Moon Fever

by Susan Sizemore, Maggie Shayne, Lori Handeland

  No. She would. She had to.

  Caroline had been wearing her seat belt. Shawn hadn’t. Which probably explained why, after the powerful impact with the surface of the lake, as the car began filling with water and sinking, Shawn was leaning forward, his head on the dashboard. She thought there was blood on his face, but it was too dark to be sure. She hoped so. It would serve the bastard right for cutting her. There were probably bloodstains on her brand-new teddy. And he’d trashed her phone, too. And maybe she’d better quit with the damage inventory and start thinking about how the hell she was going to get out of this alive.

  She reached for the power button to lower her window, but the water had already shorted it out. It wouldn’t budge. She tried pushing the door open, but it wouldn’t move at all. There was too much water already pressing against it from the outside. She couldn’t get out, wouldn’t be able to until the car filled with water, which would probably mean sitting there and battling panic while it sank all the way to the bottom. Nothing to it, she thought. I can do this. And I’m only shaking because I’m cold. What kind of a moron takes off in the middle of the night wearing a getup like this, anyway?

  She tried to remember how deep the lake was in this spot, but she wasn’t sure she’d ever known that.

  Water rose up the side windows, lapped against the windshield. Her heart pounded as she waited. It was coming inside now, leaking from God knew where, chilling her feet and ankles. Damn, it was cold. She released her seatbelt, checked to make sure the door was unlocked. It was.

  She glanced at Shawn, but he hadn’t moved. She could probably pull him out with her, once the car filled up. He wouldn’t be heavy in the water. She couldn’t just let him die. Could she?

  Maybe he was already dead. Maybe he’d hit his head hard enough…

  She listened, heard him breathing. He wasn’t dead. Bastard. Caroline wondered just how wrong it was to feel disappointed instead of relieved. He’d dropped his knife. It actually crossed her mind to find the thing and drive it into his heart.

  Turning away from him, she saw nothing but murky water beyond her window now. The hue was slightly lighter above, darker than pitch below. And she couldn’t see very far at all. Just inky black out there.

  The water in the car rose higher, creeping up her calves, covering her knees, then her thighs and hips. She was breathing faster than before, trying not to, but this was way scarier than she’d ever imagined when watching those “what to do in an emergency” shows. They made it look so simple. If your car goes in the water, you wait until it fills, open the door and swim merrily to the surface. Of course, those demonstrations were always done in clear blue swimming pools, no more than ten feet deep, with a former Navy SEAL at the helm.

  She gasped as the water came in faster, rising up her waist, chilling her right to the bones. When it got to her breasts, she tried opening the car door again. No good. Iciness crept higher, to her collarbone, her neck, her chin. She tipped her head up automatically and, again, tried to push against the door. She thought it gave a little, but it was still so freaking heavy. She pushed, she shoved. The water inched up her face. It covered her mouth now, and she was breathing through her nose, which was pressed up against the ceiling. Even then, the door wouldn’t move.

  One last breath, a deep one, and no more. She was submerged, and freezing, and wondering just how long she could hold her breath. She twisted in her seat and pressed her feet against the door, bracing her back against her unconscious ex-husband.

  The door opened as if in slow motion. Thank God. She reached behind her to grip him by the front of his shirt and tugged.

  He snapped a hand around her wrist and yanked her toward him. She didn’t know what the hell he was doing, trying to keep her there to drown with him or just panicking. She struggled to get free, twisting and pulling, but he wouldn’t let go, not until she drove her foot into his belly with everything in her. And it wasn’t easy to strike with much force in the water. But it was enough. He released her.

  She surged out of the car and headed upward, leaving her ungrateful, murderous ex to fend for himself as she should have done in the first place. How far away was the surface? God, how far? Her lungs were screaming, her head pounding, every cell in her body begging for a breath. Just one little breath. She kicked her feet, stroked with her arms, pulled herself upward, higher, and still there was only water. Was it slightly lighter now? Hard to tell with the spots clouding her vision. Dizzy. God, she was going to pass out. Kick faster. Pull harder.

  It wasn’t going to work. She wasn’t going to make it. She…

  Broke the surface all at once and sucked in huge, greedy gulps of air, damn near hyperventilating on the stuff. She floated there for just a moment, straining her eyes to get her bearings, and then spotted the shore, closer than she had imagined, and began swimming slowly toward it.

  Almost there. Her muscles ached with the cold and the struggle. She was freezing and exhausted, but she kept going. And then she heard splashing behind her and turned to look back.

  Shawn had made it to the surface and was swimming after her, his pace a whole lot faster than hers. Fear snaked through her body like an electric current, and she swam faster, stroked harder. She didn’t look back again, not until he grabbed her ankle just as she reached shallow water. She kicked free and lunged forward, falling face-first into the water and struggling to her feet again, sloshing through the heavy waves, until she finally left them behind and broke into a dead run on the dry ground. She didn’t have a clue where to go. Not to the house—it would be locked, and there were never working phones there. Her cell was long gone. He’d destroyed it and hurled it from the car. And Shawn was running, too, now. Chasing her. Why wouldn’t he just quit?

  She headed for the road, barefoot, nearly numb with cold, and raced down it, debating whether to dodge into the woods and try to hide or keep going, hoping for help to arrive, a car to pass, a house with people inside to come into view.

  But she wasn’t fast enough. Shawn caught up, tackling her from behind and bringing her down hard. Her chin hit the pavement, her knees scraped its surface, and he was on her, flipping her onto her back, closing his hands around her throat, and squeezing while his wet hair dripped on her face. And she was right back where she’d been moments earlier, struggling for air and not finding any.

  She pounded on him, clawed at his hands on her neck, but it did no good. Blackness began to descend. She thought she saw lights, once, bright through her closed eyelids. She thought she heard tires squealing.

  Suddenly, the pressure was gone. She couldn’t move, just lay there, breathing, waiting for her senses to return. She wasn’t even cold anymore.

  “Caroline. Caroline, talk to me. Come on. It’s Peter. Talk to me.” Hands on her face, patting her cheeks, shaking her shoulders. “Come on, Caroline.”

  She blinked her eyes open. Her brother leaned over her.

  “You okay?”

  “I don’t know.” It hurt to talk and sounded as if her voice box had been rubbed with sandpaper.

  Peter looked up, then jumped to his feet, and Caroline followed him with her eyes as he lunged a few yards away. Jimmy had Shawn on the ground and was pounding the hell out of him.

  “Jim, enough!” Peter gripped his shoulders, but Jim kept on punching. “Jesus, you’re gonna kill him. Let up.”

  “Damn right I’m gonna kill him. This lowlife son of a—”

  “Caroline needs you, Jimmy.”

  He paused with his fist drawn back, turned to look toward where she lay, and dropped Shawn, who landed in a heap on the pavement. Then he was on his feet, rushing toward her. He fell to his knees beside her and gathered her up into his arms, holding her close, warming her right through the chill. She heard sirens then but ignored them. She didn’t want to know anything except this, the bliss of being in his arms. She didn’t care about his secrets, or his past, or his lies. Not now. Right now, there was only this, and God, she needed it.

  “I’m
sorry,” he whispered as he held her. “This is all my fault. All of it.”

  “No—”

  “Yeah, it is. I pushed Shawn over the edge. I didn’t mean to. I got some dirt on him and used it to force him to pay what he owed you.”

  “That wasn’t a bad thing.”

  “More than that, I lied to you. Made you afraid of me, or you never would have run off by yourself tonight.”

  “I should have trusted you.”

  “You can barely talk.” He ran his fingertips over her neck, gently, soothing. “Here are the paramedics. We’re gonna get you to a hospital, okay? Get you checked out. Make sure you’re okay. And then I’m gonna explain everything and beg you to give me another chance.”

  She tried to smile. “You don’t have to beg. I barely gave you a chance to begin with. You saved my life tonight, Jimmy.”

  “I damn near cost you your life tonight.” He lowered his head, and then the medics were easing him away from her, and the police were taking him aside and talking to him. Men in white covered her in blankets, checked her vitals, and bundled her into a waiting ambulance. She wondered if it was okay to sleep on the way, and then she gave up fighting it.

  Chapter 11

  S he opened her eyes to seek out the source of the warmth surrounding her hand and found it came from another hand, holding hers. Jimmy’s hand. Her gaze slid higher, until she met his eyes, to find them moist and staring into hers.

  “The doctors say you’re going to be okay. Thank God.”

  She smiled, tried to speak, but it hurt her throat.

  “Here, try some water.” He held a glass with a straw to her lips, and she sipped, but it hurt to swallow even more than it hurt to speak. When he took the glass away, he said, “Don’t try to talk, okay? Just listen. I’ve got a lot to say to you.”

  She met his eyes again as he set the water aside, and she nodded once.

  “I blame myself for all of this. If I’d been honest with you from the beginning, none of it would have happened. But I think I was fighting the truth, all along. Hoping that what I suspected couldn’t be.”

  Frowning, she tipped her head to one side.

  “I think it was my father, Caroline. I think my father killed that girl in Maine, but he died before I ever worked up the nerve to ask him. I didn’t know, not then. I didn’t even start to suspect until Natalie disappeared, too, and even then, I was so young. It’s been haunting me, though. She’s been haunting me, begging me to tell the police what I thought, so that they could find her, lay her to rest. But I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. That’s why I wanted the house so bad. So I could find out for myself if it was really true.”

  She gripped his hand in both of hers, forced words, though they came out hoarse and raspy. “How do you know it is? And how could owning the house prove anything?”

  He lowered his head. “We were having a pool built when the first girl went missing, back in Maine. There was just a hole in the ground, no concrete yet. The police checked it and found nothing. I can only assume he hid the body somewhere else until he’d been cleared, then buried her there before the concrete was poured. We moved just a few months later.”

  She frowned, still not understanding.

  “The pool at my house—your house—it was put in right after Natalie disappeared. It’s just…it can’t be a coincidence. I remember, Mom didn’t even want it, but Dad insisted.” He lowered his head, closed his eyes. “It was right after that, when she started showing up, wet and dripping, trying to tell me where to find her, I think.”

  “God,” she whispered. The torment on his face told her just how much he’d agonized over all of this, and for how long. There was no feeling now that he was keeping anything from her. She saw nothing but honesty and pain in his eyes. “But you still don’t know, not for sure.”

  He nodded. “I will. And soon. I told the police what I suspected. They’re going to have to rip up the pool, Caroline. In fact, they’re doing it now, and the police in Maine are doing the same. I’ll pay for having a new one put in.”

  “I’m not sure I want a new one.” She cleared her throat gently. “It’s a lot, a huge burden you’ve been carrying around with you all this time. I guess I…I guess I understand why you pretended to be interested in me. It must have seemed worth the effort to get to the answers you’ve been seeking for so long.”

  His head came up slowly, and he met her eyes. “Baby, I never pretended anything with you. Not with you. I’ll understand if you don’t want anything more to do with me after this. The lies, the deception, the fact that I damn near got you killed. But even if you don’t, I need you to know this was real. Everything we had together, it was real to me. I’m in love with you, Caroline.”

  Her heart seemed to melt in her chest, and tears sprang into her eyes. “I’m in love with you, too, Jimmy. No matter what the police find, it won’t change that. I didn’t think I’d ever find a man like you. I’ve been waiting so long. I was afraid to believe you could be for real. But I do, now.”

  A sigh rushed from his lips as he gathered her up from her pillows, into his arms, and held her. “You mean that?”

  “I do. I really do.”

  “I’m gonna make you happy, baby. I swear, I am.”

  “You already have,” she whispered, turning her face up and accepting the kiss her heart had been craving, for what felt like forever.

  They stood hand in hand at the cemetery, a good distance from the spot where the service was taking place. Jim didn’t want Natalie’s family to be further traumatized by seeing the son of her killer at the funeral. His father was long dead. There would be no trial, no punishment, though Caroline liked to think the bastard was getting his just deserts in some other realm. Not only for murdering two innocent young girls but for what he’d put his son through. All these years. It had to have been pure torture. When she thought about the pain in the heart of the little boy who’d drawn those pictures, the nightmares, the haunting, the police suspecting him—it was almost too much to bear.

  He had a lot of pain in his past. So did she. But Caroline had the feeling they were healing each other, and they were both going to be okay.

  They waited until the service had ended, and all the mourners had gone away, to approach the still-open grave. Jimmy dropped the flowers he’d brought, and they landed atop the casket, which had been lowered into the ground.

  They stood there for a moment, silent. And then he whispered, “I’m sorry it took me so long.”

  Caroline touched his arm. “Jimmy, look.”

  He lifted his head and looked where she pointed. There in the distance, she knew he saw what she did: a young woman, drifting away among the headstones, translucent, filmy, but there. It was Natalie, no longer wet and haunted but beautiful and smiling. As they stared, stunned, she turned to look directly at them and lifted a ghostly hand to wave. And then, in a shimmer, she was gone.

  Jimmy turned to meet Caroline’s eyes. No words were needed. They both knew she was at peace, at long last.

  And so, Caroline thought, was she.

  Cobwebs

  Over the Moon

  Lori Handeland

  Chapter 1

  M y first clue that everything was about to change came on the night someone tried to kill me.

  Hey, they don’t need to hit me over the head with a brick to get my attention. A bullet whizzing past my right ear does the trick just fine.

  Roger, my bodyguard, shoved me to the ground behind the limo. Beneath my faux-fur coat, my evening gown tore with a shriek of rending cloth to rival the shrieks of the crowd as they stampeded down Central Park West.

  Night had fallen over New York City hours ago. The drifting clouds made it seem as if there were cobwebs over the moon.

  I’d been on my way to a charity event—the story of my life. I guess they’d just have to do without me. In truth, there was no one to miss me if I were gone. Not even my father, who’d started hiring men like Roger to protect me as soon as I could walk.


  I’d never been able to figure out why J. Thomas Kelly IV—J.T. to everyone, including me—spent so many of his pretty green dollars protecting a daughter he’d never seemed to care for.

  After having my mother committed, divorcing her, then marrying a succession of younger and younger wives who gave him blonder and blonder children, Daddy had no time for his dark-haired, dark-eyed, eldest, rudest child.

  I’d learned how to handle the neglect; my mother hadn’t. Phoebe killed herself the day the divorce papers arrived.

  “Keep your head down,” Roger snapped, shoving my nose into the pavement in case I didn’t get the concept. Then he dialed 911 on his cell. I assumed the doorman, who’d scurried back into my apartment building at the first sign of trouble, had done the same.

  Of course, it was rush hour in Helltown, I mean Manhattan, so it was anyone’s guess when the cavalry would arrive.

  “Carly.” The urgency in Roger’s voice made the world narrow to him and me, even as the danger made me hyperaware of every sound around us.

  Someone was coming.

  “Get behind me.” He duck-walked past, his broad bulk blotting out the frosty silver light of a nearly full moon.

  Nevertheless, I saw the man who stepped around the limo quite clearly. His eyes went straight to me, and he smiled. I’d never seen another smile like it. Our attacker not only wanted to kill me, he wanted other things, too. Things that would give me nightmares—if I survived them.

  Roger fired. Our attacker jerked once, then burst into flames.

  I sat back on my rump, hard. The jolt did nothing to dissipate my shock, not only over Roger shooting the man without any kind of warning but…since when did bullets cause spontaneous combustion?