard the name, only a month before.
The devil’s face.
Her first thought was to go for the gun Tom always kept in the top drawer of the night table, but his hand held her back so firmly she couldn’t move.
Her next thought was of her husband. That today would be a good day for Tom, in heaven, for she would surely see him soon.
“It’s nice to finally meet you, Mrs. O’Byrne …” The man on the bed smiled. “You may not know who I am, but I was a friend of your daughter’s.”