“Oh, Jeez!” she cried to Jan, grabbing her by the arm and starting to run hard.
They piled up against Brad and Ellie as they reached the far side of the water where the others hovered over Mandy. Mandy’s lips were blue; her face was stark white against the background of her deep auburn hair. They heard sirens, an ambulance coming. Lori felt her brother by her side then, putting an arm around her. “Susan’s called 911; help will be here any minute.”
“What—what happened?” Lori said.
No one answered. All eyes were on Mandy and Sean.
Sean eased back for a moment, drawing in a deep breath, his face drawn, eyes glistening.
“Oh, God!” Ellie moaned. Ellie was Mandy’s best friend. “Oh, God, oh, God…”
“No!” Jeff Olin shrieked, covering his face and slamming down to the ground on his knees.
“She’s dead,” Ricky said incredulously. “Jesus H. Christ, she’d dead.”
“She can’t be dead!” Brad cried. “She can’t be—she’s seventeen, she’s a kid. Where the hell are the damned paramedics?”
Sean started up with CPR again. Then the sirens screeched closer, and in a matter of minutes, professionals in neatly pressed blue and white uniforms were pushing through the crowd of kids. A man knelt down by Sean. “I’ll take it over from here, son.”
Sean rose, and stood numbly. More of the paramedic crew arrived; a syringe was shot into Mandy’s arm. Within minutes she’d been situated on a stretcher, and they were carrying her away.
The kids followed.
They were all there as she was loaded into the ambulance, Jeff barely coherent as he explained he was her brother and that he had to ride with her.
The ambulance pulled away.
The rest of them watched—Lori and her brother, Andrew, and their cousin, Josh. Michael and Sean Black. Ricky Garcia, Ted Neeson, Ellie LeBlanc, Brad Jackson, Susan Nichols, and Jan Hunt. All watching as the ambulance drove away.
“All right, who wants to tell me what happened?”
They all spun around. A tall, heavyset, white-haired man stood behind them. He’d come in an unmarked car right after the paramedics; until now they’d all been too stunned to pay him any attention.
He wasn’t wearing a uniform, but he had “cop” written all over him.
Lori stared at him numbly.
“She—she was tangled up in some vine thing down there by one of the rusted-up old cars. I dragged her up, I called for help… Sean came running,” Andrew said.
“All right. I’m going to take down all your names, and then you get in your cars and go home. I’m off to the hospital, but… I’m going to need statements from all of you,” he said, walking past them.
“But… but she’s going to be all right, isn’t she?” Brad demanded.
The man stopped and turned around, staring at them. He shook his head. “You’re all big kids, aren’t you? Big, wild, independent kids, doing what the hell you want, thinking you’re grown-ups. Well, then, you’re big enough to know the truth. I’ve seen a lot of death, and I’m sorry to say your friend is already dead. That’s bad. Real bad. But now, one of you might have made it happen. That’s worse.” He pointed at them, moving his stretched-out arm from right to left.
“Dead—deeeaaad!” Jan gasped, and she started to cry.
“Oh, God, Mandy’s dead, and he’s looking at us—” Susan stuttered.
“And next thing you know,” Ricky wisecracked, “he’s going to be telling us that none of us better dare leave town!” There were tears in Ricky’s eyes, belying his tone.
“Yep, son, you’re right,” the cop told him.
“Dead! Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God!” Ellie kept moaning, and she sank to her knees, screaming hysterically. “Mandy is dead, Mandy is dead, Mandy is dead…”
Some of them didn’t cry until later. Shock, said the therapist the Kellys hired to help their children through the trauma of the incident.
Shock…
How could they help it? Police divers found one of the vines from below, and proclaimed that there was a strong possibility that someone had purposely tied it around Mandy’s ankle, and left her fighting desperately for her life beneath the water’s surface. She had rubbed her ankle raw in her pathetic efforts to live.
By the time the cops were in the middle of their questioning, the kids all had lawyers, and none of them knew what they had said or done anymore—much less what they had felt.
In the upshot Sean was arrested. He had quarreled with Mandy, he was furious with her. She had humiliated him, she had threatened to ruin his life. He had been suspiciously near Mandy; he had motive, he had opportunity, and the strength to carry out the deed.
They refused to let him out on bond—partially because of his brother’s record, and partially because he couldn’t hire a hotshot lawyer like the others. He sat in jail until his trial, when a jury found him not guilty—due to a lack of any real physical evidence.
When they let him out, he was no longer a boy, or even a young adult; in a matter of months, he had become a hardened and cynical man. He packed his bags, and left town.
His father and brother mourned.
And Mandy’s folks, and all her family, would grieve until their dying days.
But for the parents of the other kids who’d been at the rock pit that day, it was over.
Come to an inevitable end. And it was time to move on.
Sure, Sean had been one of the most popular kids in school, but what could you expect? He’d really been nothing but a no-good kid from a broken family, and in the end bad blood had told all.
So Sean paid…
But from the very beginning, Lori suspected that they were all keeping secrets about that day.
She knew damned well that she kept one herself.
Lori woke, flying up to a sitting position in bed as if she’d heard something, as if she’d been startled awake. Her room was in semidarkness; a night-light burned in the hall. The house was quiet. Yet she had sworn that something…
It had just been the dream. She hadn’t been able to escape the past, not by telling herself she wouldn’t remember, not by seeking oblivion in sleep.
Fifteen years ago… it had all been nearly fifteen years ago, Lori reminded herself again. She was in a new home, back in the city where it had happened. Maybe it was natural to start off with a wretched night’s sleep.
Lie back down! a rational voice in her head commanded. There’s nothing wrong.
But she jumped again, hearing a pounding on her front door.
It was so late! Maybe it was Gramps. Her folks. She was at home again, something could be wrong with her mother, brother, father… Gramps.
She catapulted out of bed, raced out to the hall and down the stairs to the door. She frowned, dead still, as she realized that there was no peephole in the front door. She did have a screen door in front of the wooden one, and it was locked, but really, only a fool would open her door…
The pounding began again. She didn’t want Brendan wakened unless something were really wrong, so as the pounding continued, she threw open the door, reminding herself even as she did so that she really had to be an idiot—a murder had just taken place in the city. But murderers didn’t normally knock first.
Through the screen door, she saw him. Sean.
She froze once again. Just staring.
“Damn it, Lori, let me in.”
Sean Black. The bastard had haunted her dreams—not to mention her life.
Now he was standing on her front porch.
6
Lori wasn’t sure why, but she responded to Sean’s command and opened the screen door. Maybe it was the look in his eyes, and the fact that he’d probably stand out there banging until the police showed up if she didn’t let him in.
He entered her house, closing and locking the door behind him, his eyes never leaving hers.
“What the hell brought you back here?” he demanded, his voice thick.
“What the he
ll brought you back?”
“Lori, I asked you what the hell brought you back!”
“And I asked the same thing.”
“Well, I damned well asked first.”
If he weren’t so angry and tense, the situation might have been funny. And it was certainly strange that the years could wash away so quickly, and she could feel that she knew him when he was really such a stranger. But she did know him, the way she could gauge his anger by the tick in the vein at his throat, the tension in his face, the way he dragged his fingers through his hair. Certain things just didn’t change about people; characteristics might fade with age, might be refined, but they were still there.
She shrugged, determined to be casual.
“My grandfather is very ill, and though you might not remember, he and I were always very close.”
His eyes remained locked upon her. She was annoyed to realize that a note of distress had touched her voice. However, he seemed to ease somewhat, leaning against the door then, though he crossed his arms over his chest while watching her.
“I remember,” he said softly.
“So what are you doing back? Lording it over us all?” she demanded.
There was a look of anger—and amusement about him. “People are fickle, I’ve discovered. If they decide not to hang you, they put you on a pedestal. I was sent here by my publishing house. I thought I should stay on a while. I write crime. There’s lots of it here.”
She was quiet for a moment. Hell, yes3 lots of it! He had come back into town, and one of the most heinous murders since Jack the Ripper had taken place!
She felt her mouth go dry, and she swallowed hard. Ellie had been Mandy’s best friend. Now they were both dead. And what the hell was she thinking? She had loved him, really loved him—though adults had a way of saying that all juvenile feelings were crushes—and she knew damned well, deep in her heart, that Sean Black couldn’t possibly murder anyone.
Yet his eyes narrowed as he watched her; he was reading her thoughts.
“Wonderful!” he said bitterly. “You think I came back into town, my murderous capability honed by fifteen years of maturity and growth, to butcher Ellie?” he inquired softly.
“No!” she protested. “No!” She shook her head vehemently. Why did it sound as if she was lying. No matter what she said or did right now, it just wasn’t going to come out right.
“Why are you here, now, tonight?” she asked.
“Because it’s scary, all this coincidence. It’s damned scary.”
It was; Jan had known it, she knew it.
Lori crossed her arms over her own chest. “It’s a big city. What is the greater Miami population now? Over three million. It’s not New York City, I grant you, but in this kind of population—”
“You have drugs and domestic violence. You have guys who shoot down gas station attendants for the fifty bucks in the cash register. You have gangs and juveniles shooting at one another. You have the guy who gets carried away on a date. The woman who freaks out and shoots her husband. But this… there’s a bona fide psychotic killer out there, and he’s out there somewhere close.”
Chills suddenly shot up her spine. He continued to stare at her, as if she might somehow invite the murderer right over.
“So why are you here?” she demanded again.
“To tell you to go back to New York.”
“You can’t tell me to go back to New York. I can’t go—I came here for a reason. You go back to—wherever it was you came from.”
“I’m not in danger!”
“How do you know you’re not in danger? How do you know you’re not in the most danger? Hell, how do you know that Ricky won’t turn around and arrest you—”
“Because I’m not so vulnerable anymore,” he told her softly. “And you’re missing the point here—a woman was brutally tortured and murdered.”
“And it’s horrible, but it’s happened before, and people are tortured and killed in New York—”
“Not people we know.”
She held her breath for a moment.
“Lori, get the hell out of here,” he said simply, and with authority, as if he could make her do it.
“You get the hell out of here, Sean, out of my house, and out of here—”
“Mom?”
She broke off, feeling another cold sweat assail her as she realized that her voice had risen, and that she’d awakened Brendan.
He was coming down the stairs. Tall, lanky, wearing cotton boxers, determined to defend her from whatever trouble was at their door.
“Mom, is there a problem?” he began, and then he saw who was standing just inside their front door, and his entire expression changed. His face lit up like a candle. “Michael Shayne? Michael Shayne?” He gazed at his mother, hope in his eyes. “You two know each other?”
Lori couldn’t quite find an answer. Sean responded.
He stepped past her, offering Brendan his hand. Brendan shook it.
“We went to school together, way back. My name’s really Sean, Sean Black. Nice to meet you, Mr. Corcoran.”
He had a way with kids, Lori thought. Her palms were damp.
“My name is Brendan,” her son told him, still in awe.
“Call me Sean.”
“My mom really knows you?” he repeated.
Sean smiled. His nice smile. Lori knew the smile; he was pleased, of course, yet not at all sure why he evoked such admiration, and he was uncomfortable still with too much adulation. He’d been like that at school when he’d made a great play on the football field, or had come up with an amazing essay in English class or argument in debate. She was tempted to touch him. Just reach out, stroke his face.
She gritted her teeth together and stood perfectly still.
“I’ve read everything. Everything you’ve ever written,” Brendan told him.
“Hell, I hope not. Some of my early stuff was so bad I keep it in a desk drawer, and I’ve never let it out. I think about burning it now and then; but then again, I like to remember how things started, and how we can all learn and grow.”
“I want to write,” Brendan told him.
“Then, do it.”
Brendan was still staring at him. “Wow. I just can’t believe I’m getting to meet you. In person. But… wow. So you’ve really come home, huh? I thought you were just here on a book tour. Don’t you live in California?”
“I do, but I’m here for a while. Research.”
“That’s great. If you need anything, maybe I could help you. Run errands, do the post office bit, whatever.”
“Brendan, maybe he likes to work alone,” Lori put in quickly. “And you’ve got a new school—”
“Yeah, brand-new school, not a lot of friends,” Brendan murmured dryly.
“You will have lots of friends,” Lori said, aware her voice was tightening, but unable to stop it. “And you’ve got to get back to bed now. Mr. Black was just leaving.”
“Mom!” Brendan protested.
“I was just leaving.”
“You just came—and you’re leaving?” Brendan said.
Sean’s cool blue gaze flickered over Lori. “I haven’t seen your mother in a very long time. I was surprised to learn that she was back in town as well.”
“Just back in town. I mean, this is really incredible. We just came in today.”
“Today, umm, I guess you did just arrive. Anyway, I really was going. I just came to see that…” he broke off, hesitating, then shrugged. “It’s a strange homecoming. I was just trying to see that your mom was safe.”
“Safe?” Brendan said, and sounded confused.
Sean didn’t miss a beat, realizing that she hadn’t told her son that an old friend had been brutally murdered.
“New home and all. Needs an alarm.”
“We’ll be getting an alarm system installed. Right away,” Lori assured them both.
Sean nodded, still staring at her. “Going back to New York might be better.”
“You li
ke New York, too?” Brendan said. “I loved the city. This move was kind of tough, except that… my great-grandfather is a great guy—”
“I know.” Sean said softly.
“Oh, yeah, of course, you went to school with Mom. And Jan.”
“Jan, Brad, your Uncle Andrew, a lot of folks,” Sean said.
“Yeah. We’re really okay, you know. I mean, I’ve got to make new friends, but we’ve got family here.”
“Yeah, I know,” Sean said. “Well, good night then.”
He turned to the door, opening it, exiting. Brendan followed after him like a puppy. “Can you come back. Like Friday night, for dinner, or something?”
Sean turned, amused, arching a brow at Lori. “Son, your mother might have plans for Friday night.”
“No, she can’t. I’m sure she can’t. Mom, he can come, right? I mean, you tell me all the time to invite my friends over—well, all right, Sean is actually your friend, but that kind of makes it even, right?”
Lori felt as if she’d been frozen in place. No, it wasn’t all right. The last person in the world she wanted to become buddy-buddy with her son was Sean Black.
But she couldn’t seem to protest. With any luck Sean would refuse to come.
“Sean is a busy man these days,” she managed to say. “Very busy.”
“We’d sure love to have you,” Brendan said passionately.
Sean looked right at Lori again, curious as to whether she’d buck her son and tell him he wasn’t wanted.
“Sure,” she said flatly. “We’d just love to have you.”
“Well, then,” he said very quietly, “I’ll definitely be here.”
He turned, and walked into the night without looking back.
Sean’s phone rang at the crack of dawn. He’d been lying there awake and alone without a hangover. No drinking last night, and no women. The darkness had been peopled with haunting images of the past.
He wasn’t surprised to find that it was Ricky at the other end, but he was startled when his old friend told him he was calling him on behalf of Dr. Kate Gillespie.
“Gillespie wants to consult with me?”
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