The Runaway

by Lisa Childs

  Edie nodded. “Yeah, he’s been through hell once. Looks like he’s going to be dragged through it again.”

  Rosemary shook her head. “No. I’ll make sure that won’t happen. With your help . . .”

  “You want me to keep this quiet?”

  Rosemary shook her head. “Not at all. I want you to investigate.”

  Edie snorted. “You’re probably going to get fired,” she warned her. “The director of this place will go crazy.”

  “I don’t want you to investigate this place,” Rosemary clarified. “I want the real villains investigated.”

  Edie arched that brow again. “Who’s that?”

  “My parents.”

  Edie sucked in a breath of shock. Rosemary’s heart warmed with appreciation for Whit keeping her secret, but appreciation was all she could ever feel for him. He’d lost too much already; she couldn’t cost him his career as well.

  While he’d kept her secret, Rosemary had no such qualms. She told Edie everything. When she was done, Edie reached across the table and grabbed her hand. “I’m sorry,” she murmured. “So very sorry . . .”

  Rosemary chuckled. “It’s funny that the people who have no reason to say it keep apologizing to me, and the people who owe me the apology won’t even accept my phone calls.”

  “They’re bastards,” Edie said.

  “They are,” Rosemary agreed. “I need to know if they’re killers, too. I need to know if they killed Genevieve to keep her from inheriting that trust.” But she was still holding on to hope that the body the sheriff had found wasn’t her daughter’s.

  “Your trust.”

  She’d told her everything. “I gave it up,” she reminded her.

  “For your daughter,” Edie said. “Not for those greedy bastards.”

  “Please,” Rosemary implored her. “Please help me find out if they’re responsible. We all deserve to know the truth.” Whit should have told her all of it about his wife.

  He hadn’t chosen to do that with her. The intimacy she’d felt with him, revealing her deepest darkest nightmares, had all just been one-sided. He wasn’t as willing to let her into his life—into his heart—as she had been him. Now she understood why.

  He really wasn’t willing to risk his career to get more serious with her. He was only helping her out of obligation and guilt over the past, just as he probably felt guilty about his wife.

  “It might not be her body that was found here,” Edie said as she reached across and squeezed her hand again, offering her hope.

  Rosemary smiled in appreciation. “That’s what I’m hoping, too. But whoever she is, she deserves justice.”

  Edie nodded. “I’ll do a thorough investigation,” she promised. “Into your parents and the hall and the sheriff, too.”

  “Not Whit,” Rosemary said. “Please leave him out of it.” And from now on she would make certain that he stayed out of it.

  “Whit who?” Edie asked with a wink as she stood up. Her body fairly vibrated with excitement. The reporter was determined to find out the truth about everything.

  As she walked away though, a chill rushed over Rosemary. “Please be careful,” she called after her.

  Edie chuckled. “I’ve reported from war zones. I’m not in any danger here.”

  Maybe that was what that woman had thought whose body the sheriff had found. But if that body was Genevieve’s, she had seemed to know—because she’d wanted so badly to get out of Halcyon Hall. If only Rosemary had gotten to her sooner ...

  * * *

  Deacon stepped back to let the blond woman pass him in the doorway to the hall. He sure as hell didn’t want to stop her from leaving. He was pretty damn surprised she’d been allowed inside the gates. He dipped his head down to avoid meeting her gaze, but she didn’t even look at him, just rushed out the door and across the parking lot to a Jeep. Only when she’d jumped inside did she glance back at the building. Before she could change her mind about leaving, he stepped inside and let the doors close behind him, locking her out.

  “Sheriff?” Elijah called out to him, his voice sharp with impatience as if he’d been trying to get his attention.

  He waited a minute longer, watching the Jeep back out of the lot and head down the driveway, before turning toward Cooke.

  “I thought you wanted to see me,” Elijah said.

  “I wanted to make sure she was gone before we talked,” Deacon explained.

  “She?”

  “The reporter,” Deacon said as he jerked his thumb toward the doors. “She was just walking out.”

  Elijah tensed. “I didn’t know she was in here. I wouldn’t have allowed it.” He turned toward the receptionist, whose pretty face flushed pink.

  “She didn’t ask to see you,” she said. “She wanted to see Ms. Tulle, and Ms. Tulle agreed to speak to her.”

  Elijah clenched his jaw so tightly that a muscle twitched in his cheek. “Do not let her in here again for any reason,” he told her. “No matter who authorizes it.”

  The young woman’s lips curved into a slight smile. “Even you?”

  He shook his head. “I will never authorize a reporter in the hall.”

  Her face flushed a deeper red, and the smile slid into a grimace. “I’m sorry, sir. It’s just been so busy around here after the sher . . .” She trailed off as she glanced at Deacon.

  He finished for her. “After I found the body.”

  Now the color receded from her face, leaving it so pallid that she might pass out.

  “I’m sorry,” he murmured with regret. He hadn’t meant to upset her, but then if it bothered her that a body had been found on the property, she should have quit. That was why he was here right now, to check out the employees. Thanks to the judge, he had a subpoena for those records. But not even Lawrence had enough influence to get him one for the guest records.

  “Do you have that list for me?” he asked Elijah.

  “In here,” the other man said as he stepped through the doorway into his office.

  The door closed behind him automatically—freakishly. Deacon really hated this damn place. He couldn’t imagine why Rosemary had chosen to stick around after her daughter had probably been found on the property. But since his daughter worked here, he probably understood better than most what kept Rosemary here. She wanted to find out what had happened to her daughter.

  Was that why she’d chosen to talk to that damn reporter?

  Because of the rumors, she’d lost her trust in him—if she’d ever had any.

  Elijah snapped his fingers. “I lost you again ... what’s going on, Deacon? Did you find out anything yet? Has the body been identified? Has a cause of death been determined?”

  He shook his head. “Not yet.” But the medical examiner had promised to have a complete report to him soon.

  “Then why do you need this?” Elijah asked as he held up a folder. “Why would it matter who has worked here or works here now if the death was just a tragic accident?”

  “If Genevieve was running away, like you claim, then why wasn’t she wearing any shoes?” Deacon asked. No shoes had been found on the body or at the scene.

  Elijah shrugged. “You said coyotes got to the body. Maybe they carried away the shoes.”

  “And everything else she owned? That body had nothing left with it but scraps of a hospital gown.”

  Elijah shook his head. “That doesn’t make any sense. Genevieve didn’t have any medical procedures done while she was at the hall.”

  “So maybe that body does belong to someone else,” he said. “Someone other than Genevieve Walcott.”

  Elijah flinched. “Is it bad that I hope it does?”

  “Even if it is someone else, that doesn’t mean that Genevieve is alive,” Deacon pointed out. “It could just mean that there’s another body out there.”

  Elijah’s face went as pale as the receptionist’s had, so pale that his skin was nearly the same light gray of his eyes. His throat moved as if he was choking.


  “You okay?” Deacon was concerned enough to ask.

  Elijah nodded. “Yes, of—” His voice cracked, and he cleared his throat before continuing, “Of course I am.”

  Deacon narrowed his eyes. “Really? You seem a little edgy. Like you’ve seen a ghost. Or maybe one of the skeletons that have been rattling around your closets.”

  Elijah sneered at him. “I’m not the one who keeps finding bodies, Deacon. Little questionable that you’re always the one . . .”

  Deacon swallowed a curse, not wanting his old nemesis to know he’d gotten to him. The last thing Deacon wanted to find was a body—least of all his estranged wife’s. “I’m good at my job,” he said as a warning while he grabbed the folder from Elijah’s hand. “I will find out what you’re trying to hide.”

  Elijah shrugged. “I have nothing to hide.” He sounded as if he really believed that; Deacon wasn’t as convinced of his innocence, though.

  “You better hope that’s true with that reporter nosing around the island,” he warned him.

  Elijah shrugged. “She didn’t ask to speak to me.”

  Rosemary ...

  What the hell was she doing talking to that reporter? Anything to find out what had happened to her daughter.

  Deacon sighed with understanding. “She’s not going to stop until she learns the truth,” he warned Elijah.

  The doctor cocked his head, sending a lock of black hair falling into his pale eyes. “The reporter?”

  “Rosemary Tulle,” Deacon replied.

  “I hope when she learns it this time that it won’t devastate her like it did . . .” He trailed off and shook his head.

  And Deacon realized he’d missed something. “What are you talking about?” he asked.

  “She learned something recently,” Elijah admitted. “Something I’m surprised that she hasn’t shared with you, Sheriff. Guess she doesn’t trust you either.”

  Deacon flinched. He’d already determined that was why she was talking to the reporter and not him. But a reporter?

  Over a lawman? Over a father of his own teenager? He would do more to find Genevieve than anyone else—unless he already had found her. “I’ll talk to her,” he said. He was going to damn well make sure he had all the information about this case.

  About Genevieve.

  And Rosemary.

  And Elijah Cooke.

  He stopped at the door, waiting for Elijah to open it. He took his damn time, probably as payback for not having Deacon’s complete attention earlier. Once the door opened, Deacon paused just inside the threshold and turned back.

  “Yeah, I have been the one who found the bodies,” he admitted. “So you better hope there aren’t any more out there for me to turn up.”

  Elijah’s face grew pale again and he sat on the edge of his desk as if his legs had given out on him.

  A chill chased down Deacon’s spine, a chill of foreboding. Cooke was definitely hiding something.

  More dead bodies?

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  So many dead bodies had come out of Bainesworth Manor. . . .

  The trail of them was what Edie had chosen to follow. Not the Walcotts. Nobody was even sure yet that the most recent body found was Genevieve Walcott’s.

  She hoped for Rosemary’s sake that it wasn’t. But Rosemary wasn’t the real story here.

  She didn’t even think that the sheriff was. That was why she’d let him pass her in the doorway without bothering to stop him. No. The story here went back further than his dead wife. Further than the current owners . . .

  It went back to the days when the hall had been called Bainesworth Manor. To when all those young girls had been committed there . . .

  So many of them hadn’t made it out alive.

  She sat now in a back room of the library on the island, her laptop flipped open on the table in front of her. Its glow cast more light than the Tiffany lamps that sat in the middle of each table in the room. A sneeze tickled her nose, but she didn’t dare to let it escape. The librarian, a gray-haired woman with a stern face, was already regarding her with suspicion. Maybe that was because Edie had asked for all her records about the manor and about the people who’d been committed there.

  “Those records are not public information,” she’d been frostily informed.

  She’d stayed to use the library’s free Wi-Fi to search online databases. That was how she’d found the death certificates. But then she found something even stranger ...

  Birth certificates.

  Babies had been born in that horrible hospital. Was that why those young girls had been committed—because they’d been pregnant, not mentally ill? But then why the cruel shock treatments and gruesome lobotomies?

  Or had those girls gotten pregnant at the manor?

  Who the hell would have the answers she sought?

  Edie glanced around the library, but she was alone, except for that disapproving-looking older woman. She’d moved closer, pushing a cloth across a table behind the one at which Edie sat, as if she was dusting. But she was staring, not at Edie, but at her laptop screen.

  “I found records,” she pointed out to the woman.

  “Not here,” the librarian replied. “Most islanders wish that we could erase that place from our past completely.”

  “You can’t,” Edie said. “It’s still here. New owners—”

  “Not new,” the woman abruptly corrected her. “Same people. Grandsons of the old man—of that monster—decided to renovate and get it going again. And don’t you know ... another body turns up . . .” She shuddered. “The second one. They say he’s in a wheelchair and too old, but I wonder . . .”

  “What? Dr. Bainesworth is still alive?” she asked.

  The woman grimly nodded. “He should be in jail.”

  “For what?” Edie asked. “Some of those practices, although archaic, were accepted back then.” Hell, electroconvulsive therapy was used today albeit with anesthesia.

  “Not all the practices . . . he took advantage of those girls,” she said.

  “What do you mean?” Edie asked.

  “Let’s just say that those two grandsons of his probably aren’t really the only Bainesworths left besides him.”

  Disgust dampened the excitement Edie had experienced earlier. Sure, she was still onto a great story—for her, for her career. But for those women ... those girls ...

  “How do you know this?” she asked the librarian.

  The woman pushed up one of her sleeves, revealing scars from old burns. “I was one of them. . . .”

  Had the electrical shock treatments done that to her? Disfigured her?

  “Oh, my God, I’m so sorry,” she said.

  “He wasn’t,” the woman replied. “He wasn’t a bit remorseful for what he did to us.”

  “Did you . . .” Edie had to swallow a lump of revulsion. “Did you have a child?”

  She shook her head. “No. Thank God. Because any child of a Bainesworth is the spawn of the devil himself.”

  Edie snapped her laptop shut. She’d come here in search of records, but she’d discovered so much more than anything she could have found in old newspapers or online. “I’m sorry,” she said again. “I don’t want to dredge up the past, but I can’t help but think it relates to the present. To what’s happening now at the hall . . .”

  “To that girl turning up dead,” the woman finished for her. “That’s why I told you. I recognize you from TV. I know you don’t give up until you find the truth.”

  Edie smiled. “Thank you.”

  “No more girls should be hurt.”

  “No, they shouldn’t,” she agreed. And she couldn’t help but think about Rosemary. At least she wasn’t alone there. Whit should have arrived by now. But would Rosemary let him stay? Or would she send him away to protect him even though she was the one who needed the protection?

  * * *

  How did she keep coming back here? He knew the why—Genevieve. But how did she force herself to keep returning to
the place where her daughter might have been murdered?

  Whit shook his head as the gates opened, letting him inside the grounds of Halcyon Hall. When he’d called Rosemary, she’d asked him to come here instead of the boardinghouse. Of course she would be here.

  Maybe it was easier for her to keep busy than to sit around and wait for news. Once at the building, he shut off his car and walked through the doors that opened automatically for him. She’d said for him to meet her in her office, but he had to have the receptionist direct him there.

  He raised his hand to knock and winced as his bruised knuckles struck the wood. She opened the door before the look must have left his face. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  He forced a smile. “You put me on the list.”

  She laughed, as he’d wanted her to. But the smile quickly slid away from her face. “I shouldn’t have. . . .”

  “Why not?” he asked.

  “Because you shouldn’t have come back here,” she said.

  “I want to see you—be with you . . .” Being away from her for the past week had been one of the hardest things he’d had to do, but he’d had to take over a trial for a judge who’d had to recuse himself. He would have to return Monday. Until then, he intended to stay close to her, to hold her. But before he could put his arms around her, she turned and walked away—to the windows behind her desk.

  Her office wasn’t as big as Dr. Cooke’s, but it was all dark paneling and coffered ceiling like his outer office was. No wonder she preferred the conservatory.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked. “Did the sheriff tell you something?” Whit had been promised that the reports would come back soon.

  She shook her head. “No. He didn’t tell me anything new.”

  “But you told him something?” he surmised. “What?”

  She sighed. “This doesn’t concern you.”

  “What?”

  “None of this,” she said. “You’re not Genevieve’s father. I know that now. None of this concerns you.”

  “You concern me,” he said. “I care about you.”

  “You just feel guilty that you left that night. . . .”

  He stalked around her desk then and closed his arms around her. Turning her toward him, he lowered his mouth to hers and kissed her soft lips. When he raised his head long moments later, he asked, “Does that feel like guilt?”