She jumped out of the cab, passed through an opening in the stone walls, and crossed the grounds. The tall wooden cross looked more stark and rough than it had last night. She stopped. Something was different. It was the light. The cross wasn’t bathed in only the softening sheen of moonlight. She looked toward the church to see light flickering through the open doorway. There must be a special event tonight because the church was open. In that case, she had to be extra careful.
Nicole ran to the ruins of the unfinished church where she had met Paul last night. Moonlight played over the statue of Jesus holding the baby in one arm. Someone had placed a bouquet of flowers in the statue’s free hand. Slowly she went into the first room on the left, which she knew had been intended as the baptistery. No Paul.
She searched all the rooms of the ruins, then went outside. “Jordan?” she called softly, hoping the dog would come to her again and lead her to Paul. But the dog didn’t appear.
Next Nicole went to the hospedería, or guest lodgings, but to no avail. She emerged again onto the open grounds. Where could he be? The historical museum was closed. Only the church remained open.
Music floated from the open door. Gregorian chants, beautiful and haunting. And loud. Then it hit her. If there were a special event going on, where were the cars in the parking lot? There were no cars, no sign of activity. Paul was in the church. It was the only place left. But he certainly wouldn’t turn on lights and play loud music.
He wasn’t alone, she thought with a chill. Someone had him.
Nicole approached the door slowly, afraid to go in, afraid not to. Finally, getting a firm grip on the gun in her pocket, she stepped inside.
She’d always thought the inside of the church was beautiful, although outside it was the most austere of the missions. The walls were snowy white, the ceiling high and lined with rough beams. A simple circular chandelier decorated with only six candles hung high above. But the altar was magnificent, with its crimson hangings, golden pillars, vividly colored religious statues, and more candles. Fresh baskets of poinsettias sat beneath a delicate, lacy white altar cloth.
To her right on a table, votive candles burned. All of them, nearly fifty. The music soared, filling the old church with the reverent, perfectly pitched a cappella voices.
“Paul?” Nicole called over the music. “Paul, are you here?”
At first there was nothing but the sound of the chants. Then she heard it. Groans. Someone kicking the wooden floor near the front of the church.
Slowly she moved forward, still holding the gun in her pocket. How strange that felt. To be in a church, holding a gun.
Another groan sounded at the front of the church. Nicole bolted forward, then stopped. A man rose up from behind the altar. He held a battered, gagged Paul. He was also holding a gun to Paul’s temple.
“Ray?” Nicole’s voice was high with disbelief. “Ray, what are you doing?”
“I knew you’d come if he asked you. You still love him, don’t you? After all this time.” Nicole went hollow inside. “He wouldn’t make the call,” Ray said. “He wouldn’t lure you out here. Not even when I got…persuasive. So I had to imitate his voice again.”
“Again?”
Ray lapsed into a perfect imitation of Paul’s voice. “Nicole, come to the Mission San Juan. I need you.”
Suddenly Nicole remembered Paul saying he would never call her because he was afraid her phone was tapped. She also remembered Ray imitating Izzy Dooley’s girlfriend’s voice. Obviously he had a faculty for mimicry. How many times had he used it?
“Ray?” Nicole asked, feeling as if the words were coming from someone else. “Did you call me pretending to be Magaro?”
“Yes. After Dominic hit me, I made the call on my cell phone when I regained consciousness. Scared you, didn’t I?”
Nicole was shivering, but her voice was steady. “You’re the person behind all of these murders, aren’t you?”
He looked at her nonchalantly. “Certainly, Nicole.”
Horror engulfed her. How many times had he sat in her living room, offering comfort, delivering bad news with soft words and kind eyes? She’d believed in him. She’d considered a relationship with him when this ordeal was over. This ordeal he’d created. But she knew it would be a mistake to let him see her revulsion. Somehow she knew he would expect surprise, even be pleased by it, but he wouldn’t tolerate revulsion.
She swallowed. “So you’re responsible for the murders lately, but not fifteen years ago. You didn’t kill Zand and Magaro.”
“Oh, yes, them, too.”
“Them, too?” she echoed in shock. “Why?”
“Because they hurt you.”
“Because they hurt me? Ray, you didn’t even know me.”
“Yes, I did. Sort of.” He smiled sweetly. “You don’t recognize me, do you?” Nicole slowly shook her head. “You don’t remember Rosa’s son, Juan?”
Nicole’s mind spun back over the years. The shy teenager, always darting out of the way, never meeting her eyes. And Rosa’s last name was DeSoto. She hadn’t thought of that for years. Besides, there were so many DeSotos in the area. “You’re Rosa’s son?” she repeated dumbly. “But your name…”
“Raymond Juan DeSoto.” He smiled. “Don’t feel so bad. Paul here didn’t recognize me, either, did you, Paul?”
He tore the gag from Paul’s mouth. Dried blood streaked down from a corner. One eye was circled with purple, and his right cheek bore a long cut. “No,” he croaked.
“How about that?” Ray said, smiling. “Didn’t even recognize his own brother.”
Paul’s head jerked toward him and Ray pushed the gun harder against his temple. “Be still,” Ray hissed.
“What are you talking about?” Nicole asked. “Paul doesn’t have a brother.”
“Not one that he knows about. Not a full brother. I’m the product of an affair the saintly Alicia Dominic had when Paul was about twelve.”
My God, Nicole thought. She had considered that the affair with Javier resulted in a child, but she’d thought that child might possibly be Miguel Perez because he looked so much like Paul. There was no resemblance between Paul and Ray besides dark hair.
“Alicia doesn’t think I know,” Ray went on, “but I’ve always known. She was too religious to have an abortion, so she found a woman who was an illegal immigrant and promised that if she’d pretend the child were hers, she’d pull strings to get the woman’s citizenship papers along with giving her a permanent home in a mansion. She and Rosa left San Antonio, Alicia supposedly for Europe. Actually, they were both in California. Shortly after Alicia had me, giving her name as Rosa DeSoto in the hospital, she came home. Three months later Rosa showed up with a baby and was hired as the housekeeper.”
“The other one,” Alicia had said. Ray was “the other one,” the son of Javier.
“I don’t believe you,” Paul grated out.
“Well, it’s true.” Ray jerked him and Paul cried out. Obviously his left arm was broken. His face paled, and Nicole saw the gleam of sweat on it. “Not that I was ever treated like your brother. Oh, I lived in the same house, but I was kept away from you as much as possible. Your mother was always afraid some resemblance between us might show up. That’s why you’ve never recognized me. You left home at fifteen—I was only three—and when you were back on visits, I was ordered to stay out of your way. That was part of it, anyway. The other part was that your mother, my mother, could barely stand to look at me. I was a reminder of her great sin. Rosa told me that one night when she’d had too much to drink. She drinks in secret, you know.”
Nicole thought of Alicia’s words: “God made me pay…I tried to make amends, but it didn’t work because I was still lying, still hiding.”
“Oh, materially she did all the right things,” Ray continued sarcastically. “Saw that I was well dressed, sent me to a good college. But Rosa! The woman is a sadist. She hated me. She tortured me in a hundred little ways. One day I gathered all my courage
and told Alicia. I even showed her the bruises on my arms from Rosa’s vicious pinching. You know what your wonderful mother did, Paul? She averted her eyes and said, ‘You probably got those playing. Don’t be so imaginative, Juan.’ She knew, but she didn’t care. All her attention was focused on her golden boy, the legitimate one, the talented one. I abhorred you, Paul. I always have.”
Nicole closed her eyes, still unable to believe what she was hearing, yet knowing it was true. “You were in Basin Park the night my father went there to kill Zand and Magaro.”
Ray gave her a coy look. “Oh, you remembered! Or did you really know about your father all along?”
“I just remembered this afternoon.”
“How convenient that you’d remember today of all days. Yes, I was there. I simply picked up your father’s gun and killed them.”
“And the hanging and the hoods?”
“He’d brought the rope and the hoods, too. Didn’t you see that in your dream? I think he wanted to make it look like a ritual killing. I just followed the plan, only I knew people would think it was the kind of macabre thing Paul might do.”
“The shirt,” Paul rasped.
“I had access to your clothes, so I wrapped the murder weapon in your shirt. I knew you didn’t have an alibi. You were lying around in your music room, listening to yourself on that damned tape and pining over Nicole. Alicia was in the hospital. She couldn’t provide an alibi. Dear Rosa was closeted in her room, as usual, reading those smutty romances and drinking.”
“So you left the house and no one knew,” Nicole said.
“I left the house every night. It was the only time I had to do what I wanted, my only freedom. I knew where Dominic’s secret key was under the urn. I hung out with Zand and Magaro. They liked me because occasionally I’d bring them a bottle of wine I’d sneaked out of the house. When they were high, they told me what they’d done to you, Nicole. Magaro kept giggling about calling you ‘little bird.’ He thought that was hilarious. I pretended to think it was funny, too. That’s why they didn’t panic when I came up to them that night. They thought I was just some seventeen-year-old fan. They called me Ray, but they had no idea who I really was or where I lived. They just enjoyed having me around, seeming to worship them.” Ray laughed harshly. “All along I thought they were a couple of pigs.”
Nicole still held the gun in her pocket. She took a small step closer to the altar. “Ray, you said you killed them because of me.”
“Yes. The beautiful Nicole who never looked twice at me because she was too dazzled by Paul. But I looked at you. I wanted you more than anything I’ve ever wanted in my life except Dominic’s destruction.”
“You didn’t know me. You only wanted me because I was Paul’s.”
“That was part of it. The rest was just you. I loved the way you looked, the way you moved, the way you talked. Everything.”
“So you punished those who hurt me and tried to destroy Paul at the same time. But what about now?” Nicole’s vision darkened for a moment as an awful thought struck her. “Ray, did you murder my father?” she asked shakily.
He blinked at her. “Nicole, I told you it was suicide.”
“You told me a lot of things.”
“Yes, but that was true. Suicide isn’t as easy to fake as it is on television. And I had that damned Waters along with me. He would have picked up on the fact that it wasn’t really suicide, even if I had murdered your father and tried to cover it up.”
“But you sent Dad the letters and the photo of Paul?”
“Yes. When I heard you were back in San Antonio, I knew fate had brought you back to me. But there were so many people around you. I was trying to figure out what to do about your husband when he did it for me.” Ray laughed. “Stupid fool. But there was still your father. You were crazy about him. So I decided to slowly make him fall apart by reminding him of what he’d done.”
“He didn’t kill Zand and Magaro!” Nicole shouted.
“No. But he was there that night. He saw someone else. He looked right into my face, Nicole. He didn’t know who I was, but he knew I wasn’t Dominic. But did he come forward after Paul’s arrest? Did he admit the gun was his? Did he say he’d seen someone else out there? Did he do anything to deflect suspicion from Dominic? No.”
Nicole felt sick. Ray was clearly unbalanced, but he was right about her father. Clifton Sloan wasn’t a murderer, but he hadn’t done anything to save Paul.
“I couldn’t murder him because no one would believe you would kill him,” Ray said. “I hoped he’d just crack up and admit what he’d done. That would certainly have damaged your love for him. Instead he killed himself. That turned out to be fortunate, though. It got rid of him and brought me into your life.”
“Yes, how fortunate,” Nicole said weakly. “But if he really did commit suicide, why didn’t he leave a suicide note?”
“He did. It was a full confession of what happened fifteen years ago. I didn’t want suspicion shifted from Dominic. Fortunately, the note had slipped under the desk. I found it and tucked it in my pocket when Waters wasn’t looking. It’s easy to fool Waters about little things.”
A note. Her mother had been crushed because Clifton hadn’t even left a note to explain why he’d done such a terrible thing. His confession would have been shocking, but at least it would have been an explanation, because Nicole was certain her mother didn’t know what had happened that night fifteen years ago. But Ray had hidden it. Hatred for him rose up in her like gall. But she wouldn’t show it She couldn’t. Right now she had to concentrate on trying to save herself and Paul.
Nicole took a deep breath and another small step forward. “You said no one would believe I killed my father. But your goal was to make everyone believe I killed those other people?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“So you’d turn to me because I’d be the only one who believed you. Then I would become your protector and you’d fall in love with me.”
“But you didn’t count on Paul returning.”
Ray hesitated, a fretful look passing over his face. “No. Oh, I knew he wasn’t dead. Rosa told me she’d caught glimpses of him at the house over the years. She still hates me, but she’s also afraid of me.” He smiled with satisfaction. “You see, she’s always suspected I was the one who killed Zand and Magaro. She knew Paul didn’t have the guts to do it. But she wouldn’t say anything because I knew her immigration papers were faked. She made a big mistake telling me that. But Dominic coming back turned out my way, too. No one else believed you when you claimed he was in San Antonio. Everyone thought you’d flipped after Roger left you and your father committed suicide. But I believed you. You appreciated me for that.”
“Yes, I did.”
“And it tarnished Dominic’s image in your eyes. You were suddenly afraid he did murder Magaro and Zand and had come back to murder you in revenge for what happened to him.”
“Yes. But only for a while.”
Ray’s smile faded. “So I saw for myself last night. You know, it always bothered me that you kept such a physical distance between us. You never even kissed me, but I told myself you had too much propriety to throw yourself in another man’s arms when your husband had left less than two months ago.
“Then I saw you with Dominic here at the mission, and I knew I was wrong. You didn’t have any trouble throwing yourself in his arms, not even after all this time, after all your suspicions of him. I’ll bet you never even gave me a thought.”
“That’s not true, Ray.”
“After all I did for you. Hell, I even offered to invent an alibi for you for the Smith woman’s death. But it didn’t make any difference. You didn’t care about me. No one has ever cared about me.”
“That’s not true. I did care. If it weren’t for Paul—”
“If it weren’t for Paul, what? You would have been in my bed before long? You would have married me after your divorce?”
“I don’t know, Ray. I
couldn’t see that far into the future.”
“I can.” The flickering candles cast shadows on Ray’s face, making him look gaunt and hollow-eyed. “It wouldn’t have happened. You would have used me to help you. Then you would have forgotten I existed.”
“That’s not true.” Nicole took another small step forward, as if she were genuinely agonized by Ray’s words. “I would never have forgotten what you did for me, and our relationship could have become romantic.” It sickened her, but she had to add the following sentence. “It still can.”
Ray sneered at her. “Do you think I want you now, after what I saw last night?”
“What did you see, Ray? Me hugging someone I hadn’t seen for years, someone I once loved, someone I realized hadn’t done anything to hurt me? Is that such a terrible thing? Besides, how did you know I was meeting Paul here?”
“When you had your little fainting spell after I told you about the Smith woman, I saw the postcard with the mail and read it. I watched that night to see what you’d do. I know you so well, I even figured you’d go over the back fence. But as for your simply hugging someone you once loved, you must think I’m a fool. You didn’t just hug him. You kissed him. Passionately. It was like something out of some damned corny movie. It nauseated me. And I stopped caring about you, Nicole. Right then and there, I stopped caring.”
His coldness in the office earlier that day when Waters was questioning her so relentlessly. He’d been furious. Then later he’d decided that in order not to make her suspicious of him, he’d better smooth things over, so he’d called and lied to her about the officer seeing her moving around in the living room. She knew now it was a lie because she remembered that between ten and twelve, when Avis was killed, she’d been in bed.
“So, Ray, what’s the plan?” Nicole asked. “What are you going to do with us?”
“You’ll both be found here, dead. Dominic, of course, managed to lure you here.”
“How could he do that if I’m supposed to be afraid of him?”
Tonight You're Mine Page 35
