Dying for Love (A Slaughter Creek Novel)

by Herron, Rita

  John aimed the gun at the target. Cardboard cutouts of men and women, some dressed like soldiers, some like civilians.

  Somewhere in the distance, he heard a cry. Not just one, but several cries and screams for help.

  When he looked up, he saw children passing by. Children chained together. A tiny girl with huge sad eyes was watching him, a haunted look on her face.

  “Shoot,” the leader commanded.

  The girl mouthed the word help.

  He froze, heart hammering. What was wrong with the girl? Why did she need help?

  Then he looked at the other children. They looked washed out, eyes vacant, complexions pasty white, limbs battered and scarred.

  Suddenly the leader pushed the end of his gun at John’s temple.

  “Do not disobey me,” the voice ordered.

  John’s hand shook slightly as he dragged his gaze from the little girl and pulled the trigger. He hit the target dead on, and the cardboard cutout of the man exploded, shattered pieces floating to the ground like ashes.

  Black clouds hovered above the guesthouse, threatening to unleash more hail any second as Amelia climbed her porch. She’d decided to stay on the farm instead of her condo. Maybe being there would jog her memories.

  She hadn’t told John about the phone call. She was too ashamed of what the caller had said.

  Because there was some truth to it. One thing she’d learned in therapy was that she had to own up to her actions. That the alters had been part of her. And she had to come to terms with that before she could heal.

  It was another reason she didn’t belong with a man like John. He was a hero, while she had let so many people down, had such a fragmented life that she was still learning secrets about herself.

  She checked over her shoulder a dozen times, the sense someone was watching making her skin crawl. A tree had fallen in the drive, and dead limbs littered the yard. The wind hurled twigs and snow across the ground, icicles cracking and breaking in the storm.

  She fumbled with her keys, but managed to unlock the door, then rushed inside.

  Her stomach dropped when she saw the canvas she’d left blank smeared with red, the word WHORE scrawled across it, the paint dripping as if it were blood.

  For a moment she couldn’t breathe as the phone conversation echoed in her head. Someone was trying to either scare her or make her crazy by forcing her to remember the past.

  But if she told John that, would he think she was crying wolf? That she might be doing these things herself?

  A year ago, one of her alters would have done this.

  Shivering at the thought, she glanced toward her bedroom and saw her underwear strewn across the floor. Her panties had been slashed to shreds, black and red lace dotting the floor like a bed of dead roses.

  The journals she’d been reading had been torn apart, pages ripped from the binder and shredded like confetti, destroying the words on the page as if to say none of what she’d written had happened.

  Or one of her alters had returned to torment her and make her think she was losing her mind.

  A sob caught in her throat. Her lungs squeezed for air, but she forced herself to step to the edge of the room. On the mirror in her bathroom, there was another message.

  Jagged letters written in red.

  Time for you to die.

  Amelia’s stomach pitched. Enough was enough. She couldn’t hide this from John anymore. She’d have to convince him that she wasn’t crazy. That she hadn’t relapsed.

  She wanted to find whoever was doing this and make them stop.

  Furious, she dug her phone from her purse and punched John’s number.

  Wind beat at John’s SUV as he drove from the lab toward his place. His phone buzzed, and Amelia’s number flashed on the screen. He pushed connect, wishing he had answers for her, but his head was filled with questions about The Gateway House and Ronnie Tillman.

  “Amelia?”

  “John, someone’s been in my house.”

  John’s chest clenched. “Is the intruder still there?”

  “No,” her voice cracked. “But he left me a threatening message.”

  “Lock the door. I’ll be right there.”

  He jammed his phone in his pocket and made a U-turn at the next intersection, pushing the gas to the floor, even though black, icy patches appeared out of nowhere.

  A black sedan had skidded off the road, the driver waving for help, but John didn’t have time to stop. He phoned it into the sheriff’s office instead and gave the deputy the location.

  Frustrated at the sudden traffic, he blew his horn, anxious to get to Amelia. When the two-lane road suddenly became four for a few feet, he sped past the pickup in front of him, grateful for four-wheel drive.

  An eighteen-wheeler coming toward him on the curve was going too fast and sludge spewed from his tires, splattering John’s window.

  Dammit to hell. He flipped on the wipers, blinking, the white lane lines nearly invisible on the dark mountain road.

  He rounded the next curve, then veered into the drive for Amelia’s, cursing again at the tree that had fallen. He swung the SUV to the right around it, bouncing over the uneven pastureland until he maneuvered back onto the driveway.

  Amelia’s car was parked in front, the lights on inside the guesthouse. He searched the perimeter, but the woods behind her house were so dark all he could see were the trees, thick and ominous.

  He threw the SUV into park, jumped out, and jogged to her front door. He raised his fist to knock, but Amelia swung the door open.

  One look into her ashen face and terrified eyes, and he pulled her up against him and held her tight.

  Amelia collapsed into John’s arms, trembling all over, tears leaking from her eyes. She was trying so hard to be strong, to prove she wasn’t crazy anymore.

  But even she didn’t know if she was sane.

  Who would torment her like that?

  John stroked her back, gently soothing her with his hands. “It’s okay, Amelia. I’m here.”

  The words she ached to hear. That she wasn’t alone.

  Was she so desperate for love that she’d let a new alter emerge?

  He feathered her hair back from her face with such gentle fingers that it felt erotic and made her body instantly warm. Her breathing rasped in the air.

  John dropped tender kisses into her hair, making her want to cry again, but this time because no one had ever been so tender and loving with her.

  She fought back a sob, knowing he wouldn’t understand. No one did. She’d lived her whole life feeling unwanted, like an oddity, like no one could ever love her.

  Yet John hadn’t questioned her when she’d called. He’d come to her, and now he was holding her as if she wasn’t an outcast.

  “Shh, it’s okay, I’m here,” John murmured. “You’re not alone.”

  More words that made her want to cling to him and never let him go.

  Words that somehow felt familiar, as if he’d said them before.

  She stilled, her body craving more of him, her mind filled with questions.

  “You need to show me what the intruder did,” John said next to her ear.

  She nodded against his chest, then lifted her head, her fingers still holding on to his arms.

  His gaze met hers, his dark eyes filled with the kind of heat that made a woman want to tear off her clothes and bare her soul.

  “Amelia, show me,” he said, his professional manner back intact.

  She inhaled a sharp breath, then let go of him, reminding herself that when he left—and he would leave—that she would have to stand on her own.

  John forced himself to pull away from Amelia before he did something stupid as hell like kiss her and take her to bed.

  For God’s sake, he knew better than to fall for a woman on a case
.

  But something about Amelia was so damn sweet and vulnerable and . . . sexy . . . that he couldn’t resist.

  She had been abused so much of her life that she deserved something good to happen to her. He wanted to give her that happy ending more than he’d ever wanted anything in his life.

  But what the hell did he have to offer?

  He pulled away from her. “Show me what he did.” He said “he” although the intruder could have been a woman.

  The deep longing and need in her eyes tore at him, but she nodded and released him as if she knew she had to gather her courage.

  She let him in the entryway, both of them shaking off the cold as the wind slammed the door shut on its own.

  “There, the canvas in my studio,” Amelia said, a slight quiver to her voice. “It was blank when I left earlier.”

  He swallowed, tempering his reaction when he saw the word WHORE written in red paint, dripping like blood.

  “I got a phone call earlier when we were at the hospital. A man’s voice. He called me Viola, called me a whore.”

  Shock slammed into John. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Her expression crumpled with pain. “Because I was ashamed.”

  His heart clenched. “Amelia—”

  “You don’t understand. Viola was one of my alters, the promiscuous one. What he called me . . . it was true about her.”

  John steeled himself against the anguish in her eyes. “You’re not that person,” he said, knowing it was true.

  Amelia sighed wearily. “But I was, John. Viola was part of me and I can’t forget that.”

  He gritted his teeth. She seemed to be accepting what she’d done in the past. He wished he had the courage to face whatever he’d done. “Is there anything else?”

  She nodded, her eyes flickering again with disgust. “In my bedroom and bath.”

  He followed her, anger surging through him at the sight of her underwear shredded across the room.

  “The paper—”

  “My journals,” Amelia explained. “I kept them for years for therapy. I’ve been looking through them, hoping to find some answers, to learn more about my pregnancy. About the baby’s father.”

  She pointed to the bathroom, and he saw the message on her mirror.

  Fury railed through him. Amelia did not deserve this.

  “I’m going to get a security system installed here right away,” John said. “It may take a couple of days to get my guy out here, but trust me, once it’s in, no one will get past it.”

  There was no way he’d let the bastard who’d done this get away with hurting Amelia.

  Amelia fought the humiliation washing over her. She’d told John the truth. She had to because she was done with lies and pretending to be something she wasn’t.

  If he thought less of her, then she’d accept it. After all, she’d dealt with rejection and ridicule all her life.

  He angled his head toward her, his eyes seething, brows furrowed. “Who else knew about your alters?”

  Amelia shrugged. “Everyone. My story’s been in the news.”

  That meant any lunatic out there could be taunting her.

  But the timing had to be important. “Has this happened before?”

  She averted her gaze, worrying her lip with her teeth.

  John cleared his throat. “Amelia?”

  “The other night, I found a teddy bear.” She moved to the closet, stood on tiptoe and raked her hand along the top shelf.

  Confusion mingled with fear when she found the shelf empty. Agitated, she rushed past him into the studio and began to look through the canvases stacked against the wall.

  “I don’t understand,” she said, her voice strained.

  John followed her, his face contorting into a frown. “What?”

  She looked up at him, fear seizing her that he wouldn’t believe her.

  “Tell me,” he urged.

  She twisted her hands together. “The other night someone left a painting of the cemetery where we looked for my son. There were bones and ghosts floating in the cemetery. It was . . . dark.”

  “You didn’t paint it.”

  “No.” Her pulse clamored. “I also found a teddy bear on my bed, one that was just like the bear we found in the coffin. Except this one was Bessie’s bear, my child alter, and it had a knife stuck in its chest.”

  “But it’s not here now?”

  She shook her head, knowing she sounded crazy.

  But she had found that bear and the painting just like she’d found the one that night. Hadn’t she?

  John phoned Lieutenant Maddison to come to Amelia’s, and his security-specialist buddy to install a system in her house the next day.

  While he waited, he took some photographs of the painting, the shredded journals and underwear, and the message on her mirror.

  Amelia was visibly shaken and retreated to the kitchen to stare out the window at the unforgiving mountain ridges while Maddison processed her house.

  Maddison surveyed the message and the shredded pages. “She kept journals?”

  “Yes.”

  Maddison arched a brow. “You know her history. Do you think it’s possible she did all this herself?”

  John chewed the inside of his cheek. He had to consider the possibility. “I don’t think she did.”

  A heartbeat passed, the silence thick with doubt. She’d claimed an intruder had done something like this before, that he’d left a teddy bear.

  But it was missing.

  “Then you believe her story?” Maddison asked.

  He wanted to, more than anything. “Like you said, I know her history and so does everyone in town and half the people across the country. Someone could have done this to make us think she’s unstable so we wouldn’t believe her and I’d stop looking for her son.”

  Maddison finished bagging the pieces of the journal along with her underwear. Maybe he’d find some forensics on it to tell them who had broken into Amelia’s.

  As soon as Maddison left, Amelia walked back into the bedroom and looked at him, her eyes troubled. “He thinks I did this, doesn’t he?”

  John’s gaze met hers. “He’s just doing his job.”

  “But that’s what he thinks,” Amelia said. “Do you believe that, too, John?”

  He glanced at her hands. There was no paint on them. Of course, she could have written the message or painted that canvas and cleaned up before calling him.

  Her weary sigh reverberated in the air. “If you don’t believe me, then why are you looking for my baby?”

  Because she needed someone to believe her and help her.

  “I do believe you,” he said instead. “And I won’t give up, Amelia, not until we know the truth.”

  Gratitude flashed across her face, making her look so damn beautiful that his lungs tightened and his body hardened. He wanted to hold her again.

  To kiss her and lie her down and make love to her.

  Hunger and need darkened her eyes, their gazes locking for a long moment. Neither one of them had slept, and morning was starting to break the sky, the sun battling through more storm clouds and losing as the grayness swept it away.

  “There’s another couple I want to interview this morning,” John said. “They adopted a little boy named Eddie. Let me take you someplace safe while I go talk to them.”

  “He said he’ll find me wherever I go. I don’t want you to be in danger, too.”

  “Don’t worry about me, Amelia. I’m a professional.”

  Amelia’s breath rushed out. “Let me grab a quick shower and I’ll go with you to talk to the family.”

  He nodded, then waited in the other room while she ducked into the bathroom. But he had to step outside in the frigid air to cool the heat in his body and keep himself from asking her i
f he could join her.

  Silence thickened in the car as John drove toward the Sweenys’. Amelia looked out the window at the trees swaying in the wind. Ice and snow rained down from the limbs, splattering the windshield, the road slick with ice.

  Amelia’s past was shady, but questions about his own nagged at him. Where had he been when she was locked in the sanitarium?

  Dammit, that endless void loomed like a pit he’d fallen into, one he couldn’t find his way out of.

  The first few months of his amnesia he’d searched for the truth. Had hoped his memory would return on its own.

  Was he single? Married? Did he have a family out there looking for him? Did he have children?

  What kind of job had he worked before?

  And why was there no information about him? How could he be in his early thirties with virtually no footprint in the world?

  The only answers that made sense disturbed him even more. Someone had intentionally erased his identity. Maybe he was in Witness Protection, but if so, federal marshals would have been looking for him.

  Maybe he was a criminal who’d covered his identity? Or an undercover agent in a secret government unit?

  Maybe a unit that trained hit men?

  His gut tightened. Emanuel Giogardi, one of the Commander’s subjects, had been trained to be a hired killer.

  But if John had been a killer, why would he be so drawn to finding missing children?

  He parked at the suburban home belonging to the Sweeny family, hoping to catch them before they left for work.

  Mrs. Sweeny was a schoolteacher. Her husband owned his own garage and repaired foreign cars.

  Amelia hadn’t said ten words the entire ride. She looked nervous. Hell, he didn’t blame her. Every time she looked at a six-year-old boy, she must wonder if he was her son.

  “Are you sure you’re up to this?” he asked as they made their way to the front door.

  Amelia exhaled slowly, and straightened her spine. “Yes, I’m fine.”

  She might look vulnerable and fragile, but she was a gutsy woman. Any kid would be lucky to have her as their mother.