by Kay Hooper
Walker hadn’t had a moment alone with her since he’d got here; though he didn’t give a damn about having an audience, and wanted to hold her in his arms so badly he ached, the first flickering glance she had sent him warned him to keep his distance. He had the feeling that Amanda had withdrawn from them all, that she was holding herself aloof out of necessity.
“You should have an early night, honey,” Jesse said worriedly.
She looked at him for a moment and then smiled. “I don’t think I want to go to sleep just yet. Not until I can close my eyes without seeing … that skull. Besides, when the big storm hits tonight, I’d just as soon be awake.”
“I’ll stay and keep you company,” Walker said immediately.
“I was hoping you would.” She sent him another brief glance, this one holding something other than warning, and then she looked at Jesse, brows slightly lifted. “it’s all right with you if Walker stays—isn’t it?”
The sound of the phone in his study ringing prevented Jesse from answering right away. He looked at Maggie, who slipped out to take the call, then Jesse gave Amanda a rather rueful smile.
“Of course it’s all right.” Then, to everyone’s surprise, he looked at Ben and added calmly, “You too, Ben. It’s up to Kate to invite you, of course, but I’ve no objection.”
Ben, who was leaning on the back of the sofa behind Kate, said merely, “Thanks.”
A slightly wry expression passed over Kate’s beautiful features, and Walker understood it quite well. Jesse had at least noticed—and apparently accepted— his daughter’s lover, but with entirely characteristic arrogance, he had voiced his acceptance to Ben rather than Kate.
Maggie came back into the parlor. “Amanda, it’s for you; Helen wants to talk to you.”
“Probably checking up on me,” Amanda murmured as she got to her feet. “I keep telling everybody —I’m fine.”
“Say it a few more times, cousin,” Reece murmured, “and we might start to believe you.”
Amanda smiled at him, then went out of the parlor and down the hall to Jesse’s study. She went over to the desk, vaguely conscious of the faint scent of smoke in the room, but didn’t think too much about it as she picked up the receiver.
“Helen?”
“Amanda, are you alone?” the doctor demanded without preamble.
“Right at this minute?” Amanda looked around. “Yes. I’m in Jesse’s study. Why?”
“Listen. I just had a late delivery from the lab. The report on all the specimens from the party.”
As she had been all evening, Amanda was peculiarly detached. “And?”
“The specimens from everyone else who got sick showed clear and definite baneberry poisoning. No question. But your stomach contents and blood analysis showed monkshood as well as baneberry. A very high concentration of monkshood. There’s no way it could have been accidental. Someone tried to kill you, Amanda.”
Someone tried to kill you, Amanda.
The words seemed to echo in her mind, and yet she didn’t feel much of anything about them. She felt distant from everything, an observer only mildly interested in events.
“Amanda?”
“I heard you, Helen.”
“Amanda, I have to report this to J.T. I don’t have a choice, do you understand?”
“Yes. But can you wait until tomorrow?”
“Why? What difference will one night make?”
“Maybe … a big difference.” Amanda paused for a moment, listening to thunder rumble distantly. “Helen … I think I can identify that skeleton. But I need some time.”
“Amanda—”
“Please don’t ask any questions, not now. There’s something I have to do, but I’ll be all right. Walker’s staying with me.”
Obviously frustrated, Helen Chantry said, “I don’t like any of this. Someone in that house tried to kill you, Amanda! And now you say you can identify the skeleton of a man dead and buried for years—”
“I don’t think one has anything to do with the other.” Amanda frowned to herself as she thought about it. “No, surely not. I was a threat to somebody because I might have inherited Jesse’s estate, and that was why the poison. But the skeleton … that’s something else. And everyone is gone now, so I’m the only one who could possibly care about what happened. Unless he had a family, of course.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Never mind, Helen. Just please wait until tomorrow to call the sheriff. He wouldn’t come out here again tonight anyway, would he?”
“No. No, I suppose not. But—”
“Then there’s no problem. And I’ll be fine, really.”
There was a long silence, but finally the doctor sighed. “All right. It’s against my better judgment, but all right. Just be careful, will you please?”
“I will. Good night, Helen.”
“Good night.”
Amanda cradled the receiver, and stood there for a moment gazing at nothing. But then her eyes focused, and she found herself looking at a big cut-glass ashtray on Jesse’s desk. It was piled high with a fine white ash, and that was odd because Jesse didn’t smoke.
Paper ash, Amanda realized. She reached out and stirred the ashes with one finger, and near the bottom she discovered the hard corner of an envelope. It was only scorched, and part of the return address was visible. Amanda recognized the address. It belonged to the private laboratory where her blood sample had been sent for the DNA test.
Clearly, Helen was not the only one who had received a delivery today.
“Results … inconclusive,” Amanda heard herself murmur. Because surely if the results had been conclusive, Jesse would have immediately and happily shared them with the family. “Pints of Daulton blood … and still no proof.” She heard herself make another sound, this one the ghost of a laugh.
She buried the envelope’s corner beneath the ash once again, then left Jesse’s study and went back to the parlor.
“Hi,” Walker said. He was the only one in the room.
“Where is everyone?”
“Scattered. Jesse decided he needed an early night, Reece wanted to catch a ballgame on television, and Maggie said she had things to do in her room. Kate and Ben didn’t explain where they were going, and I was too tactful to ask.”
“And Sully?”
“Haven’t seen him.” Walker took two steps and pulled her into his arms. He held her tightly, and when she lifted her head from his chest, he kissed her.
“I thought you were going to do that in front of Jesse,” she murmured when she could.
“I nearly did. Until you glared at me.”
“I didn’t glare.”
“You didn’t smile either.”
She smiled now, looking up at him. “Sorry. Can my rough day be my excuse?”
He kissed her again, and in answer said, “You didn’t tell Jesse and the others that it was Sully who scared you as much as finding that skeleton.”
“I didn’t tell you that,” she said.
“No. Sully did.” Walker related Sully’s explanation of his presence in the woods, adding, “He said he didn’t mean to scare you, but that he obviously did.”
Amanda pulled away gently and went to sit on the arm of a chair. Thunder rumbled again, closer now, and she listened until it faded away. “I was just … startled.”
“Amanda, what aren’t you telling me?”
She didn’t answer for a moment, and when she did her voice was tentative. “Something happened today when I looked down and saw that skull. I had another flash of memory, this one … horrible. Those sounds again. And—blood. Walker, I think I’m ready to remember what happened that last night here. But I need to … trigger the memory. Will you help me?”
“Of course I’ll help you.” His answer was immediate and calm. “What’s the plan?”
Amanda drew a breath and, for the first time tonight, felt uneasiness stir inside her. “I have to go down to the stables.”
“Tonight?”
She nodded. “it’s … Tonight is like that night. It’s hot, and it’s been raining but it isn’t now—and there’s a bad storm on the way.”
He frowned. “You think the similarities will be enough to trigger your memory?”
“I don’t know, but I have to try.”
Walker’s frown remained. “Helen told you not to force it, remember?”
“I know.” But I’m out of time.
“All right. Then let’s give it a try.”
It was obvious, she thought, that Walker didn’t like the idea very much. But it was also clear he would go along with it because it was something she needed to do. She started to tell him about Helen’s report of the poisoning, but decided that tomorrow would be soon enough for that. The most important thing was for her to remember what she needed to.
Amanda wanted to retrace the steps she remembered on that night, so they went out the front door instead of going through the house to the garden. They paused on the porch, and a hot breeze warned that the storm was on its way.
It took several moments for their eyes to adjust to the darkness. Walker took Amanda’s hand in his, and looked down at her in quick concern. “Your hand’s like ice.”
“Is it?” She felt cold, and there was a queasy sensation in the pit of her stomach. She could smell the storm, hot and damp, and a tremor shook her. “Amanda, maybe this isn’t such a good idea—” “No, I have to go down there. I have to try to remember.”
“All right. But we need to go now. When this storm gets here, all hell will break loose.”
He let her set the pace and pick the way, merely walking beside her as they crossed the yard and passed under the eastern magnolia tree. Then they were in the field, with the stables dark hulks in the distance. A drainage ditch gave Amanda pause for a moment, and he felt her hand quiver a bit as she stood looking at the fast-moving muddy water, but she accepted his help to half jump across the mini-river, and they went on.
“Which barn?” he asked quietly as they neared them.
“Two.” Her voice was strained. “It was number two.”
“Victor’s apartment is—was—above barn two,” Walker noted.
“It wasn’t then. It was— Somebody else lived up there then.” She stopped dead suddenly.
The wind had shifted. Walker could smell the horses now. Thunder rumbled, ever closer, and lightning abruptly split the night sky with threads of white-hot energy. In the momentary brightness, he saw her face clearly, and something clenched inside his chest painfully.
“Sweetheart,” he said, “let’s go back. You don’t have to do this—”
“There was a light.” She began moving toward barn two with jerky steps. “It was … There was a light inside.”
The barns were equipped with sliding doors at either end to close off the wide halls, though these doors were kept open in the summer; as they reached barn two, it was possible to see, dimly, the opening at the opposite end of the hall, more than three hundred feet away.
“Where was the light?” Walker asked, keeping his voice quiet, trying not to disturb the fragile wisp of memory she seemed to be following.
“It was … across from the tack room. Where the hay was stacked. I couldn’t … I couldn’t see anything at first. Just the hay.”
They were inside the barn hall now, still yards away from the area across from the tack room. Walker hesitated, but the lawyer part of him was remorseless in its logic, insisting that a scene be re-created as closely as possible to the original if it was to have any real meaning.
“Amanda, stand still. Close your eyes.”
“But why?” Her voice was childlike.
“Please, do as I ask. You trust me, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Then do it. Stand still, close your eyes, and don’t open them until I tell you to.”
“All right.” But when he let go of her hand, thin panic soared in her voice. “Walker?”
“it’s all right, sweetheart. I’m still here. Just stand still and wait for me.”
Familiar enough with the barns to find his way in the near blackness, Walker went quickly to the area across from the tack room. Hay was still kept stacked in bales here, and feed was kept in barrels, and there were shovels, pitchforks, and rakes propped in a corner. It was, more than anything, a kind of maintenance area, boxed in by bales of hay stacked higher than a man’s head. It was about twenty feet wide, and more than twenty feet deep.
Walker knew that while the light switches at the ends of the hall activated a row of shaded bulbs, there were also switches in the tack room and the maintenance area that activated single light fixtures. It didn’t take him long to find the one for the maintenance area —and he had to admit that the light was welcome. Quickly, he went back to Amanda.
There were faint snuffling noises and snorts as some of the stabled horses reacted to their presence, but the main sounds in the barn were those from outside. The wind was blowing gustily, tossing the damp smell of rain into the barn hall, and thunder was rolling heavily down from the mountains.
“Amanda?” He took her tense hand in his and squeezed it reassuringly.
She let out a shuddering sigh. “You—you were gone a long time.”
“I’m sorry, sweetheart, but there was something I had to do. Keep your eyes closed. Now—you came into the hall, right?”
“Yes. I went along the wall toward the hay.” She suited her actions to her words, putting out her free hand to feel the wall because her eyes were closed. Still several feet from the hay area, she stopped.
“Is this where you saw something?” Walker asked.
“There was … I heard noises. Awful noises.”
“How did they sound, Amanda? What did they make you think of?”
She shuddered. “Something … hurt. Something being hurt. And … and … and hit. Heavy, wet sounds. And … and the smell. Horses and … and blood.”
Walker hesitated, wishing he could stop this now, before Amanda saw whatever had so terrified her that it had wiped out the first nine years of her life. But he couldn’t.
“Open your eyes, Amanda. Tell me what you see.”
From their position, all that was visible was the glow of the light spilling over yellow hay, and it seemed that was all she saw at first.
“The light. And somebody … I think there’s somebody …” She walked forward slowly, her body rigid, one hand still gliding along the wall beside her.
They had to walk past a stack of hay bales before it was possible to see into the area. To see the light fixture hanging down and illuminating the roughly twenty-by-twenty-foot “room” made of hay. To see tools propped up in a corner, and an overturned wheelbarrow, and loops of baling twine hung on a peg.
Amanda let out a little moan, obviously seeing what she had seen twenty years ago, and fell to her knees as though all her strength had rushed away. “No. Oh … no…”
Walker knelt beside her, still holding a hand that felt as cold and rigid as ice. She was sucking in gasping breaths and shuddering uncontrollably, and he wasn’t sure she would be able to speak at all. But he had to ask her to.
“What is it, Amanda? What’s happening?”
“he’s all bloody,” she whispered, staring unblinkingly into an empty circle of light. “His eyes are wide open … looking at me … seeing me … and he’s … all bloody …”
“Who, Amanda? Who do you see?”
“Matt. He’s … oh, nooo…” There was horror in her voice, and agony. “Stop … don’t hit him anymore … please, Daddy, don’t hit him anymore …”
Walker felt a shock of his own, thoughts tumbling through his mind almost too fast to consider. Was she remembering the night Christine had taken her away from Glory? And if she was …
“Amanda.” Walker held her shoulders and pulled her around to face him. “Amanda. Look at me.”
At first her eyes were blind, but slowly they cleared, and she blinked at him. “Walker?”
&n
bsp; “Do you remember what you saw, sweetheart?” he asked softly.
“I saw … Daddy—”
“Amanda, are you sure what you’re remembering happened the night Christine took you away from here?”
She nodded jerkily, tears trickling down her white face. “She—must have seen too, because when I backed away, she was behind me. She took my hand and … and we ran.”
“It was late that night?”
“After—after midnight. I saw the clock when I left the house.”
Walker lifted his hands to cup her face. “Sweetheart, listen to me. It wasn’t Brian. You didn’t see Brian beating another man that night.”
“It was him. I saw—”
“Whatever you saw, it couldn’t have been Brian. Because he was at King High that night.”
The rain just sort of gushed out of the sky, drenching Leslie before she could even think about taking shelter. Cursing under her breath, she wiped her face with one hand and tightened the fingers of her other hand around the grip of the gun.
Dammit, there’s no place to hide in there!
Up the exterior stairs, that’s where she needed to go. And then into Victor’s apartment, and take the interior stairs down into the barn hall. That was her only chance to get close to the people inside without alerting them to her presence. The thunder was so loud, she wasn’t afraid of making noise, but with lightning flashing like a strobe out here, there was no way she could creep inside the barn hall without being seen.
She backed cautiously away from the hall opening, planning to go around the corner to the exterior staircase.
He grabbed her just around the corner.
Leslie managed to bite back a cry of pain when he wrenched the gun from her hand, and she didn’t struggle when Sully caught her other arm in a grip of iron and hauled her against his powerful body.
“What the hell are you doing?” he bit out.
Thank God for the thunder. She looked up into his harshly handsome face, streaming with water and lit intermittently by flashes of lightning, and she whispered fiercely, “you’re breaking my arm, you big lug!”
“I’ll break your neck if you don’t tell me—”
“Shhhh! Do you want them to hear us?”
