near her box of Band-Aids. Closing the cabinet, she saw a face, shadowy and dark in the mirror.
Dropping the tube, she started to scream, just as strong hands caught her from behind, fingers digging deep into her throat, forcing her Adam’s apple backward, cutting off her air. She flailed frantically, wildly, striking backward, her hands glancing off her attacker’s head and body. She tried to kick but missed.
The world turned blacker.
Her lungs felt as if they would burst.
She felt the heat build in her head, and her hands scrabbled and clawed at the gloved hands surrounding her neck, cutting off her air. Oh, God, she was going to die! This monster was trying to kill her. Frantically, she struggled, knocking over bottles and cans on the counter.
Crash! A glass candle smashed against the tiles of the floor.
Why? she silently cried, and desperately wished she had a weapon—a knife or a towel bar or a lamp or anything! The fire in her lungs became unbearable.
She couldn’t die like this!
Not single, with no children! This wasn’t how it was supposed to happen! In the darkened room she struggled, but more slowly, her reactions slowing, the world spinning.
In the mirror, her gaze met that of her attacker. She saw the cold, hard hatred in soulless eyes . . . eyes she recognized, despite the pathetic disguise of a long, black wig.
Why? she asked herself again, just as the tightness on her throat lessened and she drew in a minuscule amount of air. Light-headed, she couldn’t fight, tried and failed to stand and nearly toppled against the counter. In the mirror, she saw her assailant withdraw a knife from a jacket pocket.
She stumbled, tried to get away.
Too late!
Sharp and gleaming, the blade flashed in the mirror.
Quickly.
Across her throat.
She gasped.
Tried to scream.
Watched in horror as the spray of her own blood spattered the mirror crimson, red drops drizzling down the glass to obscure the malevolent smile of her killer.
CHAPTER 38
Fully clothed and still lying atop her bed, Ava awoke with a start. Her heart jolted, a spurt of adrenaline rushing into her blood. Something had woken her. Something out of the ordinary, something that wasn’t right.
Then it came again. A sound as plaintive and heart-wrenching as any she had ever known. “Mama . . . Maaamaaa!” and then the sad, frightened sobs of her son echoing down the hallways.
“Son of a bitch,” she whispered between clenched teeth.
She threw back the covers and, in stocking feet, crept to the window. Half expecting to see her son on the dock, she stared outside to only darkness and the whitecaps, frothy and visible on the water. But no Noah. That image of him in his little sweatshirt on the dock was of her own making, the product of a desperate, broken mind, aided by the hallucinogens in her medication.
Evelyn McPherson had insisted she continue the use of the drugs and her own physician had agreed. “Bitch,” she muttered as Noah’s voice rang through the hallway. Couldn’t anyone else hear him? Why only her?
Outside the room, in the corridor, his voice whispered to her, and she realized for the first time it wasn’t that loud, that only someone in the rooms nearby would hear the soft, frightened cries of her child.
She started toward Noah’s room.
From the first floor, the grandfather clock bonged loudly, causing her to jump as it chimed the half hour. And then the cries stopped. Abruptly. The house again growing quiet. Seemingly empty.
But someone was up.
Someone had to be!
Before she went banging on doors, making wild accusations, Ava returned to her room, found the receiver for her equipment in her purse, jammed the connection into her computer, and as her heart counted off the seconds of her life, she saw an image appear on the screen.
Big as life, in black and white, Ava witnessed her “handicapped” cousin Jewel-Anne pull herself out of her wheelchair and, using her arms while dragging her feet and moving awkwardly, haul herself up the rickety stairs. She disappeared from view for a while, then appeared again later, on the screen from a different camera, the one in the room with the hatbox. Using handholds in the closet, hooks used to hang clothes in bygone years, Jewel-Anne hauled herself to her feet, retrieved the box and equipment inside, and then, humming Elvis’s “Suspicious Minds,” reset her machine.
“You’re right, you bitch,” Ava said to the screen where Jewel-Anne was caught replacing the suitcase from the sixties with the equipment inside. “You are definitely