Silent Fall

by Barbara Freethy

  A sand castle with turrets and towers, and a moat to pro tect the prince and the princess and all the children inside. But the waves came and the water swirled through the open doors and windows, drowning everyone inside.

  She drew in a deep breath and moved closer to get a better look at the picture. Next to the sand castle stood two little blond girls and their mother, all wearing bathing suits. Behind them was their father, a tall man also in a bathing suit and a bright yellow T-shirt, a big grin on his face. The man had his arms around all of his girls, and they looked impossibly proud.

  "What are you staring at?" Dylan asked.

  "I saw this picture in my head a while ago— yesterday, I think. I thought I was connecting to your mother, but this woman isn't her."

  Dylan crossed the room and took the photograph off the mantel. "I think I remember when this was taken. Those were the girls I played with. What were their names? Shannon was the older one, and Julie was the younger one. Yes, Shannon and Julie." Dylan gave her a pleased smile, which quickly faded as he read her expression, as he reviewed what he'd just said in his mind. "No, it can't be." He turned his gaze back to the picture. "My God, Catherine. I think that's Julie Bris-tow, the woman from my office."

  "So you finally remembered me. It's about time."

  Catherine swung around as Julie came into the room. Catherine was shocked to see that the woman was in a wheelchair. When she'd met Julie before she'd been sitting at a desk. She'd had no idea that the woman was disabled. There was a blanket over her lap hiding her legs, but there was no hiding the expression of disappointment on her face.

  "He didn't kill you," she said, as her gaze settled on Catherine. "I had a feeling he would fail. Dylan always wins. He's the golden boy. He saved you, didn't he?" She turned to Dylan with pure hatred in her eyes. "You're always the hero."

  Catherine had thought Julie was in love with Dylan, but now she saw it was the opposite: Julie despised him. She wanted him to suffer. She wanted him dead. She was the one who'd made the plan. The realization hit Catherine hard. They'd been wrong about Dylan's

  father.

  It was Julie. It had always been Julie.

  Catherine glanced at Dylan and saw the same shock in his eyes.

  "Julie, what's this about?" he demanded. "What's going on?"

  "You haven't figured it out yet? I thought you were so smart."

  "I know my father isn't my father."

  "Very good," she said. "Give the boy a prize."

  Dylan stared at her in confusion. "You knew that?"

  "Of course I knew."

  "I don't get it. You set me up? This is your work? I thought we were friends. Why would you do that to me? Why would you use Erica? Shit! Why would you kill Erica? She was an innocent woman."

  "Not so innocent, and she was just the means to an end. I wasn't going to kill her at first, but I knew they wouldn't be able to pin a murder charge on you without a body, so she had to go. I wanted to see you in jail, suffering, trapped. I saw how happy you were when you sent the senator there. Even though he hadn't been convicted yet, you crowed about how he would never be free again. You don't know what it's like not to be free. You need to know. I figured you'd believe the senator was behind the plan to frame you, that you'd never suspect me, and you didn't. I left you that video from the Metro Club so you'd wonder about your father, about Blake. And I told you that Blake had gone to Seattle with Erica so that you'd eventually figure out to come here. Even though you didn't remember me, I thought you might remember coming here. Then I planted your mother's obituary in the drawer of your old house."

  "Julie, you're not making sense."

  "I'm not making sense? Maybe you're not listening. You never listen. You're far more interested in talking."

  "I'm listening now. Tell me the rest."

  "When you came to the station the other day I knew you were going to keep running, that it would be difficult to send you to jail, so I had to change the plan. I had to kill you. But first I wanted you to suffer, because dying is easy. It's the rest that's hard." She drew in a quick breath, her eyes filled with the fire of hate. "I wanted you to be afraid of every shadow, every sound, to worry if you would die every time you stepped outside or in front of a window. I wanted you to feel trapped, the way I've been trapped in this chair for the last twenty-three years. And I wanted you to come here, to know the truth before you died. I sent the house key to Erica weeks ago. Originally I was planning to have her come here and leave you a paper trail to follow. But she started asking for more money. She was going to be trouble, so I had to revise a few things."

  "You killed her, Julie. Do you even understand that?"

  "I didn't pull the trigger."

  "You ordered someone else to do it." Dylan paused. "But what did I do to you?" he asked in bemusement. "Why do you hate me so much?"

  "Because you were born," she said in a shrill, high voice. "You ruined everything. You made my mother crazy. She found out about you, about my father and your mother." She spit out the words. "Do you finally get it? Our parents had an affair."

  Dylan swallowed hard. "Your father is . . ."

  "Your father," Julie finished. "And because he couldn't keep his pants up, my mother went insane. She completely lost her mind. She wanted to punish my father. She wanted to destroy everything he had, so she put my sister and me in the car and she drove up to the house where they used to make love. All the way there she ranted about him and her. She said she couldn't leave us with him. He was a bad man. And he had to suffer. He had to pay for what he'd done."

  Catherine held her breath as Julie stared at Dylan with wild, crazy eyes. The woman was reliving some horrible moment from her past, and Catherine was almost afraid to hear it. But Julie was going to tell them. She wanted Dylan to know. She'd probably always wanted Dylan to know. That was why she hadn't had him killed before now.

  "So my mother drove us off the cliff into the water," Julie said. "She thought we would all die, but guess what? I didn't. I was in terrible pain, but somehow I got out of the car. I tried to open the front door where my sister and mother were, but I couldn't. It was jammed. I could see my mother slumped over the wheel, my sis-ter's hands pressed against the glass, the terror in her eyes as she realized what was happening. I wrapped my hands around the door handle, but the current was too strong. It pulled me away. Eventually I washed up on the shore, my back broken. I was alive, but they were

  dead. And I would never walk again. Because of you."

  Dylan swallowed hard, his face pale. "Julie—"

  She cut him off with a wave of her hand. "My father lied to me when I was in the hospital. He told me that I'd imagined my mother's ranting words, that she hadn't tried to kill me, that he hadn't had an affair, that none of it was true. I wanted to believe him. My mother and sister were dead. He was all I had left. But he lied. And last year when he died I found out that he'd bought the house across the street, that he'd wanted to have it because it was where she was happy. I read the truth in the letters your mother had written to him, letters that he couldn't give away because she was the love of his life. I finally realized what had triggered my mother's breakdown. It was you."

  "What do you mean?"

  "You were sick. You were in the hospital. You needed blood. Your mother kept calling my father because you both had some rare blood type. My father had to tell my mother that he'd betrayed her in order to save you. You're the reason my family broke apart and she tried to kill me. You're the reason I ended up like this. My father saved you, but he didn't save me."

  "God, Julie—please. Think. I was a little kid, too," Dylan cried. "I was born. I didn't choose my parents."

  "But they always chose you," she said dully. "Over and over again. I knew I had to find you, meet you, make you pay. So I hired a private investigator to track you down. I got a job at the station. I thought for a few days you might recognize me from the past, but you barely glanced at me. You were set on making yourself a superstar. I couldn't
stand that your life was so good. It wasn't fair. It just wasn't fair."

  Dylan licked his lips. He darted a quick, pleading look at Catherine, but she didn't know how to help him. And she feared that if she got in the middle it would make things worse.

  He turned back to Julie. "What about my mother? Do you know what happened to her? Do you know how she died?"

  Julie shrugged. "My mother killed her, too. She took her out on the boat one day. She told her she wanted to make peace, be friends again. They were friends, you know, all of them. Then she pushed her off the boat and left her in the middle of the sound. Two days later she drove us off the cliff. It was her final act. She wanted to take everyone my father loved away from him. That was his punishment. And mine."

  Julie's words came with a sense of finality, as if she had said everything she intended to say. Catherine started, realizing a split second too late where this was headed.

  "Stop!" Julie pulled a gun out from under the blanket on her lap and aimed it at Catherine. "Don't take another step."

  "She's not the one you want to kill," Dylan said. "I am."

  "But you'd suffer more if you watched her die. You like her; I can tell. I saw the way you looked at her when she came to the office. No one has ever liked me. Who would? I'm in a wheelchair."

  Catherine heard the pain as well as the madness in Julie's voice. She knew nothing she could say would change any of it, and she suspected that Julie wanted to hear only from Dylan.

  "I won't let you kill her, Julie. I won't let you kill either of us," Dylan said firmly. "I'm fast. I can get to you before you pull the trigger. In two seconds I'll have that gun out of your hand."

  Julie stared back at him, weighing his words.

  Catherine wasn't sure that Dylan could do what he'd said, but she could see that Julie was wavering. And that was all that mattered.

  "You're right. You'd win," Julie said. "You always win. You're the golden boy and I'm just the cripple." Slowly she turned the gun toward her own head.

  Dylan took a step forward. Catherine put a hand on his arm, afraid that it was a trick, that Julie could just as easily turn the gun back and shoot one of them.

  "I'm tired of fighting you," Julie continued. "I'm tired of fighting the world. It's been a long struggle to survive. I should have died when I was meant to die. That would have been easier."

  "No," Dylan said with a definitive shake of his head. "I'm not going to let you kill yourself either."

  "You think I'd rather go to prison for murder than die? You're a fool. I've been trapped in this chair forever. I won't roll it into a prison cell."

  "Julie, don't," Dylan said one more time. "Think about what you're doing."

  "It's too late." Her hand tightened on the gun as she pressed it against her temple.

  "Oh, God," Catherine murmured.

  Dylan rushed across the room, grabbing for the gun before Julie could pull the trigger. For a moment she struggled, but he was too strong. He pulled the gun out of her hand and stepped back.

  "I hate you," Julie said, tears streaming down her face. "I hate you for being alive, and I hate you more for not letting me die."

  "I know you do." Dylan's chest heaved with his ragged breath. "But you're my sister. God, Julie, don't you realize that? You're my sister. We're blood. And I won't let you die for what they did. You need help, and I'm going to get it for you."

  Julie put her head in her hands, and her racking sobs rent the air as the hatred and grief of a lifetime rolled out of her. Dylan stared down at her as if he didn't know what to do.

  Catherine crossed the room, and this time she pulled him into her arms, turning his face away from Julie. "It's not your fault," she said, gazing directly into his eyes. "It's never been your fault. Never. You didn't do this to her."

  "No, but they did—my mother and her father. They were both married. They had other families." He shook his head, his jaw tight, as if he were struggling with himself not to break down. "They ruined everything. They ruined her."

  "But they're not going to ruin you," Catherine said.

  "It was all about our fathers and mothers," he murmured. "You, me, Julie—we were victims of our birth."

  "We're not victims anymore. It stops here, Dylan, right now," she said firmly. "It's over. It's all over."

  * * *

  Dylan stood at the rail of the ferry, watching the sun set over Orcas Island as it faded in the distance. It had been forty-eight hours since Julie had put a gun to her head, since his half sister had revealed the depth of her madness and the extent of their parents' betrayal. He hadn't slept for two nights, his mind grappling with the new history that had suddenly been written for him. And during the daylight hours he'd been too busy calling Mark and the various police departments in Washington, California, and Nevada to sort out the mess.

  Fortunately Julie had confessed everything to the local police, who had taken her into custody. He was temporarily off the hook. Julie, however, was on her way to the prison ward of a mental hospital. Eventually she would face murder charges for Erica's death, and other assorted charges still to be determined.

  As for Catherine's father, his body had washed ashore late last night. He was really dead. Catherine could finally let go of her fear. She was free now, and, Dylan supposed, in an odd way so was he.

  Catherine slid down the rail, touching her shoulder to his. Her beautiful hair glistened in the late-afternoon sunshine. "Are you ready to go home?"

  It was a simple question, but he didn't have an answer. Where was home? Who was he?

  He wasn't a Sanders anymore. Jake was only his half brother, not that that made a difference. Jake would always be an important part of his life. But it might not be the same. Dylan hoped it would, but who knew?

  Everyone else was dead, both literally and figuratively. His real parents were gone. He still had to come to grips with the fact that he would never ever know them. He doubted he would ever know Julie either. According to a local psychiatrist, she'd had a psychotic breakdown and had retreated into her head. It was possible she might never come out of it. Apparently her mother's mental illness had been well-known on the island, and the woman had spent years on antidepressants before the episode that had driven her off the edge of sanity and filled her with a desire to kill herself and her children to punish her husband—his real father, Thomas Bristow.

  He'd read through some of the letters his parents had written to each other back in the days of their affair, and he knew there had been real love between them. It was small compensation, but it was something.

  And the man Dylan had called his father was not going to be in his life ever again. He had yet to tell Richard Sanders that he knew the truth. In fact, Dylan wasn't sure if he'd ever have that conversation. It no longer seemed important. He didn't give a damn about Richard anymore. The man was nothing to him now.

  It was strange how he'd accumulated a lot of new people in his life and then lost them again. He was basically alone.

  But he didn't have to be alone.

  He turned his head and gazed into Catherine's blue eyes and saw everything he wanted. His past was gone.

  She was his future.

  "Whoa," he said with a smile. "I just had a vision."

  "Really? What did you see?"

  "You and me having incredible sex together—in bed, in the shower, on the kitchen table, on the desk—"

  "On the desk," she interrupted. "Whose desk?"

  "The one in our study, the one across from your studio, where you paint beautiful pictures of our children."

  Her eyes blurred with tears. "Don't tease, Dylan, not about that."

  "You saw it, too, didn't you?" He wasn't joking anymore. And neither was she. "We're connected, Catherine. We always will be. You told me a long time ago that two women would enter my life and one would be my salvation. That's you, and I'm not letting you go."

  "I'm crazy," she pointed out.

  "You're quirky,"

  "I'm a vegetarian. Yo
u're a junk-food addict."

  "You're emotional. I'm logical. What's your point? Don't you see we're a perfect complement, like mustard and ketchup?" He laughed. "Okay, not the best example, but you know what I mean." His voice softened. "You always know what I mean. I never have to explain myself." He tucked her hair behind her ear. "I'm ready to go home, to you, wherever you want to live, the beachside cottage, San Francisco, somewhere new.... I am putting my life in your hands."

  "You would trust me with it?" she asked in amazement.

  "I would trust you with everything I have. I love you, Catherine. And you may not believe it, but I've never said that to a woman." Because he'd never been able to feel anyone in his heart. But he felt her with every damn beat. She was in the air that he breathed. She was in his head. She was everywhere he wanted to be.

  "Oh, Dylan. I never thought anyone would want me forever. You'd better make sure you really want me, because once I'm in I might never leave."

  "I really want you, and I never want you to leave."

  Her eyes glistened with happiness. "I love you, too, Dylan. I love the way you brought me out of myself, woke me up, challenged me to live. I feel like a new person, someone who is finally free. I think the nightmares are gone now, because my father is dead. He can't hurt anyone else. And I'm no longer connected to him." She paused. "I wish I could have helped those people he killed. I wish I knew now who they were, so I could bring peace to their families, but the visions I had were so cryptic. I never understood them. I never really saw their faces."

  "You have to let it go, Catherine. There's nothing you can do."

  "I know. You're right," she said with a sigh. "It will be nice to sleep through the night again."

  "Hey, that may not happen every night," he told her. "I can certainly think of other things to do in bed besides sleep."

  She smiled. "I'll bet you can. Even if those nightmares are gone, I can't promise that I won't experience other psychic visions."

  "They're a part of you. I get that. I'm on board."

  "Thank you. What I can promise is this—I'll never lie to you, betray you, or walk away from you."