That image is the one that repeats itself the most often. There’s something off about it, something I can’t quite comprehend.
Breaking free of Tina’s grip, I rush down the hall, my numb legs propelled only by the insistent tug of memory. My breathing is shallow. My heart clangs in my chest.
I don’t stop until I’m in the great room again. Right back where we started. I stand exactly where I stood a decade ago, staring at the spot where I last saw Him. It’s almost as if He’s still there, frozen in place for a decade. I see the raised knife in His hands. I see His smudged glasses. Behind the lenses, His wide and uncomprehending eyes are full moons of fear.
Of me.
He was afraid of me.
He thought I was going to hurt him. That I’m the one who had killed the others.
I drop to my knees and gasp, inhaling dusty air, coughing.
“It wasn’t him,” I say between body-rattling coughs. “He didn’t do it.”
Tina swoops toward me, the knife lowered, now forgotten. She kneels in front of me and grips my arms tight. So tight it hurts.
“Are you sure?” Hope colors her words. A trembling, uncertain, pitiable hope. “Tell me you’re sure.”
“I’m sure.”
I now understand why we’re here. Why Tina sought out Lisa and me. She wanted me to remember everything, to prove His innocence, to declare once and for all that He didn’t do it.
It was all for him.
For Joe.
“I wanted to come with him,” Tina says. “I wanted to run away. Together. But he told me to stay. Even after I followed him down the hall to that broken door. He said he’d come back for me. So I stayed behind. Then they told me he was dead. That he’d killed a bunch of kids. But I knew he didn’t do it.”
“I didn’t know,” I say. “I truly thought it was him.”
“So who did it? Who killed them?”
Disbelief rises like bile in my throat. I cough again, trying to dislodge it. “Someone else.”
“You?” she asks. “Was it you, Quinn?”
God knows she has every right to think that. I’d forgotten so much. And she’s seen me angry. That was her goal, after all. To poke me, get me mad, see what I’m capable of. I didn’t disappoint.
“No,” I say. “I swear, it wasn’t me.”
“Then who?”
I shake my head. I’m breathless, exhausted.
“I don’t know.”
But I do. At least, I think I do. Another memory arrives. A straggler. It’s a memory of me running through the woods, seeing something else.
Someone else.
“You’re remembering something,” Tina says.
I nod. I close my eyes. I think. I think until my head throbs.
And then I see it, as vibrant as the day it happened. I’m running through the woods, screaming, that branch all but punching me in the face. I see headlights. I see a man silhouetted in the brightness.
A cop. I see his uniform.
It’s covered with something dark and wet. In the dim moonlight, it almost looks like he’s been smeared with motor oil. Yet I know that’s not the case. Even as I run toward him, I know his uniform is covered with blood.
My blood. Janelle’s blood. Everyone’s blood.
But I’m too scared to think clearly. Especially with Joe somewhere in the woods behind me. Chasing me. The taste of his lips still on mine.
So I make a beeline toward the cop, embracing him, pressing my dress to his uniform.
Blood against blood.
They’re dead, I gasp. They’re all dead. And he’s still out here.
And suddenly Joe’s there, bursting through the trees. The cop draws his gun and fires off three shots. Two in the chest, one in the head. As loud in memory as they were in real life.
I hear a fourth shot.
Louder than memory.
Definitely real life.
It blasts through the cabin, vibrating off the walls. The energy of the bullet streaks from the open door into Pine Cottage. It has a presence, a force that fills the room.
A splatter of hot liquid hits my face.
I shriek when I feel it, my eyes flying open to see Tina slumping onto her side. One of her hands flings outward past her head, knuckles against the floor, knife skittering from her grip. A thin pool of blood starts to roll out from under her, spreading fast.
She’s not moving. I’m not even sure she’s still breathing.
“Tina?” I say, shaking her. “Tina?”
Noise drifts from the doorway. Someone breathing. I look up and see Coop standing there. Even in the darkness, I can make out the glint of his blue eyes as he lowers the gun.
“Quincy,” he says with a nod.
There’s always a nod.
CHAPTER 43
I notice the ring immediately. The red class ring he wears in place of a wedding band. It’s familiar, yet foreign. I’ve seen it so many times that I’ve come to not see it. Taken it for granted, like so many other things about Coop.
That’s why I didn’t recognize it when I saw it in that photograph on Lisa Milner’s dresser. Coop’s face wasn’t in the picture. It was just his hand thrown over Lisa’s shoulder, the ring right there, visible yet not.
But now it’s all I see, worn on the same hand that holds his Glock. Although the gun is lowered, his index finger continues to twitch against the trigger.
“Are you hurt?” he asks.
“No.”
“Good,” Coop says. “That’s real good, Quincy.”
He takes another step closer, his long legs covering twice the distance of a normal stride. One more step and he’s right beside us, towering over Tina and me. Or maybe it’s just me now. Tina’s likely dead already. I can’t tell.
Coop gives the knife near Tina’s hand a rough kick, sending it sliding into a distant corner where it’s swallowed by the shadows.
There’s no point in trying to run. Coop’s finger never leaves that trigger. One shot is all it would take to put me down. Just like Tina. I’m not sure I even can run. Grief and pills and the weight of remembering that night have left me numb.
“For a few years there in the beginning, I always wondered how much you knew,” Coop says. “When you asked to see me in the hospital that day, I thought you were toying with me. That you wanted me to be there when you told the detectives you remembered everything. I almost didn’t come.”
“Why did you?”
“Because I think I loved you even then.”
I sway slightly, dizzy from disgust. When I drift too far to the left, Coop tightens his finger around the trigger. I force myself to stop moving.
“How many were there?” I ask. “Before that night?”
“Three.”
There’s no hesitation. He says it with the same ease in which he orders his coffee. I was hoping for at least a pause.
Three. The strangled woman on the side of the road and the two campers stabbed in their tent. All of them were mentioned in the article I found at Lisa’s house. I think she knew what happened to them. I think she died because of it.
“It’s a sickness,” Coops says. “You need to know that, Quincy. I never wanted to do those things.”
I sob. When snot starts leaking from my nose, I don’t bother to wipe it away. “Then why did you?”
“I’ve spent my whole life in these woods. Hiking, hunting, doing things I was too young to be doing. I lost my virginity on that big rock up on the hill.” Coop cringes at the memory, hating himself. “She was the school slut. Willing to do it with anyone. Even me. When it was over, I puked in the bushes. Christ, I was ashamed of what I’d done. So ashamed that I thought about snapping her neck right there on that rock, just so she wouldn’t tell anyone. It was only fear of getting caught that kept me from doing it.”
I shake my head and put a hand to my temple. With every word, a piece of my heart breaks off and falls away.
“Please stop.”
Coop keeps talking, his words carrying the relieved rush of confession.