by Ann Major
Again his cruel words and phrases came to her in horrible fits and starts.
“Utterly merciless. Destroy your cousin’s name and her claim.”
In freeze-framed images Chandra saw him as she’d seen him from the partially opened closet door where she’d hidden that day. She had been drawn to him even though he had given off an aura of rage and arrogance.
His brilliant gray eyes had reminded her of angry smoke from a smoldering fire. His face had seemed stark and bold. Even so, fool that she was, she’d imagined she’d sensed some inner pain behind his cruel, self-serving exterior. She’d imagined herself nurturing and easing that pain.
Worst of all, she’d felt a blinding current of emotion drawing her soul to his. Even though he hadn’t seen her, he’d seemed to feel it, too. He had stopped in mid-stride, his searing gaze searching every niche and darkened corner of the hall. He had called out to her, and she’d had to bite her tongue not to reply. When he’d started toward the closet, she’d desperately begun counting backward to break the connection.
Miraculously the ploy had worked.
But when he’d stalked out of the house, she’d wanted to run after him.
Because, insane though it would seem to everybody else, she’d known why that dangerous man had the mysterious power to attract her. She had known with an unfathomable certainty what no other woman in her right mind would have believed—that she’d known him before.
Just as she had known that he was the one person she had been searching for all this life without even realizing it. Every bad-boy boyfriend her family and friends had objected to, even Stinky, had been an attempt to find him.
Their love had been forbidden in her former life. She had been murdered because of it. And he had died horribly, too—he’d been run over by a train—when he’d been told by her sister she’d abandoned him.
Somehow she had sensed his presence in the world and had struggled to find him.
But her new family, who except for Gram had never understood her and who had always been against her, had unwittingly hired him as a tool to destroy her.
She remembered how she had stayed in that closet feeling drained and hopeless after he had gone. How she had wanted to race after him but hadn’t let herself.
And then someone had opened the door.
For some reason she still couldn’t see the face. But the voice that had greeted her had been familiar. “Welcome home, Bethany. I’ve been waiting for you. Just like I waited for Gram the day…she died.”
Gram…murdered?
She had tried to run, but strong hands had seized her.
“Gotcha!”
Chandra remembered the blinding flash of the syringe, the warm, dizzying sensation of the drug flowing into her veins as the world went bright white and the realization struck her that she was going to die.
But—somehow—she had escaped death.
Who had opened that closet door?
What had happened next?
Who had tried to kill her?
Was it Lucas?
Why couldn’t she remember?
Instead she saw a man’s body wrapped in plastic.
And this time she saw the corpse’s face. This time she remembered his name and shuddered.
Miguel Santos.
Her foreman in Mexico.
Poor, dear Miguel.
Next she was on a highway, barefooted and limping, her clothes covered with blood. Santos’s or her own? She was holding a gun and running straight into blinding white headlights.
She remembered a horn honking right before she crumpled in the middle of the highway.
But no more memories came.
Dear God.
Had she done murder?
Trembling, more terrified than ever before, she got in bed, careful to stay as far from Lucas as possible.
Who was he? The tender lover of the past week?
Or an unscrupulous gold digger? The lawyer her family had hired to destroy her?
Gram had said she would always be a fool about men.
Chandra stared at Lucas. His dark face looked so young, so completely relaxed and guileless, like his sons’ did when they slept. In no way did he appear to be the treacherous monster she told herself he must surely be.
A tear welled in the corner of her eye. Then another. Until she was sobbing helplessly.
What explanation would he give her in the morning?
He had pretended to love her so deeply, so passionately, and she felt that she could not live a single hour without his love.
And yet she would have to.
Not knowing what to fear the most—the truth or his lies—she pulled the sheets over her shivering body and lay awake in the darkness, dread and terror filling her heart. She wept and tried to make sense of her new knowledge as she waited for the dawn.
Ten
“Gotcha!” The whisper was soft, triumphant.
The next three sounds resonated like a rattlesnake’s hiss.
Click. Snap. Spin.
Chandra’s drowsy mind snapped awake.
One minute she’d been lying with her head cozily nestled against Lucas’s shoulder, having been lulled by his body heat into sleep despite herself. Still caught in that hazy twilight zone between dream and reality, she was about to snuggle closer to him.
The next minute she felt the cold barrel of a revolver nudge her temple.
“It’s loaded, bitch.”
She opened her eyes and stared, too shocked to move or make a single sound.
The monster with the dead black eyes from her nightmares loomed over her.
Only he was real.
She recognized him.
He had an innocent boyish face, dark eyes and curly auburn hair.
He had opened the closet door. He had drugged her and shot Santos and tried to shoot her, too, on that lonely stretch of highway near the border.
He had found her again. Somehow, even during those weeks of amnesia, she had sensed him tracking her.
Feeling her stiffen, Lucas opened his eyes.
“Stinky?” Lucas jerked upward, registering only a shadowy hulk holding a gun to her face.
“Move, and I’ll splatter her brains all over your face, counselor.”
“No, Lucas. Not Stinky.” Chandra’s voice fell. “It’s Hal.”
Sweet, gentle, baby-faced Hal. The younger brother who for whatever reason couldn’t make it on his own, so Stinky had felt responsible for him. Hal was the brother Stinky had sworn to take care of after a boating accident had claimed their parents’ lives and left them with only each other.
“You don’t look too good, Hal,” she murmured, remembering for the first time that he had been badly injured when the van had crashed.
His sallow, unshaven face was haggard. The skin around his eyes was yellowish purple. An infected cut ran jaggedly down the middle of his brow. He had unhealed scratches all over his hands. He reeked of sweat.
A silent scream rose in Chandra’s throat.
“You need a doctor,” she said.
“Shut up. I’m not going to fall for that sympathetic crap you spout ever again. You don’t care about me. You never did.”
“That’s not true! You were like a brother to me.”
He laughed and scowled at the same time, and she realized how little he resembled the courteous young man she’d once adored.
“You shot Miguel. You tried to shoot me, too,” she said. “Why?”
“Bitch! Thief! Because I was angry about the will! You walked away twelve years ago—so high and mighty—like you didn’t give a damn for the old lady’s money or how you hurt Stinky.”
“He slept with my cousin.”
“I had to stay and help him get over you. I had to take crap from your grandmother. While you—”
“I didn’t have it so easy, Hal. I worked very hard.”
“Well, you won’t get away from me this time. Neither will you, counselor.”
As Chandra stared from Hal to Lucas, she was remem
bering everything that had happened. Gram had sent her that first letter about the foundation in which she explained her late-in-life change of heart about what she wanted to do with her money. Apparently she’d had some sort of mystical experience at Skippy Hendrix’s funeral when she’d watched a crop-duster pal of his scatter Skippy’s ashes near a favorite windmill. She had decided that the money wasn’t fun for the family anymore. Stinky had married Holly for it, and now everybody was just sitting around making each other miserable while they waited for the old lady to die. Gram had decided that Chandra had had the right idea all along—that the money should be given to people who really needed it. Chandra had called to talk to her grandmother, only to learn she was dead.
Chandra remembered Miguel driving her to Texas. They’d arrived too late for the memorial service, but just in time to discover her family plotting against her with their lawyer. She’d heard Lucas’s voice and recognized him as her other half. Then Hal had opened that dark closet and drugged her.
Hours later she had awakened bound and gagged in a fetal position in the cellar. Then Hal had carried her out to the van and locked her inside, beside Miguel’s bloody corpse. Hal had laughed when he’d told her he would burn the van with her inside. He’d said he hadn’t liked sucking up to the Morans all those years and that he wasn’t about to let all the Moran money go to Mexico.
More terrible than all the rest had been the claustrophobic feeling that had overwhelmed her in that darkened, locked van as her drugged brain had pondered her impending doom. That’s when she had suddenly recalled how she had been murdered before.
Vividly she remembered dirt sifting through the top of a box as her own sister had buried her alive. Chandra had clawed at the boards until her fingers were raw long after her sister had left her to die, long after she’d known she had no recourse other than to surrender to that final darkness.
As Hal had started the van with murder in his heart, she had gone mad with the fierce will to destroy him. So mad that her passion had obliterated the drug’s lethal power as she’d lain there and calculated a means of escape.
Groping in the darkness, she had somehow freed her bound hands and untied her feet. Then she had dug through the compartment until she found the jack. Crawling woozily over Santos’s bloody body, she had crept behind Hal and slammed the jack into his head. When he’d whirled to counterattack, the speeding van had weaved crazily. She had grabbed the wheel, sideswiping a car before the van careened off an embankment and rolled.
There had been an explosion of glass and crumpling metal. When she woke up, she was lying beside Hal. The front of his forehead was split wide open. Blood was all over his face, matting his hair, drenching Her clothes and his. When she had tried to help him, he had grabbed her by the hair and picked up his gun and a gasoline can.
“Gotcha,” he’d whispered, right before he’d started laughing.
But as he had uncapped the gasoline can and cocked the hammer of the revolver, a fat woman from the car they’d hit had yelled at them. “Lady, do you have a car phone? My little boy’s bleeding something awful.”
When Hal had stared toward her distractedly, Chandra had grabbed his gun and pointed it at him.
“You haven’t got the guts, Beth!” Hal had taunted, charging her.
She pulled the trigger. But her hand shook so much, she hit the van, which caught fire. When Hal rushed her, Chandra ran straight into the path of an oncoming truck.
Hal’s contemptuous voice jolted her to the present.
“You won’t get away this time, bitch, and neither will your lover.”
“You’re the one who won’t get away with this,” Lucas warned.
For the first time Chandra remembered Lucas. “Let him go, Hal. He doesn’t really have anything to do with this.”
“Oh, doesn’t he? You little fool! Who do you think convinced me that we shouldn’t try to talk you into a compromise about the will? Who convinced me I had to destroy your good name and kill you? Everything I did was his idea!”
“No—” Lucas broke off. “I know what you’re thinking, but, Chandra—”
“Do you?” she whispered. “Do you really? I don’t think so. You’re a very good actor. But are you even human? I read all those articles about you, and I wouldn’t let myself believe you were as cruel and predatory and greedy as everybody said you were. But now…You slept with me when I was sick and ill and too confused to know what I was doing. You used me. You took advantage of me. Why?”
“I love you.”
“Don’t lie to me now. Don’t you ever lie to me again. I—I mistakenly thought I was someone special to you.”
“You are.”
“Well, you aren’t to me.” She fought to ignore the sharp glimmer of silent pain in his eyes. “Not anymore.”
“Hear that, counselor?” Hal whispered. “She’s got you figured for the no-good scum you are.”
“Tell her the truth!” Lucas snarled.
Hal laughed. “You’re damned good, counselor. I’d almost believe you if I didn’t know better. Framing her was your idea. You told. Stinky not to interfere with the bad publicity about her because it was good for our case.”
“What publicity?” Chandra whispered.
“You’re wanted for murder, sweetheart,” Hal said. “Counselor Broderick here was damned smart to recognize you at the hospital and take you home and keep you all to himself, and now everybody thinks you did murder Santos ’cause you ran. Yes, sir. You’ve been very helpful, counselor.”
“Chandra—” When Lucas reached for her, Chandra shrank away from him.
“Is that true, too, Lucas?”
“Damn it, no!” He hesitated. She continued to stare at him. “Well, not exactly. I mean—”
“Stinky did call you,” she whispered, remembering the familiar voice she hadn’t recognized until now even though it had terrified her.
Hal pulled a wadded front page from a recent newspaper out of his back pocket and pitched it to her.
Chandra straightened the crumpled newspaper and began to read. Her throat went dry. Black print began to blur. Every sentence made the hollowness inside her breast expand.
She was wanted for Miguel’s murder. For a hit-andrun accident in which a woman’s little boy had been badly injured.
“You shot Santos,” Chandra croaked. “You were driving the van. Not me.”
“But, thanks to Stinky, I have an airtight alibi. And thanks to Counselor Broderick everybody thinks it was you.”
Her gaze fell to the newspaper again. There was a second article, full of vicious rumors about her. She’d heard Lucas promise to spread such rumors that day in the library. There were stories about payoffs and bribes and a corrupt system for selecting the families for which her houses would be built. An investigation into her charitable organization had been launched.
Sickened by the filth and the blatant lies, she dropped the paper without bothering to read every word. She looked at Lucas in stricken bewilderment.
“You kept me a virtual prisoner in your house while you…while you and Stinky and Hal spread these lies. You didn’t want me to read newspapers or look at television because you were afraid I would learn the truth about you before you totally destroyed my good name.”
“No.” To Hal, he said, “Damn it. Tell her the truth.”
“I already have, counselor. Everything you think is true, Beth, except that part about Stinky. He was trying to find you because he was afraid of what I might do to you if I got to you first. You see, Stinky suspected the truth about our parents’ deaths. And the truth was that I murdered them. I took the plug out of their boat because they were so worried about me they were going to put me in a special school. When they got out into deep water, their boat filled and sank. I had taken the life jackets off the boat, hoping they would drown. Their bodies washed onto the beach a week later.”
“That’s horrible,” she whispered.
“Stinky loved me anyway. See, he understood that I co
uldn’t be locked up. He as much as told me so at their funeral. He said he’d always take care of me. And he has. I’d die for Stinky, same as he’d die for me. It was me and him—way before you or Holly ever entered the picture. He always had this knack of making himself irresistible to women. We decided that if he married a rich enough woman, there would be a living in it for the two of us. Only thing is, Stinky tends to get too involved with his women. He forgets our mission and lets them run over him. Like you did when you ran out on him twelve years ago. Like Debra before you. Like Holly now.”
“Who’s Debra?” she asked even though she was afraid she already knew.
“The girl Stinky was engaged to before he met you.”
“The one he beat up?”
“Stinky never laid a hand on any woman.”
“But—”
“Oh, he went to jail for beating her after she jilted him. Only he didn’t beat her. I did. That’s how come Stinky has been so all-fired determined to find you before I did. He has a way of sensing my true feelings even when I try to hide them. He went to jail for me that one time even though he was mad at me for hitting Debra. I don’t want to make him mad by hurting nobody again, but I can’t let you take all the money.”
“Hal, if I die, the money will still go into the foundation.”
“You think you’re real smart, Beth. You think I don’t know that?” Hal pulled the hammer back. “At least you won’t get to be the one to enjoy it.”
Some strange new element, a total finality, in his hard voice and eyes made her more afraid.
“Chandra, be quiet,” Lucas warned. “He’s gone completely crazy.”
“I’m not crazy!” With an evil smile he shifted the gun to Lucas.
Even though Hal was shaking violently and his finger was on the trigger, Chandra never really thought he’d do it.
The sudden blast was loud and obscene.
There was a blaze of fire, and Lucas fell back against the pillows, a black hole gaping in his brown shoulder, a stain of red seeping from beneath his body.
With a cry, Chandra knelt over him, her eyes glazed and tearful.
Hal yanked her away by the hair.
“Forget him!”
“But—”
