Legacy of the Watchers Series Boxed Set: Books 1-3

by Nancy Madore

  Beth remembered it well, for it marked a new era for her and Wayne. Their marriage had become unbearable, and they were both drinking way too much in an effort to avoid that fact. But suddenly everything changed. Beth came home from work one day to find Wayne pouring bottles of liquor down the sink.

  “Let’s start over,” he’d said, opening another bottle and turning it upside down. “Without this.”

  And they did. They stopped drinking and they started talking—really talking, for the first time in many years. It was like high school all over again. No—it was better than high school because, as Beth suddenly realized, when she reminisced about high school, she was mostly lying to herself.

  But this time it was real—more real than anything that had ever happened to Beth before. Suddenly she and Wayne were a couple. Wayne even wanted to buy a house. All of Beth’s dreams seemed to be coming true.

  There was just one thing—one little catch to it all—and that was the secret room. Immediately after purchasing the house, Wayne capped off the foundation for the abandoned addition and buried it beneath a beautiful new lawn. Then he cut a small doorway between the two foundations and designed a sliding door that, when shut, looked exactly like the wall. Perfect though it was, Wayne took further pains to disguise the door by covering the entire wall with tools. One of the tools—an old, rusty thing that looked like it hadn’t been touched for a hundred years—was rigged to a latch that kept the sliding door firmly in place. When the tool was lifted, the latch was released so that the door could be opened, first, by gently pushing it back until it slipped into its secret slot, and then by sliding it sideways, tools and all, behind the wall. As if all of this wasn’t enough, Wayne placed a work bench and chair in front of the wall, leaving only enough space for him to squeeze in behind it.

  No, thought Beth as she slipped behind the work bench. No one searching their house would ever think to look for a secret room here. She lifted the rusty old tool that wasn’t a tool but a latch, and felt a slight pop as the door gave way. She pushed it back away from the wall gently, until she heard it ‘click’ onto its track. From there the door slid easily behind the wall. A feeling of foreboding came over her as she stepped into the room. She slid the door back into place before turning on a light.

  Beth had only been inside Wayne’s secret room a few times, and that was during its construction phase. Her eyes were immediately drawn to the back wall, which she had helped paint a cheery yellow. She was stunned to see that it was covered with pictures of her. Some of the pictures were recent, while others were older, from their school days. There were even a few from before she’d met Wayne, and it occurred to her that he must have gotten them from her mother’s old photo albums in the attic. Every single picture was of Beth! Tears filled her eyes, blurring the image of a little red-headed girl with freckles, posing coquettishly in a navy blue bathing suit with a flouncy white border.

  Was it possible that Wayne had loved her after all?

  It had always been Beth who loved Wayne, ever since she’d first laid eyes on him. Had he been a different sort of person, her love wouldn’t have been such a burden for him to bear. But bear it he did, and he never asked for anything in return—not until the secret room. So when he asked for that, they both knew that she would not only agree to it, but that she would actually do it. And she did. She never once ventured near the room after it was finished. Nor did she mention its existence to another soul. And Wayne had known that he could trust her. That was the one advantage to being loved so much—he knew that Beth would be glad for this opportunity to please him.

  Beth hadn’t even asked for an explanation, though she was curious at first. But for the most part, she was grateful for the secret room. It provided an opportunity for her to pay Wayne back for having stayed with her all these years. In a way, it brought them closer together.

  Beth stared at the pictures that Wayne had so carefully arranged on the wall.

  I shouldn’t be here.

  And yet, surely Wayne would forgive her for trespassing now.

  Beth dragged her gaze from the yellow wall to survey the rest of the room. It was quite large—about three times the size of the average home office. At one end of the room was a long table that Wayne appeared to be using as a desk and on the other end was an enormous bookshelf covering most of the wall. The bookshelf was overflowing with books, all of which Beth had never seen before. She didn’t even know that Wayne liked to read! In the center of the room—between the table and the bookshelf—there sat an oversized couch of red and yellow plaid, and two matching red chairs. Beth wondered what they were for. Wayne was the only person who came into this room—wasn’t he?

  She walked over to the table. Tucked into the front of it was a gorgeous, cream-colored, leather, adjustable office chair. It suddenly occurred to Beth that all of the furnishings in Wayne’s office were nicer than anything they had in the rest of their house. The table that he was using for a desk, although simple, was constructed of a rich, solid cherry that appeared to have been hand carved by a skilled artisan. Beth realized that the same artisan had created the enormous bookshelf at the other end of the room. Turning to the couch and chairs, she saw that they, too, were plush and covered in a designer fabric. Even the pictures on the wall had been carefully arranged in a myriad of expensive frames. The room embodied elegance and good taste.

  The room suited Beth much more than it did Wayne; though, in truth, it exceeded even her level of refinement—which made it all the more strange, because Beth had always been the extravagant one when it came to home furnishings. Wayne’s tastes in that department were hard to define, but they usually ran along the lines of whichever item had the lowest price tag. Beth had learned this early on, when they were decorating their first apartment as a married couple and he tried to talk her into using old milk crates for a coffee table. She knew then and there that she would be doing all the decorating from that point on.

  Beth couldn’t help thinking about those milk crates now, as she sat down on the sumptuous leather chair. She had never felt more confused in her life.

  Who decorated this room?

  She took a sip from her glass and carefully placed it on an envelope she found on the table, so as not to stain the lovely wood. Wayne’s laptop had been left open, but the screen was black. Beth saw that it was in ‘sleep’ mode. She tentatively touched one of the buttons and, after a brief moment, the password screen popped up. Beth stared at it thoughtfully and then typed in Wayne’s mother’s name.

  Access denied.

  Next, she tried his mother’s name with Wayne’s birth date added at the end of it.

  Access denied.

  She typed his mother’s name with Wayne’s birth date added at the beginning of it.

  Access denied.

  Beth proceeded to try every variation of his mother’s name that she could think of, and then she did the same with his father’s name—and then his favorite uncle’s name. In fact, she went through every member of his family—even his childhood dog—and then started working her way through his friends.

  Access denied.

  Beth leaned back in the plush leather chair and sighed. Knowing how sentimental Wayne was, she felt certain that he would use the name of someone he cared about. Glancing at the wall of pictures again, she finally typed in ‘e-l-i-z-a-b-e-t-h.’

  Even as she was typing the letters she knew that it was right. She could feel it.

  Access denied.

  Beth tried it again—and again—going through all the same variations she’d tried with the other names.

  Access denied.

  Beth picked up her glass and took several more sips of her vodka. Elizabeth…what?

  Then suddenly she laughed, because it occurred to her why typing her own name had felt so right. It wasn’t his password she was thinking of at all. It was hers.

  ‘Elizabethloveswayne.’

  She typed it in anyway, just for the hell of it—and gasped.


  She was in!

  She stared at the screen, momentarily stunned.

  Wayne had known her password, of course. It had always been ‘elizabethloveswayne’—or some variation of that (depending on how many characters were allowed), since she first fell in love with him, all those years ago in high school. She was not nearly as secretive as he was, and they had even joked about it. She had all kinds of derivatives of this password, such as ‘e-l-w,’ or its numeric equivalent, ‘3-5-9.’ The only time she deviated from this formula was when an additional character, such as a symbol was required, and in those cases, even Beth couldn’t remember what her password was.

  “What’s the last digit of my pin number again?” she would ask Wayne on the rare occasions when she went to the ATM. “Three, five, nine, what?”

  It occurred to her that Wayne must have wanted her to come into his secret room in the event of his death. He’d not only wanted it, he had planned for it. Why else would he use her password?

  “What did you want me to see, Wayne?” she asked out loud.

  Wayne’s desktop screen looked like any other desktop. The picture, which was of a beautiful Alaskan sky, was obscured by various icons of folders and programs. Beth clicked on the ‘Microsoft Outlook’ icon and began scrolling through his emails, most of which were advertisements and other ‘junk’ mail. She paused when she came across a message from Alaskan Airlines.

  It appeared to be a confirmation email—for a flight!

  “Click here to check-in online,” it read.

  Beth’s heart began thumping erratically as she scanned the email for details. It was definitely confirming a flight. The passenger was listed as ‘Wayne Timmons.’ It was a one-way ticket to Heathrow Airport—scheduled to depart on the day Wayne died!

  He was leaving me?

  Beth stared at the flight receipt, hardly able to believe what she was seeing. She felt like she’d been kicked in the guts.

  Heathrow Airport. That was in England. Why was Wayne going to England?

  Could he have been leaving her for another woman?

  No. Her mind recoiled at the thought. Wayne had stopped that years ago—when he stopped drinking.

  Hadn’t he?

  Beth reached for her glass, but something stopped her from taking a drink.

  You can’t keep lying to yourself.

  Putting down the glass, Beth began scrolling through Wayne’s emails more carefully this time. Sure enough, Wayne had received another email, around the same time, confirming a hotel reservation. Opening it, Beth saw that it was for a room at the Winchester Pub Hotel in Highgate, London.

  Beth stared at the email in astonishment. Who did Wayne know in Highgate, London? Aside from that one trip they’d taken to Nova Scotia on their honeymoon, neither of them had ever been out of the States.

  All kinds of strange possibilities were running through Beth’s mind, but one kept resurfacing again and again: he was leaving her for another woman.

  It all seemed so clear to her now; his secret room, his distractedness as of late—even his insistence that she spend a few days with his aunt in Minnesota. His aunt hadn’t needed a nurse. She had a touch of the flu; that was all. He’d made it sound like she was dying! Even his aunt had been surprised when she heard Beth was coming—although she was a lonely old woman who was particularly fond of Beth, so she had welcomed her with open arms. At the time, it hadn’t made sense. But now it did. Wayne wanted to get her out of way so that he could pack his things and leave.

  Beth continued to scroll through Wayne’s emails, but this time she was looking for something specific. She was looking for a woman.

  She scanned the emails determinedly, seeking any correspondence that might shed some light on the situation. She continued like this for a while, with her heart thumping wildly and her emotions suspended in a kind of limbo between shock and disbelief. All she needed was that one email to catapult her out of her current state of uncertainty, and into the slightly less unsettling position of outrage.

  But the email wasn’t to be found. She went to his ‘deleted emails’ folder and found that it was empty also. He must have permanently deleted all the incriminating emails.

  Or maybe he met the woman on one of those online dating sites.

  Beth minimized Wayne’s email account and clicked the internet icon. From there she went directly to his history. She saw at a glance that there were a number of sites that he visited regularly. She clicked on one, relieved to find that he was still signed in.

  Only it wasn’t a dating site. In fact, it was hard to say what kind of website it was, exactly. It was made up of little more than a collection of forum discussions for its members to participate in. She went to Wayne’s profile page and raised her eyebrows. For a personal avatar he had chosen the image of a Guy Fawkes’ mask, and his screen name was simply, ‘Anonymous.’

  Beth scrolled down the page. In his ‘personal description,’ Wayne had inserted this quote from the book of Revelations:

  “The inhabitants of the earth whose names have not been written in the book of life from the creation of the world will be astonished when they see the beast, because it once was, now is not, and yet will come.”

  “Beware the fourth trumpet and the woes that will follow!” he wrote in his ‘about me’ section.

  What on earth?

  Beth went back to the history tab and clicked on another of the websites her husband frequented. It was very similar to the first, only this time his screen-name was ‘Anonymous359.’ His comments were similar to those on the other site as well—mysterious, dark and doomsday-ish (though Beth noticed that he had listed his status as ‘married’).

  For the next few hours Beth visited all of the sites that were listed in Wayne’s history, only to find the eerie Guy Fawkes mask of ‘Anonymous’ on almost every profile. She noticed that many of the other members used the same avatar and handle. How did they tell one another apart?

  She’d started out on a quest to find the ‘other woman,’ but was distracted by this strange new side of Wayne that she’d never seen before. Why was he quoting the Bible and discussing the end of the world? He wasn’t even religious! He was usually so practical. Of the two of them, Beth was more likely to go off the deep end. Or so she thought.

  The websites themselves were the sort that Beth would call conspiracy driven. The people who visited them appeared to be mostly radicals and jokesters, but there were also plenty of nerdy types. There was, as well, the ever-present theme of religion verses science, which seemed to attract the most fanatical on both sides. The comments ranged from insulting to hilarious. Wayne’s remarks came across as a kind of protest, Beth noticed, and they seemed to be coined in such a way as to reach out to others like him. She also noticed that a number of his comments were directed against the government, particularly the Department of Defense.

  What had you gotten yourself into, Wayne?

  Nothing that she discovered on these websites shed any light on why he would be going to London.

  Beth opened a new window and typed in ‘Winchester Pub Hotel, Highgate, London.’ A picture popped up of a magnificent old building that looked every bit the quaint, British establishment that she’d expected from the name. She stared at it a moment, still finding it hard to believe. She pulled up the confirmation email again. It was definitely the same hotel. Wayne had booked it for an entire month—and paid in advance!

  Where did you get the money for this, Wayne?

  Beth picked up her glass and leaned back in Wayne’s expensive leather chair. Why had she come into his secret room? All this snooping had only stirred up more questions. If anything, she felt worse now. She swallowed the last of the liquid in her glass—which was mostly melted ice by this time—and poured herself another hefty shot of vodka.

  Hadn’t she always known that she would never be able to hold him? He was leagues above her in high school—a football star—while she was little more than a slightly above-average student. On her best
day, she might be called pretty, but really, she was merely ordinary compared to the other girls who were chasing him. If only she hadn’t agreed to tutor him, she might never have realized how sweet he was. That was what grabbed her. That he was the most handsome boy in school was not the only enticement. But to be so sweet and kind as well—Beth had fallen head over heels in love with him. She followed him around like a puppy. She would have gladly done all of his schoolwork for the rest of the year, but he was much too decent to take advantage of her that way. He liked her back then. He liked being her friend. But then she had to go and ruin it. Finding him drunk one night at a party, she’d seen her opportunity and taken it. She offered to drive him home, but ended up seducing him in his car instead. She hardly knew what she was doing—being a virgin—but that ceased to matter once he realized what she wanted. Then his instincts took over. And she became even more enthralled with him. These days they would’ve called her ‘obsessed.’ She couldn’t seem to help herself. And yet, she had the decency to feel the tiniest bit of shame when she broke the news to him a few weeks later that she was pregnant. It wasn’t until after they were married, when she had the miscarriage, that she realized her mistake.

  It occurred to her that she might have found love earlier in life if she’d just waited for the right person. She wasn’t unattractive, after all. In fact, when she wasn’t comparing herself to the prettiest girls in high school, she knew that she wasn’t half bad. She’d grown into the wavy, auburn-colored hair, as well as the perceptive green eyes that tended to leave an impression of insolence when she was much younger. Her nose was a tad wide, perhaps, but her lips were plump and a pretty shade of pink, even without lipstick. Her skin was rosy and fair—which she hated when tanning was in style, but which she was grateful for now. Yes, she could have held out for someone else.

  But she loved Wayne. Elizabeth had always loved Wayne.

  Beth knew early on in their marriage that he wasn’t happy. She turned to alcohol to help her cope, while Wayne turned to other women. He was always careful—never cruel. In fact, Beth suspected that he hated himself for it. But he was so young and handsome—she supposed he couldn’t help himself. Pretty soon he was drinking too, and suddenly they had something in common again. It almost seemed to draw them closer together—for a while.