Forgotten (Shattered Sisters Book 2)

by Maggie Shayne

  Radley Ketchum.

  Ash fought his way to consciousness, a single, blood-chilling phrase ringing over and over again in his mind. "Where is the little woman?" Rad had asked.

  Ash had turned to grab his still-wet jacket. “Her place. And I’m glad you’re here, cause I could use a ride.”

  That was it. One large blow to the back of his head, and he’d gone down in a heap. He had no idea how long he’d been out. But he knew Rad had hit him.

  Joey. Rad was after Joey, and he'd blurted out where she was. Home. Alone.

  God, he couldn't believe it was Rad. Ash struggled to roll over, then pulled himself into a sitting position. His head was screaming. He was dizzy. He reached for the phone on the nightstand and brought it to his ear, dialing quickly. He asked the cop who answered at the station to put him through to Beverly, then waited until he heard her voice.

  "Bev...it's Ash."

  "You don't sound too good. Been drinking?"

  His voice was slurred, but not from alcohol. "The Slasher...it's Radley."

  Silence.

  "You hear me? It's Radley.”

  “No. it’s not.”

  “Then why did he just bash me over the head and take off?”

  “He what?”

  “He's on his way to Joey's house right now, and she's there alone. Get out there. Hurry."

  He slammed the phone down as she began shouting questions. Then he picked it up again and punched Joey's number. It rang endlessly, but no one answered.

  His heart was rapidly turning into a lump of stone in his chest. Either she'd changed her mind and was on her way back, or the storm had knocked the phones out...or he was too late.

  He got to his feet, still unsteady, staggered down the stairs and out into the rain. The car was gone, but in front of the shop beside the house, Ted's pickup sat. Ash loped crookedly to it, yanking open the door.

  No keys.

  Panic was trying to set in, but Ash fought it. He had to get to Joey. He ran to the shop's door, peered through the glass. Yes. The little key rack had one set dangling from it. Ash smashed the door in with his shoulder, grabbed the pickup key, and took off.

  "Why?" Her entire body quaked in fear as she saw the solemn determination in Rad Ketchum's eyes. "God, Radley, why?"

  "I have to protect her." He spoke softly, almost kindly. "I’m sorry, Joey. I like you, I really do. And Ash...Dammit, I didn’t want to hurt him.”

  "But you did, didn't you? Did you kill him? Is Ash dead?" The backs of her legs hit the bed, and she began edging sideways, toward its foot.

  “Amelia is sick. She’s so sick. It’s not her fault.”

  She didn't want to hear it. All she wanted to hear right now was that Ash wasn't dead, or dying. But she had to buy time, keep him from killing her until she could get away from him. “Ash said it was cancer. I’m really sorry Radley.”

  "Not cancer,” he said. “That’s what I told people to explain it away when she would act so....” He shook his head as if shaking away a memory. “Freaking quack psychiatrist said she was a psychopath. Dangerous. Wanted to lock her away. I couldn’t let that happen.” He glanced at the dagger in his hand and seemed to remember his mission. He focused on Joey again. "I can take care of her. I was doing fine until she realized I was drugging her to keep her calm. Docile. Bedridden, really, but it was better than letting her keep hunting. She fooled me though. Stopped taking the pills, got out of the house.”

  “And committed more murders,” she said softly.

  “I just have to watch her better, that’s all. I just have to watch her better."

  She said, “Amelia’s the Slasher.”

  He closed his eyes, shook his head. “She can’t help it. She doesn’t even know she does it, she just...hell, you just don’t understand."

  She shook her head rapidly. "I'm trying. Really I am."

  She’d edged around the bed, and was almost to the bathroom door now. Distract him, she thought. Distract him and then run.

  “She feels you inside her head,” he said. “She told me so. She wanted to kill you, but I wouldn’t let her. I really didn’t want it to come to this. I was gonna frame Bev Issacs for the murders. Put an end to all of this. But Amelia was right. You’re too close. You’re gonna figure it out and then they’ll take her away from me. I can’t live without her. I can’t.”

  He was looking at her, violence coming to life in his eyes.

  "W-Why do you think she does it, Radley?" Anything to buy some time, she thought. She’d come up with something. She’d find a way out of this.

  “She was a ward of the state as a little girl. Terribly abused by a foster parent. I think he’s the one she really wants to...hurt.”

  Joey nodded as if she understood. “But...there was a female victim. In Vegas....”

  “That wasn’t Amelia,” he said. “But she saw Amelia. I couldn’t let her tell the police.”

  Chills raced up Joey’s spine and over her nape. So he’d killed too. All to protect his beloved wife. Joey’s hand inched toward the door that led to the bathroom. Rad took another step toward her. His gaze caught the movement of her hand and he lashed out with the blade. She shoved the door open and ducked through it, slamming it behind her just in time. Then she sprinted across the bathroom, through its other door into the hall and down the stairs. She ran straight through the living room to the sliding-glass doors, shaking hard, her thigh screaming, her blood pounding in her temples, the echo of her pulse deafening in her ears. She bent low and tore the broom handle out of the track, then flicked the lock up, grasping the handle to pull the door open.

  Radley grabbed her from behind and spun her around so hard her head snapped back as if her neck were made of rubber. One hand caught her hair cruelly, tipping her head to expose her neck. The other lifted, clutching the dagger.

  She brought her knee up for all she was worth, heard the forced expulsion of air from his lungs when it connected, and then the thud of the dagger falling to the carpet. He doubled over. She dropped to her knees, her eyes never leaving Radley as she patted the carpet in search of the knife. Then her hand closed on its cool handle.

  Touching the weapon caused myriad faces to appear in her mind, and an instant later she realized they were the faces of the Amelia’s victims. Innocent, frightened faces. She reached behind her for the door. Rad straightened and took a step toward her. She swung the blade in a wide arc, felt it drag across his chest.

  Radley gasped and dropped to his knees in front of her, blood spreading over the front of his shirt. But he was still conscious, and she couldn't turn her back to try to make it through the door. She darted past him, running for the kitchen and those stairs, hoping to make it to the back door. But before she even reached the kitchen, she felt his arms come around her from behind in a brutal bear hug. He tackled her, knocking her to the carpet, squeezing the breath from her body, crushing her ribs, his weight adding to the burn in her thigh. She felt the half healed wound tear open, felt it bleed.

  He came down on top of her back, and she could feel the warmth of his blood soaking into her shirt. She swung backward with the dagger, her arm twisted so awkwardly it was painful. The blade sank into his side, and when he jerked instinctively away from the pain, she wrenched herself out from beneath him, scrambling to her feet.

  Horror like nothing she'd ever known surrounded her, pummeling her senses, and hysteria tried to take over. She fought it, taking a step back, waiting for a chance. Her stomach lurched as he made it up to his knees, reached down and jerked the blood-slick dagger from his side. He looked down at the blade, then his eyes rolled and he fell forward.

  She screamed and jerked away still farther, but her back met the wall. Radley didn't move. He lay motionless, blood steadily seeping into the carpet beneath him.

  Trembling so violently her muscles felt as if they'd tear free of her bones, Joey bent low, reached out. Slowly, slowly, her hand inched toward the still bloody one that held the dagger. She gripped the blood
y blade and pulled it from its owner's grasp.

  He didn't move. He was dead. She'd killed him. He wasn't moving. Why was she still so terrified?

  She lifted one foot to step past him, to move toward the door. Then she lifted the other. One more step and she would be beyond his reach. She made her legs move. He was behind her now. The door was only a few feet away.

  A warm, sticky hand closed around her ankle with crushing force. She fell forward at the sudden tug on her ankle, cracking her head on the corner of a table before she hit the floor, facedown. She felt the knife fly from her hand, saw it land on the carpet, leaving the outline of its shape, drawn in blood, on the pile.

  He was getting up on all fours. He was dragging himself forward. She had to move! She lifted her head, though it screamed in agony when she moved it. The blade lay on the floor ahead of her, and she stretched her arm to reach for it. But her fingers fell short of their goal, and then her mind slowly sank into the depths of a black quagmire.

  Through the sliding-glass door, Ash witnessed a nightmare. Joey was lying on the floor, facedown. Her back was covered in blood. She wasn't moving.

  Rad stood, hunched over, a grotesque, bloody mess. He stared at Joey and took a step forward.

  Ash leapt for the door, knowing it would be locked, intending to kick it in if necessary. But when he jerked on the handle, it slid open. He hurled himself at Radley, smashing him in the face twice, before the big man tottered backward and crashed to the floor like a felled redwood.

  Ash dropped to his knees beside him, noticing for the first time the blood pulsing from Rad’s side and wondering if it had been his punches or this wound that had brought the man down. The flow of blood slowed. Ash frowned and reached for Rad's neck. There was no pulse.

  Agony twisting inside him, he whirled toward Joey, and it hit him that what he was seeing was precisely the image she'd described to him. Except that she'd thought the woman on the floor, her back coated in blood, was Caroline. The truth was too much to take. She had foreseen her own murder. Not her sister's.

  "God, Joey, don't die. Not now."

  He bent to lift the T-shirt away from her back, hoping he could stop the bleeding and keep her alive until help arrived. Already he heard the sirens in the distance. He bent low, squinting in the poor light to see how bad her injuries were, but he saw only a coating of blood. No cuts. No slashes. No punctures. Not even a scratch.

  Frowning hard, he caught her shoulders and gently rolled her onto her back. "Joey? Joey, baby, can you hear me?" His eyes scanned her throat and found it smooth and untouched. Her forehead was gashed open and blood trickled over one side of her face, but it wasn't a mortal wound.

  The sirens grew piercing, and then flashing lights came through the still-open glass door, bathing Joey in color. "Joey?"

  Her eyes opened. She blinked. "Ash?"

  "You're okay..."

  "He didn't kill you," she muttered. "He didn't kill you." Tears coursed down her face as he gathered her to him. Her arms tightened around his neck and she clung to him, sobbing softly, words tumbling from her lips the way the tears fell from her eyes.

  Bev came in and started barking questions, but Ash held up a hand to silence her.

  “It’s Radley’s wife, Ash,” Joey said. “She’s the Slasher. She doesn’t have cancer at all. She’s a psychopath. He’s been drugging her to keep her bedridden, and trying to cover for her, protect her. That woman in Vegas was a witness. He killed her to protect Amelia.”

  “My God. All this time…and Amelia broke her hand,” Ash said slowly, rocking Joey in his arms.

  “What?”

  “Rad said Amelia took a fall, broke her hand. That’s why the killer switched from right handed, to left.” He closed his eyes, shaking his head.

  Bev spoke to an officer behind her. “Get someone out to the Ketchum residence. Bring Amelia Ketchum in for questioning. And give her a coffee or something so you can get a DNA sample from the cup. That’s going to clinch it.” She walked back outside, still giving orders.

  “Thank God you’re all right,” Ash said softly, looking Joey over once more to ensure himself that she was.

  “I am. I love you, Ash. I do. I don't care about the lies we've told each other or anything else. Just you. It tore me apart to lie to you. I hated it. But you're alive. You're alive and I love you. I love you."

  Her tears made it tough to understand all of her words, but Ash knew exactly what she was saying. He still couldn't believe she was all right. He'd thought her dead when he'd first seen her lying there, so still. He stood, scooping her up into his arms as the room filled with cops and an ambulance pulled into the driveway. He ignored the shouted questions, the restraining hands on his arm, and carried her outside, toward the rescue vehicle and the paramedics spilling out of it.

  He bent over her, kissing her again and again as he carried her to the ambulance. Then he lowered her to the stretcher the men had just pulled from the back of it and fell to his knees beside it.

  "You'll have to get out of the way, sir," one of the medics told him.

  "I'm not going anywhere except with my wife." He saw her eyes widen at his words, and he reached into his pocket, pulling out the ring she'd thrown away before. He caught her left hand in his and slipped it onto her finger. "I want you to keep wearing this, Joey."

  She frowned at him, ignoring the hands that fastened safety straps across her waist and took her pulse and probed at her injured forehead. "Ash?"

  "Just until I have a chance to buy you a real one." He pushed her hair off her face and kissed her lips softly. "I love you, you know. I'm not letting you go. You said you were my wife, and I'm holding you to it."

  Another vehicle came bounding up the driveway and skidded to a stop. Matthew Bradshaw, looking frantic, leapt out and ran toward the ambulance. "What's happened? Where's Joey? What's—? My God!" He spotted her, and raced toward her, stopping across from Ash, on her opposite side. Ash had never seen anyone so pale or terrified.

  "She's all right, Matt. Just a bump on the head," Ash assured him. "She's gonna be fine."

  Matthew leaned over her. ''Are you?"

  She nodded, lifted a hand and closed it around her father's. "I am," she told him firmly. With her other hand she clasped Ash's, her eyes brimming with love as she stared into his. "I am, Dad. We all are. We’re going to be from now on.”

  “Damn straight we are,” Ash told her. “This frog prince is more than ready for his happily ever after.”

  She smiled as he bent to press his lips to hers, and she knew that happily ever after was exactly what they would have.

  Sometimes, ESP was an awfully good thing to have.

  Epilogue

  * * *

  Joey, Toni, and Caroline sat side by side in lawn chairs near the riverbank, sipping fruity, girlie drinks and watching as Britt and Beth gave the men fishing lessons from the dock, nearby. Toni’s puppy, Ralph, took turns racing from one little girl to the other, and they were loving every minute of it.

  Joey and Ash had tied the knot as soon as she’d been released from the hospital—on a wild weekend in Vegas. Caroline and Ted were falling in love all over again, it seemed. And Toni was engaged to former FBI agent, Nick Manelli and planning a huge wedding next spring. They were buying a big Victorian near Ithaca, only an hour away.

  Joey didn’t think she’d ever been happier. And then Toni reached into the tote bag that hung from the back of her lawn chair, pulled out an envelope, and handed it to her.

  Joey frowned as she took it. “What’s this?”

  “Something that’s going to piss Caroline off, I’m afraid,” Toni said. She sent Caro a sheepish look. “Another sister you’re gonna share her with.”

  Caroline lifted her brows. “More Christmas and birthday gifts for my girls,” she replied. “What’s not to love about that?” Then she smiled and sat up in her chair. “Which one did you find, Toni?”

  Joey opened the envelope and pulled out a sheaf of papers as Toni s
aid, “Meet Caitlin Rossi, our sister.”

  A photo of a the most beautiful and sophisticated looking blonde Joey had ever seen, graced the top of the stack of papers. The woman in the photo was leaning against a red Porsche Carrera, holding a pair of designer sunglasses in one hand, and there was a mansion in the background. The shot could’ve been a cover shot for Billionaire’s Weekly.

  Joey stared at Caitlin, looking for a resemblance to herself or to Toni, and not finding any.

  And then suddenly she was behind the wheel of that very car. Her wipers beat against pounding rain and her headlights fought to cut through the pitch black of the night. A hairpin curves appeared as if from nowhere, and she realized with a gasp that she was going too fast. She jerked the wheel and pressed hard on the brake pedal.

  But nothing happened.

  The car careened toward sharp corner, and she yanked the wheel harder, stomping repeatedly on the useless brakes. She was still stomping as she crashed through the guardrails and sailed into the darkness. And then she began to plummet.

  Joey blinked. Her sisters were on either side of her, talking to her, touching her, shaking her. She didn’t know when she’d got up onto her feet, but she was standing. The black night and slashing rain had faded away, and she was once again in the bright sunshine of her own backyard, surrounded by her family.

  “What is it Joey? What happened?” Caroline asked.

  From the dock, Ash was looking her way.

  Joey blinked and said, “I think I just saw Caitlin.”

  “And?” Toni asked.

  “I think someone’s trying to kill her.”

  -THE END-

  Don’t miss the rest of the SHATTERED SISTERS SERIES.

  Continue reading for an excerpt from

  BROKEN.

  Broken

  * * *