The Runaway

by Lisa Childs

  Although Elijah couldn’t help but wonder if he knew and just wanted to hear it aloud.

  Before Elijah could determine that, though, Bode said, “Grandfather, the sheriff found a body on the property.”

  The old man arched a gray brow over one of his pale gray eyes and murmured, “Just one?”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  “So you weren’t going to tell me they found a body?” Edie Stone asked the minute Whit stepped out of his chambers, an overnight bag dangling from his hand.

  “I’m sorry, Your Honor,” his clerk said. “I should have warned you she was here.”

  Whit glared at the young man. “You think?” He had no doubts now about where the reporter had been getting her information. Either the young man had a crush on her, or Edie had paid him. He turned back toward her. “I don’t have time to talk to you now.”

  “Just when you want information from me?” she asked. “Not when I want information from you?”

  He glanced at his red-faced clerk as he headed toward the door to the hall. “I don’t think you need to talk to me to get information from me.”

  “Should I talk to Rosemary Tulle?” she asked.

  He stopped at the door and cursed. “No. You should not.” She was going through enough. It had been a week since the body had been found and the DNA results hadn’t come back yet. Not even the coroner’s report. He’d been reaching out to everybody he knew to rush the findings, and unfortunately he’d had Dwight place those calls for him. “She doesn’t know any more than you or I do.”

  And that had to be killing her, not knowing if her daughter was dead or alive. But if she was alive, where was she?

  “Rosemary’s not your story anyway,” he insisted. “That creepy treatment center is. They were covering up the fact that her daughter had gone missing. And then a body turns up on their property. You need to investigate them.”

  “I would,” Edie said. “If anyone would talk to me. But I’m not on some damn list. I can’t even get their PR person to return my calls about an interview. It’s impenetrable.”

  Whit groaned. “I wish it was, but Rosemary got inside. She’s working there.”

  “Even after her daughter was found?” Edie asked.

  “Nobody’s confirmed that the body is her daughter,” Whit said, and inwardly groaned at the information he was giving up himself now. Edie Stone was a damn good reporter. “So she’s staying until she finds out.” Against his fervent wish that she leave Halcyon Hall and Bane Island far behind her.

  Edie clapped her hands together. “Then she can get me inside,” she said. “She can get me access to this Dr. Cooke, so I can interview him about all the shady stuff that’s happened at the hall. This is the second body that’s been found there since the place has reopened.”

  He nodded. “The sheriff ’s wife . . .”

  Maybe the sheriff hadn’t had anything to do with that. Maybe there was a serial killer running around Bane Island. His heart hammering with fear for Rosemary, Whit headed toward the door again. He had to get back to her—had to make sure that she was safe. Hell, he never should have left her. Just as he shouldn’t have left her that night nearly two decades ago.

  Edie rushed out after him. “Want me to drive?”

  “No,” he said.

  Her lips curved into a mocking smile. “We’re heading to the same place.”

  The same place for different reasons. “What do you get out of this?” he asked. “Out of exploiting people’s pain?”

  She shook her head. “That’s not what I’m doing.”

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “The same thing you do,” she said. “I’m looking for justice.”

  He narrowed his eyes and studied her face. For some reason he believed her, or at least he believed that was what she believed. Then he wondered, if like Rosemary, she’d been hurt before and the justice she wanted wasn’t just for other people but for herself.

  “We’ll drive separately,” he told her. “There’s someplace I need to stop first.” Someplace he’d wanted to go since he’d learned the truth about what had happened to Rosemary that night.

  * * *

  “You never should have trusted me,” Gordon Chase said, his head bent so far forward with shame that his chin touched his upper chest. He slumped over in the chair across the table from her, sunlight shining off the bald spot on the top of his head. “I feel just terrible, Rosemary.”

  She glanced around the conservatory to make sure they were alone before asking, “What are you talking about?” She leaned closer to him. “You didn’t hurt me.”

  “But I was supposed to look out for you,” he said. “I promised your father that I would.”

  “My father died from a sudden heart attack,” she reminded him. “How could he have asked you for that promise? He had no idea that he was going to die.”

  He nodded. “He didn’t ask me. But that day we all stood around his casket, I promised him then. I know he heard and believed me. I let him down.” His voice was gruff with emotion. “I let you down.”

  “No, you didn’t,” she assured him. “You couldn’t have known what my mother was capable of, of the sick extreme she would go to for Bobby. To give him a child.” She shuddered as she thought of it, of the sacrifice her mother had made of her.

  “She didn’t do it for him,” Gordon said. “She did it for herself, so that she could get her hands on more of the trust her parents had left to support her children. You were getting older. In a couple of years, you would have inherited it all and left her none. But having another child gave her a claim on it.”

  The bile rushed up the back of Rosemary’s throat again as her stomach pitched. She was sick over what had happened to her, but now she considered what might have happened to Genevieve.

  “That child is seventeen, almost eighteen,” she murmured. In just a few months she would have inherited whatever was left of the trust because Rosemary had turned over her share as part of the agreement for Abigail raising her daughter. “That bitch . . .”

  Abigail had played her. Genevieve might not have been as easily manipulated into turning over the trust. Had Abigail gotten rid of her grandchild to avoid giving up the money? Would she inherit it if that body turned out to be Genevieve’s?

  “I was never a fan of your mother’s,” Gordon admitted. “But I had no idea what she was truly capable of.”

  “Neither did I,” Rosemary said. Now that she knew she intended to investigate fully. The statute of limitations had expired for what they’d done to her, but there was no statute of limitations for murder.

  Could they have killed Genevieve after years of raising her like their daughter? Well, technically she was Bobby’s daughter. Since they’d had no conscience over raping Rosemary, murder probably wasn’t that big a stretch for them.

  She shuddered. “It’s all so sick and twisted.” But she hoped like hell that Genevieve had not become their latest victim.

  “I’m sorry,” Gordon said again.

  “As I told you, it’s not your fault.” But just like Whit had, her father’s old friend kept blaming himself for not protecting her. “She was my mother. There was nothing you could have done.”

  “Was?” Gordon asked.

  “After what she did, I can’t consider her that anymore.” She had yet to discover the truth about what they’d done to Genevieve. Maybe the sheriff would be able to question them. Just the thought of trying to talk to them herself had panic pressing on her lungs, like those hands had pressed her down to the mattress. She closed her eyes as nausea overwhelmed her.

  “Are you all right?” Dr. Chase asked.

  She shook her head. “No, I’m not.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said again. “Here I am dumping all my guilt on you when you already have a burden of your own.”

  Guilt. That weighed more heavily on her than the disgust. She’d put her baby in so much danger ...

  * * *

  I know what you
did. . . .

  What did he know? How much? That was the reason why Abigail Walcott let Whittaker Lawrence back into the house she’d banned him from so many years ago. She needed to know what he knew.

  “So you decided not to call the cops on me?” Whittaker said as he stepped into the foyer.

  She glared at him as he reminded her of the threat she’d made years ago and just recently, when he’d called from the intercom at the gates for her to let him in. “I’ll call the police on you. . . .”

  “Good,” he’d told her. “I know what you did. . . .”

  He did. The disgust was in his eyes as he glared back at her.

  “Don’t believe Rosemary’s lies,” she advised him.

  He shook his head. “She’s not lying.”

  She sucked in a breath and raised her chin. “She can’t prove anything.” That was what she’d been telling Bobby. Glass clinked from within the den; he must have been pouring himself another drink. The last thing she needed was for him to get drunk and start running his mouth. Because nobody knew everything yet ...

  “I think she can prove it,” he said.

  “But as a former district attorney and a judge, you know there’s nothing she can do about it now,” she said. “It’s too late.”

  “I intend to change that,” he warned her. “And I think there might be something else that you can be prosecuted for . . . something within the statute of limitations.”

  She lifted her chin, refusing to be intimidated by the bastard son of a maid. While he was too damn tall for her to look down her nose at him, she tried. “For what?”

  “Murder,” he said.

  A chill raced down her spine. “You’re crazy. Who do you think I killed?”

  “Your granddaughter,” he said.

  She shook her head. “You are crazy. And if you don’t leave right now, I will call the police.”

  “Good. Then they can arrest you both.”

  “I had nothing to do with anyone’s death.”

  “You put her in that place,” he said. “You put her in danger. That makes you culpable, too. Depraved indifference. Manslaughter. If the body that was found is Genevieve’s, I will bring charges against you. And if those charges don’t stick, we’ll file civil suits—take away the estate, the cars, and every last damn dime you have.”

  Her heart began to beat fast with fear that he could, that he would. “If you try to bring me down, I’ll bring you down, too,” she threatened. “I’ll tell every tabloid about how you seduced an underage girl.”

  “Then I’ll sue you for slander,” he calmly replied.

  He wasn’t the boy she’d intimidated so easily in the past. He was a man now—a self-righteous one bent on avenging an old girlfriend. He was a threat.

  He stepped around her, as if she wasn’t even there. He must have heard the glass clinking, too, because he headed toward the den. “You son of a bitch!” he yelled when he saw Bobby.

  Her husband let out an embarrassing squeak of fear before dropping his glass to the floor. He backed up with his hands in front of him to ward off the younger man. As if he could stop the much taller and stronger-looking Whittaker Lawrence ...

  “I’m calling the police!” she yelled as the judge advanced on her husband.

  Whittaker pulled his arm back anyway, his hand curled into a fist. Bobby’s hands in front of his face did nothing to deflect the blow that dropped him to the floor. When Whittaker whirled around, she shrank back.

  “Are you going to hit me, too?” she asked.

  “I’d like nothing more,” he said. “But I have more class than that, more class than you.”

  She shook her head. “You know nothing. . . .” Not yet ... and if that body was Genevieve’s, no one might ever learn the truth.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Where is she?

  Evelyn’s heart pounded fast as panic rushed over her. Where had she gone?

  Not Rosemary. She knew where her boarder had gone, where she always was this past week—at that damned cursed manor.

  “Bonita!” she yelled as she pushed open the back door and stepped onto the icy driveway. A blast of cold air struck her face. “Bonita!” She grabbed her coat from the back door and saw her sister’s parka swinging from the hook next to hers. She grabbed it, too, and tucked it under her arm as she headed back outside.

  She’d gone off without her coat this time, leaving Evelyn no time to call the sheriff. By the time he got here, her sister would be frozen somewhere—probably like that body he’d found. Was that Rosemary’s daughter?

  Would Evelyn find her sister like that?

  “Bonita!” she screamed for her. Her feet slipped on the slick driveway and she splayed her arms out to balance herself. That was when she noticed the door to the carriage house stood ajar.

  Why would Bonita have gone in there? Small footprints led across the drive and over the threshold into the building. Evelyn pushed the door fully open but not much light filtered around her. She could only see the looming shadow of her father’s old truck.

  “Bonita?” she called out again. She had to be in here. But why?

  Her breath hung in the air in front of her, freezing in the cold. The carriage house wasn’t insulated, so it was nearly as cold as it was outside. “Bonita!”

  A shadow moved inside the cab of the truck. Rushing toward it, Evelyn pulled open the door. Bonita sat on the old bench seat, fiddling with the ignition.

  “What are you doing?” she asked her.

  “I’m going to get my baby.”

  “Your baby’s inside,” Evelyn assured her. She’d found the doll tucked into her sister’s bed; she just hadn’t been able to find her sister.

  Bonita shook her head. “No. They kept my baby.”

  Evelyn tensed as she remembered the question Rosemary had recently asked her. Could Bonita be talking about something else, something other than that doll, when she went into a panic over her baby?

  “Who kept your baby?” she asked.

  “They did—the people at the manor,” she said. “They took my baby. They kept my baby!” Her slight body shook with sobs of heartbreak and loss.

  And for the first time Evelyn wondered ...

  Had her parents committed her sister to that godawful place because she’d been pregnant? And if she had been, what had happened to the child?

  * * *

  “Miss Tulle,” the receptionist said as she stepped inside the conservatory. “I’ve been looking all over for you.”

  “I’m sorry. Does a guest need me?”

  The young woman shook her head. “No, there’s a reporter trying to get in the gates to talk to you,” she said, with a faint sneer of disapproval. The receptionist clearly wasn’t convinced Dr. Cooke’s hiring her had been a good idea. Since the body had been discovered, Rosemary hadn’t seen much of her boss. Maybe he regretted hiring her now. Or maybe he was just embarrassed for her, over the memories he’d brought out of her subconscious when he’d hypnotized her.

  “She’s not on the list,” Rosemary said. “So why didn’t you just turn her away?”

  The woman glanced around at the other women in the conservatory and lowered her voice to whisper her reply. “She knows about the body. . . .”

  “Then she should talk to Dr. Cooke,” Rosemary said. “Or Amanda Plasky . . .” She’d only met the publicist once, but the woman was fiercely protective of the hall and of Dr. Cooke.

  “She wants to talk to you,” the receptionist persisted.

  “Is it Edie Lawrence?”

  She nodded.

  The reporter had found out information for Whit; maybe she’d learned what they hadn’t yet. The identity of the body. “Please let her in.”

  “Are you sure?” she asked. “You shouldn’t be talking about the body. The sheriff has yet to identify the remains and determine how she died.”

  That body could be her daughter, and she’d already waited too long to find out.

  “Let her in,” Rosemar
y insisted.

  A short while later Edie joined her in the conservatory.

  “Thanks for agreeing to see me,” Edie said. “I didn’t think they were going to let me through those damn gates.”

  “I know the feeling,” Rosemary remarked. “But now that I work here, I understand the need to protect the privacy of the guests. You’re not going to violate that, are you?”

  “I have no interest in your patients,” Edie said. “I’m here to see you and only you.”

  A smile tugged at Rosemary’s lips. “So you’re only going to violate my privacy?”

  “I’m not going to do an article about you,” Edie said.

  “Still working on your interview about Whit?” Rosemary asked. She hoped not; she didn’t want him drawn into the mess that was her current situation. “He’s a wonderful man. An honest man.” A twinge of regret struck her heart over how she’d hated him for so long, so unfairly.

  Edie shrugged. “If he is, he’s one of the few. Too bad . . .”

  “What’s too bad?” she asked.

  “That he’s gotten drawn into all of this,” Edie said. “Young girls, dead bodies . . .” She shuddered but it was as if a delicious chill had passed through her. “He’s bound to get tainted with it all.”

  That was the last thing she wanted. She narrowed her eyes on Edie’s face. “Then make certain that he doesn’t get drawn into it.”

  “I won’t include him in my coverage but other reporters might,” Edie said. “They love to bring up his tragic past.” She glanced around the conservatory. “He’s kind of like this place, with its tragic past.”

  Maybe that was why Rosemary was drawn to them both. “I know about his wife and daughter.” At least she knew that they’d died; she didn’t know how, though. And she felt another twinge of guilt for not asking more questions. She asked Edie.

  “Cancer.” Edie answered.

  “Both of them?”

  “The wife found out she had it when she was pregnant, refused treatment so it wouldn’t hurt the baby.” She sighed. “But she got so sick so fast that they had to take the baby early anyway. Too early . . .”

  Tears stung Rosemary’s eyes. “That’s terrible.”