Nightfall

by Anne Stuart

  She figured she had three choices. She could call the police and have them hunt him down before he got too far. She could call Mabry and Sean, and warn them. Or she could go after him herself.

  Mark Bellingham’s apartment was twenty blocks north, and Cass didn’t hesitate. She should have known he wouldn’t be surprised to see her. He buzzed her up without question, and when he opened the door, he held out a cup of coffee. “He’s gone, hasn’t he?”

  She ignored the coffee. “Do you have any idea how much money my father posted for him?”

  “He’ll be back.”

  “What makes you think that? What’s he got to come back for?”

  “Nothing,” Mark said, closing the door behind her. He was obviously fresh from the shower, his sandy blond hair standing on end, a velour robe around his damp body. “He’s been less than honest with me, but I know he’ll be back. Six days. I’ve been ordered to keep your father away from the apartment—the fewer people who know he’s gone, the better. You didn’t call Sean, did you?”

  “I thought I’d better check with you first.”

  “Good girl,” he murmured. “Come on, Cassidy, drink some coffee. We were friends last night—you trusted me. Don’t look at me like I’m some sort of serial killer.”

  “Like Richard.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Do you believe it? Of course you don’t—you wouldn’t have helped a serial murderer escape. You did help him, didn’t you?”

  “What makes you think that?” he said warily.

  “Don’t be cagey now. You’ve practically admitted it already. He needed help—someone must have gotten him the credit cards in a phony name. What else did you do for him?”

  He threw himself on a white cotton sofa, staring at her with uncomfortably discerning eyes.

  “The question is, what did you do for him? There’s a mark on the side of your neck, one that’s fairly easy to recognize. It wasn’t there when I left your apartment last night.”

  Her hand reached up, instinctively, and then dropped again. “I don’t think that’s any of your business.”

  “Unfortunately it doesn’t seem to be,” he admitted with clear regret. “I didn’t realize I needed to warn you about him again. I thought you had more sense than to get involved with a man like Richard. He’s dangerous, far more dangerous than you can imagine.”

  “Then why did you help him?”

  “He’s my friend,” Mark said simply. “Besides, he’s not dangerous to me. It’s women who are the problem. He draws them to him, like some goddamned high-powered magnet, and they’re willing to lay down their lives for him.”

  “Do they have to?”

  He didn’t say anything for a moment, and when he spoke his voice was angry. “Go back to the apartment, Cassie. He’ll be back. In six days. When he returns you can ask him where he’s been, and he just might tell you. It’s not my place to divulge Richard’s secrets.”

  “And if he doesn’t come back?”

  Mark sighed. “Maybe we’d all be better off.”

  Cassidy took a deep breath, trying to beat down the unreasoning panic that filled her. “Just one question, Mark. Where’s he gone?”

  “You’re better off not knowing,”

  “Where’s he gone?” she persisted.

  He tipped his head back, looking at her. And then he rose, moving over to a glass-topped table and his briefcase. He pulled out a file and tossed it at her. “Take this with you. Read it before you decide to follow him.”

  “I can’t follow him if I don’t know where he’s gone.”

  “England. To a village on the coast of Devon called Wychcombe. I wouldn’t recommend following him.”

  “Why not?”

  “Read the file.”

  She clutched it against her. “Mark, thank you . . .”

  “Don’t,” he said sharply. “There are times when I think execution is too good for him. Don’t let him use you, destroy you, as he has so many others.”

  “He’s not going to use me.”

  “Cass,” Mark said heavily, “it’s already too late to stop him.”

  IT HAD BEEN three years since Cassidy had last been in England. She’d gone in the fall, after months of planning, weeks of packing, with a detailed itinerary, a stash of traveler’s checks, and enough tranquilizers to ensure that she slept the entire six-hour flight to Heathrow.

  This time there were no tranquilizers, no traveler’s checks, and not the faintest idea where she was going.

  It was her fault that he’d gotten away. Driven him away, perhaps, though she wasn’t sure she was ready to take the blame for that. The scene in her father’s kitchen haunted her, and she replayed it over and over again in her mind, trying to see how it could have changed, how she could have stopped him, stopped herself.

  Each time she came up with the same answer. It had been inevitable, no matter how much she’d tried to deny it. Richard had made it more than clear, and she’d ignored the very real danger. Ignored it until it was too late.

  Sean had asked so little of her. He needed Richard Tiernan, needed him to finish the book that seemed to be his sole reason for hanging on to life. And she’d let him escape.

  She managed to get herself on a plane bound for Heathrow by seven o’clock that night. It wasn’t until she settled in to her seat that she pulled out the file.

  She almost slammed it shut again. It contained newspaper clippings, tabloid articles, all the twisted filth that the press could come up with. A color photograph of a blood-soaked hallway, with the chalk outline where a body had lain. Shrieking headlines, horrifying ones. Richard hadn’t exaggerated. The National Sunset did suggest that he might have eaten his children.

  Those were the most heartbreaking—the family photos of two beautiful, innocent children, hardly more than babies. The older one, Ariel, was blond and pretty like her mother, though with a look of strength to her china blue eyes that the photos of her mother didn’t convey. The younger one, Seth, was dark, mischievous. She stared at the photo, and for a fleeting, hopeless moment she could see Richard as an innocent.

  The other charges mounted. He was connected with three different women who’d disappeared, and the articles hinted at satanic rituals, sexual perversions, blood and torture and mutilation. It wasn’t until she forced herself to read every word that she found the brief mention that two of the women had surfaced, claiming to have nothing more than friendship with Richard Tiernan. Only Sally Norton remained missing.

  She was as different from Diana Scott Tiernan as she could possibly be, if Cassidy could go by the photographs. Small and pixie-dark, with a wry smile and laughing dark eyes, she would have made a perfect foil for Richard. He never denied having an affair with her, and it was all Cass could do not to sit there and hate her.

  But Sally Norton had never shown up. She’d disappeared, no one knew quite when, and there’d yet to be any trace of her body. The state had enough evidence to convict Richard of his wife’s death—after a while they stopped searching for Sally Norton’s decomposing body or the remains of the children. Why waste the taxpayers’ money?

  Cassidy closed the file with a shudder, too sick to even consider that she was trapped on a hated airplane. She was traveling thousands of miles to chase after a man accused—no, convicted—of some of the most heinous crimes imaginable. Would she end up like his children, like Sally Norton, her existence simply wiped out without a trace?

  She could turn around when she arrived at Heathrow, fly straight back. There was no need to put herself in danger. She put her hand to her neck in an absent gesture, against the mark he’d made. She wasn’t going back. He wouldn’t kill her. He had a reason for coming all this way, for putting his appeal in jeopardy, and she needed to know that reason. And if it wasn’t good enough, she could alwa
ys call the British authorities. For a convicted murderer, extradition should be a simple enough matter.

  Or maybe it wouldn’t. England didn’t have a death sentence. Perhaps he’d be kept there, safe . . .

  She pushed her seat back, closing her eyes as the thoughts whirled around and around in her brain. She couldn’t make any plans, any decisions, until she found him. Until she made him answer the question he’d always avoided. She needed to hear it from his mouth, the mouth that had taken hers with such devastating force. Whatever he chose to tell her, she’d believe it.

  She moved through customs in a jet-lagged fog, and when she was asked the purpose of her visit, it took her a moment to come up with a suitable answer. A suitable lie. Because she hadn’t the faintest idea what the purpose of her visit to England was. She could hardly tell the matronly looking customs officer that she was following a murderer.

  She’d never driven in England, she was lousy at reading maps, she was tired and edgy and restless in a way she refused to recognize. She almost killed herself three times as she drove west from London, forgetting which lane she should be in. A gray drizzle was falling, only to be expected, but it didn’t help her mood, and the rental Vauxhall had a manual transmission, when she’d grown too used to an automatic. There was nothing on the radio but funereal organ music, and by the time she reached Somerset she was ready to cry.

  She spent the night at a bed-and-breakfast, sharing the loo, eating cholesterol, and drinking lousy coffee for breakfast. By the time she reached Devon after a late start the sun had come out, but her mood had darkened considerably. She didn’t know what she would find at journey’s end, and she doubted she was going to be happy about it.

  Wychcombe was a tiny village on the west coast. She parked her car in the marketplace and sat for a moment, stumped. Why in God’s name would Richard Tiernan risk everything to come to this tiny town, and how was she going to find him? The police were out of the question, the post office a little too official for Cassidy’s state of mind. She settled for the newsagent, buying a diet Coke and a stack of tacky postcards while she fumbled with the British money she’d exchanged at Heathrow.

  In the end, it was surprisingly easy. The woman behind the counter liked to talk, and in late March it was too early for the vast influx of American tourists. By the time Cassidy could tear herself away, she learned the nationality of every guest staying at the two bed-and-breakfasts in town, and none of them were American. She also learned of the elderly businessman who lived down by the cove, who might or might not be American, and the Canadian professor who owned the home farm out by Herring Cross. He’d just come for his annual vacation, and his widowed sister and her children would be joining them.

  Cass wanted to weep with frustration, but she didn’t dare. Once she started crying she had a tendency to weep for everything, and she couldn’t afford to give in to it. Her father had always despised tears, and likely Richard felt the same way. The hell with both of them. She’d wait till she found a quiet, deserted spot in the English countryside and then she would howl her heart out.

  She started the Vauxhall, stalled out as usual, and then got the wretched thing in gear as she drove aimlessly, down the coast. The roads were very narrow and twisty, the hedgerows blocking the view, and she was driving too fast when another car came careening around the corner. Cassidy jerked the wheel, ending in a ditch, and at that final indignity she did finally burst into tears, resting her head on the steering wheel.

  The car that had just passed slammed to a halt, and a moment later a woman’s figure appeared at the window. “I’m terribly sorry,” she said. “I always take that corner too damned fast. Are you hurt?”

  “I’m fine,” she muttered wetly, not wanting to raise her head.

  “I think you can drive out of the ditch, but maybe I’d better wait and make sure . . . The voice was uncertain.

  “I’ll be fine,” Cass said. “Please, just leave me alone.”

  “But I feel responsible . . .”

  It took Cassidy that long to realize what was commonplace in her life was not commonplace in Devon. The woman who’d run her off the road wasn’t British.

  She lifted her head, wiping her tears away, and squinted upward. The sun was too bright, leaving the woman in silhouette. “You’re American,” Cassidy said.

  The woman laughed. “Actually, I’m Canadian. I’d ask you back to the farmhouse for a cup of tea, but I’m in a bit of a hurry. If you’re certain you’re all right? You’ve been shaken up, and I feel responsible.”

  The sun nipped behind a cloud, and Cassidy got her first close look at the Canadian widow. She barely managed to keep her voice steady. “Really, I’m fine. You were on your way someplace—don’t let me keep you.”

  “Are you certain you’re okay?”

  Cassidy looked up into Sally Norton’s elfin face. “I’m feeling much better now,” she said firmly.

  It wasn’t strictly the truth, Cass thought as she watched the woman drive off down the narrow road. On the one hand, she’d obviously found Richard, found his reason for being in England, and discovered that whoever he might have killed, at least Sally Norton wasn’t one of his victims.

  On the other hand, she found she didn’t particularly like his reason for being in England.

  THE HERRING CROSS Farm was easy enough to find. A perfect little English cottage, complete with thatched roof and picturesque outbuildings, it rested on the edge of a hillside, not far from the sea. It was hardly the spot for a murderer and his accomplice to retire in style.

  She parked the Vauxhall in the narrow lane, sliding out of the driver’s seat. In the distance a dog barked, and she walked through the front yard with unseeing eyes.

  The door was open. The place was deserted. She didn’t know quite what she expected, but then, she never had with Richard Tiernan. She walked through into the kitchen, past the clutter of dishes, and looked out to the back garden.

  He was out there. Shirtless in the sunshine, digging in the dirt. Looking for bodies, she wondered? There were scratch marks on his shoulders, and it took her a moment to realize they came from her. She’d marked him. She wondered what Sally Norton had thought of that.

  There was a straight-backed chair in the corner of the cluttered, cozy old kitchen. She sat in it, her arms wrapped around her, and waited.

  He didn’t see her when he first came in. He was whistling, under his breath, sounding disgustingly happy, and the knowledge was like a blow to Cass’s belly. He moved to the sink, and he was carrying an armload of daffodils.

  He shoved them in an old jar, switched to humming, and then turned, reaching for his shirt that was lying across one of the chairs. And then he saw her, waiting in the shadows.

  It was as if the light had been stripped from his face, his eyes. His expression went blank, wary, as he stared at her, almost as if he couldn’t believe his eyes. He pulled the shirt on, and she noticed it was an old shirt, faded, one she hadn’t seen before. She supposed it was waiting here for him. Along with Sally Norton.

  “Are you alone?”

  The words almost startled her. “Entirely,” she said, her voice deceptively cool.

  “Does anyone know you’re here?”

  “Mark. But he’s covered up for you before. He’ll probably cover up again.”

  “What would he need to cover up for?”

  “If you decided to kill me. That’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it? Maybe you could stash me in the garden.”

  “You have your father’s imagination.” He was back in control once more. That lightness vanished, the wariness, the taunting, back where she remembered it. “What are you doing here, Cassidy?”

  “I’d think that would be obvious. I’m here to take you back.”

  “Against my will? I doubt you could manage. For one thing, I’m bigger than you are. If yo
u have any sense at all, you’ll leave. Go back to America and keep your mouth shut. I’ll be back in four more days.”

  “And if I don’t have any sense at all?”

  He closed his eyes for a moment. “What do you think is going on? I’d be interested in hearing just how your fevered mind works.”

  She leaned back, looking at him. He was remote, a stranger. A very dangerous stranger, but she was past the time of being careful. “There are a number of possibilities. Obviously you aren’t a serial killer.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “I ran into one of your victims down the road.”

  “Which one?”

  She vaulted out of the chair. “Don’t mock me, Richard. I won’t let you run out on my father. You mean too much to him at this point. I won’t let . . .”

  “You won’t have any say in the matter,” he said coolly. He was buttoning his shirt with deceptive ease. “I don’t mean a goddamn thing to your father except as the means to an end. You know why he won’t let you see the manuscript? He doesn’t want you to know the truth. That he’s writing my story. How I spent my adult life killing women who were foolish enough to fall in love with me.”

  There was a knife on the table. A large, sharp-looking butcher knife. She hadn’t noticed it before. She noticed it now. “You didn’t kill Sally Norton.”

  “Is that who you saw? She’s my partner in crime.” His eyes followed her wary gaze, and he leaned over and picked up the knife. “Not a very good specimen,” he murmured, running his long thumb against the blade. “Too dull to cut. It hurts more when the blade is dull. Did you know that, Cassidy?”

  She didn’t move. “I knew that.”

  He turned the knife over. “I should sharpen it,” he said dreamily. “There’s a whetstone out back. Maybe I’ll go do that, right now. It would give you time to leave, you know. You could get away from here, before I had a chance to stop you, before I had a chance to hurt you. You could take your adventurous little ass back to New York and forget you ever came here.”