by Jana DeLeon
A wave of sympathy washed over Olivia. “That’s so sad. I sometimes think it’s easier for me because I’ve never known what I was missing since I can’t remember my parents. So your mother remarried. Is your stepfather nice? Is he a cop, too?”
“My stepfather was very nice. He was the attorney that handled my dad’s will. I think Mom believed if she married a man who wore a suit to work and sat behind a desk, that she wouldn’t lose him, but he died four years ago of a heart attack. We had no warning, and it hit my mom and sister hard.”
Olivia felt her heart clench. “I can’t imagine...to lose not just one, but two men you loved. She must be remarkable to have held it together.”
“She is remarkable, but everyone has their limit, and I’m afraid Rachel may be hers. Mom’s in the hospital right now undergoing chemo. She’s getting weaker every day, and I worry that if I don’t find Rachel alive and soon that she’ll give up.”
“Oh, John, I am so sorry. How awful that must be for her and you. And you can’t even contact her now to reassure her.” Olivia bolted up in her seat. “The cell phones!” She reached for her cell phone that used to be attached to her laptop and realized the cord hung on the side of the table, her phone nowhere in sight.
“It’s gone.” She looked at John, unable to control the waver in her voice. “Please tell me you had your phone in your pocket.”
John rushed into the bedroom and Olivia heard him curse. He walked back into the kitchen. “Stupid! I should have thought about the phones.”
Olivia shook her head. “You’re not stupid. You’re just stressed and dealing with a huge unknown. I didn’t think about it, either.”
“But I should have. Why should we assume he hasn’t gone through everything in this cottage?”
“It’s pointless to blame yourself now, and with the way the rain is still coming down, we both know they would have been useless, anyway.”
“Right now, maybe, but after the storm we could have called for backup. Damn it!” John slammed his hand on the table, causing Olivia’s laptop to jump.
Olivia glanced at the useless computer and saw a piece of paper sticking out from the inside of the laptop. She pulled the laptop over to her and lifted the top. A single piece of paper lay inside. Olivia sucked in a breath and John looked down at her.
“What’s wrong?”
Olivia pointed to the paper. “That’s not mine.”
“Open it.”
“Should I put on gloves first or something?”
John sighed. “Yeah, probably so. Hold on.” He stepped into the bathroom, then returned with tweezers and grabbed a knife from the kitchen drawer. He pulled the note from her laptop onto the table, held one corner down with the knife and pulled the other side open with the tweezers. They both leaned over to read the handwritten message.
The time is now. Fulfill the prophecy and you can all leave.
Olivia’s pulse quickened as she read the words, but her mind couldn’t make anything of them. What prophecy? “I don’t...I don’t understand.”
“He left the message in your laptop. It must mean something.”
Olivia read the message over and over, her mind racing with the limited research information she’d gained on the history of laMalediction and its residents. “No. I swear. There’s hardly any information on laMalediction available, and I’d definitely remember if I’d read about a prophecy. I have no idea what that could mean.”
“Someone thinks you do.”
“I don’t care what they think. I ought to know what’s in my own mind. Besides, I’d give him anything to leave here alive.”
John pointed to the note. “See how he phrases this—‘you can all’—it makes me think he’s referring to more than just me and you.”
Olivia looked up at him, barely able to make out his face from the glow of the laptop. “You think he means your sister?”
“Maybe. Or maybe I’m looking for answers where there aren’t any.”
Olivia studied the words again. “Still, it’s an odd way to phrase it if he only meant the two of us. But if he meant your sister, then he must know you’re here looking for her.” She sat up straight in her chair. “And that means he knows who you are. How can he know all that?”
“He probably went through our stuff when he took the phones. My badge is in my wallet.”
“But all that would tell him is that you were a cop. If he thought you were looking for a missing person, wouldn’t he expect you to drive in here with a search warrant, instead of posing as a caretaker?”
John shook his head, his expression grim. “I don’t know.”
“Do you think the cabin is bugged?” Olivia asked, the thought of the intruder listening to them the night before making her ill.
“At this point, anything’s possible, but he’d have to be nearby or have a server to send the signal in order to listen, and with all these storms, I don’t think it’s possible—at least not often.”
“Did you talk to anyone about your sister when it wasn’t storming?”
John frowned. “Yeah, I think so. I mean, I talked to my partner on my cell in here, but I can’t remember what I said exactly. I’ve talked to him in the main house, too.” John looked out the window at the main house. “I suppose he could have overheard me. Those tunnels run everywhere and all it would take is a well-positioned vent to hear everything.”
Olivia gazed out at laMalediction, and a chill came over her. “It’s hard to wrap your mind around...that someone may have been watching me, listening to me...all this time. At times, it was almost like I could feel something, a presence, but I chalked it up to stress and nerves and being in such a remote location.”
“Maybe it was intuition. Fear is a powerful emotion, and we spend too much of our lives ignoring the signals. Maybe we’d all be safer if we learned to listen to those feelings.”
“Even if I think it’s just paranoia?”
“Especially if you think it’s just paranoia.”
Chapter Fifteen
Olivia pulled on a T-shirt and shorts and towel-dried her hair by candlelight. The shower had worked out some of the stiffness she felt from all the activity of the past couple of days and even though she was tired, she was excited about reading the journals. She opened the bathroom door and the smell of freshly brewed coffee wafted by.
“You have no idea how happy I am that you have a Coleman burner. Even I didn’t come prepared to make coffee with no electricity.”
John looked up from the kitchen table. “I’d love to take all the credit, but the burner was in the cabinets when I got here. I figured out real quick why Aubrey kept it easily accessible. He probably spent a lot of time cooking on it with all these power outages.”
“If Aubrey doesn’t turn out to be the intruder, I owe him big.” She took a cup down from the cabinet and filled it with the steamy liquid. “You should catch a shower while the water’s still hot. No telling how long we’ll be without power.”
John placed the journal he was holding on the table and rose. “Yeah, I think I will. I sorted the journals we have by date with the oldest on the top of the stack. I figured they may be easier to decipher in chronological order.”
Olivia nodded. “How do you want to approach the research?”
“I don’t know. I figured that was your area of expertise, so I’d ask you.”
“Were pages marked in any of the other journals?”
“No. That would be far too easy.”
Olivia pulled a package of Post-its from her backpack. “I’ll start scanning the first journal while you shower. I’ll mark anything that might be relevant, especially anything that refers to a prophecy. You can read the marked passages and then we can divvy up the rest of the journals and look for more entries that might give us a clue.”
; “Sounds good,” John said and headed to the bathroom.
Olivia double-checked the dead bolt on the front door and glanced over at the picture window, now completely covered with a blanket from the bedroom. She eased over to the window and lifted one end of the blanket to peek out at the raging storm. The rain was coming down harder now. Each flash of lightning exposed trees, bent over from the winds. She dropped the blanket back in place and slid into a chair at the table.
Despite the storm raging outside and the sound of the shower running in the cabin, there was a stillness in the air that unnerved her. She took a sip of her coffee hoping to warm herself, but she knew that the chill she felt didn’t come from the night air. Whatever was out there, she could feel it, and although she’d joked with John earlier, she knew she wasn’t paranoid. Someone out there was watching...waiting...and she didn’t have any idea why.
She set down the coffee and pulled a journal off the top of the stack. Time to get some answers.
“July 5, 1861
Father told me today that I would be married in a month. I begged and pleaded, but he ignored my cries. Mother, as usual, deferred to him. In one month, I will become the final payment for a business transaction that gains Father the business he wished to acquire in New Orleans. Father assures me that Franklin is a gentleman, and I will have a big house with many servants. I find it ironic that a war is brewing over slavery, but the daughters of the wealthy are traded like cattle and expected to stay quiet.”
Anger rose in Olivia and she gritted her teeth. No wonder Marilyn Borque had an affair. She was sold like a piece of property. What kind of man bought his wife? Olivia sighed and turned the page. Probably the same kind of man who beat his wife.
“July 19, 1861
My wedding day is two weeks away. It will be a huge event with champagne and extravagant food and happy people partying long into the night. Except for the bride. I barely know my husband, but I’m left with a bad feeling each time we are together. While his behavior is that of every other well-bred man, there’s something just beneath the surface. Something wrong, and I’m afraid to find out what it is. He’s building a house for us in the middle of the swamp. Even with a house full of servants, I know I will be alone. I think that was always his intention.”
Olivia pushed the journal to the side and took a large sip of coffee. Even tucked away in the caretaker’s cottage, she felt something closing in on her. Something malevolent. Something that had been here for a long, long time.
Something trying to break free.
* * *
JOHN SHUT OFF the water and grabbed the towel hanging over the shower door. He’d been tempted to stand under the hot water until it ran out, but he didn’t want Olivia out of his sight any longer than necessary. He’d known that someone had easy access to the house and that they’d been playing with Olivia and doing God knows what else, but he hadn’t really considered the possibility that the intruder had been following their every move, listening to every conversation.
More and more it seemed like that was the case. Whoever was behind this had planned well and far in advance, which led him right back around to the huge gaping holes in the “why.” Olivia didn’t know more than she was telling—he’d bet money on that—but every instinct told him that everything going on at laMalediction centered around her past. Which left them in a serious deficit when it came to motive.
He towel-dried his hair and ran one hand across the three-day growth on his jaw. Since shaving wasn’t anywhere on his priority list, he pulled on his jeans and a T-shirt and tossed the towel in the laundry basket. A long night stretched in front of them, but it had been an even longer day.
He probably would have stubbornly continued searching the tunnels, even though his focus wasn’t what he needed it to be, but he could tell Olivia was ready to drop. He actually admired her for making it as long as she did. The stress of dealing with all those closed-in, dark spaces would have been enough to send most claustrophobics straight into a rubber room. He’d been surprised that she was in such good shape emotionally and physically given that her regular day consisted mostly of typing and reading.
At least they had the journals. If the intruder thought them important enough to read, then surely, there was a clue in those books that they could use to their advantage. Maybe something that would unlock a buried secret in Olivia’s mind. It wouldn’t be the first time an event or object had triggered a forgotten memory.
He looked at the closed bathroom door and blew out a breath, hoping the journals would take the edge off him and Olivia sharing such close quarters. The tension between them had diminished greatly from the night before, but it was still there. The regret he felt at hurting her needled him every time he looked at her, but it had been necessary.
He wasn’t going to deny he had feelings for Olivia, or he’d be lying to himself. But he also knew that despite those feelings, caring for another person the way his mother had cared for both her husbands...the way she cared for his sister, wasn’t an option for him. His work was dangerous and that was the way he wanted it to be. To form a relationship with someone would be putting them at daily risk for being a widow, and that was something he couldn’t take.
His directives were simple—he needed to catch the intruder and stop him from accomplishing whatever he had in mind for Olivia. He needed to get Olivia away from laMalediction and back into her normal life. He needed to find his sister and return her to their mother. And he needed to forget he’d ever felt anything for Olivia Markham.
He strode into the kitchen, took one look at Olivia and stopped short. Her expression was a mixture of fear and anger, and he was afraid to ask what she’d found in the journals. “Are you all right?”
Olivia looked up at him, her hands still clutching her coffee cup. “No. I’m angry and sad and angry.”
“You said angry twice.”
“That’s because I’m really, really angry.” She gave him a rundown of what she’d read in the first journal.
John felt his jaw clench when he considered that only for the passage of time, she could have been describing his mother, his sister or Olivia. “I don’t blame you. That makes me angry, too.”
“But I could be related to these people. Do you realize that?”
“We don’t know that for sure. And even if you are, you look like Marilyn, not Franklin.”
“Do you realize that the best option here is to descend from a woman who was sold as chattel, had an affair and practiced voodoo?” Olivia shook her head. “What a mess. I mean, when I first saw the house and realized it was the one from my dreams, I thought I might get some of the answers I’d always wanted. Marilyn’s diaries make me rethink it on so many levels.”
“We don’t get to choose our family, but yeah, it’s definitely better sometimes not to know everything. Still, all of this certainly explains the voodoo angle. It was probably her last hope.”
“What a miserable existence.” Olivia blew out a breath. “I didn’t find anything in the first journal about the passages or a prophecy...nothing that seemed relevant now.”
John poured himself a cup of coffee and slid into the chair across from Olivia. “Pass me the next one. There’s got to be something in these that we can use. He’s looking for something.”
Olivia passed him the next journal in the stack and took the one underneath for herself. “I hope we find whatever it is before he does.”
John’s back tightened at her words, not wanting to think about the outcome if the intruder got what he was looking for. He was afraid if that happened, laMalediction’s history with occupants would be horrifically consistent.
* * *
IT WAS ALMOST midnight and two pots of coffee later when Olivia straightened up in her chair. “I think I found something.” She pointed to one of the journals John had read earlier. “Find that post about the
statue.”
John opened the journal and flipped through the entries, looking for the passage Olivia wanted. “Here it is,” he said and began to read.
“May 5, 1863
We held our first party since Franklin’s return at the house tonight. Franklin was in all his glory, lording over his less successful cousins and their ‘common’ wives, as he puts it. I don’t even want to think about the money spent on food and drink, but Franklin insisted on the top of the line for everything. He intends on displaying his new purchase for the first time. A statue from the Orient, with a purchase origin that he won’t provide the details on. It’s a plaster creature that favors a lion, but with two breathtaking emeralds for eyes. Again, I can’t even imagine the cost, or how he came by the statue, but my guess is it wasn’t legal.
He’s been obsessed with the thing ever since it entered the house, hiding it in his sleeping quarters and bolting the doors behind him every night. One night, after I’d performed my wifely duty, I made the mistake of touching it. He beat me with a candlestick and I couldn’t walk well for days. Even though I know better than anyone what he’s capable of, I’ve never seen him in such a state. It’s like he’s gone mad.
If he wasn’t already mad before.”
Olivia felt her excitement grow as John read the entry. “Listen to this,” she said and picked up the journal she’d been reading.
“June 15, 1863
Sissy’s cousin can no longer offer me protection from Franklin. He was already slipping into madness before the war. Now that he’s returned and seen what I’ve done, I know my days on this earth are limited. At first opportunity, he will strike. His energy grows greater each day, despite my administering the potions from Sissy’s cousin. She says he draws his energy from the statue—that the statue is the key to his madness.
