Harlequin E Shivers Box Set Volume 3: Valley of NightmaresHis to PossessThe Girl in BlueThe Ghosts of Cragera Bay

by Jane Godman

  Chapter Twelve

  Lucian leaned against the vanity of his bathroom and watched Olivia shower through the clear glass door. Actually, he watched the bloody water swirl around her feet and into the drain. He was thankful it wasn’t her blood, but not thankful for the new set of nightmares this might create for her.

  Estelle was dead—dying the same way she’d killed three decades earlier—but Lucian had learned the hard way that sometimes murder didn’t end things. He hoped that didn’t happen again.

  But at least Olivia and he were off to a good start. They were alive, and the bloody pleas for help that’d been scrawled in the bedroom had vanished. The scent, too.

  He cleared his head as best he could considering all that’d gone on, and he waited to see who might pop in there.

  Damien.

  The sultry Marissa.

  The murderous Estelle.

  Perhaps even some new demon that the violence had created.

  But nothing.

  Only the numbness that’d come with the realization that Olivia and he had survived yet another attack and had killed a woman.

  It was hard to be all choked up about that since Estelle had planned to murder them and cover it up by framing someone else. Still, Lucian figured this wasn’t something either Olivia or he would stand much of a chance of forgetting. Maybe, just maybe, the memories would fade when they made new ones to replace them.

  The trick would be getting Olivia to make those new ones with him.

  Now that the danger had passed, it was possible she would want to get as far away from him as possible. He couldn’t blame her. But he would stop her. He’d never been the sort to cling to anything or anybody. However, he wasn’t the same man he’d been only a week ago. Lucian could thank Damien for that.

  Olivia, too.

  But she could see their time together as just sex and violence caused by possession. A possession that was now gone.

  Olivia turned off the water, stepped from the shower and obviously noted his concerned expression. Perhaps she’d expected it to change at least a little given the fact that she was standing stark naked in front of him. And he would do something about that.

  Later.

  “I’m pretty sure we won,” she reminded him.

  He nodded and stayed where he was, waiting to see if she was about to fall apart.

  But that didn’t happen.

  “I didn’t want to have to kill Estelle,” she confessed. “But even more than that, I didn’t want us to die.”

  Hard to argue with that, though he did have to wonder if they hadn’t killed Estelle whether the cycle would have just continued until Marissa and Damien finally got some justice. He hoped not. Or if it had, maybe the pair would have moved on to someone else.

  Olivia coiled the towel around her, not doing a very good job of it, since her left nipple was peeking out. “So, what’s wrong? Did you learn something else bad from all those phone calls you got?”

  He shook his head. “Bennett’s going to be fine. No damage from the drug Estelle injected into him when she snuck up on him. Since the PIs had already searched the building, he didn’t expect to be attacked from behind.”

  “And after thirty years, Estelle knew all the hiding places in the building. She obviously found the perfect spot to wait for her attack.”

  Yes, and had nearly succeeded.

  “Salvetti said that Tatum’s been talking to the cops,” Lucian went on.

  Olivia froze. “About the possession thing?”

  “No.” Thank God. “If he had, then the cops might think we’re as crazy as he is. As it is, they think we were in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  She stayed quiet a moment, obviously giving that some thought. “Maybe we were. Or perhaps we were just born at the wrong time. That might have been why Marissa and Damien latched onto us.” Olivia paused. “So, what exactly is Tatum saying?”

  Lucian drew in a deep breath. “That he’s the one who broke into Damien’s office all those years ago and installed a video camera. He took the film and made those photographs from it.”

  “Is that why Estelle didn’t seem to know that the murders had been photographed?”

  “She really didn’t know because Tatum hid it. A tiny motion-activated one that he installed in the frame over the office door so he could watch Marissa and Damien have sex.”

  “That’s sick,” Olivia mumbled.

  Yes, that’d been his reaction, too.

  “Tatum filmed the murders, but not the murderer. Estelle was wearing a raincoat and a hat that night, too, and she kept her back to the camera. Since there was no sound with the video, Tatum said he didn’t know if it was her, Harvey, one of Marissa’s other lovers or one of the other lovers’ pissed-off wives.”

  She shook her head. “But if he’d given the film or photos to the cops, they might have been able to figure it out. Why didn’t he do that?”

  For the dumbest and most selfish of reasons. “Tatum claims his mother would have gotten upset if she’d learned that he had stolen the expensive camera from her security system. But I suspect it’s because he also didn’t want to be arrested for installing an illegal camera.”

  “Plus, he wanted to keep the photos for himself.” She groaned.

  Bingo. “Tatum didn’t even put all the pictures in your apartment. He held some back.”

  And he’d planned to spring them on Olivia later. Lucian wouldn’t tell her that Tatum had intended to continue his picture-stalking activities to try to scare her into running into his arms so he could have another go at Marissa.

  Yes, the guy was definitely crazy.

  “Tatum’s the one who found the earring thirty years ago under a bookcase when he was looking for clues about who killed Marissa.” Lucian went on. “He kept it for a while before he put it in one of the grooves on the desk leg, hoping it’d be easier to spot. Then, he made an anonymous call the cops to tell them to search the building again.”

  “Well, it wasn’t easy to spot. I mean, the cops obviously didn’t find it. Neither did we until it was dislodged.”

  “No,” he agreed. “And in that phone call, Tatum didn’t say where to look exactly, because he didn’t want them to think he’d set up the killer. Or if the cops managed to find out he’d made the call, he didn’t want them to think he’d been the one to kill Marissa and Damien.”

  She groaned softly. “They probably would have, especially if there was a connection between Marissa and him.”

  “There was. Salvetti did a quick check of employment records, and Tatum did indeed work for Marissa the year before she was murdered.” And it wasn’t much of a stretch to believe that Marissa had slept with him. She hadn’t exactly been selective about her sexual partners.

  Until Damien, that is.

  “So, Tatum sent Estelle the picture of the earring to taunt her? To make her confess?” she asked.

  Lucian had to lift his shoulder on that. “Tatum said he didn’t know if the earring was Estelle’s. He held on to the photo all these years and was on a fishing expedition to find Marissa’s killer.”

  “But what about those pictures taken at the party? If Tatum had seen those, he would have known it was Estelle’s earring.”

  “I had to pay big bucks to get those from the photographer’s son. Tatum might not have thought to do the same. Or maybe he didn’t even know the party had been photographed.”

  She made a sound of agreement. “So, he sent the photo to Estelle, Harvey and probably a couple of other people that he considered suspects. Obviously, Estelle took the bait. And in doing so, Tatum nearly got us killed.”

  He nodded. “Estelle was also the one who got Tatum out of the hospital so she could pin our murders on him. But now, Tatum’s headed back to a psychiatric facility,” Lucian reminded her. “One with more security this time. He won’t have access to a computer or cell phone.”

  That meant Tatum wouldn’t be able to torment Olivia, and Lucian would see that he stayed locked
up for a long, long time.

  “But Harvey didn’t have any part in this, right?” she asked.

  “None as far as we can tell. This was all Estelle’s doing.”

  However, the question that might never be answered—did Estelle want to kill Olivia and him to cover up her crime, or had she truly believed Marissa and Damien had taken over and were continuing their own lustful, cheating ways?

  Since the woman was dead, they might never know. Nor did it matter.

  “We won, remember?” Lucian repeated when her serious look didn’t go away. “I think it’s time I signed up for some zip-lining sessions.”

  That got her to smile. For a moment, anyway. Olivia paused again, and she swallowed hard. “Is Damien still in your head?”

  “No.” But Lucian needed to know the same thing from her. “Is Marissa in yours?”

  “No. And I tried to hear her, to see her. Not because I want her here.” She tapped her temple, making the towel dip down even further. “But because I wanted to make sure she was gone. She is,” Olivia added a second later. “That means her sex drive’s gone, too.”

  In spite of everything, Lucian had to smile, as well. “Good. Because I’d rather have your sex drive anyway.”

  “Really? Marissa was pretty hot. You might miss that.”

  “You’re hotter.” And he proved that by kissing her. First that peeking nipple. Then, her mouth.

  There it was, the jolt he really wanted to feel.

  Not so familiar this time. It was a little bit of the old, mixed with the anticipation of the new. He thought maybe he’d like to take his time getting to know Olivia, and once the getting to know her part was done, he wanted her around for a lifetime.

  Or two.

  “You know I’m still obsessed with you,” she said. “And that I’m not letting you get away?”

  “The feeling’s mutual.” Obsessed and crazy, but Lucian figured this was in a good way. “I’d like to ask you out on that date we were talking about.”

  “A date, now?”

  He kissed her. Then, kissed her again when she melted against him. “Well, I have to start somewhere. Seems the right thing to do before I drag you off to bed.”

  Olivia smiled, the towel dropping to the floor. “Please,” she said, her voice a silky purr. Not Marissa. This was pure Olivia. “Start dragging. You can take me on that date later.”

  Lucian had no intentions of passing up either offer. And he knew it was the first of many. Not memory smears this time. Not pieces of someone else’s life.

  Just Olivia and him.

  Lucian scooped her up and headed straight for the bed.

  About the Author

  USA TODAY bestselling author Delores Fossen has sold over fifty novels with millions of copies of her books in print worldwide. She has received the Booksellers’ Best Award and the RT Reviewers’ Choice Award, and was a finalist for a prestigious RITA® Award. In addition, she’s had nearly a hundred short stories and articles published in national magazines. You can contact the author through her webpage at www.dfossen.net.

  The Girl in Blue

  By Barbara J. Hancock

  For Todd

  One, two…she’s coming for you.

  Three, four…who’s at the door?

  Five, six…full of tricks.

  Seven, eight…too late, too late.

  Nine, ten…it’s happening again.

  Chapter One

  Trinity Chadwick was coming home. It was October and the maples would be ablaze, scorching hill and dale and turning every crag and cranny burnished and bright.

  Scarlet Falls, Massachusetts, had maple leaves in autumn and crimson wildflowers called crested celosia in spring.

  The red leaves and flowers hadn’t given the town its name, though.

  Blood was red, too.

  Trinity took a deep breath. She’d opened the vent in the bus window as far as it would slide. The fortifying air of the New England countryside was bracing, but oxygen had little to do with the process of shoring up each and every fiber of her being. Awareness was everything.

  Scarlet Falls was beautiful, but it was also haunted.

  She’d lived with the idyllic and the horrifying her whole life. Nursing school in Boston hadn’t been all that different. Simple on the surface, but scrabble and scrap underneath.

  Trinity slowly reached down to finger the bandages on her left arm beneath her black wool pea coat. She’d been lucky. The flames that had engulfed her apartment had killed one friend and badly injured another. The crisp air she’d drawn in now threatened to release in a whimper of remembered fear and pain, but Trinity instead forced it through tight lips in a controlled sigh.

  Her arm had been burned when she’d dragged her roommate to safety after the girl had collapsed from smoke inhalation. Other friends—fellow nursing students—had held her back when she would have returned to the burning building. Though she’d been singed and burned, and even now spoke with a smoky rasp to her voice, the press had zeroed in on her “heroics,” ambushing her for interviews.

  She wasn’t a hero.

  She’d left most of her salvaged belongings, her car and the fall semester of her third year behind in order to escape. As the bus wheezed up the final crimson-decked hillside before it crested the rise by the light of the setting sun and began its decent into Scarlet Falls, Trinity couldn’t help thinking about frying pans and fires.

  * * *

  The town had a main street that had been constructed more or less during the mid–eighteen hundreds. The neighborhood sprawled outward with clapboard and picket fencing. Several churches sat on picturesque high ground with spiky steeples piercing the sky. At least one of them was much older and plainer than its fellows, more Puritan than Victorian, its leeside hunched over and seeming to protect a cemetery of very old graves.

  Trinity looked away from worn tombstones and lopsided crypts as the bus labored by. She turned her face toward the distant black gleam of glassy water on the horizon. A mere glimpse of High Lake was enough to send chilly fingers of dread down her spine. So she faced forward, lifting her chin rather than cowering in the corner of her seat. Her stop was near the river. As the bus approached, the gloaming light softly illuminated the covered bridge that spanned the flowing water. She would have to cross it on foot and climb the last rise to Hillhaven.

  Then she would be home.

  No one would be there to greet her. Her parents were finally retired from their respective jobs as teacher and postal worker. They had saved for years for their current extended trip to Europe. Trinity hadn’t called to tell them about the fire or her burns. Just as she’d never told them about The Girl in Blue.

  She would be alone at Hillhaven, which would be both a boon and a curse.

  The bus pulled away in a fog of diesel exhaust and a cacophony of grinding gears. Trinity was left with a stuffed backpack and a constricted chest in the deepening twilight of evening.

  A dog barked in the distance. The river was low and gently lapping over rock and driftwood after a long, dry summer. High Lake was all the way across town and out of sight now, even if she should look in its direction.

  She didn’t.

  Trinity shouldered her bag over her uninjured right arm and turned to face the dark maw of the bridge. How long did she stand there, rooted in place and not looking toward the lake, while the bus drove out of sight? Night had descended in a cool wash of sensory deprivation and inky blackness. She was an adult now. Well past the age where darkness should have been a threat to her. Nevertheless, her heart rate increased. In a place where having your senses peeled might mean the difference between life and death, limited visibility should be frightening.

  Nothing to see here, move along. One foot in front of the other.

  Her footsteps echoed on the old oak boards beneath her feet. The noise was creaky and low. Scree. Scree. Scree. It was a long way across the river in the echoing belly of the bridge. Too long.

  A child’s laughter rang
out softly behind her.

  Trinity paused to look back. Useless, but instinctive. She couldn’t stop herself.

  There was no one there.

  She blinked, straining her eyes against the deepening pitch. The moon had yet to rise. The air was cool and still. There wasn’t even a hint of a breeze. She couldn’t see back the way she’d come. The interior of the covered bridge was pitch-black.

  But she heard no steps or any other sound. Only the memory of that familiar laugh echoing in her ears.

  Trinity forced herself to turn and continue toward the house. She did pause one more time with a start. A light had come on in one of the upper front rooms. A large shadow passed in front of the light behind a pulled shade, and Trinity knew that someone—or something—was home.

  * * *

  Hillhaven had been built before Scarlet Falls was more than a muddy little settlement beside a useful river in the 1600s. The original structure had been a mill, but that had long since given over to a great rectangle of a home with a gabled roof and spidery gingerbread trim. The roof was steep and flat across its peak, complete with a widow’s walk where a brass telescope had been used to peer down at the town.

  Trinity had done her share of peering.

  Always watching. Always trying to help.

  In the dark, with a crescent moon too slim to light her way, Trinity could only imagine the gray paint and even grayer shutters. Her parents hadn’t been able to fight time or tradition, and though she was sure her mother had chosen red curtains to offset the colonial drab, the effect was jarring.

  She was glad it was too dark to see the arterial fabric peeking out from behind every pane as she walked up to the front door. The key on her keychain rattled in the lock. How many times had she almost thrown it away?

  Another childish laugh sounded in the darkness behind her. Its playful innocence caused a renewed surge of dread to twist up her spine. This time she didn’t look. She twisted the key, urgency causing her fingers to slip and her teeth to nip her tongue. She’d always thought The Girl in Blue was a benign nuisance. A terror gotten used to. No more. No less. There had been other things to fear in Scarlet Falls. Deadlier things. But after the fire in Boston she was no longer so sure.