Ultimate Supernatural Horror Box Set

Chapter 40

The sky over the gas station parking lot where Sophie sat with the engine cooling was just beginning to brighten into a flat gray. She ended her fourth and final call to Paige’s cell and let her head fall back against the headrest. Like every other attempt, straight to voice mail.

—Where are you? An APB went out half an hour ago, and a van fitting the description was just spotted in Bothell. I’m on my way. Call me.

—Almost to Bothell. Call me.

—I’m pulling into the gas station where the van was spotted. Where are you?

She had gotten the clerk inside to replay the footage—van pulls up to the pump, glare on the windshield too severe to ID who’s at the wheel, but Vincent—unmistakable—exits from the sliding passenger door five seconds later. He walks around the hood of the van and stops in front of the pump where he digs a card out of his wallet and feeds it to the machine. Three unbearable minutes of waiting while he gasses up, the man staring dead into the camera the entire time. Finally, he caps the tank, returns the nozzle, and climbs inside. A few seconds later, the van rolls out of frame.

From the angle of the camera, it was impossible to tell which direction they had turned as the van left the parking lot, and no amount of coaxing could jog the cashier’s memory.

Sophie had spent the next forty-five minutes canvassing the area, checking motel parking lots, restaurants, and drive-thrus, her strategy ultimately disintegrating into blind Hail Mary turns down empty side streets.

She’d finally pulled back into the gas station and parked in the spot where she now sat, staring up at the ceiling of her car as if someone had scrawled the answers there.

Sophie shut her eyes.

The rain had tapered off into drizzle again, padding softly against the windshield.

Her phone rang beside her in her passenger seat.

She grabbed it.

Not Grant.

Officer Silver.

She answered, “Hey, Bobby.”

“I’m just leaving the brownstone in Queen Anne.”

“And?”

“Nobody home.”

Sophie’s heart lurched.

“You’re sure?”

“Empty as the warm, comfy spot beside my wife where I was soundly sleeping thirty minutes ago.”

“Did you go inside?”

“No. Just banged on the front door and then peered through the windows. Lights are on downstairs but it’s a ghost town.”

Sophie exhaled.

“Thanks, Bobby. I owe you big time for tonight. Apologize to Lynette for me.”

For a long beat, all she could hear was the acceleration of Bobby’s engine bleeding through the speaker.

She said, “You there, Bobby?”

“You know I got your back, right?”

“I know that.”

“There anything you want to tell me?”

She could feel the corners of her mouth beginning to quiver, her eyes blurring with tears. In this moment, there was nothing she wanted more in the world than to tell everything.

“Sophie?”

She squeezed the phone.

Steadied her voice as best she could.

“Everything’s fine. Go home, Bobby.”

The frequency of passing cars was increasing—early commuters heading toward the interstate to beat the rush into Seattle.

It felt like years since she’d seen her last clear day, one of those rare cloudless beauties when every horizon looms with mountains and the Puget sparkles and Rainier threatens to the south like the badass stratovolcano that it is.

What had she really seen, really experienced in Paige’s brownstone?

Grant had told her some whacked-out things. He’d certainly acted crazy.

But ...

What had she actually experienced that verified a goddamn thing?

A bad dream and a power surge.

That was it.

Hadn’t seen any creepy twin girls who wanted to play forever.

No one crawling across the ceiling.

There had been the phone video from Paige’s room, but it was just that. A video.

So let’s talk about what you did see. Something you could actually write down in a report that wouldn’t get you laughed at and fired ...

—Her partner had lied to her repeatedly about his whereabouts and absence.

—When she finally found him, Grant had overpowered her, taken her gun, cuffed her to a banister.

—She’d been held against her will in what was for all intents and purposes a modern-day bordello.

—A good man had died violently more than thirty hours ago in a bathroom upstairs, and her partner, as of yet, had failed to report his death, even to his wife.

—And when the shit really hit the fan with Art and their father at the asylum, brother and sister had vanished.

Yes, things had felt off inside the house, but now, with a little distance and perspective, the cold, dispassionate facts were rising out of the mire. And when it came time to sort things out—the actions of Paige’s clients, of Paige and Grant themselves, the death of Don—it was only those facts that would matter.

You covered for them, Sophie.

Lied for them.

And maybe she would’ve continued to. Maybe she would’ve extended her partner’s credit just a little longer, given him a chance to sort things out ... but for Don.

Don overshadowed all.

Because when you stripped everything away, the simple fact of the matter was that a good man was dead. And his memory, his wife, deserved an accounting.

She scrolled through contacts.

Sorry, Grant.

Pressed dial.

It only rang once, and the voice of the woman who answered sounded a far cry from the person Sophie knew.

All she said was, “Hello?” but it carried the ragged weariness of a soul in torment.

“Rachel?”

“Yes?”

“This is Sophie Benington.”

“Are you calling about Don?”

Sophie could feel the tears coming, the emotion dislodging in the center of her chest like a giant piece of ice calving off from her berg of grief.

“I’m afraid I am.”