Dawn nodded. “She’s standing there.” She pointed. And then she narrowed her eyes, because the woman faded and vanished, and there was nothing left but the framed photograph on the wall. She’d been standing right in front of it.
Dawn’s eyes widened. “Oh, my God,” she whispered. “That’s her.”
“It’s all right. Try asking her what she wants, Dawn.”
“No, no. She’s gone. She’s gone, but that is her. That woman in the photo.” She pointed.
Dr. Melrose looked at the photograph. It showed four people, two couples. Clearly the stylish woman in the incredible orange pumps standing in the circle of Dr. Melrose’s arm was his wife. Beside them stood another couple.
And then Dawn knew. She knew that what she had been sensing was absolute fact. And she couldn’t doubt it anymore, because there was a photograph to prove it. “That woman in the photo—she’s the woman who died in the fire, isn’t she? The one whose husband escaped from the mental hospital? Corbett—that was their name.”
The doctor nodded slowly. She expected him to comfort her, to tell her it wasn’t a mental illness and to suggest a dozen ways she might have glimpsed the woman’s face in the past, or heard the name, or somehow had her image implanted into her own subconscious. But he didn’t say anything. He sank back into his chair as if the wind had been knocked out of him. And she wondered why he was reacting so strongly when he’d been utterly unflappable up to now.
Dawn swallowed hard. “I’ve got to go.”
“Wait,” he said quickly. “Dawn, what did she say to you?”
“Nothing.” Dawn gathered up her jacket, her purse. “I told you, I can’t hear her.”
“But you know something. Something has occurred to you that hadn’t before. Hasn’t it?”
She frowned and realized that something had. The clear knowledge that she should not be talking to this man about any of this. The dead woman had appeared near him, too. Twice now. She should be talking to one person about this, and one person only. Jax.
And there was something else in her mind, something about a river.
She schooled her face into a mask of calm. “No. There’s nothing. It’s like she just popped up to startle me.” She frowned and looked again at the photo, squinting her eyes, making a show of it. “You know, that isn’t her at all. Not even close, actually. I just—I guess I panicked. I’m sorry, Dr. Melrose, I really want to stop now. This is upsetting. I just want to forget about all of it and hope it goes away.”
“If you really want to be rid of it, Dawn, we could try some medication.”
She blinked and looked at him. Medication? After one visit? Wasn’t that odd? Aloud, she said, “Yeah. Let’s try that.”
“I’ll phone you in a prescription,” he said. “Blackberry Pharmacy, if that’s all right. We’ll start easy, see how it works. Okay?”
“Thank you, Doctor. I honestly don’t know how I would have got through all this without you.”
He nodded, and she hurried toward the door. The doctor stood up and moved behind her, grabbing his own coat on the way. “I’ll walk you to your car,” he said.
She felt a cold chill down her nape as she started for the door. And the woman appeared there, blocking her way, shaking her head slowly, side to side.
What? Dawn thought desperately. Are you telling me this guy is dangerous? Jesus, did you wait long enough, do you think?
The woman looked down at Dawn’s coat pocket, and even as she did, Dawn heard the familiar bleat of her cell phone.
She snatched it up as if grabbing a life jacket. “Hello?”
“Hey, Dawn. It’s Bry. Where are you?”
The woman nodded. She nodded insistently.
“I’m with Dr. Ethan Melrose, Bry. I’m at his office, in Burlington, and I’m just heading out. He offered to walk me to my car. And then I’m coming straight home, no stops along the way. No one else I plan to see. There’s no one else here.”
“What the hell is going on, Dawn?”
“I’m leaving now. Oh, you’re that close? Good, I’ll see you in five minutes then. Tell you what? Why don’t you stay on the line with me the entire time?” She turned. “Bye, Dr. Melrose. Thanks for everything.”
He looked deflated, and maybe curious. But the woman in the doorway appeared relieved. She didn’t vanish, but moved aside, as if to tell Dawn it was okay for her to leave now.
Bryan was shooting questions at her. “Do you want me to call a cop or something? Are you in trouble?”
“Not yet. I’m walking to my car now.” She got out of the building and glanced back. The doctor hadn’t followed. She grabbed for her keys with her free hand, and fought not to break into a run. “He’s not following me. But I think he wanted to. I’m on to something here, Bry. Something to do with the escapee Jax is after. And the doc knows something, too, and he knows I know something, though I don’t know what it is. Yet.”
“You’re not making any sense, Dawn.”
“I know.” She got to the Jeep, hit the button to pop the locks, jumped in fast and hit the button again, locking it down. She glanced back, and the doc was standing in the open doorway. “Dammit, he’s coming.”
“Who? Melrose? Jesus—Dad! Dad, come here. I think Dawn’s in trouble.”
She jammed the key into the switch, twisted it and started the engine, then slammed the car into Reverse and swung around in a wide arc even as the doctor came toward the car, holding up a hand as if asking her to wait up a sec.
“You still okay?”
“I am. He won’t be if he doesn’t get the hell out of my way.” She jammed the car into Drive and gunned it. Tires spun. Squealing assaulted her ears and hot rubber her nostrils, and then it caught and lurched, and the good doctor ducked aside. The car exploded into the road, forcing another onto the shoulder to avoid hitting her, and then she ran the red light and turned toward home.
It was only as the little clinic vanished behind her that Dawn slowed down a little, and dared to breathe again.
She glanced to the side. The woman was sitting there in the passenger seat, and Dawn shrieked and almost went off the road.
“Jesus, Dawn, what is it?” Bryan cried into the phone. “Dawn!”
“I’m okay. I’m okay. He’s not following. I just—I was startled.”
“I’m coming down there.”
“No need. I’m on my way home.” The woman shook her head, side to side. “No? Okay. No, I’m not on my way home.”
“Where are you going?”
Dawn looked at the woman. She was so sad. There were tears welling in her pretty eyes, spilling over her blackened, charred cheek. She pointed, and sighing, Dawn took the corner she indicated. “I don’t know where I’m going yet, Bryan. But it looks like I’m headed downtown. Why don’t you start for Burlington? Keep the phone on and I’ll keep you posted as to where I end up.”
“I’ll be there. Be safe, Dawn. I need you to be okay.”
She smiled slowly. “I’m about the furthest thing from okay you’ve ever seen, Bry. And the furthest thing from what you need, too. But I need your help.”
“I’m on my way.”
* * *
Jax had River drop her off a block from the designated meeting place in Burlington, then watched him drive out of sight, and turned to walk along the sidewalk to the coffee house. It was a sunny day, and there was no snow sticking to anything the way there was out in Blackberry. It was always warmer in the city—even a tiny, small-town city like this one. The sun warmed the sidewalk and glared in her eyes, and Jax lowered her sunglasses from her head to her nose. She felt a little shiver of unease as she wondered what Victoria Melrose could want from her, but she knew from River that the two couples had been close. Maybe she wanted to help. Maybe she thought she knew something.
Maybe she was about to implicate her husband. That possibility was the most enticing of all. Despite River’s denials, Jax couldn’t help but suspect Ethan’s involvement in all of this. At the very least, she thought he was guil
ty of malpractice in treating his best friend. River was perfectly sane. She’d lived with the man for almost a week now, and he was fine. Functional, rational and fine. Clearly, he had not needed the vat of chemicals Ethan had been pumping into his bloodstream.
She looked ahead of her at the brick buildings and pretty storefronts, the benches on the sidewalk here and there with no other purpose than to give pedestrians a place to rest their feet. She decided she liked Vermont. It had a fresh, clean feeling—a healthy energy to it. She drew a deep lungful of the crisp air, spotted the coffee house across the street, looked both ways and stepped onto the crosswalk.
The car came out of nowhere.
Jax caught movement in her peripheral vision, and in the time it took her to jerk her head around fully, the vehicle was on her. A speeding glimpse of shining silver, and then the hood of the thing slammed her, launched her. She was airborne—then the impact. Her body crashing to the pavement. An explosion of pain rocked through her, with darkness close on its heels. She fought it, knew she was in trouble, had to stay awake.
Footsteps. Pain. Hands gripping her wrists. Pulling. Dragging her body over the blacktop. Oh, God, that hurt. She moaned, tried to speak, to shout, to pull free, but she was barely making any movements at all. She couldn’t see—there was hot blood stinging her eyes. And then there was more pain as her upper body was lifted, crammed and shoved inside. A door slammed. She couldn’t move. And finally, she lost her battle to cling to the light.
* * *
Dawn rounded a corner, and then stopped the car in the middle of a downtown Burlington street, staring straight ahead and not sure what she was seeing.
A block ahead of her was a car—a Silver Mercedes. Its back door was open, and Dawn swore she saw a pair of feet dangling from it. But then the person who stood at the car door, swathed in a parka with the hood up, bent down to shove the feet into the car, slammed the back door and got behind the wheel. Then the car spun around in the street and sped away.
Dawn stomped on the gas, and her car lurched ahead to where the other one had been. Items littered the road, and she stopped and got out, racing from one to the other. There was a cell phone. And a handgun.
“Jeez, what is this?” She picked up the phone and looked at its display, quickly hit a button. The screen read, “Your number is 315-555-8738.”
“Jax,” she whispered. “That’s Jax’s phone!”
A pedestrian shouted to another, “Did you see that? That car just ran some woman down like a dog!”
Dawn looked ahead, in the direction the Mercedes had gone, and knew that the dead woman had led her there. To help Jax. Dawn dived into her car again, tossing the cell phone and handgun onto the seat, jammed the Jeep into gear and took off after the Mercedes, hoping to God she could catch up to it again, and having no clue what she would do when she did.
As she drove, she grabbed her own cell phone and hit the button. “Bryan,” she told the phone.
It did the rest, and within a few seconds, Bryan was picking up.
“Dawn? What happened? We got cut off.”
“Yeah. Listen, something’s happened to Jax. I’m pretty sure I just saw her being stuffed into the back of a Mercedes. I’m following.”
“Wait a sec. Wait just a—Dawnie, are you okay?”
“Fine. Wait, I think I see them.” She pressed harder on the accelerator, got a little closer. “Yeah. Okay, I’ve got them in sight. I’m going to hang back so they don’t spot me.”
“Tell me exactly what happened,” Bryan said.
“God, there’s no time for all that now. Listen, I’m pretty sure someone in a Mercedes ran Jax down in the street, Bryan, then shoved her into their car and took off with her.”
“Where are you?”
“Just turned off East Main onto the highway—heading south.”
“I’m calling Frankie Parker. And I’m coming to back you up. Don’t get too close, Dawn. Don’t put yourself at risk.”
“I won’t.” The phone beeped, and she glanced at its screen. “I’m losing the signal, Bry.”
“Stay on as long as you can. Don’t hang—”
The rest didn’t come through. The phone’s digital panel told her there was no signal, and she flicked it off and dropped it onto the seat of the car. She sped past a man standing on the side of the highway, staring at her, and caught her breath as she realized it was Mordecai.
“You stay away from me!” she shouted. And when she looked in her rearview mirror, he was gone.
“Hold on, Jax,” she whispered. She owed the lady cop a lot. And this was her chance to pay a little bit of it back.
* * *
River showed a photo of his wife to the desk clerk at the Harrington Inn. It was a gorgeous little place. A huge log cabin, ten miles from the Burlington city limits, set on a piece of property that could pass for paradise. It had a pond, a little waterfall, a footbridge that spanned it and a water wheel in the stream that bisected the rolling green lawn. There were patches of snow here and there, few and far between, and a blotch or two of white on the shingled brown roof.
The inside was just as impressive, a double-decker dining room off the cathedral-ceilinged lobby. Wide curving staircase that wound up to the guest rooms, of which there couldn’t be more than a couple of dozen at most. An intimate hideaway.
His stomach knotted.
The manager smiled at him and shook his head. “I’m sorry, sir. I don’t know her. Is she missing?”
He held up a hand then, delaying River’s reply as he caught the eye of a woman in a maid’s uniform who’d been coming down the stairs. “Fresh linens in room six, Sylvie.”
“Sí, señor. Right away.” She moved behind the desk, glancing at the photo on the counter as she did, and doing a double take. She looked up at the manager, who met her eyes with a dismissive stare, and then turned back to River.
“You were saying?”
“The woman in the photo is dead,” River said. “Murdered.” His voice sounded just as lifeless. “More than a year ago. But it seems as if the wrong man was blamed for the crime. I’m looking into it.”
The manager appeared alarmed. “I assure you this has no connection to us, whatsoever.”
River shook his head slowly. “She was never here?”
“Never. I would remember her if she had been. I’ve been the manager here for seven years, and I assure you, I’ve never seen this woman.”
River blinked slowly, letting that settle in. It was a relief. Was it possible he’d been wrong, that his wife had not been having an affair with his best friend?
“Would you mind if I questioned some of your staff? Maybe someone else might remember—”
“I’m afraid I really can’t let you do that. Bad for business, you understand.”
Screw business, River thought, but he agreed. He’d find a way to question the employees here before the day was out. Whether this guy liked it or not.
He thanked the manager, took the photo and left the inn. Limping with the help of the wooden cane he’d picked up on the way there, he followed the winding stone path lined with holly bushes to the parking lot where he’d left Cassandra’s car.
“Señor! Señor, wait.”
He turned and saw a woman tugging a huge down-filled jacket around her even as she hurried toward him. It was, he realized, the housekeeper he’d glimpsed inside. She must have come out a different exit and cut around in front of him.
He moved toward her, and even before he reached her his stomach was sinking.
“That woman—the one in the photo—I saw her on the news after she died. It was tragic. Tragic. Miss Stephanie was kind to everyone. Always.”
He blinked, and tried not to let his throat close up. It was tough. “You knew her then?”
“Sí. She came here all the time. With a man who was not her husband.”
He closed his eyes slowly. “She was having an affair.”
“That’s why her husband murdered her. At least that’s wha
t I always thought. He must have found out about her and the doctor.”
River’s head came up fast. “The doctor?”
“Sí. Dr. Melrose. He’s a regular here. She wasn’t the first woman he brought. But he pays well, very well, for our discretion. And he’s a friend of Mr. Monteray—the manager.”
“Why did the manager lie?”
“This inn caters to the wealthy, señor. They count on us to keep their visits to ourselves.”
River thought that required a response, but he couldn’t get words to form, couldn’t make a sound. He lowered his head and tried to squeeze the tears back, not to let them show. They burned. His chest burned, his throat, too. The knowledge burned.
Stephanie and Ethan. God, his wife and his best friend. No question. Not anymore.
“I’m sorry,” the housekeeper said. “I just thought—telling the truth was the right thing to do. What Jesus would do.”
River glanced at the way she fingered the tiny gold cross she wore on a chain around her neck and he nodded. “Thank you. It was the right thing to do. I’m grateful.” He was choked and hoarse, but at least he managed to speak.
“Dios,” she whispered, pressing one hand to her chest as she stared at his face. “Are you the husband?”
“No.” He shook his head slowly. “No, just a friend of the family.” He turned and moved past her to the parking lot, got into Jax’s car, where Rex sat waiting, and took off. But a mile down the road, he had to pull off to the side, because his chest was heaving and he didn’t know how to deal with the overwhelming emotions that were flooding him right now. All he could think of was Cassandra. If he could only get to her, talk to her….
God, she had tried so hard to warn him off, to slow him down. And he was letting himself fall, anyway. It was way more than physical attraction—he knew that, and thought she did, as well. He’d tried not to feel anything. But he’d failed. And right now, the betrayal, the shock of learning what the last woman he had loved had done to him, was coloring everything. It was just as well Cassandra didn’t want any involvement. He sure as hell didn’t want it, either.
And yet he needed to talk to her. To hear her voice.
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