Moriah's Landing Bundle

by Amanda Stevens

  The van jerked to a stop. Evidently they were at the gate. He could hear the driver punching in the secret codes that opened it. The man didn’t breathe easy until the van jerked forward—at least as easy as a man could breathe buried under a pile of blankets with only a tiny space between him and the wall to grab some oxygen.

  Jump from the truck while the driver made the delivery. Hide in the row of shrubs that bordered the walk to the garden and then make a run for cover. Lucky for David Bryson he’d have a fresh supply of white roses to scatter over his newest dead girlfriend.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Becca hurried toward a front window when she heard the doorbell ring, hoping it wasn’t Detective Megham again. It wasn’t. It was the deliveryman from the florist. She couldn’t see his truck, but she recognized the ribbon-tied boxes that the roses came in. White roses to be scattered over the cliffs in memory of Tasha Pierce.

  The first time she’d witnessed it, she’d found the practice endearing. Today it only assured her that she’d made the right decision. As soon as she found a place to go, she’d be leaving the Bluffs.

  Even if David convinced her to stay, it wouldn’t work. Every time she caught him staring into space or looking as if his mind were a million miles away, she’d always wonder if it was Tasha who was on his mind. When they kissed, she’d worry that it was Tasha he was thinking of. When they made love, she’d…She had to stop this. It was making her physically ill.

  But maybe she was being too hard on David, expecting too much too soon. Just because she’d fallen so hard, so fast, didn’t mean he would have the same reaction. Given time, he might be able to let Tasha slide into the background and love Becca as much as she loved him.

  She walked down the hall and trudged the steep staircase, drawn to his shrine to Tasha. Pausing outside the door, she closed her eyes and imagined Tasha in the beautiful wedding gown, her eyes shining with love, her heart overflowing. Tears burned at the back of Becca’s eyelids as she walked away. She and Tasha had so much in common. They had both lost their hearts to David. But Tasha still possessed him.

  Becca walked down one long hallway after another, not caring where she went, as long as it was away from that room. She had no idea how far she’d walked or exactly where she was, but finally she stopped and leaned against the wall and tried to get her bearings. She was fairly certain she hadn’t been in this part of the house before, but all of a sudden she had the creepy feeling that she wasn’t alone. She turned and looked down the hall behind her.

  “Who’s there?”

  There was no answer and not a sign of movement. Paranoia was catching up with her. There were always noises in a place this old. She opened a door and stepped into a windowless rectangular room with chairs and folded tables stacked along the wall. An antique dining table, covered with a leather pad, sat directly beneath a brass chandelier, as if ruling over the clutter.

  A large cardboard box rested in the middle of the table, the edges folded back, revealing the top half of a skull and a hand that seemed to be scratching and clawing its way out of the container. A gob of white hair poked from around the skull, tumbling over the rim of the box like a clump of spiderwebs.

  Just Halloween decorations, she told herself. But still her stomach constricted then rolled inside her as she walked to the table. Her hands shook and she could feel a drop of cold sweat sliding between her breasts as she reached inside the box, wrapped her hands around the wig and pulled.

  The hideous rubber mask of McFarland Leary fell against her, the blank eyes staring at her. She went weak and the room spun around her like a carousel gone mad.

  Get a grip, Becca. It’s nothing but stupid decorations. Lots of people own these ridiculous masks. Holding the edge of the table, she struggled for a deep breath and some equilibrium.

  Instead she heard the sound of the door behind her closing and the lock clicking into place. She spun around. The first thing she saw was the pointed blade of a knife. The second was the face of the man holding the knife.

  “Hello, Becca. Time to meet the real beast.”

  Becca stared at the man, knowing she’d seem him before but unable to remember where. “Who are you?”

  “That’s right, we haven’t had the benefit of formal introductions, have we? His lips twisted into a taunting grin. “My friends call me Kevin. Most of the women just call me darlin’.”

  “Until you kill them?”

  “That’s right, sweetheart. Usually I give them the pleasure of my company first. Too bad I don’t have time to do that for you. A stuck-up broad like you could use the attention of a man like me.”

  The thought of his hands on her, much less any other part of his body, made her skin crawl, but the thought of the knife slicing through her neck overrode everything else. The chances that someone would hear her scream were almost nil. And once she screamed, he’d waste no time in killing her.

  There had to be a better way. “Why are you doing this?” she asked, trying to buy time to think.

  “I’m just delivering what the town of Moriah’s Landing wants. Think how disappointed they’d have been if old McFarland Leary hadn’t come crawling out of his grave to kill off a few maidens. One here. One there. All inching closer to the monster on the hill. Now, this one will be right under his nose. Who’d ever convince a jury he’s not the murderer?”

  The man was horribly sick, and yet he’d planned the whole thing amazingly well. And she’d played right into his hands by moving into the Bluffs. She’d be dead. David would be in jail—for murders he’d never committed.

  Unless…

  Her gazed scanned the room. A skull, a mask, a horrid fake hand. All gruesome, but nothing that could help her now. She took a step backward, to the stack of folding chairs. “All this to set up David. Do you even know him?”

  “It’s not about David Bryson or even about you, sweetheart, though you’ve made a fascinating prospect from the night I decided to add you to the victim list.”

  She leaned her backside against a metal chair, putting her hands behind her and wrapping her fingers around the curved edge of the high back. “When was that?”

  “The night you showed up at Wheels with Larry Gayle and those other two friends of yours. You shouldn’t have dumped my buddy for the mad scientist. It wasn’t cool.”

  “But even before that, you’d killed one woman and planned to lay the blame on David.”

  “That’s right. You just added the whipped cream to my pie. A murderous ghost, a vampire in a Gothic castle, and a beautiful blond-haired woman who obviously has the hots for the beast. It’s classic.”

  “And I made it easy for you by moving in with David?”

  “Easy and difficult. The Cavendish home would have been much easier to break into than a stone fortress.”

  He laughed, not loud, yet the sound roared inside Becca’s head. His left hand opened and closed, and the veins in his neck stood out like blue cords as he positioned the knife to attack. Images flew through her mind. The wedding dress and veil. Only she was wearing it, not Tasha. And she was dancing with David on the deck of the ship with a blanket of dazzling stars shining above them.

  She and David. Making love and loving. Always, she and David.

  Adrenaline rushed through her in a crushing wave and she pulled the chair from behind her and slung it at Kevin. It glanced off his chest, but it slowed him just long enough for her to grab another chair. She was screaming now, a piercing yell that reverberated from the ceiling and walls, screaming and swinging the chair like a club.

  But the man just kept coming, the knife outstretched and ready to plunge into her neck and rip through her jugular just as he’d done with the other victims. He yanked the chair from her hands and hurled it across the room. She grabbed another for one last chance. This time she hammered the leg of the chair into his eyeball. He stumbled backward, but only for a minute.

  When he recovered, he came at her like an angered bull, the muscles in his arms flexed into ha
rd knots, blood pouring from the injured eye. He slapped her hard across the face, knocking her to the floor. Her head banged against the base of the table, blurring her vision and searing her body with pain.

  When she looked up, she saw two knives, both of them coming toward her. And then her head seemed to explode. She fell back as the first drops of warm blood gushed onto her blouse.

  “I love you, David. I love you so much. I wish I could have been Tasha for you, but…”

  The words died on her lips as she sank into an abyss that pain and heartbreak couldn’t reach.

  Chapter Seventeen

  At first David thought the screams were the wind howling around the corners of the Bluffs, the way it had done so many times before. But he was in the closed-in passage, making his way back up from the catacombs. There was no way he would hear the wind.

  Oh, God, no. It was Becca. He recognized the voice now. And someone else’s. A male. Laughing like a madman. Head down to avoid colliding with the ceiling, he started running, trying desperately to figure out which room the cries were coming from.

  Within seconds, he’d cleared the bookcase door and started down the long hallway. One more scream. Please, Becca, be alive and give me one more scream so that I can find you.

  But the hallway had grown strangely silent. He rounded a corner and his heart slammed against his chest. There was no scream, but he could hear banging noises, a clucking and scraping as if furniture were bouncing off the walls.

  He reached the door, tried the knob only once before snatching the pistol from its holder and shooting the lock off. His hand still on the trigger, he kicked the door open and stared into the face of Kevin Pinelle. Kevin’s hand was on the knife. The knife was on Becca’s neck.

  “Drop the knife or I shoot.”

  “Nah. I’m not much for jail time. Wouldn’t go well at all for a pretty boy like me. So, I’ll just kill her and let you shoot.”

  David pulled the trigger.

  THE BACK OF BECCA’S HEAD pounded like the heavy bass of a punk rock tune. She opened her eyes and looked into David’s. “We’ve got to stop meeting like this.”

  He cradled her head in his arms. “I always heard that if you save a woman once, they expect you to do it over and over.”

  Her hand scraped across the front of her blouse and paused in the sticky dampness. “Is that blood?”

  “Yes, but not yours, though it would have been if I’d been a second longer.”

  “Did you kill my attacker?”

  “No, just wounded his knife hand. I wouldn’t want him to miss out on his prison experience. Now, if you can stand to be moved, I’m going to carry you to the front of the house. You took a nasty blow to the back of your head.”

  “Anything you say, Dr. Bryson.” She managed to move her head enough to scan the room. “Where is Kevin?”

  “Megham and Richard are downstairs with him while they wait for the ambulance. The second ambulance. The first one will be yours, and this time I am not taking no for an answer.”

  She rested her throbbing head against his chest, thankful to be alive, thankful that the current murder spree was over, thankful that no more women would die at the madman’s hands.

  She wouldn’t let herself think beyond that yet. She knew how much she loved David, but the near-death experience didn’t change their relationship. Loving him would never be enough as long as his devotion to a dead lover came first.

  A haunted castle. A tortured lover. A twisted and unhappy ending. Just like in an old Gothic novel.

  Bewitched. And bittersweet.

  THE DIAGNOSIS HAD BEEN a mild concussion, and by the second afternoon, Becca was restless and anxious to be released from the hospital. They’d already kept her an extra day, just as a precautionary measure, or so the doctor had said, but she’d definitely be going home today.

  Home. Only she didn’t really have one anymore. She’d already moved her things out of the Cavendish home, and one of the younger children had claimed her space. And she couldn’t go back to the Bluffs knowing that David was still in love with Tasha. She was strong but not that strong.

  With her options limited, Becca had decided to move into the motel on the edge of town while she looked for a place to rent. A small efficiency apartment would be adequate for her needs—something with a short lease. Once she’d finished the dresses she had already agreed to design and sew for the Fall Extravaganza, she planned to move away.

  She’d miss her new friends—Brie, Kat, Elizabeth and Claire—the only real friends she could remember. But if she stayed, it would be sheer torture to look up and see the Bluffs every day, to know David was there and that she would never be the one he loved.

  The loss hurt far more than the blow to the head, even more than the surgeries that had reconstructed her nose and her jaw following the incident five years ago. This time the pain buried itself so deep inside that it permeated every part of her, lived with her every second of the day. But, unlike David, she would move past the pain and enervating loss. One day, though she knew it wouldn’t be anytime soon.

  She looked up as the door to her room squeaked open and Brie Pierce stepped inside.

  “Hello, Miss Town Heroine,” Brie purred, sweeping across the room to hug her.

  “Me? A heroine?”

  “I should say. You practically singlehandedly caught the serial killer who was terrifying the whole town.”

  “I didn’t catch him. If David Bryson had been a few seconds later, I’d be dead.”

  “But you slowed the guy down until David could get there. And the report I heard was that you got in a few good whacks with a metal chair, practically took his eye out.”

  She grimaced at the thought. “How is his eye? I hope I didn’t blind him.”

  Brie shook her head, and her hair bounced around her shoulders. She looked different since she’d married the man destined to be Moriah’s Landing’s next mayor, more sophisticated, but that in no way diminished the glow love had painted in her eyes and her smile.

  “I can’t believe you’re worried about that monster,” Brie said, “not after what he did to those two poor women and almost did to you.”

  Becca straightened the sheet and propped up a little higher in the hospital bed. “It was Kevin Pinelle who tried to attack Claire and me that night, too. He admitted it.”

  “Only because he thinks some shyster lawyer is going to get him off with an insanity plea.”

  “He hasn’t admitted running me off the road that evening, though,” Becca said. “It seems he would if he’s behind it. Once a man’s admitted to two murders and an attempted murder, you wouldn’t think he’d bother to lie about running someone off the road.”

  “Drew’s convinced he did it, though. He thinks Kevin’s just trying to throw some suspicion on someone else, that he’s the kind of guy who likes to keep the cops and news media jumping through his hoops. Even Drew’s father says he thinks Kevin will milk this for all the attention he can get.”

  “So let’s not give him any more of ours,” Becca said.

  Brie walked over and stood next to the bed. “When do you get out of this place? If I were you, I wouldn’t be in too big of a hurry. I spied a very cute doctor in the hallway when I was coming in.”

  “I get out as soon as my not-too-cute doctor comes by and releases me.”

  Brie bent to smell a bouquet of mixed flowers David had sent, then paused to read the card. “Will you be going back to the Bluffs?” she asked.

  “No. I’m checking into a motel.”

  “I can’t let you do that,” Brie protested. “Come and stay with Drew and me. I’ll take care of you until you’re completely recovered.”

  “You have far too much to do keeping up with your politician husband to take me on. Besides, I’ll only be in the motel until I find a place. There have to be lots of apartments in this town for rent.”

  The phone rang. Becca reached over and answered it, half expecting it to be David, but it was Claire’s v
oice that answered her hello. She covered the mouthpiece with her hand and whispered a quick apology to Brie for having to take the call while they were visiting.

  “You sound upset, Claire. Is something wrong?”

  “I’ve started to remember the night of the abduction.”

  “That’s great. Isn’t it?”

  “It is, although it’s got me so shaky I can barely function.”

  “Do you remember who kidnapped you?”

  “Not yet, but I remember details not only about that night, but about the days immediately after that.”

  “What does your doctor say?”

  “He wants to hypnotize me again. When he tried it before, I got so upset that he stopped the procedure, but now he thinks I’m ready.”

  “What do you think?”

  “I want it over with. I want the man in jail so I can go on with my life and quit jumping at every shadow, stop thinking every man I meet is somehow connected to the abduction. The other night when Geoffrey saved us from being killed, I thought he was the man. And then when I went to the Bluffs, I was sure I could feel something evil about the place. Not necessarily David, but the house itself.”

  Catacombs with skulls and bones. Secret passageways and long tunnels. In the case of the Bluffs, Claire might not be altogether wrong, but Becca didn’t want to bring that up now. “When do you see the doctor?”

  “This afternoon. Wish me luck.”

  “I do, Claire. I wish you all the luck in the world.”

  Becca was still a little shaken by the conversation even after they’d said their goodbyes and she’d hung up the phone.

  “I take it that was Claire Cavendish,” Brie said.

  “It was.”

  Brie frowned. “She’s started to remember things about the abduction. Did she tell you that?”