The Wild One (19 page)

And with one last look at the man she loved, the man she had thought loved her, Roxxy walked out with her head held high.

CHAPTER 25

LESS
than thirty minutes after the scene in the barn with Layla/Roxxanne, the real Layla declared. “I’m going after her.”

They were back in the living room where it had all started, and Layla got to her feet. “C’mon, Nathan. Your name’s on the rental car, so you’re going to have to drive me.”

Nathan, who was nursing a tumbler of scotch, didn’t move from the chair he was lounging in. “Sit down, Layla. The only place we’re going in the next few hours is to get the couples’ massage I booked for us at the spa. The one we both deserve after the day we’ve had.”

Layla wrung her hands. “I’ve had a terrible feeling ever since she left. And now, I really think she was telling us the truth, Nathan. The look on her face as she was leaving, like she was so hurt none of us believed her.”

“None of us believed her because she was obviously lying. Just like Nathan said she was. Her
real
sister confirmed that.” Andrew pointed out.

“Well then, maybe there’s something more we can do to help her. How good is the facility she’s staying at if they let her escape? And I swear Roxxy was right about that lady’s acting skills. Something about her didn’t seem quite right. Don’t you think she looked at me just a little too long, before she denied being my mother?”

Nathan sighed. “Layla, you know I love you more than anyone or anything else on the face of this Earth. But after what happened with Andrew’s wife, I think we’ve established you’re not a reliable judge of character.”

“The fact that you married Nathan alone pretty much tells us that,” Andrew said.

Nathan pointed at him. “I’m going to let you get away with that because you’re hurting right now, and my time with Layla has turned me into a better person.” He turned back to Layla. “But he’s right. You’re not exactly dealing aces when it comes to choosing who you associate with.”

Layla made a little growly sound. “Ooh, I am so sick of you two patronizing me just because I almost got shot by Andrew’s poor, mentally unstable wife. And I’m even more sick of people insulting my husband to my face. You are an amazing husband, a wonderful man, and quite frankly, the best lover I’ve had. Plus, you’re gorgeous and really rich. I hit the jackpot with you, and I swear I’m going punch the next person who tries to tell me any different.”

She gathered up her purse, “Now are you going to make me drive the rental illegally or are you coming with me?”

Nathan looked at her for a long, annoyed second. Then he set down his scotch and grabbed his keys. “Okay, let’s go.”

“Are you kidding me?” Andrew asked him. “You’re the one who kept saying she was a psycho.”

“She is a psycho, which is why I’m not about to let my crazy wife go after her alone. Are you coming or what?”

Before Andrew could answer, a sharp knock sounded on the door. “Hold on, I’m going to send whoever it is at the door away, then I’m going to come back and convince you and the real Layla why you have no business going after the woman who duped all of us.”

But Andrew never did get to make that argument, because when he answered the door, he found two men in black suits standing on his porch.

“NYPD,” said one of them, holding up a badge. “We’re here to collect Roxxy RoxX. Though I think you might know her by her cover name.” He stopped to check a piece of paper in his hand, then said. “I believe it’s Layla.”

“HERE, DRINK THIS,” Roxxy’s mother said on the way out of town. Shirelle jiggled a water bottle at her daughter, who was sitting in the passenger seat of the BMW with her arms folded. “It will make you feel better.”

“Why, so you can drug me into submission?” Roxxy asked. “Just like you kept me doped up after you let that nasty man rape me?”

Her mother rolled her eyes. “Stop being so dramatic. You got a career most people can only dream of. I wish you’d just get over that already. Do you know what all I did to get you where you are now? It makes that incident you keep going on and on about feel like a walk in the park.”

“I never asked you to do any of that stuff for me. I would have been satisfied just growing up like a normal kid, especially if I’d known I had a twin sister.”

Shirelle glared at the road ahead. “I know you would have. You have it all, looks, dancing talent, and a great voice. And you never appreciated any of it. Or me. I’m the one who left your good-for-nothing father and your talentless sister behind. I’m the one who made everything happen for you. If I’d let you decide your own career path, you’d be some nobody living in Pittsburgh. Just like your sister.”

“Layla isn’t a nobody. She’s my sister and one of the best people I’ve ever met.”

The tires screeched, and Shirelle came to an abrupt stop at the side of the road. She turned to Roxxy with the crazed fervor of a zealot.

“She’s a
nobody
, and the only reason anyone pays any attention to her is because she’s married to a somebody.” Shirelle nearly spat out the words. “I laid the world out at your feet. Millions of adoring fans, millions of records sold, and all you did was bitch and moan the entire time to the point that I had to keep you altered just to bear being in the same room with your ungrateful ass. Then I find out you’re taking college classes behind my back and you were planning to start at USC this fall.”

Roxxy’s eyes narrowed. “How did you know that?”

“Oh please, Roxxy. I handle all your money, which includes paying your credit card bills. What did you think, you could just charge a semester at USC on your black American Express card without me noticing? Mabel, Dexter, that assistant D.A.—it’s all your fault. If you had just kept on doing what I asked you to, nobody would have had to die or go to jail.”

Realization began to sink in. “Oh, my God,” Roxxy said. “It was you who killed Mabel and you who poisoned the tea Steve Kass drank. You switched it out when you came to visit me at the station before I left. And that’s why the D.A. said Dexter’s apartment looked like a movie cliché. You broke in while he was on vacation and planted all the evidence. But why? You can’t possibly think I’m going to keep on singing after what you did.”

“No, the plan was never for you to keep on singing. The plan was for you to die, supposedly at Dexter’s hand. But as it turned out you were just Roxxy RoxX’s assistant, a kind woman who looked like me and who also volunteered to pretend to be me and go into hiding so I wouldn’t have to. The real Roxxy RoxX was going to be so overcome with grief, she’d vow to never sing again and would start acting. No makeup required.”

That plan was so convoluted, it took Roxxy a few puzzled moments to fully piece together what Shirelle was trying to tell her. “So you weren’t just planning to murder me, but also to kill or incriminate everyone that’s seen me without makeup and then take my place?”

“And maybe it would have stopped there, but you had to go and involve your sister, and those two other twins. Now I’m going to have to go back and take care of them after I get rid of you.”

Her mother pulled a large, menacing needle out of her purse. “Why must you always make me do things the hard way?”

“No!” Roxxy said, turning to let herself out of the car. But it was too late. She felt the sharp prick of the needle in her back and she lost consciousness, thinking that this time her mother had literally stabbed her in the back.

CHAPTER 26

THERE were two roads leading out of town but the men from New York only had one car.

“We’ll have to call the local police force for back up,” said one of them.

“No, she has a half hour on us,” Andrew answered. “That will take too long. You take the highway going toward Missoula, and I’ll take the one going toward Buellton.”

“We can’t send a civilian after a possible kidnapper.”

“Well, I’m going whether you like it or not. If you want, you can call the Buellton police department, too, but I’m going now.”

“I’m coming with you,” Nathan said, following him out the door.

“And me,” Layla said.

They all jumped into his Chevy and peeled out without another word to the two men who’d come to get Roxxy, just a half hour too late.

It felt like a nightmare come true when they found the BMW by the side of the road. Andrew slammed on the brakes and was getting out the car, even before he finished turning over the ignition. But the rush was in vain.

“It’s empty,” he said to Nathan, who was close behind him. He looked around and pointed at the ground. “Look how this grass is depressed. It’s like somebody was dragging something heavy through it.”

“Or somebody,” Layla said, looking toward the copse of trees in the distance.

ROXXY WOKE UP TO THE SOUND of metal scraping against dirt. When she opened her eyes, the picture was blurry, but a few things were clear: she was now trussed up like a pig, with her wrists and ankles bound in thick rope.

And her mother was digging a grave.

“Good, you’re awake,” Shirelle said, when she saw Roxxy’s eyes were open. “I was afraid you’d sleep through all of this.”

“HELP!” Roxxy screamed. “Somebody please help!”

“Don’t bother,” Shirelle said. “We’re about a mile from the road and in the middle of nowhere. Nobody can hear you.”

As much as Roxxy had grown to love the wide, open spaces of Montana, she cursed them now, knowing her mother was right.

“You’re not going to get away with this,” she said to her mother.

“I think I’ve dug enough.” Shirelle stuck the shovel in the ground. “They say you’re supposed to make it six feet deep, but I don’t think it really matters if you’re not near a body of water. Three feet will do well enough.”

Roxxy managed to get up on her feet despite her hands and ankles being tied together. “Somebody will figure it out. You can’t just kill a rock star and two rich white guys without any investigation. They’ll see through you, just like I’m seeing through you right now.”

Roxxy must have hit a nerve, because Shirelle pulled a silver revolver on her. “Shut up,” she said. “Just shut up.”

Roxxy’s eyes widened. “Where did you get a gun from? You can’t fly with one of those.”

Shirelle smiled, actual pride in her eyes. “No, but the wilderness store I got the rope and flashlight from sells them, and the man behind the counter was nice enough to let me buy one without a license. Unlike you, I’ve never had a problem using what I have to get what I want.”

Roxxy gave her a disparaging look. “If what you had was that great, then you would have gotten the gun for free, not just a pass on the license. Think about this, Shirelle. You want to believe what I do is easy, but it’s harder than it looks. It takes years of training and you’ve never even taken one acting class. People are going to have a hard time believing your story.”

Her mother’s sharp laugh rang out across the night sky. “That’s what you want to believe, that you’re oh-so-special, that you couldn’t possibly be replaced. But your sister believed every word I said. So did her husband and her brother-in-law, who I assume you were sleeping with. So really, what
you
have isn’t good enough.”

Thinking of Andrew made Roxxy’s heart burn with regret. As angry as she’d been when she walked out of the barn, she still loved him. And now she’d never get a chance to show him who she really was. And if her mother hurt him…her eyes filled with tears. Andrew and Layla had already been through so much. She hated that she had brought even more drama and violence into their lives.

“Please,” she said. “Shoot me. But leave Layla and her family alone. They’re good people, and they don’t deserve to die.”

“Nobody deserves anything. I sat by for years, watching you in the spotlight, knowing it should have been me. It would have been me if I’d had a mother who pushed me, if I hadn’t gotten knocked up so young, and if I’d grown up during the era of auto tune.”

Roxxy twisted her face. “That’s a lot of conditions that would have had to be met in order for you to become famous, too.”

“Shut up, you spoiled brat! I’m so sick of putting up with your constant whining and back talk. You’re lucky I didn’t kill you before now.”

“No, I’m not lucky,” Roxxy yelled back at her. “I think this entire situation pretty much highlights just how unlucky my entire life has been, and all because I was born to you, you selfish bitch!”

Shirelle’s face curled into an ugly sneer and for a moment she actually looked her age. Forty-nine angry years written across her face.

A shot rang out, and Roxxy felt something hot pass into her chest. She coughed with the surprise of it all, and then pitched face forward into the fresh grave. But as she fell, she could have sworn she heard somebody scream. Layla?

ANDREW GRABBED THE REGISTERED GUN from his glove compartment, before taking off after Roxxy. He had never run so fast in his life, but Layla ran even faster. He distantly remembered her telling him she’d run track in high school when they’d been dating, and she obviously still had a talent for speed, because she shot past both him and Nathan and disappeared into the trees ahead of them.

Then the gunshot rang out.

“No!” they heard her scream a few moments later.

And just when Andrew thought he was at top speed, he found himself running even faster.

When he entered the trees, he found Layla trying to wrestle the gun out of Shirelle’s hands.

His brain exploded with remembered pain. It was almost as if he’d come upon Layla and his dead wife wrestling for the gun again. But Shirelle must have been much stronger than Diana, because she soon gained the upper hand over Layla.

“If I had known you’d be such a problem, I would have smothered you with a pillow before I left your no-good father.”

She placed a hand at Layla’s throat, choking her and raising the gun to shoot.

Andrew didn’t think, he just raised his own gun and shot—once, twice, three times until Shirelle fell sideways and off of Layla, as dead as she’d been trying to make her daughter.

Nathan rushed past him, calling Layla’s name and gathering her up in his arms. “Are you okay?” his brother asked, feeling all over his wife’s body for possible injuries. “What is it with you and going after crazy women with guns in their hands?”