Her Secret Past

by Amanda Stevens

  “Look, someone had to watch out for your interests,” he defended.

  “Don’t,” she said in contempt. “Don’t try to make this anything other than it was. All this time, you’ve been manipulating me to get what you wanted. That’s how you knew about the truck almost running me off the road, isn’t it? You set that up, too, so I’d come running back to you in fear. What else have you done to me, Reece?” She stared at him in outrage, realizing there was so much more to him than she’d ever guessed. He had a dark side she wished she’d never seen.

  He returned her stare, a tiny tic pulsing at his temple. “I’ve done some things I’m not proud of. I’ll admit that. But you have to look past that now. Your life depends on it. Sullivan is the one who is a threat to you. He lied to you. He deceived you. And if the sheriff’s suspicions are true, he even tried to kill you. More than once.”

  Amy shook her head, still in denial. “I don’t believe any of this.”

  Reece grasped her arms, his grip tightening painfully. “There’s something else. Sullivan has another reason for wanting Amberly. A more powerful reason. You accused me of being greedy, but so is he. His deal with the development company hinges on his ability to acquire property on this side of the river, as well. Namely, Amberly. This is where they want to build a marina. Your coming back here threatens the whole agreement, and from what I’ve been able to determine, Sullivan stands to lose everything if he can’t deliver Amberly. The only way he can win is to get rid of you again. This time for good.”

  “And that kinda ties everything up real nice and neat, now, don’t it?” Van Horn drawled from across the room, injecting himself back into the confrontation. “Means, motive and opportunity. All I have to do now is find him and haul him off to jail. Once Frankie’s body turns up, that’ll be all she wrote for Conner Sullivan.”

  * * *

  CON’S TRAILER WAS DARK when Amy got there. She didn’t see his truck, but she knew that he usually parked around back. Running breathlessly up the porch steps, she banged on the door. “Con! Are you in there? We have to talk.”

  When he didn’t answer immediately, she tried the knob. The door was unlocked and she rushed inside, intent on warning him. No matter what he might have done in regard to Amberly, Amy knew he hadn’t tried to kill her. He hadn’t murdered Frankie, either, but the sheriff, and maybe Reece, too, were trying to frame him. “Con!

  Amy paused, getting her bearings in the moonlight. She didn’t want to turn on a light for fear someone had followed her across the bridge. She had the impression that Van Horn was definitely of the “shoot now and ask questions later” persuasion.

  Water was running in the bathroom, and Amy realized Con must be in the shower.

  Crossing the room, she called to him again. “Con?”

  The sparse moonlight allowed in by the trailer’s tiny windows didn’t penetrate the hallway. The corridor was black, and Amy had to feel her way along. The bathroom was dark, too, and she wondered if Con had turned off the light and gone into the bedroom. She knew from experience he could move without making a sound, but why would he leave the water running?

  Amy started to call to him again, but something—a premonition that tickled the back of her neck—stopped her. Almost in slow motion, her hand reached up to turn on the bathroom light.

  And then she screamed. Screamed in terror and horror and revulsion at the blood streaked across the mirror and the sink and trailing across the floor to the bathtub. The running water washed pink stains down the drain, while bloody fingerprints clutched at the shower curtain, as if someone had tried to strip it away. But it remained intact, hiding whatever—or whoever—was behind the plastic.

  Gasping for breath, retching, Amy reached a trembling hand to the shower curtain. It couldn’t be Con. Please God—

  Trembling, praying, she pulled the curtain aside. Frankie Bodine sat hunkered in the tub, his clothes covered with blood and filth, his eyes closed, his expression frozen.

  Sheriff Van Horn’s words stabbed through Amy like a dagger. Sullivan figured out that Frankie was the one to pull you out of the river that night. He was worried Frankie might have seen something.

  “Oh God, oh God, oh God,” she whispered. For a moment, she couldn’t do anything but stare at poor Frankie.

  Then she backed out of the room, grabbing at walls as she stumbled toward the living room. Opening the front door, she all but fell outside, dropping to her hands and knees, gulping in fresh air as her stomach rolled inside her.

  Glancing up, she saw Con in the distance, limping up from the direction of the river. He stopped when he spotted her and gazed at her for a long moment before he started up the path toward her.

  At that precise moment, with visions of blood and death still fresh in her mind and Reece’s warning still ringing in her ears, Amy was beyond thinking, beyond reasoning. She reacted instantly, whirling away from Con to sprint for the woods behind his trailer.

  He called her name once, but she still didn’t turn back, didn’t even glance over her shoulder until she’d reached the cover of trees. She tore through the woods with some vague notion of circling around to the road, somehow making it out to the main highway and finding a phone.

  Trying not to let her panic and fear completely destroy her sense of direction, she widened her arc, and then headed back toward the river road.

  If Con was pursuing her, somehow she’d managed to lose him. He’d been limping badly, no doubt from the strain of searching for Frankie all day, maybe even carrying him back to the trailer. She remembered he’d told her the night before that he could carry more than twice her weight—

  No, she wouldn’t think about last night. She wouldn’t think about Con’s muddy boots or the high-powered rifle he’d been carrying at the bridge. Amy wouldn’t allow herself to think about anything except getting help for Frankie. Then, and only then, would she try to sort through her feelings.

  She came bursting out of the trees onto the gravel road. Headlights from an oncoming car caught her in the face, and like a frightened deer, Amy froze for just a split second.

  The driver seemed to come right at her. Amy tried to get out of the way, but the front fender caught her hard, lifted her off her feet, and she came down on the hood with a crash that immediately knocked the breath out of her.

  The driver threw on the brakes, spewing gravel and dirt from beneath the wheels. Amy tumbled from the car and landed in the middle of the road, the sharp edges of the gravel cutting like razors into her flesh. Dazed with pain, she rolled onto her back, groaning.

  A door opened and footsteps crunched on the gravel road. A figure stood over her, but the headlights blinded Amy. She put up a hand to shield her eyes. “I think I’m hurt,” she said weakly.

  The figure bent over her, and as Amy reached up in supplication, a hand clapped over her mouth, and a rag was shoved against her nose. Almost instantly, the sweet, sickly fumes overtook her.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CON WASN’T SURE why he didn’t immediately go after Amber. He couldn’t imagine why she’d run away from him like that, but then, it was possible she hadn’t seen him, or heard him call to her. She’d appeared to be in a state of agitation, and as Con looked up at the darkened trailer, the front door swinging wide open the way she’d left it, he realized in an instant that something inside had frightened her, had sent her running away into the night. From him.

  Lifting the rifle, he entered the trailer, moving through the darkness as silently as a shadow. He smelled the blood almost immediately, and tracked the scent to the bathroom.

  He’s seen blood before, plenty of it, sometimes even his own. But he wasn’t prepared for the sight that met his eyes. Somehow, in his own home, the violation seemed more perverse.

  Entering the room, his gaze flew to the bathtub, and he drew in a sharp breath. He’d been searching for Frankie all day and had thought he’d found him at one point. But either the noise had been a false alarm, or Frankie was a lot more clever,
and a lot more fleet, than Con had given him credit for.

  How the hell had he gotten here?

  Moving quickly across the floor, Con knelt beside the bloodied bathtub. One of Frankie’s arms hung limply over the side, and Con picked up his wrist, feeling for a pulse, but not finding one.

  He got up then and searched through the trailer, quietly, efficiently, looking for evidence of who had been there. Finding nothing, he walked back into the bathroom, trying to piece together a likely scenario. One thing was clear to him now. Amy had seen him outside. She’d heard him call to her. The reason she’d fled was that she thought he’d done this to Frankie.

  She thought he was a murderer.

  Anger tore through him like a bullet. How could she think that? How could she believe that of him after what they’d shared last night?

  How could she be like everyone else in this godforsaken town?

  Con turned to go after her, but out of the corner of his eye, he saw a movement. He thought it was his imagination at first. He hadn’t found a pulse. Frankie was dead. But as he stood there, one of Frankie’s fingers moved.

  * * *

  AMY AWAKENED IN darkness. She was lying on her side, and for a moment, she thought she was back at Frankie’s house. But vague silhouettes took shape, and she recognized the glimmer of moonlight on a mirror, the shadow of an armoire, the posters of the bed where she lay.

  Her stomach lurched sickeningly, and as she tried to get up, her arms screamed in pain. She realized her wrists were bound tightly behind her.

  For a long moment, she struggled with the bindings. Sweat broke out on her forehead as the rope cut into her skin and the knot tightened. Forced to give up, she rolled to the edge of the bed, and swung her legs off.

  Although she had only a vague impression of the room, a sense of recognition came over her. Like Frankie’s house, Amy knew she’d been here before. Was she back at home?

  She crossed softly to the door and put her back to it, turning the knob with her fingertips. To her surprise, the door was unlocked. The hallway beyond was lit, and Amy knew at once the house she was in wasn’t Amberly. Where was she, then?

  A door stood ajar across the corridor, and Amy peered inside. The recognition grew stronger. The room was another bedroom, decorated as if for a child. The pink canopied bed, ruffled curtains and collection of what Amy knew were antique dolls instilled a deep sense of dread in her.

  Whose room was this?

  Walking over to the bureau, she stared down at the collection of heirlooms assembled like offerings on the top. Silver antique combs, a French music box—

  Suddenly, images bombarded her. As if she were floating free from her body, Amy saw herself—at eighteen this time—opening the lid of the music box and picking up the emerald necklace inside. And then, her voice cracking on a sob, “You killed my mother!”

  It all still seemed so dreamlike to her. Almost calmly, Amy turned as a shadow moved in the corner of the room. She stared at the gun in Corliss Witherspoon’s hand, and her aunt smiled. “You’re up and about, I see. Time to take a little ride, Amber Rochelle.”

  * * *

  THEY WERE IN CORLISS’S car, traveling along the highway. Amy sat in the back, tearing at the bindings on her wrist. “Where are you taking me?”

  “Now, that would spoil the surprise if I told you that. And you always did love surprises.”

  “Why did you kill my mother?” Amy blurted.

  Corliss glanced at her in the rearview mirror. “Because she deserved it. Emmett was mine and she took him from me.” She lifted her fingers to her neck and touched the emerald lovingly. “This necklace was mine, too. He bought it for me. Everyone knew green was my color. He was going to give it to me for Christmas. It was going to be my engagement present.”

  She pulled down the vanity mirror, admiring the pendant as she turned one way and then the other to allow light to spark off the stone. And all the while, the car flew along the highway. Outside the tinted windows, the shadowy scenery passed by in a blur. Amy had no idea where they where.

  “I saw the necklace that night, didn’t I?” she whispered. “I came to your house the night I disappeared.”

  Corliss sighed. “You were always so worrisome back then, always whining about Lottie. As if I didn’t have troubles of my own!”

  “I came over after I had that fight with Daddy,” Amy said slowly, letting the memories flow into her. There was still so much she couldn’t remember, but the events of that night were starting to come back to her. “I’d gone down to meet Con at the bridge, only…he wasn’t there. I didn’t know what to do. Daddy had all but thrown me out, and Con had turned his back on me. Or so I thought. So I came to you.”

  “Lucky me,” Corliss grumbled. “You just came barging in. I’ll never forget it. I was sitting there in my green housecoat, enjoying a nice rerun of Hart to Hart, and you just appeared in my living room. You said you rang the bell, but I guess I didn’t hear you over the TV.”

  “We talked for a long time,” Amy recalled. “I sat there and told you all about eloping with Con, and you said you’d deal with Daddy for me in the morning. I went upstairs to bed and saw that the spare room was open. Something compelled me to go in. That’s when I saw all the heirlooms you’d stolen from Amberly. And Mama’s necklace.”

  Corliss shrugged. “I was never the careless type. Looking back, I think I must have wanted you to find that necklace. You’d always been so dang certain Miranda didn’t kill herself, and I’d had to worry about that for so long. I guess I always knew I’d have to get rid of you sooner or later.”

  “So you took me out to the river, tied a weight around my ankle and dumped me. You left me to drown, just like my mother.”

  Corliss swerved to avoid hitting something in the road. Amy’s head banged against the window. “Damn rabbit,” Corliss muttered.

  Bruised and battered, Amy stared out the darkened window as she fought the ropes around her wrists. “You were the one who stole the antiques, but you let me blame Lottie.”

  Corliss shrugged. “You despised her. I figured you’d get rid of her for me, save me the trouble.”

  “The pink room in your house was like mother’s room when she was a little girl. You wanted that, too.”

  “She always got the best of everything,” Corliss grumbled. “Daddy said pink didn’t suit me. He had my room done in green, because that was my color, but I always loved Miranda Lee’s pink room the best.”

  She coveted everything of her sister’s, Amy thought. Because she had always been jealous. And that jealousy had finally consumed her.

  Amy struggled even harder with the ropes, but it was no use. She tried to turn so that she could get her hands on the door handle.

  “Don’t bother with that,” Corliss advised. “I’ve got the child safety latch on.”

  She turned on the river road, and after a few minutes, Amy could see the bridge in the distance, rising from the mist, and terror washed over her again. If she could somehow get her hands free…if she could climb over the seat…open the door…

  What she had to do was distract Corliss, keep her talking while she worked loose the ropes. The element of surprise was crucial.

  “How did you lure Mama down to the bridge that night?”

  “It was almost too easy,” Corliss said. “I made her think Emmett was meeting Lottie down there.”

  “You’re the one who started those rumors.” Her poor mother, Amy thought. Did she have even an inkling of what her sister was capable of?

  They were at the bridge now. Amy could see the mist swirling over the water, curling like smoke around the cypress knees and swamp grass. She couldn’t get loose. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t get free.

  Corliss pulled onto the bridge and stopped. The girders rose over them, dark and menacing in the moonlight.

  Amy said, “Don’t do this. You can’t get away with it.”

  “Oh, I can’t, can I? I’ve gotten away with it twice before,
didn’t I?”

  “Corliss—” Amy was never sure what she was about to say, but suddenly, the boards beneath the car snapped, the sound as loud as a cannon shot. Almost instantly, the rear tires slipped through the cracks, and the front of the car pitched upward. Amy tumbled against the back glass, smacking her head on the window. She could feel blood streaming down her face, but she couldn’t wipe it away. She couldn’t do anything but lie there, breathless and waiting, as the car remained suspended, the broken boards creaking and groaning beneath them.

  Corliss seemed stunned at first. Then, she started to panic, and her movements became frantic. Before she could open her door and escape, the bridge floor gave way with another loud crack, and the car slid backward into the abyss.

  The car hit the water with a crash that pounded every bone in Amy’s battered body. She shot forward, and then backward, blacking out momentarily. When she came to, the car was sinking. The darkness around her was almost as complete as her terror, the scene as surreal as any nightmare. Panic exploded inside her, and she struggled with the ropes, kicking and flailing, her only thought one of survival.

  The floor filled rapidly with water, but the vacuum created inside the car allowed them to breathe. As the car settled to the bottom, Corliss rolled down her window and opened her door to escape. The river came rushing in.

  Within seconds, Amy was underwater, fighting the ropes around her wrist, frantically trying to maneuver herself over the front seat. But the water was so cold and her fear so numbing, that after only a few seconds, she began to lose the fight.

  This was what her mother had felt. This was what her last few moments had been like. The agony. The terror. The helpless feeling of betrayal.

  As the precious seconds ticked by, Amy’s struggles ceased. Her strength ebbed, and a strange lethargy slipped over her.

  The water was warm now and welcoming. Her fear dissolved. She closed her eyes and visions came.