Marcus stirred. Hayley took another step back. “You’ve been drugging his water.”
“Of course. I am a trained chemist, you know,” she said with a proud lift of her chin. “It was there in my file. Oh, but you never saw my file, did you? I found it and destroyed it as soon as I took this job. Then I heard you and your boyfriend talking about computers. I realized he probably kept backup files there. I couldn’t leave anything like that for the police to find, now could I?”
“You set the fire.”
Paula beamed. Her smile was more terrifying than her fanatical stare.
“I set out to destroy everything he ever cared about, and I’ve succeeded. I planned it so carefully. I wanted him weak so I could beat him to death with your boyfriend’s hammer, knowing the police would blame him. Everyone knew about what happened to his wife. That’s what the boy told you. Only I couldn’t find her file in his office, so I had to make one. I wanted to leave it where it wouldn’t get burned, but that would have been too obvious. Besides, it wasn’t important. Making him pay is what’s important.”
“Didn’t Marcus know who you were when he hired you?”
Paula’s expression turned sly. “How could he? I changed my hair, and my makeup and it’s been seven years since he butchered Lydia Carpenter, successful businesswoman. He never looked twice at Paula Kerstairs. She was only a lowly maid, after all.”
She laughed, a chilling, cackling sound.
“You realize you have only yourself to blame. You left me no choice. First I’m going to kill you and then your boyfriend.”
“Hayley!”
It couldn’t be Bram’s voice. He was safe at the Walken estate!
Paula lowered her gun arm as she darted a glance over her shoulder. Hayley didn’t give herself time to think. She threw herself sideways, pushing through the gap in the hedge. Paula screamed in rage. The coughing sound came again.
Expecting to feel a hot flash of pain in her back any second, Hayley began to run.
Chapter Fourteen
George covered the distance between the two estates as if trying to break a speed record. When they arrived, Hayley’s car still sat out front. An official waved them around to the back, where Emily and Eden stood talking beside Emily’s car. Hayley was nowhere to be seen.
Bram’s heart dove for his feet. He was out of the car and running before George brought the car to a complete stop.
“Where’s Hayley?”
Guiltily, Emily pointed toward the garden. “Jacob went to look for her. I tried to call, but my cell phone’s battery went dead.”
Hayley’s overnight case lay on the ground in plain sight. Bram heard another car pulling in behind George, but he didn’t turn to look. Bram began to run.
Somewhere in the garden, a woman screamed in rage.
Hearing Jacob yelling for Hayley to wait, Bram pushed his tortured lungs and screaming muscles forward. He had to reach Hayley before Jacob did.
“HAYLEY! Wait!”
Hayley heard Jacob as she ran, but she couldn’t see him. She had no idea where she was in the maze—or even which maze she was in. Ahead of her, three paths intersected, and she paused as a coughing fit seized her. Vainly, she tried to muffle the sound against her dress.
“Hayley!”
Jacob rounded a corner. Hayley tried to wave him off. “Get help! Paula’s got a gun!”
Jacob kept coming.
Hayley realized someone was running toward her from another path. Where was Paula?
She’d started toward Jacob when something rustled the bushes a few yards in front of her. Abruptly, the branches were pushed apart as Paula forced her way through the dense hedge, gun in hand.
BRAM LOST JACOB in a fit of coughing that left him weak and spent and too winded to call out. He heard Hayley coughing somewhere ahead of him.
“Hayley!” Jacob called again.
The man was to his right. Bram had taken a wrong turn somewhere.
“Go back! Paula’s got a gun!”
Adrenaline gave Bram a surge of new energy. He ran forward, catching sight of Hayley moving down a branching path. Paula Kerstairs suddenly emerged from the middle of the hedge to block Hayley’s way, aiming a gun right at her.
Bram’s lungs strained for air. He wouldn’t reach Hayley in time! But Jacob raced up behind Paula and yanked on her shoulder. The gun spat flame and smoke. As Paula and Jacob began to struggle, Bram closed the distance, grabbing Hayley and shoving her behind him.
The gun fired. Jacob’s lips parted in shock. He staggered and fell back. Paula twisted toward Bram, gun in hand. At this distance, she couldn’t miss.
“Hey! You! Over here! Hey!”
Hayley was behind him, yet her voice came from the left.
Distracted, Paula jerked and half turned as she pulled the trigger. The bullet whizzed harmlessly into the thicket beside Bram. He dove at her in a hard tackle that took them both to the ground. The gun sailed from her hand.
Paula went wild, kicking, clawing, screaming obscenities, but the clearing filled with people who pulled her away. Coughing so hard he could barely see, Bram let hands pull him to his feet. Eden was bending over Jacob. George and a policeman were trying to pin the crazed woman, while Hayley was being hugged by her exact duplicate.
“You said everything was okay,” he heard the woman who must be Leigh accuse.
“I lied.” Hayley hugged her sister, then turned and threw herself into his arms.
AFTER A LATE DINNER that night, the three of them sat in the Walkens’ cozy living room, still trying to make sense of it all. The police were gone, George was taking a telephone call and Emily had gone out to the kitchen for something.
Marcus had died among the ruins of the roses he loved. Jacob was in the hospital with a hole through his arm as a result of his heroism, and Paula was in jail, smugly mute, but unbowed, having achieved her ultimate revenge.
Bram tugged Hayley more tightly against his side, feeling every one of his almost thirty-five years. His chest ached painfully, while his head throbbed in concert with assorted muscles, scrapes and burns. He didn’t care. Hayley was safe.
Unconcerned that her sister was sitting right there, he kissed the top of her hair. Hayley smiled up at him and settled her head against his shoulder, while Leigh stared in bemusement from the chair across the room. Bram was getting used to looking at the stranger with Hayley’s face. Despite their identical features, he had no trouble telling them apart. It had nothing to do with Leigh’s longer hairstyle or the difference in their clothing. Distinguishing the two of them would never be a problem for him. Leigh might look exactly like her sister, but there was only one Hayley.
“I’m still confused,” Leigh complained.
“Welcome to the club,” Hayley said. “When Bram told me he suspected everyone at Heartskeep of tampering with the water bottles, including Paula and Mrs. Norwhich, I thought he was nuts. I was so sure Eden was behind everything.”
Bram felt a tiny tremor course through her, and he smoothed back a strand of her hair. “I owe Jacob an apology,” he told her.
“A big one,” she agreed. “He saved my life.”
“I know.”
Bram would never forget his terror when he saw Paula aiming that gun at Hayley and knew he wasn’t going to reach her in time. He had known such helpless fear like that only once before—when his infant daughter had struggled for her life.
“So this Kerstairs woman is insane?” Leigh persisted.
“I don’t know,” Hayley said. “I got the impression she’d spent a couple of years creating that stuff she put in the water. She knew exactly what she wanted to accomplish, and bided her time until she was ready. That doesn’t sound like a crazy person to me.”
“Then you showed up and ruined everything,” Leigh said. “So was Paula blackmailing Marcus?”
“I’m not sure anyone was,” Hayley replied. “Marcus may have been talking to himself that day. He was doing that the first time I saw him—when he
told Mom her roses were doing well.”
Both women shuddered, and Bram stroked Hayley’s arm. She rewarded him with a wobbly smile.
“Do we know why you saw Eden sneaking into the maze that day?” Leigh asked.
Hayley shook her head. “Mrs. Norwhich said Paula was out there, too, that morning. I think it’s a safe bet Eden was following her.”
“I saw Jacob acting weird and followed him,” Bram told Leigh, “but I lost him and had to blunder my way back out. He was following either his mother or Hayley.”
“We’ll ask him about it later,” Hayley said.
“I’m surprised you didn’t all fall over one another.”
Hayley shook her head. “The mazes are a mess. There could have been half a dozen people moving around in there.”
“Oh, no you don’t,” Leigh protested. “There are already too many people wandering around in there in my imagination. What about those pictures you found? I don’t understand how they fit in, but I’d like to see them. You’d think I’d remember talking to some man outside that café in New York, even if I didn’t know my picture was being taken. And as you can see, I do not have short hair, though I have to admit I love the way yours looks.”
“Bram showed me how that was done on the computer,” Hayley told her.
“We’ll have a look for the picture file when the police let us back in the house,” Bram promised.
“We can’t,” Hayley stated. “Paula did something to the machine and now it wants a password. Jacob’s not going to be happy. I think it’s his computer.”
“I’ll have a look at it,” Bram promised.
“Bram used to work with computers before he was a blacksmith,” Hayley told Leigh.
“Really? We’ll come back to that in a minute,” Leigh promised. “I still have some questions. Like why did Paula clean the library and take the telephone books?”
“To keep me confused, I think,” Hayley told her. “She knew I was drinking the water, so she felt safe coming in while I was sleeping. Want to bet she was the one who went through my bag that first day?”
“But why? I still don’t understand the point.”
“She was trying to create as much chaos and confusion as possible.”
Bram nodded. “She wanted Hayley to go away, but if she didn’t, Paula wanted to make Hayley seem so confused that no one would believe anything she said.”
“It’s all so hard to believe,” Leigh protested. “I leave the country for a short vacation, and look what happens.”
Neither woman smiled.
“I still believe Paula’s plan was to lure Marcus into his office and kill him after she spread the accelerant,” Hayley commented.
“You think she wanted him to die in the fire?” Leigh asked.
“Paula said Bram and I ruined her plan,” Hayley said thoughtfully. “I think she intended to hit Marcus with Bram’s hammer and set the fire so that the police would blame him.”
“Is that why she made up the phony file on Bram’s wife?”
“It’s possible. She overheard Jacob telling me what happened to his wife.”
“I don’t think so,” Bram told them. “I think Jacob or Eden created that file to make you doubt me, Hayley. I think Paula expected the police would think I hit Marcus when he caught me rifling through his office. And it could have worked. Most nights I wouldn’t have had an alibi.”
“Geez, what a thought,” Leigh protested.
Hayley stroked his cheek. “When we interrupted her setting the scene she must have panicked and hit you to escape. In retrospect, she was the only person who looked totally terrified when everyone was gathered around us out front, after we got out.”
“She couldn’t be sure I didn’t see her when she hit me.”
“Is that why she decided to kill Marcus in the garden, after destroying his roses?” Leigh asked.
Hayley nodded as Emily entered the room with a platter of cookies.
“Can I get anyone anything else to drink?” Emily asked.
“No, thanks. Sit down, Emily,” Hayley insisted. “You don’t have to wait on us.”
Emily smiled. “I know. The one point that still troubles me about what happened is why Paula attacked you and Marcus with all of us standing only a few yards away.”
Bram laced his fingers with Hayley’s, reassured by the warmth of that contact. He would have nightmares about today for a long time, he was sure.
“I think she heard me trying to warn Marcus about the water, and felt she was out of time,” Hayley told Emily.
Bram scowled at her. “If you’d done what I told you and stayed with people—”
“I did stay with people,” Hayley protested. “Just the wrong ones.”
Leigh smiled wryly. “If you want Hayley to do something, you have to tell her she can’t. I could tell you stories—”
“Don’t even think about it,” Hayley warned her sister.
They all looked up as George Walken strode back into the room. Emily rose and crossed to her husband’s side. He slid an arm around her waist and smiled at her fondly.
“Sorry for the interruption,” he told them. “That was a friend of mine who works for the fire department. Were either of you aware that Marcus had a hidden room off his office?”
“What?” Hayley and Leigh exclaimed in unison.
George nodded. “They found a small surgery with a concealed entrance from his office and a hidden exit to the outside.”
“You’re joking!” Leigh said.
“I wonder if Mom or Grandpa knew.”
“I doubt it,” George said. “The only reason he’d need a hidden room was if he was doing something illegal. Dennison wouldn’t have stood for that.”
They all fell silent.
“Maybe they’ll find some answers in Marcus’s files or on his computer,” Emily suggested.
“I’m afraid not,” George told her. “Everything in that wing is a total loss.”
Bram shook his head. “Maybe not. Hard drives are pretty close to indestructible. It’s possible to retrieve a lot of the information, even after a fire and water damage. I have a couple of friends in New York who do that sort of thing for a living. It’s expensive and time consuming, but it’s often possible.”
“Will you call them, Bram? See if they’ll try? There are still so many unanswered questions.”
“I have another one,” Emily offered. “How is it you managed to time your arrival so perfectly, Leigh?”
“Good question,” Hayley agreed. “What are you doing here?”
“Are you kidding? I knew something was wrong the minute you called me in England. It didn’t take ESP, you know. You and Marcus in the same house without a referee? As soon as you said he was putting up bars, I knew the fur would be flying. I couldn’t get a plane home fast enough. And believe me, getting one at the last minute like that wasn’t easy. I was so frantic by the time I got to the airport that security did everything but strip-search me. And the only reason I didn’t get a jillion speeding tickets on my way here from the airport was because I think I broke the sound barrier. Radar traps probably wrote me off as a UFO.”
“My cautious, careful sister, speeding?”
Leigh tried to stifle a yawn and failed. “Can we discuss the error of my ways after I get some sleep? I hate to be a party pooper here, but I’ve been up for a day and a half already. Or is it two days? Whatever. I’m wiped.”
“I think we all need some sleep,” Emily said.
“I have one last question for Bram,” Leigh said as she got to her feet. “At the risk of sounding weird—which is redundant around here—what are your intentions toward my sister?”
“Leigh!” Hayley protested.
“Hey, from the looks of things, this is a whole lot more intense than your relationship with Peter Vonnavitch.”
“Who’s Peter Vonnavitch?” Bram demanded.
“The guy she dumped a couple of months ago,” Leigh said. “So answer the question.”
<
br /> “Leigh, shut up,” Hayley said. “It isn’t his intentions you should worry about. At the risk of offending the Walkens, I can tell you that my intentions are highly immoral and are not being acted on right now only because we are guests in this house. Now, shut the heck up and go to bed.”
Leigh blinked and started to smile. She looked to Emily and George. “And here I thought all the excitement was over. Looks like this situation is just starting to heat up. Good night, everyone.”
George nodded. “It’s been a stressful day for all of us.”
“You’re right, dear.” Emily snatched up the plate of cookies. “Sleep well.”
The room emptied with unnerving speed.
“One thing you can say for Leigh, my sister knows how to clear a room,” Hayley said lightly.
Bram held her in place when she would have stood.
“Hayley, I knew this would happen. I warned you I wasn’t the marrying kind,” he told her gruffly.
“At least twice,” she agreed.
“But you are.”
“Did I ever once mention marriage?” she demanded.
“You aren’t the sort of woman to have affairs.”
“Really? And here I thought I was doing a pretty good job of it, considering you were my first seduction. I’ll improve with practice. Wait until you see the underwear I bought in town today.”
“Hayley—”
“Don’t, Bram. We are not having this conversation right now. Like George said, it’s been a long day. We’re both tired. My chest hurts, and you must be hurting everywhere. We can talk in the morning.” She pulled free and stood. “Just remember one thing. Loving someone isn’t a disease.”
“No, it isn’t. But some people aren’t very good at it.”
“Like everything else, love takes practice. Good night, Bram. I’ll be using the room across the hall tonight so you can get some rest.”
HAYLEY STOOD by the window of the dark room and wished she hadn’t made such a stupid declaration. What was she doing in here when she could have been snuggling with Bram? It was never a good idea to give a man too much time to think.
The Firstborn Page 22
