Flashback

by Cait London

  Rachel shook her head. “At a guess, almost immediately. Those little special presents he brought her—”

  “I thought those were to make her feel more a part of our lives,” Trina whispered desperately.

  “Holding her on his lap, rocking her—”

  Trina scrubbed her hands over her eyes, as though trying to erase those images. “I thought it was sweet. She’d never had a loving father and Bob was showing her what a man’s love could be—”

  “He sure was.” Seated on the other side of their mother, Jada’s unusually quiet tone was cold and remote, as if she’d stepped into another life and found it hard to bear. “I remember the same things that Rachel does—the way he treated her, the way she responded to him. I don’t want to remember, but now I do and I’m going to kill him.”

  In that one moment Rachel believed her easy-going, usually carefree sister, Jada, was capable of murder.

  Trina suddenly reached for her wine; a little sloshed over the rim of the glass and she automatically dabbed it with a napkin, slowly at first and then frantically, as if trying to wipe away truths she didn’t want to accept. “He was in my home…with my daughters…. We—”

  She began to tremble, reality setting in. “His hair was like that years ago, and I remember washing a shirt for him and wondering about that piece of missing material—it looked as if it had been cut, not torn, and a button was missing. It was blue, pinstriped, just like this—”

  She gripped the doll in her fist and stared at the location of the pins. “He has heart trouble and he’s impotent now. Lovemaking wasn’t ever that good, but comfortable—then Bob couldn’t anymore and I didn’t mind. Oh, dear Lord. He was having Mallory at the same time—”

  “Take it easy,” Moses advised softly.

  Trina was all fire and anger, burning a look at him. “Don’t you tell me what to do—how to feel. Mallory was my daughter.”

  She abruptly pushed up from the couch, threw doll to the coffee table, and sobbing, hurried into the bathroom.

  “Better let her have some time alone. She’s tough. She’ll handle it. Your mother is quite the lady,” the ex-wrestler said in the tone of someone who’d had experience dealing with trauma.

  Rachel rubbed her hands together; they were cold and clammy as she studied Kyle, their eyes locking.

  His stare slid to the floor, and she knew that he was sealing her off from what he planned to do.

  “You’re not going without me,” Rachel stated quietly. Despite her fury at Bob Winters, she had to protect Kyle. If he killed Bob, there would be no going back, and she could lose Kyle to a jail sentence.

  At that moment, Rachel knew that she would have to ask Kyle to give up what he wanted most. Would he listen?

  “No?” Kyle’s head tilted with the quiet challenge. “Maybe this time, you don’t get your way, honey.”

  “Mom is really upset. I could kill him for that alone,” Jada murmured darkly. She reached for Harry and placed him on her lap. “Do that purring thing, cat.”

  “You’re not sneezing, Jada. I thought you were allergic to cats.” Rachel was almost grateful for her sister’s comic relief in a dark, tense situation where she would have to pit herself against Kyle—If they both lived….

  “I’m too mad…I will later. Right now, this cat is warm and hairy and comforting.”

  Trina came out of the bathroom, her eyes reddened, her face pale. “I’m going downstairs to play a game. Anyone want to come with me?”

  “Take Pup,” Kyle stated and Trina nodded, realizing the danger of a man who had abused her daughter and who she’d let into her home. He’d been her lover, too, years ago, and she needed time to make the transition from the Bob she’d trusted with her daughters to the one who had abused Mallory.

  “Don’t you dare take him to the police before I get to him,” she ordered.

  “Oh, he’s not going into custody,” Kyle murmured when she’d gone down the stairway.

  Moses stood and came to stand beside Kyle. “I called in some favors. This guy has been married twice. Once to Alissa, and before that another woman. Both died of overdoses. They were wealthy before they married him, and he inherited everything.”

  “Now that lends a whole new angle to Mallory’s suicide,” Kyle noted softly. “That means she got the job done, killed herself, before he could. That probably made him real mad.”

  Together, the men looked big, deadly, and merciless. Moses glanced at Kyle. “My guess is that dear old Bob probably did the fire at the garage, too. Working Kyle over like that took someone with a real grudge—like having his life and pleasures ruined.”

  Rachel stood and wrapped her arms around herself. “There isn’t much to pinpoint him, is there? Wouldn’t it be better to have him actually admit everything?”

  “He will,” Kyle said quietly. “I know that look. What are you thinking, Rachel?”

  “That I’m going with you.”

  Kyle smiled tightly. “He’s probably miles down the coast right now.”

  “You don’t think so. You think he’s out there with a real grudge and coming after me, don’t you?”

  Both men inhaled at the same time and looked at each other. Rachel understood that look: they thought exactly as she did—Bob Winters wanted revenge, and he’d be coming after the person who exposed him….

  “No,” Kyle said too easily.

  “Liar. Okay, go ahead and do your thing. Find Bob.”

  He frowned uneasily at her. “You don’t want to come with me?”

  “Is that an invitation?” she asked, and braced herself for an argument.

  “No, but I thought you’d—”

  “You were right. I’m coming with you,” she stated and picked up the doll. She walked to slip the mini tape recorder she used for testing her presentations into her shoulder bag. She quickly made a copy of Mallory’s tape and stuck it into her bag, too.

  “Smart girl,” Kyle said grimly.

  Wary of their cars being spotted by Bob, alerting him, Kyle and Rachel ran through the night shadows. Rachel didn’t complain about the fast pace, her hours of fitness jogging and exercise paying off.

  At one o’clock the interior of the Winters house was too quiet, but echoes of the sisters’ laughter years ago circled Rachel, haunting her.

  Kyle’s misspent youth served them well as he quickly used a credit card to open the side-door lock to the garage, attached to the house. Bob’s Lincoln was still in the garage, and Kyle paused a moment to appreciate the Model T Ford that Bob always rode in Neptune’s Landing’s parades—the sisters had all ridden in it, and Mallory had sat next to Bob….

  Rachel held her breath as she opened the door to the downstairs bedroom Mallory had used as a child. She closed it with a sickening feeling, and looked at Kyle who was moving like a big, silent, lethal shadow up the stairs. Several heartbeats later, he returned and shook his head.

  “He didn’t leave town and you know it,” Rachel stated. “He’ll be coming after me. That’s why you want to get to him first, isn’t it?”

  Kyle didn’t answer, but his expression was grim. “Let’s go. Let’s try your mother’s house.”

  Rachel was the first to walk out of the back door, Kyle behind her. They stood for a moment, regrouping, and flashes of the past hit Rachel, just as the Pacific Ocean pounded the rocks below the cliff…. Beyond the white picket fence was where the three sisters had stood, eagerly searching for the first blow of a gray whale, where they had flown their kites in the cliff’s updraft….

  “We’ve got to move fast, honey.” Kyle took a moment to gather Rachel against him, holding her face to his throat.

  “It’s so awful—”

  Then Bob Winters moved from the shrubbery, Kyle’s deadly semi-automatic in his hand. “Looking for something?”

  Hatred cut deep lines in Bob’s face, his eyes wild with anger, his thin hair tossed by the wind and revealing his gleaming scalp. “I warned you, Scanlon…told you to get out of town, and you d
idn’t. What happens to Rachel is your fault, not mine.”

  “It’s never your fault, is it, Winters?”

  “I know what you want,” Rachel said quietly. She had to divert Bob from Kyle; Bob looked as if nothing could stop him from pulling that deadly trigger, and Kyle would be his first—because Kyle was tensed to spring at him now….

  “Let’s keep this nice and quiet on our drive to Mallory’s favorite place on the beach, shall we?” Bob asked, motioning the muzzle of the gun at Kyle. “You drive. Rachel and I will sit in the back.”

  In the car, with the gun against her ribs, Rachel said, “Wouldn’t you like to listen to Mallory’s tape while we’re driving? The one with both of your voices on it?”

  Bob’s eyes widened. “There’s a tape?”

  “With Mallory and you. She was cursing you. That’s what she did, didn’t she? Does ‘I’ll haunt you forever’ sound familiar? I happen to have it right here. You’d like to hear it, wouldn’t you?”

  “Get it. Play it,” Bob ordered fiercely.

  Kyle slipped the tape into the car’s sound system and Mallory’s eerie moaning began, her words forcefully bitter and threatening: “You even come close to my family, and I’ll kill you. I’ll kill you! You better not have raped Rachel, you bastard—”

  “That’s enough,” Bob ordered abruptly.

  “I guess her curses worked, huh? That little doll she used to stick pins in did its job, huh?” Rachel asked moments later when Bob demanded the tape and stuffed it into his pocket. She was careful to position her bag’s outer pocket holding her voice activated recorder toward Bob.

  His eyes were wild in the car’s shadows. “The doll? What doll?”

  “You know, that voodoo doll with your hair—when it was brown—and your shirt. You attacked me in New York, didn’t you? You had to have help—two men—and then you couldn’t perform, could you? Because they laughed? I guess Mallory’s voodoo curse worked, didn’t it? Heart trouble, headaches, and trouble with manly stuff?”

  “Where is it? Where is that doll?” Bob hissed.

  “That fire at Kyle’s garage. You set that, too, didn’t you? After you hit him on the head and beat him?” Rachel was cold with fury, but she focused on getting Bob’s confession. The recorder’s tiny red light shone in the shadows beside her.

  “Rachel—” Kyle cautioned. In the silvery rectangle of the rearview mirror, his eyes cautioned her.

  “Keep driving, Scanlon. Yes, of course, I set the fire and kicked him around a bit. He’s lucky it didn’t happen before, and he should have died.”

  “Oh, well. You set out to murder him, then?”

  Bob jabbed the gun into her ribs with each word. “Yes, of course. He’s lucky it didn’t happen before, and he should have died. He deserved it. Always interfering—”

  Rachel kept focused on getting the taped confession, despite the sharp pain. The tape on Rachel’s hand recorder was still running, and she planned to get everything possible—“You started abusing Mallory when she was what? How old was she?”

  When Kyle parked the Lincoln in the beach overlook, Bob was silent; he smiled as though he was enjoying the memories. “Get out, Scanlon, and stand in front of the car while Rachel and I get out. And don’t forget that one wrong move and Rachel gets it first.”

  With Bob’s fingers biting into her arm, the gun jammed into her ribs, the three walked down the path to the beach, the sound of the tide matching the heavy beat of Kyle’s heart. Rachel was pushing too hard, fearless in her drive to get Bob to confess everything into her recorder.

  “Take it easy, Rachel,” Kyle warned, moving ahead of Rachel and Bob. If he made his move at the wrong time, Rachel could die. Fear for her overpowered everything else.

  On the beach, he turned to Bob. “There is a doll,” he said. “You’re going to need Rachel to find it.”

  “You first, Scanlon. She’ll tell me before you die.” Bob laughed wildly, shoved Rachel slightly away, and aimed the gun at Kyle, mimicking a shot. “Click. Now where is that doll?”

  Kyle held his breath. In the moonlight, Rachel had that hand on her hip, angled shoulders, her chin lifted, looking at Bob in that slanted, challenging way. The wind had picked up her hair and her expression said she was going for it all—and she could end up dead. “Don’t you want to finish it, Bob? What you started with me? You get the point, don’t you?” she asked, repeating what her attacker had said to her, then added a reinforcing, “You do get the point, don’t you?”

  “Clever little girl,” Bob stated, admiringly. “Maybe we can work something out. I’ve missed Mallory’s—services. Yours may start tonight, if you live long enough. You had to ruin everything, Rachel.”

  “I get the point,” Rachel said too quietly as the bag’s strap slid from her shoulder and she gripped it in her fist.

  Kyle held his breath, willing her not to force Bob into shooting her. “Rachel has a right to know everything, Bob. Tell her about the men that went up those steps. You arranged all that, didn’t you?”

  Bob’s grim smile and the gun turned to Kyle. “I did. Anonymously, of course. I liked to watch—and it provided me with a little extra spending money—”

  “Why, you—” Rachel exploded and reached for him.

  Bob instantly raised the gun to Kyle’s chest. “Back or he gets it right now.”

  Kyle struggled to keep Bob’s attention on him. “What about the abortions and the beatings?”

  Bob shrugged easily. “I told that tramp not to get pregnant. She deserved what she got. But I loved her in my way.”

  Rachel tossed her bag onto the sand, and Kyle knew that look. She was making her move, regardless of her own life. “There’s the doll. Don’t you want to see it, Bob?”

  In the instant Bob glanced at the bag, Kyle was on him.

  No match for the younger, more fit man—or his anger—Bob quickly lay in the sand. In an explosion he wouldn’t remember later, Kyle pummeled him.

  Then Rachel was sobbing in the distance, tugging at Kyle, and he forced himself to stop. On the edge of violence and sanity, he listened to Rachel’s pleas and gradually pushed himself away. He stood over Bob, the gun in his hand pointed at Bob and the fever to kill still running hot within his veins.

  “Do it,” Bob gasped, his eyes wild. “Do it.”

  “I love you, Kyle…. I love you….” Rachel placed her hand on Kyle’s arm. Her face gleamed with tears, her eyes shimmering up at him, her voice husky and filled with terror. Kyle realized that she’d seen the worst of him, the part he didn’t ever again want to experience. He struggled at that precarious edge of vengeance and sanity, bound only by Rachel. “Don’t. That’s what he wants, to ruin your life, too. And in doing so, he’ll ruin mine. I do not want the man I love spilling blood on this sand, not in a place where I want to remember Mallory as a carefree girl. Do you hear me?”

  “He deserves everything he gets,” Kyle stated darkly; he needed to see the man who hurt Mallory dead.

  “He does. But I think Mom would really like to talk with him first.”

  Kyle breathed heavily, pulling the anger back into him, controlling it. “I think you’re right.”

  “Have at it, ladies. You’ve only got a few minutes before the police arrive,” Kyle said as he sat in a chair at Nine Balls. Bob, his wrists taped together with duct tape, his expression bitter, slumped against the wall.

  Moses stood nearby, his arms folded over his massive chest, his expression impassive. “You want some bones broken, Trina?”

  “No, thanks. I want to handle my own garbage…. You hurt my daughter, Bob,” Trina said coolly as she lined up a trick shot, sighting in on it. “Rachel was right—I do want a little chat with you.”

  Bob stiffened and muttered, “You’re not going to do anything, Trina. You let it happen. You didn’t even question my interest in Mallory. Now, does that sound like a loving mother? And you don’t have anything on me, Scanlon. No proof at all about anything.”

  He shouldn’t ha
ve looked at Kyle just then, not with Pup sitting on the floor beside his master. The dog immediately growled and quickly did his three-legged walk to stand, legs braced, hackles raised and teeth bared, in front of Bob.

  “Stay, Pup,” Kyle ordered quietly as Bob edged back from the dog.

  “Oh, I think there may be some proof.” Rachel stood near her mother, who was slowly, thoughtfully chalking her cue stick.

  Trina seemed deep in thought and then suddenly, she moved in on Bob with her cue stick. Hit behind his knees, he went down on the floor, Trina standing over him.

  Her cue stick was shoved into Bob’s groin, much like the pins Mallory had stuck into the doll’s. “I’ll need a minute with Bob,” Trina said to the police who suddenly appeared at the stairway “Close the door, please.”

  Cody spoke into his shoulder unit, and a squad car’s red light cycled though the bamboo blinds covering the front windows. “You’re covered, Trina,” he said, closing the stairway door.

  “Always a lady, like her daughter,” Kyle murmured as Rachel came to sit on his lap.

  “I was terrified he would kill you. Then, watching you, I was afraid that you’d kill him. I’m proud of you, big guy. I thought for a minute that I’d lost you, but we’ve got him, don’t we?”

  “Oh, I’d say so.” Kyle looked at the man on the floor, the cue stuck jabbed into his crotch; Pup had changed his position until his head was near Bob’s. The dog growled, his teeth exposed, and a spindle of drool slid onto Bob’s cheek. He frantically wiped it off and Pup leaned in closer, almost nose to nose with the man.

  Jada had a billiard ball in each fist and looked as if she were going to throw them at Bob. Rachel looked appealingly at Kyle. “You’ve got another knee, don’t you?”