by Cait London
He was leaning against the Hummer, his arms folded across his chest. Pup sat beside his boots. Kyle slowly took in her sweat shirt and jeans. “Quite the little caravan went by my place a while ago. Thought I’d come out and see what was happening.”
“It’s a private party. You’re not invited, Scanlon.”
“You’ve always been able to stir things up, haven’t you? What if that fire gets out of control?”
“It won’t.” She edged her tennis shoe away from the long spindle of drool Pup had just released.
“I’m just doing my job, honey…I’m on the volunteer fire department, rural and Neptune’s Landing. You’ve always had style, and Mallory would have liked this little bonfire party. Maybe that’s what she didn’t like about you, too—that she could never live up to your style and expectations.”
Rachel had to know: “Did Mallory actually tell you that?”
You’re so righteous, telling me how to live…I’m not you, Rachel. I’m not strong like you…. Mallory had said once. You know all the right things to do and say. I’m a mess and I’ll always be just that—a mess. So stop coming around, trying to make me feel bad. I’m doing the best I can, and it’s just never good enough, is it? Don’t you get it? I’m not you and I never was….
Rachel swiped at the drool running down her shin, and Kyle reached into the rig and brought out paper towels. He handed the roll to her. “Sure.”
It was so like Kyle to lay bare hurting truths, to remember them so clearly. Rachel briskly scrubbed a length of paper toweling against her leg, until she noted that Kyle was studying her breasts, the way she was bending and the V-neckline provided a provocative view. She crumpled the towel and fired it at his face. “You should get out of here now—”
He’d moved and the paper towel hit the windshield, deflected, and rolled to the ground. Kyle grinned at her. “See? Lot’s of ‘you shoulds’.”
“You should do something about that dog’s drooling.”
“More shoulds.” The smile had stopped and he asked quietly, “What’s driving you, Rachel? You’re all worked up and it isn’t only me. Most people would be sleeping off that long trip from New York now, not housecleaning.”
She owed Mallory…her sister with the fear of flying, who had come at a moment’s notice to draw her from the darkness—
Pup was barking loudly, answered by the Parkers’ beagles in the distance. The women were shouting up at Kyle to come down and toast Mallory. “I did that already. Had a private party with Rachel,” he called back. “Good job.”
“You knew exactly how that would sound—‘private party’ with me.”
Kyle shrugged and lifted an eyebrow. “So? True wasn’t it? You were with me the night of her funeral.”
While she was dealing with Kyle’s skillful nudge, too-perceptive question, and with the drool Pup had just thrown against her leg, Kyle lifted the dog up into the Hummer. In a lithe movement, he swung up and closed the door. “You’re set to make her dream come true, aren’t you? You show more than you know, Rachel.”
“Get out of here.”
“I was just headed out of town anyway. Don’t get too worked up while I’m gone, honey. I like the thought of you saving all that fire and brimstone for me.” He grinned again, slowly, as if he approved of her and that nettled.
Rachel decided to keep the roll of paper towels and let Kyle suffer Pup’s drool. “Headed off for another girlfriend, Scanlon?”
“Hey, I’m a guy in demand.” He took a long promise-filled look at her, then started the vehicle, reversed and eased across the field, leaving her all charged up and no finalization, last-word fight with him.
“I’ve got to get better at this. He knows that he sets me off and that is irritating,” Rachel promised herself darkly as she walked down the slight hill to the other women. She was used to controlling her temper, to carefully monitoring what she said, but with Kyle, perhaps her first blast of dislike should be voiced—“I do not say that many shoulds.”
Several hours later, on the return trip back, the Hummer was gone, but Rachel’s need for revenge to take Kyle down and make him pay was still simmering.
Terri dropped her off at Nine Balls to collect Harry, then walk home. While there, Rachel checked on Mallory’s hidden treasures. There was some reason she’d tucked them away like that, keeping them safe, and Rachel would discover why….
Had he gotten everything that could tie him to Mallory, to what they did together? No, he hadn’t found the doll she’d used against him, casting spells, driving him into his addictive activities that made him feel like a god…. Worry that his secret pleasures, his life would be exposed, changed into fury at Mallory. His addictions weren’t of a chemical nature, rather a relief that kept him functioning normally. He was her master and she’d defied him by taking an exit that stirred the community—his community.
First, it was only sex…then only sex while he was hurting her, then sex after he’d seen her with other men, performing for them…. He’d worked for years to hold Mallory, to shape her, to make her obedient. “She had no business taking her life—it was mine. It’s her fault that she lured me into evil, tempted me. It’s her fault that she needed more money for her habits. None of this is my fault. If she hadn’t been so weak, we could have gone on for years…. Only she could satisfy me, knew what I needed.”
He built his rage, feeding it as he drove slowly past Nine Balls. Through Jada’s running dialogue about her sister, he knew that Rachel was set to run the billiards parlor, and Rachel was pure trouble—unmanageable, driven by her own desire to succeed.
What had Mallory told Rachel?
Three years ago, Mallory had once again decided to make a new life for herself, leaving the pleasurable evil she’d drawn him into. He couldn’t have that happen, and he’d made good on this threat to harm one of her family—he’d enjoyed planning Rachel’s attack, telling Mallory about it, threatening her with another, perhaps on Jada, until she was compliant again. But after her first defiance, threatening to expose him, she’d decided to self-destruct and that wasn’t in his plan. Nothing could bring her back from that edge, because she simply didn’t care anymore—
He looked outside to children playing in the field. Mallory had loved him at first, trying to please him, and she’d been so sweet—he’d loved her, too. He loved how she made him feel—and then she was out of his reach…. “If you hurt my family, I’ll haunt you forever,” Mallory had said during those last two years. I’ll haunt you forever….
“Well, dear Mallory, if Rachel poses a problem for me, I will hurt her, and that is a promise…. I have to find that doll…it wasn’t anywhere when she died. Maybe she got rid of it before she died—sneaky little witch, killing herself that way. I couldn’t find it after they took her away, the month before Rachel arrived. I’ve been through everything—She actually used my hair, took it right from my brush, and cut up my shirt to make it. It exists, I know it does, because she showed me the shirt, the patch cut from it, the missing button—She cast a spell and I couldn’t perform anymore. Everything is Mallory’s fault, not mine.”
But the hair on the back of his neck lifted as he thought of Mallory’s fierce threat—“I’ll haunt you forever….”
Five
AT ELEVEN O’CLOCK AT NIGHT, RACHEL STOOD ON THE sidewalk in front of Nine Balls and slid the key into the front door, locking it.
Fog had rolled into Neptune’s Landing, settling damply around her, blurring the lights of the businesses down Atlantis Street. Just two days after the burning of Mallory’s dark past at the Parkers’ farm, Rachel sat in the small neat office and set to work on forming a realistic picture of her sister’s finances. She’d started late in the morning—recovering a bit from the wine coolers and late-night girl-talk with Jada, who was worried about their mother. Needing to walk, Rachel had taken Harry in his carrier to her mother’s used-car sales office and had shared a sweet roll and coffee that somehow had run into lunch at Fast Eddie’s Diner.
She’d worked all the next day, transferring Mallory’s handwritten accounts into her laptop. In the evening she had accepted a ride on eighty-year-old Francie Alexander’s golf cart back to her mother’s house. Francie had long ago lost her driver’s license, but she’d been approved to drive a golf cart down certain streets during designated hours in good daylight. Everyone along Francie’s route waved to her and a police car prowled behind her as usual, making certain that the elderly woman was protected from speeders.
At six o’clock, Bob had been barbequing as usual, and the delicious dinner eaten from the backyard’s picnic table had been relaxing. Rachel had taken Harry and some tidbits back to Nine Balls, and there she’d worked until eleven, when she’d started to make too many mistakes and had decided to walk home.
The bygone elegance of Atlantis Street settled around her, the shops closed, Natasha the Fortune Teller’s pink neon hand sign seemed almost welcoming. In the distance, the waves pounded the shore almost like the heartbeat of Mallory that had always seemed very close while Rachel worked. Mallory’s presence seemed so real, as if Rachel could reach out and touch her, talk to her. Mallory had taken her life—why had she been so desperate?
“I owe you, Mallory, and I am going to make Nine Balls a success.” Rachel picked up Harry’s carrier and he struck out a claw, scratching her lightly. “Hey. Jada is allergic to you. It’s either come to work with me and stay in the guest bathroom at night—or it’s the garage. And you should really be declawed. And you will be, the first time you scratch those pool tables. Taking your bad mood out on my couch is one thing, but you’re not ruining Mallory’s things.”
She began walking the three quiet blocks to her mother’s home when a lowered car cruised by, the rap music pounding at the damp silence. Homes bordered the streets to her mother’s house, their front porches and sidewalks lined by shrubs and flowers.
As she stepped off the curb of the first block and was crossing the street, a cold tingle hit her, as if someone was watching her. Three years ago, after leaving the pool hall, she’d had that same full-bodied chill and should have paid attention to it.
“It’s just spending the day in the place where Mallory died, Harry. I’m not being stalked. No one is after me,” she said to reassure herself.
Her heart stopped when she heard a sound behind her, like footsteps that stopped when she did. She walked faster across the damp red bricks and they gleamed from the streetlight, contrasting the black pavement of the next and newer street.
In the middle of Mermaid Lane, she walked slowly and listened to the sounds of the night: the ocean, a car passing on another street—and to the footsteps slowly, surely following her….
She turned suddenly and a shadow crossed from the night into the pool of light from the streetlights. She couldn’t move, transfixed by the man coming closer. She wouldn’t run again, only to be run down and attacked. “Who is it?”
Shane Templeton’s narrow face appeared to loom over her. He was dressed in a sweatsuit, his unshaven jaw giving him a tough appearance. “I didn’t mean to frighten you. I was only out walking and I guess we happened to be going in the same direction.”
Rachel breathed slowly, trying to calm herself. “Hi, Shane.”
He studied her quietly. “You’re nothing like Mallory, are you? I’d heard that you were stronger, more focused, that nothing could stop you, once you’d set your mind on a task. Jada confirms that you’re going to run Nine Balls. Good luck.”
He lifted his head and looked around. “It’s very quiet here now, isn’t it? You can hear the dampness dripping off the leaves, cleaning them. That’s what I’d hoped would happen with Mallory—that she would find the courage to start a new life. I prayed that would happen.”
Then suddenly, Shane’s pensive expression was gone as he stared at her, his voice hard. “You’d tell me if you found that Bible or anything that might—that might be something I’d given Mallory? But then you burned everything, didn’t you?”
This time, Rachel paid attention to her warning senses. For a supposedly mild mannered man, Shane was too harsh. “Just how well did you know Mallory, Reverend?”
He frowned, and an almost savage expression compressed those full, feminine-like lips. “She was one of my flock. A poor misguided woman who needed me, to become a better person.”
That remark struck Rachel’s temper and she resented the image he presented of Mallory as less than a “better person,” which of course, made him the superior in the relationship. “According to whose standards?”
Shane’s smooth, controlled tone flipped into a curt, bitter one. “You could do with some humility, Rachel Everly. Perhaps your arrogance is why you’ve never married. I’ve heard that you had a certain attitude. Mallory spoke of you often, of how strong you are. She said that you had to be, because you were the oldest and had to help your mother, who was deserted by her husband at a young age. That’s so typical of the women with mothers like that—they are either too tough and make decisions for everyone, or too clingy and can’t make decisions for themselves. You, and this according to Mallory, are the make-decisions-for-everyone type. It’s not always a positive factor in a woman, you know. It’s not—attractive in a woman.”
Rachel didn’t like Shane’s condemnation. Her mother had struggled desperately to support her family. Rachel had done whatever she could to make things easier for all of them, taking over household tasks, delegating them to Jada and then Mallory. Keyed into his reaction, sensitive to his threatening body language and his tone, Rachel used the probing skills she’d learned in human resources training courses. “Whew. I guess you go for the submissive type, then. Was she? Was Mallory submissive? Did you like that?”
His eyes flared and Rachel noted the way his fists curled at his side. He’d leaned forward, his stance threatening. “You’re inferring—”
“I’m inferring nothing. I’m going home now.” Rachel wasn’t up to going rounds with an obviously athletic man at the edge of his temper. She shook as she turned and moved away, half expecting him to come after her.
She took a deep breath and inhaled the cool fog. One thing was for certain: Shane was very concerned about what she might find that would link him as a man to a woman of questionable morals. She heard the click of a heel on the bricks and walked faster.
She wouldn’t turn to see if Shane followed her; she wouldn’t expose the old fear that swallowed her now, her body chilling, her mind racing back to another time as she hurried across the next street and to her mother’s front door. Her hands shook as she inserted the key into the lock.
The door opened suddenly and Trina’s bright smile at Rachel died instantly. Her mother drew Rachel into the house, the familiar hallway lined with a refinished antique table, the wooden floors gleaming beneath the wall’s artistic fern and leaf prints. Rachel shivered slightly, trying to wrap the familiar safety around her; she wasn’t in a park and she wasn’t being held down and—
Trina closed the door. “What’s wrong, honey? You look scared.”
She didn’t want her mother to worry. No one but Mallory knew of the other time she’d been so frightened, afraid of footsteps, of the men who had come out of the shadows, holding her down—but then, attacks at night in a New York park were pretty common, and the police had said she’d been “unwise” to take that shortcut at night. They’d questioned the regulars at the pool hall that her friends and she had been using; they’d pushed the young toughs who had played and lost to her. But she couldn’t positively identify any of them.
Rachel worked to climb out of her terror…. Shewas in Neptune’s Landing now, where she’d grown up safely, and she was in her mother’s house….
“I’m just out of breath. In his carrier, Harry gets pretty heavy for any distance. And I should have brought my laptop home, but I didn’t want to carry them both. It’s only a short distance, but I think I’m going to get the Caddie fixed.”
“You’ve always loved Buttercup. I don�
�t mind picking you up, or I could get a car for you—there’s a beauty coming in tomorrow, a sweet little compact, and gets good gas mileage.” Trina smoothed Rachel’s hair. “What’s really wrong, honey? Is it because Mallory died there? I know it would bother me. I can’t stop thinking about her.”
“Mom, you did more than anyone, went the extra distance to try to get her to straighten out.”
Trina smiled sadly. “I just feel I should have done something more. But I didn’t understand what was happening to her. It was like Mallory wanted to self-destruct. We all offered to help her. Bob and I were going to use our connections to get her a regular job and paycheck to cut down her responsibilities. But she wouldn’t have any of that. Nine Balls was her dream and she held on to it to the last. I wanted her to stay here, you know, to—to get off drugs and drinking, and I said I’d help her. But she just laughed like it was some insane joke. I couldn’t help her. My own daughter, and I couldn’t help her.”
“I know.” Rachel looked around the familiar comfortable living room, the long soft sofa, the fireplace with an insert, the recliner where Trina often sat going over figures for car sales. The other recliner was larger to accommodate Bob’s portly body. Rachel shivered just once, forcing her terror back into the past….
Trina studied Rachel. “I guess you’re not going to tell me why you were so shaken a moment ago. You were always very competent and independent, Rachel. It’s not like you to be afraid of walking home a few blocks at night. But then, maybe Neptune’s Landing’s growth has changed things since you were younger. If you want Buttercup fixed, Kyle Scanlon is the best mechanic in town. I call on him sometimes when the regular garage can’t fix a vehicle. He’s good. He’s got quite the reputation for fixing classic cars. You could ask him for a tune-up.”
Rachel knew exactly what the word, “tune-up,” coming from her would mean to Kyle. “Scanlon isn’t touching Buttercup. She isn’t charging. That probably means she just needs a battery, or maybe she’s just sat in the garage for too long.”