by that's me
"Why didn't you say so?" She brushes past him. "I told you the other day, these old houses are full of them. Come on, let's get her, so we'll be ready when Charlotte comes."
* * *
At last, Lianna is nearing the bottom of the second, flight-and salvation.
No longer worried about what might await her in the cellar, she clings to the railings and cautiously lowers her foot, remembering that this is another spot where the treads have rotted away.
Then, as she feels around for a rung to stand on, she hears the groan of an old wooden door from somewhere above.
It can mean only one thing: they've found her.
She can hear voices, Royce's and Aimee's, tumbling down the shaft from two stories overhead.
Maybe they won't realize I'm still here. Maybe they'll think I'm long gone.
She goes absolutely still, hands clenching the rails, one foot precariously balanced on the wobbly step, the other dangling down behind her.
"It feels like some kind of a stairway," she can hear Aimee saying. "It must go down to the basement."
"Get a flashlight," Royce responds tersely. "She has to be down there."
"Not if she got away."
Lianna holds her breath, statue-still. If they just leave long enough to get the flashlight, she can steal away in silence, and they'll never- Something-some creature seeking higher ground- crawls over her hand.
An involuntary scream escapes her.
She lets go of the rail and plummets to the storm-flooded earthen floor a good five feet below.
"She's there!" Royce bellows overhead. "I'll go down this way; you go around to the outside entrance and block the basement door."
As Lianna scrambles to her feet in half a foot of muddy water, she can hear the pounding of Aimee's retreating footsteps.
Above, Royce is testing the stairway. As she feels her way back from the foot of the stairs toward the secret entrance to the basement, she hears him limp down the first two steps.
Then he reaches the precarious third.
The old wood groans in instant protest beneath his weight.
Then, with a splintering sound, the step gives way al-together.
Royce Maitland's petrified scream echoes in the tunnel as he falls.
He lands with a deadly splash in the very spot Lianna has just vacated.
Without even a whimper, she flees, knowing she has to make it out of the basement before Aimee gets there.
She wades through the muck and water that have flooded the earthen floor, adrenaline pumping, feeling her way in the darkness. She crosses the cellar, foot by painstaking foot, guided by memory of where she thinks the door is located.
But when she reaches the spot, there is only clammy tabby wall.
Sobbing now in fright, Lianna feels her way along the wall, hoping she's going in the right direction.
Then, all at once, the door opens… and she sees that she was wrong.
Thank God, she was wrong.
She's several yards away from the opening, well beyond the block of gray daylight that spills through.
Silhouetted in the doorway is the unmistakable figure of Aimee Maitland… And she's holding a gun in her right hand.
Lianna flattens her back against the wall, vowing not to move a muscle, not to make a sound, not even if a snake wraps itself around her ankles.
"Lianna… Where are you, little sis?" Deranged laughter echoes eerily off the tabby walls. "Are you afraid of the dark, like your mommy? Here, this will help."
It's only then that Lianna sees the object in her left hand.
A flashlight.
She doesn't stand a chance.
She holds her breath and waits for the beam to flood her hiding spot; waits for the blast of gunfire.
Maybe Adam will be waiting for me, is her last thought before she's blinded by the light.
She squeezes her eyes shut, knowing that any second now…
"No!" With a mighty shove, Charlotte catches Aimee off guard from behind.
Aimee drops to her knees in the waterlogged doorway, the gun flying out of her hand to land with a splash somewhere in the darkened basement beyond.
"Mom!"
"Lianna, stay back!" Charlotte shrieks, spotting her daughter just inside the cellar door as Aimee crawls after the gun.
Charlotte tackles Aimee, clawing at her clothes, her face, her hair.
"Lianna!" she screams. "Run!"
"Mom-"
"Get help! Hurry!"
"But the phone-"
"Not here! Run out to the highway! Keep going until you find someone!" Charlotte screeches before Aimee gets hold of her and flips her onto her back with a guttural curse.
Hearing her distraught daughter sloshing frantically away, Charlotte prays she'll follow through, escape…
Whatever happens to Charlotte now, Lianna's life must be saved.
Yet she'll fight ferociously for her own.
As Aimee reaches for her throat, Charlotte bites her wrist as hard as she can.
A yelp of pain, a window of opportunity.
Fueled by rage, Charlotte seizes the moment, grabbing hold and heaving her attacker with all her might.
Aimee lands beside her.
Go for the eyes, Charlotte thinks frantically.
Coated in thick slime, Charlotte struggles to get on top.
But Aimee is quicker.
Stronger.
As Charlotte goes for Aimee's eyes, Aimee's hands close around Charlotte's throat, constricting her windpipe.
It is Charlotte who is flipped to the flooded floor tiiis time, landing on her stomach in the sludge.
Aimee is on top of her, riding the small of her back, fingers splayed on Charlotte's head. Charlotte's arms are clamped between viselike thighs as Aimee presses her face underwater.
Try as she might to turn her head or buck her attacker, the effort is futile. Charlotte is hopelessly, helplessly pinned.
Oh, God, please help me…
She holds her breath as long as she can.
Then, overcome by the reflexive urge to inhale, her aching lungs are swamped.
No, oh, no…
This time, she really is drowning.
She's going to die.
There's no one to save her…
Lianna has escaped, but help will be too late for Charlotte now.
But Lianna is safe.
Charlotte's chest is burning.
Her useless arms have given up the struggle.
She's delirious, dying…
In the distance, a brilliant light…
Adam… Adam is waiting for me.
Then comes the violent explosion in the distance- and everything goes black.
Lianna is halfway across the great lawn when she hears the gunshot.
"Mommy! No!"
She takes off running, toward the basement and the gun, not away from it. Toward her mother. She can't leave her there to die alone.
Aimee's got
a gun.
I don't care.
Aimee's going to shoot me, too. I'm running right into a death trap.
I have no choice.
It's all I can do.
She slips wildly through a grass-slick puddle, fells, picks herself up.
Runs a few more steps, falls again.
Keep going. Get to Mommy…
At last, Lianna skids around the back of the house.
Her mother's body, limp, lies face up just outside the basement door in the pouring rain.
Royce is on top of her, trying to choke her.
"Stop!" Lianna screams.
Just before she spots the gun lying at the edge of a puddle in the grass, a few feet from Royce and her mother.
She lunges for it.
"I swear to God, I'll shoot you, Royce!"
"Help me, for God's sake, Lianna!" he commands hoarsely without even flinching, and she realizes that he isn't trying to choke her mother after all.
He's doing compressions.
Royce, bleeding from a gash in his own forehead, is trying to save her mother's life.
"Oh, my God!" Lianna wails, dropping the gun and sinking to her knees beside her mother. "Mom… I"
It is then that Lianna spots Aimee, face down in the muddy water beyond the basement doorway.
A pool of scarlet is seeping into her blond hair where the back of her head has been blown away.
Royce pumps furiously.
Lianna prays.
Her mother gasps.
"Yes," Royce whispers. "There, babe. Yes."
Charlotte sputters and chokes, water spouting from her lips.
"Thank God." Royce's voice is ragged as he cradles her in his arms.
Lianna clings to her mother's hand, sobbing in re-lief-and shame. "Royce, I'm so sorry, I thought you-"
Were trying to kill me.
She can't say it
How could she even have thought it?
Because she walked in on him and Aimee upstairs. His own daughter. He was in bed with his own daughter, kissing her…
At least, that was what it looked like in the fleeting glimpse Lianna caught before she fled, sickened.
Now she replays the scene again, and again, trying to make sense of what she saw. Or thought she saw.
Because it couldn't have happened. Royce shot Aimee to save his wife's life, so…
So maybe I was wrong about what they were doing. He and Aimee…
Or maybe I imagined the whole thing. God knows I was in a crazy state of mind up there…
Right now, the only thing that seems obvious is that Royce loves her mother. He isn't trying to harm Charlotte-or Lianna, for that matter.
"It's okay, Lianna," her stepfather says simply, as if he's read her mind-and forgiven her.
"When I heard you coming down those stairs, trying to get to me-"
"I thought you were in some kind of trouble down there."
"You fell. I was sure you were-"
"My arms broke my fall. But I hurt my leg. The same leg," he adds ruefully.
"Lianna…" Mom thrashes her head; her voice is weak.
"Shhh, Charlotte, it's okay." Royce gently strokes her soaked hair. "Lianna is here, too. She's all right. You don't have to worry."
Mom's eyelids flutter. She's trying hard to come out of it.
Lianna swallows a lump of regret, hating herself for thinking that her stepfather was trying to hurt her- and her mother.
"I thought Mom was dead when I heard the gun go off," Lianna says, trembling as she attempts to grasp all that happened. "I thought Aimee shot-"
"No," Royce interrupts, "I managed to get to the gun in time. I shot Aimee. I had no choice."
"She's your daughter." Lianna shudders.
Tears glisten in Royce's eyes. "I had to, Lianna. She's insane. I had no idea she was caught up in what Gib was doing…" His voice breaks; he buries his face in his hands, sobbing. "My God, if I hadn't gotten there when I did… I can't even think about what might have happened."
"Lianna…" Mom's eyes, her voice, are ravaged.
"Lianna is fine." Royce presses a kiss on Mom's forehead as, dazed, she looks from her daughter to her husband. "Can you see her, Charlotte? She's fine. Show her, Lianna. Tell her." 'Yes, I'm okay, Mom." Crying, Lianna bends forward to lean her cheek against her mother's shoulder.
Royce says softly, "Everything is going to be okay, now, Charlotte. We're going to be fine: you, me, and Lianna."
At last, Charlotte manages to speak coherently. 'The police-call the police. Please… Royce…"
"I will. The phones are down, but I'll use my cell phone. Lianna, stay here with your mother."
"I will." Lianna watches Royce limp away in obvious agony, thinking she won't leave her mother's side again for a long, long time.
Neither, she's certain, will her stepfather.
His body torn and bruised, his leg shattered, it takes Joseph a long time to drag himself into the house.
Clasping the cell phone against his ear, he presses 9-1-1 and begs for help.
"What's going on there, sir?"
"Please… We've been attacked. Please send someone-"
"Calm down, sir. Tell me where you are and what happened."
He does. But not, of course, everything.
Nobody will ever have to know everything.
He learns that a tree has fallen across the highway, cutting off Oakgate from the rest of the island.
It's going to be a while before the police can get up here.
"But we're working on moving it out of there now," the voice on the telephone assures him. "We'll be there as soon as we can, Mr. Maitland. I know you've been through a lot. Just hang on."
"We'll try."
Joseph hangs up his cell phone, tucks it into the pocket of his soaked slacks.
Hang on.
Yes.
Later, you '11 clean your wounds, change your clothes.
Later, you '11 take care of yourself.
Right now, he must begin the long, painful, final journey back to Charlotte.
Odette never saw it coming.
Joseph's one comfort is that she never turned her head, never sensed his betrayal.
It was over quickly. One courageous squeeze of the trigger, and Odette was gone.
She was gone, and Charlotte was saved.
What if you had been too late?
He nearly was.
If he was too late to save Charlotte, he could have gone back to the original plan: Odette's plan. The one she assumed he was following all along.
He was careful not to let her suspect anything.
Odette had no idea mat in his effort to make Charlotte love him, Joseph had fallen in love with Charlotte as well.
Odette couldn't know that he had no intention of murdering Charlotte.
No, not his beautiful, beloved Charlotte. Just Lianna- along with her beautiful blond stepsister, Aimee, in a tragic accident as they tried to flee the island for help.
Cringing in anguish as he uses his arms on the rail to pull himself down the back
steps, Joseph is satisfied with the way things have turned out.
