Читать книгу Heart Of Evil - Heather Graham, Heather Graham - Страница 9

He’d known for a long time what he’d had to do. The voice had been telling him for years.

At first, of course, he had ignored it. The vision he’d seen of the past hadn’t been real. But then he’d known. He’d known who he was, and he’d come to know that the voice wouldn’t go away until he’d done what needed to be done. And he’d carefully planned it all out, though things had gone a bit strangely today. Didn’t matter, though, who was playing Marshall Donegal. It didn’t matter at all. Because, of course, an actor was just an actor.

It was Donegal Plantation itself that needed to repay the old debt. That old debt could only be repaid one way.

With blood.

God bless a crowd. There was nothing in the world like mayhem, nothing like hundreds of witnesses to pull off an escapade such as he had planned, and to do it perfectly.

There had been a horde surrounding them. One particular brunette was the right age, exceptionally pretty and with a Massachusetts accent. When she spoke, there was an r on the name Linda, and there was no r on the car she had “pahked” down the river road.

She had giggled when she spoke to Charles, so it was easy to whisper in the man’s ear in his moment of greatest achievement and convince him that the girl was waiting to meet him.

And in the madness surrounding everyone engaged in the action then, it was easy enough to meld into the crowd himself, and to swiftly disappear, and hurry to the river road.

And there was Charles.

He’d approached Charles with a smile.

And, of course, Charles was smiling as well. At least he would go in a state of sheer happiness. It might even be a kindness. How many people got to die that happy?

Poor, dumb Charles—he never suspected a thing. After the initial whack, he never even felt the prick of the needle.

He’d thought it all out, exactly where he’d send Charles, because it all had to be done in plain sight. In plain sight, people never really knew what they saw.

There were tourists heading to their cars. But they’d never notice two fellows in uniform chatting by a car. Not at an event like this. People liked to dress up.

Maybe everyone wanted to be someone else, someone they weren’t.

But to them, it would just appear that they were two cronies, faces covered by their broad-brimmed hats, leaning against one another as they chatted and laughed over a joke.

Then … hide the body. Or if he had been seen, “help” an inebriated friend into a car.

He would need more time for the pièce de résistance. Initially, it had taken him less than twenty minutes to stash Charles and rejoin all those rejoicing over the day.

He had never felt more victorious. The difficult part, of course, would be to hide his anticipation for all that was destined to follow.

It didn’t seem that anything could go so impossibly well.

Ashley, damn her, though. Leave it to Ashley to be worried about Charles! Still and all, it did make the entire plan more exciting. Now, with the evening at a close, he was feeling elated.

The place had settled down; though everyone had been willing to look for Charles, only Ashley had been really concerned. He had played with the idea of actually disposing of poor old Charles immediately, but now he was satisfied that he had decided he should make it something more dramatic—and allow time between the reenactment and the beginning of the end.

Oh, he had worked with the others. He had searched so hard. There might have been just a few minutes when he feared someone would actually search the cars, but Charles hadn’t driven.

It had almost been as if he’d been part of the plan.

Now he sat next to good old Charles.

This was necessary. The voice had said that it had to be done, and his ancestor made him know that nothing could be right until then.

He’d never realized that he’d enjoy it all so much.

He patted him on the back. Charles didn’t move. The drug was holding, but he’d administer more. He didn’t want the big lug waking up.

He needed him alive until the time was right.

Every time he’d been at Donegal recently, he’d felt as if he were being pushed harder and harder. The past was the past—so they all said. But it wasn’t. The past created the present, and he knew now that he had to use the present to set the past right. It wasn’t crazy; he’d heard the voices in his head. A collective consciousness that seemed to scream through history.

Now, maybe, the voices would stop.