by Lisa Childs
How had Nadine inspired him? Because he’d loved her, or because she’d taken all the money that should have been his and he’d had to support himself? She couldn’t ask that. He wasn’t a troubled teenager she could pry information out of. And she wasn’t entirely sure she wanted to know.
Her arms tightened around Annie, who snuggled yet in her neck. Sasha hoped she was just sleepy.
“And she let me stay here,” he said, “where the light is…perfect.”
Maybe for him.
But Sasha hadn’t seen much light since coming to Sunset Island. Even now the sun barely filtered through some gathering clouds. That storm was coming.
“I heard that she charged you rent,” Sasha admitted.
“But never accepted the money. I should pay you. You can put it away for Annie.”
Or use it to keep the house.
“I’m leaving today,” she said.
He nodded, his blue eyes soft with understanding. “You’re running.”
She couldn’t help but smile. “I thought you said people only ran away to Sunset Island. I’m running from…”
Running. She’d just admitted it.
“Yes, you’re running.”
She covered Annie’s ear. “From a killer,” she whispered. “I think I’m entitled.”
“You’re in danger?” he asked.
“Someone tried to push me down the stairs a few nights ago.”
“You? The power was out. It was dark. It wasn’t you who died the next day.”
Barbie had. Had someone watched her leave the nursery, suspected she was Barbie and tried to kill her?
She shuddered. “I hadn’t thought about that.” And she wouldn’t, not now. “I’m still leaving.”
“I said I wanted to show you something. Over here.” He pulled a canvas from the wall, tipping it toward the fading light. “This is you.”
At the nursery window, the light shining on her hair and casting a shadow behind her. But it wasn’t a shadow. It was a transparent reflection of herself.
Nadine.
Her breath caught, and she reached toward the canvas, wanting to touch what she could not see with her own eyes anymore. Her twin.
Annie turned her head. “Mommy,” she murmured sleepily, her gaze not on Sasha but on the shadow.
“That night I saw you below the window,” she remembered. “Standing in the rain.” Watching me. Watching us.
“Yes, that night,” he said, his calm voice in direct contrast to Sasha’s madly beating heart.
“You saw her?” Maybe she wasn’t crazy.
He nodded. “I see a lot, Sasha.”
She shivered and pulled her gaze from the picture, from the image of her sister’s ghost. She glanced instead through one of the long windows and glimpsed a hint of the rocky beach. “Did you see the nanny’s murder?” she asked.
He glanced toward the window, too. “I see things. Not witness them.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I see that you’re running, Sasha, but not from a killer. You’re running from your feelings for Reed.”
Chapter Thirteen
“Do you need my help?” Dylan Matthews asked, his voice crackling through Reed’s cell phone.
His laptop lay open on the desk, jammed in a corner of the spare bedroom. He tapped the keyboard as he listened to his friend.
“I’ve got it under control,” Reed said, hoping he was right as he scrolled through the documents he’d accessed. Nadine’s court records.
“Really?” Dylan asked, his doubts obvious. “You’re too close. It makes it hard to see what could very well be right in front of your nose. You need a fresh set of eyes. Royce and I can be on the next ferry over.”
But that would be too late. Sasha would be gone by then.
“I have another set of eyes.” A beautiful blue set, but they’d proved too distracting for him to think clearly or to see the merit in her suspicion.
“Good. So you have a lead, then?”
As he perused the documents, he found it. The name that jumped out at him. The link between Nadine’s past and present. And to the house…just as Sasha had suspected.
“You tell me,” Reed said, not yet ready to share what he’d just found. “What have you heard about the Scott Mansion?”
“That spooky old house?” Dylan chuckled. “It’s quite a legend.”
Nadine’s and Barbie’s gruesome murders would only make it more so. If Sasha kept it and opened it as a bed and breakfast, the place would be packed all season with the morbidly curious. The thrill seekers. The lawman in him groaned while the lover in him groped for any reason for her to stay.
“Yeah,” he agreed. “It’s quite the legend. And it’s just been brought to my attention that it’s a pretty hot property, the largest private landholding left on Sunset Island. I need to know if anyone’s expressed an interest in the property lately. Maybe your Fed friend can snoop around—”
“I can do you better than that. My brother-in-law—”
“That’s right. The developer.” Evan Quade was well known in northern Michigan as the man who’d brought prosperity to the town of Winter Falls.
“He’s right here. Let me put him on.”
“Sheriff Blakeslee,” a deep voice said. “Dylan’s told me about the trouble on Sunset Island. Whatever you need…”
“Have you heard anything about the island, specifically the Scott Mansion?”
“I heard Dylan’s reply as I walked into his office.”
“So just the legend stuff?” Disappointment coursed through Reed. He’d been hoping for more, for the final piece that would explain the motive for Nadine’s and the nanny’s murders.
“Yes, I heard that, too,” he said, “as part of a sales pitch.”
“What?” Maybe it was the static on the phone. “You talked to Nadine?”
“No, I had a feeling this person didn’t have the owner’s interest at heart. I was offered a rock-bottom price if I was willing to pay a sizable commission to the person who brought me the offer.”
“Sizable?”
“A million dollars.”
He sucked in a quick breath. “Just as commission for the mansion?”
“It’s worth it for the price I was offered. That’s a valuable piece of property—has the acreage for a golf course. The house could either be converted to a clubhouse and hotel or torn down,” the developer said. He wasn’t the only one who’d seen the property’s potential.
Reed winced at the thought of the destruction of the house and grounds. But that was the least of his concerns. “Okay, it has potential. What I need to know is who brought you this offer.”
He would need the developer’s testimony. But he already knew. He’d found the name in Nadine’s past.
SASHA RESPONDED to the knock at the front door, grimacing as she passed through the bloodstained foyer. She was alone in the big house but for Annie asleep in her crib. She’d sent the sheriff’s deputy down to the dock with a few boxes, so that the lawyer’s boat could be quickly loaded. She’d already inconvenienced him enough.
Mrs. Arnold had gone along with the deputy to make sure the boxes got loaded. She wanted Sasha gone from Sunset Island. And the lawyer would take her away.
At the high school, she was hardly loved by every student, but she felt more welcome with the surly teenagers than she’d ever felt in this house. Behind her she heard a faint whisper. Annie’s voice through the baby monitor?
“Sasha…” The whisper grew louder. Sasha wasn’t surprised. If she would hear Nadine anywhere, it would be at the scene of her violent death. But she’d been quiet since yesterday afternoon, since Annie had been in danger.
The door rattled as her visitor knocked harder. Shivering against a sudden chill, Sasha opened the door to the smiling face of the lawyer. “Mr. Jorgen, I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your coming back and agreeing to get me and Annie back to the mainland.”
He nodded. “It’s been a very emotional
time for you, here in this house. I understand that you want to leave. I just want to make this easy on you, Ms. Michaelson.”
The whisper softened and vibrated with fear. “Sasha…”
“Nothing about this is easy, Mr. Jorgen,” she admitted with a heavy sigh. Not accepting her sister’s death, not leaving the island.
“Of course. Shall we go into the dining room? I have the papers you need to sign.”
She followed the big man as he hustled through the burled-oak pocket doors, his briefcase swinging at his side. “But I haven’t told you what I decided.”
She’d only called and asked him to come to the house and for a ride to the mainland. Away from Sunset Island. Away from the place where her twin had been murdered.
He turned back toward her, his dark eyes intense. “You can’t afford the upkeep. I understand that. It bled your sister dry.”
She shuddered as the image of her sister lying on the beach, throat slashed, flashed through her mind. And again she heard the whisper, calling her name, calling out in warning.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Poor choice of words.”
Had it been? Or was he trying to send her a message? Like Nadine had done yesterday, like she was doing now?
“I’m sorry, too, because you don’t understand,” she said, trying to ignore her sister’s voice. Maybe Nadine thought she was giving up the house. “I don’t want to just sign off the estate.”
Not when so many other people could benefit from it. Annie. Her parents. She couldn’t consider that Mrs. Arnold spoke the truth, that rightful heirs had been denied the estate. “Nadine wanted me to have it.”
And after reading the letter, she respected Nadine, respected her last wishes and respected her whispered warnings.
“So you want to sell it?” he asked.
“No.”
He sighed, a ragged sound from his barrel chest. “You still haven’t made a decision. You’re wasting my time, Ms. Michaelson.”
“No,” she said, her patience wearing as thin as his. “That is my decision. I’m keeping it.”
Something flashed behind his lenses, something hot and violent. “I’m sorry, Ms. Michaelson, but that is not an option.”
“Excuse me? You read my sister’s will to me just a few days ago. She gave me the house. There were no clauses.”
“I didn’t read you the entire will. Of course there were clauses. Why the hell else would I have drawn it up for Nadine?” Anger flushed his face and shook his voice. “She wanted you to have the kid. I said fine. She swore you’d be a good mother to her. And she also swore that you wouldn’t want anything else from her. That you’d sign off the house. Then the estate would revert to the executor.”
“The executor? But that’s you.”
And everything made sense. He had killed Nadine.
“Nadine was a lying bitch. She strung me along on this deal for two years when the house should have been sold, the money in our pockets. We’d already lost the buyer I had interested while I waited for the old bitch to die—”
“Mrs. Scott?” Fear pulsed in Sasha, fast and furious. She had to get away, but she was sure any sudden moves would cause a reaction from him…a decidedly violent one. She edged backward, trying to gain the door.
“Yeah, I got sick of waiting on her, just like I got sick of waiting for your sister to come to her senses. She thought she could keep me happy with some cash. She had no idea what this place is worth. She thought it made a good home for Annie.” He shook his head. “But she knew she had no choice. She’d eventually have to sell. She just wanted to keep me waiting. Like you have.”
“You killed Mrs. Scott?” She had to keep him talking, keep him distracted while she took another tentative step away from him.
He laughed.
“Oh, God, not Nadine. Nadine didn’t kill her.”
“You’re sure.”
No, dammit, she wasn’t. And she should have been, she should have trusted her sister. But she could remember the last line she’d read of her sister’s letter.
Her mistakes…
Had Mrs. Scott’s murder been one of those?
“Nadine wouldn’t kill anyone,” she said, and she prayed she was right. And in her anger she didn’t back down, didn’t back away as her instincts screamed at her to do.
“No, she rescinded on her end of that deal, too. I got her the job with the old lady. Had her play up her pregnancy to get into Scott’s good graces.”
“And it worked,” she said, nearly gagging on her praise, but feeding his ego might keep him talking. “She left the estate to Nadine.”
He laughed again, the sound full of such evil that a chill raced over Sasha’s skin. “You are nothing like your twin. You’re so naive. No wonder you two were never close.”
He was wrong. She and Nadine were close. Now. The connection that Sasha had always longed for had finally been forged between them—in death, as Nadine kept desperately calling her name. And only Sasha could hear her.
“Mrs. Scott didn’t leave anything to Nadine,” Jorgen explained. “She thought she was signing a petition, something about her precious damned island. Instead she was signing it away. But then the bitch held on despite her bad heart. Barbie and I struck up a deal then. And she forgot some pills here and there, so the old lady finally succumbed to the inevitable.”
Sasha’s breath caught at the vicious lengths to which he’d gone to claim the mansion. “Barbie was in on it.”
“Not that Nadine knew,” he said. “She thought the old lady died of natural causes, like everyone else. She didn’t know about Barbie’s involvement, but she’d forced me to use the young nurse. Nadine had changed, had gotten soft when I got her pregnant.”
“You got her pregnant?” Annie couldn’t be his child. She was so sweet, so innocent. And this man was pure evil.
“Part of my fee for getting her out of some legal messes. We would have made a good team if she would have stuck to the deal.”
“So you killed her?”
“She gave me no choice.” He turned toward her, his eyes full of vicious intent. “Just as you’ve given me no choice.”
She turned, ready to run, when a cry rang out from upstairs, then echoed through the baby monitor lying on the hall table. “Mommy!”
He caught her arm, whirling her back.
“Annie’s awake,” she said. “She wants me.”
“Too late. You’ve messed up my plan enough. This time you’re going to sign those papers I brought. I’m not losing another interested buyer because of a Michaelson.”
“Then you’re going to kill me. You tried that night on the stairs.”
“I’m glad you didn’t die that night. I thought I was pushing Barbie,” he admitted, “thought it was her coming out of the nursery.”
Just like Mr. Scott had insinuated. Had he been part of it, too?
“She’d gotten sick of waiting, had gotten a little too pushy.”
“She was in on everything,” Sasha realized. “You checked with her to find out when the others would be out of the house. Then you had her take Annie for a walk.” God, she was sickened by the extent of his murderous plot. She’d counseled some wild teens before, but until today, she’d never been in the presence of true evil.
“Yeah,” he admitted, and the only reason he would freely admit anything was because he didn’t intend to leave Sasha as a witness. “I had Barbie get the kid out of the way.”
“But Annie wasn’t out of the way the day you killed Barbie,” she said, stalling, trying to think as the walls closed around her.
And both Nadine and Annie called out for her. She had to get away. “Annie was right there. She could have seen something.”
Sweat dribbled from his top lip despite the chill in the air. “That wasn’t planned. I just intended to threaten Barbie so she’d stop…”
“Blackmailing you.” She drew on her years of counseling with the kids where she always tried to find the positive no matter how self-destruc
tive their actions. “You didn’t want to hurt Annie. But if you hurt me now, you’ll hurt her. She’ll have no one.”
He shook his head. “That’s not true.”
Oh, God, he was going to take Annie, too.
“The sheriff will take her. I could tell he always wished she was his, resented the hell out of you for getting her instead.” His dark eyes glittered with pure malice. “Maybe that’s why he started sleeping with you, huh? So he could play Daddy like he did when Nadine was alive.”
Like the teenagers, he was lashing out, trying to hurt her. She could handle whatever emotional pain he tried to give her. It was the physical she had to fight.
“I’ll sign off the estate,” she offered, her voice shaking despite her efforts to steady it, to appear calm even as terror weakened her knees. “It’s yours. Just leave me alone.”
“It’s too late. I can’t do that. You’ll sign off, but then you’ll leave the island. You already told the sheriff’s fine deputy that you and the kid were leaving with me. Thank you for making it easy—”
“I won’t go quietly. I’ll fight.” For her life and Annie’s. The child kept crying for her, calling for her mommy.
“And if you do, the kid will die, too. Is that what you want, Sasha?”
No, she’d do anything to protect Annie. But Nadine kept whispering her warning. And Sasha knew that if she and Annie got on a boat with him, neither one of them would survive. He was that demented, demented enough to kill his own child. She couldn’t risk it.
“Leave Annie here. I’ll go with you.”
“But the others will wonder why you’re leaving her,” he said, thinking of his alibi, no doubt, instead of his daughter. He’d obviously never thought of Annie or he wouldn’t have killed her mother.
“We can leave, go out the back way to the dock,” she said. “They should be coming up the front now.” She hoped.
“Then we better get this over with. Sign the papers.” His big body blocked her in by the table as he opened his briefcase, drawing papers out.
Hoping to borrow some time for the others to arrive, Sasha knocked the papers to the floor, then tried to wrench herself free of his grasp.
“You are her twin. You bitch.” His fingers dug into her wrist, the one still bruised from her tumble on the stairs.