She’d been speeding all the way up the highway from the Peninsula, no real destination in mind. She’d had to slow down when she hit a fog bank in Daly City and now Highway 280 was dumping into 19th Avenue. In front of her, cars slowed to a crawl for the first traffic light. When it turned green, she made the left turn onto 19th. She could think now, after the pell-mell flight from Livie’s.
Bern hadn’t seen a thing. He came up blind out of that hole. She’d have been fine if not for that damn cell phone. She’d let herself get too cocky, but she’d never dreamed one of them would think about calling it, especially not Livie.
But everything was not lost. All she had to do was get rid of the phone and the tire iron she’d hit him with. They could tell the police whatever they wanted, but nothing could be proved without the phone and weapon.
No one had noticed her following them last weekend. She’d watched the bed-and-breakfast. She’d seen the family home, the two old ladies hanging around. One of them had to be Bern’s mother. Before he’d morphed into an asshole and treated her so abominably, he’d given her a brief family rundown. She’d remembered his family was from Freedom.
It was midafternoon, and the traffic along 19th moved at a snail’s pace. Toni kept missing all the green lights until she got down to Golden Gate Park. There she managed to catch the green, and it became a smooth ride out to the bridge.
On Saturday, she’d followed Livie and Bern to Red Cliff, then to the house on the hill. They’d both been clueless. She’d parked her car a couple of twist and turns behind Bern’s, then trailed in their wake.
He’d screwed Livie up there in broad daylight.
She’d had the oddest sense of having seen them in that very spot, going at each other, completely oblivious to anything around them.
In that moment, she’d hated each of them with equal passion. She should have taken her tire iron to them right then. But no, when they were done rutting like animals, she’d stood in that exact spot, watching, waiting, as they climbed to the top.
For such a long drive, they hadn’t spent a lot of time up there, and when they’d started back down, she’d run for her car.
Yeah, completely clueless. They hadn’t seen a thing.
She’d made her plans on the long drive home. First she’d sucker Livie into forgiving her. She’d get in good with her sister once again. Then she’d strike. Little did she know the opportunity would come so quickly, but Livie had told her he was going back up north.
Toni had known exactly where he’d go.
She’d felt such power in that place, standing outside the cellar doors, waiting for him, gripping the tire iron until her fingers ached.
Toni smiled to herself. Bern was right; her hands were a mess after carrying all those rocks. But she’d had her nails done, and she’d carefully dabbed the scratches with makeup until they were practically invisible, at least without a close inspection.
All she’d missed was the damn phone. She’d been cocky. It was her downfall. But there was always a way out.
She was a hair before the heavy commute hours would begin, and traffic on the Golden Gate hadn’t yet become a snarled mess.
The plan had come to her as she drove through the city. There was a place no one would ever find Bern’s phone or the tire iron.
After crossing the bridge, she took the steady climb up to Marin. She exited for the headlands, maneuvering the car along the twisting road. At the top, she pulled into a parking spot, then popped her trunk lid. She’d wiped off the end of the iron, but there remained the possibility that the police could still find a microscopic drop of blood, a hair, his skin. Who knew what they could discover with all their tests.
Grabbing a canvas bag from the trunk, she shoved the tire iron inside. Though she was alone, no other cars for the moment, she wasn’t taking any risk of being seen with it.
Following the path from the parking lot, she passed no one. Though the sun was bright, the winds on the headlands were cold, whipping her hair across her face. Her heels teetered on the gravel path, and she wished she’d had some better shoes in the trunk. Too late now. She hugged her purse and the canvas bag close, as if they might be blown away from her.
Someone who cared about it would have found the view of the bridge, the bay, and the city magnificent. All Toni saw was Alcatraz. What a horrible, depressing place. She wouldn’t do well in prison. But she needn’t worry about that.
As she reached the edge of the cliff, the fog was beginning to slip over the top of the San Francisco hills. First there was Bern’s phone. She found it at the bottom of her purse.
“Really, you should have turned it off and everything would have been fine,” she said aloud. But she’d so enjoyed that frantic ringing every time Livie called. Once it had stopped beeping for a reminder for his messages, she simply hadn’t thought about it.
It was her only mistake. She’d correct that now. Dropping it to the ground, she stomped on it, in case there was something to that GPS chip thing which supposedly gave away a cell phone’s location. She wasn’t taking any chances. Picking up the pieces, she stepped closer to the edge to peek over. It wasn’t a straight shot down, but craggy rocks and scraggly bushes. Something might not make it all the way to the water if she just dropped it. Toni tossed the pieces as far out as possible, then glanced down. She couldn’t see any trace of the phone.
Pulling the canvas bag off her shoulder, she was about to pull out the tire iron. Then she figured she could get a much better wind-up by holding the handles of the bag itself.
She got a good grip, threw it back like a baseball bat, then stepped into the throw, letting the bag fly far, far out. But with the momentum, her foot kept going, the toe of her shoe sliding on gravel. Her high heel snagged something.
She saw the bag sailing out across the ocean, the tire iron falling from it, plummeting.
And Toni felt herself plummeting with it. She might have screamed. No, she was screaming. She twisted and grabbed, her fingers scrabbling for handholds. But all she found were tufts of grass that gave way and rocks that cut deeply.
Then she was falling, falling, falling.
* * * * *
The day was gloriously bright, the Golden Gate’s spires majestic against the blue sky, the sun sparkling magnificently on the bay. The city landscape rose up the hills on the far side, spots of sunlight reflecting in building windows. Boats dotted the water, their colorful sails catching the stiff breeze. Up here on the headlands, the wind howled, whipping Livie’s hair about her face. Yet she stood Bern’s embrace. He was her shelter.
He’d held her that day one week ago when they officers came to say they’d found her sister’s body floating in the bay. He’d held her through the questions and explanations. The police believed it was suicide. Someone had reported what they thought was a woman jumping off the cliff just outside the Golden Gate. She’d hit the rocks below, then the waves had taken her out. Toni’s abandoned car was found in the park’s lot. And in the morning, a couple enjoying a sail on the bay had discovered her body. She’d been identified through her dental records. Livie couldn’t get the images out of her mind.
“She wouldn’t have killed herself,” she said to Bern. In light of Toni’s history, the police had come to their own conclusions, but Livie knew her sister. Her suicide attempt all those years ago had been a calculated move to manipulate Livie. This time? No. Unless she was afraid she’d go to prison. Except Toni always figured she’d find a way out of whatever trouble she’d gotten herself into.
“No, she wouldn’t,” Bern agreed. “She was up here for another reason.” Getting rid of evidence, but something had...gone wrong. Why Toni had driven all the way up here to do it, God only knew.
They had come to this hill alone together. Toni had no mourners. She hadn’t had any friends. Their mother didn’t fly anymore, and the drive up from Palm Springs was too far. She’d washed her hands of them both long ago, she’d just never said the words. Julia would have attended if Liv
ie had arranged a memorial service, but she’d only have come for Livie, not for Toni.
Livie wondered how someone could live for thirty-three years and have no one to mourn them.
Even I don’t mourn her. She’d voiced the terrible thought only once in the days since Toni had died. Bern had simply held her, murmuring meaningless words. The rumble of his voice had been her comfort.
When the police released her body, which would be within the next few days, Livie would have Toni cremated. There would be no service, no formal scattering of ashes. This moment was Livie’s memorial to her sister, to come to the place where she’d fallen.
“I forgive you, Toni,” she said into the bright afternoon sky. The wind whipped away her words, carrying them high, high enough for Toni to hear. If Toni had been alive, Livie couldn’t have said those words, not after finding Bern down in that cellar. Nor could she say that she loved her sister. She felt sad, angry, guilty, hurt, and, as awful as it sounded, relieved, but she didn’t feel love toward Toni anymore.
Bern held her tucked beneath his arm. “It wasn’t your fault.”
“I know.” Toni had chosen her own path. “If you’d died—” She held that thought for a moment. If he’d died, there could be no forgiveness. Yet he’d died so many times before, and still they’d found each other again. If Toni had killed him, he’d have come back to her eventually. “I wonder if this is the first lifetime we actually have a future together.”
He pressed his lips in a slight smile. “We could ask Suze to regress us.”
Livie laughed and shook her head. “God forbid. I don’t want to know anymore.” But if they hadn’t learned what they did, Toni might been able to do the job. It made her head hurt to think of all the possibilities. “All I know is that I’m not going to let Toni’s memory destroy us. We’ve found each other, and I’m going to savor this lifetime with you.”
“Forever,” he said.
“And ever,” she agreed.
Epilogue
Wade’s house, the following weekend.
The house was dark and quiet. Bern tread softly on the steps. He’d left Livie sleeping upstairs. His family had taken to her, and she’d taken to them.
Heading for the kitchen, he noticed a silhouette in the front window.
Opening the door, h expected to find Wade, or even Clare, but it was Jake. “What are you doing out here? I thought you’d gone home.”
“Contemplating,” Jake said simply.
“About what?”
Slouching on the porch swing, his arms over his chest holding his thick flannel jacket closed, Jake gazed into the dark night. “Life and death.”
“And reincarnation?” Bern asked as he sat beside him.
His brother’s lips quirked in a half smile tinged with sadness. “So you think Nana’s right, that Dorie’s coming back soon.”
“I don’t know.” He thought about his next words. He’d never believed Jake. Sometimes he’d even thought Jake was completely off his rocker. But now he owed his brother the truth. “But I do know about George and Myra.”
Jake laughed, the sound barely enough to carry on the night air. “Don’t tell me you believe.”
“I do now. I’m sorry I never did when you needed us to believe right along with you.”
His brother turned, the laughter gone, a look in his brown eyes, pleading perhaps. No one had ever believed, no one except their sister and an old lady with dementia. Wade never would. He’d cling to the rational explanation. But Bern could give Jake this, his belief in him.
“Things came to me down in that cellar. Knowledge. Events I could know nothing about.”
“The skeleton behind the wall?” The find had made the news. His family had discussed it and speculated.
But Bern knew. “Yes. Who he was and how he got there.” He remembered the picture he’d put in his pocket. He doubted it would have survived the years of decay.
After he’d been pulled out of the cellar, the police had finished excavating. They’d knocked down the brick wall, removed the hinges of the door behind it, and found a skeleton. On the dirt floor of the dank cellar, the flesh had putrefied. There was just bones, scraps of cloth still clinging to them. He tried not to remember that it was his skeleton, but he’d be sure to add to his will that he wanted to be cremated at the end of this life. A forensic pathologist had taken possession of the remains and would do a thorough examination to determine the sex of the victim and the cause of death. That was the official version. The unofficial version was that a man had been walled up in the cellar after being killed by a blow with a blunt instrument. The skull was crushed. No identification was found. He wondered what Betty had done with the duffel bag. It would have made the most sense to throw it in there with him. Not that an identification mattered. Bern knew who it was. He would never find absolute proof, certainly not enough to convince anyone else, but he knew. So did Livie.
“I had a dream while I was down there.” He shrugged. “Or a vision. Whatever you want to call it. About an unhappy man and his wife around the time of the World War Two.”
“George and Myra?”
Bern shook his head. “George and Betty.”
“So who was Myra?”
“Betty’s sister. George’s lover.”
“A triangle?”
“Yeah.”
“Which one of them put him behind the wall?”
“That would be Betty. Kind of stupid to kill him at that point, since he was going off to war anyway. But she got angry.”
What had Betty told Myra when she returned? There would have been no farewell letter wedged in the rocks. She would have believed he’d enlisted, probably to die on some Pacific Island or a European battlefield. And Betty had driven her sister mad with guilt.
They were silent for a time.
Jake broke it. “You were him? Or he was you? Or...”
“I know it was me. I don’t have a single doubt. I felt something when I saw that house and stood in front of those cellar doors. Not déjà vu. This was an emotion. Dread. Fear. Anger. Hatred.” He’d felt love, too, but not while he was at the house. He’d experienced that down at the rock with Livie.
“You really believe all that?”
“Yes. And I believe the sisters were Livie and Toni. Toni tried to kill me all over again.”
Jake chewed on the inside of his bottom lip. The wind rustled through the leaves as if it were whispering to him, telling him things Bern couldn’t hear.
“So you came back together,” he finally said. “All three of you.”
“Correct.”
Jake turned his head slowly. The sliver of moon didn’t reach his eyes. “So that means I have to die before Dorie can come back.”
“I don’t know.” How could anyone know? “But if souls do come back time and again, why wouldn’t it also be possible for you to meet the same soul twice in a lifetime? After all, Nana says she knew George and Myra.”
Jake went back to his contemplation of the trees. “Yeah. Why couldn’t it be possible.” It wasn’t a question; it was a conviction.
###
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Will Dorie come back to Jake? Find out in Haunted by Love, Reincarnation Tales, Book 2. Coming 2013.
Enjoy the following excerpts and meet the author!
Revenge Sex, West Coast, Book 1
Double the Pleasure
She’s Gotta Be Mine
Try a sample of Jasmine’s erotica with her sexy new series about hotwives and the men who love them. Be warned, this one is pretty darn naughty!
Revenge Sex
Book One in the West Coast Series
A tale of hotwifing
Cover design by Rae Monet Inc
A man, the hotwife he can’t control...and the woman who wants to fix what’s wrong with him.
Tough, autocratic CFO Clay Blackwell strikes both fear and loyalty into the hearts of his employees. But he’s got one quirk no one at Wes
t Coast Manufacturing knows; he loves the idea of his live-in girlfriend Ruby being with another man...then coming home to him for the best sex of his life as she describes every naughty detail. He’s only got three stipulations: no sex with anyone from work, no sex with another man in their own home, and she always has to tell him when she has a date. The problem? What to do with a “hotwife” who has all the freedom any woman could want, but still can’t follow three simple rules.
Jessica Murphy has the utmost respect and admiration for her CFO. She also has wild sex fantasies about Clay every night. Not that she’d ever tell anyone. Until she walks in on Clay’s girlfriend Ruby screwing Bradley the financial analyst right on Clay’s desk.
All bets are off and a little revenge sex is the name of the game. Ruby thinks she’ll placate Clay by telling him to have sex with another woman to pay her back for all her rule-breaking. When Jessica learns about that, she makes up her mind to seduce her boss for keeps, not just one night of revenge.
But can she become the more-than-one-man woman Clay Blackwell wants? Or will his desires tear them apart?
Excerpt
Copyright 2011 Jasmine Haynes
Hoisting her onto the desktop, Bradley spread her legs and yanked on her pretty purple thong.
“Oh yeah, baby, that’s it, rip them off.” Ruby loved Bradley’s he-man act. Of course, the panties didn’t tear, but so what, he still managed to slide the thong down her legs and toss it into the corner.
Twisted By Love, Reincarnation Tales, Book 1 Page 22
