The Runaway

by Lisa Childs

  In the downstairs powder room of the boardinghouse, Whit splashed some cold water on his face to cool off his anger over the senseless death of a girl he’d never met. But she was a part of Rosemary, so he felt like he knew her. He imagined she’d been like her mother had been as a girl, the girl that he had fallen for so long ago. Genevieve had been too young to die—way too young.

  Regret that he’d never met her added to the pain gripping him. If he hadn’t been such a coward all those years ago when he’d let Mrs. Walcott’s threats chase him away, he might have been a part of her life. Or she might never have had a life . . . if he hadn’t left that night.

  At least there was that ... at least Genevieve would be spared from ever learning how she’d been conceived. Because that was a pain and guilt he always carried. But that was nothing in comparison to what Rosemary was suffering. He needed to be with her, but when he stepped into the hall, he found her waiting for him.

  “Are you okay?” she asked with concern.

  “I should be asking you that,” he said.

  “You have,” she said. “Ever since that session in Dr. Cooke’s off ice.” She sighed. “Was that only this morning?”

  He nodded. “I can’t believe it either. So much has happened.. . .” So much since that moment she’d stormed into his office ...

  “Yes,” she said.

  In awe, he studied her. “How are you still standing?” he wondered. “You’ve been through so much.”

  She shrugged.

  “Let me take you home,” he said.

  She gestured at the foyer. “You did. You brought me back here.”

  “This isn’t home.”

  Her lips curved into a slight smile. “It is for now.”

  He shook his head. “There’s nothing here for you now.”

  “I don’t know that,” she said. “I don’t know that the body the sheriff found is Genevieve.”

  Whit opened his mouth, then closed it, uncertain of what to say. He didn’t want to push her, not with as fragile as she had to be right now—after the day she’d had. All he could do was murmur her name. “Rosemary . . .”

  “I know,” she assured him. “It probably is her—since nobody else had been reported missing. But if I hadn’t kept at the sheriff and the hall, Genevieve wouldn’t have been reported missing either. So maybe somebody else slipped through the cracks.”

  “Cracks?” he asked. “More like negligence, on the part of the hall and the local authorities.” The body should have been recovered long before the coyotes had found and desecrated it. He grimaced thinking of what the sheriff must have seen.

  Fortunately, he hadn’t allowed Rosemary to look at it—even after it had been brought up from the ravine in a black body bag. The bag had looked just about empty and the medical examiner and his assistant had carried it as if it had weighed very little.

  “I don’t know what really happened,” Rosemary said,

  “and I’m not leaving until I find out.”

  “It’s too dangerous for you to stay,” he said. His anger surged back as he remembered her dangling from that cliff. If she had slipped ...

  Her broken body would have been zipped into one of the coroner’s bags, too.

  He stepped closer to her and lowered his voice so that the Pierce sisters wouldn’t overhear him before saying, “Someone’s been trying to kill you.” He didn’t want to worry the older ladies any more than they already were.

  Rosemary shrugged. “Kill me? Or scare me off?” she asked. “And the only reason to do that was because of what the sheriff found today, to keep anyone from finding that body. But now that she’s been found, I’m safe.” Tears glistened in her eyes. “I feel guilty even saying that.”

  “You didn’t hurt that girl,” he said. “Maybe nobody did. Maybe it was an accident like the sheriff suggested.”

  “The sheriff wants to think everything’s an accident,” she said.

  “Well, that would make his job easier,” Whit pointed out.

  “But if it was an accident, nobody would care that the body was found, they wouldn’t have been trying to scare me off.”

  “Unless they wanted to avoid a scandal,” he said. “Seems like the hall has the most to lose. You need to stay away from that place. It’s too dangerous for you to go back there, for you to even stay here on the island.”

  “If that’s Genevieve . . .” Her voice cracked with emotion, but she drew in a deep breath and steadied it before continuing, “I won’t stop until I find out what happened to her.” She sighed. “And if it’s not Genevieve . . .”

  “Then she’s out there somewhere,” he said.

  “Dead or alive?” she asked.

  He closed his arms around her. He couldn’t leave her now—not like this. She was still upset, just trying very hard to be strong. For herself? Or for him? “We’ll find out,” he said. “We’ll just have to wait for the DNA results to come back.”

  She shook her head. “Not we. Just me.”

  “It could take a while,” he warned her—even though he intended to make some calls like he had for that warrant. “You’ll want to be home.”

  She shook her head. “I gave up my job when I took the one at the hall. And I can give up my apartment any time. My lease has been month to month for the past year. That’s not home.”

  “Then come home with me,” he suggested.

  Her eyes widened, and she sucked in a breath. “Whit . . .”

  Heat rushed to his face. “I know it’s soon—”

  “Too soon,” she said. “We barely know each other.”

  “I know you.”

  “You know the girl I was nearly two decades ago,” she said. “And you feel bad because of what we learned today. That wasn’t your fault. I wasn’t your responsibility then and I’m not now.”

  “I cared about you then,” he said. “And I still do.” He lifted his hand to her face and ran his fingertips along her jaw. Her skin was cool, chilled yet from all her time outside, and so damn silky. “I can stay a while longer. . . .”

  But he would have to leave her here eventually. Alone and vulnerable . . .

  And that scared him—not just for her sake but for his. He didn’t want to lose Rosemary again.

  * * *

  Despite the fire burning high in the hearth, Rosemary couldn’t get warm. The chill had penetrated too deeply into her flesh, into her bones. But not her heart ...

  That held hope yet—hope that that body wasn’t Genevieve’s. And hope that Whit cared about her. It wasn’t fair to want him involved though. He’d already lost so much; he couldn’t lose his career, too, over her.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  She jumped, startled that she was no longer alone. Not that she had been alone for long; he’d barely left her side since they’d returned from the hall. She turned to find him in the parlor with her. He’d removed his suit jacket and rolled up the sleeves of his dress shirt—probably because he’d insisted on helping the sisters with the dinner dishes.

  She should have, too, but he’d insisted she warm herself by the fire he’d built. He joined her at the fire now, sliding his arm around her to offer comfort. She felt more than that as a wave of gratitude rushed over her. And desire ...

  She cared about him. So much ...

  She wrapped her arms around his lean waist and rose on tiptoe to press her mouth to his. He tasted like the tea the sisters had served after dinner, tart with lemon and ginger but also sweet from the snickerdoodles that had accompanied the tea. Bonita had, no doubt, made sure he had some more when he’d helped with the dishes. Her lips curved into a smile against his.

  He kissed her back, gently, as if afraid that she might break.

  She lifted her fingers to his jaw, to which light stubble clung. But even the faint stubble had her flinching. Her fingers were scraped and chafed from clinging to that rock. If Whit hadn’t showed up when he had, she would have died ... like the girl in the ravine.

  “Thank you
,” she murmured.

  He pulled back. “For what?”

  “You saved my life earlier today,” she said. All these years she’d thought she’d been wrong to crush on and idolize him when they were kids, but she’d had every reason to fall for him then. Even more reasons now ...

  But she couldn’t. For his sake as much as hers. With his campaign for governor starting, he couldn’t afford to get sucked into her drama. “You need to leave,” she said.

  “Not without you,” he said.

  “I’ll be fine,” she said. “Now that the body’s been found, there’s no reason for anyone to try to stop a search of the property.” Unless that body wasn’t Genevieve’s and even though her mind had doubts, her heart ached to believe that her daughter was still alive. She couldn’t give up yet—not when she’d given her up too easily before.

  He sighed, his breath stirring her hair. “If the person didn’t want the body to be found, it was probably because the girl didn’t die of an accident. She was killed—just like someone has tried to kill you. You need to leave with me.”

  She shook her head. “I can’t. I have an obligation—”

  “You can quit that job at the hall,” he said.

  “An obligation to Genevieve,” she said. “If that body is hers, I need to find out what has happened to her. And if it isn’t, then I need to find her. And I have to stay at the hall in order to do that.” Before he could argue with her, she laid her hand on his chest, over his heart, which thumped heavily beneath her palm. “And you need to return to your life, to the bench, and to the campaign you’ll be starting soon.”

  “But—”

  She pressed her fingers over his lips. “You’ve already done more than you should have. You’ve no obligation to me. We haven’t seen each other for nearly two decades.”

  “That was a mistake,” he said. “Your mother—”

  “I don’t want to talk about her,” she said. “Even if that night had never happened, we might have lost touch with each other. We were just kids back then.”

  “We’re not kids anymore,” he said. “And what we have—”

  “Is guilt. You feel guilty over leaving me that night,” she said. “But you had no choice.”

  “Then,” he said. “I had no choice. But now—”

  “You have no choice now either,” she said. “You have a life and obligations, and so do I.” She couldn’t see any way to combine those lives and obligations. Not now. Probably not ever ...

  He stopped arguing, so he must have come to the same conclusion she had. They had no future together.

  Just as Genevieve had no future ... if that body was hers. And if it wasn’t, where the hell was she?

  * * *

  The years slipped away every time he stepped inside this house, making him feel like a scared little kid again. Hell, everything about this place had scared him. The ruins of the manor ...

  The dilapidated state of this ivy-covered brick house that had once belonged to the caretaker.

  He was most afraid of the man who lived here: James Bainesworth. But Elijah’s fear was of becoming anything like him. James Bainesworth was his grandfather.

  A door creaked open, and a gust of cold air blew into the foyer and through Elijah. Bode walked in, shaking snow from his hair. When he moved his head, he flinched, though.

  “What’s wrong?” Elijah asked him. “Hangover?”

  Bode grimaced and glared at him. “I don’t drink, and you know it. Do you also know that somebody hit me over the head earlier today—when I went back to my place to grab something?”

  Elijah shook his head. “Of course I didn’t know that. Did you call the police?”

  “They were a little busy,” Bode said. “And the last thing we need is them hanging around any more than they’re already going to be.”

  “But don’t you want to know who hit you?”

  Bode shrugged. “Probably that groundskeeper I fired.”

  “You didn’t show him off the property after firing him?”

  “He had to get his stuff from the bunk cabin he was staying in,” Bode explained. “But once I regained consciousness I went looking for him. He was gone then.”

  “Regained consciousness?” Concern rushing over him, Elijah stepped closer to his brother. “Are you okay? Did you go to the hospital and get checked for a concussion?”

  “I’m fine,” Bode said. “Or as fine as I can be with the police crawling all over the property.”

  “The sheriff found a body,” Elijah reminded him. He’d called to tell him, and Bode had insisted they needed to come here—to Grandfather’s house.

  “Found?” Bode asked. “Are you sure? Was anyone with him?”

  Elijah furrowed his brow. “You think he planted it?”

  “You know Deacon Howell better than I do,” Bode said. He was almost ten years younger than Elijah and Deacon, and that decade felt like an entire generation on the island. “He seems to have a habit of finding bodies here.”

  Elijah sighed. “The other one was his wife.”

  “Exactly.”

  “I don’t know,” he admitted. “I don’t know what to think.”

  Bode narrowed his eyes again with the same suspicion he’d showed earlier. Could he have thought—for even a moment—that Elijah would have struck him over the head? But then Elijah didn’t entirely trust him either. He suspected Bode knew more about Genevieve Walcott than he’d admitted.

  “I don’t know either,” Bode said. “I just know that we need to tell him.” He pointed toward the staircase that wound up to the second story.

  Elijah shook his head. “No. We don’t. The hall has nothing to do with him.” Elijah intended to keep it that way—after what their grandfather had done at the manor.

  Bode snorted. “Everything has to do with him. And you don’t think he’ll find out? You don’t think he has that nurse of his spying on us? You don’t think he already knows everything that happens here? His body might be failing him, but his mind is as sharp as ever.”

  His brother was right. But maybe it would have been more merciful for Grandfather’s mind to fail him rather than his body, though. Then he’d be able to forget what he’d done. Not that it seemed to bother him. He left his guilt for the rest of his family to bear.

  “He’s ready to see you now,” a deep voice called down from the top of the stairs. The burly, middle-aged guy looked more like a bodybuilder than a nurse. Elijah wondered who had hired him—Bode or Grandfather?

  “You’re here,” Bode remarked to the man as he climbed the stairs.

  “Of course,” the nurse replied.

  Bode snorted. “You weren’t here earlier today when I checked on him.”

  Apparently, Bode spent far more time with their grandfather than he did. Elijah waited for a pang of guilt, but it was only unease. Why did his brother spend so much time here? With such a . . .

  “Your grandfather had sent me on an errand for him,” the man explained.

  “He sends you off on a lot of errands,” Bode remarked, and his eyes narrowed with suspicion again as he stared at the male nurse.

  The man was not intimidated. Technically he didn’t work for the hall, though. Maybe that was why he wasn’t intimidated, or maybe it was because he was older than Bode, even older than Elijah, and a lot bigger than both of them. He just shrugged. “You know your grandfather can be demanding.”

  And exhausting . . .

  Every meeting with the elderly man exhausted Elijah. As he joined his brother at the top of the steps, he noticed the dark circles rimming the nurse’s eyes. So he suggested, “Maybe we should hire another nurse.”

  Both the nurse and Bode responded with a resounding, “No!”

  Bode turned toward Elijah. “Theo is the only nurse Grandfather hasn’t run off. Unless you want to take care of him . . .”

  Elijah glared at his brother, who must have been more aware than he’d realized of Elijah’s feelings for the Bainesworth patriarch.


  “Where the hell are they?” a voice boomed from the doorway near the stairwell.

  The nurse stepped back and so did Bode, allowing Elijah to enter first. He didn’t want to; he never wanted to, but just like with every other visit he’d made here, he forced himself to step into his grandfather’s room—into his grandfather’s presence. But for the faint glow of a lamp, the room was dark with heavy drapes at the windows and heavy wood on the walls and floor and even the coffered ceiling. But the darkness wasn’t limited to just the room; it radiated from the man as well. Despite his age and physical frailty, he was still pretty damn intimidating. His big body was folded into a wheelchair, his shoulders and head bowed as if he carried a heavy burden.

  And he did. Or he should ...

  But as he had so many times before, Elijah wondered if his grandfather felt anything at all. But contempt. It was in his eyes—eyes as pale a gray as Elijah’s—when he looked at his grandsons.

  “You can spare me a visit?” he asked, his thin lips curling.

  “I was here earlier today,” Bode said.

  “I’m not talking to you,” Grandfather said, his gaze sharp on Elijah’s face. “I’m talking to Dr. Cooke.” The contempt was in his voice now, too, which was strong and deep despite his age. The son of a bitch was ninety-two years old. But he never forgot or forgave a damn thing.

  Hating that he felt like a little kid again making excuses, he said, “I have been busy, Grandfather.”

  The old man snorted dismissively.

  “He has,” Bode said, surprisingly coming to his defense. “There’s been a lot going on up at the hall.”

  The old man nodded. “I know.”

  Of course he did. Bode was right about him having the nurse spy on them. Or maybe James Bainesworth saw it all firsthand from that bedroom window. The carpet was worn in that spot from the wheels of his chair, as if it was often parked there.

  “Then do you know what was found today?” Elijah asked. Maybe they didn’t even have to tell him.

  But the gray-haired head shook now.