Endings by Linda Richards (e ink manga reader txt) 📕

“They’re down at the waterfront. There’s a house there. Near the pier. We got a tip.” He’s talking between clenched teeth, while he searches through Atwater’s pockets, a disgusted look on his face. I recognize the look. I’d been in that position before.

“Got it!” I recognize the triumph in his voice, too.

“How come you’re here?” I ask.

“We got another tip. Some kid at a gas station called it in. It felt right.”

It seems to me Atwater is beginning to stir. Not dead, after all. I feel relief and despair, all in one gulp.

“He’s moving! Hit him,” I hiss. Curtis looks a bit squeamish at this and I mime a hit theatrically. “Seriously. Grab the chair again. Bop him one. Now.”

“I might kill him.”

“Good,” I hiss.

Curtis looks at me with wide eyes, but Atwater is truly stirring now.

“Do it!”

And, finally—luckily before my head explodes—Curtis leans over and picks up the chair again, then hesitates.

“Right on the noggin. It’s okay. You can do it! I know you can.”

And this last bit of encouragement seems to do the trick, because Curtis grabs the chair even more firmly, hauls back a bit like he’s playing softball, closes his eyes, and brings it down on Atwater’s brow.

“Yes!”

For just a second, Curtis looks back at me like a kid who just got praised.

“Gosh, that was hard,” he says.

“I know,” I say.

I can see even from my position on the bed that the blow was not as hard as it looked. The chair was heavy enough to pulverize Atwater’s head. But I can see the rise and fall of his chest. Not pulverized.

Not dead yet.

Curtis has turned his attention to getting me out of the leg irons. Until they slide off, I have this awful feeling that it won’t work. That I’ll be stuck in them forever, even though that makes no sense.

“Ohmigawd,” I breathe when I’m free. “Thank you. You saved me. You’re my hero!”

Curtis laughs. I’m relieved to hear the sound.

“Are you kidding?” he says. “We saved each other.”

I bring my legs in front of me, rubbing the circulation back into them, feeling an echo of when I’d freed Emma—could it be?—just a few hours earlier.

“Now what?” Curtis says.

I’m saved from answering by the arrival of the team. We hear the van; hear the three of them clattering into the front hall. The shift in energy excites the dog. He pulls himself out from where he’s been hiding, gives a “woof” that sounds more like greeting than alarm, then skitters downstairs to meet the visitors.

I glance at Atwater, but it’s clear he’s still out cold, possibly worse. There have been a lot of hits on the noggin in the last while, I muse. I fully expect that, after what he’s been through, he might not ever rise again.

Downstairs, I am surprised at how good it is to clap eyes on this team again. The girl—whose name I’ve discovered is Juliet—looks so relieved to see us unhurt it’s almost comical.

I’m pleased by their arrival, but curious. “Why were you worried?” Of course she’d had reason to be, but she also had no way of knowing that.

“Just a feeling,” she says. “I can’t explain it. As we were driving up here, I just suddenly got the sense that he was here. And then here you both are. Somewhere in there, I just started fearing the worst.”

Curtis and I exchange a glance.

“Come upstairs,” Curtis instructs the team. “There’s something we have to show you.”

The two guys look mystified; Juliet just appears a little more apprehensive. As we go up the stairs, I even see her nibbling on her nails.

We troop up there together. Curtis and I in the lead. Juliet behind us with the two guys right behind her, shielding her back as I suspect they often do; tacitly. The dog brings up the rear, following us, his nails making soft clicking sounds on the wooden stairs.

In the bedroom at the end of the hall, Curtis and I stop so short the others nearly careen into us.

“What?” This is Rocky. But neither Curtis nor I say anything at first. There is nothing to say. Less than nothing.

William Atwater is gone.

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

I AM REELING. Of all the things I had been expecting, it was not this. I am without speech. Curtis is not.

“I can’t believe it.” He’s actually shaking his head. “Well, he can’t have gotten far.”

“What makes you think that?” Juliet asks.

“I thought he was dead.”

I still don’t say anything, even though I don’t think what he’s said is quite true. We never thought he was dead. Dead and as good as dead aren’t the same thing. The empty spot on the floor drives that home.

Curtis gives the team an abbreviated version of what happened, then they fan out to look for Atwater in a manner that is so efficient, if you hadn’t known they’d worked together on many occasions, you would now.

It’s Juliet who discovers how he managed to disappear: a back staircase. I am astonished. I had not considered that a house might have two staircases to the second floor. The back staircase is smaller and narrower than the one that leads up from the foyer. Dimmer and darker, too.

“Service staircase,” Curtis says, and I realize that makes sense: a path for the servants to take so the lords of the manor wouldn’t have to see them or interact.

So that explained how he could have gotten past us, but not where he’s gone, and I am aware of a sinking feeling. Like water through fingers. He’s slipped away again.

“Ideas?” Curtis asks.

“Don’t look at me. Look how often I’ve lost him.” And I can’t help it, but I know it sounds like I’m spitting up grapes that are sour.

“Maybe,” Curtis says. “But you also keep finding him. So, there’s that.”

It’s meant to be a comfort, but it does not comfort me. All of this energy. All of this focus. All this loss. Suddenly, all I feel is tired.

“I’m out