The Cold Nowhere

58

‘Stride!’

Ken McCarty’s voice boomed through the graffiti graveyard, calling him closer. The shout came from below, fifty yards away, in the belly of the creek. Stride ran through the snow, dodging the concrete pillars. When he reached the creekside wall, he crouched and switched on his own flashlight, expecting a bullet over his head.

Nothing happened.

He left the flashlight on top of the wall and crab-walked ten feet, where a rusted set of bedsprings was propped against the stone. He pushed himself up on the metal frame, high enough to swing his torso over the top of the wall and point his gun down toward the water.

Ken stood in the ankle-deep creek. The light captured his cocky grin, which hadn’t changed since he was a baby cop. He stood behind Serena with one muscular forearm locked around her throat. His other hand held a gun against her temple. Three feet behind him, Cat and Brooke stood in frozen silence.

‘It’s been a long time, Lieutenant,’ Ken called.

‘Let her go, Ken,’ Stride said. ‘Let her go, and put the gun down.’

‘I don’t think so.’

Stride didn’t have a shot, and Ken knew it. Half the cop’s face was hidden behind Serena. He saw Serena struggling to breathe as Ken’s grip choked off her air.

‘Ken, you know it’s over. The police are surrounding this area right now. You’re not going anywhere. If you want to stay alive, let her go, and drop the gun.’

Ken jammed the gun into Serena’s face and she struggled in his grasp. ‘Actually, Lieutenant, my odds just got better. I have a hostage. Someone you care about. I don’t think you’re going to let anything happen to her.’

‘You’re not walking out of here.’

‘No? Then shoot me. Go ahead, take the shot. I hope you’ve spent time on the range lately. It’s dark. The angle’s bad. Chances are, you blow your girlfriend’s head off instead of mine. Are you willing to take that risk? I’d hate to think of you grieving about it the rest of your life. How many women are you willing to lose, Stride?’

Stride said nothing. They both heard sirens on the streets outside the graveyard.

‘They’re coming for you, Ken.’

‘Then get on the radio and tell them to back off! Serena and I are getting out of here right now. No cops, no guns. If I die, she dies in the crossfire.’

‘Where do you think you’re going to go?’ Stride asked. ‘You won’t last a day on the run.’

‘I got away for ten years, Stride. I’ll get away for ten more. I don’t need much of a head start. Let me go and I’ll release Serena when I’m safe.’

‘That’s not going to happen,’ Stride said.

‘Then you better shoot me.’

Stride’s hand tensed on his gun. He saw Ken’s forehead lined up in his sights, but the cop’s body jerked, going in and out of focus. It was too dark, too far, too cold. Serena’s green eyes gleamed in the light, and he knew she wanted him to shoot. She’d wrench away and give him a split-second, but he couldn’t do it. He tried to tell her with his eyes. No.

Ken took a step and pushed Serena forward with him. She was going to bolt; she was going to wrestle away. The ice crushed into white frost. Stride had to make a choice.

‘Stop!’ he called.

‘I’m getting out,’ Ken said. ‘Keep your girlfriend alive and let me go.’

Stride aimed the gun again. His finger slid on the trigger. As he searched for a moment to fire, he spotted movement in the shadows directly behind Ken. His eyes flicked to Cat and saw the girl’s face wrenched with emotion. Tears ran down her face. Her mouth was slack with fury and horror.

As Stride watched, Cat knelt down and slid her hand into her boot. She came out holding a knife.

STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP.

No no no no … oh God … oh God …

Please … I’m dying … I’m dying …

Cat clutched the knife in her hand. She could hear her mother’s voice ringing out in agony, as clear as it had been that night. Even when she’d clasped her hands over her ears to drown it out, she could still hear it. The knife going in and out of her body. Her mother. Crying. Bleeding. Dying.

This man caused it. This man standing in front of her. This man took them all away. Her mother. Her father. Dory. Now he was holding Serena. He was going to take her away, too.

She couldn’t let it happen. She had to stop it. Please, Mother, give me the strength to stop it. All she had to do was stab him. Raise her arm, drive the knife down, penetrate his flesh, take away his life. Pay him back for what he’d done, plunge in the blade over and over and over and over the way he deserved. It would be so easy, so right. Kill him. Stab him.

Cat could see the dimple in his back, underneath his neck, where she would strike him first. Blood would spurt. She’d seen it before. He would cry in pain, and she would have no mercy. She would pull the knife out, slash again, pull the knife out, slash again, pull the knife out, slash again. She would count. Ten times, twenty times, thirty times, forty times, until the black creek was red with his blood.

Raise her arm, drive the knife down, penetrate his flesh. Mother, make me strong.

Michaela was silent from the grave. Cat realized she was calling out to the wrong parent. It was her father who would guide her, her father who would teach her to be brutal and ruthless, to call out the devil in her soul. Marty Gamble wouldn’t hesitate to do what had to be done. He would take the knife and cast out every weak emotion and rain down death and pain and blood.

I must stop him, Father. Show me how.

Mother, forgive me.

But it didn’t matter how long Cat stood there. She couldn’t do it. She stood paralyzed, wracked by trembling, the knife quivering in her fingers, and she couldn’t do it. She told her arm to move, and it wouldn’t move. No matter how much she wanted to, no matter how much she needed to, she couldn’t lift the knife; she couldn’t sink it in another person’s body. This man, this murderer, was going to get away because she was weak.

Cat felt cool fingers on her hand, the hand that held the knife.

It was Brooke Hahne, standing beside her. Brooke’s eyes were calm and determined.

She peeled the knife away from Cat’s hand and in a single motion, a graceful arc, she buried the blade to the hilt in Ken McCarty’s neck.





59

It happened fast, and it happened slowly.

Ken howled in pain, and his body spasmed as the knife sliced through his nerve endings and severed his artery. Blood erupted. A red fountain. The arm he held around Serena’s neck gave way, and she spun out of his grasp. She slipped on the ice and went to her knees. Ken swayed, his gun arm shot skyward, but as he collapsed against the wall, the gun was still locked in his hand.

A mortal threat.

Stride saw it happening and couldn’t stop it. He shouted. He screamed. He took a shot himself in the same split-second, but his bullet struck the wall above Ken McCarty’s head and ricocheted harmlessly up into the cross-beams of the freeway.

He heard the wind. He heard cars racing.

His flashlight beam lit up Ken’s drunken dance and glinted on the metal of the gun, and the gun danced, too, danced and swung. With the tiniest twitch of Ken’s finger, it fired. The gun spat flame. The shot was like a bomb.

The bullet drove into Serena.

*

Flashbacks.

Stride didn’t remember throwing himself over the wall into the creek. He knelt over Serena and saw the faces of the other women he’d lost, as if they lay beside her. He was at their death beds, when it was too late to change anything, when they were already out of his grasp.

‘Michaela.’

His finger in the blood of her neck. No pulse.

‘Michaela!’

His voice choked and ragged.

Her eyes closed, angelic. He put his hands on her cheeks; they were still warm, as if life had only just left them. Minutes earlier, she’d begged for his help, but in the time it took to reach her, he was already too late. He’d already failed her.

He was conscious of Ken McCarty limping toward the archway. He didn’t chase him. Ken had nowhere to go.

Serena was on her back. The dank, frozen water puddled around her. Her upper body was matted in blood, so much blood. More blood than one body should give up. Her eyes were open, but she was looking over his shoulder, at the angels, seeing visions of things to come.

‘Don’t look there,’ he told her. ‘Look into my eyes. Stay with me.’

‘Cindy.’

The shell of his beautiful wife.

He heard her breathing catch. Each breath was a labored effort. Each one came a little harder and a little farther apart.

Her lips moved. Cindy murmured something he didn’t understand. Stride leaned closer. The sight of her skin, and the smell of disease lingering on her body, crushed him. It wasn’t his battle to fight. He was a bystander in the worst event of his life.

She tried again. He tried to hear her.

‘It’s okay, Jonny.’

It was a whisper that didn’t sound like her at all. He didn’t understand. She couldn’t be telling him that everything was all right, because nothing was all right. But for an instant, he saw a glimmer in her eyes that reminded him of who she was.

She spoke again. It was a terrible effort.

‘It’s what I want now.’

He nodded. He could never accept it, but she could. She had to. There was no other choice.

He brushed his lips against hers. When he moved back, her eyes were closed again. The gasping, painful sound of her breath was gone, replaced by peaceful silence. The color left her face. He sat there, staring at her, and he found he could talk again. He told her how cold it was. He reminded her of that camping trip in the spring and how they had laughed together. He told her how beautiful she was and how much he loved her. He was still talking when the doctors came and led him away.

‘Serena, look at me,’ he begged her. ‘Look at me. Stay with me. Help’s coming. Help’s almost here.’

He leaned in, kissed her, stroked her wet, dirty hair in the creek.

‘I love you. Don’t go.’

*

Ken McCarty coughed. Blood flecked from his mouth. He didn’t have to make it far. His car was near the freeway where he’d crashed it. He still had that cabin near Solon Springs waiting for him. He could hide there while he healed.

He put a hand on the wall and it left a bloody print. It didn’t matter.

Outside the graffiti graveyard, the night looked darker than it had before, as if the darkness were in his eyes. The rocks on the slope under the freeway looked funny. He realized it was because he was on all fours. Crawling. The mud and snow squished through his fingers.

He coughed. Liquid dripped from his neck. More blood made little pearls dotting the rocks, like a spatter painting. It would be easier to sleep. Sleep here, rest here, then get in the car and head across the bridge into Wisconsin in the sunshine of the morning. Tomorrow. Tomorrow.

No. He had to keep going. He couldn’t wait for daylight.

Ken pushed himself to his feet, an effort that felt impossibly hard. He saw his car. The light post was on top of it. The doors were open. He could reach it; he could run; he could escape. He took a wobbly step and sank to his knees again. Something cold pressed into his head. It was a feathery touch, but it nearly knocked him over. The barrel of a gun.

‘Hello, Ken,’ Maggie said.

Somewhere behind her, he saw flashing lights. He heard sirens. Police cars. Fire trucks. Ambulances. People running. People hurrying past him into the graffiti graveyard. Shouts. Radios.

‘I was hoping to shoot you but it doesn’t look like I need to bother,’ she told him.

‘Huh?’ Nothing made sense now.

‘You have a knife sticking out of your neck,’ she explained. ‘Looks like it got your carotid. Payback’s a bitch.’

‘Think I’m dying,’ he said.

‘I think so.’

‘Help me.’

‘Not much to help, Ken.’

‘Come with me.’

‘Not where you’re going.’

*

‘Serena,’ Stride said.

He saw the lights and heard the stampede of boots. They were coming for her.

‘Serena,’ he repeated.

She didn’t answer. She was still looking beyond him, as if she could see things that living persons shouldn’t see. He wanted her frozen green eyes to move. He wanted her to see him kneeling over her.

‘Don’t you dare leave me,’ he told her.

Brooke Hahne sat in the dirty, icy water six feet away. She shivered uncontrollably, her knees pressed together. Her fists were clenched in front of her face. She didn’t say a word; there was nothing to say, even though she had led them here to this place. He wanted to hate her, and he couldn’t.

Cat knelt beside him. Their eyes met, and in that moment she might as well have been his own daughter. His own flesh. He loved her; he needed her. The girl took his hand and squeezed it fiercely. She pulled Serena’s hand out of the water and clutched it, too, like a chain among the three of them. Cat’s eyes closed. Her head tilted toward an invisible sky.

He heard her murmuring, praying, over and over, the same words.

‘Do not take her, do not take her, do not take her, do not take her, do not take her, do not take her.’

The medics were on top of them. They moved to gently push them away.

Stride took Serena’s other hand as they gathered around her. He and Cat held onto her, refusing to let go, as if blood and warmth could pass through their bodies. He prayed, too. The same words, aloud, in unison. Do not take her. Not after Michaela. Not after Cindy. There could be no more loss.

He held his breath, and out of nothingness something changed, like a miracle happening. He saw her eyes shift, finding his face, recognizing him again. She turned away from the angels and let them go.

There was life in her hand.





60

‘You know what would go great on this pizza?’ Cat said. ‘Peanut butter.’

Stride stared across the dining room table in disbelief. ‘You really are pregnant, aren’t you?’

Cat skipped into the kitchen in her socks. She came back with a jar of peanut butter and a knife and spread a dollop onto one of the tiny squares. When she popped it in her mouth, she rolled her eyes. ‘Oh, yeah. You really have to try this.’

‘I’ll pass,’ Stride said.

Serena laughed at the two of them, but she paid the price, wincing as pain jolted her chest. She smiled anyway. ‘You see, Cat, you’re violating the purity of a Sammy’s sausage pizza. For Jonny, that’s like painting a mustache on the Mona Lisa.’

Cat held out the jar to Serena with questioning eyes, but Serena shook her head. The girl shrugged and tossed her hair back, and she wagged a finger at them. ‘You guys don’t know what you’re missing.’

She hummed as she adorned more of the pizza, but Stride knew that her cheerfulness was an act. She was nervous and scared; he could see it in the little darts from her brown eyes as she tried to read their faces. He’d already told her that the two of them needed to talk to her. There wasn’t much pizza left now, and she was busy pretending that she didn’t have a care in the world.

‘So the car guy,’ Cat said. ‘He’s history, huh?’

Stride nodded. ‘Lenny resigned from the Council today.’

‘Rich men don’t go to jail.’

‘No, probably not,’ Stride admitted. ‘He’s got lawyers, money and leverage. He’ll probably walk.’

‘He kept his mouth shut back then. He should pay.’

‘He should. We’ll see. If we get him for anything, it’ll be his connection to this upscale prostitution ring in the city. We think Steve was right about that. We’re still digging into it.’

‘I heard about Brooke, too,’ Cat said. ‘That’s bad, huh?’

‘It could be worse,’ Stride said.

‘I guess.’

Three weeks had passed since the events at the graffiti graveyard. Serena had spent a week in the hospital, but the bullet had spared her major organs. The immediate danger of blood loss had passed after treatment on the first night in intensive care, and the lingering effect now was mostly the pain of broken ribs and torn muscles. She wasn’t moving well; she would be out of work for at least two more months.

For Brooke Hahne, it had been three weeks of behind-closed-door legal maneuvering.

‘If she’d gone to court, she would have faced multiple counts of first degree murder,’ Stride went on. ‘That’s life without parole. As it is, they pled her down to murder two because she wasn’t personally responsible for any of the homicides. She’ll still spend twenty-five years behind bars.’

‘I don’t know how I feel about that,’ Cat said. ‘She saved my life.’

‘But not before putting it in danger,’ Serena pointed out.

Cat nodded. ‘Yeah.’

‘Listen,’ Stride said.

The girl’s knee bounced nervously under the table. ‘Yeah?’

‘We need to talk about someplace for you to live,’ Stride said. ‘It’s been more than a month.’

‘I know.’ Cat played with a piece of pizza on her plate, pushing it back and forth with her fingertip. ‘Hey, it’s been fun. I’m really grateful. You’ll never know how much.’

‘You need somewhere permanent,’ Stride said. ‘You deserve more than a temporary solution.’

‘Yeah, I get it.’ She got off the chair with a shrug that belied her sadness. ‘Foster parents, huh? I know how the system works. I guess I better go pack. So where’s it going to be? Who are they?’

‘Cat, I want you to stay here with me,’ Stride told her.

She stopped. ‘With you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Really?’

‘Really. If you want to, that is.’

The girl shoved her hands in her pockets. ‘Why, because you feel guilty about my mother?’

‘No. That wouldn’t change how I feel at all.’

‘Then why?’

‘Because the more I thought about you being somewhere else, the more I realized I wanted you here,’ Stride said.

Cat sat down again. ‘For how long? A few months?’

‘As long as you need to stay. Until you’re an adult and on your own. I want to be your new legal guardian.’

‘I’m going to have a baby. It’s going to be crazy.’

‘Probably,’ he said.

‘A cop with a teenage hooker? How will that look?’

‘I don’t care how it looks.’

She didn’t want to smile. He realized that, to her, it felt like a candy cane on a string, and when she reached for it, someone would pull it away. Her eyes went back and forth between him and Serena. ‘You two are getting back together. I’ll be in the way. You don’t want me here.’

‘We both want you here,’ Serena said. ‘We talked about it.’

‘Will you stay here, too?’

‘I thought I’d stick around while I recuperate,’ Serena said, winking. ‘It’s easier than going back and forth to Grand Rapids. You and I can get to know each other better. When you’re not in school or doing homework, that is. Besides, if you and Jonny were alone here, all you’d ever eat is Sammy’s pizza.’

‘You say that like it’s a bad thing,’ Stride said.

Cat giggled. She couldn’t hold it back anymore. She smiled. It was the smile he remembered from the first night, as glorious as a sunrise. ‘Well, maybe I could stay for a little while,’ she said.

She got up and began to clear the table, stacking the plates, making a clatter of china and silver. As he watched her in the kitchen, he felt Serena watching him. He had no idea if he was ready to have a teenager in the house. And then a baby, like an instant family. He and Serena hadn’t even talked about each other yet and where their own relationship was going. There was time for that. He only knew that it felt right, the way it did when you examined a missing puzzle piece from every angle and finally found the one that fit.

As much as Cat needed someone in her life, he thought he needed her more.

When Cat finished the dishes, she came over to him, drying her hands on a kitchen towel. ‘I thought I’d go for a walk on the beach, if that’s okay,’ she said. ‘It’s safe to do that now, right?’

Stride glanced at Serena, who couldn’t hide a tiny grin. From this moment forward, every day would test his limits. It was odd how quickly he could think like a parent and a cop at the same time. The evening was dark, and there were monsters outside. Always monsters.

‘It’s safe,’ he told her, ‘but be back in an hour.’