Free Malice by Robert Cote Page B

talking about a plan made it sound less foolhardy. Sometimes talking was all some people ever did. This was no pipe dream, he reminded himself for the zillionth time.
    Samantha’s face grew warm. “Why didn’t you say anything before?”
    “What would it have changed? I have to go. If the cops wanna come after me, fine, but I’d be willing to bet I can outrun ‘em.”
    The smile on Derek’s face waned, and it filled Samantha with despair.
    “Who knows? Maybe I’ll be back someday, riding into town on a custom-made chopper.”
    Derek turned to leave and then stopped, remembering something. “When you see Lysander, tell him to watch out for Chad’s left hook.” Derek threw a clenched fist into the air. “He always starts with a fake from his right. Always.” He winked.
    Samantha’s mouth had tightened into a thin line. Part of her felt like hitting him for running way like a coward.
    Derek took her by the shoulders. “You’re my special girl,” he told her and watched as her face hardened. “Always will be, Sam. Stop building walls around yourself, or you’re gonna become a crotchety old lady.” They hugged.
    He handed her a flashlight. “Won’t be needing this anymore.” Sam took it and tossed it on the bed. “Oh, and I nearly forgot.” He produced a weathered scrapbook. “Found this at the McMurphy house, up in one of the bedrooms.”
    She took it from him carefully, turning over the first few pages. She stopped with a jolt. “Derek!”
    “Yeah, it belonged to whatshisface.”
    “Which room did you find this in?”
    “One of the rooms upstairs. Spooked me right out of my skin.”
    She leafed through the pages, her mind returning to the police report.
    Upstairs, in one of the bedrooms we found the remains of James McMurphy .
    A picture tumbled from the journal and fell to her feet. She picked it up and studied it. Two men in suits were standing side by side, shaking hands, their faces beaming. Behind them rose Millingham High School, looking new.
    As she stared at the faces of the two men, the flesh at the base of her neck began to tingle. In her mind’s eye, an axe came swinging through the air, thudding into the fleshy side of a neck, severing an artery. Blood splashed everywhere. The wound was large, and blood jetted out in a great torrent. Now the man on the left was smiling. He was looking right at her, his eyes burning with hatred. A trick of the light, she thought nervously. She snapped her eyes shut, but when she opened them again, the picture was worse. The man on the right had a shotgun in his mouth, his lips stretched wide around the barrel, his eyes staring blankly. On the left, the other man’s grin had grown wider still, and his arm was now draped over the man with the shotgun: old friends at a Sunday picnic.
    “Oh Derek, you gotta see this.”
    He took the picture from her. “Yup,” he said, bringing it closer. “The guy on the right looks like James McMurphy. There’s a picture of him at school.”
    She snatched the old photograph out of his hands. In it two young men were smiling and shaking hands in front of Millingham High, just as she had seen at first.
    “Sam, your hands, they’re trembling.”
    She looked down at her hands. They were trembling. She went to the door, closed a hand around the knob and shut herself in, only dimly aware that a terrible evil was closing in; born and festering from a time long before she had ever come to the world as Samantha Crow.
    Outside, the wind blew up, twirling dead leaves in the air and whipping them against the house, as though they were searching for a way in.

Chapter 15
     
     
    At first Alex thought he had just walked into a funhouse. Old furniture, weird animal bones.
    He turned toward the living room, and the odor of decaying flesh hit him like a shot to the gut. He held a sweaty palm up to his nose. His eyes watered. A man in white overalls was taking pictures of something behind the couch. He approached, walking through a