Her Sister's Secrets

by V. J. Chambers

  I didn’t answer.

  He whipped the gun back around and jammed it against my forehead again. “Answer me,” he whispered.

  I sucked in a breath. “Uh, because he and Violet were, uh… I mean, he, um—”

  “This is the other guy.” Oliver let out a sigh of satisfaction. “Well, that’s good, then. Because, really, it’s partly his fault she died. If she hadn’t been fucking around on me, I never would have killed her. So, that’s kind of justice.” He took the gun away from my forehead. “You, though? Well, it’s a tragedy. And, like I said, I’m sorry. Because you seem like a really nice girl. Probably a nicer girl than your sister. You wouldn’t be fucking around behind your boyfriend’s back, would you?”

  I just breathed.

  “Would you?”

  “No,” I whispered.

  “I didn’t think so,” said Oliver. “I wish you had left it alone.” He stood up. He let go of my hand and went over to nudge Drew with his foot. “He’ll take the blame for both of your deaths. I’ll say that I showed up too late.” He furrowed his brow. “How would he have killed you…?”

  I got up from the bench seat and began to back away. I was going to throw myself overboard, like I’d planned before. If I was wet, it would ruin Oliver’s plan, because Drew wasn’t wet, and then everyone would know that Oliver was making it up—

  Of course, I guess he could just get Drew wet, but wouldn’t that mess up the evidence and—

  “There are probably knives in the kitchen down there,” said Oliver. “But then we’d have blood spatter to contend with, and he’s not going to have it on him. Just as well, because I don’t know if I could really stab a woman to death.” He moved the gun from one hand to another. “I could shoot you and make something up about struggling over my gun with him? What do you think?”

  I tumbled over the railing and into the water.

  I landed with a splash.

  “Hey!” screamed Oliver.

  The water closed over my head.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Oliver was in the water too.

  I swam, moving my arms as fast as I could, kicking with my feet. Around me, the water churned as I kicked against the surface. I was moving, but I was going the wrong direction. I needed to go toward the marina, back to safety.

  But Oliver was behind me. I couldn’t swim toward him.

  I kept going, gasping for breath. The salt water went in my eyes, in my mouth. I sputtered. I coughed.

  A hand on my ankle.

  I tried to kick it off.

  Fingers dug into my skin. He was yanking me back through the water.

  I fought with everything I had.

  He was too strong. Soon he had both his hands on me, and he was pulling me through the water. He tugged me against his body, my back against his chest. “Of course, he drowned you,” Oliver whispered in my ear. “That’s how he killed your sister, after all.”

  I tried to elbow him, to kick at him. I had no momentum in the water. I was tired. I had swallowed a gallon of saltwater. I tried to fight, and I couldn’t, and I didn’t know what to do.

  “Shh,” said Oliver, wrapping his arms around me, pinning my arms to my side. “This is the best way. It’ll be over soon. You have anything you want to say?”

  “Fuck you,” I managed.

  “Anything else?” he said. “Like I said, you’re a nice girl, you deserve to have your last words. You deserve a little dignity.”

  I screamed, thrashing in the water. I screamed and screamed, my voice growing hoarse.

  “Or not,” he murmured. “If that’s how you want it.”

  And I was under the water.

  I fought harder. His hand was on the top of my head. I reached up and tried to peel his fingers away. I dug my nails into his skin.

  Nothing was working.

  And I was tired. I was really tired, and I didn’t want to try to fight anymore. Some part of me wanted to rest.

  I went still.

  I couldn’t fight him. I had no chance against him. He was too strong, and I was too tired. But if I went completely still, if I stopped fighting… It wasn’t as if he was out here with a watch or something, right?

  I tried to remember if I’d seen a watch on his arm.

  But who wore watches these days, really?

  No, out here, he’d have to rely on guessing that he’d held me under long enough. And when you were on your own, just waiting for the seconds to tick by, time seemed to slow down. He would have to estimate that he’d held me under long enough, and I was betting he’d estimate wrong.

  It was risky, but I had no other chance here. I couldn’t fight him off.

  And so, I just let all the fight go out of me. I went still and let myself float in the water.

  My lungs began to scream for air.

  I hoped I wasn’t killing myself here. If it got to the point where I was going to pass out, then should I try to fight again? But I wouldn’t have any fight at that point. I’d be oxygen starved and out of it, and this was a stupid plan, and I should fight, I needed to fight!

  I didn’t.

  I waited.

  It hurt. It hurt not breathing, and the edge of my consciousness was going dark and fuzzy.

  Oh, hell, what had I done? I had screwed this all up so bad.

  I’m sorry, Violet. I’m so sorry. I wanted to catch him for you.

  I started to drift a little, like I was floating in and out of a dream. I thought for a minute I was back under the stairs at the Wainwright house, and that Roman Wainwright was in the doorway, holding my head down and laughing.

  Then he let go.

  No.

  Not Roman. Oliver. Oliver had let go.

  Motionless, I let myself float up to the top of the water, doing the dead man’s float everyone learns when they’re seven years old.

  Oliver snatched my head out of the water.

  I didn’t react. I wanted to breathe, but I didn’t.

  He put his hand against my nose.

  I didn’t breathe.

  He let go of me.

  Only now did I allow myself one quiet, shallow breath. And then I held my breath, afraid he would notice.

  But he didn’t.

  He was dragging me through the water.

  I had to take my breaths carefully. My face kept going back under, and I had to pretend to be lifeless. I still felt strange and lightheaded from the lack of oxygen. I couldn’t afford any mistakes, and I wasn’t sure if I was in complete control of myself. But this was incredibly important. My life literally depended on getting this right.

  Oliver hauled me up out of the water and tossed me on the deck of the ship.

  It hurt when I collided with the deck, but I didn’t react.

  I heard the sound of Oliver’s footsteps moving back and forth on the deck. He was pacing. “Okay, think, Patterson, think. What do you do with him? Why isn’t he wet? He drowned her, didn’t he? I can toss him in the water, but his clothes are already bloody from the gunshot, and the blood isn’t going to match.”

  Ha! I knew jumping in the water was a good idea. I knew it.

  “I got here, and the girl was in the water, so I dove in after her and did CPR…”

  I allowed myself to open one of my eyes a slit. I looked around without moving my head. All I could see was the deck of the boat. As long as he had no idea that I was still alive, it was better to lie here and play dead until he called it in. Once the police arrived, I’d be safe from him.

  He stopped moving. “Maybe I could take off his clothes.” He resumed pacing.

  I spied Oliver’s gun. It was sitting on the bench seat, right there. It was maybe two feet from me.

  He sighed. “I don’t know if that fixes anything. The blood still won’t be right.”

  All I’d have to do was grab it and turn it on Oliver and shoot him. But I didn’t know anything about guns.

  He stopped pacing again. His voice was resigned. “Damn it, maybe I’ve got to dump them both
. If I can get my bullet out of his body, nothing will tie me to this.”

  Oh, shit. That wasn’t good. No, I needed to get the gun. If he threw us back in the water, he’d probably weight us down, and I wouldn’t survive that. I opened my eyes a little wider, focusing on the gun.

  He stepped into my view, and all I could see were his sopping shoes.

  I shut my eyes. I waited until he moved.

  “Damn it, damn it,” he was muttering. He was heading for Drew’s body. That was right. He had said something about getting the bullet out of Drew.

  I hesitated. I would only get one attempt at this. Once he knew I was alive, he’d make sure to really kill me next time. I needed to do it right.

  “Damn it!” said Oliver again. “Bullet went through and through. So, it’s somewhere on the boat. Fuck.” He took a deep breath. “Okay, okay, calm down. Dump the bodies and then look for the bullet. You can do this.”

  I was running out of time. I moved. I pushed myself to my feet.

  Immediately, I felt lightheaded and off-balance and vaguely nauseous. The world seemed to tilt and spin.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  I gasped.

  “What the hell?” said Oliver.

  I lurched forward, moving more from my memory of where the gun was than any actual sight, because I couldn’t quite focus.

  Oliver was moving too. I could hear him, sense him.

  I dove for the gun.

  Oliver yelled.

  My fingers closed around its cold metal heft. I staggered, falling down onto the bench seat.

  “Put it down,” said Oliver. “You don’t know what you’re—”

  The gun went off.

  Okay, I guess that I pulled the trigger, but I wasn’t aiming or anything, I was just tense and worried and trying to get myself back together.

  “All right, just hold on.” Oliver had stopped moving.

  My vision was clearing up. I felt steadier.

  Oliver was holding up both of his hands. “Come on, you don’t want to do this. You don’t want to shoot me. You ever killed a person, Emilia? Let me tell you, it’s not an easy thing to deal with.”

  I held the gun with both hands and aimed it directly at him. “Shut up,” I said. My voice was raw.

  “And I’m a cop,” he said. “You kill a cop, you—”

  Bang.

  I pulled the trigger, the gun kicked in my hands, and then Oliver stumbled backwards. There was a red stain growing on his shoulder. He was clutching it. “Oh, hell, that hurts,” he shrieked.

  I stood up. I advanced on him, gun out.

  “Wait, wait,” he said. “Come on, Emilia, let’s talk about this.”

  “No,” I said. “Nothing to talk about.” I pulled the trigger again. I was closer this time, and I was getting better at aiming it.

  The bullet caught him in the forehead. Not square between the eyes or anything. I wasn’t quite that accurate. But the middle-ish of his forehead.

  He fell to the deck of the boat. He didn’t speak again. He didn’t move. He was dead.

  I sucked in a trembling breath. “That was for Violet,” I whispered.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  It turned out that Drew wasn’t dead.

  Which was a good thing, because Oliver wasn’t lying about how killing a cop is a pretty complicated thing to have done.

  If Drew had been dead, there would have been no one to back up my story and I don’t know what would have happened. Even after everything, I still didn’t have any evidence tying Oliver to Violet. Drew knew that they had been seeing each other, but I hadn’t found anyone else who did. Violet had kept her personal life too private. And Oliver had done a good job of erasing any other evidence that might have connected them.

  Well, there were the phone calls. Maybe that would have saved me. But I don’t know if anyone would have gone looking at cell phone records if Drew hadn’t been around to say that I hadn’t shot him. Because that’s what they initially thought when I called the police.

  I had the gun, and there were two guys with bullet wounds, and they thought I’d shot them both. I told them my story, and I could tell they didn’t believe a word of it. Eventually, though, Drew woke up and confirmed what I’d said, and then they started looking into things, pulling Violet’s cell records and things like that.

  See, when Violet’s phone was found—along with her other stuff on the beach—Oliver had erased himself from her call log and from her contacts, like he’d never existed. And he’d also submerged the thing in sea water for good measure, so it wasn’t working anymore. He could erase her call log, but he couldn’t erase the records the cell phone company kept, and that ultimately nailed him.

  I went to see Drew in the hospital, and he looked pretty good under the circumstances. He’d been badly shot. He had a torn lung and everything. If he’d been left to bleed on the deck for much longer, he very well might have died.

  I brought him flowers and sat by his bed and told him I was so glad he was okay.

  He did his best to smile at me. “Look, Emilia, I’m glad you’re all right, but I don’t know if I can stand much more of this excitement. Ever since you showed up in that house next door, my life has gone off the rails.”

  I laughed. “Don’t worry. I’m moving out.”

  “I didn’t mean that,” he said. “I don’t think it’s your fault.”

  “I did stir things up,” I said.

  “You had to,” he said. “You had to find out who killed Violet.”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Thanks for that,” he said.

  “Don’t thank me,” I said. “I owed that to her.”

  “I’m just glad that asshole is dead.”

  “Me too,” I said. “One thing that I’m still confused about, though, is the necklace. I saw a picture of Violet wearing one of the necklaces on your boat, a green one.”

  He furrowed his brow. “I told you I moved those necklaces, but none of them were green. There was a purple one and a gold one, but nothing green.”

  “Are you sure?” I said. I got out my phone to look at the picture and show it to him. Except, when I looked at the picture, the necklace Violet was wearing wasn’t green at all. It was red.

  Maybe I wasn’t so good at remembering the colors of necklaces after all.

  Drew and I chatted for a little longer, but then I could see that he was starting to get tired, so I decided it was time to leave. Sure enough, by the time I was going out the door, he was already nodding off.

  I ran into Tania in the hallway.

  “You,” she said, narrowing her eyes. “You’re here. And it’s your fault this happened to him.”

  “Yeah, I’m sorry,” I said. She was actually sort of right about that. “And I hate to tell you this, but I think he’s asleep.”

  “Well, that’s all right,” she said. “I don’t mind sitting with him and watching him sleep. He needs someone to be there with him now. He doesn’t have anyone.”

  I shrugged. “I guess that’s true.” I gave her a smile. “Well, good luck, Tania. Actually, I hope you two crazy kids work it out.”

  “What?” she said, glaring at me.

  “You and Drew,” I said. “I hope you get back together.”

  “You’re just saying that,” she said. “You were here trying to steal him from me.”

  I shrugged. “Think what you want, Tania.” And I excused myself.

  Phin was waiting for me in the hospital lobby. He’d been to the gift shop and purchased a visor with the name of the hospital emblazoned on it and several get-well-soon balloons featuring teddy bears. He held one up when he saw me. “Souvenir?”

  I snatched it from him. “No, thank you. You know, I don’t know if I want anything to remind me of these past few weeks. It’s been a nightmare.”

  * * *

  A few weeks later, Phin and I decided to tackle going through the house on Siesta Key and Violet’s apartment on the same day. This was less because I really w
anted it that way and more because Phin never had time off, and we had to cram the activities both into the same day.

  I half-expected everything that had been in the beach house to be gone. The clothes, the jewelry, the makeup. But it was all exactly as I’d left it that night when I’d gone out to Drew’s boat. (Incidentally, I’d lost that towel and set of clothes I’d been wearing on the beach in front of the condos. And yes, my car had been towed. Phin had taken me to go and get it the next day.)

  Phin and I worked to pack up all stuff. I’d brought some boxes to do it in, so it wasn’t the college, trash-bag method.

  “I don’t know, Mila,” said Phin, holding up one of the gowns (the black one that looked so fabulous on me), “where are you going to wear this?”

  “I will wear it around the house and look at myself in the mirror and feel like a princess,” I said. “Now, put it in the garment bag.” I had brought garment bags for the fancy dresses.

  “Do you even know if it’s okay for you to take this stuff?” said Phin.

  “I texted Taylor, asking her about it,” I said. “She said nothing, so I figure it’s cool.” I shrugged.

  He shrugged.

  We kept packing.

  We were loading up boxes into my car when Jonah Fletcher appeared, walking up the beach. When he saw me, he hurried over. “Emilia, I haven’t seen you in weeks. Where have you been?”

  “Home,” I said, setting down the box I’d been carrying on the porch. “I was only ever staying here temporarily.”

  “Right,” he said, nodding. “Because you were looking into what happened to your sister. But I saw the news. You figured it out.”

  I folded my arms over my chest. “I did.”

  “I’m glad for you,” he said. He smiled at me, and I thought again that he was a pretty attractive guy. All the attractive guys I’d run into recently had turned out to be screwed up, Jonah included. But then who wasn’t screwed up? “And your blog seems to be doing well.”