Authors: Nora Roberts
“That’s brilliant. I’m marrying a very wise woman. But we’ll have to take the picture tonight. We’re getting married tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow? But—”
“Here,” he said, as he turned her into his arm. “Quietly, in the garden. I’ve taken care of most of the details, and will get to the rest this afternoon.”
“But my grandmother—”
“I spoke with her. She and Cecil will be staying another night. They’ll be here.”
“I haven’t had time to buy a dress or—”
“Your grandmother mentioned that, and hoped you’d be receptive to wearing the one she wore when she married your grandfather. She’s running up to Florence to get it this afternoon. She said it would mean a lot to her.”
“Thought of everything, didn’t you?”
“Yes. Do you have a problem with that?”
“We’re going to have lots of problems with that over the next fifty or sixty years, but just now? No.”
“Good. Lilah’s baking a cake. J.R.’s bringing a case of champagne. The idea brightened him considerably.”
“Thank you.”
“Since you’re grateful, I’ll just add, Aunt Rosie plans to sing.”
“Don’t tell me.” She drew back. “Let’s not spoil the moment. Well, since everyone has approved the schedule and the details, who am I to object? Have you arranged for the honeymoon, too?” She saw him wince and rolled her eyes. “Cade, really.”
“You’re not going to argue about a trip to Paris, are you? Of course not.” He gave her a quick kiss before she could. “You might want to close the shop for a few days, but Boots really liked the idea of running it for you, and Faith had some ideas.”
“Oh God.”
“But that’s up to you.”
“Thank you very much.” She pushed a hand through her hair. “My head’s spinning. We’ll discuss all this when I get back.”
“Sure. I’m flexible.”
“The hell you are,” she muttered. “You just pretend to be.” She shifted the basket of flowers, handed him the
shears. “Don’t start naming the children while I’m gone.”
Exasperating man, she thought, as she slid into her car and set the basket of flowers on the seat. Planning their wedding behind her back. Planning exactly the sort of wedding she wanted, too.
How irritating, and how lovely, to be known that well.
So why wasn’t she relaxed? As she turned onto the road, she shifted her shoulders. She just couldn’t quite break through the tension. Understandable, she reminded herself. She’d been through a hideous ordeal. She couldn’t imagine getting married within twenty-four hours with so much still tied up inside her.
But she wanted to begin. She wanted to close this door and open the next. She glanced at the flowers beside her. Maybe she was about to.
She pulled off onto the side of the road, where Hope had once parked her bike. And climbing out, she crossed the little bridge where tiger lilies burst into storybook bloom, then took the path she knew her friend had taken that night.
Hope Lavelle, girl spy.
The rain had turned to steam, and the steam rose out of the ground in curling fingers that broke apart, then twined together again around her ankles. The air was thick with wet, with green, with rot. Mysteries waiting to be solved.
As she approached the clearing, she wished she’d thought to bring some wood. Everything would be too damp to start a fire, and perhaps it was foolish to want to in all the heat. But she wished she’d thought of it, and could have laid one, the way Hope had.
Just thinking of it, remembering it, she caught a drift of smoke.
There was the fire, small and carefully built to burn low, a little circle of flame with long, sharpened sticks beside it waiting for marshmallows.
She blinked once, to clear the vision. But the fire simmered, and the smoke puffed sluggishly in the mist. Dazed, Tory stepped into the clearing, the basket tipping to spill out flowers at her feet.
“Hope?” She pressed a hand to her heart, almost to make sure it continued to beat. But the marble child who’d been her friend stood in her pool of flowers and said nothing.
With a trembling hand, she picked up one of the sticks and saw that the cuts to sharpen it were fresh.
Not a dream, not a flashback. But here and now. Real.
Not Hope. Never again Hope.
The pressure rose up in her, a hot gush of fear, and of knowledge.
In the brush came a rustling, wet and sly.
She whirled toward it.
Password.
She thought it, heard it sound in her head. But she wasn’t Hope. She wasn’t eight. And dear God, it wasn’t over after all.
Cade was in the garden deciding where they should set up tables for the wedding reception when Chief Russ pulled in.
“Glad you’re here. I just got news I thought you should know.”
“Come on inside where it’s cool.”
“No, I gotta get back, but I wanted to tell you in person. We got ballistic reports on Sarabeth Bodeen. The gun she was killed with wasn’t the same one Bodeen had with him. Not even the same caliber.”
Cade felt one quick knock of dread. “I’m not sure I understand.”
“Turns out the one Bodeen had when he broke in on Tory and your sister was stolen from a house about fifteen miles south of here, on the morning Tory’s mother was killed. House was broken into between nine and ten A.M. that same day.”
“How can that be?”
“Only way it could be is if Bodeen spouted wings and flew down here from Darlington County or if somebody else put those bullets in Miz Bodeen.”
Carl D. cupped a hand over his chin, rubbed it hard. His eyes burned with fatigue. “I’ve been in touch with those federals, and I’m piecing it together. The phone records
show Miz Bodeen got a call just after two that morning, from the pay phone outside the Winn-Dixie north of town here. Now, we were figuring that would’ve been Bodeen calling her from here, telling her he was coming for her. That’s fine as far as it goes. But it don’t fit when you add the rest.”
“It had to be Bodeen calling her. Why else would she have packed up?”
“I can’t say. But you’ve got him calling from here at ‘round about two in the morning, getting up there, doing the shooting between five and five-thirty, then heading back here and moving south another fifteen miles, breaking into a house and stealing a gun, a bottle, and some leftover supper. Now, why would the man be zigzagging back and forth thataway?”
“He was crazy.”
“I won’t argue with that, but being crazy doesn’t make him able to all but break land and speed records in one morning. ‘Specially since it doesn’t look like he had any kind of vehicle. Now, I’m not saying it couldn’t be done. I’m saying it don’t make sense.”
“What kind of sense does it make otherwise? Who else would have killed Tory’s mother?”
“I can’t answer that. I gotta work with facts here. He had the wrong gun, we got nothing to show the man had a car. Now, could be we’ll find one yet, and the gun that he used on his wife. That could be.”
He took his handkerchief out of his pocket, wiped the back of his neck. “But it appears to me, if Bodeen didn’t do those murders up in Darlington County, maybe he didn’t kill anyone. That means whoever did is still walking free. I was hoping to have a talk with Tory.”
“She’s not here. She’s—” White hot fear burned through his belly. “She’s gone to Hope.”
Tory opened herself, tried to feel him, gauge him. But all she saw was dark. Cold, blank dark. The rustling moved in a circle, a taunting. She turned with it, even as the saliva dried up in her mouth, she turned to face it head-on.
“Which of us did you want that night? Or did it matter?”
“It was never you. Why would I want you? She was beautiful.”
“She was a child.”
“True.” Dwight stepped out in the clearing. “But so was I.”
It broke her heart. One quick snap. “You were Cade’s friend.”
“Sure. Cade and Wade, like twins themselves. Rich and privileged and handsome. And I was their chubby little token. Dwight the Dweeb. Well, I fooled them all, didn’t I?”
He’d have been twelve, she thought, staring at the easy smile on his face. No more than twelve years old. “Why?”
“Call it a rite of passage. They were always first. One or the other of them, always first in everything. I was going to be the first one to have a girl.”
Amusement—it couldn’t be anything but amusement—danced in his eyes. “Not that I could brag on it. Kinda like being Batman.”
“Oh God, Dwight.”
“Hard for you to see that, you being a female. We’ll call it a guy thing. I had a bad itch. Why shouldn’t it have been my good friend Cade’s precious sister I used to scratch it?”
He spoke so calmly, so casually, that the birds continued to sing, liquid notes that ran like tears.
“I didn’t know I was going to kill her. That just … happened. I’d snuck some of my daddy’s whiskey. Drink like a man, you know? My mind was a little fuzzy.”
“You were only twelve. How could you want such a thing?”
He circled the clearing, not really coming closer, just stalking, a patient, anticipatory cat and mouse. “I used to watch the two of you, skinny-dipping, or sprawled out here on your bellies telling secrets. So’d your old man,” he said with a grin. “You might say I was inspired by him. He wanted you. Your old man wanted to fuck you, all right, but he didn’t have the guts. I was better than him, better than any of them. I proved it that night. I was a man that night.”
Town mayor, proud father, devoted husband, loyal friend. What kind of madness could hide so well? “You raped and murdered a child. That made you a man?”
“All my life I heard, ‘Be a man, Dwight.’” The amusement died out of his eyes so they turned cold and blank. “For Christ’s sake, be a man. Can’t be a man if you’re a virgin, can you? And no girl would look twice at me. I fixed that. That night changed my life. Look at me now.”
He spread his arms, stepped closer, watching her. “I got confidence, got myself in shape, and didn’t I end up with the prettiest girl in Progress? I got respect. A beautiful wife, a son. I got position. It all started that night.”
“All those other girls.”
“Why not? You can’t imagine what it’s like—or maybe you can. Yeah, maybe you can. You know how to feel it, don’t you? Their fear. While it’s happening I’m the most important person in the world to them. I
am
the world to them. There’s a hell of a kick to that.”
She thought of running. The idea whipped in and out of her mind. And she saw the gleam in his eyes, saw he was waiting for her to do just that. Deliberately she slowed her breathing, opened herself. There was the blankness again, like a pit, but around the edges was a kind of ugly hunger.
Recognizing it, anticipating it, was the only weapon she had. “You didn’t even know them. Dwight, they were strangers to you.”
“I just imagine they’re Hope, and it’s that first night all over again. They’re nothing but tramps and losers until I make them into her.”
“It wasn’t the same with Sherry.”
“I didn’t want to wait.” He shrugged. “Lissy isn’t much on sex these days. Can’t blame her. And that sexy little teacher, she wanted it. Wanted it from Wade though, stupid bitch. Well, she got it from me. She wasn’t quite right though. Not quite. Faith’s perfect.”
He saw Tory jolt. “Yeah, you’ve gotten pretty tight with Faith, haven’t you? I plan to be pretty tight with her myself. I was going to wait till August for her, got my little ritual, you know. But I’ll have to move things up. Oh, she’ll
be late, by the way. I talked Lissy into going over to see her, and I know my girl. She’ll keep Faith occupied just long enough.” “They’ll know this time, Dwight. You won’t be able to pass it off on someone else.”
“Your father sure did cooperate, didn’t he? Did I mention I was the one who killed your mother? Gave her a call, told her I was a friend and her loving husband was on his way to get her. It just seemed like a nice touch, one that kept the cops on his ass and let me sit back and watch with my concerned-mayor attitude.”
“She was nothing to you.”
“None of them was. Except Hope. And don’t you worry about me. Nobody’ll look to me. I’m an upstanding citizen, and right now I’m out at the mall buying a teddy bear for my unborn child. A big yellow bear. Lissy’s just going to love it.”
“I could never really feel you,” she murmured. “Because there’s nothing there to feel. You’re almost blank inside.”
“I wondered about that. Gave me some bad moments. I took your hand today, a kind of test, just to see. You got nothing from me. But you’re going to feel me, before we’re done. Why don’t you run, the way she did? You know how she ran, and called out. I’ll give you a chance.”
“No. I’ll give myself one.” Without an instant’s hesitation, she stabbed out with the stick, aiming for his eye.
When he screamed, she ran as Hope had done.
The moss tangled in her hair, slithering spider legs, and the ground sucked greedily at her feet. Her shoes slithered, tearing through soaked ferns as she batted viciously at branches.
She saw as Hope had seen, the two images blending into one. Hot summer night merging with steamy afternoon. And felt as Hope had felt, with her own fear and rage leaping just ahead of the childhood terror.
She heard as Hope had heard, the footsteps pounding behind her, the thrashing through the brush.
It was the rage that stopped her, that made her turn before
the intent was clear in her mind. It seared through her, black as pitch, as she charged him with teeth and claws.
Stunned by the sudden attack, half blind from the blood, he went down beneath her, howling as she sank her teeth into his shoulder. He struck out, felt the blow connect, but she clung like a burr, raking her nails down his face.
None of the others had been able to fight him, but she would. God, she would.
I am Tory.
The words were a battle cry ringing in her ears. She was Tory, and she would fight.
Even when his hands closed around her throat, she tore at him. When her vision grayed, when she was gasping for air, she used her fists.
Someone was shouting her name, wild, desperate calls that echoed inside the roar of blood in her head. She clawed at the hands around her throat, choking when the grip loosened. “I feel you now. Fear and pain. Now you know. Now you know, you bastard.”