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“Yep. That’s the way I heard it.” Clive was nodding.
“Then let’s go,” Bentz said, feeling a surge of hope, that there was a chance for Samantha Wheeler yet. If only. “You know the way?” he asked.
The two men shared a look.
Bentz repeated, “I asked if you could take me there.”
“Yeah. I guess,” Clive said, but he sounded reluctant.
“Then what’s the hang-up?”
“Oh, shit, Clive,” Bobby-Dean said, staring at the bigger man. “Don’t tell me you believe all that voodoo BS, do ya?”
“What voodoo BS?” Bentz asked.
Clive frowned. “No—guess not.” But he made a quick sign of the cross in the darkness.
“The way it’s told,” Bobby-Dean said, “is that the place is haunted or cursed or whatever. It’s all just a loada’ crap o’course, but I guess Clive, here, believes it.”
“My mama did.” Again he made the sign of the cross.
“Don’t care,” Bentz said, feeling time running fast. “A minute or so ago you couldn’t even remember it existed, so pack away any of your fears, okay? Let’s go! What’s fastest? Boat or car?”
“Six o’ one, half a dozen of t’other,” Bobby said.
Clive shook his head. “Nah. Car’s faster.”
“Good.” Bentz grabbed his iPad, jogged around the nose of his Jeep to the driver’s side, and threw open the door. The two men stood rooted to the spot. He started the engine, rolled down the window, and ordered, “Get in! And I mean now!”
* * *
“You can’t arrest him!” Kristi argued, standing next to Cruz at the door of the Cookes’ pantry. She couldn’t believe what was happening! For the third time, she asserted, “Cruz just saved my life!” She was fired up, her heart still pounding as there were still three dead bodies in the pantry, some kind of stew cooling on the stove, blood still smeared all over the marble floor.
The whole situation was bizarre. Outré. Something out of a horror movie or very bad nightmare.
Montoya was undeterred.
He’d already snapped handcuffs on his brother, checked his pockets, and relieved him of a pocketknife, then checked on the condition of Aldo Lucerno as well as Reggie and Hamilton Cooke. He’d called for backup and an ambulance, then read Cruz his rights as sounds of sirens screamed closer and closer.
The ambulance would be too late, though.
Hamilton had already been dead, lying in a pool of his own blood when Kristi had arrived. As for his wife, Reggie, she, too, had passed. In the second after Reggie had pressed the knife into Kristi’s hand and softly demanded Kristi kill Aldo, Kristi had witnessed Reggie’s color drain from pink to gray. Aldo, too, had turned an ashen color as Kristi had driven the fillet knife deep, a split second before Cruz had fired his gun and finished the job.
Cruz hadn’t killed Aldo. His soul had already been passing to the afterworld compliments of his ex-wife’s blade and Kristi’s deep thrust. Her slice had been fatal. Aldo would have died within the next few minutes before Cruz had shot him.
Yet, who knew how much damage Reggie’s deranged ex could have inflicted in the short space of time between the deadly thrust and his actual collapse and death? Could he have taken Kristi’s life and that of her unborn child, if not for Cruz’s fateful bullet?
Probably.
No one would ever really know.
But Kristi believed Cruz’s dead-on shot had saved her life even if it hadn’t been necessary to end Aldo’s.
Again, she pleaded. “Please, don’t. He saved my life!”
Impassive, Montoya didn’t take his eyes off his brother, but said, “Cruz just killed a man.”
“No—it was me,” Kristi argued. “I stabbed him. It was fatal. He would have—”
