by Sheryl Lynn
She didn’t look anything like Laura because she wasn’t Laura. She didn’t sound like Laura, or walk like Laura, or have Laura’s tastes, or act like Laura, or love like Laura—because she wasn’t Laura.
She didn’t belong to him.
All the ugly what-ifs clambered to the forefront of his mind, jostling and shouting for attention.
What if the other Laura showed up and took Abby away? What if the real Laura was dead and Donny Weis took Abby away? What if the real Laura was dead and Teresa had killed her? What if the truth came out and the state swooped in and took Abby away? What if Teresa blamed him for robbing her of her identity and she walked out, never looking back?
All the what-ifs scared the pudding out of him. He couldn’t see a way to set this right without destroying his life. And Abby’s life, and Teresa’s.
Lies were like bad ropes, tangling at the worst times, breaking at others. But truth was a persistent thing, always finding a way to pop out into the light.
He shoved the papers in the envelope. The Tyvek felt slimy in his hands.
Doing right meant just that, doing. The first thing that needed doing was finding Laura. With all the enthusiasm of a man climbing gallows steps, he pulled open the steel fire door. Lewis had found out this much about Teresa, he could surely provide similar information about Laura.
The private eye’s door opened, and a tall woman stepped into the hallway. Her black hair gleamed under the diffused lighting. She looked at him, and hot color darkened her olive cheeks.
Ryder glanced between Investigator Becky Solerno and the envelope tucked under his arm. Solerno carried a thick case covered in black faux leather.
The woman recovered and raised a hand in greeting. “Mr. Hudson, fancy meeting you here. How is your lovely wife?”
His forehead tightened and the muscles in his back coiled. Park Lewis had set him up. Solerno had been in the office, probably eavesdropping on every word Ryder said.
Which meant the private eye, and the police, believed him a wife-killer still.
He pivoted on one foot and slammed through the stairwell door. His boots struck each metal stair like a cannonball.
Forget that low-down, dog-dirty, rattlesnake of a private eye. He’d figure this one out himself.
Somehow.
SOMEHOW SHE FINISHED ten laps. Panting, Laura clung to the side of the pool. Her arms and shoulders quivered, the muscles gelatinous. Each inhalation was a gulp, each exhalation a rasp. Patterns in the textured pool tile swam circles before her half-closed eyes. Still, she wanted to shout in victory. Ten laps, back and forth the entire eighty-foot length of the pool, had been her goal for what seemed like forever. Day by day, she grew stronger. She was able to walk a mile without collapsing in agony. She limped only when fatigued. Instead of two hour-long resting periods a day, she only needed a light afternoon nap.
She’d finally swum ten full laps.
Grunting with the effort, she hauled her trembling, tired body out of the water. She got as far as sitting up with her lower legs dangling in the pool.
Ten laps might have been a mistake. She could barely move and her towel looked a million miles away.
The door hinges squeaked and she lifted her head, smiling broadly. Ryder was home. Except the man silhouetted in the doorway was too short, too thin and dressed all wrong.
“Hello, Laura!”
She sagged, listening to her pulse beating a tom-tom against her eardrums. Donny Weis! With every ounce of strength she had remaining, she pushed onto her feet and limped heavily across the tiles. Without bothering to dry off, she pulled on her robe.
“Laura?”
“Hello, Donny. What are you doing here?” She kept her face down and hoped he didn’t see her fear. Why he frightened her so, she hadn’t a clue, but her instincts were screaming for her to run. “Abby isn’t home. She’s gone into town with Mrs. Weatherbee.” The chronic ache in her back pulsed sharply in time with her racing heart. She didn’t want to, but she had to sit. She eased onto a lounge chair.
Donny’s bottle green eyes glinted, shimmering like the water. “Are you all right, Laura?”
The way he kept using her name grated on her nerves. He sounded as if he was making fun of her. “I’m sorry, this is a bad time. I asked you to call before you visited.”
“It’s an excellent time for visiting, Laura. Just you and me, just like the good old days.”
Each step that brought him closer made her that much more aware of her helplessness. She was too weak to run. The only other person on the property was Tom Sorry, and he could be anywhere from the barn to the far pastures doing something with Ryder’s longhorns. She hadn’t asked Ryder why she divorced Donny Weis, and he hadn’t offered to tell her. For all she knew, Donny had beaten her, or worse.
She clutched the robe closed at her throat. The pain in her back went thump-thump-thud. “I’m sorry, I don’t feel like visiting. You must leave, right now.”
He stopped five feet from her. His hair picked up blue lights from the pool water. His bright flower-print tie, natty trousers and shiny shoes made him look like a sleazy salesman. From his pocket he pulled out a slim cassette tape recorder.
Did he mean to kill her and record her screams? Her mouth went dry, and she worked her tongue against her palate.
“I need some money. I’m in a bit of a mess, so it’s time for you to help me out.”
She drew in her chin. It finally hit her that Donny had been the man who’d called and frightened her. Did this awful creature actually think she’d give him money? She wondered if she’d given him money in the past. “Go away,” she said, “and don’t come back unless I specifically invite you.”
“I can’t do that. You know how I am when I need money. Just pester, pester, pester.” His teeth gleamed. “Whine and nag. It’s my most annoying quality, but I hate being broke.”
“I am not giving you any money.” Thump-thump-thud. The pain built, radiating toward her hips and shoulders.
“Twenty-five thousand will do me okay for right now. Don’t want to be greedy, you know.”
“Go away!” She hadn’t meant to scream, but pain and fear rushed the words out of her throat. She clenched her fists. “If you don’t leave now, I am calling the police.”
“Do that, Laura. I think they’ll be interested in hearing what I have.” He pressed a button on the tape recorder with his thumb then thrust the silver box toward her face.
A woman said, “I already gave you five thousand dollars, you little worm. Why isn’t Ryder dead? Why?”
“Shh, shh,” a man replied in a throaty whisper. “Want the neighbors to hear? We can’t talk about this on the phone.”
“I’ll talk any place I want! You promised to do it, so you better do it now! Shoot him. Push him off a cliff. Drown him. I don’t care how you do it, but you’re not getting another penny until he’s dead. Do you hear?”
Donny clicked off the recorder. He clucked his tongue. “Or better yet, how about if I let old Ryder listen. I bet that cowboy will just slap his knee and hoot and holler.”
Thump-thump-thud.
“Twenty-five thousand cash, Laura darling.”
“No,” she whispered. In the far reaches of her mind she heard the woman from the book dream. I want him dead, dead, dead! “I never said those horrible things. Get off this ranch. Go away.”
“Do you want proof, Laura? How about if good old Ryder has an accident? A break-his-dumb-cowboy-neck kind of accident. Then this tape shows up in the police station.” He rubbed the little recorder against his cheek in a loving caress. “I bet the cops will figure out a way to prove this is you. That would make a juicy situation, wouldn’t it? The old man dead, you in prison for life, and that just leaves me to take care of dear little Abby. And of course, all the money Ryder will leave her in his will. That lovely, lovely money. Boy, that makes twenty-five grand look like pocket change. Think about it. I’ll get back to you.”
Frozen in horror, she watched Donny
Weis jauntily stroll out of the pool house. Long after the last echoes of the closing door faded, Laura lurched off the lounge and screamed, “No!”
Chapter Twelve
Ryder found Abby and Mrs. Weatherbee in the kitchen. Heavyhearted, he listened to the woman try to explain to the six-year-old how baking powder worked. Envisioning his life without Abby dug holes in his belly.
Envisioning Laura figuring out how to come out ahead in this caper and swooping back into his life made him physically ill. Laura had always been an enigma, but one thing remained constant—jealousy. If she ever learned he loved another—that he loved Tess—she’d find a way to use Abby to make him suffer.
“We’re making cupcakes, Daddy.” Abby hoisted a beater high. A fat drop of chocolate batter plopped onto her arm. She licked it off. “We’re gonna decorate ’em. We got sprinkles.”
“That’s good, sugar bear. Where’s your mama?”
Mrs. Weatherbee turned away from the stove. She gestured at him with a large wooden spoon. “Resting. I don’t think she feels too good, sir. She won’t let me fuss at her. No offense, but you’re letting her push herself too hard.”
Figuring she was taking an extended nap, he went upstairs. Come right out and tell her, he thought. No use delaying or beating around the bush. He had no right to withhold information.
He was going to lose her. The pain slashed across his chest and belly like a knife. Teresa had her own life. He was a married man. His wife, the other Laura, was out there somewhere.
He had to stop on the stairs and hold on to the railing until he found his equilibrium. If he found Laura, divorced her and convinced Teresa to stay with him, he would lose Abby. Even if Laura went to jail for trying to kill Teresa, she’d find a way to take Abby away from him. Out of spite and meanness, she’d throw her daughter into the bureaucratic maw for no other reason than not wanting Ryder to have her.
If he stayed married, he would lose Teresa.
The pain deepened in his chest, squeezing his heart.
He made himself lift one foot after the other to the top of the stairs and into his bedroom. No sign of her. He checked her suite. The draperies were drawn. The rooms had the feel of a silent tomb, echoing his despairing mood.
“Darlin’?”
A soft, heart-wrenching sob was his reply.
He hurried to the bed and found her huddled under the covers, curled in a tight little ball. Feverish heat rolled off her tear-dampened face.
“Darlin’, what’s the matter?” He stroked her back and shoulder. Guilt made him think she’d found out about herself and how he’d been lying.
She finally sat up, but drew in her legs and wrapped her arms around her knees. He left her in search of tissues. He found a box in the bathroom and returned to the bed. Even in the dim light, he saw the angry blotches on her face and her swollen, sore-looking eyes. She’d been crying a long time.
He used the house line to call Mrs. Weatherbee and ask her to bring up a pitcher of ice water. Then Laura asked him to fetch her pain medication. His alarm doubled. Ever since the cast had come off her left leg, she’d been downright perverse in refusing medication, even so much as an aspirin. Her asking for painkillers must mean she was in agony.
He returned to the bathroom and in the medicine chest found the codeine-laced painkiller. He shook two of the large white tablets into his palm.
Mrs. Weatherbee arrived with the water. Ryder gave her a pointed look. She closed the door behind her on the way out. Laura choked down the tablets and two glasses of water. She scrubbed her hot face dry with a mound of tissues.
“What happened, darlin’? Did you hurt yourself? Do you need a doctor?”
“Ryder, I...oh, God, I can’t tell you. You’re going to hate me forever!” She pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes.
“I’ll never hate you, darlin’. Never.” He sat on the bed and pulled her atop his lap. He held and comforted her as if she was a child, petting her shaking shoulders and murmuring soothing nonsense against her ear. “You mean the world to me. Nothing is ever going to make me hate you.”
She finally calmed enough to look at him. Her breath came ragged and rough. “I want you to call your lawyer.”
“What?” He almost flung her off his lap. Instead, he tightened his hold. She trembled in his arms.
“You’ll hate me, despise me. But I can’t fix this myself. I can’t hope it’ll go away. I want you to get your lawyer so we can make sure you have custody of Abby. You have to take care of her. Promise me that. No matter how much you hate me, you have to take care of her.”
“I—”
“Promise me!”
“All right, all right, I promise.”
He tried to ease her face around so he could see her eyes, but she resisted. Damp hair clung to her skin. Her bosom heaved.
“Laura—”
She slapped a hand against his shoulder. “Don’t. Give me a moment. I have to...I have to tell you.” Several deep breaths later, she stiffened her back and lifted her head. She looked across the room, giving him a view of her profile. “I know what happened the day I was shot.”
His heart leaped into his throat He slid a guilty glance at the Tyvek envelope he’d dropped on the bedside table.
“I figured it out.” She licked her lips with nervous little darts of her tongue. “Please, let me go. I can’t do this with you so close.” She pushed against him.
Reluctantly, he turned her loose. An awful voice of doom told him he was never going to hold her again. He moved to a chair and sat stiffly.
She turned on the bedside lamp. “I love you,” she said. “I don’t know what was wrong with me before the accident that I couldn’t love you, but I do now.”
“You don’t—”
She thrust out her hand. “Don’t say anything! Please.” Her voice, raw from weeping, cracked. She squeezed her eyelids shut, and her body rocked with a spasm. “I know who shot me. It was Donny Weis.”
He got halfway out of the chair before realizing he had moved. His muscles trembled in protest as he made himself sit back down. “Weis? Are you sure?”
“I think so. You see...I gave Donny money to kill you.”
His heart slithered from his throat and dropped into his belly, resting there like a lump of ice. In the back of his mind, he saw that glistening puddle underneath his Dodge and heard Tom Sorry saying, “Somebody cut the brake lines.”
“Donny came by today while you were gone. He has a tape recording of me telling him I want you dead. He says if I don’t give him twenty-five thousand dollars, he’ll kill you and then give the tape to the police. I’ll go to prison and he’ll get Abby and all your money.” She dropped her face into her hands. “Oh, Ryder! The book dream I keep having, it’s a memory. It’s the day I was shot. I was screaming about how I wanted you to die and then for some reason I was running away with the book—only it’s not a book, it’s a checkbook ledger. Donny and I must have argued. He must have wanted more money.”
Donny must have thought clipping brake lines on an old truck was as good as killing Ryder at close range. That kind of failure would have driven Laura berserk.
None of this explained how in the world Teresa had gotten involved.
She snuffled loudly and snatched tissues out of the box with a sniffling sound. “This is what we have to do. Make your lawyer come here and we’ll draw up custody papers. He has to come immediately. I already called Becky Solerno and told her that—”
He jumped to his feet. “You did what?”
She cringed. “I called Becky. I can’t hide what I’ve done. Donny will hurt you. He’ll hurt Abby. I can’t let him blackmail us. I have no choice.” She swabbed at her face. “Oh, Ryder, I don’t care what they do to me, but what about Abby? How am I going to explain this to her?”
“You told the cops you tried to kill me?” He sank down on the chair. If ever he needed extra proof that this woman was not his wife, this was it. Laura would never, in a million years, confess to
any kind of wrongdoing. “What did you tell Solerno?”
Snuffling, she shook her head. “I didn’t actually speak to her. She wasn’t in. I left a message telling her I remember what happened and I have to talk to her. I’m so sorry, but it’s better this way. You and Abby will be safe.”
“You can’t talk to Solerno.”
Her eyes were stricken, her mouth taut. “You are so good and kind and generous. Please, don’t be stupid, as well. He meant what he said. He’ll kill you and blame it on me.”
“Donny Weis?” He shook his head. “Blackmail you, yep, I can see that. But, darlin’, that man is as lazy as a twenty-year-old dog in August. Not to mention, he’s a coward. He’s not the kind to go around killing people.”
“You don’t—”
“No, you don’t. You don’t know him.” He glanced at the envelope he’d dropped on the table. In a twisted way, her confession filled him with relief. Teresa must have stumbled into the middle of the plot—and what a plot it must have been if Laura had trusted her ex-husband with a murder scheme. There was no telling how long Donny had been able to string Laura along. No telling how long Laura would have believed in her powers over Donny and allowed him to string her along. The clipped brake lines must have been a gesture on his part to get more money out of her—Donny must have known Ryder wouldn’t have been hurt.
“I don’t remember him, true, but—”
“You don’t know him. You never knew him. Donny Weis isn’t your ex-husband.”
“What?”
He pushed himself off the chair. “It’s my turn to ask you not to hate me.” He picked up the envelope. Better to lose her than have her go to prison for Laura’s crimes. “I saw a private eye today. I hired him to investigate you.”
She shook her head. “You knew I was trying to kill you?”
“You never hurt anybody in your life.” He thrust the envelope at her. “You know how I and the doctors keep telling you you’re crazy for those memories of yours? Well, looks like we have some crow to eat.”
Hesitantly, she shook out the envelope contents.