“I had to. They were driving me crazy!” Arianrhod leaned back in her seat and let out a half laugh. “They started trying to get me to go out with them not long after they moved to the island. I kept telling them I wasn’t their girl, but they wouldn’t listen. Finally, I told them how I knew I wasn’t and what I knew about you.”
The cocktail waitress returned with the drinks. Faith curled her fingers around her glass, suddenly grateful for something to hold onto. She sipped the drink, her mind reeling. “You saw me in the vision,” she said slowly after a moment. “You knew what I looked like?”
“I knew you had long, dyed jet-black hair and blue eyes.”
Faith made a disbelieving sound. “Wow. I don’t know what I was expecting to hear, but that wasn’t it.”
“Come on,” David droned. “It’s bullshit. If you can really see the future, then what’s going to happen to me tomorrow?”
“It doesn’t work that way. I see only what the deities reveal to me. I—”
“There you are!”
Faith’s heart stopped beating at the sound of the female voice behind her. She jerked around, her jaw dropping as she pulled her attention up and locked gazes with Ashley. “Oh, my God.” Shock, alarm, and happiness surged through her system as she leapt to her feet and threw her arms around her best friend. “What are you doing here?” She gave Ashley a tight squeeze and then eased back to look at her. “Ash, how did you find me?”
Officer Dodds must have told her. She was certain John Cabelly had contacted the Chicago authorities by now. Dodds knew how close she and Ashley were and had likely called her as soon as he found out she had gone to Silver Island.
“You never called. I told you to call me by midnight after your date so I would know you were okay.” Her blue eyes glistened with tears. “I thought the lunatic had gotten hold of you or something. I kept calling the number you gave me and you wouldn’t answer. Then I remembered the name of that store you were in the last time we talked. I heard the attendant say it when she greeted another customer.”
She hadn’t thought Ashley had heard that. Not that it mattered now, she supposed. She wasn’t really hiding anymore. She was merely waiting and praying that John Cabelly would catch whoever had been after her.
“I guess there aren’t many stores with that name in the US, huh?”
“Only one that I found. And here I thought you had gone up north. Instead, you found yourself a beautiful island off the Gulf Coast. Girl, when you go on the run, you do it in style, don’t you?”
Faith laughed. “We have an extra sex on the beach. You can have it and I’ll introduce you to my new friends. Then I’ll catch you up on everything.” She glanced around, looking for an extra chair.
“Here,” Arianrhod said, getting to her feet. “Take my seat. I’ll have Cerridwen find me another one.”
“Oh, I couldn’t possibly—”
“I insist.” Arianrhod flashed Ashley a smile as she stepped away from the table.
Faith watched the woman make her way toward the bar and saw her pull her cell phone from the pocket of her long, flowing skirt.
“Hi, I’m Ashley.”
Ashley’s voice pulled Faith’s attention back to the table as her friend exchanged introductions with David.
Faith reached across the table, moved Arianrhod’s drink, and slid the extra glass toward Ashley. “When did you get here?”
Ashley lifted the glass and sipped. “A few hours ago. I had no idea how I was going to find you. I tried to put myself in your shoes. If I were already here on a gorgeous island like this, what would I be doing with my time? The beach was the first thing that popped in my mind, so that’s where I started. I was about to give up and move further inland when I spotted you walking here. I yelled, but I guess you didn’t hear me.”
“Arianrhod and I were talking. I wasn’t paying attention to anything except our conversation.”
Ashley slid a look out of the corner of her eyes toward David. “Is this the guy you had a date with the other night?”
Faith giggled. “No, he’s—”
She snapped her mouth closed and her pulse started to pound in her ears loudly enough to drown out the noise beneath the thatch-covered roof of the bar as her attention shifted over Ashley’s head and locked on the sheriff and the man walking beside him on a direct line toward her.
“Dee? What’s wrong?” Ashley turned in her seat and followed her gaze.
Faith saw her friend stiffen and watched as apology filled her eyes as she turned to look back at her. “I’m sorry, Dee. Officer Dodds must have been following me. I must have led him here.”
She started to tell her it was okay when the words Sheriff John Cabelly spoke as he reached the table changed her life forever.
“Ashley Valentine, you’re under arrest for arson and murder.”
* * * *
Faith couldn’t feel anything. It was as if every fiber of her soul had been paralyzed the moment the sheriff arrested Ashley. Ashley! She stood in front of the window behind the desk in the sheriff’s office, staring unseeingly at the view of the main drag. The sheriff had led her in here once they had reached the department. She knew Blaze and Kalvin were in the room with her, though they were giving her space. The sheriff and Officer Dodds were somewhere else inside the building, likely locking Ashley behind bars.
She still couldn’t believe it. Ashley was her best friend, her confidant, someone she had grown to love as much as she would a sister. How could it have been Ashley all these months?
An arm slid around her waist, drawing her close. She didn’t look to see who it belonged to. She knew Blaze’s touch and even felt Kalvin’s presence as he closed in on her other side.
“What can we do, darlin’?”
Turn back the clock. Tell me this isn’t happening. Make it not real.
Kalvin put an arm around her above Blaze’s on her waist. “Faith, talk to us, baby.”
“It doesn’t make sense,” she said, more to herself than them. She turned and their arms fell away as she moved out of their embrace. She needed to move, to pace as the impossibilities twisted with what was apparently the truth. She walked around the desk and treaded the small office floor the same way she’d done when she had told the sheriff, Blaze, and Kalvin about the fires yesterday. Had it really only been yesterday? Everything had been happening so fast since she came to the island that the days had started to run together.
“You’re in shock, sweet thing,” Blaze said. “You’re hurtin’, too.”
“No.” She reached the wall, pivoted, and started back the way she’d came. “Yes, I’m shocked and hurt, but that’s not what doesn’t make sense.” She folded her arms beneath her breasts as she paced, her mind reeling. “When the sheriff arrested her at the bar, he said he was charging her with arson and murder.” She stopped and turned to look at the men. “I’ve only know Ashley a couple of years, but I know she’s lived in Illinois her whole life. She couldn’t have been the one that started the fire at my parents’ house in Montana.”
The door opened behind her and she spun around as the sheriff and Officer Dodds came into the room.
“Where is Ashley?”
“One of my deputies is putting her in a cell,” the sheriff answered. “You can see her if you want, but Officer Dodds and I need to talk to you about a few things first.”
“You’ve got the wrong person,” she told them. “Ashley couldn’t have set those fires and I didn’t even know her until a couple of years ago so there’s no way she had anything to do with the death of my parents.”
“Slow down, Miss Cassidy,” Officer Dodds said. “We’re certain we have the right person.”
“We figured it out shortly before Arianrhod called Kalvin, telling him she mysteriously showed up at Ménage a Drink,” the sheriff added.
That’s what Arianrhod had been doing when she’d gotten her phone out as she’d left Faith with Ashley and David back at Ménage a Drink. It hadn’t been until they wer
e on their way to the sheriff’s department that Arianrhod had confessed to calling Kalvin about Ashley’s sudden appearance. Arianrhod had also told Kalvin to send the sheriff.
“How?” Faith put a hand over her forehead. All the confusion had brought on a massive headache. “I don’t understand.”
“Do you want to sit down and—”
She shook her head and interrupted the officer. “I don’t want to sit. You have been investigating the fires since they happened. You didn’t have anyone on your suspect list besides me. I know you checked Ashley’s alibis and background and everything when it happened.”
“I did.” The officer nodded. “Then I started finding holes in her story I didn’t tell you about.”
Faith gaped at him. “What?”
“I didn’t see most of them until after you left Chicago. The letter was what really raised my suspicions. It prompted me to dig deeper into her background.” The officer exchanged a look with the sheriff. “Does the name Cleo Valentine mean anything to you, Miss Cassidy?”
“Of course, she’s Ashley’s mother. She passed away a couple of years before Ashley and I met.”
The officer was already shaking his head. “Cleo Valentine is alive and well and living in Englewood.”
Englewood was one of the worst neighborhoods in Chicago.
“There’s got to be some mistake,” she whispered.
“I’m afraid not, Faith,” the sheriff said, his expression grim. “There’s more. Ashley’s father was Wilson Cassidy.”
The name hit her lick a punch in the gut. She stared at the sheriff, certain he had lost his mind. “My father never had any other children. He and my mother were high school sweethearts who married right after graduation. They were together nearly their whole lives and I was the only child they ever had.”
“Your father made a business trip to Chicago twenty-seven years ago,” the officer told her, compassion filling his voice. “According to Cleo Valentine, they met at a restaurant where she was working as a waitress. They engaged in a short affair while your father was in town and she never heard from him again. Six weeks after he returned to Montana, she discovered she was pregnant. She managed to contact him once and told him about Ashley. Your father paid her one hundred thousand dollars to keep quiet and never contact him again.”
Dumbstruck, Faith stared at him. “You’re saying Ashley is my sister?”
“Cleo Valentine admitted to telling Ashley who her father was and that she’d taken money from him. She used the money to raise Ashley. When Ashley turned eighteen, she wiped out her mother’s bank account and disappeared. Cleo Valentine has never recovered.”
“She tracked my father down, found out where he lived in Montana, and set fire to the house?”
“And made it look like you did it,” the officer added. “I spoke with the fire investigator who handled that case. He’s retired now, but he admitted to falsifying the final report. He said every bit of evidence he uncovered pointed to you, but he refused to believe it out of respect for your father. Apparently, your father was a very prestigious man in that town.”
“He was. Everyone loved and respected him and my mother.”
“The fire investigator thought he was covering for you. What he didn’t know was he was really covering for Ashley Valentine.”
“Why did she wait ten years to start the fires in Chicago? Why pretend to be my friend? Why not kill me at the first opportunity like she did my parents?”
“That’s something you will have to ask her,” the officer said. “She has confessed to the fires, but she didn’t give us any explanations.”
“I would like to talk to her now, if I may.”
“I’ll take you to her.” The sheriff turned and gestured for her to leave the office first.
“Faith, do you want us to come with you?” Kalvin asked.
She’d forgotten he and Blaze were in the room. She attempted to smile at him as she shook her head, but couldn’t seem to get her lips to curve. “This is something I need to do alone.”
“We’ll be waitin’ for you out here, darlin’.”
She nodded once and left the office.
“This way,” the sheriff directed her as they stepped into the hall.
She let him take the lead, following as he guided her down the hall, around the corner, and into another room containing two jail cells. Ashley was locked inside one.
“I’ll be right outside the door if you need anything,” the sheriff told her softly.
She waited for him to leave the room before stepped closer to the cell where Ashley was detained. The sheer venom that darkened Ashley’s blue eyes when she looked at her turned her blood to ice.
“You’re one hell of an actress, aren’t you?”
Ashley’s smile was menacing. “I guess we both got an artistic talent.”
Faith gaped at her. “Lying, deceit, murder, arson, those are not an artistic talent, Ashley. They’re signs of insanity.”
“If I’m insane it’s because of you,” Ashley spat.
“Why?” Of all the questions taking up space in her mind, that one seemed the most important.
“To make you pay, bitch.”
“For what? I never did anything to you. I didn’t even know you until two years ago, Ash. God, if you had told me you were my sister, I would’ve—”
“What? Turn me away just like your fuckhead father did?” Ashely screamed. “You had everything. Everything! I grew up in one shithole dive of an apartment after another, eating TV dinners and sandwiches, and wearing secondhand clothes, while you were living in that lavish house with everything money could buy.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t know why my father—”
“Dear sweet daddy didn’t want an illegitimate child ruining his sweetheart marriage and precious reputation,” Ashley said dryly. “That’s why he paid off my mother and the stupid bitch took it. A measly hundred thousand. Really? A measly hundred million wouldn’t have been more than I deserved. I would’ve gotten it, too, if you had died in that damn fire I set ten years ago. I wanted all of you dead. There wouldn’t have been anyone to inherit all that money if you had died, too.” She shook her head. “I fucked up though. I didn’t set the fire right. I got in too much of a hurry.”
“Why wait ten years before trying again? I let you into my life. You could’ve killed me at any time. Why the charade?”
“It wasn’t a charade. I decided your death wouldn’t be enough for me. I wanted you to pay, to suffer. I wanted you to know what it felt like to live with nothing. Getting close to you like I did, fooling you and watching you eat all the bullshit I spooned out to you…” She threw her head back and laughed. “God, it was fantastic! Then you had to up and leave town. You came to this place where you’ve got the whole damn island behind you and two men falling over their dicks to make sure you’re happy and safe. You’ve always gotten everything, while I’ve ended up with nothing!”
Faith’s eyes filled with tears. “I might have found Kalvin and Blaze, but I can promise you that you got what you wanted. I am suffering. I don’t have anything left. You did take everything from me, including the one true friend I thought I had.”
Chapter Eight
Kalvin pored over the lab report when it came in from the mainland five days later. He sat at the desk in the chief’s office at the firehouse, staring at the results, and wishing to God they made sense. Once again, he found himself with a truckload of questions and facts that weren’t jiving.
Ashley Valentine had been returned to Chicago to face charges for her crimes committed there. He didn’t understand enough about police procedurals to know what would happen from there, but he suspected she would be tried in Montana for the fire and murder of Faith’s parents before she was brought up on the charges for the fire on the island. The woman had confessed to everything, the arson, the murders…everything except the fire in suite three fourteen.
“If you didn’t fucking do it, who the hell did?”
It wasn’t just Ashley Valentine’s lack of a confession that had started to make him wonder if they had their arsonist. According to the report in front of him, the accelerant used in the fire that had occurred inside suite three-fourteen had been gasoline, not acetone. After three structure fires and a car fire, why would the woman change her MO?
A knock at the door interrupted his thoughts. Kalvin lifted his head, bid the visitor to enter, and sat straighter when John Cabelly walked into the office.
“Nichols said I would find you in here.”
“The report came back from the lab on the mainland,” Kalvin told the sheriff. “The MO doesn’t match.”
The sheriff slid the notebook in his hand across the top of the desk. “I’m not surprised. Check that out and tell me what you see.”
Kalvin made a quick scan of the page and then started back at the top, noting he was looking at the logbook Kimberly Bevel kept at the Welcome Center at the docks. The page was divided into columns with names and a date and time stamp at the top. He read each name, waiting for whatever he was looking for to jump out at him. When he found it, his attention jumped back to the top once more, this time to the date and time stamp.
“According to this, Ashley Valentine didn’t arrive on the island until two days after the fire at the resort.”
John Cabelly nodded. “The same day she was arrested.”
“She couldn’t have started the fire if she wasn’t on the island.”
“No, she couldn’t have.”
“Then who the fuck did?” Damn it, there couldn’t be someone else on the island with a vendetta against Faith, could there?
“Right now, your friend David Goldman has shot to the top of my suspect list.”
* * * *
Faith opened the door of the cottage and stepped aside to let Arianrhod enter first. “Thanks for helping me carry this stuff home.” She left the door open as she followed Arianrhod to the kitchen. Her fingers ached from being curled around the handles of the bags she carried for so long. She set them on the counter, fisting and unfisting her hands to get the circulation moving in the again. “I have the keys to Blaze’s truck and Kalvin’s keys are around here somewhere. I guess next time I hit the market I should remember to take a car.”
Safe and Burning with Ecstasy [The Heroes of Silver Island 3] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) Page 16