Not tonight. Not ever.
He broke through the tree line and stalled on the river’s bank. The water was dark and wide, its song whispering to the air.
Arnold fell to her knees, making those god-awful sounds. Prescott knelt down and tried to comfort her. Adeline ignored the tugs on the chain. She wasn’t getting on her knees again for this bastard. He’d have to shoot her first.
“When I discovered you had grown up here,” Jamison said to Adeline, “I realized the setting was perfect. I had to get you back here. I knew when Arnold wouldn’t cooperate, Prescott would come here looking for you. All I had to do was wait and follow her here. I wanted to do thishere.”
“How clever of you.” She spat the words at him.
“You don’t understand, do you?” he jeered. “The Singing River. ‘It murmurs a tragic tale,’” he recited, evidently from something he’d read.
“Yeah, yeah,” Adeline said, “I know the story.” Who could grow up here and not know it?
“Those sweet, kind Pascagoula Indians were about to be enslaved by the Biloxi tribe.” He shook his head. “Rather than be taken, they joined hands and walked right out into that dark water. Chanting a death song the whole way. The Singing River hums that song to this day.”
Prescott and Arnold sobbed louder with his every word.
“Amazing,” Adeline tossed at him. “You see yourself as some kind of warrior or something? You need to prove you’re more powerful than us?” She rattled her shackles. “I think you pretty much proved that already.”
He shook his head and made that annoying tsking sound. “You don’t understand at all, Detective Cooper. The story revolves around aprincess. It was her goddamned fault that all those people walked right out there,” he pointed to the murky water, “to their deaths.”
He was right. The Biloxi princess who’d fallen in love with the Pascagoula chief. That was why it had to be here. He saw them as princesses ... it was destiny. But whose? What had they done to him? How had they intruded into his territory? It didn’t make sense.
He motioned to the river with his gun. “Now. Get in the water.”
Arnold and Prescott wailed even louder, the sounds strangled.
“Why?” Adeline asked him. “What’s your point in making us get in the water? Why not just shoot us right here? Dead is dead. Who cares about a stupid legend?” He rushed up to her, shoved the barrel of what she recognized as a 9mm into her face.
“Because this is what was supposed to happen all those years ago when you were just a tiny little baby.”
“Your father killed your mother,” she reminded. “He tried to kill you. But you hid us where he couldn’t get to us. Why kill us now? What happened back then is over. You don’t have to do this. Where’s that hero who saved his three little sisters?”
He laughed long and loud. “That’s not what happened.” He snickered. “That’s whattheythought happened. But that wasn’t the way it happened at all.”
“Tell us then,” Adeline challenged, “how it really was. I think we deserve to know before you kill us. Otherwise your whole ritual will have no meaning.”
He stared at her a moment, his blue eyes—the ones exactly like hers—narrowing with suspicion, then relaxing. “Why not? A bedtime story to put you to sleep.”
Haha. He was a comedian. Right now she just wanted him closer and distracted.
“For six years it was just me.” He banged his chest. “My parents loved me so much. Everything was about me. It was perfect.” He glowered at Prescott. “Then you came along and you were all they talked about. I had to share everything with you, especiallymyparents. Their littleprincess,” he snarled.
He shifted his attention to Arnold. “Then you.” He kicked her in the side. “By then they didn’t have any time at all for me. The babies needed them. Especially that bitch mother of ours. Their little princesses were so sweet in their little pink dresses and bows.” He jerked Prescott to her feet. “I tried to get rid of you. Tried to drown you in the bathtub but that bitch caught me. She was so stupid she thought it was an accident.”
Adeline eased a little closer to where he stood.
“And the princesses just kept coming!” He released Prescott and whirled on Adeline. “That bitch just kept spitting ’em out. You cried all the time. I made sure. Mommy,” he said in a squeaky childlike voice, “just couldn’t figure out why you cried all the time.” He rushed closer, nose to nose with Adeline. “It was because I tortured you when they weren’t looking.”
“Sucked for me,” she muttered, scarcely able to contain the urge to hurl herself into him. But she wouldn’t when the gun’s barrel was turned toward Prescott.
“Finally,” he snapped, “I’d had enough. My father kept telling me not to worry, that it was still me and him. He would laugh and say the princesses ruled our world. I knew he was miserable, too.”
Adeline dared to ease a little closer to him.
“I made a plan,” he said, seemingly lost in the memories. “I promised to take you on a picnic. The bitch thought we were all sleeping, so she’d fallen asleep in front of the TV. I carried you,” he said to Adeline. She halted her incremental movement toward him. “And the rest of you followed right behind me just like you were in a parade.” He smirked. “It was so easy. I led you right to the water. It wasn’t far from our backyard.” He stepped back. “Then I persuaded you to come into the water with me. It wasn’t more than knee deep. We all sat down, laughing and having fun. Then I pushed you under the water, put my knees on your chests,” he said to Arnold and Prescott. He shot Adeline a sideways look. “I held you under with one hand.”
Adeline quashed the panic that tried to swell in her throat. “But our mother caught you again, didn’t she? Did she punish you?”