The Runaway

by Lisa Childs

  The scream had come too late though. The first blow had already dropped her to the snow. But as she’d been drifting into unconsciousness, she’d heard that scream again, and it had jerked her awake and into action. Though her vision had been blurred, she’d managed to raise her can of pepper spray and direct it at the shadow looming over her.

  Then that voice—that voice that had to be Genevieve—screamed at her again. “Run!”

  Rosemary didn’t want to run—not away from her daughter. She wanted to run toward her. But that urgency in Genevieve’s voice had her scrambling up from the snow and running away from that shadow as it rushed toward her again.

  Something swung at her, narrowly missing her head again, but swinging so hard that her hair moved and tangled around her face. Blood trailed down her forehead, blinding her nearly as much as the dizziness that threatened. But she forged ahead, stumbling over the ice-encrusted snow as she tried to run.

  Even though the slope to the shore was lower here, it was still strewn with rocks that rose up through the snow. She couldn’t maneuver quickly there; she had to get away from the rocks and the frozen water.

  Had to get back to the hall ...

  Back to Genevieve . . .

  She tilted her head, listening for another scream. She heard nothing but the wind whistling through the pines. She headed toward the trees, but her legs were heavy, leaden as dizziness overwhelmed her. Her vision blurred again and from more than the blood that trickled from the cut on her forehead. She stumbled and tripped, falling into the snow.

  But she forced herself up. She had to keep going ... for Genevieve . . .

  She regained her footing and stumbled a few more yards—toward a thick stand of pine trees—before she fell again. She tried to push herself up, but she had no strength left.

  Consciousness slipped away from her again. But then she heard another scream ... and jerked awake. Had the scream been real or just part of her nightmare? The darkness remained as she lay in the shadow not of a tree but of the man looming over her.

  She flinched and cried out in fear of the next blow. Curled up on the snow, she wrapped her arms around her head for protection. But a hand grasped her right arm and pulled it down.

  “Are you all right?” a deep voice asked.

  “Sheriff . . .” she murmured as she blinked back the blood trailing into her eyes and tried to peer up at him.

  He reached for something black and metallic, and she flinched again—worrying that it was his gun. Like her mother had said, she trusted the wrong people. But he pressed a button and static emanated from it. “It’s the sheriff . I found her.” Then he called out behind him. “She’s here—she’s alive.” Then beneath his breath, he murmured, “Thank God . . . I didn’t find another body.”

  Rosemary shuddered.

  The sheriff hunched down to reach for her. But then somebody else was there, lifting her up in his strong arms, and she looked into Whit’s eyes, which were dark with concern.

  “You’re bleeding,” he said. “You’ve been hurt.” Then, holding her against his chest, he turned toward the sheriff, who’d been joined by Edie and Dr. Cooke. “Did you call an ambulance?”

  The sheriff spoke into his walkie-talkie again, asking for paramedics. Rosemary reached out and grasped Deacon Howell’s arm. “So you didn’t find a body?”

  “You’re alive,” he said, as if assuring her that she was.

  Or maybe himself . . .

  “Genevieve,” she said. “She’s alive.”

  “We don’t have the DNA back yet,” he said.

  “No. I heard her. She’s alive. . . .” Or she had been. Rosemary looked at the people gathered around her, but they looked away from her—as if they thought she’d lost it. “I heard her,” she insisted. “She called me. That’s why I’m out here.”

  “It was a trick,” the sheriff said.

  She shook her head, and the dizziness overwhelmed her, making her nearly pass out. But then she remembered . . .

  “No,” she said. “I heard her out here. She screamed at me to run. She distracted him so I could get away. She saved my life.” Now Rosemary had to do the same. But when she tried to wriggle away from Whit, the dizziness overwhelmed her again.

  “Why were you out here?” Elijah asked.

  “I got a phone call. It was her, telling me to meet her in the boathouse,” Rosemary said.

  Elijah’s brow furrowed. “Boathouse? There’s no boathouse on the property.”

  “Yes, there is,” Rosemary said. Was the sheriff right to doubt the hall director? “I asked the groundskeeper where it was, and he pointed me in this direction.”

  Elijah sighed. “Williams has worked here for thirty years. Maybe he remembers where one was years ago. But I don’t remember one ever being on the property.”

  “I couldn’t see much of the groundskeeper I talked to,” she admitted. Not with his ski mask and his hooded jacket. “But he definitely hasn’t worked here or anywhere else for thirty years.”

  “The guy in the parking lot?” Whit asked. “I saw him, too. He looked younger than thirty.”

  Dr. Cooke sucked in a breath. “Teddy Bowers. Bode fired him last week. He shouldn’t have been anywhere on the property.”

  “He was,” Whit said.

  Elijah cursed. “Damn it. Bode was right. The kid is trouble.”

  “Give me a description,” Sheriff Howell ordered. “Of the man and the truck.”

  She opened her mouth to speak, but Dr. Cooke was already answering him, already giving him more information than she would have been able, especially now with her head pounding so painfully.

  “We need to get you to the hospital,” Whit murmured as he started walking.

  The movement increased the dizziness and the pounding, but Rosemary fought to stay conscious. She wanted to make sure that they found Genevieve—that they saved her daughter. But with each step Whit took, the pounding and the pain intensified. A moan slipped through her lips.

  He hastened his step. “I need to get you to that ambulance.”

  She patted his shoulder, trying to grab it, trying to stop him. She didn’t want to go—didn’t want to leave Genevieve . . .

  Where was her daughter?

  * * *

  The blood kept flowing from the wound on her head, down her face, onto her jacket, into her hair, onto Whit. So much blood ...

  Whit tried to hurry back toward the hall, toward the parking lot. The ambulance had to be there now, had to be waiting to take Rosemary right to the hospital. But the soles of his dress shoes slipped across the icy crust on the snowy ground, slowing his progress. And every time a shoe broke through the crusty surface, he nearly lost it. His socks were soaked, like the legs of his slacks.

  The discomfort was nothing in comparison to his fear for Rosemary. Her head wound looked serious. She must have been hit very hard with something—maybe the shovel the groundskeeper had been wielding earlier. Had Whit been that close to her assailant, so close that he could have stopped him then?

  Maybe if he’d been less concerned about his hurt feelings over Rosemary rejecting him, he might have paid more attention to his suspicion about the young man. That noise he’d heard ... had that been Genevieve?

  Was Rosemary right? Was her daughter alive? Or was the head wound making her imagine that she’d heard her? But she’d claimed that she’d heard her on the phone—before the blow to her head.

  Her fingers splayed across his shoulder, grasping at the fabric of his coat. “I don’t want to leave ... not until I know if she’s all right . . .”

  “You have to,” he said. Lights flashed across the snow as he drew closer to the parking lot. Lights also glowed in the windows of the hall, but those were the only light as the sun slipped from the sky. “You need stitches and a CT scan.” Maybe surgery if she had blood pooling within her skull like it was flowing from the wound.

  “I need to know that she got away from him, that she’s safe. . . .”

  Whit r
ushed the last few yards to the lot where paramedics were opening the back doors of an ambulance. Before they could bring out the stretcher, he jumped up into the back and laid her on it. “Close the doors,” he said. “You need to get her to the hospital right away.”

  “No!” Her shout echoed throughout the back of the ambulance, and her beautiful face twisted with a grimace of pain.

  “You have to go,” he said.

  “Genevieve—”

  “The sheriff will find her,” he said. Howell hadn’t followed him and Rosemary back to the lot, so he must have been searching for her. “Maybe he already has.”

  She shook her head, smearing blood across the white sheet on the stretcher. “No . . .”

  “Don’t listen to her,” Whit said. He shouldn’t have listened to her earlier. He should have never left her side no matter what she’d said, not when he’d known she was in danger.

  She gripped his shoulder and shoved him back. “You stay. You make sure they find her.”

  “Rosemary . . .” He didn’t want to leave her—not alone, not again, not when the man who’d attacked her might try again.

  “Please,” she murmured. “You’re the only one I really trust. Do this for me.”

  Then he knew that he had to . . . that he had no choice this time. He nodded and turned toward one of the paramedics. “Let me out.”

  When the doors opened, Edie stood outside them—her face pale. “You ride with her,” he told the reporter. “You make sure nobody gets to her.”

  “Where are you going?” Edie asked as he hopped down from the rig.

  “To help them look for Genevieve.”

  “But Whit, she might be wrong.”

  He hoped like hell that she wasn’t, that she had really heard her daughter. But if she had, that didn’t mean that Genevieve was still alive. It just meant that she wasn’t the body the sheriff had found last week. Would he find her body now though?

  “Where did the sheriff go?” he asked.

  “There’s a cottage on the property that the groundskeeper was using before he was fired,” she said. “The sheriff and Dr. Cooke went there to find her.”

  And, obviously, they hadn’t let her tag along.

  “Get her to the hospital,” he said, as he helped her into the back.

  “Whit!” Rosemary called out before the doors could close again.

  Maybe she didn’t want the reporter going with her; he couldn’t blame her. But for some reason he was beginning to trust the woman. “What?” he asked.

  “I think Teddy Bowers stayed at the boardinghouse, too.”

  Would he have gone back there—after getting fired? Would he have returned to the house with Genevieve? If so, they would all be in danger. “I’ll make sure they’re okay,” he said.

  “Whit . . .” she called out again.

  But he closed the doors, making sure she left for the hospital. The sheriff and Cooke led the search here, and they both knew the grounds better than he did. He would check on the sisters. Chances were that they were fine—that the young man wouldn’t have stopped there—not once he’d tried for Rosemary again. He’d probably left the property and the island.

  So where the hell would he have gone? And would he have brought Genevieve with him if she was still alive?

  * * *

  Hours earlier Bode had started out for his morning run. Due to the wind, he’d stuck closer to the hall and the other buildings on the property. That was when he’d noticed the light on in one of the small cabins that the groundskeeper’s helpers used. During the winter, there was only one extra helper on duty, but since Bode had fired Teddy Bowers a week ago and told him to get off the premises, there should have been no lights inside the small cabin.

  Maybe Teddy had just left one on when he’d moved out. Hopefully, that was all he’d done ... though Bode suspected he might have been the one who’d hit him over the head. Who else could it have been?

  He slowed his pace and stifled a groan. A woman or two or three might have been holding a grudge against him. Especially . . .

  But she’d left him. She hadn’t left just him, though.

  He glanced at that light again. He should probably shut it off, but as he neared the cabin, he noticed the truck parked near the back of it. It wasn’t a Halcyon Hall vehicle although Teddy had had the use of the groundskeeper’s SUV until he’d wrecked it. The beat-up old red pickup was the kid’s personal vehicle.

  So what the hell was it doing here?

  Bode drew in a deep breath and headed around the cabin toward the back. As he passed by one of the windows, he glimpsed a shifting of the shadows inside the room. Someone was in there.

  But a metallic clank in the pickup drew his attention away from the house. As he walked away though, something tapped at that window. Before he could glance back, Teddy Bowers called out to him. “Bode!”

  “What the hell are you doing here?” he asked the kid. “I fired you a week ago.”

  “I’m moving out.”

  “I told you to do that when I fired you,” Bode said. When he’d regained consciousness, he’d come by and checked the cabin and hadn’t seen him there then. Apparently, he should have made more certain that the kid had left, maybe he should have showed him off the damn property himself. He couldn’t have trusted Warren to do it. “I gave you a chance, Teddy. I told you I wouldn’t call the police. . . .” But he should have—no matter what scandal it might have caused the hall.

  At the very least he should have changed the damn security code for the employee gate. Why hadn’t he thought of that—especially after he’d been struck over the head in his own damn cottage? Hell, maybe that was why; maybe that blow had rattled his brain.

  “I told you that, but you still waited in my place and attacked me,” Bode said, shaking his head with disgust.

  “What?” Teddy exclaimed. “I didn’t—I swear—”

  “It had to be you,” Bode insisted. He didn’t have any other enemies but for a few women and sometimes his own damn brother.

  Teddy shook his head. “No, I swear it wasn’t. And I’m just here to grab a couple things I left behind. I’m leaving right now.”

  Bode narrowed his eyes with skepticism. “You better be.”

  “I—I had some trouble finding another place to stay,” Teddy replied.

  Bode snorted. “Those old ladies that own the boardinghouse always have a room or two open.”

  “Yeah, yeah, that’s where I’m going,” he said. “I was just leaving.”

  Bode nodded. “Make sure that you really are this time.”

  Teddy nodded. “Yeah, I am. You can get back to your run, Bode.”

  He seemed really eager to get rid of him and Bode knew why when another noise came from the cabin. This time it wasn’t tapping on the glass; it was a scream. He whirled back around, but he wasn’t fast enough to avoid the blow.

  Metal flashed as Teddy swung a shovel at him. The blow knocked him to the ground. He tried to roll away, but Teddy swung again.

  And everything went black.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Whit would keep his promise to Rosemary to check on the Pierce sisters on his way to the hospital. He’d just make sure they were all right; then he’d make sure Rosemary was all right.

  Would she be though? If her daughter wasn’t found?

  Or had Genevieve already been found? The body in the morgue was probably hers. But then, who had Rosemary heard scream? Had Teddy Bowers faked the voice when he’d called to lure Rosemary out of the hall? Why was a groundskeeper so determined to kill her? It made no sense. But then in his experience as a district attorney and as a judge, crime rarely made sense.

  Whit pulled up to the Victorian house, but before turning into the driveway, he glanced at the doors to the carriage house. They were not closed entirely, exposing a familiar red pickup truck parked next to an even older pickup. And his blood chilled.

  Rosemary had been right to worry; the groundskeeper had come here. Why?
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  And was he alone?

  Whit hit the emergency call button on his cell phone. When the dispatcher picked up, he said, “Please connect me with the sheriff.”

  “Sir, he’s out of the office on an emergency call.”

  “I know—at Halcyon Hall. I found the kid he’s looking for. Teddy Bowers.” Or at least he’d found his truck. Maybe Bowers had exchanged it for one of the sisters’ vehicles, if they owned two. Maybe he wasn’t in the house at all. But if he was . . .

  Whit couldn’t let him hurt either of the sweet ladies.

  “Don’t approach him,” the dispatcher cautioned. “They’ve found another body at the manor.”

  Whit cursed. So if Rosemary had heard Genevieve, it might have been the last time.

  “Where are you?” the woman asked.

  “I’m at the Pierce boardinghouse,” he said. “Howell needs to get here ASAP.” He didn’t wait for the woman’s response, just clicked off the phone. He didn’t have a gun. But the kid hadn’t shot anyone, so he must not have had one either. Whit could handle him. He had to handle him, so that Teddy Bowers didn’t hurt anyone else.

  Parking the car so that it blocked the driveway, he pushed open the driver’s door and slid out. Then he slowly climbed the steps to the front porch, careful to keep his footsteps light. The kid must have seen him drive up because Whit could hear him yelling through the front door. “Shut up, you old hags! Anybody screams this time, and I’m going to kill everybody!”

  Whit sucked in a breath. Somebody had screamed, just like Rosemary had said.

  “You can’t kill us all,” a female voice told him. Despite quavering slightly with fear, there was strength in it, too. And youth—it wasn’t one of the Pierces. “You can’t see to drive yourself. You need one of us to drive you.”

  “That bitch maced me,” he said, “because of you!”

  The guy was talking to Genevieve. She was alive. Whit had to make sure she stayed that way. He couldn’t wait for the sheriff to show up, not with all of the women in such immediate danger.

  “And you,” Teddy continued his rant. “I’m your family and you claim you don’t even know who I am. . . .”