by Maggie James
Deception Wears Many Faces
Maggie James
Contents
Also By Maggie James
Praise For Maggie James
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Epilogue
A Note from Bloodhound Books:
Copyright © 2018 Maggie James
The right of Maggie James to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in 2018 by Bloodhound Books
Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publisher or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
www.bloodhoundbooks.com
Also By Maggie James
The Second Captive
Guilty Innocence
Sister , Psychopath
Blackwater Lake: A Psychological Suspense Novella
Non Fiction
Write Your Novel! From Getting Started to First Draft
Praise For Maggie James
"For me, this book was a gritty and intense read and the characters work so well together in this book, plenty of twists and turns and an unexpected ending too..." Donna Maguire - Donnas Book Blog
"Great psychological suspense from Maggie James. A recommended read." Mark Tilbury - Author
"A truly electrifying read that delivered twist after twist and kept me turning the pages." Babus Ahmed - Goodreads
"A thoughtful and clever story with plenty to get your psychotic teeth into." Colin Garrow - Goodreads
"Overall a very twisty tale with a complicated web of relationships." Lorna Cassidy - On The Shelf Reviews
"The plot here is hard hitting with a few twists you won’t see coming." Joanne Robertson - My Chestnut Reading Tree
"The plot is outstanding, highly recommended for suspense, action and thrilling entertainment. Pure Magic Maggie James!" Susan Hampson - Books From Dusk Till Dawn
"There are twists and turns and unexpected events that build on the intrigue and suspense to such a level that you just keep turning page after page." Jill Burkinshaw - Books n All
"I thought it was a genuine page turner and the kind of book that is right up my street – I loved it!!!" Donna Maguire - Donnas Book Blog
"An excellent ending (one of my big must have’s to achieved 5*) , a brilliant plot, served with empathy and guts to achieve a thought provoking read." Misfits Farm - Goodreads
"A great psychological thriller from Maggie James that I highly recommend." Deanna - Goodreads
"WOW!! Seriously WOW!! I just loved The Second Captive!" Laura Turner - PageTurnersNook
"...The Second Captive by Maggie James is an excellent psychological thriller that will appeal to many readers." Rebecca Burton - If Only I Could Read Faster
"...told from different viewpoints a gripping hearwrenching tale...that you won't be able to put down till the last page is turned ..." Livia Sbarbaro - Goodreads
Prologue
My mobile pinged in my handbag, causing my heart to pound, my pulse to skyrocket. With shaking fingers, I pulled out my phone.
A text message. Hello, friend. Long time no talk.
I forced myself not to respond. He’d soon tire of goading me if I ignored him, surely?
Another arrived after a few minutes. Aw, have I upset you? You’re not my friend anymore?
I dug my nails into my palms, my hands clenched into tight fists.
A third ping. Remember what I told you. You don’t want to piss me off. I’m not always Mr Nice Guy.
After my phone beeped a fourth time I hurried to the drinks cabinet and poured myself a whisky. Fuelled by the courage it provided, I read the latest message.
What, no more threats about the police? You’re no fun these days.
I wouldn’t reply. No way in hell.
I know lots about you, friend. More than you think.
Screw not replying. OK, fucker. So what’s my name?
You’ve got me there, I admit. But I’m working on it, trust me. My shortlist of possibilities is down to two.
A final ping.
And when I find you, and I will, you’re dead, bitch.
1
SEVERAL WEEKS EARLIER
‘Can you get the next available flight? She’s conscious, but refusing to talk.’ Exhaustion hovered in my mother’s voice, along with terror. I clutched my mobile, my palm sweaty, the surrounding air hard to breathe.
‘I’ll come right away. Once I’ve landed, I’ll call you.’ My brain whirred with a list of things to do: pack a bag, lock up the gallery, make the hour-long drive to the airport. I’d go standby for the next plane out. Thank God the UK was only a short flight from Spain.
‘I’m worried sick about her, Lydia.’ Mum’s last words before we wrapped up the call. She wasn’t the only one.
I glanced at the clock on the kitchen wall: 8.30am. The temperature was already scorching its way to dizzy heights, the August sun a fierce blaze over the hills. Sweat dampened my body - and not just from the heat. I tried to reassure myself. With luck I would be in Bristol by the afternoon. Despite the two years I’d lived in this sleepy coastal town, I still considered good old Brizzle to be my home. I didn’t care to examine what that said about my new life in Spain.
Right then my old existence was calling - no, demanding - me to return.
I took twenty minutes to pack. By the time I shut up the gallery and walked to my car, it was just after nine. With any luck, I’d be airborne by midday.
My chest clenched tight with tension all the time I drove, made worse by the broken air-conditioning in my car. I dragged in lungfuls of hot sticky air in an attempt to calm myself, my brain assessing the facts. My sister, from what our mother had told me, had tried to kill herself. Again. First she’d phoned Mum, saying she no longer wanted to live. Then she’d shut herself in her bedroom and lain down with a half-full bottle of antidepressants in her hand, a glass of water on her bedside cabinet. By the time she’d finished, both were empty. Her life had been saved by our mother, who had driven over straightaway, letting herself in with the key she possessed. She’d discovered my sister unconscious and phoned at once for an ambulance. I closed my eyes, imagining her opening the door to Ellie’s bedroom, calling her name, terror in her voice. The horror on finding her daughter’s limp body, an empty pill bottle by her side. Not the first time Mum had faced such an awful scenario.
Ellie, oh Ellie, I thought, as I turned into the airport car park. Would my sister ever slay her demons?
To my relief
, I grabbed a seat on the eleven forty flight. That gave me a little over an hour after I’d checked in to get my head in order. I pulled out my mobile.
Caroline answered on the first ring.
‘Hey, Lyddie.’ Mum was the only person who called me Lydia. Or referred to Ellie as Eleanor. ‘It’s great to hear from you.’
She sounded surprised, as well she might. I didn’t normally phone her. Most of our communication took place via Skype or text.
‘How are you?’ she continued. ‘Everything okay your end?’
‘I’m fine. But Ellie’s not. I’m flying back to Bristol today.’
‘Has something happened? Is she all right?’
My throat closed, refusing to say the words. I shoved a finger in one ear to block out the thrum of noise around me.
‘Lyddie?’
‘She ...’ The tears I’d been choking back all morning flooded my eyes.
‘Has she ... oh, God. I can’t think how best to ask this. Did she try to kill herself again?’
I swallowed hard. From somewhere, I found the words I needed. ‘Yes. She’s back at the mental health unit at Southmead Hospital. Medicated and undergoing psychiatric evaluation.’ My voice rose high, cracked a little, as I spoke. Damn it, I’d hoped I was holding everything together, until Caroline’s concern sounded in my ear.
‘But she was doing so well, wasn’t she? Mentally, I mean.’
‘We all thought so.’ A tear slid down my cheek. ‘Seems we were wrong.’
‘I’m so sorry, lovey.’
Such empathy in her voice. Caroline Maston and I had been best friends for twenty years. She was as much my sister as Ellie was.
‘Can we meet up?’ I asked. ‘Tonight, if possible?’
We arranged I’d go to her house after I’d visited Ellie in Southmead and spent some time with Mum. ‘No idea when that’ll be,’ I told her. ‘I’ll call you later.’
My plane landed in Bristol to a welcome of steady drizzle. The contrast with my life in sun-soaked Spain couldn’t have been starker. Once I’d collected my luggage, I rented a car at the airport and drove straight to Southmead Hospital, breaking the speed limit most of the way. Four years had passed since I’d last visited the psychiatric unit there, an overdose by Ellie the cause back then too. Before that, she had tried to hang herself in our family garage. Three suicide attempts: the first at eighteen, the next at twenty-one, and this, the most recent, at twenty-five. The motive for her latest one seemed obvious, even if my sister hadn’t yet voiced the words. Pain rose within me, fierce enough to be almost physical, as my thoughts skated over the events of seven years ago. The night a phone call changed everything for the Hunter family.
Don’t go there, I warned myself. You need to be strong, for Ellie’s sake.
Once I entered the psychiatric unit, the twin odours of disinfectant and bleach hit my nostrils, along with the chilly temperature against my skin. Mum was waiting for me by the door to the locked ward when I arrived. Her complexion was dough-like in its pallor, the skin around her eyes creased with worry. She had aged five years in the three months since my last visit home. Mostly in the past twenty-four hours, no doubt.
‘Lydia,’ she murmured, before she pulled me into a hug. Her body was stiff with worry against mine. ‘Thank God you’re here.’ Her voice shook, and tears pooled in her eyes. With one hand, she brushed them away, the movement angry, hurried, and reproach squeezed my heart. I should have stayed in England, not left her to cope with Ellie on her own. But my sister had seemed so positive, as though she’d turned the proverbial corner. She’d even mentioned she’d met a man, that they were dating, when we’d last spoken on the phone. A monumental step forward for her. No wonder I’d assumed she was on the road to recovery.
‘How is she?’ I asked.
Mum shook her head. ‘About the same.’
‘Still not talking?’
‘She keeps asking for you. Apart from that, not a word.’
At that moment a doctor appeared. ‘Mrs Hunter,’ he said, his gaze on my mother. He flashed her a perfunctory smile, then another at me. ‘And you must be Lydia.’ He tapped in the entrance code to the ward, Mum and I following him through the double doors. To my left, I glimpsed my sister, lying in bed, her back to us. She made no attempt to turn around when we entered.
‘We can talk later, after you’ve had a chance to speak with her,’ the doctor said. ‘I’ll leave you to it.’
I walked around the bed, leaving Mum on the other side. Ellie’s appearance shocked me, even though I didn’t expect bright eyes and rosy cheeks. I’d seen her after her two earlier suicide attempts and I knew she’d look rough. Her blonde hair was a tangle of pale straw, her skin dry and sallow. Dark bruises of exhaustion sat under her lower lids. She seemed shrunken, curled in on herself, as if to occupy the least amount of space possible. I’d always felt something of an Amazon beside my petite sister - an impression heightened by the small figure under the bedsheets. What I wasn’t prepared for were her eyes. They were blank, a dark nothingness in her soft brown irises. Fear squeezed my lungs, wouldn’t let go.
I knelt before her, took her hands in mine. ‘Why, Ellie?’ As if I didn’t already know.
She dropped her gaze, for which I was thankful. That deadpan expression scared me to the bone. In my peripheral vision, I saw Mum draw up a chair beside her daughter, a sigh of weariness escaping her. She knew better than to interrupt, aware my sister might talk more readily to me than to her. If Ellie talked at all, that was.
My fingers slid over her clammy hands, noting the contrast between them and mine. Over the years she’d chewed her nails into tiny nubs, the skin around them raw and ragged.
‘Talk to me.’ I wouldn’t mention the car crash, not yet. The words would have lashed my sister like a whip. Wasn’t she already in enough torment? Nevertheless, the image of Alyson’s bloodied body forced its way into my mind.
‘Please, Ellie.’
She didn’t say a word. A thick cloak of tension hung around us, my sister’s eyes shut tight, her defences locked in place. I shot a glance at Mum. Her mouth was thin, the lips pressed together, as if to keep in check the multitude of questions that yearned to burst forth. Thank God. She wasn’t always so restrained.
‘I’m sorry, Els.’ A sob escaped me. ‘I wish I’d been there for you.’ Still no response. Ellie remained silent, closed off. My one consolation was that neither Dad nor any of her grandparents were alive to witness her in a psychiatric unit again.
Despite my efforts, she didn’t respond or even acknowledge my presence. After our allotted visiting time was up, we left her curled in her foetal huddle. Our mission was to find her doctor.
When we did, I didn’t waste my energy on preamble. ‘How long must she stay here?’
What he told us wasn’t reassuring. Given Ellie’s history of suicide attempts, her refusal to talk, she’d need to remain at the unit for the foreseeable future, until she no longer posed a threat to herself.
‘I’m heading your way,’ I told Caroline over the phone, after I’d kissed Mum goodbye.
‘I’ll rustle up some chocolate and crack open the wine. I’m guessing you could murder a drink.’
‘Amen to that.’ In the background, I heard movement, the sound of something being dropped. A muffled curse, the voice male. I stiffened. ‘Richie’s not with you, is he?’
A slight pause. ‘Don’t worry, lovey. He’s on his way home. He’ll be gone before you get here.’
Thank God. I was too shattered to deal with Caroline’s brother. Or the bittersweet memories he evoked.
Within half an hour, I’d parked my rental car outside my friend’s house in Bishopston. As I walked towards the front door it opened and Caroline appeared in the gap. She rushed towards me, engulfing me in a hug. Always the demonstrative one out of the two of us, Caroline with her easy-going warmth posed a contrast to my typically British reserve. For a long moment, I soaked in her embrace, allowing her arms to wash away my sister’s
blank gaze. Then, all too soon, the horror of it swept over me again.
She pulled back to look at me, and I drank her in. She was my opposite in so many ways, more like Ellie than me. A pixie to my Amazon, the strength of her personality belied by her physical fragility. Our only similarities lay in our chocolate-hued eyes and wayward hair, although hers was a dark caramel, mine more honey-toned.
‘You’re the spitting image of my friend Lyddie.’ She flashed me a grin. ‘That miserable cow deserted me for Spain, though.’
I laughed. ‘Driven there by your nonsense, you daft bat.’
‘I miss you so much.’ Affection shone from her eyes. ‘It’s fecking good to see you.’ Although Bristolian to the core, Caroline had acquired a few speech tics from her Irish grandfather. ‘You’re here now, though, so you are. Come in, lovey.’
I followed her into her living room, noting the bottle of Malbec on the coffee table, the two glasses. Our houses were as dissimilar as our personalities; Caroline’s an explosion of African wood and Oriental textiles in shades of brown, blue and red, a sharp contrast to my penchant for furnishings that came in white and silver from Ikea. I poured us both a generous measure of wine, knocking mine back in one go. Then I refilled my glass.