The Runaway

by Lisa Childs

  The truck was gone. Where?

  Had it fallen over the bridge?

  She drew in a shaky breath and continued the rest of the distance to the island, the metal swaying and creaking beneath the weight of the car and the ice. Where had the other vehicle gone?

  She went directly to the police department. This time instead of passing it to park in the diner’s lot, she pulled right up to that front door with the badge on it. When she shut off and stepped out of her vehicle, her legs nearly folded beneath her. She had come so close to crashing over that railing.

  Had the truck?

  Maybe she should have stopped and called for help. But in the moment all she’d wanted was to get the hell off that bridge. To get out of danger herself.

  But even at the police department, she didn’t feel safe. It wasn’t like the bustling police station in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where she lived now. Civilians and police officers were constantly walking in and out of that three-story building that occupied the corner of a vibrant city block.

  This building was just the one floor and just that one exterior door that she pushed open before stepping inside the narrow reception area. Like the police station at home, she had to buzz for the inner door to open. But it didn’t open to let her in—instead someone stepped into the room where that single desk sat.

  It was the older female officer she’d seen arriving with take-out containers the evening before. The woman raised a gray brow and wearily asked, “Can I help you?”

  “Is the sheriff here?”

  The woman shook her head. “No, ma’am, but if this is still about getting into Bainesworth Manor, he can’t help you.”

  Bainesworth Manor. It didn’t matter what it had been renamed; the locals apparently preferred to use the name of the old psychiatric hospital it had once been. The one that had fallen into ruins from the pictures Rosemary had pulled up online, of most of the stone walls crumbling with vines and moss growing all around them.

  “I’m not here about that,” she said. Not just about that anyway ...

  “Then why are you here?” a deep voice asked.

  Rosemary whirled around to find the sheriff standing in the doorway behind her. Cold and snow blew in as well. How had she not noticed the door opening? How quietly had he moved?

  “Somebody just tried to run me off the bridge,” she said.

  “Were you on your way out of town?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “I was just coming back from the mainland.”

  “Maybe you should have stayed off the island,” he said.

  She sucked in a breath. “Are you threatening me?” Once again she’d come to the wrong place. After the last time the police had refused to help her, she should have known better.

  “I cautioned you,” he said, “about your reckless driving. Maybe I should have given you that citation, then you might have slowed down.”

  “I wasn’t driving too fast,” she said. “Somebody rammed into the back bumper of my rental car. You must have seen the damage when you came in.”

  From where?

  Where had he been?

  On the bridge?

  She’d thought the vehicle had been a truck, but it could have been a big SUV . . . like the one the sheriff drove. She pushed past him to rush out to the street. His SUV wasn’t parked there. Her rental, with its crumpled back bumper and scraped metal, was the only vehicle in the street on which snow was beginning to accumulate.

  “I saw it,” the sheriff said as he joined her outside. “Looks like you hit the railing and then spun around and probably hit the other side of the bridge with the rear bumper.”

  She sucked in another breath along with air so frigid it burned her lungs. “That’s not what happened,” she said. “Another vehicle struck me.”

  “What kind?” he asked.

  “I—I don’t know,” she admitted. “I only saw the lights, but it stood taller than the rental car—the headlights were higher.” And the beams had definitely been brighter. Had the driver had the high beams on the entire time? Was that why she’d been so blinded?

  Tears stung her eyes now, tears of frustration and tears of cold. “I’m telling the truth,” she persisted, “about everything. I don’t know why nobody will believe me.”

  Maybe Whit had only been acting like she was crazy, though. Maybe he hadn’t doubted her at all—because he’d already known. Had he sent that vehicle after her? Or had he been the one behind the wheel?

  He was a powerful man with a lot to lose if she went public with what he’d done to her all those years ago. She shivered.

  “You should get out of the cold,” the sheriff told her.

  No place on the island—or anywhere else for that matter—felt warm to her. “Don’t you want to take a report?”

  “When did it happen?” he asked.

  “Just a little while ago,” she said. “I drove straight here from the bridge.”

  “Then I have enough for the report.”

  “But—but . . .” She’d been in traffic accidents before where the officer had taken a half hour to fill in the form on his laptop.

  “Do you remember anything else?” he asked. “Anything that might help?”

  “Help . . .” That was all she’d wanted, but nobody would offer her any. She had no idea what to do now, no idea if she should trust him with the truth. She had no way of proving that she was Genevieve’s mother, so she doubted the claim would get the sheriff to act on her behalf. It hadn’t compelled Whit to help her. But maybe that was because he didn’t want Genevieve free. Maybe she was a skeleton he wanted locked in a closet like those parents had had their daughters locked up at Bainesworth Manor all those years ago. But just as Evelyn had said, it was happening again....

  “Are you going back to the boardinghouse?” he asked.

  She nodded but then tensed as it struck her that he’d already known where she was staying. How?

  “You can’t go to the hall again,” he advised her. “They’re going to press charges for trespassing the next time you show up, and they’ll know if you do. They have security cameras at that front gate. Maybe you should have just stayed on the mainland. There’s nothing for you here.”

  “There’s Genevieve.” She wanted to claim her as her daughter now, wanted to shout it from the rooftops that she’d been freed from that horrible pact with her mother. But she couldn’t trust anyone here. Every time she’d reached out for help she’d been turned down. And tonight ...

  Tonight she could have been killed. That attempt made her more concerned about her daughter.

  She reached for the driver’s door, tugged it open, and slid beneath the steering wheel. Before she could pull the door closed, the sheriff caught the top of it in a gloved hand. He leaned down, and she finally realized that he wasn’t wearing his dark glasses. His eyes were dark—fathomless, unreadable. He didn’t need to wear the glasses to conceal his expression. She couldn’t read it, so she had no idea what he meant when he cautioned her again, “Be careful.”

  Was he talking about driving on the slick roads? Or dealing with the hall and whoever the hell had tried running her off the bridge?

  * * *

  Sheriff Deacon Howell stared after the rental car as it drove away. One of the rear lights was broken, but he didn’t wave her down. He let her go. And he wished like hell she would keep going.

  She was trouble. He’d known it when he’d watched her drive through town the day before and when he’d stopped her and learned she was looking for the hall....

  He shouldn’t have just given her a citation; he should have locked her up. Hell, it was probably the only way to keep her safe since she was so damned determined to get onto the property of Halcyon Hall.

  It didn’t matter what it looked like now. Nothing had changed about the damn place. It was still cursed. Nobody knew that better than he did. Except maybe Genevieve Walcott. Was that why the teenager had called her sister begging for help to escape?

  He’d
noticed something else about the damage to Rosemary Tulle’s rental car besides the broken light: paint transfer on the crumpled rear bumper. It wasn’t quite black; it wasn’t quite gray. It was the weird charcoal color of every vehicle Halcyon Hall owned.

  “Are you coming inside?” Margaret asked from the open doorway to the police department.

  He shook his head. “No. I need to check out something.”

  Her eyes widened. “You’re not going out there, are you?”

  He sighed, and his breath formed an icy cloud in front of his face. “I have to.”

  “It’s a family matter,” Margaret insisted. “Her parents didn’t put her name on the list of visitors for her sister. They probably had a good reason. Maybe she’s a poor influence.” His deputy bristled with maternal protectiveness—of him. She obviously thought the teenager wasn’t the only one Rosemary Tulle might poorly influence.

  “What was their reason for putting their daughter in that place?” he asked.

  “I’m sure they had a good reason for that, too,” Margaret said. “A reason that’s none of our business.”

  “We’re the police,” he reminded her. “It’s all our business.” The majority of the crime calls on Bane Island were domestic disputes. This one just didn’t happen to affect the locals.

  For that he should have been relieved—would have been relieved—if it hadn’t involved the damn manor.

  “But you’re not supposed to go out there,” she reminded him. “Like Warren says, we have no jurisdiction there.”

  Deputy Warren Cooke had more jurisdiction than Deacon did; he was related to the sons of bitches who ran the place. At least the young deputy wasn’t on duty tonight, or he would have called ahead to warn them that Deacon was coming. That was probably the only reason he worked for Deacon—to spy on him and to eventually take his job.

  Waving Margaret back inside the building, he headed around the back of it to his SUV. Snow melted and slid off the warmed-up windshield and hood. He hopped back inside and turned on the engine.

  The manor wasn’t far away, but the roads were slippery enough that four-wheel drive wasn’t even that effective at avoiding skids. Maybe Rosemary had just spun around and struck the bridge like he’d suggested. But the bridge wasn’t that charcoal gray color; it wasn’t any color now but rust.

  The streetlamp under which she’d parked hadn’t been that bright, though, not bright enough for him to be certain that he’d identified the color. But the couple of chips he’d scraped from the bumper and dropped into an evidence bag would either confirm or disprove his suspicion—once he got it back from the state police lab. He needed another sample to match it to, though.

  As he neared the stretch of stone wall where the gates should have been, he noticed one light burning in the rear of a vehicle parked on the road. Damn. She was trouble.

  He braked at the gates and jumped out of his SUV. Storming over to her vehicle, he rapped his knuckles against her frosted side window. It wound down with a lurch. “What did I just tell you?”

  “I’m not on the property,” she said. “I’m on the street.”

  He snorted.

  “What the hell are you going to do here besides get hit again?”

  “Whoever comes or goes, I’ll stop them—get them to tell me about Genevieve.”

  “The employee entrance is farther down the road and doesn’t have a security camera,” he said, surprising himself that he’d made the admission. “But trying to sneak in there will get you more than a trespassing ticket; it’ll get you arrested.”

  “What are you doing here?” she asked, her eyes wide with hope. “Are you checking on . . . Genevieve?”

  His eyes narrowed at that slight pause he’d caught earlier outside the office. Maybe there was a reason she wasn’t on that list. Maybe she wasn’t really related to the girl at all. The place was marketed to appeal to the rich and famous. That was the reason, or so they claimed, that they were so vigilant with their security.

  “I’m here on police business,” he told her, “not that it’s any of your business.” But it was; it was about her.

  “Did they already call you about me?” she asked. “I just got here.”

  “Go back to the boardinghouse.” He would have told her to go to the mainland instead, but she’d been lucky to make it across that bridge once already tonight. And she hadn’t managed that unscathed. “The sisters are worried about you.”

  “Did Evelyn call you?” she asked.

  He nodded. Last night and earlier that afternoon. “You left your stuff, so they figured you intended to return and were concerned that you hadn’t yet and that the weather was bad.” That was why he’d been out when she’d arrived at the police department; he’d been looking for her.

  A crease appeared between her black brows. “I didn’t mean to worry them.”

  “Then get back to the boardinghouse before anything else happens to you,” he suggested.

  She sucked in a breath, probably thinking again that he was threatening her. His warnings were actually just good advice, though—advice she seemed intent on ignoring. But after a long, silent moment, she nodded. “Okay, I’ll go back to the boardinghouse. Please, check on Genevieve for me, though. Make sure they haven’t done anything to her.”

  “It’s some touchy-feely rehab center,” he said. At least that was what it was claiming to be now. He knew better, though. Hell, everybody on the island knew better. Instead of being a place where people went to get help with their problems, it just exacerbated them.

  Remembering what the place had already cost him, he flinched at the sudden jab of pain. “Just leave,” he told her, “and don’t come back.” He didn’t know why he wasted his breath, though. She wasn’t listening.

  She rolled up the window and drove away, her tires skidding on the road as she did a U-turn and headed back toward town. With the weather worsening, maybe she’d stay away for the night. But she would return in the morning, and so would he, to either arrest or cite her for trespassing.

  Wet snow settled on the shoulders of his jacket, adding to the weight of guilt he already carried, as he jumped back into his vehicle. He pressed the button to lower his window and reached out for the intercom. Before the person could even greet him, he said, “Sheriff Howell, let me in.”

  Whoever it was had the sense not to ask for a warrant this time—just opened the damn gates. He drove through them. Snow had accumulated on the driveway, as if nobody had been down this way for a while. And maybe they hadn’t. As Rosemary Tulle could attest, they weren’t exactly welcoming to visitors—sometimes even the ones who were on the damn list.

  Deacon wasn’t here to visit, though. He was here to investigate whoever had run into Rosemary Tulle and taken off. The people who would have been driving one of the Halcyon Hall vehicles used the employee driveway that wound around the back of the main building, so they wouldn’t have left tire marks in the snow accumulating on the front drive.

  The SUV tires skidded on the slick snow as he drove it around the tight curves on the long drive that wound past iced-over ponds and stands of pine trees. The darkness of those trees gave way as the last turn brought him in front of the manor, which glowed in the floodlights pointed at the enormous stone mansion. It didn’t look like a house, though. More like a mansion or a fortress or a prison ...

  Part of Bainesworth Manor—the locked ward—had been a prison for the criminally insane. It hadn’t been just that ward that had been locked, though, if the old rumors were true....

  And it hadn’t been just the criminals that had been mistreated. But that had all been before his time. He wasn’t here to investigate old rumors.

  Deacon opened the SUV door and stepped back into the cold. As he rounded the front of his vehicle, the ten-foot-high, steel double doors to the foyer opened like a drawbridge coming down over a moat. He wasn’t walking across a bed of alligators, though; he was walking into one.

  Those doors opening reminded him that there w
ere security cameras all over the property. Except near the cliffs. He would need a search warrant to secure any of the footage, though. Cooke wasn’t likely to hand over anything without one.

  When he stepped over the threshold into the expansive foyer of the hall, the doors closed automatically behind him. All the security and automation were parts of the renovation that had taken years to complete. Maybe it wouldn’t have taken as long if the contractor hadn’t been so damn distracted stealing other men’s wives.

  He flinched again when another pang struck his heart. But the place had literally been in ruins when the renovation had begun; they should have left it that way. He walked through the foyer into the reception area. For a minute he thought it was empty, but then a man stepped from the shadows. Or maybe through some secret sliding door in the dark paneled wall. The place was rumored to be full of secret passageways and chambers.

  “Deacon,” Dr. Elijah Cooke greeted him, his voice nearly as frosty as the wind howling outside.

  The wind wasn’t the only thing howling though. Despite the thickness of the stone walls, the wail of coyotes echoed eerily within the hall.

  His voice wasn’t the only frosty thing about Elijah Cooke. His eyes—a weird pale silver—were like the iced-over ponds on the property. They contracted sharply with his darker skin and black hair. A few strands of silver had slipped into that hair, though, even though Elijah was just thirty-eight, like Deacon.

  Hell, Deacon had a few gray hairs himself, though. And not just because of this place.

  “What brings you out to the hall at this hour?” Elijah asked him.

  “Rosemary Tulle,” Deacon replied.

  Elijah sighed. “She’s not on the list, and I will not violate a patient’s privacy. You understand that.”

  “I do,” Deacon acknowledged. “What I’m investigating is her claim that someone tried running her off the bridge on her way back to the island a short while ago.”

  Elijah sighed again and shook his head. “You can’t seriously think anyone at the hall had something to do with that. How would anyone here know that she’d even left the island?”

  Heat climbed into Deacon’s face. Elijah Cooke had always had this effect on him, had always made him feel like an idiot, since they were kids. The guy was too damn smart for his own good and for anyone else’s.