The Substitute Sister

by Lisa Childs

  A curtain swished at an upstairs window in the copper-roofed turret. The nursery. Behind the sheer fabric, a shadow stood…and watched Sasha.

  Even though the spring breeze that tousled her hair was warm, she shivered, chilled to the bone. Despite the beauty of the Scott Mansion, something dark and ugly lived within those walls.

  Hatred.

  She turned away from the house, continuing on a path that appeared to lead toward the lake. Distance. She needed distance from the house, to think.

  The path grew steeper as it approached the shore. Stones skittered beneath her feet as she bent her knees to slow her descent. This wouldn’t be enough distance. She had to get farther away.

  And she had to take Annie with her. It didn’t matter that she didn’t have Nadine’s body to bury. She had her sister’s daughter to keep safe. And to do that, to be alive to do that, she had to leave Sunset Island.

  Stones skittered behind her as someone followed her down the path. She turned back, expecting Jerry, the gardener. If he had his pruning shears, she was going to scream again. She’d suffered enough drama last night.

  But it wasn’t Jerry.

  This man was a little younger and broader and strangely familiar. She’d seen him once before…in the dark…on the lawn beneath the nursery window. She gasped.

  “I didn’t mean to startle you,” he said, brushing a shaking hand through his wind-ruffled white hair. “You’re Ms. Michaelson.”

  She nodded, although it was unnecessary to confirm what he could easily see for himself.

  “I’m Roger Scott.” He held out his hand, which was broad and stained red with…

  She swallowed a scream, recognizing that it was paint, not blood, and that there were other colors embedded in his skin and nails.

  But still, Sasha hesitated. Standing below him on the steep path, she was vulnerable. One push could send her tumbling…like last night. She shook off the ominous thought and her bad manners to quickly grasp and release his hand. “Mr. Scott.”

  What could she say to a man who her sister had probably robbed of his inheritance? I’m sorry?

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “What?”

  “About your sister,” he explained, blue eyes soft with sympathy. “Tragic loss.”

  He was one of the few who thought so. Only him and Reed. Had he been involved with her sister? Although old enough to be her father, he was good-looking, charming and he’d once had money—that was more than enough to interest Nadine.

  Could he be Annie’s father?

  “Yes, it is tragic,” she agreed, if Nadine were truly dead….

  Could she believe what the sheriff had told her? Could she accept that there was no way her sister could be alive, could be taunting her?

  “Trust Sheriff Blakeslee.”

  Startled by his insight, she jerked, her foot slipping. He caught her, his stained fingers wrapping around her sore wrist. She flinched at the pain shooting up her arm.

  “Careful,” he advised. “This slope is too steep. Dangerous. There’s a better path for walking, one with stairs, leading from the carriage house to our private dock.”

  “I’m fine,” she said, shaking off his fingers and his concern. “I’ll be fine.”

  And she would be once she left the island. Maybe a walk had been a bad idea. Meeting Mr. Scott an even worse one. But she had to know. “Why did you say that about the sheriff, that I should trust him?”

  Something fleeting passed through his observant eyes, maybe resignation. “The sheriff’s a determined man. He’ll find the person responsible for your sister’s death.”

  She didn’t doubt that. She could trust Reed as a lawman. She just couldn’t trust him as a man. Her heart couldn’t survive another break, and she already knew her heart was vulnerable where Reed was concerned. It hammered at just the memory of their kiss.

  She nodded, trying to shrug off her attraction to the sheriff, trying to think of him only as a lawman. “Yes, I’m sure he will.”

  She glanced over her shoulder, where the sunlight shimmered on the lake. Farther from shore, waves rippled as dark clouds gathered over the water. From the vantage point on the hill, she could almost touch the low and menacing, fast-moving clouds.

  “I don’t blame her, you know,” the older man said, his voice as soft as the wind that tousled Sasha’s hair.

  She turned back, waiting for him to explain. What an odd, insightful man. But she didn’t know if that was what unsettled her about him, or if it was that he might be Annie’s father…or Nadine’s killer.

  He turned away from her, staring out at the clouds nearly touching the water. “Some people come to Sunset Island to visit, to buy fudge, to hike. Then they go home. Nadine didn’t have a home when she came here.”

  Then why had she come? She had never been into fudge or hiking. Why?

  “Then there are the people who make their homes here, on the island,” he continued.

  As Nadine had. As the sheriff had.

  “Those people are usually running away from something,” he said, and she realized he spoke from experience. He was running away, too.

  Nadine had made a habit of running away. First at seventeen and then after Sasha’s wedding. What or who had she been running from when she came to Sunset Island? Had that problem or person caught up with her again?

  Sasha breathed an uneasy sigh as another thought unsettled her. What had the sheriff been running from when he moved to Sunset Island? And why did she want so badly to know?

  But the sheriff wasn’t her concern. She couldn’t let him be. She had to concentrate on her sister. “Do you know what brought Nadine here? Did she ever tell you?”

  Would she have had to for this man to know? His insightfulness was eerie, but then everything about Sunset Island was.

  Roger Scott shook his head. “She never said, but Nadine was pregnant, alone.”

  “And your mother took her into her home?” Had Nadine taken advantage of that, as Mrs. Arnold believed?

  He smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. They stayed flat, unreadable. “My mother always had a soft spot for single mothers.”

  “You really believe she left the estate to Nadine?” No one else did. She could tell that even Reed, despite the friendship or more he’d shared with her sister, had his doubts.

  He laughed, a kind of well-modulated social laugh that lacked any real humor. “Mrs. Arnold’s been giving you a hard time. Again, I’m sorry.”

  “It’s not your fault.” Until now she’d blamed Nadine. But if she’d really inherited the mansion…

  “You don’t know me, Ms. Michaelson. Don’t give me any credit. It would be undeserved.” He sighed, then pushed his paint-stained hand through his hair again. “I told you to trust the sheriff. Not me.”

  As the clouds moved in, the breeze grew cooler. Sasha shivered. What was he trying to tell her?

  “SO THERE’S NO WAY, then?” Reed asked, needing confirmation. The wind picked up, messing with the reception of his cell. He’d had to repeat his question a couple of times to the former FBI agent, as he walked from his cottage back to the Scott mansion…and Sasha.

  “No way. I checked with the techs, as well as checking out the crime-scene photos myself. By the blood spray, the carotid artery was cut. Several pints of blood lost. Nobody could have lived through that,” Royce Graham said. The ex-Fed was a friend of Dylan Matthews, the sheriff of Winter Falls.

  “And the blood matched the DNA evidence we lifted from Nadine’s hairbrush?” he asked, even though he had a faxed copy of the report that stated the answer to his question, the reason he’d called Sasha and told her of her sister’s death.

  “You know all this, Blakeslee. You’re a pro—Detroit Homicide.”

  “A couple years ago,” he interrupted. He’d not had anything more serious than a drunken brawl to handle since becoming sheriff.

  Through the phone, Reed caught the rustle of paper then a hard crunch. The Tracker, as the agent was
known, had a weakness for butterscotch candies. Reed far preferred the sweetness of Sasha’s mouth.

  He stifled a groan as his body hardened, as he remembered again the passion of their kisses at dawn. He couldn’t afford the distraction, not now, not when someone had tried to hurt Sasha. He had to do everything in his power to keep her safe, even check out a dead woman’s alibi.

  Along with the crunching of his candy, Royce Graham threw out a comment, “From what Dylan has said, a couple of years out of the fray isn’t going to be enough to make you rusty.”

  No, he wasn’t rusty. But he felt damned old. Sasha’s frantic call in the middle of the night had shaken him. God, if she’d been hurt any worse…

  He couldn’t think about that, couldn’t think about her hurt. The sight of her bruised wrist had struck him like a blow to the gut…as had her kisses.

  But he couldn’t allow that to distract him. He couldn’t let her distract him, so he forced his mind from their kisses.

  “The fray?” he repeated, his mind latching on to that.

  “Fray—Detroit. Same difference.”

  Same difference. A long way from Sunset Island.

  The wind whipped up off the lake as the clouds moved in, obscuring the sun. He quickened his stride as he headed back up the hill, toward the Scott Mansion. Hopefully, she was still sleeping, still safe…

  “Royce, thanks a lot for—”

  “Repeating what you already knew. You didn’t say—why are you double-checking the crime scene? You got a suspect?”

  “Just making sure I didn’t overlook anyone.” Like the dead woman herself.

  “If you need anything else…”

  “Thanks.” But he hoped he wouldn’t. He hoped to find Nadine’s killer soon, before he…or she killed again.

  He clicked his phone shut and shoved it in his shirt pocket. Raindrops splattered the back of his hand. He lengthened his strides, hoping to reach the cover of the porch before the threatening clouds released a deluge.

  “Damn.”

  He’d thought the weather might give him a longer break. Now he’d have to call his team from the woods and abort his search for Nadine’s body yet again.

  Sasha needed to see her sister’s body, needed to accept her death. And at this point, after his strange conversation with Mrs. Arnold, he wouldn’t mind seeing the body, too. For confirmation of the facts.

  And the fact was that she was dead.

  Gone.

  He blinked against the raindrops as he looked up, searching the dark clouds. Just rain. Or more? Lightning? He couldn’t leave his team out in a storm, not as ferociously as the weather tended to batter the island. He reached for his phone but curled his fingers into a fist as some strange sound pealed out. He slowed his steps, listening.

  Thunder?

  Screaming.

  Hair rose on the nape of his neck as he identified the sound.

  A woman’s scream, full of terror, rent the air.

  “Sasha!”

  Where was she? Not in the house. She wasn’t that close. He listened, trying to pinpoint where…

  Her scream stopped, choked off.

  Oh, God, someone was hurting her.

  He ran, instincts guiding him toward the water. Pebbles flew as he scrambled down the path to the beach, and his heart hammered against his ribs. Why had he left her alone? Someone had tried to harm her last night. He should have known they’d try again.

  But maybe, like the staff, he’d had his doubts. Had thought she might have been disoriented in the dark, might have slipped. He shouldn’t have taken a chance, shouldn’t have believed that she’d still be resting.

  Catching a glimpse of movement, he reached for his holster, for the gun he usually didn’t bother to carry on the island. Instinct again.

  As the wind picked up, the waves rose, crashing against the shore and leaving a foamy white residue on the jagged rocks.

  And on the face of the woman lying on those rocks, her crystal-blue eyes wide-open in death…her glossy black hair in a tangle across her white face…and her throat an open gash from the wound that had killed her.

  “Sasha!”

  Chapter Eight

  Sasha couldn’t stop shaking, and it had nothing to do with the rain that drenched her clothes. Her hair hung in dripping tendrils across her face, and she blinked back the water running in her eyes. Then she realized it wasn’t water but tears.

  She couldn’t stop crying, either.

  Reed grasped her shoulders, but his touch couldn’t heat her blood this time. Nothing could. She tried to peer around his shoulder, but he turned her away from her sister’s corpse.

  She didn’t need to see Nadine to know what she looked like…lying dead on the rocky shore. She would never forget finding her sister’s body.

  “She’s dead, she’s really dead,” she murmured, burying her face in Reed’s shoulder as he pulled her close.

  His arms tightened around her, and his heart pounded hard against her cheek. His voice, always so deep, was a husky rasp as he said, “For a minute I thought it was…”

  “Me.” She shuddered. “You thought it was me lying there…dead.”

  Even for identical twins, the resemblance was uncanny. Nadine had let her hair grow since Sasha had seen her last. The black locks, stained with blood and wet with rain, hung the same length as Sasha’s. Her open eyes, wide and shocked from the surprise of her murder, were the exact same color. The face of the woman lying on the beach was exactly the same one Sasha saw every time she looked in the mirror.

  She and Nadine had spent so little time together since childhood that Sasha had nearly forgotten that somewhere out there was a woman who looked exactly like her. A person with whom Sasha was nearly interchangeable. That could have just as easily been her lying there on the beach, dead.

  And maybe it would have been better if it were. Nadine had been a mother, had the responsibility of a young child. Sasha had no one.

  “It should have been me,” she said.

  “What?” Reed asked, grasping her arms, pulling her back and staring at her.

  Sasha closed her eyes, shutting him out, trying to shut everything out as emotions pummeled her. “It should have been me. Annie needs her mother.”

  “And now she needs you,” he said. “It shouldn’t have been anyone.”

  Sasha blinked against the rain falling into her eyes. “You’re right.” She accepted that numbly, barely aware of him taking out his cell and reporting the location where he needed crime scene techs. After he put the phone away, he touched her face, wiping moisture—rain or tears?—from her cheek.

  “I’m going to walk you back to the house,” he said, linking his fingers with her. “You need to get inside, get warmed up, out of the storm.”

  She’d never be warm again…not after what she’d seen, what she’d thought…

  How could she have suspected Nadine faked her own death in order to torment her? How could she have thought such horrible things of her own sister? She’d been dead, just as Reed had said. But because of that voice in her head calling her name, Sasha had had her doubts. Until now…until her sister’s body had washed ashore.

  “But Nadine…”

  “Come on, Sasha.” He led her toward the path. “We’re going back to the house.”

  “I don’t want to leave her.” Like she’d found her…all alone in the rain.

  “You have to get back to the house, to Annie. Annie needs you now,” he said again.

  “Annie…” She turned back to the child’s mother. As she stared at her, Nadine stared back. “Who could have done this to her?”

  “I don’t know…”

  “You promised me you’d find out. You promised me.” She fought the rising hysteria, but, like the tears, she couldn’t control it.

  “I will find out.” His deep voice vibrated with emotion, and when her gaze met his, she caught the hint of tears in his eyes. Was it just the rain that dripped from his hair? Or did he cry for Nadine?
r />   “But,” he said, “you need to get inside now. Out of the storm.”

  “Nadine…”

  “I’ll take care of her.”

  But it was too late. Somebody else had already taken care of Nadine by slashing her throat, by killing her.

  WHY? THE QUESTION reverberated in her mind. Why would someone kill Nadine?

  As she rocked the little girl, Sasha held Annie tight, snuggling with the child. The motherless child.

  Reed was right. Annie needed her, and so Sasha had pulled herself together. But it had taken an effort, especially with Annie’s soft voice calling her Mommy. Annie’s mother was gone.

  “Oh, sweetheart,” Sasha said, fighting back another flood of tears. “I’m so sorry….”

  As young as Annie was, she might not even remember Nadine, might not remember the woman who’d given birth to her and from all accounts had doted on her.

  Along with grief, anger flowed through Sasha. It wasn’t fair. Whoever had hurt Nadine had hurt the child, too. Had robbed her of the most important person in her young life.

  She knew the sheriff believed someone from Nadine’s past had probably first blackmailed and then killed her when the money ran out, but none of that had anything to do with Annie. She was so innocent. But next to Nadine, she would suffer the most.

  “Mommy…” the little girl sighed.

  She knew. Despite her young age, she knew Sasha wasn’t her mother…even though she called her Mommy. She knew her mother was gone.

  But if not a live Nadine calling her name in the night, who called Sasha?

  Her sister’s ghost?

  Sasha shook her head. God, that was crazier than thinking her sister had faked her own death. Ever since arriving on Sunset Island, Sasha had lost control. She’d lost the calm, rational person she’d once been.

  She was the person who calmed others’ irrational fears. Until now, she’d thought no one had more of those than teenagers.

  Now she realized she was apparently more like the teens she counseled than she’d thought. Especially that morning when she’d begged Reed for kisses and more. She definitely had not thought that one through. And while she’d like to believe she wouldn’t do it again, she didn’t trust herself.