As the couple blurted words he hardly heard, he tried to hold the weapon steady. This took all his effort. After days of being chained to a bed, he was weak as a bird. Even the climb up the stairs had been a chore. The gun was weaving.
“No, please no!” someone cried, the man or the woman. He couldn’t tell. He was confused, disoriented by the glaring light. It stung his eyes. Travis aimed at the man and woman, but still, he kept wondering: Who are they, Donald and Lily? In the basement the man had said, “Look at them like characters in that game you play. DimensionQuest. Donald and Lily’re only avatars, nothing more than that.”
But these people sobbing in front of him weren’t avatars. They were real.
And they seemed to be his captor’s friends — at least in their minds. “What’s going on? Please, don’t hurt us.” From Lily. “James, please!”
But the man — James, it seemed — just kept his eyes, cool eyes, on Travis. “Go ahead. Shoot!”
“James, no! What are you saying?”
Travis steadied the gun, pointing it at Donald. He pulled back the hammer.
Lily screamed.
And then something in Travis’s mind clicked.
James?
The boy from the blog.
Roadside Crosses.
Travis blinked. “James Chilton?” Was this the blogger?
“Travis,” the captor said firmly, stepping behind him, pulling another gun from his back pocket. He touched it to Travis’s head. “Go ahead and do it. I told you not to say anything, don’t ask questions. Just shoot!”
Travis asked Donald, “He’s James Chilton?”
“Yes,” the man whispered.
What, Travis wondered, was going on here?
Chilton shoved the gun harder into Travis’s skull. It hurt. “Do it. Do it, or you’ll die. And your family will die.”
The boy lowered the gun. He shook his head. “You don’t have any friends at my house. You were lying to me. You’re doing this alone.”
“If you don’t do it, I’ll kill you and then go to their house and kill them. I swear I will.”
Hawken cried, “Jim! Is this… for God’s sake, what is this?”
Lily cried uncontrollably.
Travis Brigham understood now. Shoot them or not, he was dead. His family would be all right; Chilton had no interest in them. But he was dead. A faint laugh eased from his throat and he felt tears sting eyes already stinging from the sunlight.
He thought of Caitlin, her beautiful eyes and smile.
Thought of his mother.
Thought of Sammy.
And of all the terrible things that people had said about him in the blog.
Yet he’d done nothing wrong. His life was about nothing more than trying to get through school as best he could, to play a game that made him happy, to spend some time with his brother and look after the boy, to meet a girl who wouldn’t mind that he was a geek with troubled skin. Travis had never in his life hurt anybody intentionally, never dissed anyone, never posted a bad word about them.
And the whole world had attacked him.
Who’d care if he killed himself?
Nobody.
So Travis did the only thing he could. He lifted the gun to his own chin.
Look at the luser, his life is epic FAIL!!!
Travis’s finger slipped around the trigger of the gun. He began to squeeze.
The explosion was fiercely loud. Windows shook, acrid smoke filled the room, and a delicate porcelain cat tumbled from the mantelpiece and shattered on the hearth into dozens of pieces.
Chapter 43
KATHRYN DANCE’S CAR turned onto the long dirt driveway that led to James Chilton’s vacation house in Hollister.
She was reflecting on how wrong she’d been.
Greg Schaeffer wasn’t the Roadside Cross killer.
Everyone else had been misled too but Dance took no solace from that. She’d been content to assume that Schaeffer was the guilty party and that he’d killed Travis Brigham. With the man dead, there’d be no more attacks.
Wrong…
Her phone rang. She wondered who was calling, but decided it was best not to look at Caller ID as she wove up the serpentine drive, with drop-offs on either side.
Another fifty yards.
She saw the home ahead of her, a rambling old farmhouse that would have looked in place in Kansas if not for the substantial hills surrounding it. The yard was scruffy, filled with untended patches of grass, gray broken branches, overgrown gardens. She would have thought that James Chilton would have a nicer vacation home, considering the inheritance from his father-in-law and his beautiful house in Carmel.
Even in the sun, the place exuded a sense of eeriness.
But that was, of course, because Dance knew what had happened inside.
How could I have read everything so wrong?
The road straightened and she continued on. She fished the phone off the seat and looked at the screen. Jonathan Boling had called. But the message flag wasn’t up. She debated hitting “Last Received Call.” But instead picked Michael O’Neil’s speed-dial button. After four rings it went to voice mail.
Maybe he was on the Other Case.
Or maybe he was talking to his wife, Anne.
Dance tossed the phone onto the passenger seat.
As she pulled close to the house, Dance counted a half dozen police cars. Two ambulances as well.
The San Benito County sheriff, whom she’d worked with regularly, saw her and motioned her forward. Several officers stepped aside, and she drove over the uneven grass to where the sheriff was standing.
She saw where Travis Brigham lay on a gurney, his face covered.
Dance slammed the gearshift into park and climbed out, then walked quickly toward the boy. She noted his bare feet, the welts on his ankle, his pale skin.
“Travis,” she whispered.
The boy jerked, as if she’d awakened him from a deep sleep.
He lifted the damp cloth and ice pack off his bruised face. He blinked and focused his eyes on her. “Oh, uh, Officer… I, like, can’t remember your name.”
“Dance.”
“Sorry.” He sounded genuinely contrite at the social slip.
“Not a problem at all.” Kathryn Dance hugged the boy hard.
THE BOY WOULD be fine, the medic explained.