The head seemed to move in slow motion, almost without sound. I heard Willow say, “Ma’am?”
I held my breath as the head stopped a few feet behind Lydia. All I could see of her was her back. There was absolute silence.
Then Lydia screamed as if she’d exploded into flames. Her hand grabbed the knife from her slacks. She dove out the door, jabbing and slashing. Willow roared with outrage. Someone tumbled down the steps. Then, four gunshots. Fast. They sounded like firecrackers.
Another moment of silence. All I could hear was my heart.
Lydia walked in, knife in hand, the silver blade now crimson. There were two red dots in the center of her blouse. She stopped and studied the room as if it were brand-new to her, or a dream. Then she saw me. There seemed no recognition in her eyes, like she had walked through the last door of madness; I was nothing but easy prey. Lydia lifted the knife and started toward me. She stumbled into the suitcases by the door, kicked them aside. The red dots on her blouse caught her attention. She looked down at them with a kind of wonder, as if mystified at how they’d gotten there.
Her face went slack and she stopped moving.
Two seconds later the machinery clicked on. Her head snapped up and she advanced three steps.
Until her eyes were drawn to her wounds and she again shut down.
Off, then on. She moved to me in a tick-tock motion, closer each time. I shrieked beneath the tape as if my blind terror could ward her off.
Off, on…until she stood above me.
Raised the knife high.
And seemed to pause in the middle distance between off and on.
It occurred later I didn’t hear the fifth shot. Instead, a small red flower bloomed quietly in Lydia’s side. She quivered when it bloomed. Paused to touch it. This time she didn’t shut down, but seemed to understand something. The knife dropped from her hand and she fell to the floor with a sound like thunder.
Jacob Willow pulled himself into the house with one hand, the other clutching his side, a wide swash of red following him. He half-crawled, half-swam across the floor, reached out a bloody hand and pulled the tape from my mouth. “She cut me good, Ryder,” he mumbled, looking down at his side. “My liver, I think. I got slow over the years.”
He stared at Lydia, confusion on his face.
I said, “She’s Calypso, Jacob. Call 911, you’re bleeding out.”
“Calypso? Calypso?”
“A switch-off beneath the veil. She’s hustled the collectors for years. Get to the phone, Jacob. Now.”
The phone was twenty feet away, mounted on the wall. He looked at it and sighed.
“I can’t.”
“Untie me. My hands.”
He struggled to his knees and fumbled at my wrists but the wires were too tight for his wet and failing fingers. His blood-soaked shirt squished as he swayed above me.
“The phone,” I said. “You’ve got to try to -”
He slumped back to the floor, exhausted. “Shhh, Ryder. It ain’t gonna happen. Calypso, you’re sure?”
I nodded. He thought a moment, then choked out a laugh and tapped my arm, like sharing a joke. “Know what Hexcamp told me in the courtroom, Ryder? Laying there dying. Just before he told me to follow the art?”
“What, Jacob?”
“He said, ‘She lied.’”
“She lied?”
“Don’t you…get it, Ryder?” he said, his voice getting thinner. “She lied. Calypso told Hexcamp she was coming to save him. Instead, she sent someone to kill him.”
I understood. “That particular game was over. She was ready to move on.”
Willow nodded, pushed up on his elbow. “Follow the art. Didn’t understand…until now. Hexcamp was asking me to track down Calypso, his lover, then his murderer.” He laughed weakly, his breath almost gone. “I spent…thirty-five years…avenging Marsden Hexcamp.”
“You nailed Calypso, that’s what you did. She was a killing machine, a monster. You saved lives, Jacob.”
He shifted his eyes to the motionless form at my feet, whispered, “Guess it worked out, then.” His head dropped to my chest. His eyes stared fearlessly into mine: we both knew.
A minute later I watched Jacob Willow’s final moment. Nothing poured out, no mud, no wriggling horrors, no heat. It was simply as though something else caught his attention, and he wandered that direction.