by Nancy Bush
“Who says I didn’t?”
“Did you?” Becca demanded.
He almost lied to her. She could see him thinking whether he could make her believe him. But he knew her almost as well as she knew him. “It wasn’t supposed to be this way,” he mumbled, heading for the bedroom and his suitcase.
She followed him, too betrayed to let him just go. She grabbed down another bag and stuffed it full of his clothes, cramming them inside. “Take everything. Everything. Don’t come back. Ever.”
“Becca your just upset. I’ve gotta come back and get—”
“Don’t be reasonable, Ben. I swear to God. Don’t be reasonable or I’ll scream.” She glared at him but all she saw was the baby. The one he was having…with someone else. “If you can’t carry it now, it’ll be on the front porch.”
“Don’t be ridiculous!”
“I’m ridiculous?” she demanded.
Ben, the coward, couldn’t hold her gaze. In tense silence, he finished packing his bag and stormed out. She tossed the other suitcase after him, not caring whether he picked it up or not. It sat on the porch for two days while she stacked other items beside it, crowning the pile with his most prized golf trophy. She half-expected the homeowner’s association to complain about the mess, but Ben managed to sweep everything up before that happened. He came when Becca was away, so there were no more angry words. In fact, there were no more words at all for several months. Becca had just determined to open the lines of communication again, preparing for the inevitable divorce, when she got a call from Kendra Wallace, who between sobs, shrieks and tears, explained that Ben had died in her arms. For a good ten minutes Becca heard nothing else. Nothing past the fact that Ben was dead. She finally understood that Kendra’s wailing was along the “poor me, what am I going to do” line.
“The baby,” Becca said, moving from shock back to reality.
“The baby is mine!” Kendra snapped sharply, as if aware of Becca’s desire to have a child of her own.
“Do you have family?” Someone to help you?
“You’ll be hearing from my lawyer,” Kendra choked back and slammed down the phone.
Becca was left staring into space. She was aware Kendra was going to come after her financially, but if the child was Ben’s, so be it. When she received no call, she dialed Kendra on the number caller ID coughed up. She learned that it belonged to Kendra’s mother, who told Becca that Kendra had moved to Los Angeles with her new boyfriend.
“What about the baby?” Becca asked.
She was told, in a chilly voice, that Kendra’s boyfriend was adopting the little boy and it was none…of…her…concern.
Now, Becca fitted Ringo with his new collar and clipped on his leash. They walked into a night black with rain and cold and strolled around the condo’s grounds. Ringo waved his tail at several other dogs, but he didn’t bark. Apart from a woof or two when food was coming his way, he was pretty quiet. Rarely did he growl or make any noise.
So, it was with a sense of the hair rising on the back of her neck when, about a block away from her front door, Ringo suddenly stopped, planted his feet, and growled low in his throat, that Becca glanced around jerkily, half-expecting the bogeyman to pounce on her.
Ringo stared into a space about a hundred yards away, where a thick grove of firs, branches waving like beckoning arms, stood tall and dark in the slanting rain. Ringo was so planted that Becca couldn’t drag him away. He stared and stared toward the trees.
“You’re freaking me out, dog,” Becca murmured, sliding the wet dog into her arms and hurrying toward her stairs. Ringo’s head swiveled to keep sight of the trees. She could feel the low “grrrrrr” that rumbled through his body.
Inside, she grabbed a towel she kept in the front closet and tried to towel Ringo off but he shot to the nearest window, rising on his back legs, nosed pressed to the glass, lips pulled back in a silent snarl. A shiver that shot down Becca’s neck.
“Stop that,” she ordered as she headed to the kitchen and filled a teakettle with water. No champagne this Valentine’s Day. Tea would be just fine.
When she returned to the living room, Ringo was sitting on his haunches, but his eyes were still fixed on something outside the window.
Becca tried to woo him to sit on the couch beside her, but when she went to pick him up, he sidled away and paced in front of the glass. Unnerved by the dog, she picked up the paper and slid it from its plastic sleeve. Her eye fell on a picture of a statue. The Madonna inside the maze at St. Elizabeth’s. The bold headline read: BOYS DISCOVER HUMAN SKELETON INSIDE MAZE.
She inhaled in shock.
The teakettle shrieked.
Becca bit back a scream, sending Ringo into frenzied barking. It took long moments before she could calm the dog and her own rocketing pulse enough to actually read the article.
When she was finished, she stared at the rivulets of rain running down her window but her thoughts were far from this miserable Valentine’s Day, her deceased husband, and whatever had spooked Ringo. Her mind was in the past.
For she knew the skeletal remains belonged to Jessie Brentwood, the girl from her visions, the friend from high school who’d disappeared without a trace, the girlfriend of Hudson Walker, Becca’s own secret crush and the father of Becca’s unborn child, had he but known it.
Jezebel “Jessie” Brentwood. She’d come to Becca in a dream today. She’d said something. Something important. While the wind had tossed her hair and she’d eased her toes over the edge of the cliff. It meant something. Something Becca needed to understand.
“Jessie…” she said aloud.
KENSINGTON BOOKS are published by
Kensington Publishing Corp.
850 Third Avenue
New York, NY 10022
Copyright © 2007 by Nancy Bush
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.
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ISBN: 0-7582-3782-0
Table of Contents
Books by Nancy Bush
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
EPILOGUE
CHAPTER ONE