The Final Victim, page 9
Lianna is uneasily aware of the rhythmic night sounds; the dank, humid smell of brackish water; the overcast night sky void of moon or stars.
She reaches into her pocket for her small flashlight, but comes up empty-handed.
Is it any wonder?
Kevin had her shorts halfway down her legs out there at the beach. The flashlight probably fell out into the sand as they rolled around.
Terrific.
Now she'll have to sneak back into the house in the dark.
It's not that she's a big baby about the dark…
Not like Mom.
No, but who wants to venture into a creepy old basement without even a flashlight?
The thought of that is bad enough; she can't imagine bringing herself to enter the tunnel and walk up two flights of the pitch-black hidden stairway. There are definitely spiders and mice. And probably even bats in there-what if one flies into her hair?
What if she loses her balance and falls? Several of the runglike steps have rotted away in the dampness; others, are about to. With a flashlight, she can pick her way past them. In the dark, she'd be playing Russian roulette1' with every step.
Nobody would ever find her in there. Not with those fourteen-inch-thick tabby foundation walls that are probably soundproof.
Okay, so she obviously isn't going back into the house the same way she came out.
But maybe that's not necessary anyway. Glancing at her watch, she sees that it's well past four in the morning. Nobody will be stirring at this hour. She can slip inside through the back door, using the key Great-Grandaddy always kept hidden among the perennials that ring the base of an old stone sundial in the garden.
Her heart pounding, Lianna decides it's a brilliant idea.
It takes her quite a few minutes of rooting around for the key in the dewy, overgrown bed that contains more weeds than flowers. Something pierces her fingertip, probably a spider's bite, and she thrusts her stinging finger into her mouth.
This is a stupid idea. Really stupid. What if the spider was poisonous? There are lizards in here, too, and God knows what else. A dark, rodent-infested tunnel is now almost more appealing than reaching back into the weeds again.
But when she does, she finds the key almost immediately.
All right, so this was a good plan after all.
The big door opens silently and the rooms are deserted, just as she knew they would be. She pockets the key, hoping she'll remember to replace it later, in broad daylight.
It isn't until she reaches the door to her bedroom that she realizes she's made a huge mistake.
It's latched… from the inside.
How could she have forgotten?
Now what?
Before she can plot her next move, she hears a movement behind her.
A voice drawls, "Well, look who's prowling around at this hour."
Charlotte sits straight up in bed, heart racing wildly.
Then she realizes it was just a dream.
No, not a dream. A nightmare.
Not even that.
It really happened.
But it isn't happening now, she reminds herself, pressing her hand against her pounding chest. It's over. Long over.
She lies back slowly against the pillows, closing her eyes as if to block out the images that have haunted her for eight years. But they're still there, more vivid than ever.
She can see the foaming ocean; can feel it, sun-warmed and saltily stinging her newly shaved legs; can feel her hands swirling helplessly through it, coming up empty again and again.
She can hear screams, her own screams, as she bellows her son's name over and over again in futile, exhausting effort.
A sob escapes her throat even now.
She shudders and rolls toward Royce's side of the bed, needing to feel his warm body against hers. He alone understands. He's been there, too.
Even on their honeymoon, when they found themselves standing at the brink of Niagara Falls, he knew instinctively what she was thinking as she gazed down at the churning blue-gray water. He was thinking it, too. "Come on," he said, and quietly led her away.
Charlotte needs him now as she needed him then.
But the covers are thrown back on his side of the bed; his spot as cold and empty as her arms that ache for a child who will never come home.
* * *
Even in the dim light from a distant sconce, Gib can see the panic in the kid's eyes.
"What are you up to, Leigh Ann?" he asks, reminded suddenly of a childhood fishing expedition with his maternal grandfather in Narragansett Bay: the empowering sensation of gazing down at a helpless cod trapped in his net.
"Lianna," she says, lifting her chin, and it takes him a moment to realize she's correcting him about her name.
"Lianna," he repeats, amused by the insult that now mingles with panic in her gaze. "Sorry about that."
She shrugs and tries to seem casual as she inquires, "What are you doing up?"
"I asked you first."
"Well, I'm going back to bed."
"So am I," he tells her, though it's not entirely true.
He hasn't yet been to bed in his assigned guest room. But he's willing to bet Cassandra has long been asleep beneath the old-fashioned eyelet canopy. He can feel his loins tighten at the mere thought of her, naked, between the sheets.
He'll get to her momentarily.
For now, he can't resist toying with Charlotte's daughter. Poor thing clearly didn't inherit the Remington genes when it came to looks. Perhaps she looks like her father, although he can't seem to conjure an image of Charlotte's first husband. Gib saw him only rarely, and hasn't in years.
Lianna isn't unattractive, yet hardly possesses her mother's beauty, or Phyllida's, or even Gib's. Maybe she'll get there one day, but for now, she's on the scrawny side, with sharp features and a slight overbite. Braces would help, Gib concludes. Braces, and longer hair. Highlights in her hair would be good, too-or even if she was a brunette like her mother…
Instead, her hair is a dull, sandy shade that could, Gib supposes, pass for blond-just not to a connoisseur, like him.
"I'd be willing to bet," he says, leaning in, "that your mother doesn't know you're locked out of your room at this hour."
"What makes you think I'm locked out?"
"I saw you try the door and I heard you curse when it didn't open."
There's little she can say to that, of course. To her credit, she remains silent, glaring up at him.
No stranger himself to adolescent prowling in the wee hours, Gib can't help but admire her spunk. As he recalls, Charlotte wasn't the kind of girl who would be caught dead disobeying her parents' rules. How interesting that this apple fell hard and rolled quite a long way from the tree.
"So what are you going to do now?" he asks Lianna, folding his arms. "Wait it out until morning? Break the door down?"
Before she can answer, his ears pick up the sound of a door creaking closed down the hall. Footsteps approach.
"Please don't tell," Lianna hisses at him, before slipping into a shadowy nearby nook.
It takes three attempts before Mimi's violently trembling hands are successful in fastening the carseat buckle snugly across her son's chest.
By then, Cameron is asleep again, as blissfully unaware of his mother's growing panic as he was before she plucked him from his bed five minutes ago.
Mimi slides into the driver's seat, manages to get the key into the ignition, and says a brief prayer as she backs out into the street.
Please, dear God, don't let anything happen to Jed.
Then she shifts into DRIVE and races off toward the highway that leads to Savannah, and the hospital emergency room.
Moments after Gib watches Charlotte's daughter disappear into the shadows of the hall, her stepfather appears.
Royce is fully dressed, carrying luggage, and striding briskly, though he stops short at the sight of Gib standing before him.
"Hey, what's up?" Gib asks, as though they're casual acquaintances running into each other on the street in broad daylight.
"I'm leaving to catch an early flight. What are you doing…?" The remainder of Royce's sentence trails off, as though he isn't sure whether to conclude it with an "up" or a "here."
"I'm going to bed after a late night," Gib says truthfully. He adds, at Royce's doubtful look, "I couldn't sleep so I drove down to the other end of the island for a nightcap at the Reef. That always was my favorite beach bar-It sure looks a lot different these days, though. It used to be a dive."
He just hopes Royce isn't, say, friends with the owner or something. The last thing he needs is to be caught in a lie.
"Where's your girlfriend?"
Gib resists the urge to correct the terminology. Let Royce think whatever he wants about his relationship with Cassandra. It'll be much easier that way. "She's probably asleep. She stayed here."
Royce frowns.
"What's the matter?" Gib asks.
"Nothing, I just… I thought you were talking to someone. I heard voices."
Gib hesitates, weighing his options.
Should he tell Royce about his stepdaughter sneaking around in the middle of the night? How will he react? Gib doesn't know what kind of guy he is-they never even met before this week. But he seems like a decent fellow, unlike Charlotte's first husband. He couldn't stand Vince, and the feeling seemed mutual on the few occasions they were thrown together for family functions.
Anyway, Royce would probably go tell Charlotte that her kid is up to something. Why get the kid into trouble? Gib has to give her credit, having this much spunk with such a Goody Two Shoes for a mother.
So he shrugs and tells Royce, "I don't know what you heard… maybe it was just me, talking to myself. I do that sometimes."
"We all do, I suppose." Royce barely cracks a smile.
"Have a good trip," Gib calls after him in a whisper as Royce walks off down the hall, unwittingly passing within a few feet of his stepdaughter's hiding place. "See you when you get back."
"Maybe not. I'll be gone for a few days."
"Oh, I'll be here," Gib replies, relishing the stiffening-just barely visible-of the other man's spine at the news.
Yes, he'll be here. Where else is he going to go? Oakgate is as much his home as anybody else's, and at this point, it's the only one he has. Not that he's about to let on to his sister or cousin or even Cassandra.
Cassandra.
Stirred by renewed lust, he hurries off down the hall, leaving Lianna to resolve her own dilemma. She'll undoubtedly be grateful he didn't rat her out to the old man. It might have been tempting if Charlotte's second husband didn't seem to have the temperament of a tree stump.
The kid will just have to owe me a favor, Gib decides, smiling as he lets himself into his room.
A big favor that he has every intention of collecting at some point. But for now there are other things on his agenda.
Slipping into his room, he steals across the carpet to the canopy bed.
There, instead of a slumbering beauty, he finds a note impaled on the pillow with an antique hat pin.
He has to turn on the bedside lamp to read it, but he probably shouldn't even have bothered.
Gib,
I decided to go back to Boston.
Sorry,
Cassandra.
For a moment, he stands there staring at it.
Then, with a smirk, he plucks the paper from the pin, wads it into a ball, and tosses it in the general direction of the wastebasket. The pin he stabs into place on the cushioned top of a dusty sewing box that rests on the nearby bureau, a forgotten relic of some bygone Remington spinster.
Easy come, easy go, Gib thinks as he crawls into bed alone.
Phyllida is awakened by Brian's prodding hand in her side, his stale, boozy breath wafting beneath her nostrils.
She yawns, opening her eyes to darkness. "What time is it?"
No reply, just an urgent, "Come on, Phyll," as he tugs at her cotton nightgown.
"Come on, what?" She rolls away-or tries to. This isn't their California King. There's little room to escape him on a full-sized mattress that butts up against the wall on her side.
"You know…"
She knows. And she isn't in the mood.
"Did you just get home now?" she asks, flinching beneath his cold touch on her bare skin.
"No, I got home hours ago. You were asleep." He moves closer and nuzzles the back of her neck with his razor stubble.
Phyllida endures it for a few moments, wondering if he might actually be able to arouse her for a change.
Nah. Try as she might, she can't even pretend he's somebody else. There are occasions when that works, but not this time.
"Stop, Brian. We can't," she tells him softly, nudging his probing fingers from her hip.
"Sure we can."
"No. The baby is right here."
Baby? Wills is no more a baby than Brian is the man of her dreams.
Yet her son is sleeping in a crib again, and right here in the room, a mere few feet from their bed, just as he was as an infant Back then, of course, it was with great reluctance that Phyllida warded off her husband's advances.
"He's asleep," Brian protests, just like old times.
Unswayed, Phyllida whispers, "If he wakes up, he'll be traumatized for life."
"Yeah, right." He resumes his neck-nuzzling.
She brushes him away. "Seriously, Brian, cut it out."
"Jesus, you're no fun anymore, you know that?" 'Yeah, I know. You keep reminding me."
He rolls onto his back, the bedsprings creaking loudly beneath his weight.
She wonders if he really was here, asleep beside her, for hours as he claimed.
She wouldn't know. As Brian likes to say, she sleeps like the dead.
"What time is it?" Phyllida asks again.
"Who knows? Four? Five?"
She groans. "I'm going back to sleep."
So leave me alone.
The unspoken words linger in the darkness between them.
