Chapter 1
Rocks hurtled down the steep mountainside, and bounced onto the gravel road bare inches in front of the Suburban’s bumper.
Ambush!
Ariel swerved to avoid a big stone just as a mountain goat leaped in front of her vehicle. She stomped on the Suburban's brakes and wrenched the wheel. The front grill swooped past the startled animal, and hurtled toward a flimsy guardrail that protected them from the chasm. She heaved the steering wheel toward the sheer mountainside, but it fishtailed out of control. As she fought to regain command, she observed movement in her rearview mirror; a moment later, the goat vanished in the thick rooster-tail of dust spewed by the tires.
She didn’t have time to worry over the animal’s fate she needed to worry about herself and Tempest. Ariel threw all her strength and one-hundred-twenty-pounds into recovering control of her armor-plated vehicle and keeping it from plummeting into the gorge on the left side of the thin dirt road they were following through the Rocky Mountains.
The bumper hit the rusted guardrail. Metal shrieked. The impact threw her against the shoulder harnesses, numbing her from right shoulder to fingertips. With only her left hand, Ariel whipped the wheel toward the road.
Her muscles screamed.
So did Tempest and Mozart.
Ariel bit the insides of her cheeks so hard she tasted blood.
Then finally, miraculously, the suburban stopped.
Heart slamming against her ribs, Ariel stared through a haze of dust at the boulder-strew gorge, a hundred yards below.
“We’re alive,” she whispered in surprise. She tore her attention from the chasm and looked at her sister.
Tempest’s eyes were pools of white. “Is that poor animal okay?”
Trust her fifteen-year-old sister to worry more about a wild creature than herself. Did the kid realize that if it hadn’t been for the defensive driving course she’d taken, they’d be dead? Or had the five years they’d been on the run made Tempest take this sort of situation for granted? Ariel grimaced, this wasn’t the first time those lessons had saved them.
And knowing Peter’s persistence, it wouldn’t be the last.
Hanging onto the one safe topic, Ariel glanced at the rearview mirror where she’d last seen the goat, but the only thing visible was billowing dust. She cleared her throat. “I think so.” She closed her eyes then leaned her head against the seat, and controlled her breathing as she waited for her racing heart to still. When her blood pressure edged downward, she admitted, “After all the car chases and close escapes from your father, I never imagined a goat could give me such a scare.”
“Uncle Mitch sure taught you good,” Tempest said. Ariel grunted in agreement. Tempest’s white knuckled grip relaxed and she turned to face Ariel. “I wish he’d taught me before we had to leave.” Her tone brightened. “But you can teach me to drive like that.”
“I’ll probably have to.” Someday, but not today. Or tomorrow. Maybe not even next year. But Tempest surely would need to learn, eventually, after all, her father had vowed to kill them and the one thing everyone could be certain about was that Peter always kept his word. Tempest flexed her fingers, restoring circulation. Sitting in the passenger seat without any control had to be worse than fighting fate. A glance in the rearview mirror showed the plume of dust concealing the isolated mountain pass they’d just come through. It billowed so high, that even the snow-topped peaks of the Rocky Mountains were hidden. She hoped it didn’t mask something worse: Peter. Stomach tight, Ariel moved the suburban into the middle of the winding gravel road.
“We lost him three days ago,” Tempest said, as if reading her mind.
Ariel nodded in agreement and hoped that for once they had actually gotten away and Tempest’s perverse father wasn’t just playing some sort of cat and mouse game. Please let that black Bronco have lost our trail in Montana. Please let this be their last move and the last time she had to remember a new identity or not jump when she saw a stranger in the mirror. Please don’t let Peter find them in Fairbanks. She wished there was a way to tell if they’d finally outsmarted him or if he was merely keeping track of them from a distance. Either way, Peter’s specter hung over them, like the death shroud he’d promised them. Ariel wondered if he had let them go instead of outright murder them because their efforts and fear entertained him.
Despite the long pause, the rear-view mirror only showed dust. Still, Ariel didn’t fully believe they’d managed to evade Peter’s lackey.
Was there anywhere, short of the grave, where Peter couldn’t find them?
She pushed aside her paranoia, shoved the suburban into drive, focused on the road and gently pushed on the accelerator. She wanted to floor it, but knew better than to give into panic.
Alaska. She shivered at the forbidding thought of ice and polar bears. Surely he’ll never look for them in a land of perpetual winter.
Neither she nor her half-sister spoke for a long time. When the afternoon passed without any sign of a tail, Ariel’s heart stopped pounding like a frenzied drummer. Then, she became concerned because she hadn’t seen another vehicle in hours and the gas gauge was inching toward a quarter tank. Her foot eased back on the accelerator, the goon Peter had hired still didn’t appear.
Tempest stared at the bleak mountain peaks long after her fright wore off. Gradually, her gaze dropped to the equally barren slopes on the far side of the wide gorge bordering the twisting road. “The trees are sure little here. Guess loggers got all the big ones, and these are all babies, huh?”
“The closer trees are to the Arctic circle, the smaller they are and they don’t grow in it at all,” Ariel hoped she didn’t sound like a know it all. “They’re not like the ones we’re used to, either… No oaks or elms.” Ariel forced herself to focus on the road to freedom and not think about Mecklenburg County’s southern temperate forests or all the friends and family they’d left behind when they’d run for their lives and to protect the ones they loved. She couldn’t prove it, but intuition told her Peter had tried to murder Mitch for helping them learn the skills they needed to protect themselves.
“No green pollen ponds in spring?” Tempest wrinkled her nose.
Ariel glanced at the trees across the gorge. “Pine pollen probably does that, too.” Talking about trees was much better than thinking about what the swirling dust could hide, or what would surely happen when Peter found the only two people who’d had the audacity to testify against him. “In the Arctic Circle bushes are tiny, like bonsai.”
“Ya mean they’re in fancy pots?” Ariel glanced at Tempest in time to see the well-know mischievous grin beneath the chocolate brown eyes and short, spiked black hair. “Sherry-"
“Forget I’m your sister. Forget I’m a pediatrician. Forget Grandma, Kelsey, Jade and all our other cousins. Forget every name we’ve had before. Now, we’re simply Ariel and Tempest Danner. Mother and daughter.” The road shimmered through her unshed tears. “We can not afford to create suspicion. Not after we worked so hard to create these identities.” She slowed down, even more and massaged the tight muscles at her nape. “I’m tired of creating new pasts and trying to remember who I am. From this point on, you must remember to call me Mom, Mama or whatever you want, as long as it’s not Sis or Sherry.”
Tempest wrinkled her nose. “I hate moving. I hate correspondence school. I hate not getting to go to the prom or have a boyfriend. Go on a real date. Maybe have a bunch of girlfriends over for a slumber party… I want to do all the stuff you got to do when you were my age.”
“It wasn’t that great.”
“Yeah right,” she scoffed. “I’ve seen the pictures. You had all kinds of fun.”
“Sometimes. Not every day.” Certainly not since her father had died o
r the day she’d seen her mother murdered. Definitely not the day when the judge freed Peter and had accused her of slander, then threatened to incarcerate her for libeling a man who’d given her and her mother a home, name and new future. Ariel swallowed. “Think about this: we get to play dress up and masquerade every day. Some people would think that’s fun.”
Tempest looked back over the seat to Mozart, who had his red head tucked under an emerald wing. “You’re lucky there’s no way to dye feathers.” When the parrot didn’t respond, silence descended. Tempest shifted in her seat, toyed with the CD player, wiggled some more, then finally said, “Sh-Ariel, can’t I go to a real school?” Ariel shook her head. “Pull-ease?” Again, Ariel showed her disapproval. “Well why not?” She had to ask? “I mean, you are.”
Her stomach clenched. “I’m working so we can eat.” If she got any tenser, her fingernails would rip the leather cover off the steering wheel. Ariel glanced at Tempest. “A roof is nice, too. And you love clothes.” She couldn’t resist teasing, “Even though the ones you pick look like they were made for someone twice your size.”
“I’m fashionable.” Tempest turned toward her, a belligerent expression on her face. “And you shouldn’t talk about baggy clothes, not when you’re still wearing what you bought twenty pounds ago.” Tempest glared at her. Ariel ignored the jibe; after all, the weight she had lost due to stress was the truth. When the silence stretched, Tempest said, “Home schools don’t have proms.”
“True.” Years ago, she’d been forced to sit at home because their mother had made her respect her step-father’s wishes. She could still remember her anger and the resentment toward the man who’d dared to usurp her father’s place. Was she being as unreasonable and overly protective as Peter had been? Was her little sister’s situation similar to what she’d resented? She shuddered at the thought. Should she set aside her fears and simply let them try to enjoy a normal life instead of view everything as a survival issue? “It’s only a dance,” she muttered. As she listened to herself, Ariel winced; their mother had said the exact same thing to Peter.
“Oh, you think so, do you? Trust me on this - the prom is not just any ole dance. Just like I’m not just any ole gal." Tempest patted her short black spiked hair. "I’m gorgeous and cool. Someone equally cool should ask me - at least they would if they knew me. But if I home school, no one will ask me ‘cause you’ll make sure we live like mushrooms and no one will know I exist.” Her expression became thoughtful. “Maybe I should ask someone. Preferably someone totally gorgeous… You know, the drop dead kind.”
Ariel shivered involuntarily, as she pictured Peter, who epitomized ‘the drop dead kind’, in far too many ways. Tall, dark, handsome men were worse than Ebola. Another shudder shook her. If it weren’t for Peter’s promise of death, she’d have a pediatric practice, not a phony master’s degree in biology, a bulletproof Suburban, brown contacts and matching drab hair along with an alias she hoped would keep her alive.
“Even if I don’t always remember our new names, Father’ll find us,” Tempest predicted. “He always does.”
“Not this time.” If she said it enough and prayed hard enough it would be so. Ariel glanced at the rearview mirror. A prickle of panic coursed through her when she didn’t immediately recognize the woman with the dark wavy hair and tense brown eyes.
“Like he’ll ever give up.” Tempest snorted as she crossed her thin arms over her stomach. “Even if we were dead, Father’d probably dig us up and kill us all over again, just to make positive certain he got his revenge.” Tempest balled her fist and hit her open palm. “I hate him, I hate him, I hate him!”
“I know you do. And believe me I understand, but try to realize that while we can dislike things he does, we must love, not ha-”
“I don’t want to hear it.”
“Lo-“
“I don’t want to hear about love! You know how horrible he is!”
“Yes, but all human life is-“
“Sacred,” Tempest interrupted. “That’s what you always say, but do you really mean it or are you just all screwed up from taking that hypo critic oath?”
“Hippocratic oath,” Ariel corrected. “It’s something I believe in because it focuses on good, not evil.” Tempest screeched with irritation. From the back, Mozart, their parrot, shrieked and flapped his emerald wings. “Now you’ve upset Mozart. Better pop in a concerto to get him calmed down.” Tempest was already pushing buttons on the player. Soon, the tones of Sonata in F Major came from the speakers. After several bars, the parrot calmed. Ariel wished Tempest were as easily mollified. “We should try to find something good we can focus on. After all, he is your father, and you’re pretty terrific, so there has to be something good to say about him.” When it came to Peter, Ariel knew she was asking the impossible.
“Like what? The way he tortures animals?” Sarcasm infused her tone. “Or, how about the way he treats people? Like when he makes us feel guilty when he’s the one who’s wrong?” Her mouth flattened. “Can you forget him pushing mom in front of that bus or did the judge convince you that we were just a couple vindictive brats, who imagined it?”
Ariel blinked hard to hold back the tears that always welled at the horrible memory and its demeaning aftermath. “No one is totally bad,” she whispered. Tempest snorted in disagreement. “I know how easy it would be to hate him, but it only would hurt us. Please, try to find something positive to think about.”
“Like what? All those dead animals he hung on the walls?”
“At least he never stuffed Mozart.”
“Well, there is that,” Tempest conceded, before she lapsed into silence. For several miles, the only sounds were from the gravel road and classical music. Ariel stared out the dusty windows at the scenery, which looked different from anywhere they’d ever been.
Hours later, exhausted from the trip, they followed the crudely sketched map to a quiet residential street and parked in front of the white clapboard townhouse, which would be their home for the foreseeable future.
“It looks weird,” Tempest said. “Maybe barren is a better word.” She frowned. “Do you think it’ll take a long time to get used to such small trees?”
“I don’t know.” Unlike the big beautiful oaks surrounding the home they’d been raised in, these trunks barely looked big enough for a bunny to hide behind. For the zillionth time she wondered if Peter had wanted their mother for herself or for her family’s prestige and money.
Ariel got out of their mud-splattered Suburban and stretched her aching back as she studied the simple white clapboard two-story building. Black shutters flanked the windows. A huge rose-colored peony covered in dinner-plate-sized blooms appeared to be making up for the lack of other foundation plantings. She looked up and down the block-long apartment building and counted a total of three spindly trees. At least it wouldn’t be easy to be a peeping tom here.
Tempest opened the cigarette tray and grabbed the house key, then snatched Mozart’s perch and headed for the door.
Ariel leaned over the back of her seat, petted Mozart’s head, and then offered her finger to step up on. He stared at her for a brief moment before he backed away. She tickled him under the chin and offered her hand again, but he refused to come close enough for her to pick him up. “You stubborn old bird,” she teased. “I know what you want.” She opened a Tupperware canister of sunflower seeds and tempted Mozart toward her. He tilted his head, eyeing the seed as if to determine if she was trying to bribe him with substandard millet. He took a small step forward. Then another. Almost there. He took two more quick steps.
As he grabbed a seed, Ariel held the container with one hand and grabbed Mozart’s red-feathered body with the other. When he bobbed his head to eat, she backed out of the suburban.
Suddenly, a dog began barking. Ariel twisted around in time to see a large black and white beast barrel around the end of the long building, and leap toward the chain-link fence that enclosed the townhouse next to theirs. The an
imal landed against the barrier with a resounding clamor. Mozart shrieked and flailed his wings. The seed container flew upward. Ariel lost her grip on Mozart and the container. He flapped back into the Suburban, while the Tupperware hit the ground. A second dog joined the first, but instead of beating the fence, the new one sat on the sparse grass and howled.
If they had to listen to this noise every day, she’d shoot the creatures. She snorted. As if she’d ever do anything that labeled her like Peter.
A third dog joined the pack. This one silently reared up and pawed at the fence-wire. Ariel swallowed. Though the chain-link fence appeared tall enough and strong enough, to keep beasts at bay, having anything with long claws and big sharp teeth this close reminded her of the toddler who’d been her first patient; a pit-bull had mauled the tike and ripped his throat to within a tendon of the jugular, it was a wonder the little guy had made it to the ER alive.
Tempest rushed back outside, nearly tripping over her own feet when she spotted the dogs. Instead of fleeing, she moved toward the howling pack. “Hello,” she purred. “You’re so pretty and handsome. I’m sure we’ll be great friends.”
Ariel rolled her eyes to heaven, as the howls doubled in strength.
Tempest glanced over her shoulder and grinned at her. “Aren’t they gorgeous? This is almost as good as having a dog of my own.”
Ariel grunted and motioned her to come away from the fence. After a moment’s hesitation, Tempest trudged toward the suburban “I feel safe knowing they’re there and that they bark at strangers.”
“Valid point.” One she’d have to consider later. “But, right now, you know you live here, but they still have to figure it out.” Tempest grabbed the Tupperware, then crawled over the back seat and lunged at Mozart. The bird evaded her. Ariel slung her backpack over her shoulder then started crawling over the seat to help her.
Suddenly sunflower seeds exploded from Tempest’s hand. Ariel felt several hit her head. “Ah!” She backed out of the door, while fluffing her dark, wavy hair. Suddenly, half in, half out of the suburban, something heavy thudded against her head and claws gripped her hair. Ariel fell backward.
Fatal Attractions Page 1