Hush

by Nancy Bush

  “What happened that night? You were fighting with her about spilling your secret.”

  “You bet I was.” Now Yvette turned, the planes of her face shadowed, her mouth grim. “Annette was a know-it-all bitch who had to meddle in my affairs. We fought. Yes. And yeah, I pushed her into the hot tub. But it was a mistake. I was just so mad at her that I shoved her. She fell into the tub and then I rushed up but she was just sitting there, kinda dazed. I told her she was a bitch and I went inside. I left her there.

  “She just wouldn’t leave me and Benedict alone, you know? I hated her. All she ever did was mess things up! But then . . . then she was dead, but when I left her she was sitting up!” Yvette’s voice had started to shake. She seemed to be unraveling right in front of Coby. “Somebody else held her under. It wasn’t me, and it’s not my fault that she died! Yes, I pushed her, but it was an accident. If she’d just left me alone . . .”

  “What about the lock of hair?” Coby asked quickly as Yvette stabbed the key in the lock and twisted.

  “I don’t give a good goddamn about Lucas’s hair. It wasn’t my sick souvenir. I lied about him, okay? I admit that. We weren’t lovers, but that’s all I lied about.”

  “You were with Hank the night of the campout.”

  “Yes! Yes. I was with Hank, okay? But Lucas just fell.”

  “You saw him fall?”

  “Yes. He tripped and fell and it was terrible. Stop making a federal case out of it! It was an accident, too!” She jumped into her car and slammed the door behind her.

  “Do you think I don’t belong?” Coby yelled after her, which earned her a look that said Yvette thought she was completely nuts.

  Yvette threw the car in reverse, nearly running over Coby, who moved a good ten feet away, then she jammed the car into gear and it leapt forward with a little blurp of tires.

  Coby’s breath was coming fast. She felt like she’d just run a marathon. Everyone had said Yvette had killed Annette, and now it looked like they’d been right. Except Yvette wouldn’t cop to the fact she’d held her under. Not yet, anyway. Maybe in time. Maybe now she just couldn’t accept that she’d killed her sister.

  In a detached part of her mind, she heard an engine fire up. Someone leaving the hospital.

  But her mind was making feverish connections. Yvette was with Hank and not Lucas. Lucas’s death was an accident. He died of head trauma—no, wait—Danner had said he died from drowning, though from his injuries it looked like he’d hit the back of his head against the cliff or rocks or both, and then turned over later. Possibly by the waves. Or possibly by someone who’d taken a piece of his hair?

  Yvette had kept the secret of Benedict’s paternity for her own reasons. But Hank had been about to go for full custody, and Yvette clearly believed he had just cause or she wouldn’t be so scared now. In a fit of anger, she’d shoved Annette, who then fell into the hot tub and drowned. But someone had held Annette under; there were marks on the back of her neck and she’d tried to claw her way free. Yvette wouldn’t go so far as to accept blame for that, but then maybe she hadn’t done it? Maybe it was just as she’d said: she had entered the house after pushing Annette. Maybe someone else seized the opportunity to get rid of Annette, who was all about divulging secrets and had found a lock of hair that she believed was Lucas Moore’s.

  The departing car’s headlights swept the front of the hospital as it curved through the turnaround, its engine revving. Coby saw the flash of light, and a detached part of her brain knew she was in its path, so she moved to one side of the parking lot.

  But what if Yvette was telling the truth about Annette? What if someone else—a true opportunist—had either seen or come upon Annette falling into the hot tub and simply finished what Yvette had begun? What if someone came upon Lucas Moore after he fell onto the rocks and clipped a swatch of his hair and then pushed his face in the water, making certain he drowned?

  What if someone then followed Rhiannon onto a cliff trail and made certain she tumbled to her death?

  “But why?” Coby said aloud.

  The sudden loudness of the approaching car’s engine. A high-pitched whine. A squeal of tires screeching against slippery pavement.

  Coby jerked around, shocked. Headlights blinded her. Twin beams in gray fog. White and glaring.

  The car shot forward. Spurting toward her. A sedan? her brain wondered as she leapt for the grass.

  The car came right at her. Smack! She felt a jolt in her hip. She spun like a top, then went down. Facedown into mud and grass. She yanked up her knees in a move of automatic self-preservation, certain the car would run over her legs. But it tore past Coby, accelerating.

  Groggily, she raised her head to try to read the license plate, but the fog obscured everything but the shape of the red taillights and a general idea that the vehicle was light-colored.

  She laid her head back down. Afraid. Cold. Wondering if the driver would suddenly reverse and try for a second attempt at her. Fear shot a jolt of adrenaline through her system and she struggled to her feet.

  She swayed, catching her breath.

  She heard shouts. Coming from the hospital. Someone had seen the attack.

  But the car was long gone, onto the highway, by the sound of the disappearing engine. Not interested in another swipe at Coby.

  “Are you all right, miss?” It was an orderly, she thought, based on his white garb. He hadn’t come from the front of the hospital but was apparently already outside, walking along one of the sidewalks from another wing.

  “I think so.” She slowly sat back down on the cold, wet ground.

  “Are you sure? I can get a wheelchair or a gurney.”

  “No. Just give me a minute.”

  “I’ll be right back,” he said, running toward the front door, clearly not believing her.

  But Coby knew she was basically unhurt. All she felt was reaction. From everything that had happened the whole day. She didn’t know what it meant. She didn’t know how much was fact and how much was conjecture on her part, but someone was out to get her.

  And whoever that someone was, it wasn’t Yvette Deneuve, because Yvette hadn’t had time to drive out of sight, turn around, and circle the parking lot to attack Coby.

  And the car that came after Coby was white, or tan, or maybe even light gray, hard to tell with the fog.

  But it sure as hell wasn’t a black Ford Focus.

  I disappear into the blanket of the fog, uncertain. By all rights she should be dead but she darted at the last moment, spinning away. I think I may have just grazed her.

  Did she know it was me?

  A thrill shoots through me. Stimulating. Sexual. I hope she knows it was me!

  No. I cannot think that way. Cannot let the desire that rules me overtake my planning.

  I am a master at the art of planning and opportunity.

  I killed Lucas.

  I killed Annette.

  I killed that bitch Heather.

  I wanted Rhiannon dead, but I did not kill her, though I know who did. . . .

  The time is coming.

  If Coby Rendell is not dead, she will be soon. The minutes of her life are ticking down.

  I will make sure of it.

  Chapter 24

  There was no escaping the hospital cavalry. Coby tried to make it to her own car, but the orderly who’d seen her came out of the hospital with a wheelchair and a real need to call 911 and the police, and the only way Coby could get him to hold off was to climb into the wheelchair and let him push her back inside.

  “What’s your name?” Coby asked him, half turning in the chair, as he was behind her and she had to admit that she did feel a bit weak. The hit-and-run had knocked the stuffing out of her temporarily.

  “Tim.”

  “Well, Tim, if you would wheel me to the ladies’ room, then I’ll place a call to my boyfriend, Detective Danner Lockwood of the Portland PD. Thank you, but I don’t need any more help. I know what this is about,” she stated firmly, l
ying a little.

  “I’m taking you to the emergency room—” he started, but Coby cut him off with, “No. I’m on my way there anyway, but I’m going to clean up first. You can wrestle me if you want, but that is the way it’s going to be. You understand?”

  For an answer he slowed the wheelchair to a stop. Coby could see a restroom sign down the hall. Climbing from the chair, she ignored the feeling of her limbs being worked from some other place than her central brain. She didn’t look back at Tim as she headed toward the restroom, but she was pretty sure he was eyeing her progress with laserlike intensity. Convincing hospital personnel that you didn’t need help appeared to be about as easy as winning an argument with a TSA agent.

  In the bathroom she stared at her image in the mirror. There wasn’t as much mud on her face as she’d been afraid of, which was a plus. But in the negative column, her coat, blouse, and jeans were covered in splotches of mud and grass, and her eyes were huge, pupils dilated, her face drained of color. She splashed water on her face, and that helped.

  She wasn’t really going to call Danner. That was a lurking “I told you so” she didn’t have time for. Carefully, she mentally checked herself over, and apart from some areas that were definitely going to be sporting bruises, she was unhurt. No broken bones, no lacerations apart from a scratch at her knee that was barely bleeding.

  She was okay.

  No thanks to the driver in the white car.

  Rage flooded her and brought color back to her face. She was flat-out mad at her would-be killer. Who was it? Why? Because of her investigation?

  “But you don’t know anything,” she told her reflection, perplexed. She’d thought it was all tumbling into place with Yvette’s confession about Hank Sainer, but Yvette certainly hadn’t aimed her vehicle at Coby.

  Hank Sainer. Someone had run him off the road tonight, too.

  The same person? Someone else?

  Were there two people involved in these killings?

  Who are they?

  Yvette drove with controlled fury through a spotty fog that, as the temperature declined, was trying to freeze. Freezing fog. The kind of thing that put a sheen of ice over everything and sent cars spinning into ditches. All the way back to her apartment she kept her attention on her driving, but when she was safely parked, she stopped a moment and took a breath, her hands still on the wheel.

  What the hell kind of game was Coby playing? Fishing around. Trying to win sympathy, encourage intimacy and the sharing of secrets. Bullshit. Coby Rendell’s better-than-thou attitude hadn’t changed one bit since high school. Maybe it was even worse.

  A heaviness invaded Yvette’s chest, making it hard for her to breathe. She remembered the screech of metal against metal. The strange whistling sound as Hank’s Land Rover went airborne. The wrenching crash as the vehicle smashed down, turned over, and rolled.

  Crossing to the refrigerator, Yvette pulled out a pitcher of water, poured herself a glass, and gulped water cold enough to make her teeth ache. She needed him dead. Dead and gone.

  A strangled sob emanated from her throat. She hadn’t meant for it to happen! She still loved Hank Sainer, had loved him since the first time she saw him, one afternoon when he’d picked Dana up from school. Dana had always been a true pain in the ass. Whining about her eating disorder, never letting anyone forget. But her dad . . . wow . . .

  Yvette recalled seeing Hank that first time, a spring day her junior year. She locked eyes with him and he smiled, then looked away, then looked back, a line of consternation forming between his brows. He’d had no plan to get involved with a teenager—it was about the last thing an up-and-coming politician would choose, but then sex and politics, they kinda went together, didn’t they?

  Yvette sure didn’t have the same reservations. She wanted him. One of those animal things that just was.

  From that day forward Yvette had pursued him. She’d made herself available everywhere Dana was, going so far as to make Dana a friend for a brief couple of weeks, something no one remembered or thought maybe they’d misinterpreted. Yvette and Dana? Not a chance.

  But by then Hank was hooked. She caught him alone on the back patio of his small, rented house, the place he’d lived after his divorce from Dana’s mother. Nothing near as nice as that goddamned penthouse he lived in now.

  She’d simply walked up to him that night and laid a hand on his chest. Tensions had been simmering between them for weeks. The moment was breathless and hot and Yvette had debated how to ask him to make love to her. Should she be all ballsy and just come out and say, “Let’s make love”? Or should she play a little more coy and naive—guys just about shit themselves over a girl who could pull that off right—and stare at him with dark, liquid eyes and simply mold her body to his? She chose the latter, and it was the right move. With a groan he grabbed her hair, gazed back at her in mounting frustration, and muttered, “What the hell are you doing?”

  “What we both want, Mr. Sainer.”

  “Hank,” he said, then nearly swallowed her up with a kiss that felt like it was the end of the world.

  Man.

  Even now Yvette could get a little turned on by the memory. Jesus, she wished she had a man who could quench this desire, but hell . . . as soon as she got close to someone else—anyone else—the mood just evaporated with a poof! Nothing there. Not a god . . . damned . . . thing.

  Her affair with Hank burned hot and liquid and out of control for those few months. When the opportunity of the campout came along, it was like a sign from forces beyond their control. Yvette waited and suffered and waited some more through that interminable campout and ring of ridiculous confessions. She’d lied about herself, of course. She’d never had sex with anyone when she was thirteen! She just wanted to shock the socks off that stick-up-their butts group, although Ellen had certainly thrown a curveball with admission of an abortion. That was cause for a double take, all right. But then it was all Yvette could do not to break out laughing. Seriously? These losers were actually going to reveal deep and private things about themselves?

  No, her secret was staying secret: She was having an underage affair with one of the dads! A political candidate who had his eye on the governor’s office, although she hadn’t known that last part at the time. And she wouldn’t have cared anyway. She wanted him. Inside her. Sliding back and forth and moaning and telling her how beautiful she was and that someday, someway, they would be together.

  They were deep into lovemaking the night of the campout, high atop Bancroft Bluff, wrapped together in a blanket on the dune, carefully out of sight from the rim of houses that made up that chichi cul-de-sac above the beach. The roar of the ocean was their music; overhead a waning moon gazed down upon them through drifting clouds.

  Yvette was close to climaxing. “C’mon, c’mon, c’mon,” she was chanting through clenched teeth. All Hank had to do was one of those last deep thrusts and she’d be there!

  And then . . . and then . . . a voice. “Hey, man.” A male voice. From just outside the circle of visibility on that dark night.

  “Oh, Jesus . . .”

  Lucas Moore practically tripped over them. He was staring down at Hank’s bare butt. His long hair hung along the sides of his face and his lower jaw was slack with disbelief.

  Hank pulled himself out of her so fast it caused Yvette to cry out. And that made Lucas stagger backward, away from them. One foot stepping back about a yard.

  Hank charged Lucas, to what? Reason with him? Beg him to keep his mouth shut? Yvette would never know.

  For Lucas just teetered a moment, arms pinwheeling, and then he was over the edge in silence as the scream in Yvette’s throat was caught there in total horror.

  Hank grabbed her hand, squeezing so hard there were bruises the next day. He snatched up her clothes, shoving them at her stomach. He was muttering, half crying, and Yvette, finally finding her voice, let out a loud mewl.

  He clamped his hand over her mouth. “Get dressed. We have to get help.
Nine-one-one. Oh, my, God . . . oh, God.”

  He let go of her long enough to yank on his own clothes, stumbling a little as he dragged on his pants. Yvette stood in unmoving silence, her lower jaw trembling. She knew Lucas was dead. She’d never seen anyone die before. But he had to be dead.

  “We killed him,” she said.

  “No, we didn’t! He’s alive.” Hank clenched his hands in his hair, breathing hard. “My phone . . .”

  “You can’t,” Yvette said, struck with sudden clarity. “It will ruin you. And I can’t have that.”

  He stared at her, slack-jawed. He wanted someone else to take the lead. He needed someone else to make decisions.

  “You’re supposed to be at the tavern, right?” Yvette reminded him. “You left the dads at the house for a while. That was what you told them. Go to the tavern. Get seen.”

  “But . . .”

  “I’ll go down the beach and stay out for the rest of the night.” She picked up the blanket, folding it over her arm, thinking hard. “I’ll go back tomorrow and tell them something. But you go now.”

  “I’m not going to leave you out here alone.”

  “Yeah. You are.”

  She practically had to push him to walk out the access road to Bancroft Bluff to Highway 101, which would take him to the nearest town, Deception Bay. Yvette waited impatiently as he kept looking back, then she half climbed, half slid down the cliff to the beach and headed south, in the direction opposite the beach house and the other dads and girls.

  She saw Lucas’s body in the tide pools. He was lying on his back, looking for all the world as if he were stargazing.

  A shiver spread through her and she ran down the beach as far as she could, until her lungs were on fire and her muscles shivering. Wrapping herself in the blanket, she lay down behind a huge piece of driftwood and stared at its rough and charred surface, the result of many campfires made behind its sheltering arm, until dawn broke. Then she stared at the ocean.