The Beautiful Daughters

by Nicole Baart

  “We’ll get him,” Officer McNeil told her. “You’ve given us more than enough information to nail this guy.”

  She had. Full name, address, license plate, places he frequented. Agency 21. Where he banked and worked out and bought coffee every morning. Physical description, down to the small birthmark on his upper arm. Harper had also given them her stage name, though it was bitter on her tongue and she nearly gagged. Worst of all, she had no doubt that a team of people would soon be scouring the internet for evidence. For pictures of her. Did they have a task force for this sort of thing? A Special Victims Unit? Would the FBI get involved? Harper had no idea, and she didn’t much care.

  “Is Will okay?” she asked, for now that she had done her part, he was the only thing she cared about.

  Officer McNeil exchanged a look with Jenna. “Last I heard he was still in surgery.”

  “But is it serious?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  “Your friends are in the waiting room,” Jenna said. “Would you like to see them?”

  Harper didn’t know how to respond. Could she face Adri and Jackson? She felt like even Caleb, a relative stranger, was a better friend to Will than she had proved to be. But she had no choice. She nodded.

  “I’ll send them in,” Officer McNeil said. “And I’ll let Gayle know that you’re ready to see a doctor.”

  The two officers started to leave, but at the last second Officer McNeil turned and said, “I’m going to need you to stick around for a while, okay? We’ll put out an APB on Sawyer, but you’re going to have to give a full statement, testify if this thing goes to trial. We can contact you at the Vogt farm?”

  Harper didn’t know if she’d be welcome there anymore. She shrugged. “I don’t know. But I promise I won’t go anywhere without telling you first.”

  “Thanks.”

  The door fell shut behind the men, but Jenna hovered near Harper’s knees for a moment longer. “I’m sorry,” she eventually said, searching Harper’s eyes. “I’m so very sorry.”

  Harper knew how a heart could hurt for another person, could hold all the regret in the world on behalf of someone who had been wounded.

  But Harper didn’t deserve Jenna’s sympathy.

  She had told them most of the story. But not all of it. She hadn’t included the one in her tawdry life story that would have changed Officer McNeil’s compassion to revulsion. That would have made Jenna consider her anything but a victim.

  Harper hadn’t told them about David.

  Adri didn’t come. Instead, Gayle bustled in with another, younger nurse, and a doctor who attended to Harper’s injuries with dispassionate calm. It turned Harper’s stomach to hear him discuss her ear and the perforations that had torn right through the cartilage in places. It hadn’t felt quite so violent at the time, but hearing him discuss it now was downright grisly. And she almost fainted when he painstakingly removed the half dozen earrings that ringed the uppermost curve of her ruined ear. But he assured her he would use small stitches, try to keep the scarring minimal, and handed her a printed referral sheet for a reconstructive plastic surgery center before he took his leave. Not that she ever intended to use it.

  The doctor had determined that Harper didn’t need X-rays for her jaw, and after washing her gravel-scraped cheek, the nurses smoothed it with salve and called her good to go. Only the IV remained, but Gayle removed it neatly and efficiently, lecturing Harper about finishing the oral antibiotics she had been prescribed and watching closely for signs of infection.

  “Cross my heart,” Harper assured her, but she felt completely anesthetized. Well past the point of listening. Or caring. It had been hours, and she had yet to hear a single word about Will.

  When Harper emerged from the trauma room, it was almost six o’clock in the morning. She hadn’t slept for a single second throughout the entire torment of the night, but she was throbbing with restlessness.

  The waiting room was almost empty, but Caleb sat hunched alone in a chair beside the water cooler. He was wearing an ill-fitting sweatshirt bearing the hospital logo; the too-tight sleeves reached only halfway down his forearms. At first Harper thought he was asleep, but as she hovered uncertain in the doorway, Adri’s would-be boyfriend looked up.

  “Hey,” Caleb said. It was a noncommittal greeting, casual. She couldn’t tell if he was being purposefully short with her or if he was just tired.

  “How is he?” Harper asked, not moving from where she stood. Not daring to.

  “He’s going to be okay.”

  It was such a benign statement, but all the air whooshed out of Harper’s lungs at the news.

  Caleb seemed to notice how fragile Harper was, and he put his hands on his knees and stood up. Walked over to where she was barely clinging to composure and gave her elbow a fortifying squeeze. “Gunshot wound to the outer left shoulder. Missed the brachial artery and the joint. Long story short, humerus fracture, nerve damage, muscle damage, and the tissue surrounding the exit wound is the consistency of soup, but our boy is going to live.”

  Harper buckled. Caleb caught her by the arm before she could hit the floor, and steered her over to one of the waiting room seats. It was smooth, blue plastic. Cold and uncomfortable.

  Caleb sat down beside her, and touched her knee briefly, kindly. Harper was still reeling from his words, “Our boy is going to live.” It was all she cared about. Almost.

  “It could have been a lot worse, Harper.” Caleb sounded grim.

  “Will his arm be okay?” she whispered, staring at the wall unseeing.

  Harper felt Caleb shrug rather than saw him do it. “It’ll never be the same, that’s for sure. TV has convinced the world that there is such a thing as a flesh wound, but that’s just not true. A gunshot is a major traumatic event, no matter where the injury occurs. Of course there is blood loss and shock, the risk of sepsis due to the junk brought in with the cavitation wave . . .” Caleb trailed off and gave Harper a sidelong glance. “Sorry. Nurse talk.”

  “No,” she shook her head. “I want to hear it all.”

  Caleb nodded. “He’s out of surgery, for what it’s worth. And when he woke up from the anesthesia, he asked about you.”

  “I’m fine,” she said.

  Caleb gave her a quick once-over. Seemed to assess the thick bandages on her ear, her scratched cheek and undoubtedly bruised jaw. Her palms were scratched, her jeans torn. Harper hadn’t seen herself in a mirror, but she assumed she looked terrible. For a moment, Caleb seemed like he wanted to ask her how she was, maybe what had happened, but he refrained. He said, “We told Will exactly that. That you’d be just fine.”

  Harper looked around. There was no we, only Caleb, alone in the waiting room. And now her. The outsiders.

  Caleb guessed her question before she asked it. “Sam and Adri are with Will. And Jackson is getting some things for him from Will’s house. After asking about you, Will asked for his toothbrush.”

  Harper grinned in spite of herself, then buried her face in her hands because she was afraid that she’d laugh or scream or throw up all over Caleb. She had forgotten how vain Will was about his perfect teeth. How they had to be, at all times, pristinely clean. It made her unaccountably happy to think of him bending over the sink, scrubbing his teeth.

  Sighing, Harper turned to Caleb. “May I . . . Do you think I could see him?”

  But Caleb wasn’t looking at her anymore. His attention was fixed on the entrance to the waiting room, at the place where Adri stood rumpled and gorgeous and vengeful. And, though she was a good six inches shorter than Harper, looking for all the world like a diminutive, dark-eyed Amazon.

  28

  ADRIENNE

  Caleb excused himself quietly, but as he walked past Adri he ran his fingertips along her cheek. She closed her eyes for just a second, tolerating his touch. No, she savored it, turning he
r face toward him in the moment before he broke contact. She kissed the palm of his hand.

  Everything had changed. And whether or not she could forgive herself for all that had happened, Adri needed Caleb now. She couldn’t deny the depth of her longing for him. No matter what happened, Adri knew that a part of her would love Caleb forever. He had helped her save Will’s life.

  “Thank you,” she whispered.

  Caleb shook his head a little, but his gaze told Adri everything she needed to know. Later, he said silently. And then his eyes flicked toward Harper. She was curled up in one of the plastic waiting room chairs, as limp as a rag doll and just as worn and patched. One side of her head was swaddled in thick, white bandages, and the other bore the purpling stain of a wicked bruise.

  Adri crumbled a little as she studied Harper. She was furious, so insanely angry that someone would dare to shoot her brother, so she could hardly see straight. Some of that anger was directed at Harper—of course, her former best friend was wrapped up in all of this. She would have to bear some of the blame. But seeing Harper so fragile, as small and scared as an abandoned child, Adri felt her fury leaching away.

  Caleb caught her hand and gave it a fortifying squeeze. Then he disappeared behind her down the long hallway. Adri and Harper were alone.

  “I’m sorry,” Harper croaked before Adri could think of a single thing to say.

  “You should be.” There was a quiver in Adri’s voice, but she got it under control. She hadn’t meant to say that. To sound so judgmental and harsh. But she was sick of lies and half-truths; she could taste bile on her tongue. Adri wanted to vilify Harper, but she couldn’t. She still loved her too much. And yet, she wouldn’t stand for anything less than the truth. Not anymore. “I want to know what happened out there, Harper. I want to know everything.”

  Harper nodded. “Okay.”

  “And I mean everything. You’ve been hiding something since the day you showed up at Piperhall, and though I have done my level best to be your friend, to be there for you no matter what, you have lied to me again and again.”

  Harper didn’t deny it. She didn’t say anything at all.

  “I need a change of clothes.” Adri held out her arms to show Harper that her shirt was stiff with dried blood. Her hair, too, though she had pulled it back in a sticky ponytail. The scent of her brother’s blood in her hair had almost sent her to her knees in the hospital bathroom. A part of Adri couldn’t shake the feeling that this was all a nightmare and she’d wake up feverish and sweaty in her little bungalow, Caleb knocking on her bedroom door to make sure she was okay. But she couldn’t bury her head in the sand anymore. She couldn’t hide.

  “You’re coming with me, Harper.” Adri said. “You’re not leaving my sight until I know exactly what is going on, and how Will got tangled up in it.”

  “Okay.” Harper nodded, looking contrite.

  “Wait. Before we go . . .” Adri held up her hand, stopping Harper before she could edge her way out of the waiting room. “I need to know: are we safe?”

  It was a loaded question, and Adri wasn’t sure that Harper would know the answer.

  “He’s on the run,” Harper finally said, and Adri could tell that it was the truth as far as Harper understood it. “I saw his face after . . .” She stalled. Tried again. “He’s afraid. I don’t think he meant to shoot Will.”

  Adri’s heart clenched, but she believed that at least they wouldn’t be facing a deranged gunman in the parking lot. She spun on her heel and led Harper out of the hospital without another word.

  The sky was milk and honey, pale with the promise of a brilliant sunrise. It was changing by the second, honey deepening to butter and then to the warm, rich tones of a ripe pumpkin. The prelude to a spectacular autumn day. Adri would have turned her face to the hint of sunshine, the softening horizon line, but her chest was too tight to take in such beauty.

  Sam’s old truck was parked crooked between two spaces near the front of the visitor lot, but no one had bothered to give him a ticket. Whoever monitored such things was probably well versed in the middle-of-the-night, emergency parking job, in the way that people in crisis might leave lights on or doors open or engines running. Sam had barely managed to park his car, but the lights were off and Adri held the keys. No matter that the doors were unlocked and the spare tucked in a magnetic holder beneath the driver’s side wheel well. Sam had thrust the ring of keys into her hands in the emergency room hours ago. He had been pacing frantically, one fist pressed to his mouth and his eyes wild with fear and worry. It hurt Adri to see her characteristically calm, immovable father anchorless, and when the jangle of the keys at his waist seemed to drive him momentarily insane, she happily accepted them.

  The girls didn’t speak all the way back to Blackhawk, but when Adri pulled down the road toward Piperhall instead of turning in the direction of Maple Acres, Harper opened her mouth to ask why. “Do you really want to go back here?” She sounded fearful.

  “It’s closer than the farm,” Adri said. “Will is sleeping, but I want to be there when he wakes up.”

  The estate was only four miles closer, but Adri wanted to bring Harper to Piperhall. She hoped the harsh reality of all that had happened there would work as a catalyst. Besides, they each had a change of clothes and toiletries at the estate, and she did want to be back before Will woke up.

  But when they turned off the main road and down the gravel drive, it became obvious that they might not make it to the mansion at all. Three police cruisers were parked along the lane, and a handful of officers milled around snapping pictures, taking notes, and talking into cell phones.

  Adri shook her head to clear it. “I forgot that they’d be here. Piperhall is a crime scene, isn’t it?”

  One of the policemen was already breaking away from the group, heading toward Sam’s truck. It was Officer McNeil. Adri had met him outside the emergency room when Will was in surgery.

  “Good morning,” he said when Adri rolled down her window. “Sorry about this. We’re almost done here.”

  Adri pressed her lips together for a second and nodded once. “Do whatever you need to do. We’ll help in any way we can.”

  “You already have,” he said kindly. “We’ve got all your statements, and Ms. Penny here has set us up well to snag this guy before he goes underground. We’ll get him, Ms. Vogt. I trust your brother is doing okay?”

  “Sleeping,” Adri said. “The surgeon had to stabilize the arm with external fixation because it was a comminuted fracture and that was the only way to keep all the fragments secure . . .” She sighed a little, realizing that she was talking way over their heads. “What I mean to say is, Will’s going to be livid when he wakes up and discovers that he has metal rods sticking out of his arm.”

  “We like livid.” Officer McNeil smiled. “Livid is good. He can be as mad as he wants to be. It’ll fuel his recovery.”

  “I hope so.”

  “You’re remembering that we’ll need to speak with him as soon as he wakes up?”

  “Of course.” Adri pointed through the windshield at the police cars. “Are you finding anything?”

  “Everything we expected to find. It’s not a murder scene,” Officer McNeil said, gravely, gratefully, “so it doesn’t require quite the same vigilance. But I’m still going to have you do a little off-roading. I take it you’re headed to the house?”

  “I’d like to clean up,” Adri said, tugging the blood-stiffened collar of her shirt.

  “Of course. I’ll show you where you can drive.”

  Officer McNeil walked in front of the truck, leading the way into the shallow ditch beside the road and then indicating that they should take it all the way to the mansion. Adri drove slowly past the police cruisers and the yellow tape, and though she tried to keep her eyes trained in front of her, she couldn’t stop herself from searching the gravel for evidence of all that ha
d happened there. Deep gouges in the dust, a wide swath of tire tracks from a hasty departure, a dark pool of blood where Will had fallen. Or was she just imagining it all? There were red tags scattered across the ground, sprinkled in a haphazard pattern that indicated there was much to read in the clues left behind.

  Rather than going all the way around the circular drive and parking beside Betty and Caleb’s borrowed car, Adri pulled up beside the stables and cut the engine. She breathed heavily for a few seconds, her hands still clutched tight to the steering wheel, and then swiveled to face Harper.

  “I’m ready,” she said without preamble. She didn’t dare to say anything more. Didn’t trust herself to. Adri knew that if she opened her mouth, she’d be the one apologizing, dragging Harper into the past and forcing her to relive every mistake they had made. But this wasn’t about that. It was about Will. And as much as Adri ached to come clean about David and everything that happened five years ago, before she could focus on the sins she had to atone for, she needed to know who shot Will. And why.

  Apparently Harper was just as ready to confess as Adri was. She started to talk. About the guilt she felt after David’s death and all the ways she tried to punish herself. Drugs, the bite of a razor, men who treated her as if she was disposable. It sounded like a bad after-school special to Adri, but this wasn’t fiction. It was Harper. Her Harper. And Adri didn’t have to wonder if her former best friend was spinning a story. The thin white lines on her wrists and the hollow look in her eyes were evidence enough.

  And then, Sawyer Donovan.

  Adri found that she had tears rolling down her cheeks when one slipped off the edge of her jaw and dropped on her folded hands. She was weeping without making a sound, and though she wished Harper would reach out and wipe all those tears away, fold Adri in a hug that would erase everything that had come between them, Harper simply looked away. Kept going.