Shadow Lover

by Anne Stuart

  “Of course you will,” George said heartily. “We wouldn’t suggest anything else.”

  “Anything else,” Patsy echoed, her eyes bright. With unshed tears for her sister, or with something else, Carolyn couldn’t be sure.

  She hadn’t driven her car in days, even weeks. Not since long before Alex had shown up. It sat in a corner of the huge garage that had been built to look like a carriage house, small and unprepossessing among all the more expensive cars belonging to the extended family of MacDowells. Except, of course, for Alex’s rusty black Jeep.

  She’d lost the feel for her car, she decided, as she started down the long, narrow driveway toward the tiny village of Stanton. The brakes felt spongy beneath her foot, the accelerator sluggish, even the steering seemed unusually recalcitrant. She wasn’t planning on staying with the MacDowells for a moment longer than she had to—just through whatever memorial service they planned for Sally, and then she’d be out of there. But she’d better take the car in for a once-over before she embarked on any kind of long drive.

  The car was picking up speed, hurtling down the narrow, hilly drive with dangerous enthusiasm. She tapped the brakes, but the car barely responded, gathering speed as she neared the sharp corner that led down the last stretch of driveway to the main road.

  She stomped hard, only to have the pedal go straight to the floor. She tried to shift down, but the gearshift wouldn’t move, and the speedometer was moving higher and higher.

  She didn’t stop to think. Unfastening her seat belt, she opened the door and rolled out, landing in a clump of dirt as her car continued on without her. She lay in the rubble, trying to catch her breath, barely conscious of the great crashing, rending noise of her car as it crashed into something up ahead.

  She struggled to sit up. Her hands were cut and bleeding from her fall, her ankle was twisted, and her tiny, beloved car was gone.

  She was shaking, past tears. She struggled to her feet, barely able to put her weight on her left ankle. The house was more than a mile away—it wasn’t much further to the main road, where presumably she could hitch a ride. She could just disappear, go away and never be seen again. Turn her back on the small trust fund Sally had set up for her, turn her back on the family who had never been hers.

  Turn her back on Alexander MacDowell.

  Except that her purse was back at the house, with all her identification, credit cards, and cash. The idea of disappearing without a trace was hypnotic, but the reality of it was far too difficult. Maybe a seventeen-year-old rebel could do it, but not a sensible, thirty-one-year-old woman.

  She was halfway back to the house when she heard the car coming up the road. She knew who it was immediately—that noisy rumble was unlike any of the MacDowells’ well-tuned luxury cars. Even if she hadn’t recognized the sound of the Jeep, she knew full well who would bother to come after her.

  Maybe the man who had sabotaged her car in the first place? The man who had shot at her in the woods, the man who was determined to get rid of her.

  But now that Sally was dead, why would any of this matter? She stood her ground, watching as he turned the corner, wondering whether he’d plow into her while she stood waiting.

  The Jeep ground to a halt inches away from her, and he slammed open the door, looming up over her like the wrath of God. She could pride herself on the fact that she met his onslaught calmly. She didn’t even flinch.

  “Are you trying to get yourself killed?” he demanded, grabbing her arm roughly and dragging her out of the road.

  “It wasn’t my idea,” she muttered, not bothering to struggle.

  “Where’s your car?”

  “Crashed somewhere on the road ahead. My brakes failed so I jumped out.” Her voice didn’t even shake.

  He halted, staring down at her. There was no reading anything in his expression apart from complete fury. “Your brakes failed?” he echoed. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “One of two things. Either I don’t have proper maintenance done on my car, or someone is trying to kill me. I vote for the latter. And I vote for you.”

  He looked at her in utter astonishment. “You think I’m trying to kill you? Why?”

  “You were out yesterday morning when someone shot at me. As far as I know everyone else but Patsy was still asleep.”

  “When did someone shoot at you? I don’t remember you saying a word about it!”

  “I didn’t think anyone would believe me.”

  “So you thought you’d just wait around till someone tried it again. Very wise. And what makes you think I’m the one who’d most like to kill you? Though right now I wouldn’t come up with much of an argument. I’d like to strangle you.”

  “You have the most to lose,” she said with icy certainty.

  “Why? What do I have to lose?”

  She opened her mouth to answer, then stopped, disconcerted. “Sally—” she began.

  “Sally’s dead. And I don’t give a shit about any inheritance—I’m planning on getting out of here before someone decides to use me for target practice as well. I don’t have any reason to want you dead, apart from the fact that you do your best to annoy me. And I’ve given up murdering people who annoy me in my old age.”

  “Then who tampered with my brakes?”

  He knew. She could tell by the sudden, odd expression in his face that he had a very good idea exactly who might have tried to kill her.

  “Get in the car,” he said abruptly.

  “I’m not going anywhere with you.”

  “Get in the goddamned car, Carolyn, or I’ll tie you up and throw you in,” he said in a low, dangerous tone of voice.

  She wasn’t going to get away from him. His grip on her wrist was iron hard and painful, and with her twisted ankle she’d have no chance of outrunning him.

  “All right,” she said at last.

  She’d managed to startle him. “You’ve decided to be reasonable? How novel.”

  “No,” she said. “I just decided if anyone was going to murder me I think I’d prefer it was you.”

  “Bitch,” he said genially, opening the door for her.

  She climbed in, casting one last, longing glance toward escape. And then she noticed the suitcases in the back seat. Including her own small one.

  He was already behind the wheel. “Fasten your seat belt,” he said, putting the car in gear.

  “What are you doing with my things? Where are we going?”

  “We’re getting the hell out of here. You may be willing to face death like an early-Christian martyr, but frankly I’m not interested in dying young. I did it once already, and it’s highly overrated.”

  He’d shocked her into silence. She fastened the seat belt around her with shaking fingers, then clutched the door handle as he tore down the narrow road at breakneck speed. They passed her car smashed up against an outcropping of rock, but he made no attempt at slowing down, he just kept driving. She looked away, shuddering.

  She waited until they’d reached the main road. It was deserted, and she realized with dismay that it was already late afternoon. She’d lost all track of time, she hadn’t eaten in what seemed like days, and she was being kidnapped by a criminal. Or was she?

  “Who the hell are you?” she said finally.

  “Who do you think I am?” He kept his eyes glued to the road.

  “I’ve given up trying to figure it out. Why don’t you be original and tell me the truth for a change?”

  He still didn’t look at her. Instead he reached into his jeans pocket for something. “Hold out your hand, Carolyn.”

  She did so, expecting God knew what. Anything but the tiny pile of gold he placed in her palm.

  It was her gold charm bracelet. The one he’d stolen from her the night he left, the one thing she begged him not
to take. It was still there—each delicate charm that Sally had chosen for her over the years was intact. She stared down at it in disbelief. It had been eighteen years since she’d last seen it—she’d almost forgotten how precious it had once been.

  It was a while before she found her voice. “Why do you still have it?”

  “I’ll never forget your face that night,” he said, his voice distant. “You looked so bereft, and I couldn’t figure out if it was because I was going or because I was taking your most precious possession. I knew you had a massive crush on me back then. I used to think if I could bring you back the bracelet, if I could keep from pawning it, then when I brought it back to you you’d tell me I was more important than a goddamned piece of gold.”

  “I didn’t care that it was valuable. I cared that it came from Sally. She brought me here, took care of me, loved me—”

  “You still don’t get it, do you? The MacDowells don’t do anything out of selfless motives.”

  “Sally loved me—”

  “Maybe. She always loved to be surrounded by pretty things, and you know it. But she didn’t just happen to pick you up off a street corner, you know. It was no accident that she brought you back here.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Haven’t you ever wondered why someone like Sally MacDowell would bring home the bastard child of a former servant? She who usually kept her charity work at arm’s length?”

  “Don’t!”

  “Didn’t you ever ask? Don’t you want to know where you came from? Why she brought you home to be part of the family?”

  “Stop it!” Her voice rose to a wild edge. He was silent for a moment, concentrating on the road. He glanced over at her for a moment, then back.

  “Well, when you’re ready to know the truth, you can ask me,” he said.

  “You haven’t impressed me as someone with an intimate acquaintance with the truth.”

  “I know it when I see it. Whether I like it or not.”

  A sudden suspicion entered her mind, filling her with such sick horror that she couldn’t push it away. “You aren’t going to tell me you’re really my brother, are you?”

  He threw back his head and laughed. “Wrong. Trust me, Carolyn, we have no blood relationship at all. Not even a whiff of incest.”

  “Then if we’re not related, what’s the big secret?”

  “I’ll tell you when we get where we’re going.”

  “Where are we going? And why?”

  “I’m saving your life, Carolyn.” Then he added, almost as an afterthought, “And mine.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  SHE LOOKED LIKE holy hell. He didn’t want to take the risk of stopping on the way south, but she looked like she was at the very end of her endurance, so he pulled into a diner by the Massachusetts border and practically force-fed her something from the all-day breakfast menu. She ate automatically, refusing to look at him, her hands bruised and bloody, her face scratched, her demeanor frighteningly calm. He considered taking her to a hospital to get her ankle x-rayed, then decided against it. She wasn’t limping too badly, and the sooner they reached their destination the better.

  He should have realized they would have missed the last ferry by the time they reached Woods Hole. She sat in the car passively enough as he made a reservation for the first boat over in the morning, saying nothing when he drove into a nondescript motel and got them a room for the night.

  She went straight into the bathroom, and he could hear the shower running full force. He’d already checked—there was no other way out of the room, so he knew there was no way she could escape, if she suddenly had the crazy need to. The motel didn’t come with room service, but he found a place that delivered Chinese food and called in a huge order. By the time she came out, looking like a pale, drowned rat in a baggy t-shirt and oversized jeans, he was setting the cartons out on the table.

  “Don’t bother telling me you’re not hungry,” he said, forestalling her instant protest. “You need to eat, and if you don’t cooperate I’ll tie you to the bed and pour fried rice down your throat.”

  A faint, answering smile would have been too much to hope for. Instead she simply sat on one of the hard little chairs and reached for the can of soda he’d gotten from the machine outside.

  There were no plates, so he simply shoved the carton of lo mein at her, along with a pair of chopsticks, then started in on his own beef and broccoli. “You can have the egg rolls,” he said, breaking the silence. “They have shrimp in them.”

  That broke through her numbness. She jerked her head up to look at him, and her eyes were bleak. “Why are we here?”

  “We missed the last ferry.”

  “That’s not what I mean and you know it. Why did we come here? Why are we going back to the Vineyard?”

  “Unresolved business. I want to know who shot me. No one seems to be able to pry that information out of your brain, and I’m not comfortable letting go of it, particularly now that someone’s started using you for target practice. I thought I could just forget about it and get on with my life, but I guess I’m not as forgiving as I thought I was. Particularly since someone seems to be up to his old tricks.”

  She picked at the lo mein with a complete lack of interest. “What do you mean?”

  “Whoever shot at you, whoever tampered with your brakes, is presumably the same person who thought they’d killed me eighteen years ago. At least, I’m assuming it’s the same person. They were all in the Vineyard the night someone shot me, and I’d hope there aren’t two would-be murderers in the MacDowell family.”

  “Why would they want to kill me? I have nothing to do with you.” There wasn’t even a trace of defiance in her flat voice.

  “Isn’t it obvious? We both happen to be a singular inconvenience to anyone interested in inheriting the bulk of Sally’s estate.”

  “My trust fund isn’t going to make a hell of a lot of difference in the scheme of things. Not when you consider how much Sally left. Besides, the trust fund is already in place—my death wouldn’t change it.” She pushed the carton of food away from her.

  “Well, maybe our busy little murderer doesn’t realize that. Or maybe he knows perfectly well you could have a much greater claim if you chose to exert it.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Eat your dinner.”

  “I’m not hungry, and I’m not going to eat another bite until you explain yourself.” Anger had finally begun to splinter through her unnatural calm. Anger, and a trace of fear. She didn’t want to hear what he was going to tell her. She didn’t want to know the truth.

  “Haven’t you ever wondered where you came from?” he said, putting his own carton of food down on the Formica-topped table. “Didn’t you ever bother to ask, ever think about why Sally would bring you home to live with us? She certainly didn’t make a habit of picking up strays.” He couldn’t keep the cynicism out of his voice, remembering his own origins, but Carolyn took it wrong.

  “You don’t need to remind me,” she said bitterly. “I don’t belong. I was here on sufferance. I have no right to be among the MacDowells.”

  “Didn’t you ever ask where she found you?”

  “I know where she found me. No one’s ever made any secret of it. I’m the illegitimate child of someone who used to work for her.”

  “Nice of Sally.”

  “She hasn’t been dead for twenty-four hours, Alex,” she said sharply.

  “That doesn’t make her a saint, and she’d be the first one to tell you so.”

  “You know the story as well as I do. Sally was always fond of the woman, and when she died Sally decided to see that I was taken care of.”

  “She could have just written a check every month. And don’t tell me that wasn’t Sally’s style. You know perfectly w
ell she preferred her charity long-distance. What made her bring you into the house?”

  “Obviously, you have some theory,” Carolyn said, her icy calm vanishing. “Why don’t you share it?”

  He tipped his chair back, surveying her with a remote air. “You’re a MacDowell,” he said flatly.

  She didn’t blink. “Sure.”

  “Haven’t you ever noticed the resemblance? You and Tessa could be twins.”

  “You’re out of your mind. My mother was a Swedish nanny—”

  “She might very well have been. But your father was Warren MacDowell.”

  All color left her face. She stared at him with a kind of sick shock. “No,” she said flatly.

  “Yes. There’s no other explanation. Sally was too old, and Patsy had just had Tessa. The bloodlines in the MacDowell family have run very thin these last few generations. Too much inbreeding, I’d guess. The only other living MacDowell is an ancient great-aunt in a nursing home in England and a second cousin who’s both too young and gay. No one else.”

  “I’m not a MacDowell.”

  “You know you are,” he said. “And that’s always been the problem. Deep in your heart you’ve known you belong.”

  “You’re crazy,” she said, but he could see the dawn of doubt in her eyes that were so like Tessa’s.

  “Why don’t you ask Warren?”

  She pushed away from the table in sudden fury. “I’m not asking Warren a goddamned thing. Now that Sally’s gone I don’t care about the rest of your sick family. If Warren happened to have fathered me I’m sure he knows it was the worst mistake of his life, and he’s not about to admit it. And I don’t want to know. I don’t want to see or talk with any MacDowell ever again in my entire life.” She was looking around the room in desperation. “And that includes you.”

  “What are you looking for?”

  “My shoes. I’m getting the hell out of here.”

  “No, you aren’t,” he said with deceptive calm. “I told you, you aren’t safe.”

  “And I told you I don’t want to spend another minute with any of the MacDowells.”