The Runaway

by Lisa Childs

  “Did she accuse someone here of trying to run her off the road? And if so, does she have any witnesses to back up her outrageous claim?” Elijah didn’t wait for Deacon’s answer before he shook his head in response to his questions. “Of course she doesn’t.”

  Leather creaked as Deacon’s hands tightened into fists at his side. He wanted to slam his gloved fist into Cooke’s face like he had once or twice when they were kids. That had been before Elijah’s cousin David, Deputy Warren’s older, bigger brother, had rushed to his defense and before Elijah had hit his growth spurt. Not that Deacon had been afraid of them; he’d just realized it was smarter to control his temper than get suspended for fighting.

  “The paint that transferred onto the bumper of her car looks an awful lot like the color of all your company vehicles,” Deacon said, and he studied Elijah’s face for any reaction.

  The guy was too cool—and too damn smart—to betray his thoughts, though. He just shrugged. “It’s gray. A lot of vehicles are gray.”

  “All of the ones on the island that are that particular shade of gray belong to you,” Deacon said.

  “She was coming back,” Elijah said. “But that doesn’t mean the person who struck her was a local. It could have been another visitor to our beautiful island.”

  The urge to hit him got stronger. It was good that they hadn’t gotten closer to each other, or Deacon might have given in to the temptation.

  “What’s the deal with her sister?” Deacon asked. “Why’d the parents put her here? Drugs? Eating disorder?”

  Cooke shook his head. “I cannot violate our privacy policy.”

  “Let me talk to the girl then,” Deacon urged. “Make sure that she’s really all right and not being held here against her will as Rosemary Tulle thinks.”

  Cooke shook his head again. “Rosemary Tulle is mistaken and perhaps delusional.”

  “She seems pretty sane to me,” Deacon said. He wasn’t a shrink, like Dr. Cooke, but he knew crazy. “Just worried about her sister, worried enough that she’s getting me a little worried.” Because he was still studying Cooke closely, and despite the distance between them, he noticed the muscle twitch along the guy’s cheek, noticed how tightly his jaw was clenched. He was working hard to hide any reaction.

  Was something going on? He’d figured Rosemary’s sister just wanted out of rehab so she could get back to her bad habits. But maybe there was more to it—if someone from the hall had tried running Rosemary off the bridge.

  “Unless your name is on the list or you have a warrant, you can’t visit with Ms. Walcott either,” Cooke said. “So if you’re done ... I really should get home.”

  It wasn’t as if he had far to go. If Cooke didn’t live in the hall itself, he lived in one of several other buildings on the property.

  “You should get home as well, Sheriff,” he said, “before the roads get any worse and you have a mishap like Ms. Tulle.”

  “Are you threatening me?” Deacon asked.

  Those creepy pale eyes widened with shock—probably feigned. “Of course not.”

  “Better not,” Deacon said. “Threatening an officer . . .”

  “For however much longer you’re an officer,” Elijah remarked.

  “My term’s not up for a while,” Deacon reminded him.

  “Before your cousin tries to take my job, I have plenty of time in office to take care of unfinished business.”

  “You might be the law,” Elijah said, “for now, but even you are not above it.”

  “Nor are you,” Deacon reminded him. Even though the son-of-a-bitch was the richest damn person on the island. While he owned most of it, he couldn’t do whatever the hell he wanted on it—not like his family had done before the state had finally shut them down.

  The sheriff turned and headed toward those doors. But when he touched the handle and pulled on one, it refused to budge. He turned back toward where Elijah had been standing but he must have evaporated into the damn wall again. What the hell was he?

  A ghost?

  A soft buzz rang out and the doors opened of their own volition. Deacon stepped back to avoid getting hit. But before they could close again and lock him inside the freaky mausoleum, he rushed out.

  Why the hell would anyone choose to come here? Especially Holly ...

  He pushed the thought from his mind for now. She was on it entirely too often. He climbed into his SUV and glanced back at the building. He felt like it stared back at him—or at least somebody did.

  Cooke?

  Or Genevieve Walcott?

  Was she being held here against her will?

  She wouldn’t be the only one who’d had that experience at the hall. But it had been called Bainesworth Manor when that kind of stuff had happened here, when parents had committed their wayward daughters for treatment. Just because the name had changed didn’t mean the practices had, especially when the same damn family running it now had run the psychiatric hospital.

  Back then Elijah’s grandfather, James Bainesworth, had been the resident shrink and director. Had Elijah taken over more than the operation of the hall? Was he continuing the manor’s gruesome legacy?

  * * *

  Light flashed against the front windows, shining through the drapes. Evelyn rushed to the front door. Pulling it open, she sucked in a breath as the cold air and snow struck her like a hard slap. The motion light in the driveway turned on, illuminating the blowing snow and the car parking beneath it. The back bumper was crumpled, the passenger’s side scraped.

  “Oh, no . . .”

  She’d been right to worry about Rosemary, but she’d been concerned something would happen to her at the manor, not on the roads. She glanced toward the street now, and a strange movement caught her attention. A vehicle passed, but its lights weren’t on. She noticed it only in the light spilling from the driveway into the road. It was dark and big, and its front bumper looked as if it had been pushed back, as if it had struck something.

  Maybe the accident had just happened. Maybe she needed to call the sheriff to write up a report. But instead of pulling into the driveway behind Rosemary’s car, the vehicle continued past, its brake lights flashing as it slowed to turn at the next intersection.

  Then it was gone.

  “I’m so sorry,” Rosemary said as she joined her on the porch. “I should have called. I didn’t mean to worry you.”

  Evelyn’s heart warmed, and she released a ragged sigh of relief. “You’re okay?”

  Rosemary nodded.

  “Let’s get inside,” Evelyn said. “You must be freezing.”

  The young woman’s face was chafed from the cold, and snow had collected on her black hair and in her lashes. Evelyn stepped into the house and tugged her over the threshold. Before she closed the door on the cold, she glanced again at the street.

  Had the vehicle come back? Would it return?

  “What happened?” Evelyn asked her. “I see that your car is damaged. Why didn’t the other vehicle stop?”

  Rosemary tensed. “How do you know that it didn’t?”

  “It just drove past after you pulled into the driveway,” Evelyn said. “I thought it was going to stop, but it kept going.”

  “You saw it?” Rosemary asked.

  “Barely,” Evelyn replied. “Its lights weren’t on, but maybe that was because of the damage to the front of it. Where did the accident happen? I didn’t hear it.” With as close as she’d been sitting to the front of the house, waiting for Rosemary, she should have heard the collision.

  “I was hit on the bridge,” Rosemary replied. “But you saw the other vehicle just now?”

  Evelyn nodded. “I think so . . .”

  Anger flushed Rosemary’s face. “I told the sheriff it wasn’t an accident.”

  “You already reported it to him?” Evelyn asked.

  Rosemary nodded. “Yes, and he went out to the hall. I think he knows someone from there must have done it, must have tried to force me off the bridge.”

&n
bsp; “I told you not to go to the manor,” Evelyn reminded her. “It’s too dangerous.”

  “Is it too dangerous for me to stay here?” Rosemary asked. “Do you want me to leave?”

  Evelyn shook her head. “No.” And it wasn’t just because they had bills to pay and no other boarders at the moment. It was because Rosemary reminded her of herself all those years ago when her sister had been put in a place from which she couldn’t help her escape.

  While physically she’d gotten her back, Bonita had never really come home. She wasn’t the person who’d been sent to the manor fifty years ago. She wasn’t the sister Evelyn had once known and idolized. Those treatments had destroyed the bright and lively young woman Bonita had once been. She’d returned to them more like a child. That hadn’t been what their parents had wanted. Or had it?

  Evelyn reached out and grasped Rosemary’s cold hands. “Come inside. I saved you some dinner, and I’ll make you some hot tea.”

  “Where’s Bonita?” Rosemary asked with a concern that touched Evelyn’s heart.

  “She already went to bed.” She’d been very upset earlier, going into a panic about her missing baby, but more than likely she’d been upset about the earlier talk of the manor rather than a misplaced doll. Evelyn didn’t share any of that with Rosemary. She didn’t want to make her feel guilty for bringing up the manor—because she knew the young woman would have to bring it up again.

  While she didn’t agree with Rosemary putting herself in danger, she understood that she had to—that she couldn’t let her sister remain there.

  She just hoped that Rosemary got her sister back fully—not like Evelyn had gotten hers back. Bainesworth Manor had broken Bonita—mentally, spiritually, emotionally.

  What were they doing to Rosemary’s sister?

  Chapter Seven

  Whit’s head pounded and the words blurred on the screen of his laptop. He blinked and focused again, but it didn’t matter how many times he read what he’d found. He still didn’t like it. And neither would . . .

  The door creaked open, alerting him to someone’s arrival. Since he’d called the meeting, he was expecting this person. “You were right,” he told his campaign manager. “I should have canceled the interview.”

  Martin dropped heavily into the chair in front of his desk. He rubbed a big hand over his bald head and groaned. “What happened?”

  “It was a setup,” Whit said. It had to have been. It couldn’t have been that sick a coincidence. But then stranger things happened. He filled in the campaign manager on what had transpired the afternoon before with Rosemary.

  Martin uttered a louder groan. “I asked you if you had any skeletons . . .”

  “I don’t,” Whit said.

  “So nothing she accused you of is true?” Martin asked.

  Whit nodded.

  “Then she’s a kook,” he said. “And we can easily prove that.”

  Whit tapped his computer screen. “That’s the problem. She’s not a kook. She’s a shrink. A very highly respected one who specializes in counseling rape victims.”

  Martin flinched.

  “I think there’s a strong probability that if Edie Stone goes live with Rosemary’s story, people will believe her.”

  “Not just people—voters,” Martin grumbled.

  Whit wasn’t concerned about just the voters. He studied the older man’s face for a long moment. “What about you? Do you believe her?”

  “You said you had no skeletons,” Martin reminded him. “You lied to me.”

  “I didn’t lie,” Whit insisted.

  “If you’d just told me up front, I could have figured out a way to handle the reporter and Rosemary Tulle.”

  Whit tensed. “I didn’t tell you her name.”

  “Of course you did.”

  “No.” He was always very aware of every word he spoke, and he’d been careful not to share her name. “How do you know it?” And how long had the campaign manager been aware of Rosemary?

  Martin’s face flushed. Was he embarrassed at getting caught? Or angry? He shrugged. “I do my due diligence before I take on any client.”

  Whit furrowed his brow. “What does due diligence have to do with this? I knew Rosemary a lifetime ago. How the hell . . .”

  “Some old prep school friends mentioned her name to me,” he said.

  Whit flinched now. “I had no friends in prep school.” When they hadn’t tried bullying him, they’d patronized and pitied him for being the bastard son of a maid. He hadn’t known the truth yet then, or he would have set them straight.

  “They want to be your friends now,” Martin assured him. “I didn’t think she was going to be a problem.”

  “She’s not,” Whit said, “because what she’s saying isn’t true.”

  “But you said yourself that people will believe her,” Martin reminded him. “She must be stopped.” His beefy hands clenched into fists, and he looked even more like a fighter. “I’ll take care of her.”

  Whit shook his head. “No.” He didn’t trust the man now and wanted him nowhere near her. “I’ll deal with Rosemary.” Once he figured out how the hell to do that ...

  * * *

  The other entrance to Halcyon Hall had been even harder to find than the visitor one. The gap between the tall pine trees lining the road was even narrower, and so was the gate in the stone wall that encompassed the grounds of the estate. There was no room for Rosemary to park on the driveway or the road on that side, so she parked across from it.

  And she waited for employees to arrive.

  She’d come early, way before dawn had even begun to lighten the sky, so she wouldn’t miss the first shift. But the hours at the hall must not have been the same as other places of employment. Or perhaps everybody lived or stayed somewhere on the grounds.

  Maybe, like Genevieve, they weren’t allowed to come and go of their own free will. Lights glinted off Rosemary’s windshield, alerting her to an approaching vehicle. Her luck it would be the sheriff.

  Or perhaps that vehicle from the night before, the one that had struck her on the bridge and then followed her back to the boardinghouse. Had Evelyn really seen it though?

  She hadn’t been able to describe much of it—except that it was dark, and the front bumper had looked crumpled.

  Squinting against the glare of those headlights, Rosemary focused on the approaching vehicle, and her heart began to pound fast and furiously. This one was dark and big and heading straight toward her. She’d shut off her engine and her lights. She didn’t have time to restart and move the vehicle, didn’t have time to get out of the way.

  Just as it was about to strike her, the SUV turned sharply into that narrow employee drive and braked. A man stepped out of the driver’s door and stared out at the street, at her vehicle.

  Shock gripped Rosemary that she’d come so close to getting hit again and ... that she recognized the man. At least she thought she did ...

  He’d been a friend and mentor of her late father’s and the reason she’d attended the university where he’d taught. She’d always admired the professor. What the hell was he doing here?

  Hand shaking, she fumbled with the handle before pushing open the door and stepping onto the street. “Dr. Chase?” she called out to him.

  He walked closer to the street and peered at her. “Rosemary? Is that you?”

  “Oh, thank God,” she murmured. She rushed across the street, slipping on the icy surface, to join him.

  Despite it being more than a decade since she’d seen him last, he looked the same. His hair had been white for years, maybe prematurely then, but now he had wrinkles in his face. He’d always been older than her father, but her father was the one who’d died of the aptly named widow maker’s heart attack at forty—right before Rosemary’s thirteenth birthday. After his friend’s death, Dr. Chase had continued to come around to check on her and her mother.

  She’d once hoped that her mother would turn to Gordon Chase for more than comfort. But,
maybe feeling her own mortality after losing her spouse, Abigail had sought out younger men . . . like Bobby, who was closer to Rosemary’s age than her mother’s.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked him. “I thought you were retired.” Some years ago ... since he had to be seventy.

  He shook his head. “Retirement bored me. So I let the hall lure me back into private practice.” His voice held a trace of affection, as if he loved the place as much as he loved his career. “It feels great helping people work on their problems. Some people come here just to relax. Some come to work on their problems,” he admitted. “Like stress and substance abuse. We have quite a few with substance abuse issues. That’s how I help.”

  “Does the hall really help though? Or does it hurt?” she asked. “Like the manor used to?”

  His brow creased, and more lines appeared in his face, betraying his age. “You shouldn’t listen to the gossip of the islanders,” he admonished her. “This place has done a lot of good—for our guests and for the island.”

  “I’m talking from my own experience,” Rosemary said.

  “You’ve been a guest?”

  “No. My . . . sister is.” How could he not know that? But perhaps he’d forgotten her mother’s current surname. “Genevieve Walcott.”

  The creases remained in his brow, as if he didn’t recognize the name or her.

  “Is she still here?” Rosemary asked.

  “I can’t talk about clients,” he said. “I taught you that, remember?”

  “She’s my . . .” She bit her lip to hold back her secret. Maybe he already knew it, though. Maybe her mother had told him.

  She doubted it, or he wouldn’t have kept urging her to explore the nightmares he’d learned about while she had been one of his students. He wouldn’t have wanted her to relive the horror of that night if he’d known.

  “You’re not her legal guardian,” he said. “So I can’t discuss her situation with you.”

  “Situation?”

  He sighed. “You were always persistent ... with others,” he said. “When it came to your own life . . .”