The Runaway

by Lisa Childs

  “I can’t do this now,” she said. “I can’t start something with you. I’m out of my mind with worry. So don’t force yourself on me now—when I’m most vulnerable.”

  All the breath left his lungs as if she’d punched him. “Force myself . . .” That was the last thing he would ever do with anyone.

  “I get that you feel guilty about our past, about your wife . . .”

  He shook his head. But he couldn’t deny the guilt about her. About his wife ...

  “Please, go,” she implored him.

  He jerked his head in a quick nod. She’d already accused him before of forcing himself on her. But then she hadn’t really remembered that night. But to accuse him now ... “Rosemary . . .”

  Tears glistened in her eyes as she stared up at him. “Please, Whit, I can’t do this now. I can’t . . . I need you to leave. . . .”

  A lawyer before a judge, Whit had never been at a loss for words or an argument, but she was too vulnerable now for him to pressure. He forced himself to turn around and walk away from her. But it killed him leaving her alone in that dark office, in that dark place ...

  For years she’d thought he was her rapist. While she knew the truth now, she would probably never completely get over all the nightmares she’d had about him. She’d only contacted him to help her find her daughter. Genevieve was her total focus as well she should be. He couldn’t fault that, and he couldn’t add to her worries.

  Not right now ...

  He kept walking, right out of Halcyon Hall. But he paused in the parking lot, beside his car, and drew in a breath of air so cold it burned his lungs. They were already aching, though, along with his heart.

  He wanted to turn back around, to go back to her, to fight for her. But she was too fragile now. He wasn’t going to force himself on her, but he wasn’t leaving her again. At least he wasn’t going far.

  He reached for the door handle of his vehicle. As he gripped it, a chill raced over him. The wind had whipped up again, but that chill had nothing to do with the cold. He had an odd sensation that someone was watching him. He glanced toward the hall. Had Rosemary reconsidered?

  Was she watching to see if he could turn around and come back to her? No. With as determined as she’d been a while ago, she was probably just making sure that he left. He sighed, and the breath hung like white mist in the air in front of him.

  A clanking sound startled him, and he whirled around to peer at the other vehicles parked in the lot. A man stood near a pickup truck, messing with some tools sticking out of the bed. He had a hood pulled over his head and ski mask on under that.

  Whit narrowed his eyes with suspicion. He’d seen security footage with so many criminals disguised that same way. What the hell was this guy up to?

  He pulled out a shovel and began working on the sidewalk leading up to the hall. The concrete was already pretty clear, but maybe the groundskeeper was worried that the wind had caused drifts. Snow removal was probably the only thing he could do in the winter.

  Whit laughed inwardly at himself. He’d spent too many years on the bench, too many years in the courtroom, that he suspected everyone of something. Even Rosemary ... Why was she so determined to send him away? Had her mother called her after his visit, threatened her in some way? Because he had this feeling that Rosemary wasn’t pushing him away for her sake as much as she was for his.

  * * *

  He watched as the blond-haired man drove away from the hall, his car disappearing around a curve in the winding drive. He hadn’t stayed. Neither had the sheriff or the reporter. They were all gone now, leaving him a clear shot at the woman.

  His pulse raced with excitement as adrenaline rushed through him. He had to be careful, though—had to make sure that he didn’t get caught. That nothing could be traced back to him . . .

  Because he wasn’t done here—at the hall—or on the island. No matter what other people thought or wanted ...

  He wasn’t going to leave—wasn’t going to just go away. He wasn’t giving up his birthright. Not like ...

  No. He forced his mind to stop racing ahead. He wasn’t going to deal with that yet. First he had to deal with her. And there had never been a better time than now.

  He could finally get rid of her and, this time, nobody would be around to rush to her rescue.

  Rosemary Tulle’s was the next dead body that would be found at Halcyon Hall.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  When the shadow fell across the diner table, Deacon glanced up from his plate and groaned.

  Whittaker Lawrence slid into the booth across from him. “Nice to see you, too, Sheriff.”

  “What are you doing here?” Deacon asked.

  “I was just about to ask you the same thing,” Whit replied. “You don’t appear to be doing a lot of investigating.”

  Deacon poked his fork through the layer of gravy covering the meat on his plate. “I am investigating what the hell the special is supposed to be. . . .” he murmured. “Is that meatloaf or roast beef?”

  “You have a bigger mystery than the meat on your plate,” Whit pointed out.

  Deacon groaned again. “So I’m not supposed to take a minute to eat or sleep?” Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if he lost the election next year. Everybody on the damn island and now even outsiders expected him to work twenty-four seven. They certainly wouldn’t get that much time out of Warren, not with his allegiances divided.

  “It sure doesn’t look like you’ve taken a minute to sleep,” Whit remarked.

  Deacon glared at him. “Thanks for noticing.” He knew he looked like hell. He felt like hell, too. He hadn’t been sleeping, and he hadn’t been eating. He pushed the plate away from him. “What do you want, Lawrence?”

  He should have been relieved that it was Lawrence who’d crashed his dinner, though, rather than the reporter. Though she was certainly prettier to look at than the judge.

  “I want to know about your investigation,” Whit said.

  “You know as much as I do,” Deacon said. “You’ve been making calls, I’ve heard, pushing the DNA results further along the chain.” So he probably owed him a sincere thank-you, but it stuck in his throat along with the one bite of the mystery meat he’d taken before the judge had joined him. “They should be back soon.”

  “So you’ve just been waiting to hear about those?”

  He snorted. “Yup, just been sitting here twiddling my thumbs.”

  “Really?”

  “Whittling, too,” he added. “We do a lot of whittling on the island.”

  Whit snorted now and a chuckle slipped out with it. “I do enjoy whittling myself.”

  “I’m sure you do,” Deacon agreed, a grin tugging at his lips. “Given your name and all . . .”

  “Oh . . .” Lawrence nodded. “Yeah, never put that together before.”

  “Well, I’m pretty good at putting things together,” Deacon said. “Take you and Rosemary . . .”

  “We’re not together,” Whit said.

  “Then why are you here?”

  “I’m worried about her,” he said. “About all the things that have happened to her since she arrived on this island.”

  Deacon sighed and tilted his head, studying the judge’s face. The man was good at the guarded expression, at hiding what he was really thinking or feeling. That was the one thing that Deacon had managed to master himself about politics, but that had been more out of self-preservation than playing any game.

  “You know nothing happened to her until she made contact with you again after all those years,” Deacon mused. “It was on her way back from seeing you that she was nearly run off the bridge. And you were in town that day her brake line was cut. And hell, you were the one holding her off the side of that cliff—”

  “On that cliff,” Whit interrupted, and his poker face vanished beneath a flushed tide of anger. “I was holding on to her.”

  “You seem to have let go now,” Deacon mused. “You’ve been pretty scarce this past week.”
Except for all the calls he’d made and favors he must have cashed in to rush those DNA results.

  “That’s Rosemary’s choice,” he admitted. “Not mine . . .”

  Deacon groaned—this time in commiseration. He understood now what was going on; he understood too damn well because he’d been there himself. “Well, she’s going through a lot right now.”

  “And she won’t let me help her,” Whit muttered, his voice gruff with frustration. “So you need to help her, Sheriff.”

  “She reached out to that reporter you brought here,” Deacon said.

  Whit flinched. “You need to make sure they both don’t get in over their heads.”

  “I suspect the reporter can handle herself,” Deacon said.

  “I’m more worried about Rosemary,” Whit said.

  “Me too,” he admitted. After his meeting with Elijah, he’d met with Rosemary and found out more of her family secrets. And he’d thought his family was messed up. He sighed.

  “What are you going to do about it?” Whit asked.

  “I’m working on it,” Deacon assured the judge, and he glanced at his watch. “In fact I have a meeting soon. . . .” He pushed his plate across the table. “It’s all yours.”

  Whit shook his head. “I’ve had more than enough mystery lately.” He was pulling his cell from his pocket as Deacon walked out. No doubt he was going to make more calls, going to apply more pressure to rush those results.

  Soon they would know the truth. If that was Genevieve’s body Deacon had found ...

  If it wasn’t . . . who the hell else had died on the island?

  * * *

  The call had surprised Rosemary. She had not expected to hear from her—not after all the voicemails she’d left had gone unanswered. She’d expected even less for her—for them—to show up in person in her office. Of course, they had already been on the list, though, from when they’d put Genevieve in the hall.

  “You’ve been making so much trouble for us, and it has to stop. Now,” Abigail told her. “You need to call the sheriff and tell him that we had nothing to do with Genevieve taking off.”

  “Genevieve might be dead,” Rosemary said, the words scratching her throat as she forced them out. She didn’t want to consider it, but it wasn’t just a possibility. It was a probability, or Genevieve would have contacted someone before now. If not Rosemary, then one of her friends. “You already know that, though.”

  “The sheriff informed us of that when he called,” Abigail admitted, but she sounded unconcerned. “Your friend did as well when he barged onto the estate.”

  Rosemary forced herself to look at the woman, but Abigail’s face was so full of fillers that she couldn’t have revealed an emotion if she had actually been feeling one. Since they’d walked into her office at the hall, Rosemary had had trouble looking at them. Bobby had seemed to share her aversion since he kept his head down and stayed near the door, as if ready to bolt. Abigail acted as bold as she always did, as if she had nothing to hide. Or maybe she counted on her plastic face to keep her secrets. “My friend?”

  “That bastard—Whittaker Lawrence.”

  Whit had confronted her mother. She shouldn’t have been surprised since he was so determined to protect her—despite the risk to his reputation and his career.

  “I can’t believe you’ve forgiven what he did.”

  “He didn’t do anything,” Rosemary said. That was why she’d had to send him away. She didn’t want his involvement with her to hurt him. “So don’t talk about Whit. Talk about Genevieve. Do you care about her at all?”

  The woman lifted a slim shoulder in a slight shrug. She was tall but kept herself thin—almost painfully thin. “I don’t believe it’s her.”

  “Why?” Rosemary asked. “Have you heard from her?”

  The woman pursed her lips and shook her head. “No.”

  Rosemary turned toward Bobby. “Have you?”

  Keeping his head down, he shook it. But now she noticed the red mark on his cheek and the swelling around his eye. Whit had struck him; she was surprised her mother hadn’t called the police on him like she’d threatened all those years ago. But now she had even more to hide than she did then.

  “Genevieve was furious when we brought her here after she got suspended from school,” Abigail said. “Despite her drinking problem, she thought she was old enough to stay home alone. To care for herself. She is probably just trying to prove that now. And she doesn’t want to go back for treatment.”

  “How is she taking care of herself?” Rosemary asked. “She hasn’t contacted any of her friends. Where is she since she isn’t with any of them?”

  Abigail sighed. “Of course she found someone new. Genevieve is even more boy crazy than you were. I’m sure she found someone to help her get out of here and to take care of her. She’s resourceful.”

  Rosemary hoped that was true. But she couldn’t let her mother and Bobby go on acting as if they’d done nothing wrong, as if they had nothing to hide when they’d been hiding the truth from her all these years. “I was not boy crazy,” Rosemary said, jumping up from her desk chair. “I know what happened that night. You know I know.”

  Abigail snorted. “I know that you conjured up some false memory so you would be able to forgive Whittaker Lawrence for what he did to you. It didn’t happen the way you claimed in that disturbing voicemail.”

  Anger coursed through Rosemary now. When they’d first entered her office, she’d stayed behind her desk—keeping it between them for her protection. She stalked around it now. She wasn’t afraid anymore. She wasn’t the defenseless child she’d been when they’d assaulted her. “You lying bitch!” she yelled at Abigail.

  The woman flinched.

  And Bobby cringed as if she’d struck him like Whit must have. “You know what you did, and a DNA test will prove it, you sick bastards. And all just to get your hands on my trust fund.”

  “Who told you that?” Abigail demanded to know. Before Rosemary could answer, she nodded. “Gordon. He’s the one who conjured up your memory, too, isn’t he?”

  Rosemary opened her mouth to deny it, but Abigail rushed on, “He’s the one who recommended Genevieve come here—who promised he would take care of her. I should have known better than to trust him.”

  “Why?” Rosemary asked. “Because he would help us learn the truth about you two?”

  “Because he can’t be trusted around young women,” Abigail said. “Why do you think he’s no longer teaching? He’s been fired from every university he ever worked at over his inappropriate relationships with his students. That’s why I hated how much he used to come around you.”

  “Gordon didn’t hypnotize me,” Rosemary said. “It was another psychiatrist who brought out the memory of what you two animals did to me.”

  Abigail shook her head. “Brought out a memory that Gordon probably had him plant. He’s trying to take the focus off him—off what he probably did to Genevieve. If anything has really happened to her, he’s probably at fault. You’ve trusted the wrong people, Rosemary, but then you always did that.”

  Rosemary closed her eyes and focused on that nightmare—the one she’d had all these years, the one she had tried—unsuccessfully—to block from her mind all these years. She opened her eyes and turned toward Bobby. “I know it was you,” she said. “You’re my rapist. The one who hurt me.”

  He didn’t look at her even now. Instead he turned, pushed open the door, and fled from the room.

  “You’ve broken his heart,” Abigail persisted, “making these horrific accusations against him.”

  Anger surged through Rosemary again so fiercely that her temper snapped. She closed the difference between her and Abigail and swung her hand, slapping the woman so hard that the sound echoed throughout the office.

  Abigail sucked in a breath and clasped her hand to her red face. “How dare—”

  “Shut the hell up! Stop lying!”

  “I’m not—”

  “Yes, you are,
” Rosemary said. “But maybe you don’t even know it anymore. You’ve been lying so long and so hard that maybe you’ve convinced yourself. Bobby knows the truth. I know the truth. And somewhere, in that black heart of yours, you know the truth. You’re an evil bitch. And I never want to see you again.”

  “Then you’ll never see Genevieve again either!”

  Pain jabbed Rosemary’s heart, poking the bubble of hope she’d been hanging on to that that body wasn’t her daughter’s. “So you’re admitting she’s dead? That you killed her?”

  Abigail’s eyes widened with shock. “Of course not. I don’t have any idea what happened to that girl. You’re wrong about me, Rosemary. You can research Gordon and learn the truth.”

  “I might be wrong about him,” Rosemary agreed. “But I’m not wrong about you. And if you ever try to keep me from my daughter again, yours will be the next body that gets found. So get the hell out of here.”

  The woman spun on a heel and headed toward the door. But she stopped with her hand on the jamb and turned back. “I shouldn’t be surprised that you’ve found a way to blame me for this. You’ve always blamed me for everything—even for your father dying. I had nothing to do with that. And if that is Genevieve’s body that they found, I had nothing to do with that either.”

  Shock gripped Rosemary. She had never blamed her mother for her father dying. A heart attack had taken his life. But could she have caused it?

  And now that she was conceding the body could be Genevieve’s, maybe she was admitting that the girl was dead. Rosemary was glad the sheriff was going to question Abigail; maybe he would be able to get the truth out of her—since Rosemary had never been able.

  Her cell phone rang, drawing her attention back to the desk where she’d left it. As she reached down for it, she glanced back at the doorway. Abigail Walcott was gone. Rosemary hoped that she would never see her again. But if she’d been involved in Genevieve’s death, she would see her—in court and then in prison.

  Her hand shaking, she picked up the phone and clicked the connect button. The connection was so bad that she heard only static.