by B. J Daniels
He wanted her more than he had even twelve years ago when he’d been ready to marry her. No one had ever made him feel the way she did.
As he reached to take off his boots, he suddenly felt strange. The room began to spin. He’d had hardly anything to drink tonight, yet he felt drunk. As the room tilted precariously, he had to hold on to the bed to keep from going with it.
His mind raced. What was wrong with him? He remembered the odd taste of the orange juice and fumbled for his cell. The phone slipped from his fingers and fell to the floor. He groped for it.
The room blurred, then dimmed. He fought to stay conscious, but not even his force of will could hold off whatever had been put in the orange juice.
Chapter Eight
Jace bolted upright in bed, his mind a knot of tangled dreams, his head aching and his dry mouth filled with a horrible taste.
As his gaze took in the room, he wondered if it had all been nothing more than a bad dream. Then he smelled her perfume and winced when he realized it was on the bed cover. She’d been in his bed?
He looked down, relieved to see he was still fully clothed.
His mind raced. The last thing he could recall he was starting to take his boots off when he suddenly felt ill and had reached for his phone.
He looked over and saw that his cell phone was sitting on the nightstand. His boots stood side by side over by the chair. No way had he put them there.
His earlier terror came back in a rush as he remembered the strange aftertaste of the orange juice. The woman had drugged him.
Throwing back the covers, he staggered to the bath room and threw up. Then, after turning on the shower, he stripped down and stood under the beating hot spray until he realized she could still be in the house.
Grabbing a towel, he rushed back into the bedroom to reach for the gun he’d put under his pillow. It was gone.
Nor was he surprised when he quickly dressed and went downstairs to find all signs of the orange juice bottle gone, as well.
He had no proof that he’d been drugged last night. Or that Ava Carris had done it. The only proof he had that someone had been in his room other than the scent of her perfume was his missing gun.
Ava Carris was now armed. He had a feeling she’d always been dangerous.
AVA WOKE CONFUSED. As hard as she tried, she had no memory of last night. She attempted to sit up. Her head swam. Beside the bed, she spotted the empty bottle of wine. Only one glass sat next to it. Had she drunk all of that herself?
She heard a sound in the bathroom and swung her legs over the side of the bed. The dread she felt when she’d awakened grew with each step she took.
At the bathroom door, she turned the knob and pushed. She knew the moment she saw her sister neck deep in bubbles in her motel tub that Evie had done something bad.
“I thought you left,” she said, her voice breaking.
“Did you?” Evie blew a handful of bubbles at her and grinned.
Her heart fell. She knew that look. “Oh, Evie, what have you done?”
“Don’t you get tired of blaming me for everything?”
“Please tell me you didn’t hurt Jace. Oh, please.”
“He’s more handsome than John,” her sister said, making Ava so weak she had to drop the toilet seat and sit. “Too bad he betrayed you and went to the sheriff. The deputy showed me the note you left beside his bed. Really, Ava.”
“I didn’t want him hurt,” she said, barely in a whisper.
“Ava, men always betray you, don’t they? Remember what John did?”
She was crying now. “It’s not the men. Whenever I like someone, you come along and spoil it.” She tore a piece of toilet paper off the roll and blew her nose. “You always have to try to take them away from me.” Her voice broke in a sob.
Evie waved a hand through the air, sending bubbles airborne. “Stop blubbering. If you want me to leave…”
Ava couldn’t look at her sister. “I want you to leave. I want you out of my head, out of my thoughts.” But what difference did it make now? She’d already spoiled everything with Jace. “Just tell me you didn’t hurt him.”
Evie laughed, and Ava knew she couldn’t stand another minute around her. She left the bathroom, suddenly exhausted, and lay down on the bed to rest. When she woke up, her sister was gone, but there was a gun laying on the pillow next to her.
THE FIRST THING SHERIFF McCall Winchester had done this morning after hearing about Jace’s call last night in regard to Ava Carris and reading her deputy’s report was to get on the phone to Alaska.
She was told by the Anchorage, Alaska, police department that the homicide detective on the case had retired, but most of the information had made the local newspaper—including the original 911 call made by Ava Carris.
Directed to the online site, McCall had become more concerned the more she read. The entire transcript of Ava’s hysterical 911 call had indeed made the newspaper.
Caller: “Help me. It’s my husband. She killed him.”
Dispatcher: “Who killed him?”
Caller: “My sister.”
Dispatcher: “Ma’am, is the killer still there?”
Caller: “There’s blood all over.” Weeping.
Dispatcher: “Ma’am, can you tell me what happened?”
Caller: “I don’t know. It’s so horrible.”
Dispatcher: “Is there anyone else in the house with you?”
Caller: “No, no, Eva left.” Hysterical weeping.
Dispatcher: “Ma’am, are there any weapons in the house?”
Caller: “She killed him with a butcher knife.” Louder hysterical weeping.
Dispatcher: “The police are on their way. Please don’t touch anything. They should be there in just a few minutes. You’re sure whoever killed your husband isn’t still in the house?”
No answer as the phone was dropped, but what could have been two voices in the background, both female, conversation unintelligible. “Ma’am? Ma’am?” Sirens, then the police pounding on the door and finally breaking it down to find Ava lying next to her husband in a pool of blood, stroking his face with her bloody hand. No sign of another person found in the house.
Shaken by what she’d read, McCall called the former homicide detective at his home.
To her relief, he answered on the third ring. “I just walked in the door. I’m sure when you called my old department they told you that I’m retired. I was out feeding my sled dogs. What can I do for you, Sheriff?”
McCall told him why she was calling. “What can you tell me about the Ava Carris case? I read some of the news in the papers, but I wanted to talk to you.”
“Yeah, it was all in the newspapers, all right,” he said. “One of those cases that gets all the media attention because of its bizarre aspects.”
“According to what I read, she was raised by a very strict father in the wilderness outside of the city,” McCall said. “I didn’t see anything about a mother.”
“Died, according to the father, in childbirth at the cabin. You should have seen that place. It was nothing but a hole in the wall. Ava had lived there until social services got wind of it and forced him to put her in school.”
“How old was she then?”
“Sixteen. She could read and write, but the only book her father had on the premises was the Bible. Why are you asking about Ava?”
“She got out of the mental institution last week and turned up in Whitehorse, Montana.”
“I see.”
What McCall heard in those two small words only managed to increase her growing anxiety. “She’s been stalking one of our residents.”
The detective sighed. “That doesn’t surprise me. Imagine not seeing anyone other than your father for sixteen years, living in a tiny cabin, being given a daily dose of preaching about sin and damnation. Ava was a shy little thing suddenly thrown into the real world at sixteen. She fell in love almost at once and was married by seventeen. Her father, of course, blamed social servi
ces and, as far as I know, never saw her again.”
“He disowned her?”
“Well, he never showed up when she was arrested or when she was sent to the state mental hospital.”
“I read that she blamed her sister for the murder,” McCall said.
He sighed. “Ava swore on the stand that she had a twin sister, but when social services visited the cabin to force her to go to school, the father showed them two graves. One was Ava’s mother, who died in childbirth. The other was Ava’s twin, who, he told them, had died at the same time as the mother.”
McCall could see why this case had gotten so much media attention.
“According to the father, Ava always blamed anything she did wrong on her twin. Classic psychosis according to the mental evaluation that was done on her after her arrest. Some mumbo jumbo about her feeling guilty, blaming herself for her sister’s death. For all we know, the father blamed Ava for both her sister’s and her mother’s deaths.”
“What about the husband, John Carris?” McCall asked.
“He apparently was a lot like Ava’s father. They lived out in the woods, kept to themselves. They were only married a few months when he was murdered. Stabbed eleven times with a butcher knife. Once, when she was asked why her husband was dead, Ava said because he’d lusted in his heart for her sister but that it hadn’t been his fault. She swore her sister always spoiled everything for her.”
“Ava was released from the mental hospital after ten years. Now she is stalking a man here in town because he looks like her late husband. Would you consider her dangerous?”
“Wouldn’t you?”
AVA SQUEEZED HER EYES shut, praying that when she opened her eyes again—
The gun was still lying on the pillow next to her.
She had to get rid of it. It didn’t matter where it had come from or what she might have done. She had to—
Goose bumps suddenly prickled her flesh. She squeezed her eyes shut again, pleading to all that was holy for this not to be happening.
She didn’t know how much time had passed when she woke in a strange place and heard the creak of the bed frame, felt the bed give as someone sat down on the edge next to her. She groaned inwardly as she smelled the perfume. Her perfume. Evie was wearing the same scent. It filled her nostrils, and she thought she might be sick as her twin whispered, “Hello, Ava” in her ear. “Miss me?”
Keeping her eyes closed, she shook her head hard, afraid to speak.
“I tried to stay away. I really did. Ran out of motels to stay in? I see you rented a house. You weren’t hiding from me, were you?” Evie laughed. “Did you really think you could get away from me? I’m always with you. Just like we were in the womb. Together always.”
“What do you want?” Ava asked in her little-girl voice as she opened her eyes. “You know.”
“No.” She shook her head from side to side.
“I have to take care of the mess you’ve made,” Evie said in disgust. “It’s the only way, Ava. Remember how John hurt you? Remember what he did?”
Ava covered her ears with her hands, and yet she could still hear her sister’s whisper as if it was in her head.
“This Jace Dennison, he’s no different than John. He is lusting after that woman, Kayley Mitchell, just like John lusted after me.”
“No, no, no,” she cried, but her voice was so weak it couldn’t possibly drown out Evie’s.
“Don’t you want this to end? Imagine how much better you will feel when it’s over,” her sister said. “You can really start that new life in Seattle. No one need know. I will help you. Haven’t I always helped you when you needed me?”
Ava told herself she wasn’t listening, but as each word echoed through her, she knew that Evie would have her way. Evie always got what she wanted and had since they were children.
It was Ava who took the blame, got the strap, made Daddy angry. It was Ava who was forced to stand up all night. It was Ava who got blamed for John’s death. Just as she would get blamed for whatever Evie was planning to do now.
JACE TOOK THE KEY OFF the peg by the kitchen side door and drove over to his uncle’s house down the road. He’d known where his uncle Audie kept the keys to his gun cabinet since he was ten.
Opening the cabinet, he took out one of his uncle’s guns. Audie had a .357 Magnum that would stop a horse. Or a crazy woman, Jace thought as he took the gun and a box of cartridges. He noticed there was one pistol missing. The one his uncle had killed himself with? He felt sick as he closed the cabinet.
Before leaving his house minutes earlier, he’d found how Ava had gotten in last night—through a window at the back of the house. The pane was broken where she had reached in and opened the latch, then climbed in.
As he relocked the gun cabinet, his cell phone rang.
“I saw my deputy’s report from last night about you running into Ava Carris,” McCall said when he answered.
Jace heard something in her voice that instantly put him on alert. “I was just coming to see you. She paid me another visit last night. I can’t prove it, but she drugged me and took my gun. She gained entry through a window at the back of the house. I just found the broken pane this morning.”
“I called the homicide detective who led the John Carris murder case in Alaska,” McCall said. “Jace, I’m afraid we have a real psychopath on our hands.”
She filled him in, telling him about the way Ava was raised, her mother’s and twin’s deaths at her birth, the way she had always blamed her sister.
“What was the twin sister’s name?” he asked when she finished.
“Eva.”
“I met her last night at the bar.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“She was completely different from her sister, Ava. I told her I was going to the sheriff if she didn’t quit following me, and she broke down and was again the woman I met at the Denver airport.”
“They were that different?”
“Spookily so,” he said.
“Jace, when Ava called 911 after killing her husband, she said her sister had done it.”
“She really does need to be locked up, doesn’t she?”
“Not according to the state of Alaska. Jace—”
“I know. Now she’s armed and even more dangerous.”
“I’ve put an APB out on her. We’ll pick her up and see if we can’t get her committed again,” the sheriff said. “If not that, then at least hold her on stalking, breaking and entering, and theft.”
After he hung up, Jace returned to his house but he was too antsy to sit around. He found himself questioning every decision he’d ever made—especially coming back here. He had to clear his mind, and the last thing he felt like doing was sitting around waiting for Ava Carris to come back.
He saddled up one of the horses in the corral, noticing that the neighbors had been taking care of all the livestock. He’d forgotten how neighbors helped neighbors here.
The air had a bite to it that felt invigorating, and it was good to be on horseback again as he rode out across the ranch. He wondered why he hadn’t done this sooner.
Because he’d forgotten his roots. He smiled at the thought. While it was the first time he’d been on a horse in years, he’d ridden everything from donkeys to yaks to camels and elephants since he’d left Montana.
But he realized he’d missed being on a horse as he rode across the land he would soon sell. It surprised him that the thought made him sad. He’d loved growing up here. Once he’d sold the place, it would be gone. Just like his mother. The mother who had raised him.
The day was too beautiful to think about Virginia Winchester or how badly he’d treated her. None of this was her fault.
It was one of those amazing fall Montana days, the sky a crystalline blue. A few clouds bobbed along high over the rolling prairie. Ahead, a stand of bare-limbed cottonwoods rose up out of the golden horizon.
He knew even before he reached the creek where he was headed. Following th
e creek bed, he crossed through a narrow underpass under the highway and onto state land until he was riding adjacent to the Mitchell place. He and Kayley used to meet here back when they were kids.
That’s why at first he thought he was just imagining her riding across the prairie toward him. He reined in his horse and leaned against the saddle horn as he watched her and realized she hadn’t seen him yet.
Her hair flowed back over her shoulders, her face lit with the last of the day’s light. If he hadn’t already, he would have fallen in love right then. She was so beautiful and looked so free.
She reined in when she saw him, looking startled and nervous. Her eyes were bright and shiny, her face flushed from the ride. He’d never seen her look happier and hoped that seeing him hadn’t ruined her horseback ride.
“I never expected to see you here,” she said, seeming to regain her composure. “You remembered how to ride?”
He smiled at the challenge in her words. “Just like riding a bike.”
She laughed, the sound musical. It pierced his heart. He couldn’t bear the thought of never hearing that sound again.
“I remember you on a bicycle,” she said smiling at him.
He could see the two of them, just kids trying to learn to ride an old one-speed they’d found in the barn. They’d taken it out to the lane, the ground sun-baked in ruts.
Kayley had run along beside him, keeping him steady until he’d told her to let go, he could do it himself. He smiled now at the memory of hitting a rut and going over the handlebars face-first. Kayley had come running to find him bloody and bruised. He had looked up at her, trying to be tough, not wanting her to see how much it hurt.
She’d stood, hands on her hips, a look in her eye that said: “Why do you have to be so blamed stubborn? You should have let me help you.”
“I never did listen to you like I should have,” he said now.
“So true,” she said with a flip of her hair, her gaze going to the horizon. “Days like this are a gift. I suppose you heard a storm is coming in.”
Her gaze came back to him. He nodded. She would have realized that he wanted to be gone by then. He’d never like winters. But after years of spending time in jungles and deserts, the thought of winter seemed almost pleasant.