Freefall (7 page)

Across the island from Swannsea, thirty-year-old Cleo Gibson was pulling into the driveway of a little white cottage set on stilts.

Being a highly practical woman—she was, after all, a no-nonsense emergency room RN at Somersett's St. Camillus Hospital—Cleo had never believed in love at first sight.

Until her frustrated real estate agent, after months of house hunting, had, in one last-ditch attempt to find something that would suit her picky client, brought her here.

Mine.

The thought had struck like lightning from a clear blue summer sky. The cottage, located on the edge of the marsh, had been listed by Sumner Realty and Development as a "fixer-upper." That, Cleo had discovered was Realtor-speak for "falling-down wreck."

But the badly peeling paint, sagging shutters, and rusting old car sitting on blocks in front of the cottage hadn't mattered. Neither had the fact that after inspecting the house, John Tremayne reported it needed a new roof, new wiring, new window glazing, new kitchen—well, just about new everything.

The house had spoken to her, as clearly as the voice of God booming from a burning bush.

But softer. More feminine.

Here you are
, it had murmured silkily as she climbed the rickety steps while the cautious agent stayed safely on the ground.
What took you so long? I've been waiting for you
.

The inside had looked even worse than the outside. But instead of the layers of water-stained, peeling wallpaper, Cleo had seen softly sponged walls of sea-glass green that would set off the white plantation shutters she would install. Ignoring the rat droppings on the scarred and pitted floor, she saw smooth hickory planks gleaming in the morning sun.

The views of the rolling dunes topped with sea oats, the glistening sand, and miles of Atlantic Ocean were well worth the cost and trouble it would take to make the home livable. And fortunately, not only was Cleo a practical woman, she was frugal.

After getting rid of that lazy, no-account husband—who'd blown his rare paycheck and too many of hers on those damn gambling cruise boats that were popping up like crabgrass all along the coast—she'd begun putting away money for her own place back on the island where she'd grown up.

Unfortunately, while Swann Island was still a long way from the rampant commercialization of Hilton Head or Kiawah, developers and tourists had begun to discover its beauty, which in turn had caused home values to escalate, nearly pricing her out of the market.

Until now.

She sat in the car for a moment, hands draped over the steering wheel, drinking in the sight of the pretty gray two-bedroom cottage with its sunshine-yellow shutters. Although she doubted she would ever remarry, she'd bought a wicker love seat for the porch and liked to imagine sitting in it on a summer's evening with a beau, sipping sweet tea and watching the lightning bugs flicker amid the star-shaped leaves of the sweet gum tree.

Mine.

She'd lived in the house during the renovation, which didn't prove as much of a problem as she had feared, given that she'd been pulling a lot of double shifts to pay for turning the poor battered beach shack into her dream house.

And recently, since Zachariah Tremayne had come home from the war, he had taken over a lot of the work from his father. Having that former Navy SEAL around to add to the scenery had certainly proven to be no hardship.

She did a little Carolina shag dance as she carried the bags up from the car. She'd spent her morning off at the Buccaneer Outlet Mall in Somersett, and damned if she hadn't snagged a pirate's booty.

Pretty white dinner plates and some purple towels for her bathroom, which was still lacking the soaking tub she dreamed of, but that would come soon. A little crystal dish to put seashells in, two fragrant sea grass baskets for the kitchen, and a trio of crocheted pillows to go on the white iron bed she'd found at a flea market in Charleston.

There were those at the hospital who thought she'd gone crazy. Not so much because she'd bought a home that needed extensive repair. Unlike some places, where people oohed and aahed over new and shiny, Lowcountry folks tended to appreciate the value of history.

What did worry her friends and colleagues was that she'd chosen to live in such an isolated location.

Which, as she'd explained, was exactly what she wanted. The ER was a beehive of activity. Some days, even if she had been able to steal time to stop and think amid all the hustle and bustle around her, she wouldn't have been able to hear her own thoughts.

But here, it was as if time stood still. The moment she returned home at the end of the day she could literally feel her muscles relaxing, her heart slowing, her racing mind beginning to calm.

She had to put down her packages to unlock the door, which she'd painted the bright blue color that her Gullah granny had always said kept away
haints
.

While Cleo had never considered herself the least bit superstitious, since no one had ever proven what, exactly, happens to spirits after death, covering all possible bases seemed the practical thing to do.

She put the baskets on the quartz countertop of the new kitchen island she'd had built, turned on the CD player, then, as the sound track from
Dreamgirls
began pouring out of the speakers, headed down the hall to put away her other treasures.

The bathroom counter held a trio of white candles and a glass jar of sand from what she liked to think of as
her
beach.

She'd hung the towels and filled the new bowl with the shells she'd collected and washed, when, just as Beyonce was complaining about not feeling at home in her own home, a state that Cleo could blessedly no longer identify with, she heard something—or someone—behind her.

She turned, her heart instinctively leaping into her throat when she saw the man standing in the doorway of her tidy bathroom.

Then it settled. There wasn't anything to be afraid of.

Except…

"What are you doing here?"

"I brought you a housewarming gift."

Which was nice.

But…

Gooseflesh rose on Cleo's arms. At the back of her neck. Although the temperature outside was in the nineties, with the humidity just as high, her skin turned to ice.

She may have been a nononsense, practical woman. But she still had a healthy dose of female intuition, and as Beyonce hit a high note, internal alarms began screeching.

"Well, isn't that sweet of you?"

Stay calm. Do not panic.

"Why don't we go back out into the living room and you can show me what you brought?"

"I'd rather show you here."

With an odd, detached smile that didn't reach his eyes, he pulled a piece of white cord from the front pocket of his jeans. The cord, she noticed through her shock, had been formed into a noose.

Okay, now it's time to worry.

When he grabbed her, long fingers curving around her throat, intending to loop the cord over her head, Cleo had only a fleeting second to decide whether to fight or to go along with the program and hope he'd come here to rape. Not kill.

It was what her mama had always told her to do. Her granny, on the other hand, who remembered when bad things could happen to people of color in this part of the country, had always counseled her to scream like hell and fight like the devil.

Deciding to go with Granny, Cleo grabbed the jar, threw the sand into his face, elbowed him in the ribs as his hands flew to his eyes, and pushed past him.

He was quick. Too quick.

He caught her in the living room and shoved her against the wall.

"You're a very naughty girl, Cleo," he said in a voice that was spookily calm under the circumstances. His eyes swam with moisture as they tried to wash out the scratchy sand. "I'm going to have to punish you for that misbehavior."

He pulled a knife from the same pocket that had held the cord and pressed it against her breast as he slipped the noose over her head, then tugged, tightening it around her neck.

"Now, we're going to walk back into that pretty green bedroom, and you're going to take off your clothes. Then I'm going to rape you."

Oh, God, she wanted to think that was all he had in mind. But this was no stranger danger attack like her colleagues had warned her about, worried about her living out here all alone.

This was someone she knew.

Someone she trusted.

How could he possibly let her get away to tell what he'd done?

As she made her way, with as much feigned meekness as she could muster, back to the bedroom, she suddenly remembered the newscast she'd heard on the car radio about the woman's body being found in the marsh.

And she knew that if she didn't come up with some plan, she would end up the same way.

"You don't have to rape me," she said in what she hoped was a convincingly smoky voice. "All you have to do is ask."

"But what fun would that be?" he asked reasonably. "Now, let's get those clothes off." His voice, which had been eerily pleasant, suddenly snapped like a whip.

He held the knife blade against her jugular as she unbuttoned her blouse, shrugged out of it, and let it fall to her lovely new floor. It wasn't easy shimmying out of her skirt while her entire body trembled, but she managed.

"Nice." His reptilian gaze crawled over her red panties and bra. Wearing sexy underwear beneath the ultilitarian scrubs she was forced to spend her days in made her feel more like a girl.

He sliced the bra away with a single flick of the knife. The panties went next.

"Very nice," he amended. "Now, be a good girl and lie down on the bed."

That weird smile faded and suddenly she found herself looking into the face of a very dangerous, very deadly, stone-cold killer.

Cleo lay on her back as instructed, breathing a bit easier when he released the noose long enough to start taking off his own clothes.

He'd laid the knife on the bedside table.

She thought about using it. Then thought about all the victims she'd seen over the years, people who'd tried to use a weapon against an attacker only to have it turned back on them. Often with fatal results.

She'd taken kickboxing and was stronger than most women her size, since lifting injured patients all day required some serious muscle, but she was still a foot shorter than he was. And at least fifty pounds lighter.

No. The knife was a bad idea.

Still, she thought, as she watched him roll the condom over his rampant erection, she did have one chance.

She waited as he lowered himself over her. Bit her lip as he surged into her, tearing dry tissue.

She could do this, Cleo assured herself as Beyonce and Eddie Murphy began stepping to the bad side. She could survive.

He was watching her as he plunged in and out, his cold eyes on hers, looking, she knew, for the fear he want to see there.

Wanting—needing—him to feel he was in control of the situation, she allowed the tears to flow.

Which, if the increased thrusts of his hips were any indication, only excited him more.

Salty drops of sweat were falling onto her face. Her breasts.

You will survive.

He came silently, without a word. Then crashed down on top of her, panting heavily, his slack mouth against her throat, momentarily letting down his guard.

Which was when she yanked open the drawer of the nightstand, pulled out a small canister, and even knowing that she would be blinded too, aimed the pepper spray at his face.

He leaped off her with a mighty roar.

"Bitch!" He was rubbing wildly at his red eyes with one hand, while slashing out with the knife he'd snatched up with the other. "Nigger cunt!"

Cleo was off the bed like a shot. Her own burning eyes were as useless as his, but she knew the layout of her house, where every stick of furniture was placed, which, she hoped, would give her an advantage.

She raced down the hall, past the kitchen, through the living room, out the door, onto the porch. Holding onto the railing, she found the stairs.

Unfortunately, the keys to the car were in her bag on the kitchen counter, but blinded as she was, she probably would've driven into the marsh anyway. Trying not to listen to the sound of footfalls clattering down the stairs behind her, she took off running toward the road, screeching at the top of her lungs.

She'd almost made it when he caught up enough to lunge for her flowing hair.

Cleo was pulled off her feet. She landed on her back on the sharp shell driveway.

He smelled of sex and sweat and fury as he hovered over her, his face dark with rage.

The knife blade flashed in the bright white light of the noonday sun.

Cleo felt the sharp burn as he buried the steel blade deep in her chest. Heard the sucking sound as he pulled it out.

Then, venting his fury, he stabbed her again.

And again.

And again.

One of the absolutes Sabrina had been able to count on while growing up was that whenever she returned to Swann Island, she would find it exactly the same as she'd left it. Which had been reassuring to the child she'd once been.

People talked slower here, so slow there were times it was almost impossible to understand them. They walked slower, too, pacing their entire life to an internal rhythm that only they seemed able to hear.

One thing visitors always commented on when first arriving on the island was the seeming scarcity of buildings. While the town wasn't nearly as large as the city of Somersett across the water, it did possess its share of homes, businesses, and, increasingly, resorts, vacation homes, and even a coastal golf course, where natural dunes gave an entirely new meaning to the notion of a sand trap.

But thanks to a cleverly orchestrated save-the-trees campaign spearheaded by Sabrina's grandmother back in the fifties, the lush green canopy that not only looked fabulous on postcards but also contributed to the survival of birds and other wildlife hadn't been allowed to be bulldozed and replaced with scrawny, look-alike nursery trees, as had been done on so many of the other neighboring barrier islands.

With local zoning laws prohibiting any building higher than the trees, homes and businesses were cleverly hidden behind thick green screens of oak, palmetto, laurel, hickory, red maple, and sweet gum.

Unfortunately, the acres of cotton, rice, and soybeans she'd once driven through to get to the village were being turned over to condo developments, and rows of what appeared to be vacation homes, all painted in pastels, perched on stilts overlooking the sea.

Even the former plantation belonging to her grandmother's cousin was being edged out by a gated golf course community named Plantation Shores, currently under construction. As much as Harlan Honeycutt loved the game, Sabrina doubted he was all that thrilled about that heavy machinery plowing up the field on the other side of their shared property line.

Although time might move slower on the island than on the mainland, even the village, which consisted of four narrow, tree-shaded streets arranged around a snowy-white wedding cake of a Victorian bandstand, had undergone some changes.

The Pop Shop, where she and Titania used to flirt with boys over Dr Pepper ice cream floats, was now a microbrewery, and Beatrice's Hair Zone—where Lucie had her regular Saturday-afternoon appointment, come rain or come shine, for forty years—had evolved into the Shores Spa, offering, the gilt calligraphed sign on the window promised, A STRESS-FREE SANCTUARY FROM DAILY LIFE.

"Stress?"

On Swann Island? Isn't that an oxymoron?

Still, there was comforting familiarity in the red-and-white-peppermint-stick barbershop sign rotating outside Leon's Clip Joint; the Lowcountry Market still offered fresh local seafood and picnic baskets to go; and a quartet of old men in bib overalls sat hunkered over checkerboards in the park surrounding the bandstand, as Sabrina suspected elderly men had been doing since before what was known in these parts as the War of Northern Aggression.

And, in the distance, where the street dead-ended at the sea, men and boys dangled lines over the railing of the old wooden pier as fishermen had been doing for more than a century.

She pulled into the angled parking space in front of what had once been the Crab Shack and was now the Wisteria Tea Room and Bakery. A porch, on which leafy green ferns hung, had been added to the side of the building since she'd last been on the island, and every white wicker table was occupied.

Inside, the mouthwatering aromas of fresh-brewed coffee, tasso sizzling in a pan, cinnamon muffins, and myriad other baked goods were swirled around by the ceiling fans that spun lazily from the high white bead-board ceiling.

"Well, someone run out and kill the fatted calf," a wonderfully familiar voice called through the open window between the dining room and kitchen, "The prodigal daughter has finally seen fit to return!"

A tall, willowy African American woman flew out of the swinging doors, a white chef's apron covering a short, tight dress the color of a Carolina sunset that showed off her mile-long legs.

Sabrina laughed as she hugged her childhood friend, breathing in the smells of vanilla, cinnamon, and a sexy, inimitable scent created for Titania Davis by an old Gullah woman who lived out in the marsh.

" 'Bout time you came home." Titania held on to Sabrina's shoulders as she leaned back and swept her dark eyes over her. "Glory, girlfriend, you look like something a cat wouldn't bother to drag in."

"Thanks."

"If you can't count on your best friend to tell you the truth, who can you count on? When was the last time you had something decent to eat?"

"Need I remind you that I've spent the last five years in Tuscany? Which happens to have a reputation for spectacular cuisine?"

"Hah! Anyone can boil up a pot of spaghetti." Titania dismissed the idea with a flick of a delicate wrist. Before Sabrina could open her mouth to say that she wasn't all that hungry, her friend was dragging her through those swinging doors back to the kitchen.

"Sit that skinny ass down over there." Titania waved toward a tall wooden counter covered in waxed white butcher paper. "And prepare to be dazzled."

"I already am." Sabrina perched on a stool painted in the same bright colors as Titania's dress. "You've done wonders with this place."

"Well, it isn't the Wingate Palace, that's for sure." She poured a glass of orange juice from a pitcher, then took a bottle of champagne from the stainless-steel refrigerator. "But it's all mine."

"Just juice is fine," Sabrina said.

"Don't be foolish. We're having mimosas to celebrate, and I won't hear another word."

Although the orange juice was freshly squeezed and the champagne added sparkle, just the sight of those effervescent bubbles gave Sabrina the chills.

She'd been sipping champagne when a religious fanatic driving a bomb disguised as a fish delivery truck had literally turned her life upside down. Ever since, Sabrina had been struggling to find some sense of normalcy. Which was what this trip had been all about.

But if she could be spooked by something as simple and harmless as a mimosa, apparently she still had a ways to go.

She touched the glass to her lips, to be polite. Then, because she didn't want to hurt Titania's feelings, she screwed up her courage and tossed it back, swallowing it down like bad-tasting medicine.

"So," she said after she'd managed to polish it off without shuddering, "why don't you fill me in on what's happening around here? Zachariah Tremayne mentioned something about you having something to do with the addition Lucie had planned to build onto Swannsea?"

"You've seen Zach already?"

"He was fixing the roof when I left."

"Lucky girl. That man was sexy as homemade sin back in high school, but damned if he hasn't grown up to be one seriously scrumptious piece of eye candy."

"I suppose he's good-looking enough. If you like his type."

"Let's see." Titania tapped a fingernail against her lips as she considered that idea. "Tough. Macho. Ripped, rock-hard body to die for, with those world-weary, wounded-soul eyes that make a woman want to kiss the hottie everywhere it hurts and make it feel better."

She pulled a pan of sticky buns out of the commercial oven that had replaced the greasy old grill Sabrina remembered.

"Which, venturing a guess, would mean about ninety-nine-point-nine percent of the women on this planet. Including all the females on this island who've discovered an urgent need for some serious home repair… but not you," she said, not bothering to keep the blatant disbelief from her tone.

Sabrina didn't want to talk about the former SEAL. Especially with the only other person besides the man in question who knew her long-ago secret.

"Getting back to the addition at Swannsea—"

Titania shrugged. "It's not that big a deal."

The cinnamon aroma had Sabrina salivating. "Adding twelve hundred square feet to a one-hundred-and-fifty-year-old house isn't exactly a
small
deal."

"You're right. Your grandmother and I had ourselves a business deal going. Which is obviously off the table now."

"What kind of business?"

"She wanted to start running tours at the farm. The way a lot of wineries do? With tastings?" Titania cut one of the oversized buns and placed it on a white plate. "I'd worked out some recipes to serve in a tearoom."

"More than a lot of folks would like. Especially since Brad Sumner seems determined to pave over the entire island."

"The same Brad Sumner who was working in the Buchanans' fields that last summer I was here?"

"Oh, that boy was plowing something, all right. But it sure as hell wasn't the Buchanans' cotton. More like Mrs. Buchanan…"

"Tea? Or coffee?"

"Although Lucie'd probably consider it heresy, I'll take coffee." Still jet-lagged, Sabrina needed the caffeine.

"Coffee it is." Titania poured the dark brew into a tall white mug that matched the plate.

"Do you really think they were sleeping together?" Sabrina asked as she sweetened the coffee with brown sugar crystals from a white bowl that Titania put in front of her.

"Oh, absolutely. Though I doubt there was much sleeping goin' on. If you remember, he only worked out in the fields a couple days before he was promoted to being their yard boy. I swear, though the house might not be on Wisteria Lane, it was obvious to everyone in town that Patsy Buchanan was one desperate housewife."

"I don't remember anything about that." The coffee was dark and hot and delicious.

"That's not so surprising, given you had your mind all wrapped around giving away your virginity to a certain bad boy that summer. Anyway, after you went off to school, things really heated up. Enough that some people were even suggesting that the two of them had more than a little to do with Mr. Buchanan's untimely demise when his John Deere tractor crushed him while he was changing a tire."

"You're making that up."

"Well, in the interest of full disclosure, Brad was in Somersett when the so-called 'accident' happened. But that didn't stop the talk. Especially after he up and married the merry widow the day after he graduated high school. And a mere six months after Frank Buchanan's funeral."

"Lucie wrote me every week and never said a thing."

"You know she didn't believe in telling tales out of school. Besides, the marriage only lasted a little under three years. Word was that Brad got caught screwing around out on marsh road with Mary Sue Easton while his wife was on an overnight shopping trip to Atlanta.

"Well, that caused another scandal, so they went off to Savannah, where Mary Sue has an uncle in the real estate business. Brad got a job working at their agency, and to hear him tell it, he became king of the flip.

"He must have made some money, because they came back home last year and he opened up his own agency. He wasn't back in town a week when he started buying up every piece of property he could get his hands on. And turning a damn good profit, which hasn't earned him all that many friends, since a lot of the land belonged to planters who weren't able to hold on to their farms when property values skyrocketed."

"That's an old story."

Sabrina had even seen it happen in Tuscany as more and more Americans, Brits, and Australians discovered the beauty of the northern Italian countryside.

"Sad, but true. And there are, admittedly, more than a few people who'd just as soon return to antebellum days. But, like Lucie always said, you can't stop progress, which is why she came up with the idea for the tearoom.

"Then, since she was never one to settle for a small idea when a more elaborate one would be better, she decided to make the island, and, of course, Swannsea, a destination wedding location."

"That's not a bad idea at all."

"Agreed. Which was when she decided to build the addition larger than originally planned. Oh, she was full of fancy plans, including perhaps using some of those extra bedrooms by turning it into a bed-and-breakfast and having house tours hosted by pretty girls in
Gone with the Wind
hoopskirts."

"Well, that's not exactly original. But it's certainly proven popular in other places."

"That's what Lucie figured. She also did an informal poll. As society editor of the
Swannsea Trumpet
, she knew every debutante in the Carolinas and Georgia, and, believe it or not, there appears to be no shortage of women who'll jump at the opportunity to dress up like Scarlett O'Hara."

Sabrina wasn't surprised. It had been one of the things she'd once secretly thought would be fun. Of course, she'd been twelve at the time.

She pulled the sticky bun apart, popped a piece in her mouth, and nearly wept. "Oh. My. God. This is downright sinful."

"It is good, isn't it?" Titania's teeth flashed like pearls in her mocha complexion. "The trick is brushing some of Swann's cinnamon spice tea onto the dough after it rises and then using some more of it in the frosting."

Sabrina took another bite, which was, incredibly, even more delicious than the first. "You could sell these on the Internet and make a fortune."

"Lucie thought the same thing. Though shipping would be a problem, since they really need to be fresh from the oven, which would mean figuring out a way to ship frozen dough. But that would've involved starting up a retail business, which didn't interest either one of us."

She glanced out the opening toward the dining room and the patio beyond. "I can't deny that money isn't nice to have, but the real fun is watching people enjoy my food."