The Night Before

by Lisa Jackson

  “No! Oh, God, is she okay?”

  “Don’t know. I just got a call from the EMT. He asked me to meet them at Eastside General. I’m on my way.”

  “Me, too,” she said without thinking. “I’ll meet you there. Oh, and Troy, did you try to call me a couple of minutes ago?”

  “No. Why?”

  “The phone rang and I answered, but no one was there.”

  “It wasn’t me,” he said.

  Her fingers clenched around the receiver. “Probably a wrong number,” she said, not believing it for a second as she hung up. She stripped out of her nightgown, pulled on a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt, then slid into a pair of sandals, the bottoms of her feet encountering something crusty. “What the devil?” she groused, then saw the dark splotches on the insoles, two purplish drips that she knew instinctively were blood. Her stomach turned over as she realized these were the shoes she’d worn on the night Josh died. She’d obviously kicked them toward the back of the closet and hadn’t noticed the stains when she’d cleaned up her room the next day. Now she scrambled out of the sandals as if her feet actually burned. She felt a wave of panic and found a pair of running shoes that she wormed her feet into, then hurried down the stairs. As she reached the back door, the phone began to ring again. She checked Caller ID.

  Unknown caller.

  Her heart froze.

  She should answer; it could be news of her mother.

  She picked up. “Hello?”

  No response.

  “Hello?”

  Nothing, just the static of an open line. The hairs on her nape rose. She had to quell the fear that threatened her.

  “Who is this? No, wait, I don’t want to know. Whoever you are, just go to hell!”

  “You go first.” The voice was a harsh whisper and had the same effect on Caitlyn as if she’d heard her own death sentence. She slammed the phone down, her heart racing, cold sweat breaking out on her back and face. Who was it? Why were they calling?

  Calm down!

  Caitlyn backed up and stumbled against the counter. She had to get to the hospital. She didn’t have time to think about whoever it was who was harassing her. But as she stepped outside to the sultry Savannah night, the three chilling words followed her.

  You go first.

  The hospital loomed in the night, eight very modern stories in sharp contrast to most of the historic buildings in the area. Caitlyn parked and paused long enough to leave a message on Kelly’s cell phone. “Kelly, it’s Caitlyn. I just got a call from Troy. About Mom. It’s around four in the morning, and she’s been rushed to Eastside General Hospital. I don’t know the details, but when I do, I’ll call again.” She hesitated, staring out the windshield to the deserted parking lot. “I, um, I just thought you’d want to know. It wouldn’t kill you to visit her. Maybe it’s time to mend a few fences.” She clicked off, figured she’d probably pissed off her sister, but didn’t really care. A crisis was a crisis.

  Sliding out of her Lexus, she stepped into the thick, warm night. There was a slight breeze off the Savannah River and the rumble of a few engines as solitary cars, headlights cutting down the city streets, rolled past. Her footsteps echoed across the pavement as she spied Troy’s black Range Rover and, beside it, Hannah’s Honda.

  Glass doors opened as she stepped under the covered portico. Inside the lights were turned low, the corridors hushed except for the ER, where lights blazed. The night staff was on duty, and several members of her family were waiting.

  Grim faced, Troy stood near the admissions desk while Hannah sat on a long couch and absently flipped through a magazine. Lucille sat on a small chair near a potted palm and looked straight ahead, either dead tired or stricken, Caitlyn couldn’t tell which. Amanda, none the worse from her recent accident, perched on the edge of a plastic chair and Ian, dressed in his uniform, his shirt crisp, his cap lying on a table, seemed distracted and edgy. He constantly glanced at his watch or bit at a thumbnail.

  “How is Mom?” Caitlyn asked, approaching her brother.

  “Better.” Troy tried to angle a look past the drapes of the private rooms as some sleepy elevator music played from speakers set into the walls.

  “Thank God,” Amanda said with a sigh. “I don’t know if I could take another tragedy.”

  “You could take anything,” Hannah said without looking up from a six-month-old edition of People magazine. “You’re tough as nails.”

  “How would you know?”

  “I know.” She flipped another page slowly, and Caitlyn caught a glimpse of Julia Roberts on an inside page.

  “Fine, so you’re psychic.”

  “Nooooo, I just know people. I leave all that psychic crap to Lucille.”

  Amanda looked about to shoot back a retort but decided to hold her tongue. Lucille didn’t so much as glance in Hannah’s direction.

  Troy ignored his sisters’ bickering. “Once the ambulance got her here, the doctors were able to stabilize her.”

  “She had another one of her ‘spells,’ ” Amanda offered.

  “Her heart?”

  “Umhmm. Angina attack.”

  “Angina pectoris,” Hannah clarified, looking up briefly. “You know, as opposed to just angina, which can be anything. You’re talking about her heart.”

  “What about her nitroglycerine pills? They’re supposed to help.”

  “They didn’t work this time.”

  Lucille sighed heavily as she wrung her hands. “This time nothing helped, so I called 911.” Guilt kept her eyes from meeting Caitlyn’s. She stared at the coffee table. “Nothing worked. I was walking her upstairs to bed, and she began to have trouble, breathing hard, complaining of pain. I managed to get her into the bed and give her the pill, but she just kept getting worse.” The older woman’s lips pursed, and she shook her head. “I called Doc Fellers, and he didn’t answer. Your mother, she was fit to be tied and in so much pain, but she didn’t want me to call anyone else. Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore. I called 911, and they sent an ambulance.”

  “You did what you could,” Troy said.

  Hannah rolled her eyes.

  Amanda shot Hannah a warning glare, but their youngest sibling didn’t seem to notice as she tossed the glossy magazine onto the table.

  “I should have called sooner,” Lucille said.

  “Where were you, Hannah?” Troy asked.

  “Out,” Hannah said sullenly, then grabbed her bag. “I’m going out for a smoke.”

  “I’ll join you.” Troy was already reaching into his jacket pocket and jogged to catch up with her. The glass doors parted and they stepped outside, huddled together near the ash can.

  Caitlyn looked over at Amanda. “How’re you feeling?”

  “All in all? Just peachy,” Amanda said flippantly. “All in all, it’s been a helluva week.”

  Caitlyn couldn’t disagree, but as the first light of dawn seeped through the mist, she had the gnawing feeling that it was only going to get worse.

  He had to work fast.

  Adam slipped into his office and made sure the door was closed tight behind him. He’d missed something; he was sure of it. Although he’d searched this room top to bottom, he was going to do it one last time, scouring every nook and cranny, tearing up the damned floorboards if he needed to. Time was running out.

  And you’re scared. Not just for Rebecca but because of Caitlyn. Face it, Hunt, you’re interested in her and not just professionally.

  Ignoring that thought, he went to work. He looked through everything. Drawers, files, bookcases, tables, even the pillows on the couch and chairs. He searched the closet and the dry planters, behind the pictures he’d taken from the walls and through all the pockets of the coats he found in the closet.

  He rolled up the carpet, looked through the bathroom next door and finally, as the sun rose steadily in the east, was about to give up. If the information he sought wasn’t on the computer’s hard drive, then he was sunk. But something bothered him; something
about the office didn’t seem right. He sat down on the couch and viewed it again, remembering where the furniture had been placed when he’d first walked in, thinking of the few objects he’d removed . . . what was incongruous about the place?

  Think, Hunt, think!

  His gaze skimmed the desk and furniture, the decor. All recent. Made to look older, yes, but acquired in the past few years. Aside from a few books, a pair of boots, a jacket and the backpack, the items were fairly new.

  But so what?

  Frustrated, he sat on the corner of the couch where Caitlyn always took her seat. He thought he smelled the hint of her perfume, and his heart raced a little. Innocence and sexuality all rolled into one seductive package.

  Stupid, stupid, stupid. That’s what his attraction to Caitlyn was. Professional dynamite. Personal disaster. And yet when she appeared in this room, he couldn’t deny the physical allure of the woman. Slim, but not bony, she carried herself with a slightly aloof air, a facade that shattered in their sessions when she, fighting to maintain control of her ragged emotions, would refuse to break down, or try and laugh off her own case of nerves. Her smile was sexy. Her movements sensual. Her worries deep. Shadows darkened her eyes, and confusion occasionally tugged at the corners of her mouth, but beneath the layers of anxiety and tragedy, he sensed there was an intelligent, sharp, deep woman that she rarely allowed out.

  He was an idiot. Plain and simple. He didn’t have time for a woman and certainly not a complicated one like Caitlyn Bandeaux. Already the police were nosing around, asking questions about Rebecca. It was only a matter of time, days or possibly hours, before they figured out that he was subleasing her offices and using her equipment. Then he’d have some explaining to do. Her disappearance would be a matter of record, and they would seal up the office and house. Not that their investigation would necessarily be a bad thing, just a hindrance, and he would be looked upon with suspicion. His movements would be restricted, and he really believed that he was more likely to find her than any other person on the planet.

  He’d lived with her.

  He knew her.

  He understood her.

  He knew he could find her.

  But he was beginning to worry that it wouldn’t be fast enough. Too much time had slipped by. With each passing day he felt with growing certainty that she was dead.

  Worse yet, he had the chilling premonition that Rebecca’s disappearance was somehow tied to Caitlyn Montgomery Bandeaux.

  Twenty-One

  “I don’t know where she is,” Sugar said, blocking the cop’s entrance to her home. Caesarina was standing next to her, growling a warning at the detective on her doorstep.

  “But Christina Biscayne does live here.”

  Sugar nodded. She usually hated cops. Didn’t trust them. But this one seemed a little different, with his rugged good looks and intense gaze. More interesting than the green yahoo who had interviewed her after Josh Bandeaux’s death. That cop had been a kid, but this one, he was definitely a man. He had a woman with him—tight-packed body, tons of attitude and really bad hair. What was with that? The department must have loosened its dress code. “Cricket’s an adult. Sometimes she doesn’t come home.”

  “Will she be back later?”

  “Who knows? I hope so.”

  “Doesn’t she have to work?” the woman cop asked.

  “Yes. But I don’t know her schedule.”

  They seemed to want to ask more, but settled for asking Sugar to have Cricket call the police station once she turned up. Sugar lingered at the door, watching Detective Reed climb into the passenger side of the vehicle. He had a nice walk. Easy strides that were long enough to stretch his slacks over a tight butt. As he settled inside, he flipped on a pair of dark aviator glasses. He wasn’t exactly handsome, not in Hollywood terms, but there was something innately sexy and male about him. Maybe a hint of danger, which, of course, she was always drawn to. The driver lit a cigarette, backed the car up, and as the dust was still settling, stepped on it and roared down the rutted lane, leaving a plume of dust and Sugar to wonder where the hell her sister was.

  Where the hell was she? It was dank, dark . . . and she was lying on what felt like a dirt floor. Cricket couldn’t move, couldn’t lift her head, didn’t know how long she’d been here. Her hands were bound behind her, her feet wrapped, her mouth covered with tape. Not that she could do anything. Ever since she’d been brought here, driven in her own car and hauled in a child’s cart to this dirty, stinking hole in the ground, she’d been drugged, unable to move. She’d seen flashes of light from beneath a door and her captor, who called herself Atropos, had come and gone. Hours—maybe days—had passed. Cricket couldn’t tell, but she had a bad case of the creeps here in this godforsaken cellar.

  “You awake again?”

  Cricket started. She hadn’t heard her captor approach.

  “Well, it won’t be for long, now will it?”

  Up yours, you bitch! Cricket thought, her mind disjointed. It seemed as if she’d slept, or been knocked out, but she didn’t know; she resided in a kind of netherworld that was foul smelling and dark. It had been a long while and she was thirsty and thought she might have wet her pants . . . her bladder had been full and now wasn’t.

  If she had the chance she’d kill the bitch, but so far she hadn’t had the opportunity or the strength. Any time her mind had cleared and she’d thought about trying to lash out at her attacker, she’d suddenly been overcome with drowsiness. She was being drugged, no doubt about it. But if she ever got a clear head . . . the bitch was dead. Dead!

  “Here we go. I thought you might be lonely.” Atropos squatted near Cricket’s head and flipped on a flashlight, the narrow beam showing off old rotten wood and bits of broken glass. There were bottles as well and what looked to be rat poison on a shelf. Oh, no . . .

  Atropos placed an old glass milk jug on the floor. It seemed to be moving, breathing inside, growing.

  Cricket began to sweat. Couldn’t take her eyes off the milk bottle. Her heart was pounding, adrenalin laced by fear, kicking through her bloodstream.

  “Watch this.” Atropos trained the flashlight’s beam directly on the jar. Inside were nests of spiders, cottony-looking drifts and lacy webs, crawling with hatchlings, tiny spiders moving everywhere, elder arachnids as well, their many eyes ever watchful, some with front legs upraised, ready to eat each other’s young. “I’ve been incubating them for weeks,” she explained.

  Cricket began to shake.

  Atropos retrieved a smaller vial from a pocket in her jacket and placed it in the light. Within, atop a cotton ball, were insects . . . no, not just insects. Crickets. Three or four of the dark bugs.

  Oh, for the love of God! Cricket’s guts turned to water.

  Carefully, Atropos unscrewed the lid and then, using a pair of tweezers, pulled one of the tiny pests from the jar. It struggled against the tight forceps, but it was no use. Adeptly Atropos retightened the lid, opened the milk jar, held the cricket over it for a heart-stopping second, then opened the tweezers and let the cricket fall.

  Horrified, her gaze glued to the milk jar, Cricket watched the cricket land in the cobwebby pit, where it was stuck on a web.

  It struggled but a second.

  The spiders pounced.

  With new terror, Cricket watched the spiders fight over the struggling insect, a large brown arachnid becoming the victor and piercing the cricket’s tiny body with deadly fangs.

  Cricket recoiled in terror. Her heart was pounding. She wanted to throw up, but she was gagged in this macabre place with its broken bottles, dark corners and sick, sick inhabitant.

  “Mmmm. Not a pretty sight,” Atropos said as she tied a braided cord—red and black strands—around the neck of the milk jar, then rescrewed the lid. “Oh, well, show’s over. Now remember, ‘sleep tight and don’t let the bed bugs bite.’ ”

  Atropos flipped off the flashlight and walked up stairs that creaked and moaned.

  Cricket was
plunged into darkness once again.

  With the jar of spiders only inches from her nose. She didn’t have to be a brain surgeon to guess what fate Atropos had decided for her. Tears filled her eyes; terror stole through her heart.

  And, in the darkness nearby, the spiders waited.

  Did you do it?

  Did you try to murder Amanda?

  The horrid voice in her head, sounding so much like Kelly’s, was at it again, pushing Caitlyn as she drove through the city streets. Distracting her so that she nearly ran a stoplight. She bit her lip, turned up the radio and switched on the headlights. It didn’t help. The damning voice couldn’t be sidetracked.

  What about Josh? Did you kill him . . . it’s just so damned convenient that you can’t remember.

  You dream about seeing Josh dead and slumped over his desk. So what about Amanda? Don’t you remember being in her garage? Running your fingers over the smooth finish of her little red sports car? Fingering the tiniest tear in the rag top?

  Then there’s Berneda’s attack. The doctors are saying that she didn’t get her medication, that there was no trace of nitroglycerine in her body, though Lucille swears Berneda took her pill after the angina attack. You were there the other day. You helped say good night to her. You saw the bottle of nitroglycerine pills on the bedside table. You even touched the bottle when you reached for a tissue . . . did you do something else? Something you’ve tucked into one of those holes in your Swiss cheese of a brain? What kind of person would try to kill her own mother?

  Heart in her throat, recriminations echoing through her mind, Caitlyn pulled into the small lot off the back alley. She looked up at the elegant old Victorian house that was now cut into private offices. From the car she found the windows of Adam Hunt’s office, the very rooms that Rebecca Wade had used. The third floor, near the roof line, with only the dormers of the attic above. It was near evening. She’d been at the hospital most of the day, but Adam had agreed to meet her after the scene at Oak Hill, and the shadows of the buildings and surrounding trees were lengthening, promising dusk and twilight.