by Nalini Singh
It began to slide back almost at once.
Waiting only until it was open just far enough, Anahera slipped through, then told Jemima to close it.
Four huge black dogs boiled out of the trees at that moment, snarling and barking and heading straight for her Jeep.
64
“Jesus, Jemima.”
“Drive,” the other woman ordered. “They’ll go for the people at the gate. Matthew assured me they know not to cross that barrier.”
Anahera wasn’t so certain of that, but she kept on driving as, behind her, the gate slid shut again. Barely in time. One of the dogs slammed into it, its jaws wide open. No wonder Jemima was keeping her kids indoors.
Parking her Jeep right by the front door of the glass and timber guesthouse, Anahera opened her own door with care. She couldn’t hear the dogs, but she still moved as fast as humanly possible to grab the drinks and cakes. Jemima was waiting for her in the doorway, sea green eyes jaggedly brilliant in a face as pale as porcelain.
“Here, I’ll take those,” she said with a graciousness that seemed habitual.
“Those dogs, Jem.” Anahera shut the door behind herself, then took the drinks from Jemima. “I can see they’re doing a good job, but they’re vicious.”
“Matthew’s going to pick them up tomorrow,” Jemima told her, leading them into a large living area made warm and snug by the crackling fire in the hearth.
Her face changed as she entered, her expression brighter and happier. “Sweethearts, look what my friend Anahera’s brought! Treats!”
The two children jumped up from where they were playing with Lego bricks on the floor. Fidgeting, their small faces aglow, they nonetheless remembered to say, “Thank you!” to Anahera before they reached out to pick a cupcake each from the box their mother held open.
“I’m going to put your drinks here,” Jemima told the children, placing the hot chocolates on a coffee table by the play area. “You both know you have to sit at this table to eat and drink.”
Two happy nods, faces already smooshed with pink and purple frosting.
Putting the extra cakes on the dining table to the far right of the open-plan space, Anahera following suit with their coffees, Jemima smiled at her children and it was incredible, the fierce power with which she held back her sadness and grief in their presence. “If I leave these cakes near them, they won’t be able to resist, and their little tummies can only hold so much.”
Anahera took off her anorak and hung it on the back of the chair before taking a seat across from Jemima. “They’re sweet kids.” Well raised rather than polite robots too scared to step a foot out of line. Currently, they were giggling as they painted mustaches onto each other’s upper lips with the frosting from their cupcakes.
Jemima’s face crumpled for a second before she slapped the cheerful mask back on. “I don’t know what this will do to them,” she said in a low tone that wouldn’t reach Jasper and Chloe. “To grow up being known as the children of a serial killer?” Her anguish was a raw wound. “Daniel’s coming back into the country tomorrow to deal with some urgent business matters. He said he’ll fly us out of here. At least I can take my babies away from the center of it all.”
“Good. You don’t need to have that ugliness on your doorstep.” Those vultures wouldn’t be leaving anytime soon. “It’s good of Daniel to offer to fly you out.” The news choppers did the occasional flyover here, but they tended to concentrate on the activity at the Baker house and the crime scene in the bush behind it—Vincent’s private burial plot. If Daniel timed it right, he could be in the air and away before anyone realized he wasn’t alone in the chopper.
“Vincent never had a nice thing to say about Daniel, but he doesn’t want anything from us. When the police came and said we couldn’t stay in the house, I didn’t know what to do, but Daniel and Keira were there minutes later.”
Anahera figured Daniel must’ve been tipped off by a police contact—and she also figured she knew the name of that police contact. “Daniel’s not a bad guy.” Arrogant, yes, but when it mattered, he stepped up.
Jemima squeezed her takeout cup, denting it. “My family wanted to fly in the instant they heard, but I told them to stay away. They came anyway, are waiting in Christchurch.” She swallowed. “I had to get things straight in my head first. I couldn’t deal with my father telling me what to do while my sisters organized my life.”
Anahera sat back and let Jemima talk, and she learned that Vincent had chosen the most soft-spoken and submissive of four sisters, the woman least likely to question his actions.
“I went along with everything,” Jemima whispered. “The nights when he just disappeared, the days when he’d shut the door to his basement workroom and ignore me and the children, the way he’d be so cold to me when we were alone and so warm and affectionate when we were out in public—I pretended that was the real Vincent. Because that was the Vincent who courted me. Who married me.”
Anahera nodded. “I understand.”
The other woman’s expression fractured, her lips quivering. “You’re the only person who can say that and that I know actually does understand. Thank you for sharing your secret with me. I won’t tell anyone.”
It was such a stark thing to say, stripped of all pretense. “And whatever you tell me,” Anahera replied, “it stays between us. No matter what.”
“You’re with that cop.”
“I’m my own person.” She also understood the ugly truth that long-term abuse had an insidious impact on the psyche; no one who hadn’t walked in Jemima’s shoes had the right to judge her. “My father beat my mother for most of their life together. And she stayed. She even stuck up for him against people who called him a bully. She told them he was a wonderful husband and father.”
Jemima stared at Anahera. “Did she ever get away?”
“Five years before she died. The first time he punched me.” Anahera could still feel her head snapping back with violent force, her body flying back. “I got into the middle of a fight between them and he went for me. I never knew before that day why he’d never once touched me even in the worst of his rages. Because that was my mother’s bright line.” The one thing Haeata would not forgive.
Jemima frantically wiped away the tears rolling down her face, shooting a quick look toward the children to make sure they hadn’t seen. “I was getting to that point,” she whispered. “He’d started to ignore the children more and more except when he needed to bring them out for a photo op.
“They’d run to him for hugs and . . .” She stared at nothing for long minutes. “Vincent never yelled, but he’d be so cold, like our babies were stray animals who had nothing to do with him.” Her fingers clenched again around the takeout cup. “At night, in the darkness, I lie awake and I wonder if I would have left him if he’d carried on that way. Or if I would’ve stayed while my children suffered.”
Glancing at the two frosting-smudged kids currently sitting with their elbows braced on top of the coffee table while they drank their hot chocolates, Anahera said, “As far as I can see, they’re happy and well-adjusted. Whatever Vincent withheld, you gave them in spades.”
A tremulous smile. “You think so?”
“I’ve never lied to you.”
The smile brightened then disappeared. “I didn’t know,” the other woman said, her voice hollow. “Those nights when he disappeared, I thought he was going out and sleeping with other women. Maybe prostitutes. It was the worst thing I could imagine.”
“I don’t think murder is the default assumption for any wife when her husband goes missing overnight.” Anahera leaned forward. “The media are going to hound you. If you decide to do an interview, control it.”
“I won’t be talking to reporters,” Jemima murmured. “My oldest sister, Catherine, is a lawyer. She’s always been the strongest and mostly, I try to keep out of her way, but I called
her and I asked her if the children and I can disappear.”
A long exhale, traces of her South African accent slipping back into her words as she continued. “Catherine said it’ll be next to impossible in a small country where every news channel and outlet is going to be carrying this story for months, maybe years, along with photos of Vincent and me. At least they’ve been decent enough to spare the children.”
She took a gulp of the tepid coffee. “It’s also a huge story in South Africa because of my family’s standing there.” More whispers of the accent, more cracks in the veneer of perfection demanded by Vincent and produced by this woman who’d loved him. “My face is apparently everywhere.”
“You need to go somewhere you can start afresh.” Some people might call that running away, but fuck those sanctimonious pricks. They weren’t living this horror. “Europe?”
“Yes, that’s what I was thinking. Vincent’s known in London, and in a few cities like Paris and Milan, but most of his business interests are in the US and China. Catherine says the story hasn’t gained much traction in Europe beyond London.”
Jemima turned her lips inward to wet them before continuing. “I was an exchange student in Germany during high school. I speak the language and I know how things work there. It has a population of tens of millions. We could vanish in all those people, just three more blond heads in the crowd.”
Anahera reached out a hand, closed it over Jemima’s wrist. “Go,” she whispered. “Take care of yourself and your children. Be selfish.”
“The police haven’t told me I can’t go, but they’ve strongly suggested I stay in the country. They want me to give evidence of the nights Vincent was gone over the years.” A haunted look in her eyes. “I kept diaries.” Pressing her lips together desperately, she squeezed her eyes shut for long seconds.
“Did you hand them over?” Anahera asked when she was sure Jemima could speak without breaking.
“During the second interview,” was the husky reply. “After I couldn’t lie to myself any longer, after they played me a tape of Vincent confessing to the most horrible, awful things.”
“Then you’ve done more than enough. Vincent’s happily talking—he’s never again going to walk free, whether or not you testify.” Anahera knew that if Jemima didn’t get out now, she’d be caught in the endless loop of trials and appeals and game-playing by Vincent.
“He called me.” Jemima’s fingers trembled around the coffee cup. “From the prison. And he was my Vincent. Oh, God, Ana, if I stay here, I’m so scared I’ll never break free.” A harsh whisper. “He’ll always have me.”
“I’ll help you in any way I can.” No way was Anahera allowing Vincent to claim another victim. “If the police have frozen your assets, I’ll give you my bank card for my London account.” There was plenty of money in it, more than enough to help a woman who needed to get on her feet. “You can access it all over Europe and no one will ever trace it to you.”
Jemima glanced over at her children, then back at Anahera. “What if . . . what if I knew something? What if I suspected in the darkest part of night? What if I saw a speck of blood on one of Vincent’s polo shirts one night after he came home?”
Holding those eyes of sea green, Jemima’s pupils hugely dilated, Anahera kept her voice quiet as she said, “What did he do to you after he came home those nights?”
Jemima’s hand flew to her mouth, muffling a cry. “How did you know?” she whispered through white-knuckled fingers.
Because she’d looked into a friend’s face and seen a monster hot with sexual arousal. Death, fear, it had been erotic to Vincent. “He wears masks, Jemima. Husband, friend, reliable member of the town. But beneath it all, he’s fundamentally twisted.”
Tears shimmered in Jemima’s eyes. Dropping her hand, she said, “Do you think it was because of what his father did?”
“I don’t know.” The elder Bakers weren’t here to defend themselves against the accusations. “But to have two sons turn out . . . wrong. It’s tough to believe that’s coincidence.”
“I know it’s a horrible thing to say, but I want the abuse story to be true.” Jemima threw a desperate glance toward where Jasper and Chloe were involved in an animated discussion about building a castle. “Then my babies can be free. They’ll never have to worry about being born with evil inside them.”
“I remember playing with Vincent on the beach when we were maybe six. He used to make disgusting noises with his armpit, laugh at how the seagulls fought, make me crazy by putting sand down my back then running like hell when I chased him, all normal little-boy things.” Anahera had nearly forgotten that distant childhood summer.
It hurt to remember it now, to remember that bright-eyed boy who might not have been born a monster. “He got quieter slowly. I never really thought about it, it was so gradual, but he changed in a deep way from the wild little boy who collected shells for our sandcastle and who only watched the hermit crabs but didn’t catch them.”
“Thank you,” Jemima whispered, her hand clutching at Anahera’s. “Thank you.”
They watched the children for several long minutes.
“It wasn’t rape,” Jemima said so low it was barely audible. “It couldn’t be rape. I loved him.”
But in Jemima’s face, Anahera saw that she didn’t believe her own words. “Promise me one thing,” she said. “You’ll talk to someone about all of this once you’re safe. A therapist, a priest, someone.”
“Will you . . . will you stay in touch?” A hunted, flinched look.
“Try to get rid of me.” She made eye contact, held it. “Kia kaha, Jemima. You’ve survived evil that sought to crush you. You will endure.”
65
Will went straight to Dominic de Souza’s surgery after separating from Anahera. The Closed sign was on the door, but when he walked over to Dominic’s place, no one responded to his knock.
“He left a while ago,” a neighbor yelled out to Will. “Poor fella. Just walking, shoulders all hunched in.”
“Did you see which direction he went?”
It was inevitable that she’d point toward the ocean.
That was where this had begun. And that was where it would end.
Making the drive to the cliffs, Will headed down to the part of the beach where Anahera had dragged up Miriama’s body. It was now marked by flowers put there by her friends and family. The crime scene tape had been blown away that first night, but—and though both Pastor Mark and the local kaumātua had come and said a blessing over the area—nothing could erase what had taken place there.
Dominic knelt beside the flowers, his shoulders shaking as he sobbed. Will made no attempt to hide his footsteps. The sand absorbed all sound regardless. So he did a wide circle that would bring him within Dominic’s peripheral vision, but the doctor didn’t show any awareness of his presence.
He didn’t react even when Will sat down on the sand next to him, having already mentally patted him down—Dominic was wearing only a thin white shirt and a pair of dark brown pants that looked like they might go with a suit jacket. The wind pasted the clothing against his body with every small gust. It was obvious he had nothing hidden on him, and all he held in his hands was a bracelet.
It sparkled silver and gold and bronze in the sunlight.
“Is that Miriama’s?” Will had seen the shine of it on her wrist more than once.
Dominic gave a jerky nod before lifting the bracelet to his mouth and pressing a kiss to it while tears ravaged his face. “Her favorite,” he said. “She left it at my place the last time she stayed over.”
Dropping his hands to his thighs, the bracelet still clutched in the fingers of one hand, the young doctor stared out at the water. “I still can’t believe she’s gone. She was so alive, so vibrant. My sunshine.”
Will had situated himself so he could see Dominic’s face. Now he saw that the grief
was real. “I just came from talking to Dr. Richard Symon.”
It seemed as if it was relief that swept across Dominic’s face. “Oh,” he said, staring down at the bracelet again. “I knew someone would, eventually.”
“We all just assumed you were Miriama’s doctor,” Will said. “Small town and all that.”
“I could’ve had my registration yanked if someone had wanted to make trouble and say that I’d seduced a patient.” Dominic swallowed hard. “She never had reason to come to the clinic after I took over from Dr. Wong. Once we got together and I figured out she was on the clinic roll, I referred her to Dr. Symon. Keep all the ethical lines clear, you know.”
Will nodded. “It was a good thing you did,” he said. “You should’ve left it at that.”
Another burst of sobs, Dominic’s face breaking apart in front of Will. Falling back to sit on the sand with his knees raised, he banged his head against the bracelet. “I just got so worried,” he said after a long time, his voice raw. “She was going to see the doctor more times than she should. When I asked her, she’d say, ‘Kāore he raru. Don’t worry, lover.’ She was just feeling a little off, and wanted to check her iron levels since she used to have low iron as a girl.”
Raising his head, the other man stared out at the water again. “I didn’t quite believe her, but I let it go. I thought it might be something a woman would consider embarrassing—it’s funny how people can be, even with a doctor. I never wanted her to feel that way with me.”
“When did you find out?” Will asked.
“We’d been dating a couple of days shy of three months when she came to me all nervous and said, she was sorry, but that her birth control looked like it had failed. She was pregnant, and did I mind very much?”
