I stepped backward and bumped into the doorframe. My head hit the wood trim. I winced and pressed my hand against the not-yet-healed wound in my scalp. She stepped forward, never taking her eyes off mine.
The knife hovered over my heart. I pushed my hand into her chest. My defense found words. “That’s what Claire told me before she died. She cheated on him with…” I slapped my hand over my mouth.
“With who?” she asked with mounting hysteria, as if she already knew. “With who?”
“Price,” I whispered.
She lowered the knife, the weapon wobbling in her shaky hand. “Are you sure my mother told you that…and not Price?”
“Price hasn’t told me anything!” I shouted, trying to penetrate her desire to punish me for her mother’s misdeeds.
She dropped the knife with a grunt and a miserable groan. Panic glowed in her eyes.
“You know that Sudha tried to kill me, don’t you?” I asked.
She stepped back from me. “So? What does that have to do with—”
“She was your mother’s housekeeper. Claire was poisoned. Sudha must have given her an overdose of some drug. Just like she tried to overdose me.”
“Momma was poisoned?” She looked away from me as if peering into a far-distant past.
“Yes!” I screamed to regain her undivided attention.
She turned to me once again. “Who told you that?” she asked, spewing her disbelief.
“Brandon Sairs.”
Her keen gaze grazed over me. “Is he going to arrest her?”
“No. She’s dead.”
“Dead?” Her breath left her in a gush of unbelief. “Did you kill Sudha?”
“I’ve never killed anyone.” I grabbed her shirtfront. “Listen to me. I haven’t done anything to your father. I wouldn’t. Don’t you understand? I want him alive. I need him alive.”
Rhonda’s memory barged into my consciousness. Another stormy night. My hands gripping Jackson’s shirtfront as I screamed similar words…
“Don’t you understand? He’ll never betray you. You have to let him live. I need him alive.”
“But you will, won’t you, Rhonda?” Jackson asked, no mercy in his eyes. “You’ll betray me.”
Just as Jennifer’s psyche reasserted itself, the shadows in the hallway came to life. Marnie took a header face first onto the hardwood floor. Her jaw made a horrible crack on impact. Her breath swooshed from her in one enormous gush. Her hand bumped the knife. It skittered across the floor and bounced against the wood trim. I stared at the weapon in the fractured light but couldn’t move toward it.
My nightmares coalesced and emerged from the shadows in the hall. “You disappoint me, Jennifer,” Jackson taunted from across the room. “I thought for sure you would use the knife and spare me the trouble of killing you.”
“Spare you the trouble?” I asked, my lips trembling. His eyes flicked toward the knife, inches from his feet. He looked me in the eye before slowly lowering his gaze to my chest. I shuddered at the idea he wanted me to stab myself. “Why would I do that?”
He advanced a few steps into the room. “Because you can’t stand the thought of what you did, can you?”
His face blurred. I wiped my eyes, hoping this was only a nightmare, hoping my subconscious would force me into wakefulness soon. The horror remained, standing in front of me with death in his eyes.
“What did I do?” I whispered.
“Don’t you remember?”
Without warning, Jackson sprawled on the floor, Marnie’s foot tangling his legs. She struggled to break free, but he tightened his legs around her ankle. My body moved with no order from my brain. The umbrella stand crashed on his head. I stared at it in my hands, everything moving very fast and very slow, swirling around me.
Marnie jumped to her feet and pulled me toward the door. “Move, Jennifer!” she screamed in my ear.
I startled and responded before she dragged me with her onto the porch and down the steps toward her car. Rain slanted in sheets across the wet dunes. A gust of wind whipped my hair about my face, pushing grains of sand into the corners of my eyes. I swiped at the grit. My eyes stung from the abrasive assault. Marnie’s free hand cupped the handle of her car door. She stopped and stared. Slashed tires puddled on the ground beneath the wheel wells. She dropped my hand and kicked the car, grunting her outrage. The front door slammed open against the white clapboard siding. Her Manolo stiletto dropped from her foot. She yanked it from the ground and flung it across the shell track. I swiveled on my heel just as Jackson lunged at us with the knife.
Chapter Sixteen
“Come on,” Marnie yelled over the storm, pulling and tugging me down the beach. The sand dragged at my feet, but she continued her insistent forward motion.
Jackson struggled, panting and swearing behind us, the knife clutched in his grip, blood dripping from the gash the umbrella stand had made in his forehead. When he was a mere two or three steps behind us, he tripped, sprawling on the water’s edge. Turning toward my tormentor, I halted in my tracks, causing Marnie to pitch forward onto the beach.
Wet sand covered most of Jackson’s face as he looked up from the pounding surf. Our eyes met. Jackson smirked. “Run, Jennifer. Run as fast as you can.” He rose to his feet, an angry tower of malevolence. The rising wind whipped his loose shirt around his torso.
Marnie yelled something at me, struggling to rise from the shifting beach beneath her. My mind tuned her out. My eyes locked onto a large piece of driftwood. I lifted it above my head. As I approached him, he brandished the knife.
“Where is he?” I demanded, ignoring the danger in his hand.
“Jennifer, what are you doing?” Marnie hollered.
I growled, low and mean. “Where is Anson?”
Marnie’s hand brushed my elbow just as Jackson and I closed on each other—the piece of wood over my shoulder, ready to strike.
“I want to know what you did to my husband.”
He sneered. I swung and missed. He lunged and tripped, his face contorted with anger, his head wound gushing rivers of black-red blood. I stomped the hand that held the knife and slapped the tree branch against the open cut in his forehead. He writhed and screamed.
“Where is he? What did you do to him?” I asked as I stepped back to regain my balance.
He pushed his free hand against the bleeding gash. A wicked smile spread across his face. “He left you.” He struggled to rise, but I kicked him hard in the side. Once again, he hit the sand.
“You’re lying. You should be a better liar. You’ve had enough practice.” I stabbed my opinion at him as if driving the pointed comment into his heart. A direct hit. He didn’t flinch or bother to deny it.
Marnie pleaded with words I couldn’t discern. I knocked her hands away from me, determined to break him and make him talk. “Tell me where he is, you…” A crashing wave drowned my words and dragged Jackson toward the unrelenting surf, tossing and bumping him along the wavy line of water. I stumbled, losing my balance.
When the tide left the beach for a moment, he settled into a hollow in the sand. His hand was empty. I lifted the branch again. My toes clutched at the unstable ground, the waterlogged sand sucking at my feet, my ankles covered in murky water. The tide broke over his body, covering his face. He spewed water from his mouth. His chest expanded and contracted with his struggle to live.
I considered ending his life. Who would know but Marnie? I turned toward her. Yes, who would know but her?
“Don’t do it, Jennifer,” she insisted in my ear. “Don’t. If you do this, you’ll be no better than him.”
My mind retained its muddy consistency. Shocked and dazed. Scared. Filled with fear and pain. “I just want to know what he did to Anson.”
“Me too,” she replied. She tugged at my shirtsleeve. “If you kill him, he’ll never be able to tell us anything.”
“I want to, but I can’t.” I knew in my soul—Jennifer’s soul—he deserved to die, but it was Rhonda�
��s soul that demanded retribution. I looked down at Jennifer’s hands, constricting into claw-like vises and then relaxing. I pressed my right hand against my forehead. “I have to stop him. I can’t let him kill me twice.”
“What do you mean twice?” Marnie frowned.
“Nothing. Forget it,” I said, my mind skittering, my thoughts bouncing around willy-nilly, searching wildly for a sane place to rest.
Marnie shook me, insistent and demanding, pushing me toward action. “Help me.”
I blinked at her, uncomprehending. Why won’t she stop shifting and dissolving? When her features reset, the image of another woman’s face zoomed across the landscape of my tortured mind. My lips formed a word, but no sound came from my mouth.
She nudged me out of my catatonia. “Help me pull him out of the water.”
I complied as if moving through a sea of gelatin.
****
Marnie stood in the corner of the bedroom, biting her nails, while I pounded Jackson with yet another question. “How did you find us?”
“We should find a cop,” Marnie suggested for the third time.
“No, we’ve got to do this. We’ve got to make him talk.”
Jackson tugged against the strips of sheeting that tied his hands and feet to the four corners of the bed. The first glimmer of fear flickered in his gray eyes—eyes that resembled his brother’s. I shook off the sentiment. Alex meant nothing to Jennifer. Jackson grinned at me, triumphant, superior, and condescending. I flung myself at him, pummeling his broad chest with my fists. He squirmed, but spread-eagle he was helpless against my assault.
Marnie dug her long nails into my upper arms and pulled me off him. “Stop it, Jennifer.” She turned me to face her. “What are we going to do with him?”
“I know what I’d like to do—”
“Jennifer,” she said, pressing her fingers on either side of my face.
“What do you think we should do with him?” I fumed through my scrunched lips.
She wagged her pointer finger, the tip of the nail broken and jagged from her exertions. Her mouth opened—
“It’ll be a long time before anybody comes looking for you,” Jackson said. “You picked a poor spot to hide. Too isolated. Anything could happen way out here, away from the rest of the world.”
I threw her hands from my face and swung around to confront him. Marnie shoved me aside. “How did you get here?”
He blinked at her. She circled the bed and fluffed the pillow under his head, pulled his shirt down over his bruised body. He eyed her with suspicion and bared his teeth. A shocked gasp escaped her lips. She tugged on his bindings.
He followed her with his gaze as she moved to the other side of the bed where I stood. “My car is miles down the road,” he said. “Which one of you is going to walk down there and get it?”
My eyes drifted to his keys, lying on the side table where I tossed them after I yanked them from his pants. I picked them up and handed them to Marnie. She stuffed them in her jacket pocket.
“How did you find us?” I asked.
“You weren’t that hard to follow.”
“What did you do with my father?” Marnie asked.
“Nothing. He was gone when I got here.” Jackson’s smug answer infuriated me.
“That’s a lie,” I said, calmly, evenly. “If you followed me, then you followed us, because he drove us down here.”
“Your new man got into his car and drove away.”
“So he was here when you got here,” I said, exposing his lie.
He grinned at me. “You were so dead to the world you didn’t hear me come into your bedroom, did you?”
I shivered with revulsion. He’s the one who changed my clothes and cleared out my belongings. He’s the one messing with my head. He’s the one trying to kill me. He touched me and I was so out of it I didn’t even know it.
“What does he mean by your new man, Jennifer?” Marnie asked.
“There was no first man, so how could Anson be my new man?” This was true as far as Jennifer’s memory took me.
“You can’t believe anything she says. Her name isn’t really Jennifer—”
I prepared to attack Jackson’s credibility with a barrage of angry invectives. “You evil—”
“We don’t have time for this,” Marnie said and grabbed me before I could assault him. Whirling me around to face her, she slammed my back into the doorpost. “Okay, which one of us is going to get his car and find a cop?”
The thought of venturing out into the storm alone terrified me. “I can’t.”
“You have to.”
“Why me?” I asked.
“Because…because—”
“Because she thinks you’ll kill me,” Jackson interrupted our semi-private confab. “And she doesn’t want me dead. Do you, sweetheart?”
I turned on Marnie. “Sweetheart?”
“He’s playing us. I’m not his sweetheart. And I believe there is no other man in your life but Daddy. After all, who would want you?” Her face was a blank façade.
She had yet to explain her sudden appearance tonight. “Why are you here?” I asked. She leaned her head back, drew in a deep breath. “Who told you we were here?”
“Nobody. I can’t believe Daddy would bring you here.” She pursed her lips as if she was sucking a lemon drop. “This place belonged to my mother.”
I disregarded her disbelief. “So what are you doing here?”
“What is going on here?”
I spun on my heel. Price Whitaker stood in the doorway with his hands on his hips, an appalled scowl on his handsome face.
Chapter Seventeen
A tepid cup of coffee sat in front of me. The penetrating cold of a steel chair permeated the sweat pants that weren’t mine.
“Okay, let’s go over this one more time,” Sairs said.
My eyelids drooped from lack of sleep. “We’ve been over it four times already. I told that other cop the same things. Can’t the two of you compare notes? There’s nothing else to tell. I’ve dragged every single thing up from my memory. If you’re still keeping me here, it’s because you’re trying to torture me,” I said with no small amount of disdain.
“It wasn’t that long ago you told me your memory was unreliable,” he reminded me and sat in a chair across the steel-topped table from me.
“I didn’t say it was unreliable. I just said it didn’t go very far. Are you charging me with something?”
“No. Not under the circumstances,” he muttered.
“Then I’m leaving.” I remained seated. Too tired to move.
“How are you going to get home?” he asked with a little more civility.
“I’ll leave with Marnie, I guess.” I laid my head on the table in front of me. “I don’t know if I can face that house alone.” When he remained silent for a long time, I pulled my throbbing head up and looked at him. “You’ll find him, won’t you?”
“I’ll do my best.” There was no assurance in his tone. “I’m sorry, Jennifer. I think maybe I misjudged you—”
“No, you didn’t. Sometimes people change.” I was through with his interrogation, even if he wasn’t. “I didn’t kill Claire. So you can stop torturing me about it and try to figure out who did. Anson had just as much motive as I did. Why didn’t you ever pursue that lead?” I rose from the chair, not really expecting an answer or, at least, not a truthful one.
“Is there some reason you suspect Anson?” he asked.
“Anson has plenty of motive, but I suggest you look at Sudha. She tried to kill me because I was Anson’s wife. She was Claire’s housekeeper, you know.”
“I’ve considered that.”
“Well…then…I’m leaving now.” My heart lodged in my throat. I hoped he wouldn’t detain me. He didn’t make a move to stop me as I flung open the heavy metal door of the interview room.
****
Marnie waited for me in the front lobby, her arms shifting from dangling loose at her sides to crossin
g her chest, to hanging at her sides again as if her appendages didn’t know where to land. “Well?” she barked.
The double glass doors swung open. A man and woman looked both ways before approaching the deputy at the reception desk. I waited until they were out of earshot. “He wouldn’t tell me anything. Just kept asking the same stupid questions over and over.”
“Come on, Marnie. I’ll take you home.” Price grabbed her elbow and nudged her toward the front door.
“No, you won’t.” She pushed his hand away. Her anger was tangible, a prickly thing, thick with antagonism, thorny little poisonous barbs dripping with toxin. “I’ll call a cab. Or...I’ll ask one of these nice deputies to take me home.” Her vocalization of deputies reeked of sarcasm.
“What? Why are you mad at me?” he sputtered.
“Jennifer told me the truth.” She turned angry eyes on me.
“What truth?” he asked.
“About you and my mother.”
He studied her, waited a full minute before responding. “If what you suggest is true, how would Jennifer know anything about that?”
“Claire told me.” I raised my chin. “She told me everything.”
Marnie crossed her arms. “This is over, Price.”
Utter humiliation spread across his face. “You’ll regret this, Marnie. One day you’ll discover that it’s all lies…and you’ll regret accusing me of this. By then it’ll be too late.” He left us standing in the lobby of the sheriff’s office.
An unnatural quiet surrounded us, punctuated by the uncomfortable throat clearing of the deputy who was pretending not to notice our private drama.
“Dumped by both of us,” I quipped. “Must be hard for the man to stand.”
“Shut up,” Marnie snapped.
My heart broke for the brokenhearted. “Look, Marnie, I’m sorry—”
“Don’t try to comfort me. As if you’re my mother or something. You’re not. We may have just gone through hell together, but we’re not going to be best friends. So don’t even try to bond with me.” She headed for the door.
“Stop. Please,” I called to her stiff back. She took another step and then paused. “I know Jackson is in jail, but I can’t stay in Anson’s house by myself tonight,” I pleaded, anxious. “I’ve been attacked twice there. And Anson won’t be home to protect me.”
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