Truth and Humility (50 page)

“We both fell.  Into the river.”

Though it seemed like an eternity, only mere seconds had passed.  Danny’s eyes focused on the woman beneath Austin.  “It wasn’t you the witness heard pleading with your attacker...it was
me
.”

Austin swiveled to watch Danny in confusion.  He wanted to ask what the hell she meant by that, but he was unsure of how to approach anything at the moment.

Danny cocked her head, locked her gaze with a pair of large wild eyes.

“Danny...look at me.”

“What were you after, Rena?” she asked softly.  “You expected to find Derek in the car.  Not me.  Just like you expected me to die at the grain plant, not Derek.”  The woman’s eyes cleared, slowly filled with anticipated loathing.  “And how does it feel to have failed in just about everything you have set out to do?  All because you can’t seem to keep up.”

“What?”

Austin’s voice didn’t register.  This was a private conversation between her and Rena.  But the woman only glared, so Danny felt her way through the facts on her own.  “When you realized you’d incapacitated the wrong person at the river, you went ballistic.”  Her eyes rolled disbelievingly.  “You thought I was one of Derek’s love interests.”

“Shut up!” Rena hissed, bucked under Austin’s weight.

“We already know what you planned to do with me at the grain plant.  But what were you planning to do with
Derek
at the river?  Once you had him helpless and twitching from electricity, what the
hell
were you going to do?”

“He attacked me!  I was defending myself!”

“Danny!” Austin barked, holding Rena down effortlessly.  When he had her attention, he spoke slowly.  Clearly.  “Talk.  To.  Me.”

Her jaw moved.  Suddenly she was aware of how her bits of information must be affecting him and she nodded.  “Alright.”  She cleared her throat.  Started from the beginning.  “As you know, I was at the river to meet Derek just like every Wednesday night.  Only this time he had my car, I had his.  It was before the rest of our group was to show, so I was alone.”  His eyes told her to continue when she paused.  The first hint of light put blue in the sky above the green canopy.  “Rena pulled up beside me.  She just barged into Derek’s car and...and came at me with a stun gun.”

“Liar!” Rena hissed.

“When I first recalled that, I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why she would do that.”

Austin’s face darkened.  “You knew about this before?”  She nodded, the movement slight and reserved.  “I asked you if you remembered anything.  You said no.”

“I didn’t want to hurt you...at least until I knew more.”  When he swore under his breath, she continued.  “And now I think I know what her motivation was.”  She was talking to Rena again.  “When you dragged me out of the car, you told me...in so many words...that I’d have to ‘get my fuck some other time because he was yours that night.’”  Her head tilted from one inquisitive angle to the next.  “Were you planning to take advantage of my brother, Rena?”

A choked gasp.  The white of Rena’s skin darkened to an angry red.  “I wouldn’t have actually gone through with it!” she raged, affronted.  Her head swiveled to face the man above her and she went soft.  “I loved you, baby,” she crooned.  “I love you so much.”

Her pleading sapphire irises grabbed him.  Emotions tore through his system as he scoured her features with a perplexed frown.   It had been almost nine months since he’d last seen her.  Believed her to be dead, drowned, torn apart by wild dogs.  But she was here now, living.  Breathing.  Only, her appearance had changed.  His old love was still extraordinarily beautiful, but what was once full, bright and spirited was now emaciated, haunted...lacking sanity.

It was all in those eyes.  He’d gazed into them countless times when they’d made love, danced together, kissed over the breakfast table, as he’d bent on one knee and presented a ring.

And now...as he probed into her soul, his brow crumpled beneath the weight of what he saw.  “You love me?” he asked, softly at first, tenderly.  Her mouth – a mouth he’d amorously tasted in many different ways – spread into an adoring smile.  “You love me,” he repeated, the words now taking on a frenzied edge.  Then his face clouded with thunderous rage.  “You
left
me!”

Her smile dissolved, was replaced by something frantic.  “I didn’t want to!”

“Then
why?”

“I had to!  Because of what I’d done!”  Her wild gaze sliced over to the woman crouched beside them.  “It’s her fault!  She should have never been there, but she was and I had to get rid of her!  It was supposed to be harmless!”

“Harmless!”  Danny broke in, fists at her sides.  “You planned to set my brother up to look like a rapist!”

“It could have happened!  He hated Austin.  It was believable that he’d want to retaliate if given the opportunity!”

Austin blinked, bowled over by the reality of it.  He’d confided in her about what had transpired between him and Brynn.  How it had torn a close friendship apart.  “Which is exactly what I believed.”  Now that Rena’s eyes were on him again he reached deep down for a modicum of control.  “Why?  Why would you do that when you were so adamant to help me end the feud?”

The smile was back, sick and pleading.  “Because I had to prove to you how much you loved me, baby.  You were all I ever wanted.  I worked so hard to get you.  But I knew you were losing interest in me.  I could see it.”

“What?”

“It was only a matter of time before I...” she swallowed, evaded.  “I adjusted my medication, but it only made me worse.  I could feel myself slipping into that dark place.  You saw it.  You were going to leave me, I could tell!”

“My God.  You’re insane, aren’t you?  Only it’s not a behavioral problem like I thought when we were kids.  You are literally. 
Clinically. 
Insane.”

“Don’t say that!  I was good to you!  I was everything you wanted!”

“But how much of it was real?”

Hurt mixed with rage.  “You don’t understand.  You will never understand what it’s like to live like this, Austin, never knowing when the darkness will take you.”

“You never gave me a chance.  If you were unstable, I had a right to know.  I would have tried to help you!”

In some ways Danny felt likenny felt an outsider.  She swallowed as she watched them.  They were a striking couple.  The man she loved was positioned over his beautiful fiancé, holding her down, face-to-face, exchanging looks and passionately spoken words.  Did they even remember she was there?

“No.  You would have left me to rot in some mental institution like my parents did.  But I couldn’t go back.  Not again.  I worked far too hard to make myself perfect for you, someone you couldn’t resist.”

“You succeeded.”  His eyes scoured her face.  The pressure of his hands on her wrists eased up slightly.  “I was completely fooled.  Everyone was.  We were so...right together.  I never suspected a thing.”

“Yes you did.  At the end.”

Danny wasn’t sure how much more of this she could take.  “That’s where you’re wrong,” she broke in, not gaining a single glance from Rena or Austin as they continued to gaze at each other.  She felt every bit the third wheel.  “Every time he talked about you a blind person could see how much he loved you.  How much he missed you.  How affected he was by your death.  If you thought his feelings were fading, it was because of your illness.”  Was Rena’s pull on him still so effective?  The question weighed heavily at her center core.

Rena’s body seemed to melt under his weight.  Her face softened, eyes glazed over with crazy love.  “Is that true, baby?  Did you miss me so terribly?”

Something in his countenance changed.  Austin nodded once.  “I did.”  Then his mouth thinned into a grim line.  “Until Danny came along.”  Her adoring look froze.  “If it weren’t for her, I’d still be grieving your loss.”

Now that her name had been thrown out there, Danny released a pent up breath.  Rena screeched with rage.

“I was going to come back to you!  I was finally ready, but what do I find when I do?  This common hooker lounging in
our bed!”

Well, that explains my missing clothes,
Danny thought malevolently.

“You were
dead!”
Austin roared, springing into a sitting position.  Rena rubbed her aching wrists and sizzled under his accusations.  “If you wanted me to wait for you, faking your death wasn’t the way to do it!”

“As far as I knew, once the cat was out of the bag, I’d be hauled off to the asylum, so I had some remains tagged as mine!  I didn’t know that whore wouldn’t finger me!”  Rena lifted up on her elbows, sneered at Danny.  “What happened, dime-dish?  Did your little heddie-weddie get fried when I hit you with my little zapper?  Or was it the river that rendered you a brainless idiot?”

Bad things sliced through Danny’s body, tensing her entire muscular structure in a need for battle.

Austin noticed her volatile state and held her off with a stern look.  “Don’t start,” he warned gently.  “She’ll get hers, believe me, but I don’t think you could live with assaulting a mentally handicapped woman.”

Rena laughed, an eerie wicked sound, and fell back to the earth.  “See?  I knew you still loved me, baby.  You’ll always be mine.  You can say you love her, that you want to marry her, but you will always be mine, Austin.  Mine alone.”

The cops needed to come, Danny thought.  Now.  Before she did just what Austin feared.  “Did you really think you could hang on to a guy by forcing yourself on another, Rena?” she purred nastily.  If this bitch wanted to provoke, she could give as good as she got.  Slowly, she dropped to her hands, crawled closer, unabashed, unafraid.  “Even if I weren’t there, Derek would have stopped you somehow.  He was faster than me,
stronger than me, and he definitely wasn’t hard up.  He would have smelled your ploy from a mile away and the only thing you would have had between your legs that night is your tucked little tail.”

Provoked?  Oh, yeah.  The woman was boiling.  Austin took a surprising blow to the solar plexus and Rena gained enough freedom to spring to her own hands and knees, snarl face-to-face with her hated opponent.  “Yeah?” she spat with intense loathing.  “Well, where is your beloved Derek now you
whore?”

“Whoa!”  Taking his life into his own hands, Austin dove between the two women as they simultaneously attacked.  He was able to retake control of Rena with little effort, but Danny proved a much bigger challenge as she repeatedly reached around him to go at his captive. 

“I’ll tear you apart, you murdering
bitch!
”

“Not before you join your brother,
home-wrecker!
”

“Danny!” Austin thundered when her elbow connected with his wound.  “I’m only able to handle one lunatic at a time!”

“And you!” Rena raged, fighting his iron hold around her waist, “You fell for her, you cheating bastard!  You should have died in that factory!”

A deafening shotgun blast put an end to the fray.  Rena stilled, Austin ducked, Danny crouched with her hands flattened against her eardrums.

“Can you hear me now?” Herb barked not ten feet away in his bathrobe and slippers.

Austin closed his eyes, thanked God for Herb.  The help was much needed.  “Can you take your daughter inside, please?” he asked, breathless and hurting.

Rena knew her man well, could hear the strain in his voice that indicated deep physical pain.  She looked down, saw the red stain spreading across his shirt.  “Oh, baby, you were shot!”

Danny snapped to attention, noted the same red stain just as Austin’s eyes pinched closed in a concentrated effort to keep up his strength.

“It wasn’t by me,” Herb blustered under the weight of his daughter’s accusing look.

“I wasn’t shot,” Austin growled, wincing again when Danny pulled up his shirt for a better look.