by Sarah Andre
She rose to her knees and began to crawl, but his hand snatched her ankle and clung. “You won’t get away with this,” she sputtered, falling flat. “You’re crazy!” Her fingers clawed at mud for purchase. It was useless.
“I will not lose my Frannie,” he yelled.
My Frannie? A thick cluster of willow branches whipped Hannah’s cheeks, stinging her breathless. In that heartbeat of hesitation, Joseph grappled her and tugged her back into sitting position. His bony knee banged into the tender lump at the base of her skull. Pain exploded into a galaxy of stars.
Through the agonizing haze, she swung her arm, connecting to his cheek in a wet slap. She clawed her way down until her fingers found his throat, then squeezed with all her might. Her grip was too slick, her strength gone. Thousands of tiny lights still flashed behind her eyes. Her arm dropped, and her vision tunneled. This was it; she was going to die.
A calm settled over her. She was no longer in a freezing storm, no longer petrified or in pain. She was in the warmth of Devon’s arms, basking in the light and love that shone from his eyes. Her dream was so real, she even heard him shouting her name far away. “I’m here,” she whispered. “I love you.”
“Hannah!” Devon streaked across the soggy lawn, terror fueling adrenaline, but like some hideous nightmare, the more he pumped his arms and legs, the slower he progressed. Deep swaths of muck or slick grass hindered every step. Horizontal rain blinded him, so he raced straight at the sound of the booming surf. He was vaguely aware he was shouting, although except for her name, he couldn’t comprehend his words.
A double fork of lightning streaked through the air. In the split second of light, he made out two forms at the cliff. He had thirty feet to go. Blinding dark returned, but at twenty feet, lightning struck again. Hannah, pale and bloody, lay collapsed on her side.
Joseph, grim-faced and focused, leaned over her and shoved.
Devon’s brain blanked out in shock. In that split second of blue-white light, he experienced the thin line between life and death, felt the overwhelming power of love and hate.
Hannah reached for Joseph and grabbed only air as she disappeared over the edge.
“Hannah!”
Chapter 30
Somehow Hannah clung to the narrow stone step protruding from the cliff. Her body swayed in the gust as her feet clawed for another step. She found it as an icy wave rammed her from behind, bashing her knees against the rock wall. Frigid water engulfed her and retreated with such violence, it sucked at her like a vortex. Her shaking fingers slipped a fraction. She cried out, clasping the step with all her might.
She’d seen Devon a split second before she went over. All she had to do was hang on. Could she? Her fingers cramped; the smooth step was so slippery. Willow branches whipped her head and neck mercilessly. A new wave slammed into her, and her fingers slipped another fraction. Oh God, don’t let me die! Her breath came in rasping sobs, and her body shook with chilled convulsions. She clung for all she was worth.
At a sudden shout, she craned her neck. Rain beat into her eyes, but she made out hazy images of the two men grappling. Then a soaking-wet form peered over the edge, blocking the rain and taking the brunt of the willow whips. Lightning cut through the sky. Devon’s frantic face morphed to shock as he spotted her a foot below.
“Hannah!” Steel fingers closed over her icy wrists, and she began to rise up the cliff face, lighter than air. Another wave battered her into the rock; he swore and tightened his grip painfully. She tried to say his name, but her teeth chattered too hard, and her lips had frozen into a stiff grimace. Her torso rose above the cliff, and he laid her across the grass, dragging her dangling legs up and around. Dark figures spilled out of the mansion, holding flashlights. One had much more of a head start, streaking toward them, only yards away. The inert body of Joseph lay a few feet to her right.
“Are you all right?” Devon wiped the tangled hair from her face and cupped her cheeks. He remained bent over her, trying his best to shield her from the pelting rain and willow tree. “Can you understand me?”
She nodded. The only warmth in her frigid body came from the tears trickling into her hairline. She turned her head cautiously toward the house, and a blur of movement near the willow tree trunk caught her eye. The first of the help had arrived.
Frannie! The younger woman dragged a thick branch from the ground and stumbled through the sweeping, clawing branches toward them.
“N-n-n-n-no,” Hannah chattered.
“It’s okay, sweetheart. Ouch,” Devon muttered as the willows slashed him.
“F-f-f-rrraaa…” She pointed, but her arm was down by her side, and his face was an inch from hers. He wouldn’t look behind him in time.
Frannie raised the branch like an ax and swung with all her might, aiming right for the middle of Devon’s back. A sickening thud and his grunt of surprise preceded him falling heavily onto her.
“D-d-devon,” she sobbed, trying to twist out from under him and help him. Frannie flung the branch away and shoved him hard. He fell onto his side, groaning.
Lightning lit the sky, and Frannie, face distorted in rage, dropped to her knees in front of them.
She pushed Hannah backward, muttering obscenities, and once again Hannah struggled for all she was worth, clutching at slippery blades of grass and handfuls of mud. Devon stirred beside her. Flashlights bobbed faster, but they wouldn’t be fast enough. She moaned as she clawed at Frannie’s rain-slicked hands, tried to bite the wrist that held her.
In dreadful slow motion, Frannie rolled her backward. The surf roared up over the ledge, soaking her. Another bundle of willow branches slapped her. With one final push, she was slipping over the cliff again. Her fingers clawed for the steps, a jutted rock—anything—as another cluster of willow branches sliced down. Her fists closed over them. She hung on, praying the willow would hold her weight as once again her feet scrambled for purchase.
Devon shook his head, hair splatting against his cheeks. The pain in his back was intense. What the hell had just happened?
“You’re as bad as Brady,” his sister screamed from behind. “You’re engaged and carrying on with a whore, just like him!”
Hannah! She was gone. He jerked to his knees, and the twinge in his spine felt like the twist of a knife. No fingers clutched the cliff. He crawled to the edge, and his sister wrapped her hands around his throat from behind and squeezed.
“You bastard. You’re all the same!”
He shrugged her off and leaned over the cliff, prepared to dive into the angry froth to either save Hannah or die with her. There she was, three feet down, clinging to branches, for fuck’s sake. “Hannah,” he shouted, scrambling to where she swung.
She twisted her head at the sound of his voice and opened her mouth just as a wave slammed her into the rock and crested over her head. A second later, it surged back out, sucking at her as she coughed and sputtered. He stretched over the cliff and grabbed her just above the elbows. Fists beat on the backs of his thighs.
“I’ve got you,” he murmured, and clung tight as they rode out another ramming wave.
Her body strained away from him as the retreating swirl sucked her, but the second the lake retreated enough to release her, he grabbed flesh and clothes and hauled until he caught her about the waist. They waited out another wave so vicious he felt the strain of holding her stab through his injured back. He stilled, immobilized from agony.
“Oh no,” she whispered in defeat, and he knew another injury was on the way. He held on to her as tightly as he could and braced himself. If they were going to die, at least he’d go out with his arms around her.
“Frannie!” Rick shouted.
“Enough!” his father roared in his dragon voice, and it seemed that even the storm paused in that split second. “Put it down!”
The blow never came. Devon hoisted Hannah slowly, rolling onto his side and dragging her up and across him. He closed his eyes against the battering raindrops and hugged her
sobbing, breathless body.
“Francine. Drop it.” Harrison used that gentle tone with her again, the one he’d used after Devon had beat up her husband…jeez, only hours ago. “That’s a good girl.”
Devon squinted through Hannah’s soaking mass of hair. Harrison shined a light at Frannie’s feet while she swayed, still holding a remarkably large tree branch. Rick crept up stealthily from behind. A shitload of cops and EMS stood frozen in action stances, while Harrison held up his other hand, like a puppeteer keeping them at bay.
“I have to kill her,” Frannie said. “I have to.”
“No, baby girl. Let’s go inside. Right now.” The tree branch slid from her grasp, and she sank to her knees. Harrison motioned to the cops, and suddenly flashlights and lanterns blazed, gurneys rolled forward, and medical personnel swarmed. Harrison waved them away from Frannie and helped her up.
Rick fell to his knees beside Devon seconds before the medical personnel. “Are you guys okay?”
“I don’t think so, Rick.” He tried to infuse ironic humor in his voice, but it came out as pained as he felt.
“It was an accident,” Frannie sobbed. “I never meant to do it, Daddy. It was a terrible accident.”
“I know, sweet girl.” After cursory glances, first at Joseph, then Devon and Hannah, Harrison turned and led her toward the house. Two EMTs knelt over Joseph, blocking him from view.
Devon swiped blood from his nose without losing his grip on Hannah. Why would Joseph try to kill her? And Frannie try to finish the job? None of this made sense. He ignored the crowd hovering around him and clutched Hannah’s shivering body, so miraculously alive and glued to his.
“She…she killed Honey,” Hannah said. “It wasn’t an accident.”
“Shhh.” He kissed her quivering cheek, and then three techs were gently probing, questioning, and prying them apart. He barely heard them, still trying to wrap his mind around Joseph and Frannie’s actions. What had Hannah ever done to them?
“I’m fine,” Hannah insisted, weakly brushing off the tech covering her with an aluminum blanket. Flashlights blazed around them. Lightning lit the sky.
“Ma’am, I need you to lie still—”
She slapped at his hands clumsily, and before Devon could order her to cooperate, she staggered to her feet. By the look on her sheet-white face, she was going after his sister.
Chapter 31
Hannah didn’t make it four yards before she sank to the frigid ground and threw up, her humiliation complete when Devon knelt and held her heavy hair back while the techs waited. After vomiting until she dry-heaved, she was too dizzy to do more than wipe her mouth on her soggy sweater and groan. The throbbing in her head felt like a thousand gonging church bells.
“Come on, sweetheart. Let EMS take over now.”
She allowed them to lay her on a gurney, and they all carefully made their way toward the mass of flashlights twirling like a laser show over by the patio. Even the beams drove shafts of pain through her skull, and she closed her eyes. When the rain suddenly stopped beating on her, she knew they’d reached the sunroom. The abrupt warmth felt like a pile of luxurious fur coats.
“Where’s Frannie?” Devon asked someone, and she risked opening her eyes. The room was filled with more officials holding flashlights. It took her a moment to realize he’d spoken to his father, who stood near the arched doors with his arm around a deathly pale teenage boy, and that homicide detective scribbling in his notepad.
“She’s upstairs changing.” Devon’s reaction must have caused Harrison to quickly add, “We have a female officer with her.”
Hannah’s gurney was wheeled through the house, Devon at her side, arguing with his father and the medical staff on why he didn’t need to lie on one too. “It’s a small bruise,” he insisted, but the deep lines bracketing his mouth exposed the lie.
They loaded her up in the ambulance, and more arguing ensued as Devon insisted on riding with her to the hospital, and the techs gently refused. “There’s no room. She’ll be at Evanston Hospital, sir. We’ll make sure the ER staff knows you’re on your way.”
“How about you ride in this other ambulance?” Another tech pointed at a third vehicle. “And get yourself checked out as well.”
“I said I feel fine.”
“I’ll drive you, Dev.” Rick sidled up to his brother, holding an extra-thick jacket and studying Hannah almost apologetically.
Devon waved the jacket off, his two-buttoned, tattered shirt glued to the chiseled torso. How could he not be shivering after all this? “Hannah, I’m going to change into some of Rick’s clothes and grab some for you. I’ll be right behind you, okay?”
She nodded weakly as a shout came from somewhere outside the vehicle. Using the last of her strength, she raised her head an inch off the thin pillow. Everyone outside the ambulance turned toward the house, where orders were barked, but she couldn’t make them out. “Devon…what’s happened?”
He held up a finger, still listening, his handsome profile shadowed outside the lighted ambulance. Rick shifted his weight, and as he leaned into the light, she saw his jaw drop and his eyes dart to Devon.
“Devon?” she said again, not sure he heard her over the noise of the storm, the diesel rumble of the ambulance, and the tech sitting next to her talking into a phone. Then both brothers faced her, their expressions stricken. “Frannie overpowered the police officer,” Devon rasped. “She’s disappeared somewhere in the house with the cop’s Glock.”
Devon dragged his eyes from Hannah’s battered, frightened face to his father standing on the threshold of the open front door. They shared a bleak moment. No one knew hiding places in the house like Frannie. There was no electricity. She had a gun. This would not end well, not if attempted murder and beating him with a tree branch was acceptable to her frame of mind. She’d suffered from depression, but nothing he’d ever considered severe, certainly nothing to warrant this psychotic break. But then, Hannah had mentioned seeing pills…
“Devon,” Hannah said faintly for the third time, and he turned back, masking his panic. She beckoned him closer, and after the tech nodded and scooted over, he ducked inside the ambulance. Guilt thickened his throat as he crouched by the gurney. He ignored the shaft of pain down his spine and grasped her hand. Everything about her swollen, purple cheekbone, the welt lashes from the willow, and her inside-out sweater was his fault. She could’ve finished her job in the second gallery and been long gone from this godforsaken house, but he’d instigated a fight and manhandled her right out of her clothes. Why, of all of them, had she become the victim?
“I’m so sorry, Hannah.” He kissed her knuckles and brushed a strand of hair off her forehead. “What in the hell happened between you and Joseph and Frannie?”
She squeezed his hand. “It’ll take too long. Frannie led me down a tiny spiral staircase tonight.” Her voice cracked a bit. “It opens into the far side of the kitchen.” He nodded. “She showed me a door hidden in the wall… Said it used to be servants’ quarters. She still goes there to be alone.”
The four bedrooms tucked back there were from their hide-and-seek days. Frannie had returned there often in her dark teen years.
“Brilliant, thanks.” He leaned in to kiss her gently, but she turned her head away.
“Don’t go after her, Devon. She’s already tried to kill you tonight too.”
“I have to. I know how to talk to her.” I hope.
Her eyes filled with tears. “Come with me,” she whispered. “She has your whole family. I only have you.”
His heart wrenched, the pain as excruciating as the throbbing in his back. In a distorted version of that stormy night, she was asking him to drop everything, turn his back on his family crisis, and go with her.
They’d both lost so much twelve years ago. He couldn’t afford to make the mistake again. But this was different. She was loaded into a warm ambulance about to be cared for. The technician cleared his throat.
“I’ll be ther
e before you get through the admissions process.” He kissed the non-swollen part of her face. “You’ll be fine. My family needs me.”
“I need you.” Tears streamed down her cheeks.
He hesitated a few seconds, torn by the devastation in her gaze. But his decision was right. Sit around the hospital waiting room like a bump on a log, or stop his sister from harming anyone else? It was a no-brainer. “I’ll be there soon, okay?”
She turned her face to the wall and closed her eyes. He was fucked, but he didn’t know what else to do. He kissed her cheek once more and beat it out of the ambulance before he buckled under his need to stay. By the time he’d jogged back to the foyer, Rick had told his father and the officers where Frannie used to hide.
The homicide detective with the Southern accent handed them flashlights and motioned for them to lead the way. In the crowded spiral stairwell, an argument in primitive sign language ensued, where the homicide detective initially didn’t want any family to enter the servants’ quarters. He finally acquiesced to Harrison’s forceful headshake and pointed to Harrison, Devon, and one other cop, leaving Rick and a very youthful-looking uniform at the entrance.
If they’d hoped for stealth, the squeal of the rusty, old door ruined those plans. The stench of mold and dead rodents permeated the dusty air and twitched Devon’s sinuses. He crept along the corridor, following the others step for step. The servants’ hall was twenty feet long and had four closed doors, two on each side. The detective gestured with a series of hand signals, obviously demanding that father and son move out of the way and stay put. Harrison shook his head again and stood before the farthest door on the left. After a prolonged stare-down, the detective finally scowled and nodded. Once each man flattened himself up against the wall beside a door, he signaled a three-second countdown. On one, Devon rotated his doorknob and pushed. His flashlight encountered only white-sheeted furniture and the stink of even stronger mold and dust.
