Deceptions of the Heart

by Denise Moncrief

  “Maybe Jackson told him,” Anson guessed, leaning his head on the seat rest behind him.

  “Then Jackson probably told him what I said at the party.”

  “What did you say?” he asked.

  My insides churned at the thought of what I might have said to the man to set him off. “I don’t know. But I have my suspicions.”

  “So?” He waited for me to reply. I refused to answer. I couldn’t drag him into this. “Oh, I get it. That’s the part you can’t or won’t tell me.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  In the middle of a mild California afternoon, I faced Alex’s garish front door once again. But this time I wasn’t alone. Anson put his hand on the small of my back before I knocked. The door nudged open without resistance. My stiff legs refused to move, my mind reluctant to propel my stubborn body forward. Anson pushed past me and entered Alex’s house. I followed him into the foyer, keeping in his shadow, using him to shield me.

  “Alex…Alex Prentiss,” he called. Quiet answered his booming voice.

  “I don’t think there’s anybody home.” When he didn’t budge, I prodded his shoulder. “We should leave.”

  We both turned to go, but faint moans stalled me. He collided with my back and his muscles tensed as he wrapped his arm around my waist to keep us both from tripping and sprawling in Alex’s doorway. “What is it?” he asked.

  “Someone’s crying,” I whispered as I regained my balance.

  The pitiful wail increased in volume. Anson released me and ventured farther into the house. “Alex?” he hollered into the living room. His voice echoed throughout the lower floor. “What’s the woman’s name?” he asked. I told him. “Kristen?”

  The sobbing increased in fervency and pitch. We followed the wretched, sniveling cry until we found Kristen huddled in an upstairs closet. A smudge of something dark smeared her shirt. A cut zigzagged down her cheek, leaking crimson onto the floor. “Don’t hurt me,” she pleaded, pushing red hands toward Anson. Her left eye resembled a mass of bloody, wadded tissue.

  “Let me handle this,” I suggested. Anson nodded and backed up a step.

  I knelt beside her, my knuckles sinking into deep-pile carpet. The unrelenting wood of the closet frame pressed against my backbone as I sat sideways in the door. Every muscle in my body reminded me of my inactivity—the interminable drive from Virginia Beach to St. Louis, and then the equally long flight from St. Louis to LAX. Not to mention the trip from Los Angeles to Oakland with only one potty stop. The rental’s cloth seats didn’t contour to my backside as well as the Jag’s leather. Even the Taurus rode smoother than our current ride. My neck hurt from the way I constantly looked over my shoulder, expecting another ambush.

  I placed one hand on Kristen’s forearm. She flinched so I adopted a soft, reassuring tone. “Do you want me to call an ambulance?”

  She tossed her head back and forth and bit the tip of a jagged nail, started on one end and gnawed until there was nothing left but a uneven, ragged edge. The red acrylic chipped and left a white unpainted splotch on her thumbnail.

  “Who did this to you? Alex?” I asked.

  “Alex? No. He wouldn’t hurt me like this.”

  Like this? How would he hurt her? Everything I thought I knew about Alex was wrong. About his character. About his capabilities. About his loyalties. Everything.

  “How can you be so sure he wouldn’t hurt you?”

  “Alex didn’t do this to me.” Her eyes reflected no deception.

  “Where is he?”

  “He left….I don’t know…” She blinked hard. “Days ago. I’m not sure where he went. He wouldn’t tell me where he was going. I thought….” She looked up at me.

  “He was in Virginia, but I don’t know where he is now. I think he’s been following us, stalking us like some sort of crazy…” The pain in her eyes stopped me.

  Her face screwed into weird shapes. “I thought he went to find you.”

  “Well…I didn’t want him to find me. I told him to stay away.” The words clogged my throat as I recalled the confrontation in my hospital room.

  “If Alex didn’t do this to you, then who did?” Anson asked over my shoulder. Kristen scooted into the corner of the closet. Her body appeared to fold in half—almost in the fetal position. He put both hands in the air. “Don’t be afraid. We’re here to help you.”

  “You can’t help me,” she muttered and glared at me through one eye—the one that wasn’t smashed. “Your father did this to me.”

  “My father? My father is dead. How could he do this to you?” Placing my hand over my scar, I attempted to still the dread that beat behind my ribs.

  “That doctor…the one that did your surgery…he said he’s your father.”

  “Crane is Jennifer’s father?” Anson asked. He rubbed his left ear as if he believed his eardrum had mangled the sound waves.

  She turned accusing eyes on me. “This is your fault. He came looking for Alex because of you and your questions.”

  I leaned in to argue, but Anson pulled me back. “How long ago?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. A long time…” She retreated into fuzziness, her words dribbling to nothingness.

  I lunged into the closet and shook her shoulders. Her eyes went glassy. I shook her again. “Kristen, focus.”

  “I’m calling nine-one-one,” Anson announced from behind us.

  “No,” Kristen and I said together. I beseeched him with my eyes, begging him to delay the inevitable. He threw his hands in the air and backed away from the closet. The springs on the bed creaked with his weight. He scratched the back of his head and waved his hand as if urging me to get on with it.

  “Dr. Crane said I’m his daughter?” I asked Kristen, hoping she could still converse with reason. “You’re mistaken. I’m his patient, not his daughter.”

  “He called you his daughter.” She gulped back a sob.

  “But that’s impossible…” My mind drifted.

  Anson stood behind me once again, placed his hand on my shoulder and squeezed. “Why did he hit you?” he asked Kristen, wedging himself between me and her.

  I sucked back my questions.

  Why did Anson give me the signal to stand down? Why did he steer the questioning away from Dr. Crane’s incredible statements?

  Kristen and the closet and all of its contents shifted and swayed and bent.

  My head bobbed a bit as I tried to concentrate. I missed something she said, but I couldn’t seem to rewind long enough to rehear her emphatic words. “He wanted to know where Alex was hiding. I told him I didn’t know,” she said with a sniffle, her attitude revealing a hint of spite.

  “You have no idea?” Anson asked.

  His voice wobbled through the murky atmosphere. I shook my head to clear my suddenly cloudy vision.

  She retreated from his stern question and looked at me with big, horror-filled eyes. The color vanished from her face. “When I couldn’t tell him what he wanted to know, he took them.”

  “Took what?” I asked. The brilliance of revelation pierced my heart. The world snapped into focus. “Where are Ally and Lauren?”

  “He took them.” She bit her bottom lip with such force it drew blood. “If you’d just left us alone…”

  She was talking, but I didn’t hear what she said. I backed away from her, propelling myself from the horrid truth. Her face distorted. The pain in her eyes was a dim reflection of my own. “I didn’t know what I was doing. I couldn’t remember anything. I still don’t remember everything. I never meant anything like this to happen. Not to them.”

  “Of course not,” Anson said. “If Jennifer had any idea—”

  “Get out of my house.” Kristen flung her wrath at us, followed by enormous gulps and sobs.

  “Wait. No!” I shouted over her sobbing. “Where did he take them?” The futility of questioning her washed over me. She didn’t know and, if she did, she wouldn’t tell me.

  Anson pulled me toward the bedroom door. �
�Come on. Let’s get out of here.”

  Kristen emerged from the closet, her fists clenched, face lit with blistering antagonism. “Are you going to the cops?” She turned to Anson. “He’ll kill them if you do.” She grabbed Anson by his shirt, her fingers clutching as if to tear out his beating heart. “I have to tell him how to find Alex, so he’ll give me the girls.”

  I pulled back from her awful choice—her husband or another woman’s daughters.

  Anson shook his head. “I don’t really think Crane wants Alex. I think he wants Alex to give him Jennifer.”

  “What? Why?” I stumbled over my surprise.

  “That is the question. Your faulty memory has the answer.” He spoke with such force the power of it crawled under my skin and raised chill bumps on my arms.

  Kristen mumbled and fretted with her wedding ring. “He said he’d give me back the girls if I gave him Alex. That’s what he said.”

  “That’s because he thinks Alex knows where Jennifer is,” Anson replied. “So you see, this is my choice. Jennifer or Alex’s girls. Which one do you think I’m going to choose? I can’t give you Alex. Even if I could, I have to protect my wife. I’m sorry Crane has put you in such a horrible position, but there’s nothing I can do about that. You should call the police before he does something to your daughters.” He dragged me toward the door. “Come on, Jennifer. We have to get out of here. That maniac could be watching us.”

  I pulled back. He grabbed my chin, expected me to obey. My mind wanted to rebel, but my heart saw the truth in his eyes.

  ****

  Anson dialed nine-one-one before we cleared Alex’s front walk. I grabbed the cell phone from his hand. He snatched it back.

  “Police,” he said, his attitude defying argument. “I thought I heard a woman crying and moaning. It sounds like someone’s hurt.” He paused. “Um…I’m right outside twenty-one-twenty-two Palm Meadows Drive.” He paused again. “No. I knocked on the door, but it was already open. That’s when I heard her crying.” He closed his mouth tight and rubbed his chin. “Of course. I’ll wait right here.”

  By the time he punched his cell phone off, he was sliding into the driver’s seat of the car, his key already in the ignition. I yanked open the passenger door. “What are you doing? Didn’t you just tell them you’d wait?”

  “You see anyone around?” He lifted his sunglasses from the cup holder. It was midday, so all the houses were probably empty, their owners busy with their daily pursuits. There was no one around to report our license plate number to the cops.

  “We can’t just leave her. What happens if Crane finds out we called the police? What will he do to the girls? Really, Anson. I’ve never seen this side of you before. I can’t believe you’d lie to the cops like that.”

  “Jennifer! I can’t believe you said that!” He looked at me, disapproval darkening his face. “Come on. Have you always told the truth?”

  “Please,” I gasped. “We both know the answer to that. Well, at least, since I woke up with Rhonda’s memories I’ve tried to tell the truth to the best of my knowledge. Okay, maybe some of my speculation was off base, but is that my fault? I was flying blind.”

  He grunted and answered my real question. “I hope we can find Alex before Crane does something to those girls. Get in the car. I’m circling the block and waiting for the cops to show. I want to see what happens after they leave. Alex will wait until the coast is clear to show his face. I’m just going to wait him out.”

  I sighed with relief. Of course. Our chances of locating them were better if neither Alex nor Crane knew we were looking for them. “You’re right,” I finally agreed.

  “Of course I am. I’m usually right,” he said. “So…Ally and Lauren? Rhonda’s daughters?”

  I rubbed my lips together and nodded. Tears wet my eyelashes. A swarm of flashing red and blue descended down the street.

  ****

  Kristen didn’t leave the house. Neither did she take the trip to the hospital. The cops didn’t huddle around the Prentiss house nearly as long as they should have under the circumstances. If Alex was there somewhere, he hid well out of sight.

  After hours of useless waiting, Anson declared he was too tired to keep up our amateur surveillance. “We’re wasting time.” He pushed up in the seat. He stretched, looked at his watch, and then started the car. “I’m hungry.”

  The long afternoon spent hunkered down in the seat of the car strained my determination, but there was a smidgen of fight left in me. “Why don’t we go to Crane’s office?” I asked. “He might—”

  “He won’t be there.” He turned out of the neighborhood onto a larger road.

  “How can you be sure? Even if he’s not there, we might wheedle some information out of his receptionist or nurse or something.”

  He lifted his cell phone from the cupholder. “This is hopeless, Jennifer. We have no idea where to start looking for either of them. Or the girls. I think we should tell the cops—”

  “No.” I couldn’t believe he was giving up so easily. I slapped the phone away from his ear. It dropped to the floorboard.

  “Jennifer!” He scooped the phone from beneath his feet and tossed it in a compartment of the console, then tapped his thumbs on the steering wheel.

  “Just wait a minute. Just listen. Before you call the police…I found copies of old newspaper clippings in the safe. I must have done some research on Crane. Maybe this stuff will give us a clue where to look for them.” I didn’t care if we found Crane or Alex. This was about finding Rhonda’s daughters.

  When he didn’t argue with my theory, I cleared my throat and dragged the clump of papers out of my newly-acquired, oversized purse, pawing through the copies, trying to shift them into some sort of logical sequence. “There’s no date on any of them…” I picked up the last piece of paper. Not a clipping. A note.

  “Anson, stop the car.” I pushed on his shoulder. “Stop the car.”

  He slowed onto the shoulder of a busy four-lane road. I handed him the brief note.

  If you won’t tell Daddy the truth, then I will.

  I didn’t have to ask him whose handwriting it was. Disappointment covered his features. “So read and see what truth she’s talking about,” he urged, pointing at the mess of unruly paper in my lap.

  I devoured the assorted articles one at a time while Anson waited for my verdict. The truth stunned me in black and white. “Did I tell you the truth?”

  “I don’t know. What truth is Marnie getting at?”

  My breath clung to the back of my throat, already constricted with anxiety. I handed him the picture from the society pages of the newspaper, then the article about the San Francisco police accusing Crane of murdering his wife. “She disappeared, Anson. They never found her body.” I rubbed my hands on my pants while he studied them. “Maybe that’s why I’ve lost my memory. Maybe I don’t want to remember.”

  He shoved the papers at me. “You sort of look like his wife, maybe a little bit, but I think you look more like Claire’s mother than this woman. This doesn’t prove anything.”

  “What if Crane thinks I’m his long-lost wife? Maybe she ran away from him and he’s been looking for her all these years. That must be why he found me a heart outside the list.”

  That seemed so wrong.

  What about all the other souls waiting for a second chance to live?

  “Did I ask him to do that?”

  “If you did, I wasn’t there when it happened.” He cleared his throat. “I thought he did that because I offered him an…incentive.”

  I pursed my lips and puffed the bangs out of my eyes. “Every time I think I have this figured out, something new gets thrown into the mix and just…stirs it all up like a…witch’s brew. This is a nightmare.” I glanced at him. He kept his head turned away from me. “I can understand if you want to bail on me. This mess keeps getting more complicated.” I held my breath, waiting for him to respond.

  His hand closed around mine. “I’m not going a
nywhere.” He started the car, but didn’t shove the gear into drive. “Why was Kristen so adamant you were Crane’s daughter? Something’s missing. We don’t have all the information.” He leaned his head back on the rest. “I’m so tired.”

  “Me too.” I wanted him to fold me into his arms. I wanted us to absorb each other’s weariness—to lean on each other. I needed him to tell me everything would be all right.

  “You know, there’s only one man who can give us answers.”

  “Crane,” I said and looked at Anson to verify my assumption. His mouth set into a grim line. “What if I am his missing wife?” I nudged him on the shoulder. “Anson?”

  “What?”

  “I just want this to be over so we can get on with the rest of our life. I don’t want to be his wife.”

  “Well, then, if you are his wife, we’ll just have to deal with that, won’t we?” And finally, he said exactly the right thing.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  At another cheap motel independent of any national chain, I watched Anson slip into the sleep of the exhausted. His chest rose and fell in the early stages of slumber. He shifted and rolled. I wanted to curl up next to him and forget about everything, but I couldn’t.

  When he was sound asleep, I rifled his pockets, looking for spare change. Slipping out the door, I shielded my eyes from the glare of the neon sign—bright lettering blinking pink and green with the middle burned out. The Easy Rest Motel had become the Easy Motel. The sign advertised weekly rates. My bare feet scraped across the rough concrete of the parking lot as I headed for the only payphone I’d seen for miles. I pulled my sweater closer around me despite the warm California night.

  The phone rang six times before she answered.

  “Marnie? It’s me, Jennifer.”

  “Jennifer? So help me…you can’t just disappear and not let anybody…where are you? Where’s Daddy?” She plowed into me with all the indignation of a spoiled princess.