by Libby Rice
The slow slide of panic inched up Cole’s throat. “What did he guess?”
Blind to Cole’s rising sense of urgency, Rhea kept talking. “I couldn’t let you know. Then everything would have been for nothing.”
Rhea plays at the hate, Lissa had said.
“What were you hiding?” Cole’s whisper barely rose above the accusations swimming in his head.
“When Kent fell—I swear I didn’t cause his attack—I panicked, went for his pills. That’s all. Nothing else.”
“That’s all?” Kent echoed faintly.
Looking right at Kent, Rhea promised, “I never wanted you to die. I just didn’t want you to talk. Instinct won.”
Cole almost doubled over. Hell of an instinct. “Tell me what you knew about my wife.”
Rhea flashed Cole a scathing look, but the bravado didn’t mask her regret. Or her fear. She let go of Trevor’s slack hand and stood, stroking Kate’s headstone as though it were the most familiar act in the world. “Kent saw your wife refuse me.” She snatched her hand away. “Kate said she couldn’t leave you, that how she—how we felt—had to be extinguished.”
A ragged sob wrenched out of Rhea’s throat, and Trevor shot up. Never able to watch suffering without wanting to help, he pulled his wife into a loose embrace. “Rhea, don’t do this—”
Lancelot to the end.
“Kent had to forget,” Rhea whispered, so low Cole strained to hear. “He knew how we felt. He knew I loved her.”
“Then why”—Lissa emerged from the trees, an all-too-familiar box clutched high against her chest—“did you kill her?”
Chapter 36
Lissa had known her claim would be a bomb. She hadn’t realized it would also be a test. As soon as the inflammatory words left her lips, the men whipped to attention, horror drawn in tight, disbelieving lines bracketing chilled faces. Similarities Lissa hadn’t noticed jumped out. Cole might be the lean version of his brother’s bulk, but when clenched, the two shared a jawline as harsh as any of the jagged rocks in the clearing. All three shared their imposing height, and Lissa would never have guessed Kent’s reliably warm gaze could go as glacial as Cole’s.
Of course Rhea looked different than the men, but she also acted different. Despite being almost positive of Rhea’s guilt, Lissa had expected shock and outrage. Yet the woman shrank away from the husband who’d been holding her, so obviously willing—at least in the moment—to offer a second chance.
And then there was the box Lissa hugged like a child with a beloved puppy.
Cole came forward and put his hands on top of hers. Staring at her strangely, he whispered, for her ears only, “Are you all right?” The unexpected concern made her revelation all the more heartbreaking.
She nodded carefully.
Cole began to pluck her fingers from the cardboard, lifting the box from her grip a scant inch at a time. As she looked into his eyes, she saw alarm and a fierce need to help. “Please,” he said gently. “Let me have it. Tell us your story.”
Lissa blinked. It was so hard for this man to say please that she let go. On a deep breath, she watched Cole retreat with the prize and considered the lifetime that had passed since leaving Trevor and Rhea’s kitchen.
Melina had attested to its invasion in more ways than scattered reading materials and dirty dishes. If the house had been pristine, Lissa would still have guessed at Rhea’s presence.
The door leading to the basement had been closed.
A person less suspecting—Cole, for instance—might have missed the significance, even though he’d been the one to prop the door open on their departure for India. In their absence, he’d wanted the heat from the main floor to circulate and guard against frozen pipes routed from below. To Lissa, the closed door had meant someone had followed behind them with a visit to the basement, later shutting the door as a reflex.
Rhea being the prime candidate.
She’d sidetracked Cole with a strong suggestion about joining the merrymaking in the rock garden. While Lissa had shared her inklings about a connection between Kate and Rhea—one far fonder than Rhea let on—Lissa had not revealed her fears of foul play. She hadn’t wanted to muddle Cole’s perception of Kate’s death with unfounded suspicions.
Nodding toward the box and then Rhea in turn, Lissa asked, “Recognize the show-and-tell?”
Cole lifted the cardboard higher. Trevor and Kent shifted on anxious feet, both looking confused. All were getting more than they’d bargained for.
Rhea took a step back, but Kate’s stone-bound eulogy stopped her retreat.
Don’t drag it out. Lissa faced off against the woman who’d once loomed so large. “Your irrational anger flirted with too many minor deceptions. One day you insisted Kate had been a cheating whore who’d violated the sanctity of your marriage. The next you eyed the painting she gave you, constantly monitoring its position but refusing to mount it on the wall. You maintained this gravesite, even after being asked to stay away. Claiming you never wanted Kate ‘for a sister’ only betrayed the fact that you wanted her for something else. I saw you sit in front of that rock”—Lissa pointed to the headstone—“and trace out the letters now kissing the backs of your knees.”
L. O. V. E. D.
Listing Rhea’s little reveals made them all the more damning. “You cared enough to see every blade of grass clipped and every flake of snow shoveled, but when she lived, you returned her gestures of friendship and family with veiled threats. Is that because she spurned you?”
Rhea’s eyes flared, broken and dangerous. “She loved me.”
“Yet in the end she didn’t choose you.”
“She wanted to.”
“Maybe,” Lissa countered. “But if yours had been a mutual case of star-crossed love, why—at least after Kate’s death—didn’t you acknowledge that the Kate-and-Trevor angle had been a mistake? No one would have guessed at what came before. Why did you make a part-time job out of proving your hatred and distrust, in life and in death?”
With each new piece of the puzzle, Lissa drifted closer to Rhea. “You laid a fake trail to make sure no one suspected the infidelity rested on your shoulders, which would have pointed right to your violent secret. You’re no better than the bookie who bets on the little guy in the fight when you’ve been supplying the big guy with his steroids. The bet’s just a diversion.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Rhea choked.
No? “What’s in the box?”
When Rhea looked at the burden in Cole’s arms, she shuddered.
Well, well, well. “I’ll give you a hint—it’s the last you saw of Kate.”
Lissa knew the truth to the fiber of her being. The past few minutes had resolved weeks of discordant hunches and lingering doubts.
On the heels of Cole’s departure for the garden, and wearing only her winter hat as spider-armor for the sake of an emergency, Lissa had ventured past that closed door and into the basement. She’d found Cole’s collection of Kate’s belongings in the corner, some boxes unstacked and open as though abandoned mid-search, others lined up and waiting. One box in particular had drawn her attention. In truth, that small, neat package had bothered Lissa on and off since she’d accidentally stumbled upon it in her own search of the basement weeks ago.
The single known quantity had sat high on the discard pile.
Lissa remembered how Cole had caressed the side with a loving hand, seeming loath to leave Kate’s things in the dark beneath the house. Then, inexplicably and without a hint of explanation, he’d closed up, flippantly extending his permission to continue on with the box and the hiking gear it contained.
This time Lissa searched for details, any clue or confirmation to help her cause. The top and all four sides of the cardboard were nondescript and unhelpful. Not a name. Not a date. No inventory. But now Lissa knew where to look.
Inside, Kate’s Nikon nestled within a familiar yellow shirt. Turning the camera on, Lissa pressed the playback button an
d saw a blank screen. She looked around at the neat piles in her midst, uncertain whether Rhea had tampered with the contents of this one particular box. With an audible click, the camera went dark. Another press brought the screen back to life.
This time the screen wasn’t empty. Confused, Lissa toggled the camera on and off. Sometimes the pictures living in Lissa’s memory showed bright against the dim overhead lights. Other times the device hoarded its secrets.
Iteratively working the power and playback buttons, Lissa clicked until she saw a tree-lined sky in early morning and then—yes!—a picture of Rhea pedaling toward the camera, head down above a pair of clunky hiking boots that barely fit over slim pedals. Instinctively, Lissa zeroed in on the date and time stamp—January fourth, 7:27 am, two years prior.
The next photo showed Kate’s exuberant selfie in the yellow top—January fourth, 7:57 am, two years prior.
The exact date of Kate’s death hadn’t been bandied about, but Kate had died in the winter, off the ledge of a hiking trail not far from Melina, approximately two years prior. Right about the time Rhea had been in the same place at the same time despite a damning claim.
The day I’d hike with that woman, Rhea had said.
A day otherwise known as January fourth in the world of non-pathological liars.
As natural as chocolate and red wine, Lissa’s mind wandered to Cole. When he’d found her pillaging the wrong end of his man cave, he’d instinctively reached for Kate’s box of hiking gear, seeming to channel care through his fingers and, at the same time, forever release the hold the contents had over him.
Like a lover saying farewell.
A whisper in Lissa’s mind breathed, Yes, exactly. And in that paralyzing instant, the air whooshed from the room. Cold, painful certainty roared between Lissa’s ears, leaving her gripping her forehead in a belated attempt to push the knowledge back out.
Lissa had witnessed Cole’s last good-bye to his wife’s final effects, final effects that included a yellow jersey and a camera placing Rhea where she claimed to never have been.
Dizzy with the horrific implications of the discovery, several competing prescriptions, and tens of hours confined to planes, trains, and automobiles, Lissa melted to the concrete floor, buffeted by the onslaught of too many coincidences—the pictures, the dates, the matching yellow in Kate’s good-bye box and the photographs taken on the right winter’s day, Rhea’s warring obsession and hostility toward the same woman, Kate’s withdrawal from her marriage, the breakup Kent swore to have witnessed, and the mysterious decision Kate had contemplated in her note to Cole.
Pulling from her last reserves, Lissa had scooped up the box and ran for the trees.
Horrible days. The worst of Cole’s life, Lissa realized now. They’d preceded two years of punishment, and all because Rhea’s love had flared out of control.
“Cole,” Lissa began, never taking her eyes off Rhea, “open the box. Take out the camera.”
At the word “camera,” Rhea’s brows cinched. She started toward Cole, but Trevor’s massive palm thumped to her collarbone, a human fence restraining the woman’s ferocity.
So it was true. Unlucky Rhea had been caught on candid camera. Maybe next time she’d look up when pedaling toward her victim on a glow-in-the-dark bike.
Cole pulled the jersey from the box first. The wind caught an edge, and the shirt flared against the whipping snow, its color too cheerful for the weather and the mood. Cole folded the shirt with slow hands and placed it within the protection of the box.
Next came the point-and-shoot. Cole turned the Nikon on and looked up in expectation. “Nothing,” he said.
Ignoring Rhea’s increasing efforts to escape Trevor’s hold, Lissa instructed, “Turn it on and off. I think there’s a glitch between the memory card and the internal storage. The thing seems to point to one or the other at whim.” Lissa’s phone had backfired like that last summer. Half the pictures from an art show had been fine. The other half she’d lost, or so she’d thought, until stumbling over them in another, unbeknownst-to-her memory.
Cole jammed buttons on the camera over and over, suddenly going still. Lissa guessed he’d found Rhea and her bike. With one subtle press of another button, the camera jerked in his hands—Kate’s selfie.
Clearing her throat, Lissa prepared to drop the final hint. She didn’t want to tell him and restart his loss clock. Yet… licking her lips one last time, she said, “The dates, Cole.” A last breath. “Look at the dates.”
One heartbeat, and then Cole laughed—a harsh, mirthless noise. The camera fell into the box, and he knelt in the snow and closed the top with precise, economic movements. Even blown away with the cruel reality of his wife loving another and paying the ultimate price, he moved with restrained grace.
Still a joy to watch.
Without looking at Lissa, Cole walked to Kent and handed over the burden. “Give this”—he gave the box a rough shove—“and her back to the police. Tell them to do a better fucking job this time.”
She shouldn’t have told him.
Not any of it.
The lines that streaked from the corners of Cole’s cobalt eyes hadn’t eased. The unhurried stride he set in approaching Rhea, who still struggled against a stoic Trevor, didn’t mask the way Cole’s hands spasmed in and out of fists at his sides.
Half-way to his sister-in-law, Cole stopped, hovering like he didn’t trust himself to bring the standoff too close.
Lissa had wanted to help, to ride in on a white horse bearing relief. Instead she’d opened a festering wound. “Cole—”
“Don’t.” The warning sliced through the wind, shutting her up as surely as duct tape to the mouth. To Rhea, he finally asked, “Why?” so low Lissa strained to hear.
Rhea folded in on herself, visibly shaking with suppressed sobs. “I didn’t mean to or want to. I just…” She tried again to break free, unsuccessfully. “I wanted her to acknowledge us. I needed her to try for us. At the St. Julien, she danced around our future. She called us sisters. Friends. On the mountain, she threatened even that. I was to get nothing, to be nothing. Kate was willing to live a lie for you.”
This time Cole’s fists didn’t uncurl. “A lie? What do you call your last two years?”
“Heartbreak.” Looking up, Rhea’s eyes glittered like liquid glass, and each syllable eked out in a fractured whisper. “I told you I didn’t intend this. Like with Kent. One minute he was hounding me with questions. The next he was on the floor, and I stood over him, meds in hand. Kate was walking ahead of me, insisting we stay apart. Then she was screaming, falling.”
Lissa tamped down sympathy that had no place. “You pushed her.”
Momentum, the police had said.
A pained gasp from Rhea said Trevor struggled for control. “I want to kill you,” he growled at his wife, squeezing her too hard. “Not on accident. Not because I’ve lost control…”
“Because you need killing.” Cole dove. In a blink, Rhea lay flattened over Kate’s gravestone with Cole’s strong hands around her throat while Trevor stood by, contemplating the scene with curious detachment.
Shock. From the only person this side of Boulder with the strength to stop the madness.
“Yes.” Rhea choked, no longer struggling like she had in her husband’s embrace. The woman relaxed into Cole’s merciless grip. “Please.”
Shaking her by the throat, a rabid dog with a ragdoll, Cole snarled, “My pleasure.”
Trevor merely watched and nodded—a zombie, but an approving one.
The sickness that had chased Lissa from India rose up in a heated rush, pricking over her skin and clenching in her stomach. Bile scalded the back of her throat. “No.”
She’d wanted to free Cole from the perceived burden of killing someone. She couldn’t—wouldn’t—let him substitute imagined guilt over Kate with real guilt over Rhea. “No.”
Cole either didn’t hear or didn’t care. He muttered against Rhea’s slack chest. “Too bad you won’t
be joining Kate up top. You’ll have to wait for me in hell.”
Refusing to lose the contents of her stomach, Lissa tripped forward in a jagged path through the rocks. “Cole, stop. Please.”
Rhea’s eyes slipped closed. An aching remnant of a smile curved her lips, and Lissa realized the woman craved release in any form she could get it.
Afraid to touch but more afraid not to, Lissa laid a gentle hand on Cole’s straining shoulder. “Stop.” She swallowed frozen air in an attempt to calm her revolting stomach and watering mouth. “Cole,” she pleaded again, “look at me.”
God, the fever and nausea felt like fear.
Still hanging on, Cole turned his head and stared at her, eyes blank.
Unseeing and unreachable.
“I’m not okay,” Lissa said. The plea was both a desperate bid for distraction and a real cry for help. Her hand slid off his arm. Like it or not, she was going down. Not out, maybe, but definitely tapping the mat.
The last bit of Cole’s jacket slipped from her fingers, and she reeled backward, stung by her failure. She deserved to pass out in the snow. Maybe a couple frostbit fingers would teach her to mind her own business.
She tensed for impact.
And never hit the ground.
“Goddamn it!” Cole had wrenched himself from the trance. His face, flushed and fully inhabited by frustrated, thwarted, concerned male, swam above. Clarity had broken the blankness. “You won’t even let me murder a murderer in peace. I hate that I love you.”
She did, too. Wait? What?
In Lissa’s peripheral vision, Rhea rolled off the rock, gasping for air but coughing most of it up. Old Red would live to sue Cole for assault and battery from a prison cell. Lissa wouldn’t die of hypothermia, left for the coyotes. Or wolves or bears or whatever foraged for frozen people in January in the Rockies. Kent had answers to fill most of the remaining blanks in his head. Trevor at least knew why his wife had turned so terribly cold, not that Lissa imagined knowing of his wife’s struggles would be much consolation.
And Cole.