When I roused again, I was back on the porch. The bloody knife dropped from my unsteady hand.
When did I pick it up?
“Anson?” I hurled my panic into the ocean breeze. The wind whipped my hair about face. I rubbed the wetness from my eyes, straining to see far down the beach against the mid-day sun. But only sand and surf stretched into the horizon in both directions. Then my eyes locked on the crimson stains on my hands. I backed up, trying to escape the blood evidence. My foot caught on a loose board and I flailed, falling backward off the edge of the porch. A loud crack echoed in the night as my head hit the wood deck.
****
My isolation was complete. Hunger rumbled in my stomach. My hands rubbed one over the other in an endless cycle of scrubbing. I perched on the edge of a deck chair, the knife on the table next to me. The blade mesmerized me, holding my attention for long minutes, maybe even hours. After I could bear to gaze at it no longer, I dragged myself to the bedroom.
The sheets lay crumpled, just as I had left them that morning. The far-off squall of an approaching storm rumbled across the ocean as I fell onto the bed. The display on the clock blinked six thirty something. I shifted from my right side to my left. The aching pulse of my head wound ceased for a moment then resumed its throbbing.
As the sun went down, the house grew dark. I longed for light. I stared at the lamp but made no move to turn it on. Lightning flashed. Thunder boomed. Night fell quiet around me for a brief moment before footsteps thudded on the hardwood floor. My fingers clutched the sheet beneath me. I opened my mouth and closed it. The memory of the bloody knife stopped me from calling Anson’s name.
Someone wanted me to pick up the knife. Someone wanted me to use the knife.
I tiptoed toward the open bedroom door. A shadow moved down the hallway and through the entrance to the front room. Sliding along the bare wall, I crept closer to the front of the cabin and grabbed something heavy from the foyer. An umbrella stand. My knuckles glowed white where I gripped my makeshift weapon.
I gained the front room and peeked around the corner. Shadows formed and dissolved and formed again, disappearing into the kitchen on the other side of the cottage. When I inched my head around the doorframe, the kitchen was empty. A flash of lightning illuminated the room for one brief moment before dousing the cottage in total darkness once again. I retreated to the front room. Footfalls clunked on the hardwood behind me. I twirled and stared into the darkened hallway. A loud thump echoed from the bedroom. I stifled a gasp and froze. My muscles cramped in my calves from standing still so long.
No sound penetrated the dark night. I backed out of the house through the front door and bumped into someone. I screamed. She screamed. I dropped the umbrella stand as lightning from the approaching storm flashed across her face. “Marnie? What are you doing here?” I asked, placing my hand over my heart to slow its frenetic beating.
“Where’s Daddy?”
I shook my head, more to regain my composure than to reply in the negative. “I don’t know. I woke up this morning and he was gone.”
“So you’re saying you don’t know where he is?” Her suspicion was palpable.
I was too weary to play nice. “That’s what I said.”
“So why didn’t you go back home?”
Indignation ripped through me, beginning in the soles of my feet and exploding out of my mouth. “How? The car’s gone. My purse is gone. My cell phone is gone. I’ve been deserted out here. He left me with nothing, just like he left me alone the night—” I stopped, not willing to divulge more than I wanted her to know. “I’m afraid something happened to him.”
“You expect me to believe he just left without saying goodbye?” She pushed past me into the cottage.
I stepped into the doorway behind her. “We were talking…that’s the last thing I remember. When I woke up this morning, he was gone. I don’t feel so good. I think he might have given me something…” Verbalizing my suppressed fears opened the floodgates. Panic crawled over me.
“Maybe this will refresh your memory.” She pulled the bloody knife from behind her back. The tip of the silver blade reflected in the shimmering moonlight. “Did you kill him…just like you killed my mother?”
A flash illuminated the scene. Thunder crackled outside the cottage. My fingers spasmed and twitched. “I didn’t kill your mother.”
“I think you did.”
“Anson doesn’t think I killed her. Why do you?”
“Of course he doesn’t believe you killed her. He’ll make up whatever he wants to protect his mistress.” Malicious intent—thoughts of murder—flashed in her eyes.
“He didn’t cheat on her. She cheated on him.”
“Liar.” The knife glimmered in her hand—poised for the kill.
I stepped backward and bumped into the doorframe. My head hit the wood trim. I winced and pressed my hand against the not-yet-healed wound in my scalp. She stepped forward, never taking her eyes off mine.
The knife hovered over my heart. I pushed my hand into her chest. My defense found words. “That’s what Claire told me before she died. She cheated on him with…” I slapped my hand over my mouth.
“With who?” she asked with mounting hysteria, as if she already knew. “With who?”
“Price,” I whispered.
She lowered the knife, the weapon wobbling in her shaky hand. “Are you sure my mother told you that…and not Price?”
“Price hasn’t told me anything!” I shouted, trying to penetrate her desire to punish me for her mother’s misdeeds.
She dropped the knife with a grunt and a miserable groan. Panic glowed in her eyes.
“You know that Sudha tried to kill me, don’t you?” I asked.
She stepped back from me. “So? What does that have to do with—”
“She was your mother’s housekeeper. Claire was poisoned. Sudha must have given her an overdose of some drug. Just like she tried to overdose me.”
“Momma was poisoned?” She looked away from me as if peering into a far-distant past.
“Yes!” I screamed to regain her undivided attention.
She turned to me once again. “Who told you that?” she asked, spewing her disbelief.
“Brandon Sairs.”
Her keen gaze grazed over me. “Is he going to arrest her?”
“No. She’s dead.”
“Dead?” Her breath left her in a gush of unbelief. “Did you kill Sudha?”
“I’ve never killed anyone.” I grabbed her shirtfront. “Listen to me. I haven’t done anything to your father. I wouldn’t. Don’t you understand? I want him alive. I
need
him alive.”
Rhonda’s memory barged into my consciousness. Another stormy night. My hands gripping Jackson’s shirtfront as I screamed similar words…
“Don’t you understand? He’ll never betray you. You have to let him live. I need him alive.”
“But you will, won’t you, Rhonda?” Jackson asked, no mercy in his eyes. “You’ll betray me.”
Just as Jennifer’s psyche reasserted itself, the shadows in the hallway came to life. Marnie took a header face first onto the hardwood floor. Her jaw made a horrible crack on impact. Her breath swooshed from her in one enormous gush. Her hand bumped the knife. It skittered across the floor and bounced against the wood trim. I stared at the weapon in the fractured light but couldn’t move toward it.
My nightmares coalesced and emerged from the shadows in the hall. “You disappoint me, Jennifer,” Jackson taunted from across the room. “I thought for sure you would use the knife and spare me the trouble of killing you.”
“Spare you the trouble?” I asked, my lips trembling. His eyes flicked toward the knife, inches from his feet. He looked me in the eye before slowly lowering his gaze to my chest. I shuddered at the idea he wanted me to stab myself. “Why would I do that?”
He advanced a few steps into the room. “Because you can’t stand the thought of what you did, can you?”
His face blurred. I wiped my eyes, hoping this was only a nightmare, hoping my subconscious would force me into wakefulness soon. The horror remained, standing in front of me with death in his eyes.
“What did I do?” I whispered.
“Don’t you remember?”
Without warning, Jackson sprawled on the floor, Marnie’s foot tangling his legs. She struggled to break free, but he tightened his legs around her ankle. My body moved with no order from my brain. The umbrella stand crashed on his head. I stared at it in my hands, everything moving very fast and very slow, swirling around me.
Marnie jumped to her feet and pulled me toward the door. “Move, Jennifer!” she screamed in my ear.
I startled and responded before she dragged me with her onto the porch and down the steps toward her car. Rain slanted in sheets across the wet dunes. A gust of wind whipped my hair about my face, pushing grains of sand into the corners of my eyes. I swiped at the grit. My eyes stung from the abrasive assault. Marnie’s free hand cupped the handle of her car door. She stopped and stared. Slashed tires puddled on the ground beneath the wheel wells. She dropped my hand and kicked the car, grunting her outrage. The front door slammed open against the white clapboard siding. Her Manolo stiletto dropped from her foot. She yanked it from the ground and flung it across the shell track. I swiveled on my heel just as Jackson lunged at us with the knife.
Chapter Sixteen
“Come on,” Marnie yelled over the storm, pulling and tugging me down the beach. The sand dragged at my feet, but she continued her insistent forward motion.
Jackson struggled, panting and swearing behind us, the knife clutched in his grip, blood dripping from the gash the umbrella stand had made in his forehead. When he was a mere two or three steps behind us, he tripped, sprawling on the water’s edge. Turning toward my tormentor, I halted in my tracks, causing Marnie to pitch forward onto the beach.
Wet sand covered most of Jackson’s face as he looked up from the pounding surf. Our eyes met. Jackson smirked. “Run, Jennifer. Run as fast as you can.” He rose to his feet, an angry tower of malevolence. The rising wind whipped his loose shirt around his torso.
Marnie yelled something at me, struggling to rise from the shifting beach beneath her. My mind tuned her out. My eyes locked onto a large piece of driftwood. I lifted it above my head. As I approached him, he brandished the knife.
“Where is he?” I demanded, ignoring the danger in his hand.
“Jennifer, what are you doing?” Marnie hollered.
I growled, low and mean. “Where is Anson?”
Marnie’s hand brushed my elbow just as Jackson and I closed on each other—the piece of wood over my shoulder, ready to strike.
“I want to know what you did to my husband.”
He sneered. I swung and missed. He lunged and tripped, his face contorted with anger, his head wound gushing rivers of black-red blood. I stomped the hand that held the knife and slapped the tree branch against the open cut in his forehead. He writhed and screamed.
“Where is he? What did you do to him?” I asked as I stepped back to regain my balance.
He pushed his free hand against the bleeding gash. A wicked smile spread across his face. “He left you.” He struggled to rise, but I kicked him hard in the side. Once again, he hit the sand.
“You’re lying. You should be a better liar. You’ve had enough practice.” I stabbed my opinion at him as if driving the pointed comment into his heart. A direct hit. He didn’t flinch or bother to deny it.
Marnie pleaded with words I couldn’t discern. I knocked her hands away from me, determined to break him and make him talk. “Tell me where he is, you…” A crashing wave drowned my words and dragged Jackson toward the unrelenting surf, tossing and bumping him along the wavy line of water. I stumbled, losing my balance.
When the tide left the beach for a moment, he settled into a hollow in the sand. His hand was empty. I lifted the branch again. My toes clutched at the unstable ground, the waterlogged sand sucking at my feet, my ankles covered in murky water. The tide broke over his body, covering his face. He spewed water from his mouth. His chest expanded and contracted with his struggle to live.
I considered ending his life.
Who would know but Marnie?
I turned toward her.
Yes, who would know but her?
“Don’t do it, Jennifer,” she insisted in my ear. “Don’t. If you do this, you’ll be no better than him.”
My mind retained its muddy consistency. Shocked and dazed. Scared. Filled with fear and pain. “I just want to know what he did to Anson.”
“Me too,” she replied. She tugged at my shirtsleeve. “If you kill him, he’ll never be able to tell us anything.”
“I want to, but I can’t.” I knew in my soul—Jennifer’s soul—he deserved to die, but it was Rhonda’s soul that demanded retribution. I looked down at Jennifer’s hands, constricting into claw-like vises and then relaxing. I pressed my right hand against my forehead. “I have to stop him. I can’t let him kill me twice.”
“What do you mean twice?” Marnie frowned.
“Nothing. Forget it,” I said, my mind skittering, my thoughts bouncing around willy-nilly, searching wildly for a sane place to rest.
Marnie shook me, insistent and demanding, pushing me toward action. “Help me.”
I blinked at her, uncomprehending.
Why won’t she stop shifting and dissolving?
When her features reset, the image of another woman’s face zoomed across the landscape of my tortured mind. My lips formed a word, but no sound came from my mouth.