Web of Lies

by Brandilyn Collins

  As long as he played the thing at someone else’s house, not mine.

  By eight the great room was filled with people and laughter. Jenna opened her presents. Chelsea and I, helped by the girls, served hors d’oeuvres and drinks. Every now and then I saw Milt and Jenna exchange lingering glances across the room.

  Oh boy.

  I was in the kitchen putting stray dishes in the sink when I sensed Chetterling beside me. I turned to him with a smile. “Rowena’s great. I like her.”

  He gave me a long look, then nodded. “Thanks. I do too.”

  I searched his face. He had something to tell me. “What?”

  “Just some talk. I’ve been hearing interesting things about Ryan Burns. Warden at the jail says he whispers to himself about those bodies he buried. How they’re coming to take their revenge. And he rubs his legs and feet real hard all the time. Yelling at dirt ants.”

  I creased my forehead. “Dirt ants?”

  Chetterling shrugged. “You got me.”

  We were silent for a moment. I thought of Ryan and his chameleon-like personas. Pretending innocence in public, yet feigning the kidnapping of Amy Flyte in the privacy of his own home. If all the scenes from Chelsea’s visions were to be believed. And I thought they were.

  I picked up a plate, rinsed it. “I talked to Irene Kreger again this week. Every time, she’s so sweet and grateful. I mean, she’s heartbroken over what happened to her niece and nephew, but at least she doesn’t have that black hole of not knowing after all these years.”

  “Yeah.” Chetterling drew up his chin, gave me a meaningful look. “That’s because of your work, Annie. You should be proud of that.”

  “I am proud — of all my forensic artwork. I just . . . need a break. You can understand why.”

  He drew a long breath, let it out. “Yeah. I can understand.”

  I watched him amble back into the great room, the projector in my head replaying Irene Kreger’s first phone call.

  “For six years I prayed that I’d find out what happened to those kids. Now God has answered my prayer. He was such a good boy, my nephew Eddie. Took care of Emily, his sister. Most of the beatings from their no-good father went on his back. When his sister got pregnant, he knew their father would kill her. Who’d have guessed they’d run all the way from Kansas to California . . .”

  Eddie, eighteen, and Emily, fifteen, were apparently broke by the time they reached Redding. Eddie splurged and bought a lotto ticket at a convenience store. His wildest dreams came true — it turned out to be worth $56 million. Irene got a call from Eddie. He was ecstatic, saying he’d come into a lot of money, and he would phone her back when it was all settled. Tell her where he and Emily were. He’d pay Irene’s way to come to them, and they’d all live together in a big fine house . . .

  She never heard from him again.

  Ryan Burns’s broken-spirited confession gave the rest of the story. Thinking he was protecting himself, Eddie made a fatal mistake. He walked into a copy store and ran a duplicate of the ticket — just in case the lottery folks tried to cheat him out of his winnings. He need not have worried about the State of California employees as much as the helpful clerk named Ryan Burns who saw what he’d copied and struck up a detail-seeking conversation. Pretending to watch out for them, Ryan lured Eddie and Emily to his apartment and killed them both. He buried their bodies in the middle of the night — one at our airstrip and one clear across town — and went on to be one of the biggest winners of the California State lottery. Redding knew him as generous with his money, always ready to help fight crime.

  Good deeds from a guilty conscience.

  Since the day of Ryan’s arrest, Tim Blanche and I hadn’t spoken. I wasn’t ready for that yet. I knew I should apologize for my mistakes. Yes, he was right that Chelsea’s vision had nothing to do with Orwin Neese. But he wasn’t exactly perfect. I had to admit I felt a certain vengeance in seeing his takedown of Neese overshadowed by the national fascination with Kelly’s and Chelsea’s rescue. Served him right.

  Sorry, God. Guess I need to work on that.

  I’d turned it over and over in my mind — all that God allowed to happen. I didn’t understand everything. But I did see that He sent Chelsea her visions so justice could be won for young Eddie and Emily. Without those visions, Milt wouldn’t have aired my drawing of John Doe on FOX News. And without national coverage, Irene Kreger in Kansas wouldn’t have seen the face of her missing nephew. Ryan Burns later led Chetterling to Emily’s grave on the other side of town. He’d certainly gone to great lengths to cover his deeds. Both Emily’s and Eddie’s remains were shipped back to Kansas for burial.

  Closure for another grieving family.

  As for myself, I saw how the terrifying events led Chelsea to pray for me — a prayer that changed my life. That deep, constant sense of unworthiness had faded, almost disappeared. When it threatened to raise its ugly head, I’d learned how to claim victory against it. Amazing to me, how a focused healing prayer, even in the midst of chaos, released me from its grip.

  Chelsea and I talked about it on the phone a couple weeks ago. “Annie,” she said, “Satan fights Christians daily. Don’t forget he’s a liar, the father of lies. He wants more than anything to keep us from being all we can be in Christ.” She gave a little huff. “Don’t let him.”

  I won’t, God. Thank You for answering her prayer. Thank You for everything, especially my family’s safety.

  And for Dave.

  As if I’d spoken his name, Dave wandered in to stand behind me, circling my waist with his arms. I squirmed around, looked up into the eyes I’d grown to love.

  “Know what?” He gave me an almost weary smile. “You and I have waited far too long for a party.”

  “We sure have.”

  I tilted up my face and kissed him.

  Read an excerpt from Dark Pursuit

  1

  Untitled ms.

  “Ever hear the dead knocking?”

  Leland Hugh watches the psychiatrist peruse his question, no reaction on the man’s lined, learned face. The doctor lists to one side in his chair, a fist under his sagging jowl. The picture of unshakable confidence.

  “No, can’t say I have.”

  Hugh nods and gazes at the floor. “I do. At night, always at night.”

  “Why do they knock?”

  His eyes raise to look straight into the doctor’s. “They want my soul.”

  No response but a mere inclining of the head. The intentional silence pulses, waiting for an explanation. Psychiatrists are good at that.

  “I took theirs, you see. Put them in their graves early.” Deep inside Hugh, the anger and fear begin to swirl. He swallows, voice tightening. “They’re supposed to stay in the grave. Who’d ever think the dead would demand their revenge?”

  From outside the door, at the windows, in the closet, in the walls — they used to knock. Now, in his jail cell the noises come from beneath the floor. Harassing, insistent, hate-filled and bitter sounds that pound his ears and drill his brain until sleep will not, cannot come.

  “Do you ever answer?”

  Shock twists Hugh’s lips. “Answer?”

  The psychiatrist’s face remains placid. The slight, knowing curve to his mouth makes Hugh want to slug him.

  “You think they’re not real, don’t you?” Hugh steeples his fingers with mocking erudition. “Yes, esteemed colleagues.” He affects an arrogant highbrow voice. “I have determined the subject suffers from EGS — Extreme Guilt Syndrome, the roots of which run so deep as never to be extirpated, with symptoms aggrandizing into myriad areas of the subject’s life and resulting in perceived paranormal phenomena.”

  He drops both hands in his lap, lowering his chin to look derisively at the good doctor.

  The man inhales slowly. “Do you feel guilt for the murders?”

  “Why should I? They deserved it.”

  He pushes to his feet.

  He pushes to his feet. He slumps back in his c
hair.

  He slumps back in his chair. He aims a hard look

  “Aaghh!” Novelist Darell Brooke smacked his keyboard and shoved away from the desk. All concentration drained from his mind like water from a leaky pan.

  His characters froze.

  He lowered his head, raking gnarled fingers into the front of his scalp. For a time there he’d almost had it — that ancient joy of thoughts flowing and fingers typing. In the last two hours he’d managed to write three or four paragraphs. Now — nothing.

  Absolutely nothing.

  King of Suspense. He laughed, a bitter sound that singed his throat. Ninety-nine novels written in forty-three years. Well over a hundred million copies sold. Twenty-one major motion pictures made from his books. Countless magazine articles about his career, fan letters, invitations to celebrity parties. Now look at him at age seventy-seven. Two years after the auto accident and still only half mobile. And wielding a mere fraction of the brain power he used to have.

  What good is an author who can’t hold a plot in his head?

  As for his once-diehard fans, they were now happily reading King or Koontz or that upstart Patterson.

  Betrayers, all. He made a gagging sound in his throat.

  Darell stared at the monitor, reading over his strikeouts, struggling once more to settle into the story. He pictured the psychiatrist, his killer . . .

  No use.

  Face it, old man. You’ll never write that hundredth book. You’ve been put out to pasture for good.

  He wrenched his eyes from the screen and reached for his shiny black cane. With effort, he pushed himself out of his leather chair to unsteady feet. The broken bones in his left leg and ankle had long since healed, but the ligament damage had not. Despite painful physical therapy his foot had not regained its full flexibility. Amazing — the constant flexing of a foot to maintain equilibrium. He hadn’t realized the importance of those muscles and tendons until his were torn apart.

  Darell shuffled across the hardwood floor of his thirty-foot-long office, repelled by his writing desk and computer. Every day they wooed, then shunned him. At the tall, mullioned window near the far corner he stopped and spread his feet wide. Hunched over, both hands on his cane, he brooded over the green rolling hills of his estate, the untamed and capricious Pacific Ocean in the distance.

  He used to go to the beach to write a couple times a week, tapping his laptop keys as the surf pounded in rhythm to his pulse. Now he never left the house except for doctor’s appointments.

  Darell Brooke had no use for a world that no longer had use for him.

  His mouth puckered with disdain.

  Characters’ faces in shadow, snippets of scenes filtered through his mind. Fredda Lee. Now there was a delectable killer. Or Alfred Stone with his black hair and eyebrows, an intimidating figure much as Darell had appeared in his younger days. Black Tie Affair, that was Alfred’s book.

  No. Not that one.

  Midnight Madness?

  Darell shook his head. He used to know. Before the accident, he remembered every story he’d written, every character.

  “You knocked your skull pretty badly,” the doctor had said as Darell watched the hospital room spiral from his bed. “The dizziness will pass, but you might find it hard to concentrate . . .”

  Now here Darell stood, a shell of his former self. As the undisputed King of Suspense he’d reveled in playing the part. No longer was there a part to play. His once stern, confident countenance — now blank-faced. His black hair turned an unruly shock of white. The wild gray brows jutting over his deep-set, dark eyes no longer intimidating, merely strawlike. Oh, how he used to love to use those eyebrows! The muscular arms — even into his early seventies — sagging. Straight back now bent.

  “Pshhh.” His lips curled.

  Slowly, with defiance, Darell raised his chin.

  He focused through the glass once more. At least the gnarled trees on his property still looked formidable. And his mansion looked just as severe from afar, with its black shutters and multiple wings and gables. From the outside looking in, people would never guess . . .

  Darell glared at the phone near his computer. On impulse he clomped over to it and picked up the receiver. His gnarled forefinger hovered over the keys.

  What was the number? The one he’d dialed countless times, year after year.

  He lowered himself to the edge of his chair and flipped through his Rolodex. There.

  Malcolm Featherling, agent to the country’s top writers, answered his private line on the third ring. Clipped tone, terse greeting. Malcolm was always pushed for time.

  “Hello, Malcolm. Just checking in to give you an update.” Darell pushed the old confidence into his voice. After all, his agent worked for him.

  “Well, Darell, nice to hear from you. It has been three days.”

  Darell blinked. He’d called three days ago? Surely it was at least a month. Maybe two.

  He cleared his throat. It sounded phlegmy, like an old man’s. He hated that. “I wrote some today. Almost a page. And another yesterday. You know what they say — write a page a day and you’ve got a novel in a year.”

  He used to write at least two a year. All of them brilliant.

  “That’s good, Darell, good . . .”

  “Maybe I can get that contract back. Just think, Malcolm, fifteen percent of ten million is a lot of dough. I’ll make you rich. Again.”

  “You do that, man, you do that. Keep up the good work.”

  He could hear the disbelief in Malcolm’s response. The agent was patronizing him. Darell’s publisher had waited eight months after the accident, strung along on the promise that he would be able to write his one hundredth bestseller — the assumed milestone that had landed him on the cover of Time magazine. But a worldwide publishing conglomerate couldn’t wait forever, even for Darell Brooke. Not with half the contract — five million dollars — already paid up front, and doctors advising he may never write again. The deal was canceled. Darell had been forced to give the money back. Malcolm had to cough up his fifteen percent.

  I’ll show you, Malcolm. Maybe I’ll even get a new agent.

  “All right. Well, got to get back to my writing. See you, Malcolm.” Darell clicked off the line and stared at the phone in his hand.

  Just three days ago he’d called?

  With a loud sigh he hung up the receiver. He shifted his legs and focused on the half-empty page on his screen. An emptiness he used to love to fill. Now it mocked him. His killer was still on his feet, frozen. The psychiatrist watched from his chair.

  What were they supposed to do next? Where had he been headed with this story?

  What was the story?

  Oh, to regain half the concentration he’d once had. A fourth. A tenth. The thought of spending day after day in this mansion-turned-prison, in this office, unproductive and used up, filled him with an emptiness as deep as staring into the face of eternal hell . . .

  Straightening, Darell dredged up his will.

  He placed his fingers on the keyboard, straining to turn the gears of his mind. One more paragraph, just one. He’d give anything to finish this book. To gain back his reputation, his life. Anything.

  The gears refused to move.

  Dark Pursuit

  Brandilyn Collins,

  Bestselling Author

  A new stand-alone “Seatbelt Suspense™” from bestselling author Brandilyn Collins.

  Novelist Darell Brooke lived for his title as King of Suspense — until an auto accident left him unable to concentrate. Two years later, recluse and bitter, he wants one thing: to plot a new novel and regain his reputation.

  Kaitlan Sering, his twenty-two-year-old granddaughter, once lived for drugs. After she stole from Darell, he cut her off. Now she is rebuilding her life.

  In Kaitlan’s town two women have been murdered. She is about to discover the third. The only possible culprit? Her boyfriend, Craig, son of the town’s police chief.

  Desperate
, Kaitlan flees to her estranged grandfather. For over forty years, Darell Brooke has lived suspense. Surely he’ll devise a plan to trap the cunning Craig.

  But can Darell’s muddled mind do it? And — if he tries —with what motivation? For Kaitlan’s plight may be the stunning answer to the illusive plot he seeks . . .

  Softcover: 978-0-310-27642-5

  Pick up a copy today at your favorite bookstore!

  Violet Dawn

  Brandilyn Collins

  Something sinuous in the water brushed against Paige’s knee. Her leg jerked. What was that? She rose up, groped around with her left hand.

  Fine wisps wound themselves around her fingers.

  Hair?

  She gasped, yanked backward, but the tendrils weighted her hand. Something solid bumped her wrist. With one frantic motion, Paige shook her arm free, grabbed the side of the hot tub, and heaved herself out.

  Paige Williams slips into her hot tub in the blackness of night —and finds herself face to face with death.

  Alone, terrified, fleeing a dark past, Paige must make an unthinkable choice.

  In Violet Dawn, hurtling events and richly drawn characters collide in a breathless story of murder, the need to belong, and faith’s first glimmer. One woman’s secrets unleash an entire town’s pursuit, and the truth proves as elusive as the killer in their midst.

  Softcover: 978-0-310-25223-8

  Pick up a copy today at your favorite bookstore!

  Coral Moon

  Brandilyn Collins, Bestselling

  Author of Violet Dawn

  The figure remained still as stone. Leslie couldn’t even detect a breath.

  Spider fingers teased the back of her neck.

  Leslie’s feet rooted to the pavement. She dropped her gaze to the driveway, seeking . . . what? Spatters of blood? Footprints? She saw nothing. Honed through her recent coverage of crime scene evidence, the testimony at last month’s trial, the reporter in Leslie spewed warnings: Notice everything, touch nothing.