Page 63

CHAPTER 63

I watched through the front window of Oddities as Poppy and Serena and Marley and Maggs all went into Melissa’s, heading for the basement, and I tried not to think what it must be like to be Serena right then. I hated her for what she’d done to Poppy, but even hate couldn’t smother the feeling of what she must be going through. Nobody should ever outlive her child. Even if you’d embraced violence as a way of life, that could never?—

“Hello, Rose,” somebody said from behind me, very calmly, and I turned, and there was Herc in my kitchen doorway. I was not surprised.

He didn’t have a gun pointed at me, so there was that. He was just leaning against the doorframe, his arms folded, completely relaxed. He still looked weird—too much plastic surgery at eighty makes you look embalmed, not young—but he got points for being so confident that he wasn’t waving a gun around.

“Where is Serena?” he asked. Politely.

“She just went across the street for a second,” I said. “She’ll be back. Maybe.”

“Why?”

“My daughter wanted her to see something.”

I started to edge toward the door, and he straightened, putting his hand inside his coat.

I knew that might be a fake, maybe he didn’t have a gun in there, but given his rep, I decided not to chance getting shot and stayed put.

“You have caused me a great deal of difficulty, Rosalie Malone,” he said, surveying me.

I nodded. “I’m very proud of that.”

“I wasn’t happy when you stole the microfilm?—”

“It wasn’t yours to take,” I said. “We found it here in the shop, and Ozzie left me everything in the building, so it was mine.”

“—but the real problem,” he went on smoothly, as if I hadn’t interrupted, “is what you did to Max.”

“Fed him lasagna?”

“Corrupted him,” Herc said. “He was the perfect weapon and you ruined him.”

The perfect weapon. He’d known Max for over thirty years, and that’s all he saw?

“A miscalculation,” Herc went on. “But I hadn’t realized you’d be a problem.” He cocked his head a little, as if puzzled. “You were nothing here for twenty years, and then suddenly you’re ruining everything.”

“Nineteen years,” I said. “And I was never nothing. And Max was never just a weapon.”

“He thought he was,” Herc said. “He was what I needed him to be. That’s all that counts.”

I don’t think I’ve ever hated anyone as much as I hated Herc in that moment. He’d taken an abused teenager and turned him into a killing machine, and even then he couldn’t erase the sweet, caring man inside, waiting for somebody to value him, even if Max hadn’t realized that was what he was.

I wasn’t the only one who’d been waiting for a real life for decades.

“He’s a good man in a good place now,” I said, not adding “with a good woman who will protect him no matter what” because I knew Herc would just sneer. “He’s not yours anymore.”

Herc did sneer then. “You think he’s yours?” He shook his head.

“Hey, he put his ass on the line for me, Making you get rid of that warrant on me?—”

He laughed. “Oz asked me to do that years ago,” he said. “I didn't do it then, I didn't do it now.”

That hit home.

Of course Ozzie had asked him. Ozzie had taken care of me except for the important detail of telling me he had. Maybe he thought I’d leave if I knew, get in more trouble without him. That’s when I realized I was like Max, except the entity controlling my life had been Ozzie, and above him, Herc too, in a perverse way, because he’d controlled Rocky Start. I’d lived for others all my life, even if they were good others like Ozzie, protecting me.

No more.

It all came back to this snake in human skin standing in front of me. He’d destroyed so many lives. Twisted so many from who they should be.

Herc laughed. “How na?ve to worry about a twenty-year-old warrant. A speck in the big scheme of things. Just like you.”

“You were just saying what a pain in the ass I am,” I pointed out. “I can’t be both. Pick a lane, Herc.”

And that’s when I realized I had picked a lane, too, when I’d taken charge in Ecstasy with the other women. When I’d confronted Barry and run him out of town. When I’d decided we needed Jackie and now she was staying. I smiled, and for the first time there was a look on his face, a narrowing of the eyes.

He shrugged, trying to pretend it hadn’t happened. “No matter. Max is done. Along with Pike. Rocky Start is mine.”

“No,” I said. I held up my cellphone. “I came up with a plan. And it worked. Max just called me. Your men are prisoners. Dmitri still has the treasure. And Max is on his way back and he isn’t happy. Rocky Start is ours . You’re the speck.”

“Louise said you were a problem,” Herc said, shaking his head. “She was, too, but Barry took care of her. And he said you were a problem, but I took care of him. So now, I need to take care of you.”

His attention shifted, looking behind me, so I glanced over my shoulder. Luke’s minivan had come to a halt outside, appearing silently as if from nowhere, and the doors flew open.

I turned to see Max running toward the door, Luke right behind him, and Herc said, “Well, I guess we’re going to find out,” which is when he pulled a submachine gun out from under his coat and aimed it at me.

Max came bursting through the door and then stopped, gun drawn.

“Not so fast, Max,” Herc said. “Lower your gun or I shoot her right now.”

Max lowered his gun. “If you kill her,” he said, “I will end you.”

“I know,” Herc said genially. “But she’ll be dead. So you’re not going to do anything, Max.”

Luke came in the door, but he had his weapon down also. He stood on the other side of me. Being flanked by Max and Luke felt pretty good. Luke looked from Herc to Max. “We’ve got numbers,” he said.

“I know,” Max said.

Herc laughed. “I wanted this town and my treasure. And I wanted you here, running the place for me, and my daughter here, people I could trust, but I don’t have that now, I get that. Here’s what I want now, here’s the bargain, Max, and it’s a good one. Give me the treasure and I’ll leave this town forever. We both get what we want.”

“He’s lying,” I said.

“I know,” Max said.

“Oh, yeah,” Luke added.

Herc’s eyes shifted slightly, and I looked over my shoulder.

Serena was walking back down State Street, right on the blue line that separated North Carolina from Tennessee. She looked like a vampire in broad daylight coming to claim a soul, her face hard like stone.

I noticed that the Ferrells were standing outside the post office on one side of the street, watching her go by. Waiting to see how it played out.

High Noon.

Serena Stafford walked in.

“It’s about time you showed up,” Herc said. “Take Max and Luke’s guns.”

She took a position to the side, between us and Herc. She met his eyes, level and calm. “You sent Joseph here. I told you not to, and you sent him into this hellhole.”

“An exaggeration,” Herc said smoothly, evidently missing her ravaged face. “He and I discussed the situation and we agreed upon the sequence of events.”

“He would have done whatever you told him to do,” Serena said. “He trusted you. He admired you.”

“He was forty, Serena, he could make up his own mind.”

“You killed them all to get this town and a bunch of gold. All of them, starting with Oz, just to get a safe place to retire. You?—”

“Take the guns, Serena,” Herc ordered, and Serena turned her gun on Max.

“You weren’t the one who killed him, were you?” she asked, and Max said, “No.”

She nodded. “I guess it doesn’t matter who pulled the trigger.” And then she turned on Herc and shot him, once, in the exact same spot that Betty had shot Junior with her first round. Right between the eyes.

I froze as his body hit the floor, watching Max, who was watching Serena.

After a moment that lasted a hundred years, she dropped her gun on the floor.

“I won’t be back,” she said and walked out the door and got into the SUV and drove toward Melissa’s. To collect her son’s body, I assumed.

Max had crossed the room, kicked Herc’s gun to the side, checked to see he was dead, even though it was obvious to all of us he was. But Max wasn’t taking any chances.

Then he came back to me, put his arms around me, and just held me. It took him about ten seconds.

“That was bad,” he said finally, his voice a little shaky.

“But it’s really over now.” I couldn’t quite believe it. “He’s really dead?”

“Yep,” he said.

“Then it’s worth it.” I leaned against him.

After a minute, I realized the place was full of people, Maggs checking both Max and me out, Luke picking up what I really hoped was going to be his last body, Dottie and Lionel with shotguns and relieved faces, Coral looking appalled and Pike looking tired, and front and center, Poppy, crying, with Marley right behind her as always.

My town.

All we needed was?—

Hermione Witch pushed her way to the front, looking avid. “Rose would want me to?—”

She saw me and stopped. “I heard a shot,” she said.

“I’m not dead,” I said.

“That’s so . . . good!” she said brightly. “So what I really came for . . .” She paused, trying to think of something. “. . . is what’s everybody’s favorite Christmas song?”

Poppy told Hermione to leave, and she did, and that’s when I knew.

Everything was going to be okay.