by Sandra Brown
The room felt very cold after he and Wise closed the door behind their hasty departure. Marilee went to the fireplace, rearranged the burning logs with a poker, then sat down across from Dora, who said, “They’re convinced Scott had something to do with that girl’s disappearance.”
Marilee hugged her elbows to ward off the chill. Perhaps it was also a subconscious gesture, an attempt to hold on to her flagging hope that Scott’s note didn’t imply suicide—for reasons she didn’t allow herself to contemplate.
“From Millicent to you,” Dora said scornfully. “I don’t know which of you is worse.”
“I don’t expect you to understand.”
“Well, thank you,” Dora said with a bitter laugh. “Because I don’t understand how a decent and responsible person, which you’ve always seemed to be, could seduce a boy. You’re an authority figure. He looked up to you. Admired you.”
“He still does.”
Dora didn’t acknowledge that. “You’re the reason he’s been sneaking out of the house at night. He came to you.”
“Yes.”
“Do you realize the danger you placed him in?”
“Yes,” Marilee replied, her voice soft with contrition. Staring into the flames, she added, “The risks were incredibly high for both of us.”
“Yet you lured him into your bed.”
Marilee raised her head and looked across at Dora. “Do I look like a femme fatale capable of luring any man, Mrs. Hamer?” She smiled with self-deprecation. “Hardly. Scott responded to me in the same way I responded to him. We recognized a matching need.”
“For sex.”
“Yes. There was passion.” Ignoring the other woman’s wince, she continued. “But we were drawn together by more than that. Both of us lacked something essential that the other was willing—no, glad—to provide.”
“Oh, I’m sure you gladly provided an outlet for my eighteen-year-old son’s lust.”
“I did,” she admitted without a qualm. She wondered how much she should say. Should she tell her that she had become Scott’s sounding board last night when he finally opened up to her and railed against the steroids Wes had forced on him?
That was the least shocking thing he’d told her, but wouldn’t it be cruel to tell Dora about Wes’s treachery concerning Millicent? Perhaps she already knew. But if not, she was in no state of mind to hear the story now.
Besides, Marilee wasn’t a hypocrite. Who was she, having been caught in bed with her student, to cast stones at Wes or anyone? She stuck to the facts but veiled them. “I also gave Scott relief from the pressures imposed on him by your husband. I listened to his opinions, his thoughts and dreams, where—”
“Don’t whitewash it, Marilee. Priests who abuse young boys also hear their confessions and give absolution. You’re nothing but a sexually repressed old maid who finally found a willing partner.”
“You’re right, of course,” she admitted sadly. “On every point. My only saving grace is that Scott is beyond the age of consent. So far as the law is concerned, I didn’t have sexual congress with a child. But from an ethical standpoint, it was . . .” She wouldn’t say it was wrong. She would never think of it as wrong. She finished by saying “Unacceptable.”
They stared into the fire for several minutes. Then Dora leaned forward and placed her elbows on her knees. She rested her face in her hands and remained that way for a long time, time enough for the logs to burn down to charred sticks that needed stoking.
Then she lowered her hands and turned her head toward Marilee. “You love my son, don’t you?”
“With all my heart,” she replied quietly. “But don’t be distressed, Dora. You don’t have to worry about me ruining Scott’s life. Before it started, while he was still just a lovely daydream, I knew that if anything were to develop between us, it would be temporary. I recognized that it couldn’t, and wouldn’t, and shouldn’t last. I planned all along to quietly exit his life one day so that he would be spared any embarrassment or guilt over us.”
She turned her head and looked wistfully into the fire. “I knew this day would come. I knew it would break my heart in two, and possibly break Scott’s as well, although I hoped to avoid that.
“In anticipation of this day, I treasured every moment we were together. I knew that if our affair was discovered, I would be reviled for the rest of my life. I didn’t care. For once in my life I disobeyed the rules. I lived in the moment and tried not to let the dread of the inevitable outcome spoil the time I had with him. I gave him everything I had within me to give.” She shifted her gaze back to Dora. “And I would do it again, without a grain of regret.”
The two women looked at each other with complete understanding. It was hard to say who moved first because it seemed that they simultaneously reached across the space between the two chairs and clasped hands. They clung tightly to each other, because neither had anything else to which she could cling.
CHAPTER
30
WINDOW PEEPING ON MY FANTASIES.”
He closed his lips around her nipple and sucked it into his mouth, rubbing his tongue against it until she thought she would die of the pleasure. As he moved to the other breast, he whispered, “Naked is so much better than through clothes.”
“But even fully dressed, you managed to find everything.”
“I have a built-in heat-seeking device.”
“You certainly do.” Smiling seductively, she slid her hand down his belly, closed her hand around him, and began to massage. “I saw you washing,” she confessed in a whisper.
He looked at her inquisitively.
“In the window glass. Your reflection. It was only an accidental glimpse, but . . .”
Placing his lips against hers, he murmured, “But what?”
“I got all hot and fluttery.”
“What you’re doing now has got me hot and fluttery.”
Squeezing and stroking, she had brought him to full erection again. As she rolled her thumb over the smooth tip, pressing it where it was most sensitive, he groaned, “Christ, Lilly.”
“This is a lovely device.”
“It’s not the only one.”
In the tangle of blankets, she lost track of exactly how he came to be lying between her thighs, his hands beneath her hips, tilting her up toward his mouth and that other heat seeker, his tongue. It treated her to carnal sensations she didn’t know were possible and acquainted her with a level of intimacy she hadn’t realized two separate individuals could share.
Did she actually cry out his name? Or did she only think she did? Either way, it echoed loudly inside her head, her heart.
Moments later, when he was buried deep inside her again, she gazed up at him, her eyes telegraphing a million things she wanted to say but had no words for.
He smiled tenderly. He understood. Tierney understood everything.
• • •
When Lilly came to, she was back in the main room of the cabin. A fire was burning in the grate, so she wasn’t cold. Welcome sunlight was streaming in through one of the windows, where the drape had been pushed aside. Her neck was sore, but it was no more painful than a crick.
And she was handcuffed.
Tierney!
God, she’d been dreaming about him, about last night, about making love with him. A sob of humiliation and outrage escaped her, but she wouldn’t indulge those feelings now. She would save them for later. Assuming she survived.
She looked wildly about the cabin and listened for sounds of him moving around in the other rooms but quickly determined that she was alone. She was seated on the floor beneath the bar that divided the kitchen from the living area. Her hands had been secured to a metal support bracket on the underside of the counter. Her hands had gone to sleep from lack of circulation, and it was probably that discomfort that had brought her out of unconsciousness.
She came up onto her knees to give her arms some slack and much relief. Her inhalers had been placed on the seat of the bar stool
nearest her, within reach if she stretched out her fingers. A cup of water was also there. How considerate. Tierney wanted her hydrated and breathing well when he killed her.
What choice did he have? She had sealed her doom when she found Millicent’s body.
He was Blue.
His explanations for the handcuffs and all the rest had been, indeed, as false as they’d sounded. Probably he’d been on the mountain to dispose of Millicent’s corpse when the storm had forced a postponement. He’d stashed her body in the most convenient hiding place—her toolshed. As he was making his way back to his car, Lilly had intercepted him on the road.
All his actions and evasions since then seemed indisputable signs of guilt. How could she have believed him innocent even for an instant, much less for an entire night? The answer was simple: She had wanted to.
She had desired him. His self-sacrificing, life-risking kindnesses toward her yesterday had seemed incompatible with a man who would then wish to destroy her.
What a clever modus operandi. He befriended his victims. Romanced them into a sentimental stupor. Made sweet love to them. But at some point, the tender lovemaking turned violent.
She’d had only a glimpse of Millicent’s face before turning away in horror, but the sight was branded on her memory. Millicent hadn’t died in the throes of passion. She had been choked until her tongue protruded from her lips and her eyes bulged from their sockets. Her killer had been cruel and merciless. She hadn’t died quickly. It had been slow and awful.
Thinking of it filled Lilly with terror, but also with a determination not to be Tierney’s next victim.
Where was he, and how long till he returned? Was he disposing of Millicent’s remains before coming back to deal with her? Whatever he did, he would have to do it swiftly. He was under a deadline. He’d said himself that Dutch or someone would try today to reach them.
When, when, when?
She yanked hard on the cuffs, knowing even as she did that it was futile to try to break free from them. If Tierney couldn’t do it, what possible chance did she have? God, had she really kissed the skin he’d rubbed raw on his wrists and the scratches her nails had left on the back of his hand?
She couldn’t think about that now. Nor about anything else they’d done in the dark warmth beneath the blankets. That was last night. This was today. She wouldn’t die of shame. She wouldn’t die, period. She would survive.
Reaching up, she fingered the screws securing the support brackets to the underside of the counter. If she could loosen them enough to pull the brackets out of the wood, she could at least slip the cuffs free. Her hands would still be cuffed together, but she could run.
She tested the screws. There was no give in any of them, but she attacked them anyway. She broke her nails and abraded the pads of her fingers as she tried to twist the screws. After five minutes, she admitted that it was hopeless. She hadn’t loosened one of them. All she’d accomplished was to make her breathing more difficult and her fingers bleed.
Unless she could devise another means of escape—and nothing came to mind—she would have to rely on someone coming to her rescue. What kind of scenario would be played out?
Would Tierney kill her quickly and flee? Would he hold her hostage while negotiating the terms of his surrender? Whether he left her alive or dead, would he try to avoid arrest and get gunned down in the process?
Would she die while looking into his face, her eyes imploring him to spare her life, just as they had implored him last night to make her feel alive again after a four-year grieving slumber?
Or would she watch him lying motionless in a bank of snow that turned red as the life flowed out of him?
She wasn’t sure which of those two images caused her to start weeping.
But the tears ceased abruptly when her cell phone rang.
• • •
“Dammit!” Dutch cursed. “Got her voice mail. Why isn’t she answering the phone?”
The trip up the mountain was taking longer than anticipated, and Dutch’s patience was long since spent. He knew the basic route of the road, but the surface was covered with several feet of snow, icy in patches, making each yard of it hazardous. The short straightaways were no safer than the hairpin curves. Neither he nor Wes had a lot of experience with snowmobiles. In his opinion, they were unreliable and unwieldy vehicles.
His ski goggles had dug deep impressions into the puffy skin of his face. It was so swollen that his nose blended into his cheeks without any differentiation. Some of the cuts had developed pus. To relieve the throbbing pain, he’d taken off the goggles, but the sun’s glare on the snow had made his eyeballs ache so bad he’d put them back on.
Here on the mountain’s western face, the wind was much stronger. It whipped snow into icy dervishes they couldn’t always avoid. The temperature was impossibly cold, although the heated grips on the snowmobiles kept their hands from freezing. They had to ride single file, so they’d taken turns in the lead.
Wes, who was presently leading, had signaled him that he was about to stop. “I need to take a piss.”
Dutch had been annoyed by the delay but had used the opportunity to check his cell phone. When he saw that it was registering service, he hastily pulled off his glove and punched in Lilly’s number.
Wes had finished peeing and was plowing his way over when he heard Dutch ask rhetorically why she wasn’t answering her phone. “Try it again,” he said.
Dutch redialed, with the same unsatisfying result.
“Don’t jump to conclusions, Dutch. Just because she’s not answering her phone, doesn’t mean . . . well, you know. It could mean a lot of things.”
Dutch nodded agreement, but his heart wasn’t in it.
Ever the optimist, Wes said, “Maybe she’s tried to call you.”
Dutch shaded his phone with his hand so he could read the LED. There were no calls from Lilly’s number but three from police headquarters, coming in at one-minute intervals. His officers would be wondering where he was. Reluctantly he dialed the number. It was answered immediately, but background noise made the poor connection even worse.
“Chief?” his dispatcher said. “Can you hear me?”
Was he kidding? They could have heard him in China.
“. . . looking for you. The . . . BI helicopter has set down . . . school football field . . . quick or else . . . gonna . . . without you.”
Dutch clicked off. Later he could claim he’d lost the signal, hadn’t understood the message for all the breakups, hadn’t heard the part about the chopper’s arrival.
“Begley’s got his helicopter,” Wes said, having overheard the dispatcher’s excited voice.
Dutch nodded grimly as he tried Lilly’s number one more time and cursed when he heard the start of her voice mail message again.
“I don’t get it,” he said irritably. “Isn’t she anxious to be rescued?”
“She doesn’t know that Tierney is Blue,” Wes reminded him.
“I know, but she’s been—”
“Listen!” Wes raised his hand. “Did you hear that?”
“What?”
“Shh!”
Dutch lifted his cap away from his ear and listened hard. But all he could hear was the whistling of the wind and the occasional clump of snow landing on the ground after being blown from an upper tree branch. After thirty seconds, he said, “I don’t hear anything.”
“I don’t either now. Thought I did.”
“What did it sound like?”
“Like these.”
“Snowmobiles? Can’t be. Not Ritt’s anyway. I had the keys to all four of them.” On the key ring that William had given him were four keys for four snowmobiles. At the garage, it had been a quick process of elimination to see which two keys they needed for the snowmobiles they’d taken out. He still had the key ring in a pocket of his snowsuit.
Wes shook his head. “Guess it was my imagination. These things are so damn loud, they could do funny things to your ears. Anyhow, you
were saying that Lilly’s been . . .”
“She’s been up there for two days. Stranded. Without power. Why wouldn’t she have her cell phone in her hand, willing it to ring, trying to call out?”
“You’d think,” Wes admitted. “But maybe she’s not getting cell service up there. Maybe her battery is dead.”
“Or maybe she is.”
“Dutch—”
“Or maybe she’s hurt.” Or maybe she was snuggled up in bed with Tierney and resenting the intrusion of the ringing phone. They might not find her injured at all but rosy with health and purring with sexual satisfaction. He looked at Wes and knew that he was thinking the same thing.
“If she could get through, she’d be trying to call you, Dutch. I’m sure of it.”
Before he yielded to the temptation to push Wes over the cliff for patronizing him like he was a mental patient, Dutch pulled his ski glove back on. “If you’re gonna lead, step up the pace.”
Wes started walking toward his snowmobile. “I can’t go any faster. These switchbacks are brutal.”
“You knew that when you volunteered to come along. And by the way, why did you?”
Wes stopped in his tracks, turned back. “What?”
Dutch pushed his goggles up to his forehead and gave Wes a long, appraising look.
“What?”
“Why are you doing this, Wes? Don’t get me wrong. I want a crack at Tierney whether or not he’s Blue. But what’s your stake in this?”
Wes shook his head with misapprehension. “I don’t follow.”
“Yeah, you do. Don’t play stupid. You did everything but lick my dick last night to talk me into going after Tierney myself. I want to know why.”
“I explained why. You deserve the glory for capturing him, not the FBI. I’d bask in the glow of your success. Nothing wrong with that, is there?”
“No, there’s nothing wrong with that. But I think you have another motive. And I think it has to do with Scott.”
“Scott?”
“You should know, Wes, that the more innocent you act, the more suspicious I become. Are you manipulating me? As I said, I want to take care of Tierney anyway. I’d just like to know before I do that I haven’t been played for a chump.” He gave Wes a hard look. “Did Scott have anything to do with the disappearances of those women?”