by Rita Herron
The agents narrowed their eyes.
“Lady Bella Rue is our resident witch,” A.J. said sarcastically.
“You’re the lady those boys targeted, aren’t you?” Agent Gentry asked.
Lady Bella Rue nodded and offered her outstretched, gnarled hand. The suits shook it, introducing themselves.
Lady Bella Rue turned to Matt, her expression grave. “Mr. Mahoney, you have to do something. Ivy Stanton is in trouble.”
Matt’s heart accelerated. “What makes you think that?”
“I…went by the cabin to see her and found the car there, but the tires were slashed, and she wasn’t anywhere around.” She worried the knots tied at her neck. “Besides, I’ve had this feeling all day that someone else would die tonight. That the killing wasn’t over.”
Matt’s body went cold. He had the same feeling. He hurriedly tried Ivy’s number again, but no one answered. What if this George Smith was the one who’d tried to kill Ivy? What if he’d wanted the land deal enough to cheat Lily and her husband out of the money? If Ivy had witnessed the murder, she might be able to identify him. And if he was here in Kudzu Hollow, she might have accepted a ride from him without knowing who he really was.
“Boles, tell us more about George Smith,” Matt ordered. “Where is he?”
Arthur shrugged, looking haggard and weary. “I told you all I know.”
“George Smith,” Lady Bella Rue said, clapping one hand over her cheek. “Oh, my word, is that boy back?”
“What do you mean, back?” Matt asked.
She clucked her tongue. “His mama, Nellie, sent him away when he was younger. After his brother died, the boy went crazy.” She leaned closer. “Some folks thought that he was possessed by the devil, that he was insane, that he even killed his brother.”
Nellie? The name sounded familiar. Miss Nellie raised me after my parents died, Ivy had said. Dammit, could it be the same Nellie? “Who was his mother?” Matt asked.
“Nellie Smith,” Lady Bella Rue said in a screechy voice. “She was so lonely she took Ivy in after her parents died. Poor little Ivy didn’t have anyone else in the world, so the authorities finally agreed.”
Miss Nellie was George’s mother?
Miss Nellie always seemed to hold something back, Ivy had said. They’d never been close. And Miss Nellie hadn’t wanted Ivy to come to Kudzu Hollow to look into her past.
Christ. What if George had killed the Stantons, and Miss Nellie had known? Maybe she hadn’t taken Ivy in to atone for her son’s sins, but to make sure Ivy never remembered him and revealed his identity.
RAIN POUNDED THE METAL roof, rousing Ivy from unconsciousness. Her head throbbed and the room spun in dizzying circles, white dots popping before her eyes. She blinked several times and finally managed to bring the room into focus. But when she tried to move, panic shot through her.
Her arms were tied to the rickety iron bedposts, and heavy ropes bound her ankles to the footboard. The room was dark, the old curtains faded and closed, the scent of dust and mildew swirling around her. George’s familiar cologne turned her stomach.
“So you’re awake now, my pretty Ivy.”
At the sound of his grating voice, Ivy yanked at the ropes, but the heavy cord chewed at the skin around her wrists. George moved to the edge of the bed beside her, slid a finger along her cheek, down her throat and to the top of the flimsy white gown he’d put on her.
Tears pricked her eyelids as she noticed her clothes on the floor and realized that he had undressed her. She felt bare, naked in the garment, especially with his eyes trailing over her.
How long had she been here? Hours. Hours in which he’d touched her…
“This gown is like the one your mother wore for me,” George said. “You know she was so beautiful. She taught me how to thoroughly love a woman.” His fingers dipped lower to graze Ivy’s nipple through the lacy weave.
“Please don’t….”
“Yes, Ivy. She liked entertaining men.” He smiled and moved his fingers to her other nipple. “She liked it when I did that. Liked for me to tease her. And she liked the money.”
“She wanted to take me away from Kudzu Hollow,” Ivy whispered. “That’s what she planned to do with the money.”
“Yes, and when I offered to buy the junkyard, she jumped at the chance.”
“So why did you kill her?” Ivy asked.
He had a crazed look in his eyes as he paused, contemplating how to answer.
“When I came to see her that night, she had another lover in her bed.”
“A.J.?”
He nodded, a muscle twitching in his jaw. “He was drunk, passed out in her bed, the asshole. I thought I was special. That she would leave your father and come with me.”
“You wanted my mother to marry you?” Ivy asked, shocked. “But she was older than you—”
“Not that much older.” He shrugged. “But she said I was too young. That she had plans for you. That she was leaving us all behind.” He reached up and flicked the lacy top of the gown open with one finger. “Then she said she didn’t want me, just wanted the money for the land.”
“And that’s why you killed her?” Ivy asked in horror.
“I tried to convince her she was wrong, that we were meant to be together, but she refused to listen. Then she laughed and told me to sign the papers for the deal and leave.”
Ivy’s head swam as the memories bombarded her. George and her mother had fought, bitterly.
“I’m taking my little girl away from this hellhole,” her mother shouted.
George grabbed her and they struggled. The kitchen knife lay on the table, and George picked it up and stabbed Lily in the back. Her mother’s cry of terror pierced the air. Ivy ran into the room and tried to wrestle the knife from him, but he knocked her down. She saw the blood, the beet-red color, and screamed, unable to move. Her mother was dead. Then George lurched at her with the knife.
She thought she was going to die, and she froze.
“You tried to kill me that night?” Ivy said in a haunted whisper.
“But I couldn’t.” His self-deprecating tone rumbled out, low and husky. “I looked at you, that little girl with the big green eyes, and I couldn’t do it. If I had…all these years I would have slept so much better.”
“You can’t kill me now, either, George. Don’t you see, the violence has to stop.”
“You’re not a little girl now, Ivy.” He twirled a strand of her hair around his finger. “And you know everything, so I can’t let you live. Just like I couldn’t let Nellie.”
“You…killed your own mother?” Cold terror trapped the air in Ivy’s lungs. “How could you?”
“She threw me away like I was nothing,” he wheezed. “And then in the end, she threatened to tell you everything. I warned her, just like I did you that night I killed Lily, that if you ever told anyone, I’d come back and finish you off.”
No wonder she’d suppressed the memory, Ivy realized. She’d been terrified he would make good on his threat.
“Then I left to hunt for your father at the junkyard so he would sign the papers,” he said in a rant. “But I couldn’t find him.”
Ivy put the pieces together in her mind. Her father had come home after George left, and found her mother dead. He’d blamed Ivy and chased her into the junkyard. She’d fallen and Matt had saved her.
Then George had seen her father in the graveyard and had killed him.
“That bastard refused to sign the papers for the land deal,” George continued bitterly. “He said the junkyard was his home, and he wouldn’t give it up. But he had to. Lily promised it to me. I earned the commission for the sale.”
“I don’t understand,” Ivy said, in an attempt to stall. She had to sway George from this madness. “The junkyard is still there.”
“I forged the papers,” he explained. “But the deed proved that there was more property than I’d originally thought. The developer I worked for only needed half the land, so he le
ft the junkyard intact.”
George slowly turned back to her, a sadness and desperation flickering in the depths of his cold eyes that rocked Ivy to her core.
“All I wanted was for Lily to love me. And then…when my mother took you in, when I watched you grow up and saw that you looked like Lily, I wanted you, Ivy.” He finished untying the lacy top of the gown and trailed his fingers over the soft swell of her breasts. “You were just as beautiful as your mother, but you were innocent. So innocent.”
Ivy shuddered at his demented tone.
“I knew every date you had,” he continued. “And when you never got close to anyone, I knew you weren’t like your mother, that you would be faithful. I just had to convince you that we belonged together.” He flicked the edges of the gown open to reveal her breasts, then bent and licked a path down her ear, her neck, to her cleavage.
“We could have built a good life together,” he said in a low, heated voice. “If only you hadn’t insisted on coming back to Kudzu Hollow. If only you hadn’t started asking questions.”
“We can still have that life,” Ivy whispered. “Please just release me, George.”
His sharp laughter echoed through the dim room. “It’s too late, Ivy. You’re no better than Lily was in the end. You crawled into bed with Mahoney.” Anger hardened his voice. “And now I’m going to erase his touch, then finish what should have been done in that trailer fire.” He leaned closer, so close his rancid breath bathed her cheek. Slowly and deliberately, he pressed his lips over hers and whispered, “When you die, my face will be the one you see, the last man you’ll remember sliding inside of you.”
Then he began to sing in a whisper:
“One kiss, two kisses, three kisses,
Sigh.
Four kisses, five kisses, six kisses,
Cry.
Seven kisses, eight kisses, nine kisses,
Die.
One last kiss
and then goodbye.”
MATT’S BODY THROBBED with tension. “Let me borrow your computer for a second.”
A.J. frowned but gave him a clipped nod. Matt frantically logged on to the Internet and located the Web site for Ivy’s magazine, Southern Scrapbooks. When he’d first searched for her after being released from prison, he’d found the magazine and a photo of her online, as well as the cofounder of the magazine, George Riddon. The minutes ticked by now, every second adding to his frayed nerves as he waited for the picture to download. What if the man had Ivy? What if Matt was too late?
God, he’d never forgive himself if anything happened to her.
“Lady Bella Rue, look at this picture.”
The older woman leaned over his shoulder. “What am I looking for?”
“Could this man, George Riddon, be George Smith, Nellie Smith’s son?”
The bones in her cheeks protruded, leathery skin stretching over them as she frowned. “It’s been a long time, but…yes, I think it could be.”
“Christ.”
“What is it?” she rasped.
“That man works with Ivy. He…he invested in her magazine.”
A.J. peered at the screen. “Shit. I saw him in town a couple of nights ago at Red Row.”
Matt swallowed, his stomach churning. He glanced up at Boles, A.J. and Lady Bella Rue. “Where would he take her?”
“His mother used to have a cabin out past mine,” Lady Bella Rue said. “It’s pretty deserted.”
“Could you tell us how to get there?” Matt asked.
She nodded, and offered directions. A.J. jangled his keys. “Come on, Matt, I’ll drive.”
Matt stood and faced the federal agents. “We’ll take care of Boles,” Gentry said.
Agent Blackberry gestured to Kintrell. “And I’m going to question him further. He might know more than he’s told us.”
Right. Maybe they were wrong about George, and Matt was on a wild-goose chase. Maybe there had been a muscle man and he’d come after Ivy.
Matt and A.J. rushed out the door, tension thick as A.J. started the engine and raced toward the river. If he’d come forward sooner, and if his daddy hadn’t tried to cover up for him and had confessed about the illegal chemical dumping, lives might have been saved.
Dusk approached as they raced around the mountain. Matt clung desperately to the hope that Ivy was all right, but fear trapped him in its clutches. He could still see her tormented face when she’d run from him. The pain in her eyes, which he had caused.
Even if he did save her, she might not listen to him.
The shrill sound of the siren cut into the howling wind as they closed the distance to the cabin.
IVY STRUGGLED AND FOUGHT against the bindings, but there was no way she could rip them from the posts. Finally she closed her eyes, forcing herself to focus on something other than George’s vile touch as he moved his lips across her body and chanted the crude words about kissing her goodbye. Maybe if she tried hard enough she could block it all out. Just as she had years ago.
But pain and reality intruded, her body convulsing in horror at the thought of him touching her the way Matt had.
No, this was different. Matt’s touch had been gentle. Loving. Meant to give her pleasure.
George’s was harsh. Rough. Meant to take, not give. Meant to make her feel ugly.
Tears trailed down her cheeks, and she spat at him in disgust. Furious, he slapped her across the face. She screamed, but he smothered her mouth with his hand, and she gagged.
Matt…
Still, Matt had been with her mother, just like George.
The thought nauseated Ivy, and she sobbed, but renewed strength surged through her, and she bit her captor’s hand. Salt and sweat singed her tongue, and George bellowed in fury. His eyes went wild as he hit her again, then he ripped the gown completely open and ran his hands over her naked body.
She nearly lost consciousness, but a siren split the air, and she heaved a breath, praying help was on its way.
“No!” George yelled. “They can’t find us now.”
Frantically, he jerked the bindings from her arms and legs free, then grabbed her. Ivy yelled out and pounded him, but he slammed his fist into her face, and stars swam in front of her eyes.
Maybe he’d go ahead and kill her, she thought just before she blacked out. Anything would be better than having to endure his touch again.
Minutes, hours later—she had no idea how long it was—she roused from unconsciousness and panic tightened every nerve in her body. The heavy scent of wet earth and kudzu nearly choked her. She tried to move, but George had tied her up again. “I can’t get caught with you, Ivy.” He opened the trunk of a car, tossed her inside, then slammed it shut. Ivy cried out, panting for air. She was buried beneath the kudzu. Seconds later, she smelled smoke. Tears rained down her cheeks as it seeped through the cracks of the trunk. Dear Lord.
George had set the field of weeds on fire. Even with the light rain, if the gas tank had gas, the car might explode.
She was going to die here where her father had lost his life, and no one would ever find her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
MATT’S HEART RACED as they approached the old cabin. A.J. had flipped off the sirens and lights so they wouldn’t announce their arrival. A black sedan sat in the drive, offering hope that they had at least located the man, although technically the car might belong to someone else. But the house was boarded up in front, and so far off the main road no one would know about it who hadn’t visited before.
“Let’s circle around back, see if there’s an open door or window,” A.J. said.
Matt nodded and climbed out, taking the right side while A.J. went left. Knee-high weeds and scraggly bushes surrounded the rotting wooden structure, and the torn screens on the back porch quivered in the wind. Rain had collected on the sagging porch, and fresh mud splattered the steps near the door. Someone was here or recently had been. Matt eased toward the opening, then nodded when A.J. approached with his weapon drawn, and gestured for
Matt to let him enter first. The wooden planks squeaked as he stepped inside.
The eerie silence felt daunting, the smells of sweat and dust permeated the air. Matt followed close behind A.J. as they checked the kitchen, the living room, then the bedroom.
The sight of the unmade bed and Ivy’s clothes discarded in a heap beside it stopped Matt cold. Blood dotted the sheets and he saw drag marks across it. What had Smith done to Ivy?
A.J. checked the tiny bath. “They’re not here.”
Matt spun around and raced back through the house. The car was still in the drive, which meant they had to be on foot.
“He carried her to the woods,” Matt yelled, studying the heavy boot prints in the wet ground. He frantically searched for signs of Ivy’s footprints, but didn’t see any.
“I’ll get a couple of flashlights!”
Matt didn’t wait. The rain died as he darted into the woods. He listened for sounds, but heard only the whine of an animal in the distance. A.J. caught up with him and handed him a flashlight. “Ivy?” Matt yelled. “Ivy, are you out here?”
“Smith, stop!” A.J. shouted. “You won’t get away.”
Only the howling wind answered.
Blind fear drove Matt forward at a dead run. He had to find Ivy and save her. A minute later, he broke through the clearing, but halted when he saw the trail leading to the junkyard. George must have taken her to where he’d killed her father.
“He’s going to the junkyard,” Matt shouted. “Come on, we have to hurry.”
Up ahead, smoke curled into the sky, and fury gripped him. “He set the kudzu on fire, A.J.” Hopefully, the wet leaves wouldn’t catch too quickly.
“I’ll call the firemen.” A.J. quickly phoned for assistance, then followed on Matt’s heels, running along the river. After a while they veered onto a shortcut they both remembered from their youth.
A.J.’s labored breathing cut through the air, but Matt pumped his legs harder, grateful he’d maintained a rigid exercise program in prison.
When he finally reached the junkyard, his legs ached, but the acrid smell of smoke made him quicken his pace. He spotted a man running from the small blaze toward the trailer park.