Teryl looked as if she couldn’t take any more shocks. She was staring at her foster sister, her best friend—the last person in the world she had expected to run into here—with a total lack of understanding. She knew what she was seeing, knew what she was hearing, but absolutely could not, John suspected, understand it. He knew how she felt. It seemed that his own world had just tilted askew, and he didn’t have near the emotional investment in D.J. Howell that Teryl did. Hell, he didn’t even like the woman.
D.J. moved away from the door, coming farther into the room. “What the hell are you doing here? You have no right to come here, to break into Simon’s house, and go through his things.”
“Not much here is actually his, though, is it?” John asked.
Coming across the room, she snatched the card and the book from his hands, returned them to the drawer, and pushed it shut. “It’s all his. You’re fools to come here. Don’t you know he plans to kill you? Don’t you know he’s already tried?”
She was going to be sick, Teryl was sure of it. She had never felt such sorrow, such betrayal, or such hurt. This was all simply a bad dream. She couldn’t have broken into a crazy man’s house, couldn’t have discovered all those creepy pictures of herself here. She couldn’t be hearing what D.J. was saying, couldn’t be feeling the fear and the sickness she was feeling. Her best friend couldn’t be standing there talking so calmly about her own murder. D.J. couldn’t be a part of this.
But she was. As much as the idea shocked her, Teryl knew it was true. She felt it on some level deep inside. She felt it with a certainty that made her want to weep.
“You did it, didn’t you?” she asked, her disillusionment so great that it seemed to round her shoulders. “You gave him John’s address. You gave him the outline for Resurrection.”
D.J. smiled mockingly. “Honey, I gave him the goddamned idea… although, to be honest, at the time I didn’t really think he could pull it off. Yes, I gave him the address and the outline—and it was all courtesy of you, Teryl.”
“How?” John asked.
“Every day she goes home, and she puts her keys in a cute little basket on the kitchen counter, where anyone who goes into the house could take them. So I did. I pocketed them one evening, I went to the office, and I found everything Simon needed. I used the agency’s own copy machine,” she said with a laugh. “I made copies of everything, put the originals back, went back to Teryl’s house on the pretext of picking up a jacket I’d left, and slipped the keys right back into the basket. It was so easy. No one suspected a damned thing, especially Teryl.”
Especially her, Teryl thought miserably. She had no doubt it had happened exactly the way D.J. described, but she didn’t remember it. She didn’t remember her friend coming over, leaving, then coming back again. She had certainly never noticed her keys missing.
“Of course, the only address in the agency’s files was the mailbox in Denver, but Simon’s a resourceful man. As soon as he finished the book, he flew to Denver. It cost him a nice little bit of money, but he persuaded the clerk to let him have a look at their records—the ones with John Smith’s home address on them. Then it was a simple matter of going to Rapid River and locating Route 4 and the box number.”
“Why?” Teryl asked, her voice shaky with threatening tears. “Why did you do this? Why is he doing this?”
D.J.’s expression slipped from cocky and sarcastic into pure sorrow. “You don’t even know who he is, do you? You went to New Orleans with him, you talked to him and spent time with him, and you didn’t even recognize him!”
“I never met him!” she protested. “How could I recognize him?”
Pushing past her, D.J. grabbed a large, heavy book from the bottom shelf of the bookcase and thrust it at Teryl. It was their college yearbook, freshman year. D.J. flipped it open to a section marked with an envelope and stabbed one long red nail at a photograph near the bottom, identified as Richard Martin.
The page was headed English Department, and she recognized the subjects in several of the small photographs as instructors she’d studied under during her four years at the university. After a moment’s study, she also recognized Simon—younger, looking very different with dark hair and a heavy beard, but still Simon. Still intense. Still creepy. Even in the flat dimension of a photograph, those eyes were enough to send shivers down her spine. They were enough to make her skin crawl. The idea of facing him in reality, of sitting across from him… Of sitting in front of him, student before instructor…
“Oh, God,” she whispered. She let the book fall to the desk. The pages fluttered, then settled again, the disturbing picture still staring up at her. “That teacher?” she asked, staring in dismay at D.J. “The writing teacher we had our freshman year?”
D.J.’s smile was chilling. “So you do remember.”
Teryl backed away until she bumped into John. Seeking reassurance, she clutched his hand tightly.
“You’ve met him before?” he asked, drawing her near.
“He taught creative writing at the university. We took it our first year because we thought it would be fun, but it wasn’t.”
“He had a crush on Teryl from the first time he ever saw her,” D.J. filled in. She was still standing at the desk, rubbing her fingertip across the photograph. She was stroking the lifeless image, gently caressing it. “She wouldn’t give him the time of day. She said he was weird. Creepy. Spooky. She dropped out of the class after only two weeks. She said that sitting in front of him for an hour three times a week made her skin crawl.” Her smile was vague, distant. “He made my skin crawl, too, with pleasure. He knew exactly what I wanted, exactly what I needed, and he gave it to me.”
“But you couldn’t give him what he wanted.” John’s voice was quietly sympathetic. “You couldn’t be Teryl.”
D.J. drew a deep breath, then let it out noisily as she looked at them. “No, I couldn’t. He used me to keep track of her. I gave him her class schedules, I told him who she was dating and what was going on in her life, and in exchange he let me be part of his life. I loved him, and he loved her, and she forgot he existed. I hated you for that, Teryl.” Picking up the yearbook, she studied the picture for a moment, then hugged it to her chest. She seemed suddenly smaller and achingly vulnerable. “Oh, God, I’ve hated you ever since I met you!”
“I’m sorry, D.J.,” Teryl said, her voice catching in her throat. “I never knew… I didn’t want him to like—”
“You should have loved him!” D.J. interrupted angrily, slamming the yearbook down on the desk. “But, no, everyone loved sweet Teryl. She had her pick of people to love in return. Some lonely little college instructor who tried to teach no-talent idiots how to write wasn’t good enough for her. He wasn’t handsome enough. He wasn’t rich enough. He wasn’t famous enough. Hell, he wasn’t the great Simon Tremont, at whose feet she worshiped.”
“He wasn’t normal enough!” Teryl snapped. “For God’s sake, D.J., even then we knew there was something wrong with this man! He was so intense, so peculiar, so odd. We used to joke about him, that he was probably a serial killer or a deranged stalker or something!”
“You used to joke about him,” D.J. disagreed, her voice as cold and hard as granite. “You and those stupid bitches you called friends. You were the stupidest bitch of all. You talk about normal. Do you think you’re normal? After what your grandfather did to you, after what your mother let him do, do you really believe, deep down inside, that you’re even close to normal?”
Beside John Teryl became stiff and unyielding. She was barely breathing. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said, her voice unnaturally quiet. “Grandpa Weaver never did anything to me, and I never knew Mama’s father.”
“Stop it!” D.J. demanded, clenching her hands into fists, squeezing her eyes shut for a moment as if it might stop her from hearing. When she opened them again, she looked at Teryl with such anger, with such pure malice and hatred, that John automatically moved between them. “Grand
pa Weaver isn’t your grandfather. Lorna and Philip are not your parents. For Christ’s sake, Teryl, how can you be so stupid? How can you not at least suspect the truth? How can you live your entire life with these people and never wonder why you don’t look like them? Why there’s no more resemblance between you and them than there is between them and every other kid they took in? How can you believe you’re so damned special that, of the hundreds of kids they’ve played parents to, you’re the only one who really belongs?”
“You’re lying,” Teryl said, her voice soft but so intense that it quavered. “You’ve always resented the fact that Mama and Daddy never adopted you. You’ve always believed that if they had really wanted you, they could have found some way to force your parents to relinquish their rights. You’ve always resented that I was their own and you never could be.”
“Believe what you want, Teryl, but I know the truth. I’ve seen the adoption papers. I’ve read the doctors’ and the psychiatrists’ reports. They talk about repression and denial, about not forcing Eliza—that’s what they called you then—to face the truth.” She smiled maliciously, taking such pleasure in her cruelty. “John knows the truth, too. Look at him. It’s in his eyes.”
Teryl whirled around, staring up at him, her eyes pleading for denial, for reassurance that her foster sister was, indeed, lying. He’d never been much good at lying, but, hell, he made up stories for a living. He could give it a try. “Don’t listen to her, Teryl. She has always resented you. She’s always hated you because she’s always wanted to be you. If she could be you, then she wouldn’t have to be Debra Jane Howell and she wouldn’t have to remember all the awful things Debra Jane endured at the hands of people who were supposed to love her. You can’t believe her, Teryl. You can’t trust her.”
She wasn’t completely convinced, although she wanted to be. He could see in her expression just how desperately she wanted to believe him. But some part of her knew. Hidden someplace deep inside, someplace that she had kept safely blocked off for most of her life, she knew that D.J. was telling the truth. That she, like the other eight Weaver kids, was adopted. That she, like too many of the Weavers’ foster kids, had been abused. That she, like D.J., had horrors in her past. D.J., though, drew strength from hers, while Teryl had had to forget hers in order to survive.
“Bastard,” D.J. said; then she shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. You can lie all you want, but one of these days she’ll remember. One of these days she’ll know the truth… and I hope it makes you suffer.” She directed that last vicious comment to Teryl.
“Why?” Teryl demanded tearfully. “Why are you doing this?”
John slid his arm around her waist and answered with far more sympathy than he’d believed he could feel for her friend. “Because D.J. never managed to forget. Because she’s suffered every day of her life, and just once she wants someone else to feel the pain.”
Behind them the boards just inside the door creaked, and, in front of them, D.J.’s expression became panicky. John knew before he turned what he would see. It made his muscles tense, made shivers dance down his spine. Still, he forced himself to slowly turn, taking Teryl with him, until he was finally face-to-face with Richard Martin, dying to be known… no, killing to be known as Simon Tremont.
There was an unholy light in his eyes, an elation that Martin visibly struggled to control. He must realize that fate, for once, was on his side, that it had delivered to him the perfect opportunity to take care of them and to solidify his claim on Tremont for all eternity. He could kill them right here and bury their bodies anywhere on this sprawling old farm. Only D.J. would know the truth; only Janie and Rebecca might suspect it. Rebecca, for whom the agency was everything, just might look the other way, even on murder. Janie couldn’t prove her suspicions, and D.J.…
Hell, D.J. was in love with him; she’d been helping him all these years. She had just admitted that the impersonation had been her idea. John could easily imagine how she had goaded Martin to this point. Teryl doesn’t like Richard Martin; Teryl doesn’t know Richard Martin even exists. But she admires Simon Tremont; she worships Tremont. If you could write like him, she would admire you, too. Her intent, John would bet, had merely been to mock him, to taunt him with what he couldn’t have, but Martin had taken her challenge seriously. Somewhere along the way, in his twisted mind, write like had become be like, and be like had soon changed to be.
If you can dream it, you can be it. I can be Simon Tremont… for you, Teryl. He’d done it all for her, but she still hadn’t liked him. To add insult to injury, she’d gotten involved with the very man Martin had tried so hard to become.
All this time, John thought with a humorless smile, he’d been feeing guilty for dragging Teryl into this mess, when the truth was she had unwittingly dragged him in. She had been the object of Martin’s obsession, not Simon Tremont. If she had been a fan of King instead, of Grisham or Clancy, John would probably still be living his quiet life up in the Colorado mountains.
When Martin spoke at last, it was in a mild voice, one that didn’t even hint at what was to come. “Jeez, I go to town to run a few errands, and people break into my house. What’s this country coming to?” He moved closer, but at an angle, keeping them all a safe distance away. “John Smith. I recognize you from your pictures. And Teryl. Everything I did was for you… and it turns out, you’re not worth any of it. You’re as much a slut as she is.” He jerked his head toward D.J. “You don’t deserve even a moment of my devotion. You’re a whore.”
“And you’re crazy,” Teryl replied, her voice every bit as mild.
Martin smiled, amused by her retort, then turned cold and harsh when he looked at D.J. “Did you bring them here?”
“No.” She answered quickly, desperately. “I came out to see you, and as I drove around the last curve in the road, I saw them sneaking around back. I came in to make sure they didn’t disturb anything, to make sure they didn’t take anything, before you got back.” Twisting her hands together, she moved toward him. “What are you going to do, Simon?”
“Kill them, of course.” He smiled again—and crazy, John thought, didn’t come close to describing it. “They’ve given ne no choice.”
Although she claimed ownership of the original plan, although she had acknowledged when she first arrived that Martin wanted them dead, D.J. seemed disturbed by the idea low. Wringing her hands again, she looked from him to John and Teryl, then back to him. “I understand him, but… do you have to kill her, too? She’s not important. Who could he tell? It’s all so crazy that she didn’t even believe it herself in the beginning. No one would believe her now.”
“Don’t be a fool, Debra Jane. Everyone would believe her. Slut or not, she’s not like you. She doesn’t lie as naturally as she breathes. They both have to die.” Sliding open the credenza drawer, he withdrew a pistol, a hell of a gun, the kind that could undoubtedly leave a hell of a hole in a person, and leveled it at them.
John stiffened, dread turning his skin cold, and Teryl, next to him, shifted behind him. It wasn’t a safe place to hide, he thought regretfully. With a gun like that at this close range, the bullet would tear through them both without losing any of its momentum. With a gun like that, they didn’t stand a chance in hell of surviving. That meant he had to stall. He had to find some way out, some chance for escape, at least for Teryl. “You’re going to shoot us right here. In your office. Where you work.”
“Well, I’d rather not, but if it’s necessary…” Martin shrugged. “Actually, I’d rather not shoot you at all. It seems a shame to change methods so late in the game.”
“So you’d rather keep trying the bombs until you get them to work.”
“Oh, no, not me. Why, I’m just a writer. I know nothing about bombs.” He shrugged again, then used the gun to gesture around the room. “I never cared much for this place. It was fine for somebody like that hack—” with the barrel, he pointed toward the yearbook on his desk, toward the picture of himself—“but it’s hardly
suitable for an author of my stature. I deserve something a little grander, something along the lines of the Grayson estate, don’t you think, Teryl? I can get rid of this place and the two of you and throw suspicion your way, all in one afternoon.”
Teryl slowly edged out to once again stand at John’s side. She might be scared senseless, might be facing death much sooner than she wanted, but she’d be damned if she would do it cowering. Not in front of this crazy man. “And how would you do that?”
Once more he pointed the gun at them—or, specifically, at John. “He’s already connected with the bombing in Colorado. Of course, right now the sheriff believes he was the intended victim, but it wouldn’t take more than a few well-chosen words to change his perception entirely. He’s also connected with the bombing of your house. The fact that he survived both isn’t in his favor. Do you know what the odds are of an innocent victim who is truly uninvolved escaping a building only seconds before it blows up not once but twice? Walking away once is a miracle. Walking away twice is suspicious. Dying the third time… that’s justice.”
D.J. approached him, coming between him and Teryl and John. “Please, Simon,” she said, her voice small and pathetic. “Please don’t kill Teryl, please.”
He looked at her with enough scorn to make Teryl flinch, but it seemed to have no effect on D.J. She seemed used to it. “You hate her. You’ve always hated her at least as much as you loved her. Don’t beg for her life.”
D.J.’s shrug made her hair shimmer. She looked the same as always—beautiful and provocative—but for the first time in her life, Teryl didn’t envy her. For the first time she felt nothing but pity for the woman she had believed was her best friend. “I’ve begged for plenty of other things. I don’t mind begging for this. Please, Rich—”
Neither woman was prepared for the sudden blow he struck her. One moment he was apparently calm; an instant later, he was slamming the butt of the gun into D.J.’s face. She was so small and slender, and he struck her hard, knocking her to the floor. Stunned and frightened by her friend’s stillness, Teryl instinctively moved to go to her side, but John caught her arm and held her back. “Takes a lot of courage to hit someone half your size,” he said in a faintly mocking drawl.
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