Swimsuit Body (24 page)

“It was risky even so,” I point out. “Someone might have recognized you.”

“I came by boat,” he explains. “I have my own, and I know which ports to avoid—the ones where the sorts of people who might have recognized me tend to anchor. I've been staying out of sight since I got here. Aside from paying Delilah a visit … and dropping in on you the other night.”

“Congratulations. You got away with it.” I'm freaking out on the inside, and it's all I can do to keep it together outwardly. “And how convenient that Olivia Harding confessed.”

A smile flits across Greta's face. She looks like the Wicked Queen from Disney's
Snow White
in her high-collared, austere navy gown, backlit by the moonlight that's coming through the porthole. “Yes, although I doubt Olivia's confession will hold up. She's always been a little …” She twirls her finger next to her temple in the universal gesture for crazy. “It should buy us enough time to get Eric out of the country, but that still leaves the problem of what to do with you, Tish.”

Icy fingers seem to clamp around my gut, twisting. It feels like I'm being strangled from the inside. My fingers and toes go numb. “If you kill me, you won't get away with it. I was seen leaving with you.”

“Which is why your death will be made to look like an accident.”

Dire scenarios flit through my mind. They'll take me home . . . and then what? A house fire with me trapped inside? A “fall” that has me hitting my head at the precise wrong angle? A blow-dryer that “slips” into the tub while I'm bathing? My one hope is Spence. He has to be looking for me by now, and the tracking device on my phone will give him my location. But will he find me in time? I shudder to think of what will happen if he doesn't. “You're both monsters. You know that, don't you?” The words, spoken in a calm voice, seem to come from someone else's mouth. Someone who isn't terrified, whose heart isn't thumping like an overloaded clothes washer.

I'm on my feet a second later, bolting for the door in a blind panic. But Eric is too quick for me. He leaps forward to grab me by the arm. I struggle to free myself, but he's too strong. I feel his hot, cocoa-scented breath on my face as he growls, “You're only making it harder on yourself.” The realization seizes me like the fingers that are digging into my arm:
I'm going to die.

I feel a surge of hope when I hear the sound of a car engine approaching and see the glare of headlights splash across the picture window.
Spence.
He came for me. Except neither Greta nor Eric appear to be worried. Greta peers out the window, saying, “Ah, there she is. As prompt as ever.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

A minute later, I hear the sound of footsteps approaching briskly along the front walk. Greta calls out a greeting from the open doorway where she stands. “Brianna, thanks for getting here so quickly.”

Brianna? Is she working with them? Oh, God. I feel like I'm going to throw up. Has she been plotting against me all this time? I thought it was too good to be true when she took the job. I should have trusted my instincts.
Are they paying her? Or did she have her own reasons for wanting Delilah dead?
Like with the roommate who was killed in a hit-and-run after she screwed her over.

“No problem,” Brianna chirps. “Anything I can do to help.”

“That's my girl,” says Greta.

My girl?
I'll kill her. I swear I will. If I make it out of here alive, that is.

Then I hear Brianna ask sweetly, “Are you feeling any better?”

“A little. It must have been something I ate,” Greta says.

She doesn't know.
Realizing I was wrong about Brianna, I'm at once relieved and terrified. Because she's walking into a trap, and I can't warn her. Eric is holding me pinned to the wall, his body pressed against mine, his hand clamped over my mouth. I struggle to free myself, and the pressure against my mouth eases a fraction, just enough for me to bite down on the fleshy part of his palm. “Run!” I yell loudly when he jerks his hand from my mouth with a grunt of pain.

Too late. Eric is out the door in a flash, and with a hard push from him, Brianna is inside with me seconds later. “Eric?” Her jaw drops. “I don't understand. … How can you … You … You're
dead
.”

He grins. “Apparently not. Hello, Bree. Nice to see you. I'm glad you could join us.”

“Greta texted me. She said she wasn't feeling well, and that Tish needed a ride home.” Brianna speaks in a voice dull with shock. She stares at Eric as if at a ghost, which he is in a way.

“It was a trap.” I state the obvious. “They killed Delilah. Now they're planning to kill me.” What I don't understand is why they lured Brianna here. What could they possibly want with her?

“Why don't you ladies have a seat.” Eric motions toward the sofa. He looks a little flushed, and he's rubbing his hand where I bit him. He glares at me when I don't obey.

“Pardon the theatrics.” Greta produces a gun from the cherry console that stands against the wall by the door. “But I've found it pays to err on the side of caution. Now, please, do as you're told.”

Brianna darts a panicked glance my way. I squeeze her hand. “Is it true? Did you kill Delilah?” Brianna asks when we're sitting down. From the look on her face, she already knows the answer.

“It was unavoidable, I'm afraid,” Greta says. “She got in the way of our plans.”

Brianna pales. “Oh, my God.”

“I asked you here because your services are required,” Greta goes on in the same mild tone. “You and Tish will ride home in her car. Tish will insist on driving because that's what drunks do. Tish, you see, had a bit of a … slip. She was so shook up after what happened earlier, she took the edge off with a drink—let's make it two. She insisted she was fine to drive, and you, the loyal assistant, went along. A bad decision on both your parts. Sadly, neither of you will survive the trip.”

“It won't work!” I burst out. “No one who knows me would believe it!”

“That you're not a model of sobriety?” Greta smiles like an indulgent parent at the protestations of a child. “AA has a recidivism rate of eighty-five percent. Not the greatest odds, we can agree. I've done my homework, you see. And don't forget, Tish, you were recently pulled over.”

“Because you drugged me!”

“There's no proof of that. By all appearances your ‘accident' will be the sad but all too familiar tale of a drunk driver who exercised poor judgment in failing to hand over the keys. No one will question my story.”

“So what does that make me? Collateral damage?” Brianna tips her chin up at Greta.

“That's one way of putting it.” Greta shrugs. “You also managed Delilah's affairs and now you work for Tish. Knowing you, you'd find some inconsistency, and like the eager beaver you are, you'd keep digging until you had enough to take to the police. You and Tish are alike in that sense. Now”—Greta walks over to the rolling cart against the wall by the bookcase that holds an array of liquor bottles—“what shall it be, Tish? A Jameson neat? Or is vodka and tonic your pleasure?”

“I always knew you were a two-faced bitch!” Brianna bursts out. “My uncle and Liam, they tried to get Delilah back into rehab, but you only told her what she wanted to hear. ‘You're not an alcoholic. You can cut back anytime you like. You don't need a bunch of losers telling you what to do.'” She mimics Greta's voice. “You were killing her then, only slowly. There's a special room in hell for people like you, and that's where you're going. Preferably by way of lethal injection.”

I wish I'd known sooner how Brianna felt about Greta. Why hadn't she said something? Was it because she felt sorry for Greta in her bereavement? Ill-placed sympathy, as it turns out.

Greta replies irritably, “Did anyone ever tell you you're extremely annoying?”

Brianna ignores the insult. “You had Eric all to yourself before she came along. She broke up your love fest—I can't say what it rhymes with or I'll throw up—and you hated her for it.”

Greta's eyes flash, her features twisting into an expression that has her morphing in that instant from the evil stepmother to the hag who offers Snow White the poisoned apple. “Don't be disgusting. I don't care who Eric sleeps with. Women have been throwing themselves at him since he was old enough to know where to put it. Starting with his ninth-grade English teacher.” She sounds like a proud mom bragging about the achievements of a precocious child.

“Mrs. Mac.” Eric's expression softens. “Yeah, she was hot. Couldn't get enough.”

“Delilah wasn't like the others,” Brianna goes on, undeterred. From the waxy pallor of her face, it seems she might actually be on the verge of throwing up. “She meant something to him once. That was the
real
reason you wanted her dead, wasn't it, Greta? Whatever excuse you gave.”

Eric appears unsettled, which tells me there's some truth to what Brianna said—he must have loved Delilah at one time—while Greta looks furious enough to pull the trigger. For a breathless moment, it seems she might do just that. But the moment passes along with her fit of anger. She pours three fingers of Maker's Mark into a cut-glass tumbler and carries it over to me. “Here you go. Bottoms up.”

I ignore her outstretched hand. “Thanks, but I'll pass.”

“Take it,” Eric growls.

I do as I'm told, only to set the drink down. “Go to hell.”

Greta shrugs and sets the bottle on the coffee table next to my untouched drink. She hands the gun over to Eric and exits the room. When she reappears a few minutes later, I see that she's changed into a dark-gray tracksuit and athletic shoes. She stuffs the fifth of bourbon in the pocket of the windbreaker that she wears over her tracksuit. Eric dons a jacket from the row of pegs by the door that holds various items of outwear. He orders, “On your feet, ladies. Let's get a move on.”

Except I can't move. I'm paralyzed with fright, reliving my near-death experience of last summer. Another night. Another gun. Another psycho who'd been bent on killing me. Brianna takes my hand, pulling me with her as she rises to her feet. The thought of Spence returns along with mobility to my limbs. I still have my phone, so all is not lost.
Hurry
, I mentally urge.
Before it's too l—

Greta snatches my silver evening bag from my hand and extracts my phone from it. “You won't be needing that.” She tosses it on the cherry console before she hands me back my bag. She's not taking any chances. She must watch the same detective shows that I do. She'll tell the police I accidentally left my phone behind in my “inebriated state.” It will sound all too plausible.

“Where are they taking us?” Brianna whispers to me as we're marched outside at gunpoint.

“I don't know,” I whisper back, “but you can bet it's someplace remote.”

“You won't suffer,” Greta says from behind. “It'll be quick.”

Terror sits like a chunk of ice in my belly, sending cold trickles through my gut. Brianna tightens her grip on my hand as we make our way to my Explorer, which is parked in the driveway behind Greta's rented blue Nissan. Greta opens the driver's door. “Get in,” she orders. I hesitate, thinking that if Eric were to shoot me on the spot, it wouldn't necessarily be fatal, and the shot would be heard by the owners of the bed-and-breakfast—better than my odds elsewhere. “You know,” Greta says as if she read my mind, “Eric could just as easily kill you with his bare hands.”

I climb in.

Brianna gets in on the passenger side and Eric climbs in back. “Drive,” he commands when Greta is in her car with the engine running, and I feel the cold kiss of the gun barrel against the back of my neck. Despair settles over me, thick as the fog that's creeping in. I back out of the driveway and follow the glowing red taillights up ahead as they move in the direction of the main road.

We drive south along the old coast highway for several miles before we arrive at the entrance to Manresa State Park, where Greta makes the turn. I follow her car as it cruises slowly past the shuttered ranger's station. The park looks deserted. There are no vehicles in the parking lot, and the only thing that's stirring is the fog that drifts in ragged patches through the beams of my headlights. We wind through the park until we reach the first scenic overlook, where Greta pulls over. Prompted by a nudge from the gun barrel, I pull in behind her. In AA we're taught not to pray for specific things or outcomes. “Your higher power ain't no short-order cook,” as one old-timer, Lennie O., put it. But now I pray for divine intervention, of the burning-bush variety, rather than God-give-me-strength kind, because only a miracle can save us.

I know this park well. I used to come here a lot with my ex-boyfriend Daniel, who's an assistant professor of marine biology at the university. We'd stroll along the rocky shore at low tide, pausing to peer into tide pools with Daniel pointing out the various forms of marine life. High tide, on the other hand, can be treacherous. You can quickly become trapped by rising waters. There are signs posted around the park, warning visitors, but every year some idiot ignores them and ends up having to be rescued. Or the person's body is recovered. Right now, I'm thinking about the latter. At the edge of the overlook is a drop of over a hundred feet. I can see Brianna and myself trapped inside my Explorer, Eric and Greta pushing from the outside. We crash through the guardrail and … I shudder, imagining our swift descent onto the rocks below.

I watch Greta get out of her car and cross through the beams of my headlights. She climbs in the backseat of my SUV and places the fifth of bourbon in the cup holder that normally holds my large coffees from the Daily Grind. “Let's get this party started,” says Eric in a hearty voice.

“Be my guest,” I tell him.

Brianna reaches for the bottle. “I, for one, could use a drink. Ouch, that hurts!” she cries when Eric grabs her by the wrist. I know she was only trying to protect me, and I feel a rush of affection for her. She yanks free of Eric's grasp and twists around to glare at him. “You're a fucking asshole. And you were a shitty husband. I don't know why she didn't divorce you while she had the chance.”

He grins. “Wow.
F
-word and all. I'm impressed, Bree. Didn't know you had it in you.” He picks up the bottle, and I notice he's donned a pair of calfskin driving gloves. Dead men don't leave prints. He thrusts the bottle into my hand. “Go on, Tish. Live a little.” He chuckles at his own joke.

I stare at the bottle. Why not? It would ease my nerves and soften the blow of what's to come. The Grim Reaper would seem more like an old drinking buddy. But the thought is fleeting, like a twinge from a phantom limb. If I have to die, I'll die sober. “Go fuck yourself,” I say pleasantly.

“Bitch,” he snarls. “You'll goddamn do what—”

“Now, now. Temper,” Greta chides, the way I imagine she did when they were kids and Eric pulled the wings from flies or beat up on other boys. She pokes my shoulder with her finger. “Do yourself a favor, Tish. Trust me, you don't want the alternative.”

I feel Eric's knees through my seat as he shifts from side to side, trying to get comfortable. He has almost no legroom, he's so tall. Which gives me an idea. Not the most inspired idea I've ever had, but it's all I've got. I unscrew the cap from the bottle and accidentally on purpose let it slip through my fingers into the footwell. I bend as if to retrieve it and instead grab hold of the metal bar underneath my seat that's for adjusting the seat position. I release it from its locked mode, then as I straighten, I ram my seat back as far as it will go, throwing my full weight into it.

I hear a dull crunch as the seat drives into Eric's kneecaps. He roars in pain. “Mother
fucker
!”

When I glance in the rearview mirror, the gun is no longer in his hand. He must have dropped it when I rammed into him. While Greta is bending to retrieve it, and Eric is rubbing at his sore knees, I bring the bottle down on the back of her head. There's an equally satisfying crunch and broken glass flies everywhere. Greta slumps onto the seat, incapacitated for the moment, if not unconscious. I wrench my door open, heady with the thrill of my temporary advantage and the pungent fumes of alcohol that fill my nostrils, and leap out. Brianna does the same.

I make for the edge of the overlook, Brianna sprinting alongside me. The park campground is located less than a mile to the south. The quickest way to get there is by road, but Greta and Eric would pick us off like sitting ducks, so we have to go by shore, where they can only follow on foot. We have a head start and I'm familiar with the terrain, which gives us a slight advantage. But the odds aren't in our favor. Eric and Greta both appear to be in peak physical condition, and Eric was a stuntman. Still, a
slim chance is better than none, I tell myself
.