Gone Too Far (9 page)

But then he drew in a deep breath, and let it out in a hard exhale as he ran his hands down his face. “I’m okay,” he said. “I’m just . . . a little . . .”

“It’s all right,” she said quietly. “You don’t have to say anything.”

It was several long moments before he spoke.

“It was Janine?” he asked.

“Yeah,” she told him. “They’re looking for her ex-husband, Clyde.”

“You up for a drive?” Sam asked, finally looking over at her. “Because I know where to find him.”

The good news was that Whitney wasn’t lying dead on the floor, her hair soaked with blood.

In all likelihood, the girl had taken Haley and Amanda, her own daughter—born when Whitney was barely fifteen—to the beach.

Still, Mary Lou’s hands shook as she picked up the phone and dialed Whitney’s cell phone number.

The girl answered it on the third ring. “ ’Lo?” Amanda was wailing in the background.

“Whitney!” Praise God. The cell phone signal out here in Nowheresville was spotty at best. “It’s Ma— Constance.” Connie, not Mary Lou. Connie, Connie, Connie. She was Connie Grant, who had a
son
, Chris. Haley had balked at a name change until Mary Lou had suggested she pick one herself. Her first choice was Daddy, which had made Mary Lou pause. Her second was Pooh, which also didn’t work. The third time was a charm, thank the Lord, with Christopher Robin, which fit right in with Mary Lou’s plan to pass her off as a little boy. “Where
are
you?”

She never raised her voice to Whitney, and right now it took everything she had in her to keep from shrieking at the teenager.

“Almost home. We’re nearly at the gate. We’ll be in the garage in about three minutes,” Whitney reported. “Are you and Daddy through? Meet us down there and take the screaming monster out of her car seat. You know, I don’t get it. Chris doesn’t have shitfits in the middle of Starbucks.”

“Please watch your language in front of the children,” Mary Lou said, working hard to keep her voice calm and in control, closing her eyes and silently invoking Ihbraham Rahman’s gentle spirit. Lord, she missed him so much there were times she doubled over from the pain.

If she lost her temper and let on that foul words in front of Haley and Amanda were a serious problem, Whitney would use them
more
frequently, instead of less.

The truth was, Amanda’s misbehaving had more to do with the fact that she had been unlucky enough to be born to a rich spoiled brat who was little more than a petulant infant herself.

Whitney Turlington was the bane of Mary Lou’s existence—yet she was also her savior. In the past two years of Amanda’s life, more than two dozen au pairs had run screaming from the palatial Florida mansion where Amanda and Whitney lived with Whitney’s very wealthy father, Frank. They hadn’t run from Amanda, who wasn’t the terror everyone made her out to be, but rather from Whitney, who was barely seventeen and constantly at war with King Frank, Whitney Turlington was a bitch on wheels.

But because of that, King Frank hadn’t called a single one of Connie Grant’s faked references when Mary Lou had applied for the position. He’d just been downright grateful
some
one had showed up for the job interview at all.

Which meant that, at least for now, Mary Lou and Haley had found a safe place to hide in the Turlington’s private little compound just southwest of Sarasota—not twenty miles from the house where Janine lay dead in the kitchen.

No one had found her yet.

Mary Lou watched the local news every night, praying that someone would find her sister and give her a proper, decent Christian burial.

She also prayed that the men who killed Janine wouldn’t find her and Haley.

Her ex-husband, Sam, the Navy SEAL, had once told her that the smartest place to hide was back where everyone had already searched. So she’d maxed out her credit card in Jacksonville, making it look as if she were heading north, while at the same time buying everything she hadn’t been able to take from Janine’s house when she’d left town on that awful evening.

One of her first stops had been at a beauty parlor where Haley’s golden curls had been cut boyishly short. Mary Lou had her own hair cut, too, and went blond, telling the beautician to match the shade with Haley’s.

The next stop had been Sears, where, while Haley wasn’t looking, Mary Lou had bought a brand-new Pooh Bear. She’d given it to her daughter, pretending she’d found it at the bottom of her big purse. Haley had looked suspiciously at the new stuffed animal’s gleaming golden fur and clean red shirt, but Mary Lou had chattered on about how she’d taken Pooh to the beauty parlor, too, and had his fur “done” while they were there, same as Mama’s hair.

She’d bought them clothes—Haley’s from the little boy’s section of the store—and luggage on little rollers. They’d headed to Gainesville, ditched the car, and boarded a bus back to Sarasota, where Mary Lou had seen Frank Turlington’s desperate ad for an au pair hanging on the community message board in the grocery store where she used to work. It had been there close to six months ago, when she’d first started as a cashier, and a month later, when she’d been about to take it down, her assistant manager had stopped her. Even though the store managers had a rule against signs hanging on the board for longer than a few weeks, the woman gave her the scoop on the Turlingtons, telling her that King Frank—as he was called by the locals—might as well put in a revolving door at the front of his house. Because a few days after a new au pair went in, she’d come shooting out again.

Mary Lou had been here now for almost three weeks, which was breaking the official Turlington au pair stamina record by thirteen days.

And then word had come down from Mrs. Downs, the housekeeper, that King Frank had requested Mary Lou’s—Connie’s—presence at breakfast today. At 7:00 A.M. He’d even given the royal order for Whitney to wake up early and keep an eye on Amanda and Haley while Connie was meeting with him.

Before she’d made the marathon run to the wing with the dining room, Mary Lou had taken Haley to the bathroom at least two dozen times, cursing the fact that her daughter had been potty trained—early—for a full month now. She tried to put a Pull-Ups on Haley, tried to tell her daughter not to drink, tried to caution her not to ask Whitney for help in the bathroom, told her to wait to pee until Mommy came back.

Haley had blinked at her and then returned to staring at
Sesame Street
.

Whitney had staggered in at 6:57, and Mary Lou had sprinted to the dining room, risking one of Mrs. Downs’s “the hired help moves silently throughout the house” lectures.

She’d arrived at 6:59, dressed in Connie’s most conservative beige slacks and a pastel blue blouse. And then she’d sat off to the side and waited for more than ninety minutes while King Frank talked on the phone to someone in San Francisco named Steve about acquiring one of Wyatt Earp’s six-shooters for his vast gun collection.

Finally, King Frank got off the phone, ate half a corn muffin, and then turned his attention to Mary Lou.

At first she thought she was being let go, because he told her that he’d decided to send Whitney into a special rehab-type program. Starting in two weeks, she would be gone for three months. And she’d be taking Amanda with her.

But then he gave Mary Lou a contract that, if she signed, would give her five thousand dollars a month—including the months Whitney would be away—provided she stayed a full year. If she didn’t stay the year, she’d receive only five hundred dollars a month.

The catch was that King Frank was going to Europe this afternoon. Something important had come up, and he wouldn’t be back until August. And Mrs. Downs’s niece was getting married in Atlanta on Friday. She was leaving tonight, and would be gone most of the two weeks before Whitney and Amanda were scheduled to leave, too.

Starting in just a few hours, Mary Lou would be alone in the house with the devil child and her offspring. The security guards would remain on duty down by the gate, and although they did a daily check of the compound to make sure the two empty guest houses were secure, they rarely did more than walk in a circle around the main house.

Of course, she’d signed. She’d had her pen out and ready the moment King Frank had uttered the words
five thousand
. These next few weeks might actually be easier with no one around for Whitney to piss off. She’d try plenty, but Mary Lou had learned early on to let it bounce right off.

But now Whitney had taken Haley to
Starbucks
.

Mary Lou ran into the garage just as the convertible pulled inside.

And the reality of the situation hit Mary Lou. That girl had taken Haley all the long way to town. In a convertible with the top down.

Where anyone might have seen her.

You did
not
have my permission to take Chris into town.
Mary Lou clenched her teeth over the words. If she uttered them, then Whitney would know that she’d found Mary Lou’s weakness. And then the girl would have the upper hand.

Lord help her, she needed a drink.

“Please ask me next time you decide to take Chris to town,” Mary Lou said instead.

“You were busy and I needed a cup of coffee.”

“There’s coffee in the kitchen.” Mary Lou worked to make her voice calm. Unaffected. She lifted howling Amanda out of her car seat and held her close. “Shhh, honey, it’s all right.”

“Yeah, well, I needed a
Starbucks
.”

What Whitney had needed was to see Peter Young, the loser of the moment, the boy who was currently using her for sex.

Had she left Haley and Amanda alone in the car, in the parking lot, while she and Peter had gone into the bathroom and . . . ?

Mary Lou wanted to break Whitney’s nose.

But there was a gleam in her blue eyes that Mary Lou didn’t like. And Whitney’s smile was just a little too satisfied.

“You know,” Whitney said, “Chris had to pee on the way home, so we pulled off the road and—”

Damn it!

“—wasn’t
that
a surprise.”

Mary Lou made shushing noises as she hugged Amanda, crossing around to the other side of the car to get Haley out of the car, too.

“I’m going to tell my father that you’re a liar,” Whitney singsonged.

Mary Lou had both children in her arms now, one on either hip. She went to the far end of the five-bay garage and put them down near an open area dedicated to Amanda’s Big Wheel. Amanda, five months older, would ride, and Haley would watch, all big eyes.

Now what? The thought of murdering Whitney and hiding the body actually crossed her mind. Amanda wouldn’t miss her, and Frank would probably be relieved.

No, she and Haley would have to leave. They’d have to pack up and move on.
Damn
it. Five thousand
dollars
a month. She’d been
so
close.

Unless . . .

Lord, it was worth a try. She marched all the way across the garage, back to Whitney. “I need your help.”

Whitney blinked. Probably because no one had ever said those words to her before.

“My ex-husband wants me dead,” Mary Lou lied, saying a silent apology to Sam, who had never hit her and would probably die before laying a hand on a woman. “I left him before he could beat the life out of me, and now he’s hunting me down.”

She hoped that Whitney wouldn’t recognize the plot from that J. Lo movie she’d rented last week. The truth of Mary Lou’s situation was too complicated. But spouse abuse—now, that was something Whitney could relate to. Apparently Amanda’s father had had quite a right hook. “He’s crazy,” she continued, “and he says if he can’t have me, no one will, so I changed my name and got this job here with you so I could hide from him.

“He doesn’t know I’m in Sarasota,” she told the girl, who was definitely listening. “I left a false trail to make him think I was up north. But I used to live in Sarasota, so he might have people watching for me here. Or watching for Chris, who, yes, is a girl. Our lives depend on our being able to stay here, in this compound, where as few people as possible can see us. So I need you to promise that you will never take Chris anywhere again without asking me first.”

Whitney was silent for a moment. “What’s your real name?” she asked.

“Wendy,” Mary Lou lied, praying she was doing the right thing by telling Whitney this. “I’m not going to tell you my last name.”

Whitney thought about that a little bit longer. “I should still tell Daddy.”

“If you do,” Mary Lou pointed out, “you’ll find yourself with a new au pair. One who spies on you and tells your father when you sneak out at night to see Peter.”

On the other side of the garage, Amanda was driving in circles around Haley, who was laughing. Lord, she didn’t want to leave. Where would they go?

Early on, she’d found that the key to communicating with Whitney was to always be the one to end the conversation. Always be first to walk away.

“Who wants a snack?” Mary Lou asked Amanda and Haley as she crossed the garage toward them.

Please Lord, don’t let Whitney tell.