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Authors: Rita Herron

Tags: #Fiction, #Romance, #Suspense, #Thrillers, #Crime

Dying for Love (8 page)

BOOK: Dying for Love
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The creak of the swing made John look across the yard. But the swing was empty, the wind pushing it back and forth as if a ghost was sitting on it.

“Have you noticed anyone watching the children?” John asked. “A strange car nearby or someone new in the neighborhood?”

The baby began to fuss, and she jiggled him up and down, trying to soothe him. “No.”

“How about a car driving by often? Or maybe someone walking their dog? Oftentimes predators use animals or candy to lure children to come closer.”

She rubbed at her temple with nails that had probably never seen a manicure. “I’m sorry. I can’t think of anyone.”

Coulter walked over, his dark eyes troubled. “The little girl said she saw a white van drive by after lunch. Said she noticed it because she thought it was an ice-cream truck.”

Terri made a low sound of worry. “The ice-cream truck only comes to our neighborhood on Saturdays and not in the winter.”

John silently cursed. “What else did she see?”

Coulter shook his head. “There was no snow cone on the side, but the van played music.”

Fear and regret washed over Dr. Clover as she looked through the window and watched Amelia run to her car. Amelia kept looking over her shoulder, obviously terrified someone was after her.

She had good reason to be terrified.

Her phone buzzed, and she startled. Her hand shook as she picked up the receiver.

“She was just there?”

She closed her eyes, hating his voice. Hating what he made her do. “Yes.”

“She’s starting to remember things?”

“Yes. She knows about the baby.”

Dr. Clover massaged the knot at the base of her neck. A stress headache beat against her temple. The nausea would follow.

She popped an antacid.

“Then do something,” he snarled.

Dr. Clover closed her eyes, a war raging in her mind. She had always followed the code. Done as he’d ordered.

She couldn’t refuse him now.

“June, you have to finish this.”

Yes, she did. Her reputation depended on it.

Hell, her life depended on it.

She did not want to die.

Amelia wasn’t paranoid. Someone was following her. She’d suggested RMT to Amelia, knowing it could help her recover the holes in her past.

But if she remembered everything, the memories could get her killed.

 

Chapter Eight

A
melia fretted about the doctor’s suggestion of RMT as she drove back to her condo. If she agreed to it, it meant facing her demons again.

She’d barely survived once. Could she survive again?

If it meant finding out what happened to her baby . . .

No, not yet. She’d save RMT as a last resort. John would investigate and find answers just as he’d found Darby Wesley.

Besides, if the Commander or someone else at the hospital had taken her son immediately after his birth, and they drugged her afterward, she might not know anything more than what she already remembered.

Tugging her scarf around her, she climbed out of her car, her boots sinking into the icy snow as she trudged up to her condo.

But the moment she opened the door, she froze. Someone had been inside. What was that strange smell? A man’s cologne?

She grabbed the umbrella in the stand by the door, pausing to listen for an intruder. But only the sound of the wind whistling echoed back.

The wind blowing through the open window in the kitchen.

She hadn’t left it open.

Cold air engulfed her as she rushed to close it. But the hair on the back of her neck stood on end.

She glanced at her studio and saw her paints on the tray where she kept them. Except a new canvas stood in the easel, one splattered with dark lines of reds, grays, and blacks. She gaped at the vicious swirls and strokes, emotions pouring through the bleak colors and bold lines.

She hadn’t painted that canvas.

Had she?

Her stomach quivered with nerves as fear washed over her. Could she possibly have blacked out and painted it? Had a new alter emerged?

The furnace squealed, and she startled, then remembered the open window and scent of the man’s cologne. Gripping the umbrella in case she needed a weapon, she walked toward her bedroom.

Ting. Ting. Ting.
The wind chimes tinkled outside.

Ticktock.
The clock’s noise sounded ominous, as if it were amplified.

Amelia fought the haunting memories the noises evoked, but when she saw the teddy bear, her legs buckled.

That was Bessie’s bear.

Amelia clutched the wall for support. She hadn’t seen that bear in months. She’d left it at Papaw’s farmhouse and thought it burned in the fire.

Adrenaline surged through Amelia as she drove her Mini Cooper toward the old farmhouse where she’d spent her childhood.

She had to get away from the condo. Someone had been there.

She needed to go home, someplace safe. Back to Papaw’s land, to the guesthouse he’d built as a studio for her when she was younger. It was her sanctuary.

The road curved and wound sharply around the mountain, the ridges jutting out like spikes, the bare tree branches stark against the gray sky. Dead leaves swirled across the road, the wind whistling shrilly as the last remnants of winter screamed that spring would have to wait.

When she’d been locked away in the sanitarium, she had missed the seasons, missed the spring blossoms bursting to life on the trees, the dogwoods and magnolias scenting the air with life and color, the wildflowers shooting up from the ground, damp with rain, and dancing in the breeze. She’d missed the blazing colors in the fall as the foliage changed, the summer sun clinging to the sky as summer bled into autumn.

Her hospital room had been sterile and cold, all white and metal, virtually a prison, chaining her to the dark loneliness.

She veered onto the dirt and gravel road leading to the farm, a sense of loss overwhelming her at the sight of the charred remains of her family home. The guesthouse remained, but the farmhouse lay in ruins.

Memories of her and Sadie running through the fields, riding horses, and climbing trees floated back into her mind.

Although the memories were peppered with the lost days of her youth, with the alters taking over, with the nowhere nights.

Her therapist had encouraged her to keep journals. The alters had destroyed them, though.

Something niggled at the back of her mind. Had they destroyed all of them? Could she have hidden some of them in a place the alters might not look?

She’d search again.

Hopefully she’d written something about her pregnancy in an entry. Something about the father of her baby.

She pulled to a stop in front of the guesthouse that had doubled as her studio, then sat and stared at the wind chimes swinging and clanging in the wind.

After her grandfather’s death, she had moved to the condominium complex for therapy and to escape the past.

But she didn’t feel safe there anymore. Someone had been inside the condo. She didn’t want to stay there that night in case he came back.

Battling the wind ripping at her coat, she climbed from the car and walked up to the porch. In between hospital stays, when her medication had been stable, she’d been released to the care of Ms. Lettie, and she’d lived in the guesthouse. Maybe the answers to her lost years were there.

Nerves tingled along her spine, fear clawing at her.

But she summoned her courage, unlocked the door, and stepped inside.

The voices of the alters whispered through the house, reminding her she hadn’t lived there alone.

The paintings she’d done during her most tumultuous years lined the walls, a sea of macabre renditions of being imprisoned, of the darkness that had consumed her life.

Of the fear that had nearly choked her as she’d begun to merge her alters and realized what some of them had done. That Skid, the teenage boy who’d vowed to protect her, had actually wanted to destroy her completely so he could take over.

She’d also painted side-by-side views of her and Sadie, the comparison stark. Sadie was light and she was dark.

“You’re not all dark,” she whispered to herself.

And she wouldn’t let the demons win.

She walked through the rooms, searching the desk drawers and the closet for the journals or something, anything, Papaw could have left behind.

The old church hymnal that Papaw had loved so much sat on the end table by her bed alongside his Bible.

Papaw had believed in God and redemption. He’d always been close to the preacher and considered him a friend.

Hope spiked in her chest. If Papaw had known anything about her baby, the one person he would have turned to was Reverend Bartholomew. He told him everything.

John searched the computer database for missing boys with the same MO as his current case, five- to nine-year-olds, and noted they all had one thing in common.

They all came from troubled families or foster homes.

Other similarities in the MO—none of the kids had come from families with money, no ransom demands had been made, and there were no witnesses.

Which made the motive for the crimes even more chilling.

Zack scratched a picture of an airplane on the wall. The airplane would take him away one day. He would fly over the clouds and the ocean and the trees and find where he was supposed to be.

Far away from the banshees.

The door opened and the big man with the steel-colored eyes stared down at him.

“Where’s Devon?” Zack asked.

The man’s hand fell to the metal rod at his belt. Zack’s legs shook. Was he going to use it on him?

“Devon is gone. And if you don’t cooperate, the same thing will happen to you.”

Zack straightened his shoulders. He wouldn’t cry or scream.

They would punish him for that.

He had to fight them though. He wasn’t meant to live there. He didn’t fit.

He didn’t know how he knew, but he did. It was just a feeling that something wasn’t right.

That he was meant to be somewhere else. Like the little boy who talked to him in his head. He belonged with him. They could be friends.

But the big man jerked him by the arm and ordered him to walk. Zack did as he said, looking for a way to escape as he led him down the hall. Footsteps sounded outside.

Guns fired. A truck rumbled.

Metal screeched as the guard opened a heavy door and pushed Zack through it.

 

BOOK: Dying for Love
7.14Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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