Page 21 of Kill For Me Kill For You
Amanda clung to the sides of the small wooden dingy. Another wave was coming. Tall and black against the turbulent night sky, like a mountain roaring toward her out of the deafening storm. Cold sea water splashed over the side of the little boat, soaking her already wet clothes. The boat rose on the wave, higher and higher. The wind, rain and water lashing her hair to her cheeks, stinging them. As the boat reached the crest of the wave, and tilted over, she found that she could see all around her for miles. A beam of moonlight had broken the clouds and she saw the towering waves beyond and then, in the distance, she glimpsed a light. Land.
A small fire burning on a beach. Two people stood in the light of the flames. A man. Tall and lean, and beside him a little girl with blonde hair. No matter how hard she tried to get to that beach, the dark waves threw her back, and then Amanda knew what would happen next. She had seen this before. Lived this before. Dreamed this dream before.
The boat capsized and Amanda fell into the icy sea. The shock took her breath, the cold ink-black water flooded into her mouth and . . .
She opened her eyes, gasping for air. The back of her neck ached, and her head too. She could see the city through a large window, and she remembered where she was. Amanda sat up on Wendy’s couch, stretching her shoulders. The time on her iPhone read seven twenty a.m.
Shit. She’d missed Crone’s morning commute.
Her head hadn’t hurt like this in a long time. She got up slowly, put on her boots and made her way to the kitchen. Found water.
She often had that same dream. It started not long after she was hospitalized following Luis’s suicide. She’d told one of the counselors about it, and they said it was her subconscious working through her trauma. Recurring nightmares are common in those with PTSD. They can diminish, with time and treatment. Amanda didn’t want that. She liked the dream. She knew, one day, she could get through that storm to the little bonfire. She knew she would get to that beach once Crone was dead. His death would take her to the light. It would take her to Luis and Jess.
The headache started beating a pulse in her head. It was getting worse.
Wendy should have some Advil around here somewhere.
Nothing in the kitchen cabinets, which she opened and closed soundlessly – reluctant to wake her host. There was a hallway off the kitchen. Three doors. Two on the left. One at the end of the hallway, slightly ajar. It was dark in that room. Drapes drawn. Amanda made her way down the hall, peeked into the gloom at the far end. She could just make out the soles of Wendy’s feet at the bottom of the bed, the sheets crumpled and spilled to the floor. Wendy snored softly.
Last night she had used the bathroom. There was a cabinet built into the mirror – there might be some painkillers in there. Then she remembered something Wendy had said at the end of the evening. She’d told Amanda where the bathroom was, but she also seemed pretty adamant Amanda shouldn’t go into the other room because it was messy.
Amanda knew the feeling. After Jess and Luis died, it was a good two months before she even tried to clean the apartment. And, yes, it was still embarrassing. She didn’t want to embarrass Wendy, even though Amanda of all people would understand. The events at the end of the night came back to her a little clearer. And she remembered at the time thinking Wendy was making a lame excuse to keep Amanda out of that room. Now, Amanda couldn’t help but feel curious about why Wendy would lie about it.
Amanda tried the door closest to the kitchen, and it opened quietly.
It wasn’t a bathroom.
And it sure as hell wasn’t messy.
A second bedroom that Wendy had converted into an office.
A desk and chair in one corner, some plastic storage boxes stacked neatly in the opposite corner. The drapes were open. Amanda began to back out of the room and stopped. Wendy had seen Amanda’s driver’s license in the bar – had insisted upon it. She knew all about Amanda. And Amanda could not resist taking a closer look at what Wendy was so keen to hide.
She listened, heard the faint sound of snoring from Wendy’s bedroom, and then moved slowly into the office. There was a corkboard above the desk with documents and sticky notes nailed to it with dozens of little red pins. Amanda crept forward, scanned the board.
There were newspaper articles on Saint Patrick’s High School. Funding for a new science block, their new scheme on truancy and one on their new pastoral-care scheme. Maybe twenty or more articles, some looked to be from the school’s website. There were photos of the school in some of the news articles with staff pictured at the front gates, shaking hands with bishops, businessmen and other men in slick suits. There were two photographs that weren’t from the newspapers. They were glossy photoprint paper, but in black and white, and enlarged so that the image was grainy. A man, in his late forties maybe, with dark hair. One was taken as he was getting into a car outside the school. Another, from further away, as he got out of the same car parked outside a house. The pictures were a little fuzzy, but it was clearly the same guy.
Beneath the photos lay a map of Manhattan, with handwritten annotations too small for Amanda to read unless she got in real close. There was one more article, small and rectangular, hanging off the bottom of the cork board.
She suddenly felt uncomfortable.
It was a photo of a young girl. Teenager. Blonde hair in pigtails, smiling with a pair of orthodontic braces in her hand. She looked happy and her teeth looked perfect. It was the kind of photo a mom took of her daughter the first day she got her braces removed. Wendy’s daughter had been a beautiful girl and would’ve grown into a greater beauty had she not met an evil man along the way.
There was something underneath the photo. Another printout from the web. She placed a finger at the bottom of the picture and tilted it so she could see what lay beneath.
It was a death notice in the local newspaper. For a fifteen-year-old girl.
Amanda left the room and held her breath as she softly closed the door and tip-toed to the next one. This door was the bathroom. But there was no medicine cabinet, never mind a bottle of painkillers. Instead she used the toilet, washed her face and hands, took a pea of toothpaste and ran it around her teeth and gums with her finger. Spat.
She opened the bathroom door. This time she wasn’t concerned about the noise. She heard Wendy stirring.
‘I’m going to take off, Wendy,’ called Amanda. ‘Thanks for last night. It was fun,’ she said, and she meant it.
‘No problem. Just shut the front door on the way out, would ya?’
‘Sure thing,’ said Amanda, gathering her purse. She put on her coat and was on the way to the front door when Wendy appeared from the hallway, running her fingers through her thin blonde hair as if she was trying to wrestle it into shape.
‘I couldn’t let you go just like that,’ said Wendy.
