Killer Secrets

by Marilyn Pappano

  And now I was in more trouble than I’d ever imagined.

  —Excerpt, The Unlucky Ones by Jane Gama

  Cedar Creek was aptly named, flowing from the woods with cedar trees greedily grabbing every bit of space they could and into Cedar Creek Park, where its banks had been cleared on both sides with a man-made beach on the east.

  Mila went there to swim at least twice a week during the summer months, but the past week and a half had thrown her off schedule. This Saturday morning was the first chance she’d had both time and energy.

  “You know, we could go the municipal pool,” Gramma said as she secured a pair of hot-pink swim goggles over her eyes.

  “They don’t like swimmers at the city pool.”

  “If you want to swim, you have to be there when the doors open at six. After seven, the only real exercise anyone can get is kicking at the obnoxious kids when they get too close, and kicking doesn’t scare off the kids the way it used to.”

  “They haven’t been raised right.” Mila smiled faintly as she dropped her towel on the grass, then stripped off her T-shirt and shorts. Her black swimsuit was one piece—“modest enough for Granny,” Gramma had said drily—her water shoes were black, and her hair was pulled back in a tight braid. The only bit of color on her was a thin red stripe on her black goggles.

  Gramma, on the hand, was a sight that screamed Summer! Her swimsuit, also one piece and Granny modest, was lavender and yellow and lime and electric blue, and her water shoes were pink-and-orange plaid. For a sixty-five-year-old woman, she looked impressively good. She was fit. Despite her penchant for baking and good food, her weight had never varied by more than ten pounds throughout her life, and while she admitted she had some sag, she insisted she’d earned it.

  Men in her age range never seemed to mind a little bit of sag. Mila wished that she would start paying back the attention they gave her sometime.

  “Did you see Sam yesterday?”

  Together they walked into the water, tepid but relatively clear in the shallows, and they both turned to the right. Kids played around the beach, so they always swam upstream, enjoying the quiet.

  “No,” Mila said, feeling a twinge of disappointment. “He worked late. But Detective Little Bear called and asked me another few dozen questions.”

  “I like Detective Little Bear. If he was twenty years older...” Gramma grinned lasciviously. “He would still be too young for me, but I wouldn’t let that stop me. I wonder if he’s got a father or an uncle who’s single.”

  “Have you always stayed single because of me?”

  Gramma skirted around a group of preteen girls on floaties. “I had responsibilities—things I needed to do and things I wanted to do. Besides, your grandfather...he was a tough act to follow.” She smiled at Mila as they drew near again, the water now up to their waists. “Oh, you would have loved him, Mila, and he would have thought God had blessed him twice. Things would have been different if he’d still been alive, sweet girl. He never would have let Lindy take off with you the way she did. He saw things, your grandfather did, that other people didn’t.”

  They were past the kids now, at a good spot to start their swim along the broad stream, but Mila didn’t move. It was so rare they talked about her grandfather. Was it because she didn’t ask, or talking about him made Gramma sad, or Gramma thought talking about him made Mila sad?

  “What sort of things?”

  “Oh, nothing scary or weird. He was the best judge of people I ever knew. He understood that people could be flawed and still do their best. He knew you could love a person who was badly flawed, and that person could deserve it. But he also knew that loving someone didn’t mean a damn thing if he or she was bad, and that some people truly were bad.” Gramma’s gaze settled on the mottled clouds overhead. “He knew Lindy was truly bad. I made excuses for her, so many excuses. She was my little girl! But he always knew. He watched her. He worried over her.”

  Mila’s parents had zoomed past bad straight into evil. For a long time it had scared her that theirs were the genes that created her. They’d given her dark hair, eyes and skin; they’d helped determine her height and weight and, to some extent, her intelligence. Had they also passed on whatever mutant genes they’d possessed? Would she one day lose her sense of right and wrong? Lose her morals and compassion and empathy? Would she become crazy, mean, selfish and cruel?

  Her psychologist assured her she wouldn’t. He’d been assuring her of that for fifteen years. Nature versus nurture, he reminded her. Her parents had been horrible people. She’d understood that even when they’d been the only influence in her life. She’d known they were bad and she could be good. If she’d gotten that message while living with them, it had become so much easier to grasp after moving in with Gramma.

  “I would have loved Grampa.” Mila had seen pictures of the big handsome man whose life had been split so evenly between sheer joy with Gramma and grave sorrow over his daughter. And he would have loved her back.

  She still so very much missed every bit of love her parents had kept from her.

  They stood in the warm water, sun beating down on their shoulders, the bulk of the people playing in the water behind them. After a moment, Gramma said, “I’ll race you to the bend.” She pushed forward, gliding smoothly, more graceful in water than on land. Mila watched a moment before shifting to take a long look around. Kids splashing in the creek, parents sitting in lawn chairs or on quilts spread across the grass, other kids running wild around the playground. Smoke from one of the park’s grills floated on the air, and from a remote spot of the park, the strains of “Happy Birthday” drifted. It was the quintessential small-town American Saturday morning, and she was part of it, even if in the smallest of ways. All it needed for sheer perfection was Poppy.

  And Sam.

  “She’s leaving you behind,” an older gentleman, one of those who’d appreciatively watched Gramma disrobe earlier, called from the west bank, gesturing upstream where Gramma was just bits of colors.

  “But she always lets me catch up,” Mila replied. With a tentative wave, she slipped lower in the water and started after Gramma.

  Swimming equaled peace to Mila. The muted sights and sounds, the water that was refreshing even when it was bathtub warm, the fish that sometimes came right up to her to nibble. She was strong in the water. She could hold her breath forever, and her strokes propelled her forward with amazing ease. She was in her own blissful world, could become a fish that effortlessly swam this way and that, so lost that she was startled when she almost swam into her grandmother.

  Abruptly she surfaced. “You beat me again.”

  “Aw, you didn’t even try. You were taking a mental picture of the scene.”

  No one knew her as well as Gramma did. Physical photos didn’t matter much to Mila. Her family pictures started when she was eleven, and there wasn’t a lot of happiness in them. Memories were what mattered to her, there in her head where she could call them up whenever she wanted, accompanied by scents and feelings. Where she could treasure them.

  “If you beat me back, I’ll treat you to hamburgers and fries at Patriot Grill,” Gramma offered.

  “With onions and jalapeños in the fries?”

  “Is there any other way to eat them?” Gramma adjusted her goggles. “On the count of three... Three!”

  Mila swam a few yards behind her, then flipped onto her back to gaze up at the sky. She had never been to church in her original life; God didn’t escape her parents’ anger any more than anything else did. She’d never learned to pray, beyond the lone prayer Gramma had taught her at five.

  But she’d developed her own sort of prayer—gazes, gratitude and fears sent skyward. Life was good. It wasn’t perfect and never would be, but perfect would get boring in no time. Good, though...good was something to be proud of.

  So she’d discovered a dead body. Been present
at the discovery of a second one. Had her sanctuary violated. Been driven out of her house Thursday night—though she’d slept there again last night with Poppy’s weight comfortably pushing against her.

  She was alive. Free. Had her health. Had her gramma. Had met Sam. Had her job and her garden and her whole future ahead of her. Had endless possibilities that intrigued her.

  Most of them having to do with Sam.

  Life was so very good.

  A smile curving her lips, she rolled back to her stomach to finish the swim when something warm and rubbery bumped her arm. A snake was the first thought that came to her mind, and she jerked away, but it wasn’t a snake. Fingers enclosed in a glove curled clawlike around her wrist and dragged her beneath the surface of the creek.

  Mila’s involuntary response was to scream, but she cut it off with the first bit of water that dribbled into her mouth. The attacker’s free hand yanked her goggles from her head and let them go. The water stung Mila’s eyes, distorting what she saw in the dim, murky depths. There were hollowed-out logs resting on the bottom, tumbled together, with a warning flag attached on their top side so she knew exactly where they were. All she had to do was break away and shoot to the surface, and someone would be close enough to help her, close enough to scare this crazy person away.

  Just break away. If only everything was as easy as it sounded. Her assailant was dressed in black, not a wet suit, just snug-fitting black pants, shirt and gloves. His face was obscured by a dive mask with tinted lens. The image of him in Cedar Creek should have been comical, but his grip was so powerful that it felt as if the bones and tendons in her left wrist were being ground to powder, the pain increasing every minute.

  Mila’s lungs were burning. She’d had no opportunity to take a breath before he’d grabbed her, and she desperately needed one now. She used her free hand to attack his, at the same time kicking her feet, finding a spot on a downed tree to push off. Despite the man’s best efforts, her head broke the surface for an instant, long enough to appreciate the sweet fresh air, nowhere near long enough to yell for help. Instead, as he drew her relentlessly back under, she dragged in every particle of air she could.

  Kicking and punching underwater was impossible, not with enough force to do any good, so with her stinging eyes barely open, she looked for vulnerabilities. She found a thin gap between one long sleeve and a glove and dug her nails into the skin, scratching, digging, wishing her nails were long enough to do real damage. She twisted in a circle, trying to rotate her wrist away from him, even raised her foot and planted it on his arm to push against the slime-covered surface of the tree. She pulled herself closer and pried her fingers beneath the edge of his mask. He reacted too quickly for her to yank it off, but she had the satisfaction of seeing water bubble where she’d broken its seal.

  Her air situation was getting desperate, her breath threatening to explode, her lungs fiercely hungry. She felt blindly, unable to budge the mask a second time so she could gouge at his eyes. Her fingers brushed across his ear, skimmed over a bald head, then went back. Gripping the ear tightly in her fingers, she gave it a vicious twist. His bellow muffled by the mask, the man shoved her away, releasing her hand in the process.

  Mila didn’t wait to see what he did, where he went. Eyes squeezed tightly to ease the burning, she shot to the surface and emerged, coughing and choking, no more than twenty feet from Gramma. If she could make it to Gramma, she would be all right.

  But she didn’t make it that far. She heard a man, maybe the one she’d spoken to earlier, exclaim, “What the hell?” followed by an incoherent shout from Gramma. Splashes sounded and arms grabbed her, pulled her to the grassy shore. They dragged her out of the water, then someone pushed her to the ground; someone else wrapped a towel around from her. Gramma crouched in front of her, worry etched deep into her face.

  “Baby, what happened? Did you get a cramp? Did you get snagged on something? What happened to you?”

  All Mila could do was lift her left arm. Everything fell silent for a moment, then a man, definitely the man she’d talked to about Gramma earlier, spoke in a grim voice.

  “I’m calling the police.”

  * * *

  “How the hell did this happen with all these people around?” Sam demanded as he stalked across the parking lot and toward the creek bank.

  “The guy was underwater. She was swimming. He grabbed her, pulled her under and held her.” Daniel Harper matched his stride, not bothering to glance at his notes. “She and her grandmother were the only ones actually swimming. They were racing, but Milagro always let her win because she liked to take her time. When Jessica got down here, she stopped to talk with the geezer brigade, and that’s where she was when Milagro suddenly popped up. They said she looked half-drowned, could barely catch a breath. It took three or four of them to get her out. As soon as they saw her arm, they called us.”

  Sam’s heart was pounding as if he were half-drowned, too, like there wasn’t enough oxygen in the world to reach the places his nerves and muscles and organs needed it. Who the hell lurked under the water at the local swimming hole surrounded by kids and tried to drown someone in the middle of a busy Saturday? What kind of maniac was after Mila?

  He angled off the sidewalk, gave up all pretense of walking and broke into a run across the grass. Six or eight old men were huddled together with two figures in their middle: Mila and Jessica. Both women were pale and shivering, Mila looking unbearably young and forlorn, Jessica’s expression torn about equally between grief and rage.

  Paramedics were questioning Mila while one gingerly examined her wrist. Sam didn’t get in their way, but he stepped up right behind her, laid his hand on her shoulder. It did his heart good when she raised her uninjured hand and rested it over his. “Merry, Kerry, how about some good news?”

  The paramedics greeted him with solemn smiles. “We’ve narrowed her attacker down to Iron Fist or maybe Bone Crusher. Her wrist is gonna be sore as the devil, and she’ll have lovely bruises, but nothing appears broken.”

  Sam winced when he saw the swelling that doubled the size of Mila’s wrist, along with the discoloration that had already occurred. He was so damn angry that it vibrated through him. He felt helpless and impotent and wanted more than anything to pound the man who’d done this into the ground.

  No, not true. He wanted more than anything to wrap his arms around Mila and hold her until the shaking stopped, until her breath steadied and her fear faded, until she curled up against him and felt safe enough to fall asleep.

  He gazed around the geezers until he found their leader, Charles Brinkley. “Hey, Charles, can you fellows take Jessica here and get her a dry towel and something to drink? Maybe mix a couple of your thermoses together.” He knew Charles always carried coffee in his bottle, no matter how hot the weather. He also knew a couple of the others always carried a little mix-in of liquid courage in theirs. Jessica looked like a stiff drink would do her a world of good.

  “Be happy to, young Sam.” The old gentlemen were pleased to lead her some distance away, though at first she looked like she wanted to resist. It was only after catching Sam’s gaze that she went along.

  He eased to the ground next to Mila, keeping hold of her right hand, and adjusted the towel around her shoulders. There were a couple of marks across her face that made her look that much more vulnerable.

  Merry or Kerry—though not related, they’d been inseparable best friends for so long that he couldn’t keep their names straight—followed his gaze. “That’s where he yanked her goggles off.”

  “A kid found them about a hundred feet downstream and brought them over,” Daniel said. He sat down, too, choosing a grassy spot in front of them. “Do you feel like answering a few questions?”

  Mila nodded.

  “You said it was a man. Did you see his face?”

  “No. He wore a dive mask that I couldn’t see through.�
�� Anticipating his next question, she went on, her voice growing a little stronger. “I was looking for a way to hurt him. I thought maybe I could yank his hair, but he was bald, so I tweaked his ear instead. It made him let go.”

  “Did you see which way he went?”

  She apologetically shook her head. “I was out of air. I just surfaced, saw Gramma and tried to get to her.”

  “Can you make any guess about his size?”

  Another rueful shake. “The water was murky, and without the goggles, my eyes were burning. All I can say is he was dressed all in black—shirt, pants, gloves—he was bald, and he had a very strong grip.”

  Sam looked at the finger marks visible on her arm. As the swelling continued, the marks and colors would run together to make one ugly mass. Damn it, who was this bastard, and why was he terrorizing Mila?

  “Could you identify him if you saw him again?”

  She was very still for a long time before shaking her head. “No,” she whispered. “I wasn’t thinking about being a witness. I just wanted to survive.”

  The statement was so soft, so bald, that everyone around her went still. After a moment, Daniel broke the silence when he closed his notebook and turned his attention to Sam. “You should probably take her to the emergency room. Merry and Kerry offered, but she declined.”

  “I’m okay.” Mila started to move her hand, winced and stopped. “It’s not broken.”

  “You have X-ray vision now?” Sam forced a teasing tone into his voice, though it just about broke his face to smile.

  It was worth the look she gave him, though. Relief. Gratitude. Like she would tease, too, if she had it in her.

  “It can’t hurt to get it X-rayed,” one of the paramedics said.

  “Of course it can,” the other disagreed. “They’ll try to put it in all kinds of unnatural positions for the views. But afterward, they’ll give you drugs for the pain—and there will be pain.”