“He wouldn’t need entire bodies to do genetic research.”
“Normally, you’re right, but these were reputed witches from England who lived in the 1500s. I imagine the chance to examine them was irresistible.”
Brie gaped, wondering when this nightmare would end.
“Jonah thinks a member of the secret society now living in England found an unknown peat bog where witches were dumped after they were killed.”
She shook her head, too bewildered to even question such insanity.
“Actually, I’ve heard of this. Scientists have found perfectly preserved bodies dating back to the 1500s in peat bogs. Fortunately, it’s Jonah and Cullen’s problem. Cullen knew Ursula Manning was killed by a rifle shot from the woods and he suspected Manning all along.”
“So Manning kidnapped Carey because of the affair he had with Ursula?”
“Looks that way. The attacks on me stopped right after Carey admitted his involvement with Ursula. She was supposed to meet him in the woods that morning, but she never showed up. She told Carey that Manning only married her because her ancestors dated back to the Salem witch trials.”
“Then why didn’t Manning try to kill Carey like he tried to kill you when he thought you were the one having an affair with his wife?”
“Manning told Carey he planned to open Carey’s brain and inject a gene he had isolated to see if it would reproduce and cause Carey to develop some sort of psychic talent or something.”
“That’s crazy!”
Drew nodded. “As Carey put it, Manning gives new life to the Hollywood image of a mad scientist. The worst part is, the court system will probably find him mentally incompetent to stand trial for his crimes.”
Horrified, Brie stared at Drew. “He’s still alive?”
“I’m afraid so. He’s badly burned, but the bullet didn’t hit any vital organs. The doctors expect him to pull through.”
Brie shuddered. “What about Carey?”
“He has a concussion, cuts and bruises, he’s dehydrated, and weaker than Little Imp from being drugged and locked up in that coffin. And while I don’t imagine he’s going to be fond of enclosed places anymore, he’s going to be fine.”
“Thank God. We should have stopped to see him before we left the hospital.”
Drew shook his head. “He wouldn’t have appreciated our company. Nancy was there.”
“So there is something going on between the two of them.”
“Looks that way. What about us?”
The world seemed to stop. “What?”
Drew walked over to stand directly in front of her. “Why do you think I married you?”
“Is this a trick question?”
“No. Just give me an honest answer.”
Her heart began pounding irrationally. “We both know why you married me,” she said sadly.
“Do we?”
“Of course. You needed to save your career and you wanted to be part of Nicole’s life.”
“And you married me to pay for your mother’s experimental treatment,” he said bleakly. “So my uncle was right when he called our marriage a sham. A marriage of convenience.”
“I don’t understand. Why do you look so angry?”
“Maybe because I’m not finding this marriage one bit convenient,” he snapped.
His words were like tiny razors, flaying her heart.
“I don’t want a sham of a marriage,” he announced.
Her own anger, usually carefully controlled, sprang to life. “Well what do you want?” she demanded.
He grabbed her shoulders. “You. Loving me.”
The silence was deafening. “What?” she whispered.
He let her go and strode over to where Max sat perched on the arm of a chair watching them. Stroking the cat gently, he went on more quietly.
“Do you know what my mother told me tonight? Manning might actually have been on to something about witches and their genes. She informed me that my staid, huffy, highly educated father actually believes that stuff. He thinks I have an unnatural ability. Charm. Don’t you love it? He thinks my mother’s incredible green thumb is as unnatural as my supposed ability to charm everyone I meet. Everyone except my own wife, of course.”
“Are you saying you want to charm me?” Brie reeled from the implication of his words. Was it possible? Did Drew want what she wanted?
Drew snorted. He turned back to the window. “The storm’s finally moving off. We were lucky. The hurricane moved up the coast, but never actually made landfall. All this damage was nothing more than a passing blow.”
Just like Drew’s words.
“When I saw your wrecked car tonight,” he continued, “I knew if you were dead, part of me was going to die right there, too. Sounds sappy, doesn’t it?”
She shook her head, but he didn’t turn around, so he didn’t see the hope blossoming inside her.
“I have to tell you, Brie, I have never been so scared as I was tonight when Manning came at you and you just stood there protecting Nicole, holding that ridiculous screwdriver like some street fighter with a knife. I grabbed the rifle, but I knew I was going to be too late. You were going to die and I wanted to die, too.”
He turned around and she saw the moisture in his eyes.
“I love you, Brie. I’ve loved you since that stupid party four years ago. I think I knew it even then, but I was young and stupid and—I don’t want a sham of a marriage, Brie, I—”
She launched herself into his arms, laughing, crying, her heart filled to bursting. “I love you, I love you, I love you.”
He grabbed her, giving her a shake.
“You love me?”
“Since I was ten years old and Tasha took a group of us to watch your baseball game. Josie Farleigh knocked my drink over to be mean. You saw her do it and you bought me a drink and a candy bar.”
“Why don’t I remember that?”
“Because I was ten and you were sixteen and there was a girl with long blond hair you were trying to impress.”
“Ridiculous.” But a smile edged his lips. His intense blue eyes were practically glowing. “I don’t even like blondes. I prefer redheads.”
“Really?”
“I’ll prove it. What do you say we go and check out the bedroom?”
“Oh, God, I love you so much, Drew.”
He pulled her tightly against his chest. She felt the certainty and the power of his words when he spoke against her ear.
“I love you, too, Brie.”
Kissing her with incredible tenderness, he slid his arm around her waist and reached for the light switch. At least for the moment, the ghosts of Moriah’s Landing were at peace.
Behind the Veil
By Joanna Wayne
Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Prologue
Sweat beaded on the man’s brow as he struggled to drag the lifeless body into the thick clump of bushes and untamed undergrowth. The stench of death punctuated the night air and clogged his nostrils, but he couldn’t leave her like this. The job had to be done exactly according to plan.
Her leg caught on a rock, and he yanked it free, his hand brushing the delicate curve of her ankle as he did. She’d been an easy victim. Weak, innocent, gullible.
So easy. Almost too easy. He’d expected it to be more of a challenge, more satisfying to watch life seep from her body when he’d strangled her, watch blood gush from the two slashes that had severed her a
rteries. Instead it was over so quickly, he barely had time to appreciate the perfection of his work.
Just like it had been done twenty years ago. And, like twenty years ago, the stupid Moriah’s Landing police would never solve the murders. There had been four then, but only three remained unsolved and attributed to the serial killer. He’d probably stop at three now, as well. Or maybe he wouldn’t stop at all.
He took the knife, ran his gloved fingers along the edge of the blade, and then plunged it once more into the cold, pale flesh.
Easy. Easy. Easy. And perfect. Only one thing left to do. Working meticulously, he carved an M and an L into her abdomen. Something new to make certain everyone knew that McFarland Leary had returned.
Chapter One
Rebecca Smith snipped the emerald thread, laid her scissors on the table and held up the full satin dress for a critical look at the finished garment. The fabric swished as it fell into iridescent folds, catching the glow of the bright overhead lights.
Standing, she held it to her shoulders and took a few twirls around the room. It was the first piece of clothing she’d made for herself in months, but she’d outdone herself this time. The fabric was fabulous, the color rich, the sheen almost glittery.
Stopping to admire the finished creation in front of the full-length mirror, she could almost imagine herself attending a ball in old England. It would be the perfect dress for the Fall Extravaganza. On that night the town of Moriah’s Landing would be transported back in time, to the way it had been the year it was first inhabited. The night would be magical, a celebration that would hopefully dispel the sense of danger and fear that prevailed every fifth year when McFarland Leary was said to rise from the grave. If everything went as planned, tourists from miles around would flock into the narrow streets to celebrate the town’s three hundred and fiftieth anniversary year in a spectacular evening of dancing, vignettes, music and food.
If all went as planned, they would return to their homes when the festivities were over—alive.
The dress slipped through Becca’s fingers, and she barely caught it before it fell to the floor of the shop. The uneasy feeling that had lurked just beneath her consciousness all day had leapt to the forefront, icy and onerous and threatening to squeeze the life from her lungs.
She hated these moments when she seemed to slip into the depths of some world far beyond the one she knew as a simple seamstress. She never told anyone about these experiences, the same way she never admitted that she was anyone but Rebecca Smith, a young woman with simple values and meager expectations. It was better this way, made her less of an oddity, gave people no reason to pity her or to speculate about her past.
She laid the dress across the worktable, then walked to the front window and stared into the grayness of twilight. The streetlights had come on along Main Street, tiny globes of illumination, blurred and dulled by the thick fog that coated the air. A black car pulled up in front of the liquor store next door and a tall man in a pair of worn jeans and a windbreaker climbed from the passenger side of the car and sauntered to the entrance. He nodded and waved when he caught sight of her watching through the window. She waved back.
Moriah’s Landing was ordinarily a quiet, safe town in spite of the popular tales of witches and warlocks and ghosts who rose from their graves to kill innocent women. She didn’t believe in such nonsense, anyway. Humans committed murders, and though the town of Moriah’s Landing had experienced its share of those, there was no reason to believe that evil still lurked in dark graveyards or strolled the rocky beaches at midnight.
No reason at all, unless you believed the legend of McFarland Leary, a man who’d been dead for centuries and still rose from the grave every five years to torture and kill innocent females.
Or if you bought into the stories that circulated about the monster on the hill. She closed her eyes, and the image of a lean, brooding man with swarthy skin and dark, piercing eyes walked through her mind. Thick hair fell across his forehead and hung past his ears, only half hiding the nasty scar that crawled down the right side of his face.
Dr. David Bryson. Living in the Bluffs, his formidable castle of stone and menacing turrets, guarded by hideous, lifeless gargoyles that bared rusted teeth and sharpened claws.
When she thought of danger and foreboding, his was always the face that appeared in her mind, and still the man intrigued her. She’d asked questions of all her friends, listened to the talk about him, watched for him, half hoping he’d materialize from the shadows when she walked home by herself after dark.
She’d spotted him one night just as she’d finished turning the key to lock the shop door. He’d been standing at the corner near her shop. She’d looked him straight in the eye, studied his features in the faint glow of the streetlight. Her heart had beat erratically, but she’d stood as if frozen to the spot, mesmerized, drawn to the man half the town claimed was a mad murderer.
The jangling of the telephone jolted her from her thoughts. She took a deep breath and forced the image of Dr. Bryson from her mind before she answered. “Threads. How may I help you?”
“Becca, it’s Larry Gayle. Some of us are heading over to the carnival tonight. Want to join us?”
She hesitated. “The weatherman is predicting thundershowers.”
“Aw, come on. It’s Friday night. Kat and Jonah are going, and if it rains, we’ll duck into one of the bars along the wharf.”
“In that case, count me in.” She hadn’t seen Kat nearly enough since her friend had fallen in love with and married Jonah. Jonah was with the FBI and Kat was one of the toughest private investigators around. Still, it had been a rough year for Kat. After twenty years, the man who’d killed her mother in Kat’s presence had finally been arrested. The first of the infamous Moriah’s Landing murders of twenty years ago had been solved. The last three had not.
“What time?” she asked, pushing thoughts of the murder aside.
“I’ll pick you up about seven,” Larry answered, “unless that’s too soon.”
Her gaze rose to the clock over the door. It was already a quarter after six, but it was only a ten-minute walk to the room she rented from the Cavendish family, and it wouldn’t take long to slip into a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt. “I’ll be ready.”
A few minutes later, she’d straightened her work area, hung her dress on a hanger so that the wrinkles could fall out and turned out the lights in the shop. Pulling the door closed, she fit the key into the lock and turned it, checking before she walked away to make sure the lock had caught and held.
There was little breaking and entering in Moriah’s Landing, but it didn’t hurt to be cautious, especially since she only managed the shop for the owner. One day she hoped to buy it, but for now she was content to have a job she enjoyed.
Picking up her pace, she turned off of Main Street and onto a narrow unlit side street. It was the one secluded area on her short walk home. It didn’t really frighten her, but still she always picked up her pace when she started down it. The lots on either side of the road belonged to one of the Pierces, but they had never built here.
The wind blew in from the ocean, sharp and damp and prickling her flesh. Not a great night for a carnival, but she was relieved not to be staying home tonight. The chilling presence that had haunted her all day began to swell into an almost palpable sensation as she rounded the last corner and walked beneath a canopy of tree branches and shadows.
If she believed in witchcraft, she would fear she was one, and that the chill inside her predicted the imminence of danger or death.
If she believed. But she didn’t.
DAVID BRYSON WALKED the rocky path along the edge of the craggy cliffs and stared down at the swirling water as it crashed against the treacherous rocks below. Once the sight had filled him with awe and excitement. Now it was only a bitter reminder that it was the place where he had lost his world.
Some claimed he’d also lost his sanity that horrible night five years ago, and perhaps they
were the ones who understood best.
Instinctively, his hand moved to his face, and his fingers traced the jagged lines of the scar that ran from his right temple to below his ear. The facial disfiguration, his conspicuous limp and the hideous patches of coarse, red skin on his chest and stomach were always with him to remind him of the explosion.
Still, the plastic surgeons had worked wonders, rebuilt his face, transformed him from something so ghastly he couldn’t bear to pass in front of a mirror to something merely hideous. The doctors had saved his life even while he’d begged them for the release of death. To this day, he’d never fully forgiven them.
“Dr. Bryson.”
He turned at the sound of his name and located the lone figure standing behind the Bluffs. The man was no more than an outline in the deepening darkness, but David didn’t have to see his butler to recognize him. He knew the voice well.
He waved and called up to him. “I’m down here, Richard.”
David took one last look at the water below him, then tilted his face and examined the turbulent layers of dark clouds before starting back up the rocky path.
Too bad about the gathering storm, but if the carnies were lucky, it would hold off for a few hours. The carnival had been a highlight of the fall season for years, coming to town just after the students at the all-girls college of Heathrow had plunged into the sea of sorority activities and before they became immersed in serious studies.
Memories sneaked into his mind. A kiss at the top of the Ferris wheel, Tasha’s body pressing into his as they spun on the Tilt-A-Whirl.
A ragged ache tore at his insides. He fought it by pushing his body to the limits, ignoring the stabbing pain in his right leg and jogging up the slippery path that ran along the edge of the cliff. In minutes, he’d covered the ground between him and Richard and stopped at the man’s side.
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