Tell No Lies (21 page)

 

Where the hell was Sadie?

Augusta sat on the couch, with a towel under her rear end, resisting the urge to turn on the TV. She really wanted to know if there were any new developments, but didn’t relish the thought of Sadie walking in with her sitting on the couch watching television. It was enough that she was in her house uninvited.

She got up, feeling a little on edge, and walked back to the bathroom. There, she turned on the sink and waited for it to flow clear, then splashed water onto her face. There was only one bathroom in this tiny cottage and the pipes were all rusty. Augusta honestly didn’t understand why Sadie was so attached to the place. She had more than enough money to buy a nice house somewhere that didn’t come with so much bad juju—Sadie’s word, though it fit.

Augusta was getting hungry. She hadn’t heard from Ian since the text he’d sent her earlier so she walked into the kitchen to grab her phone and sat on the couch again to text him back. She didn’t want to talk to him yet, because if she did, she was going to walk out of this house and go straight to see him. It was too easy to let him take her away from all these problems, but she owed it to Sadie to stay and face this with her.

Maybe Sadie was with Josh?

She sent Josh a quick text first:
Do you know where your mom is?

Then, feeling brave, she texted Ian:
I think I love you.

She set the phone down at her side on the couch but it vibrated at once.

She picked it up and read the text from Ian:
Then marry me.

Augusta’s heart leapt clear from her stomach into her throat. She wrote back:
Are you serious?

A smiley face blinked next to those words, making her doubt.

She sank into the couch, and texted back:
Why?

Augusta laughed and raised a brow. “Bastard,” she said, and started to text him back to say something smart-assed for getting her hopes up, but then he texted again:
Because I love you, Augusta. Why else?

Augusta found herself grinning from ear to ear, despite what she was writing.
You’re really asking me to marry you in a text? How lame!

It seemed she waited forever for him to text back:
Have you ever seen a grown man cry?

What if you said no?
And then, immediately after, he wrote:
Did you steal his heart, too?

Augusta thought about the day she’d gone off to college—the day she’d told Josh she was never coming home if she could help it. Although he hadn’t cried, that was as close to seeing a grown man weep as she had ever come. He had stood there staring at her with those glassy blue eyes, but regained his composure, blinking the tears away without saying a word.

Their relationship was never the same after that.

She sat there, staring at her screen, uncertain how to answer, because she was pretty sure Josh had never really loved her. She was just familiar to him. And now that she knew the whole truth, the entire situation was a little gross.

Still, Josh claimed to have loved her, and she took it at face value, knowing that at least he thought he did.

Yes,
she wrote back.

 

Sprawled across the bed—the bed he had shared with Augusta—completely naked from the shower, Ian was in no hurry to get dressed—unless it was to go to her. He craved her body. Like a teen, he lay staring up at the phone in his hand, hanging on her every word, aroused by mere words typed across a screen.

The sex was good, but it was more than that. He wasn’t a grateful virgin—far from that, in fact. He’d had a string of lovers, beginning from the age of eleven. Women had always thrown themselves at him, and he had very shortly learned how that game worked. He was the bad boy women wanted a roll in the hay with. The guys they actually married had an account with Morgan Stanley Smith Barney. They wore expensive watches and wanted the house and wife with two-point-five kids because it looked good on their résumé.

Ian had never been that guy. He’d come from a broken home. His father was a druggie and a low-rent criminal. He sold meth and stole packs of cigarettes rather than pay for them, even when he had the money. The best thing he had ever done for Ian was hook him up with Ian’s uncle, who was the reverse image of his dad. His mother had been lost from the get-go. He wanted better than all that, but he didn’t need to be
that guy
, because that guy’s wife was exactly the type who would hit on him while her husband was busy drinking single-malt scotch and smoking Cuban cigars with clients. He’d had a very rude wake-up call as a young man, and extreme situations called for extreme changes. So he took the hard right turn. Giving up sex had never really seemed like a huge sacrifice when he had a hand that worked as well as any vagina. Doing something better with his life was what mattered to him. Money didn’t make much difference, except that having none sucked. So he’d put nearly every last dime of his earnings into a tidy little bank account that now almost rivaled
that guy’s
—especially considering that Ian came debt-free.

But his entire life had changed in the space of a day, and he wanted Augusta at his side for the rest of his life.

Suddenly, making love—to her—occupied at least half his waking thoughts. He was hard again just reading her words, but he didn’t even consider taking care of it, because sex meant nothing without her.

He thought about dialing her and listening to her voice instead of texting, but right now, this was enough. He had seen the news, and knew that the instant they spoke, reality would come crashing back into the picture. Of course, it must. Soon enough. But for the instant, he wanted to say what was in his heart, without interruption and without reality to shut him down. He savored the moment.

His heart thumped against his ribs as he tapped away his question.
Yes, what?

It took her a long time to answer this time.
Yes, I guess I so.

Grinning, and enjoying the flirtation, he tapped out his question
: Is that yes, you guess you broke his heart? Or yes, you guess you’ll marry me?

Tease. She lingered over the question for an interminable moment.
Depends,
she wrote.

“Augusta Aldridge is typing” continued for far too long.
On whether you plan to ask me in person.

Tomorrow,
he wrote back at once. And he meant it. Later he planned to go look at rings—something simple to match her frugal sensibilities and his budget. That was the one thing he hadn’t come to terms with—the money she seemed to have at her disposal. Luckily, she would be getting her bail money back soon.

What’s wrong with today?
she fired back.

Ian stared at the text and grinned from ear to ear. Indeed, what was wrong with today? Except that he wasn’t about to ask her over the phone. He was going to pick his ass up, get dressed, go get her and when he had her face-to-face, he was going to ask her again.

While she waited for his response, Augusta inspected the book on the coffee table. There was barely any light in the house now—just a faint blue glow from the front and back windows—but she was feeling too lazy to get up and go turn one on. Outside, a sliver of moon was barely visible through a steady sheet of rain. Using her phone as a flashlight, she shone it on the book.
The Road to Forgiveness.
It was a big, fat self-help book by an author she didn’t recognize. She picked it up, bringing it close and holding the light up to it, curious about the message it imparted. Some of these books were gems. Others were a bunch of drivel. Hopefully Sadie was reading one of the former. For a time, Augusta had devoured these types of books and found solace in a few, inspiration in others. In the end, she realized what she’d needed all along was to come home and face her demons.

She was finally making peace with Flo.

Too bad her mother wasn’t around to know it.

Or maybe she was.

Sadie believed in the afterlife.

And sometimes, lately, Augusta felt her mother out there . . . so maybe it was true.

Feeling completely contented, if only for a moment, she flipped open the book to a page that was marked with a folded piece of paper. The document had bold handwriting on the inside. You could see it clearly from the other side, bleeding through. Feeling nosy, she set the book down in her lap and picked up the piece of paper with her left hand, unfolding it, using the phone in her right hand to read by. She heard the text come in as she was reading, but continued to stare at the words, too stunned to comprehend what she was looking at, though her brain recognized it at once.

“Mom’s will,” she said aloud, and held her breath as her eyes scanned the page. She heard a sudden noise in the bedroom, and her stupefied brain attributed it to the cat and kept reading.

Dumbfounded, Augusta stood, dropping the book on the couch, clutching the piece of paper in her hand, along with her phone. She went straight to the kitchen to retrieve her purse, intending to leave with the will, but stopped at the sight of a man standing at the end of the hall. His face was hooded. He wore black from head to toe. All that distinguished him from the dark were his pale eyes. For an instant, he simply stared at her, looking as surprised as she was.

Augusta screamed and bolted for the front door, abandoning her purse.

Right-handed, and knowing she couldn’t manage the door with the phone in her hand, she dropped the phone to snatch open the door and ran out into the rain, slamming the door hard behind her. She heard curses in her wake.

She didn’t go for the car, because even if she could get in and lock both doors in time, she didn’t have the keys and she didn’t want to be trapped inside.

She ran toward the dock, slipping into the brush as the man emerged on Sadie’s front porch, a dark shadow against the faded blue porch. She shoved the will down the front of her shirt as she ran to protect it from the rain. Thank God she wasn’t one to wear heels! Wet and sloppy, the ground sank beneath her feet, but she ran as fast as she could.

She didn’t have the keys to the house. It would be locked. The keys were in her purse. It was late, but Caroline wouldn’t be home yet. And the construction crew was long gone. The only phone in the house was upstairs in her bedroom. But if she had to break in to get to it, she wouldn’t be able to keep the man out—even if she could get into the house in time. But she knew she couldn’t. They had reinforced the locks after the last break-in. But what did that matter? Windows could be broken. There was nobody around for miles to hear her scream.

The docks seemed her best choice. The lock on the boathouse door was already broken. She could get in there fast and maybe there were keys in one of the boats.

She knew the man was somewhere behind her, but didn’t dare turn to look. She knew this property better than anyone except her sisters. He didn’t. Augusta ran hard, her brain searching for options.

The dock was still a few hundred yards away through thickening mud, but she was camouflaged by brush. Her feet sank into the muck, and the suction threatened to pull off her shoes. She couldn’t hear him behind her anymore. He would expect her to run toward the house, toward safety. The porch lights were a beacon in the growing darkness. She knew he couldn’t see her in the pouring rain and would have to guess at her direction.

The closer she got to the dock, the softer the plough mud became, until it began to bog her down. She lost one shoe as the mud sucked it straight off her foot, but she kept running, leaping up onto the dock when she sensed it was there in front of her. She could barely see where she was going now, but despite the fact that she hadn’t lived here in ten years, she knew every inch of this property.

On the dock, she made better time, racing toward the boathouse, her footfalls echoing along the wooden pier. She prayed he wouldn’t hear. She knew he couldn’t see her. The boathouse at the long end of the dock was no more than a black hole in the darkness. She ran toward it, praying for keys.

In the distance, a crack of lightning lit the horizon.

Behind her, the glow of the house porch lights through sheets of rain looked like fireflies in the distance.

Reaching the boathouse at last, she ripped off the tangled makeshift lock, and the door collapsed with a hollow thud. She knew the instant he realized she wasn’t going toward the house because she heard him cursing across the distance. Her time was limited.

Inside the boathouse, she could see that one bay door had been left open. The dory was there and in the water so she made a last-minute decision and skipped looking for keys. She dove into the dory, hoping against hope she wouldn’t miss. She landed in the bottom of the small boat with a thud, banging her head on one of the seats and her ribs on another, but the dory slid out of the bay into the black night.

It was only when she was inside the dory that she wondered why the boat was back in the bay and why the door was open. There were no paddles left in the boat, but she had enough thrust to carry her out toward open water.

Her left thigh hurt. So did her chest and head, and she thought she tasted blood in the rainwater that seeped between her lips.

Behind her, she could hear footsteps racing down the dock, but judging by the distance, he was a good ways behind her. She lay dead still, hoping to let her momentum carry her as far as possible. The rain beat down on her back and the back of her head. The tinny taste of her own blood lingered in her mouth. In the distance, another razor-thin bolt of lightning flashed, followed by a
crack
of thunder. Augusta lay quietly, trying to remember what she was wearing. Dark. Thank God. She was wearing denims and a dark plum shirt, nothing bright to reflect light.

The front of her shirt was soaked now and she could feel the paper of the will plastered to her skin—probably ruined. In the end, she had given up her means of calling for help to salvage a piece of paper that was going to be completely worthless.

The boat suddenly shuddered to a halt as the bow nosed into the muck.

Another bolt of lightning lit the sky enough for Augusta to see that she was stuck in the tidal flats. Yet another flash illuminated the dock behind her. She could see someone standing on the edge of it, but he wasn’t coming after her yet. A dark form stood at the end of the dock, silhouetted with each flash of lightning. Thunder cracked between every bolt, closer and closer together.

The inlet creeks were like spidery veins. Even at low tide, the middle of the creek was deep enough to accommodate a good-sized boat that could easily handle Clark Sound and the winding rivers and estuaries around Morris Island. But you needed paddles and you needed light to navigate. Augusta had neither.

If he took one of the boats, he could easily overtake her.

The instant he disappeared from the dock, her decision was made. She slipped out of the boat and crawled into the spartina flats.

 

Ian pulled on his left boot, glancing at the phone lying on his rumpled sheets.

Answer your phone
, he’d texted, but she’d yet to answer him, and he felt a little silly for feeling so disappointed by that fact. He had no idea where she might be, or what she might be doing. It could be that she’d gotten distracted by something important. There was nothing abnormal about a text gone unanswered. How many times had he done that sort of thing himself?

Mostly on purpose.

The problem was that he was in the middle of asking the girl to marry him, and it didn’t seem like Augusta to set the phone down and walk away from a conversation like that. She might tell him to go to hell, but she wouldn’t ignore him.

Picking up the phone, he scrolled through their messages for some clue as to her whereabouts, but their conversation had never gone there.

He called her again, for the third time, but the phone rang and rang and then went straight to voice mail.

“Damn it, Augusta.”

Pride be damned—this didn’t feel right.

He glanced at the clock. It was nearly eight o’clock. The rains had yet to let up and he had to believe she was home. Who would be out in this kind of weather? He didn’t have her sister’s phone number, or he would have called Caroline, despite how she felt about him. Impatient to hear from Augusta, he tapped out a message completely devoid of humor.

Setting the phone down on the bed, screen facing up, he pulled on his other boot, and then sat there, staring at the phone, waiting. When the screen faded to black, he rose from the bed.

“Shit,” he said and grabbed his phone, sticking it in his back pocket. He went straight for the kitchen to snag his car keys.

He didn’t believe Augusta would simply stop talking.

Grabbing his raincoat, he walked out the front door, with the intention of heading toward Oyster Point. He realized her sister probably didn’t want him on the property, but he didn’t give a damn right now.

He had a bad feeling.

 

Staying low, Augusta made her way through the spartina flats, panting, trying not to panic. Her ribs hurt from the impact to her chest, but she focused her attention on the tidal flats, trying to pick her way through the muck in the darkness.

With one shoe on and one shoe off, she put the greater weight on the foot with the shoe. There was literally no telling what was in these marshes. Folks claimed they were littered with the bones of the Confederate and Union dead. There were old boats, fishing tackle, glass, broken and otherwise—from stupid drunk boaters who didn’t respect the place and tossed out their beer bottles when they were done with them. She’d heard of people unearthing wooden carriage wheels, hundreds of years old, perfectly preserved because of the nature of the plough mud. Wading in water that was ankle-deep in places, along uneven terrain, she scrambled through the spartina grass, using it for cover.

She had never really come out this far—not even as a child. She had often seen fishermen standing out in the tidal flats wearing their bright yellow waders, but the prospect had never appealed to her. This land was theirs, but while it might seem cool to explore the first few feet of tidal flats, the mystery soon gave way to annoyance over the struggle of walking through what amounted to little more than whipped mud.

If you weren’t careful, it was easy to end up in mud to your chin. Nor was it pleasant to pick it out of every crevice of your body because the stinky muck literally oozed into every available crack. Though some people claimed to love the smell, it was not a scent Augusta relished.

She had no idea how far she’d gone through the spartina flats, but she kept going until she heard nothing behind her. When she stumbled across the carcass of a small rotting boat, she dashed beneath it to hide, tripping over something bulky on her way in.