by Nora Roberts
She saw nothing—just empty stalls, the dull gleam of the wet floor. Heard nothing but her own racing breath. Still, she leaned against the door, terrified to turn her back on the room, and her eyes wheeled left and right, searching for movement in the shadows.
Sweat began to run down her back, icy panic sweat. She couldn’t draw enough air, no matter how fast and hard she tried to gulp it in. Part of her mind held firm, lecturing her: You know the signs, Jo Ellen, don’t let it win, don’t let go. If you break down, you’ll be back in the hospital again. Just get a grip. Get a grip.
She pressed a hand to her mouth to hold back the screams, but they came through in whimpers. She could feel herself begin to crack, terror pushing viciously against will until she simply turned her face to the door, slapping it weakly with her palm.
“Please, please, let me out. Don’t leave me in here alone.”
She heard the sound of feet crunching on the path, opened her mouth to shout. Then the fear grew monstrous, shoved her stumbling back. Her eyes were wide and fixed on the door, her pulse pounding painfully against her skin. There was a scrape and an oath. Her vision spun, grayed, then went blind as the door swung open and brilliant sunlight poured in.
She saw the silhouette of a man. As her knees buckled, she fumbled for the mop again, jabbing it out like a sword. “Don’t come near me.”
“Jo Ellen? What the hell’s going on?”
“Daddy?” The mop clattered to the floor. She nearly followed it, but his hands caught her arms, drew her up.
“What happened here?”
“I couldn’t get out. I couldn’t. He’s watching. I couldn’t get away.”
At the moment all Sam knew was that she was pale as death and shaking so hard he could almost hear her bones rattle. Moving on instinct, he picked her up and carried her out into the sun. “It’s all right now. You’re all right, pudding.”
It was an old endearment both of them had forgotten. Jo pressed her face to his shoulder, holding tight when he sat on a stone bench with her cradled on his lap.
She was so small still, Sam thought with surprise. How could that be when she always looked so tall and competent? Whenever she’d had nightmares as a child, she’d curled up in his lap just this way, he remembered. She’d always wanted him when her dreams were bad.
“Don’t be afraid. Nothing to be afraid of now.”
“I couldn’t get out.”
“I know. Somebody’d braced some wood against the door. Kids, that’s all. Playing pranks.”
“Kids.” She shuddered it out, clung to it as she did to him. “Kids playing pranks. Yes. They turned the lights off, shut me in. I panicked.” She kept her eyes closed a moment longer, trained her breathing back to level. “I didn’t even have the sense to turn them back on. I just couldn’t think.”
“You had a scare. Didn’t used to scare so easy.”
“No.” She opened her eyes now. “I didn’t.”
“Time was you’d have busted down that door and torn the hide off whoever was fooling with you.”
It nearly made her smile, his memory image of her. “Would I?”
“Always had a mean streak.” Because she’d stopped trembling, and she was a grown woman and no longer the child he’d once comforted, he patted her shoulder awkwardly. “Guess you softened up some.”
“More than some.”
“I don’t know. I thought you were going to run that mop handle clean through me for a minute. Who’d you mean was watching you?”
“What?”
“You said he was watching you. Who’d you mean?”
The photographs, she thought. Her own face. Annabelle’s. Jo shook her head quickly and shifted away. Not now, was all she could think. Not yet. “I was just babbling. Scared stupid. I’m sorry.”
“No need to be. Girl, you’re white as a sheet yet. We’ll get you home.”
“I left all the stuff inside.”
“I’ll tend to it. You just sit here until you get your legs back under you.”
“I think I will.” But when he started to rise, she reached for his hand. “Daddy. Thanks for—chasing the monsters away.”
He looked at their joined hands. Hers was slim and white—her mother’s hand, he thought with unbearable sadness. But he looked at her face, and saw his daughter. “I used to be pretty good at it, I guess.”
“You were great at it. You still are.”
Because his hand suddenly felt clumsy, he let hers go and stepped back. “I’ll put the things away, then we’ll head home. You probably just need some breakfast.”
No, Jo thought as she watched him walk away. She needed her father. And until that moment, she hadn’t had a clue just how much.
TWELVE
JO wasn’t in a picnic mood any longer. Even the thought of food curdled in her stomach. She would go out alone, she decided. Over to the salt marsh, or down to the beach. If she’d had the energy she would have raced down and tried to catch the morning ferry back to the mainland. She could have lost herself in the crowds in Savannah for a few hours.
She washed her face with icy water, pulled a fielder’s cap over her hair. But this time when she passed the darkroom she was compelled to go in, to open the file drawer, dig out the envelope. Her hands trembled a little as she spread the pictures out on her workbench.
But the photograph of Annabelle hadn’t magically reappeared. There was just Jo, shot after shot. And eyes, those artfully cropped studies of her eyes. Or Annabelle’s eyes. How could she be sure?
There had been a photograph of her mother. There had been. A death photo. She couldn’t have imagined it. No one could imagine such a thing. It would make her insane, it would mean she was delusional. And she wasn’t. Couldn’t be. She’d seen it, goddamn it, it had been there.
With a snap of will she forced herself to stop, to close her eyes, to count her breaths, slowly, in and out, in and out, until her heart stopped dancing in her chest.
She remembered too clearly that sensation of cracking apart, of losing herself. She would not let it happen again.
The photo wasn’t there. That was fact. It had existed. That was fact, too. So someone had taken it. Maybe Bobby had realized it upset her and gotten rid of it. Or someone else had broken into her apartment while she was in the hospital and taken it away. Whoever had sent it had come back and taken it away.
Briskly, Jo stuffed the photos back in the manila envelope. She didn’t care how crazy that sounded, she was holding on to that idea. Someone was playing a cruel joke, and by obsessing over it, she was letting them win.
She stuffed the envelope back in the file drawer, closed it with a slam, and walked away.
But she could confirm or eliminate one possibility with a single phone call. Hurrying back to her room, she pulled her address book out of the desk and thumbed through quickly. She would ask, that was all, she told herself as she dialed the number of the apartment Bobby Banes shared with a couple of college friends. She could keep it casual and just ask if he’d taken the print.
Her nerves were straining by the third ring.
“Hello?”
“Bobby?”
“No, this is Jack, but I’m available, darling.”
“This is Jo Ellen Hathaway,” she said crisply. “I’d like to speak to Bobby.”
“Oh.” There was the sound of a throat clearing. “Sorry, Miss Hathaway, I thought it was one of Bobby’s ah, well ... He’s not here.”
“Would you ask him to get in touch with me? I’ll give you a number where I can be reached.”
“Sure, but I don’t know when he’ll be back exactly, or exactly where he is, either. He took off right after finals. Photo safari. He was really hot to put together some new prints before next semester.”
“I’ll leave you the number in any case,” she said and recited it. “If he checks in, pass that along, will you?”
“Sure, Miss Hathaway. I know he’d like to hear from you. He’s been worried about ... I mean, wondering. He�
��s been wondering about continuing his internship with you in the fall. Um, how’s it going?”
There was no doubt in her mind that Bobby’s roommate knew about her breakdown. She’d hoped, but hadn’t expected, otherwise. “It’s going fine, thanks.” Her voice was cool, cutting off the possibility of deeper probing. “If you hear from Bobby, tell him it’s important that I speak with him.”
“I’ll do that, Miss Hathaway. Ah—”
“Good-bye, Jack.” She hung up slowly, closed her eyes.
It didn’t matter that Bobby had shared her problem with his friends. She couldn’t let it matter, couldn’t let herself be embarrassed or upset over it. It was too much to expect him to have kept it to himself when his trainer went crazy on him one morning and was carted off to the hospital.
Her pride would just have to stand it, she decided. Shaking off the clinging shame, she headed downstairs. With any luck, Bobby would call within the next couple of weeks. Then she’d have at least one answer.
When she reached the kitchen door, she heard voices inside and paused with her hand on the panel.
“Something’s wrong with her, Brian. She’s not herself. Has she talked to you?”
“Kate, Jo never talks to anyone. Why would she talk to me?”
“You’re her brother. You’re her family.”
Jo heard the clatter of dishes, caught the lingering odor of grilled meat from the breakfast shift. A cupboard door opening, shutting.
“What difference does that make?” Brian’s voice was testy, impatient. Jo could almost see him trying to shrug Kate off.
“It should make all the difference. Brian, if you’d just try, she might open up to you. I’m worried about her.”
“Look, she seemed fine to me last night at the bonfire. She hung out with Nathan for a couple of hours, had a beer, a hot dog.”
“And she came back from the campground this morning pale as a sheet. She’s been up and down like that ever since she got back. And coming back the way she did, out of the blue. She won’t talk about what’s going on in her life, when she’s going back. You can’t tell me you haven’t noticed how ... shaky she is.”
Jo didn’t want to hear any more. She backed away quickly, turned on her heel, and hurried to the front of the house.
Now they were watching her, she thought wearily. Wondering if she was going to snap. If she told them about her breakdown, she imagined there would be sympathetic—and knowing—nods and murmurs.
The hell with it. She stepped outside, into the sunlight, took a long gulp of air. She could handle it. Would handle it. And if she couldn’t find peace here, just be left alone to find it, she would leave again.
And go where? Despair washed over her. Where did you go when you’d left the last place?
Her energy drained, bit by bit. Her feet dragged as she descended the stairs. She was too damn tired to go anywhere, she admitted. She walked to the rope hammock slung in the shade of two live oaks and crawled into it. Like climbing into a womb, Jo thought as the sides hugged her and let her sway.
Sometimes on hot afternoons, she had found her mother there and had slipped into the hammock with her. Annabelle would tell stories in a lazy voice. She would smell soft and sunny, and they would rock and rock and look up through the green leaves to the pieces of sky.
The trees were taller now, she mused. They had had more than twenty years to grow—and so had she. But where was Annabelle?
HE strode along the waterfront in Savannah, ignoring the pretty shops and busy tourists. It had not been perfect. It had not been nearly perfect. The woman had been wrong. Of course, he’d known that. Even when he’d taken her he’d known.
It had been exciting, but only momentarily. A flash, then over—like coming too soon.
He stood staring at the river and calmed himself. A little game of mental manipulation that slowed his pulse rate, steadied his breathing, relaxed his muscles. He’d studied such mind-over-body games in his travels.
Soon he began to let the sounds in again—piece by piece. The jingle of a passing bicycle, the drone of tires on pavement. The voices of shoppers, the quick laugh of a child enjoying an ice cream treat.
He was calm again, in control again, and smiled out over the water. He made an attractive picture, and he knew it—his hair blowing lightly in the breeze, a man handsome of face and fit of body who enjoyed catching the female eye.
Oh, he’d certainly caught Ginny’s.
She’d been so willing to walk with him on the dark beach and over the dunes. Tipsily flirting with him, the southern in her voice slurred with tequila.
She’d never known what hit her. Literally. He had to bite back a chuckle, thinking of that. One short, swift blow to the back of the head, and she’d toppled. It had been nothing to carry her into the trees. He’d been so high on anticipation, she’d seemed weightless. Undressing her had been . . . stimulating. True, her body had been lusher than he’d wanted, but she’d only been practice.
Still, he’d been in too much of a hurry. He could admit that now, he could analyze now. He’d rushed through it, had fumbled a bit with the equipment because he’d been so anxious to get those first shots. Her naked, with hands bound above her head and secured to a sturdy sapling. He hadn’t taken the time to fan her hair out just so, to perfect the lighting and angles.
No, he’d been too overwhelmed with the power of the moment and had raped her the instant she regained consciousness. He’d meant to talk to her first, to capture the fear growing in her eyes as she began to understand what he meant to do.
The way it had been with Annabelle.
She struggled, tried to speak. Her lovely, long legs worked, drawing up, pumping. Her back arched. Now I felt that calm, cold control snick into place.
She was subject. I was artist.
The way it had been with Annabelle, he thought again. The way it should have been now, this time.
But the first orgasm had been a disappointment. So ... ordinary, he thought now. He hadn’t even wanted to rape her again. It had been more of a chore than a pleasure, he remembered. Nothing more than an additional step to manipulate the final shot.
But when he’d taken the silk scarf out of his pocket, slipped it around her neck, tightened it, tightened it, watched her eyes go huge, her mouth work for air, for a scream . . .
That had been considerably better. The orgasm then had been beautifully, brutally hard and long and satisfying.
And he thought, the last shot of her, that decisive moment, might be one of his finest.
He’d title it Death of a Tramp, for really, what else had she been? Hardly one of the angels. She’d been cheap and ordinary, he decided. Nothing but a throwaway.
That was why it hadn’t been even close to perfect. It hadn’t been his fault, but hers. It brightened his mood considerably now that it had come clear. She had been flawed—the subject, not the artist.
Yet he had picked her. He’d chosen her, he’d taken her.
He had to remind himself again that she had simply been practice. The entire incident had been no more than a run-through with a stand-in.
It would be perfect next time. With Jo.
With a little sigh, he patted the leather briefcase that held the photographs he’d developed in his rented rooms nearby. It was time to head back to Desire.
SINCE Lexy was nowhere to be found, again, Brian headed out to the garden to attack more weeds. Lexy had promised to do it, but he was more than certain she’d run off to hunt up Giff and seduce him into a lunchtime roll. He’d seen the two of them the night before from his bedroom window. Soaking wet, sandy, and giggling like children as they came up the path. It had been obvious even to his tired brain that they’d been doing more than taking a midnight swim. He’d been amused, even a little envious.
It seemed so easy for them just to take each other as they were, to live in the moment. Though he imagined that Giff had in mind a great deal more than the moment and that Lexy would do a quick tap dance on his
heart on her way.
Still, Giff was a clever and a patient man, and he might have Lexy dancing to his tune before he was done. Brian thought it would be interesting to watch. From a safe distance.