Beach Season (52 page)

Authors: Lisa Jackson

BOOK: Beach Season

7.93Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub

Dear Reader,

I can’t tell you how thrilled I am that “The Brass Ring” has been republished by Kensington. When I first wrote this story I didn’t anticipate it becoming a “classic romance” or that my career would take the twists and turns it has to the point that I’m now writing mainstream romantic suspense.

“The Brass Ring” really is a favorite of mine. I remember thinking as I wrote the story, What would happen if a woman who has it all, including the man of her dreams, loses everything right before her wedding? How would she react? Would her love survive? From there, the characters came to mind and the story was born! “The Brass Ring” is a story of true love, and I hope you liked it.

Let’s talk about my next book. In
You Don’t Want to Know
you’ll meet Ava Church Garrison, a woman who fears she’s losing what’s left of her mind. Once strong and decisive, a businesswoman, Ava is now reduced to a shell of her former self. She trusts no one, not even her husband, Wyatt, or the pretty psychologist, Evelyn McPherson, he’s hired to “help her.”

Ava’s paranoia has its roots in the loss of Noah, her two-year-old child, a boy who went missing and who most presume is dead. Ava, though, hasn’t given up hope and she still sees Noah’s image not only haunting her dreams but appearing in the rising mists that swirl over Church Island. Is he really alive? Or a hallucination borne of false hope and guilt? Is someone intent on driving her out of her mind by somehow torturing her with his image? Whom, if anyone, can she trust? Certainly not Wyatt; or her cousin, Jewel-Anne, trapped in a wheelchair; or her once-upon-a-time best friend, Tanya Denton, who lives on the mainland and has ties to the island; or the new man that her husband hired, Austin Dern, a handyman of sorts with a murky past and a killer smile.

The fact that Ava’s trapped on an island where only a smattering of people live and an old, decrepit former asylum lies rotting and abandoned only adds to her mounting fears. Desperately she tries to hold on to her rapidly deteriorating mind while finding out what really happened to her only child.

I think you’ll like
You Don’t Want to Know
. I really enjoyed writing it (even if I did get creeped out a time or two!).

I’ve included an excerpt from the book here, in the following pages, and if you’d like to learn more about
You Don’t Want to Know
or any of my other projects, please visit me at
www.lisajackson.com
or on Facebook, where I have the latest info on all of my books, upcoming projects, appearances, and the like. I’ve got contests running, and I’d love to hear what you think of the books and the characters. We have some lively conversations going on!

Okay, so I promised you a sneak peek of
You Don’t Want to Know
, and here it is! Just turn the page... .

Hope you like it!

Lisa

From #1
New York Times
bestselling author Lisa Jackson comes a gripping novel of suspense in which a mother’s worst fear is only the beginning of a terrifying nightmare... .
.

In Ava’s dreams, her son, Noah, looks just the way she remembers him: a sweet two-year-old in rolled-up jeans and a red sweatshirt. When Ava wakes, the agonizing truth hits her all over again. Noah went missing two years ago, and his body has never been found. Almost everyone, including Ava’s semi-estranged husband, Wyatt, assumes the boy drowned after falling off the dock near their Church Island home.

Ava has spent most of the past two years in and out of Seattle mental institutions, shattered by grief and unable to recall the details of Noah’s disappearance. Now she’s back at Neptune’s Gate, the family estate she once intended to restore to its former grandeur. Slowly, her strength is returning. But as Ava’s mind comes back into focus, her suspicions grow. Despite their apparent concern, Ava can’t shake the feeling that her family, and her psychologist, know more than they’re saying. But are they really worried for her well-being—or anxious about what she might discover?

Unwilling to trust those around her, Ava secretly visits a hypnotist to try to restore her memories. But the strange visions and night terrors keep getting worse. Ava is sure she’s heard Noah crying in the nursery and glimpsed him walking near the dock. Is she losing her mind, or is Noah still alive? Ava won’t stop until she gets answers, but the truth is more dangerous than she can imagine. And the price may be more than she ever thought to pay... .

Please turn the page for an exciting sneak peek of
Lisa Jackson’s
You Don’t Want to Know
coming in August 2012!

P
ROLOGUE

Again, the dream creeps in.

It’s a foggy, gray day and I’m in the kitchen, on the phone, talking to someone ... but that part changes. Sometimes it’s my husband, Wyatt; other times it’s Tanya, and sometimes it’s my mother, though, I know she’s been dead a long, long time. But that’s how it is... .

From the family area, the room right next to the kitchen, here in this house, I hear the television, soft cartoon voices speaking, and I know that Noah’s playing with his toys on the rug in front of the flat screen.

I’ve baked some bread—the kitchen is still warm from the oven—and I’m thinking about Thanksgiving. As I glance out the window, I notice that it’s nearly dark outside, dusk at hand. It must be cold, too, as the trees shiver in the wind, a few stubborn leaves hanging on to thin, skeletal branches. Across the bay, the town of Anchorville is invisible, shrouded by fog.

But inside this old mansion, the one my great-great-grandfather built, it’s cozy.

Safe.

Smelling of cinnamon and nutmeg.

And then, from the corner of my eye, I see movement outside. It’s Milo, our cat, I think, but I remember Milo, a prince of a tabby, is dead. Has been for years.

I squint, suddenly fearful. It’s hard to see through the fog rolling in from the sea, but I
know
something’s out there, in the yard, behind the hedgerow of roses where the scraggly bushes are thin and bedraggled, a few shriveled petals visible in the dead blooms and thorns.

Creeeaaaak!

My skin crawls as a shadow passes near the porch.

For the briefest of seconds I fear there’s something evil lurking just beyond the vertical, arrow-shaped spikes of the surrounding wrought-iron fence.

Creeeaaaak! Bang!
The gate’s open, swinging in the buffeting wind.

That’s when I catch a glimpse of Noah, my son, in his little hooded sweatshirt and rolled-up jeans. He’s gotten out of the house somehow and wandered through the open gate. Now, in the twilight, he’s running joyfully, as if he’s chasing something, down the path to the dock.

“NO!” I drop the phone.

It knocks over my water glass in slow motion.

I spin around and think I’m mistaken, that surely he’s in front of the couch by the TV, that ... I see the room is empty, some Disney thing—
Aladdin
?—still playing. “Noah!” I scream at the top of my lungs and take off at a dead run.

I’m in my pajamas and my feet feel as if they’re in quicksand; I can’t get through this damned house fast enough, but as I race past each of the windows looking out at the bay, I see him, running through the descending darkness, getting closer and closer to the water.

I pound on an old pane with a fist.

The window shatters!

Glass sprays.

Blood spurts!

Still, he doesn’t hear me. I try to open the French doors to the veranda overlooking the bay. They don’t move. It’s as if they’re painted shut. Blood drizzles down the panes.

I slog forward. Screaming at my son, and for Wyatt, I run in slow motion to the doors. They’re unlocked, one swinging open and moaning loudly as I push myself onto the porch. “Noah!”

I’m crying now. Sobbing. Panic burns through me as I nearly trip on the steps, then run past the dripping rhododendrons and windswept pines of this godforsaken island, the place I’ve known as home for most of my life. “Noah!” I scream again, but my voice is lost in the roar of the sea, and I can’t see my boy—he’s disappeared beyond the dead roses in the garden, no sight of him in the low-hanging mist.

Oh, please, God, no ... let him be all right!

The chill of the Pacific sweeps over me, but it’s nothing compared to the coldness in my heart. I dash down the path strewn with oyster and clam shells, sharp enough to pierce my skin, and onto the slick planks of the listing dock. Over the weathered boards to the end, where the wharf juts into the mist as if suspended in air. “Noah!”
Oh, for God’s sake!
“NOAH!!!”

No one’s there.

The pier is empty.

He’s gone.

Vanished in the mist.

“Noah! Noah!” I stand on the dock and scream his name. Tears run from my face, blood trickles down my cut palm to splash in the brackish water. “NOAH!”

The surf tumbles beyond the point, crashing and roaring as it pummels the shore.

My boy is missing.

Swallowed up by the sea or into thin air, I don’t know which.

“No, no ...
no.
” I’m wretched and bereft, my grief intolerable as I sink onto the dock and stare into the water, thoughts of jumping into the dark, icy depths and ending it all filling my mind. “Noah ... please. God, keep him safe... .”

My prayer is lost in the wind... .

Then I wake up.

I find myself in my bed in the room I’ve occupied for years.

For the briefest of instants, it’s a relief. A dream ... only a dream. A horrible nightmare.

Then my hopes sink as I realize my mistake.

My heart is suddenly heavy again.

Tears burn my eyes.

Because I know.

My son really is gone. Missing. It’s been two years since I last saw him.

On the dock.

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