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Authors: Lisa Jackson

BOOK: Whispers
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“Honey, I'm just telling you what Jessica is saying.” Claire's throat was suddenly raw with the pain her daughter felt.
“But why?” Samantha's voice was an octave higher than normal.
“Because she's a slut, and he's a pervert.”
“I don't know,” Claire said. “Sean, I don't want to hear another word—”
“No! It's not true!” Samantha's body stiffened, and she pushed Claire away. “I don't believe you!” She ran to the door. “You're a liar, Sean, a creepy, lowlife liar!”
The door banged shut behind her, and Claire whirled on her son. “That was uncalled for.”
“That was the truth.”
“There are kinder ways—”
“Yeah, like letting Candi Suck-Up Whittaker rub Sam's nose in it! Face it, Mom, Dad's a sex fiend who likes young girls. Samantha's better off knowing the truth. That way she won't get hurt anymore.”
“Won't she?” Claire whispered under her breath as she ran after Samantha through the house, out the front door, and down the street. A hot breeze turned the leaves of the aspen trees, causing them to shimmer in the sunlight, and somewhere behind the neighbor's house a dog was barking fiercely. Claire dashed down the sidewalk, dodging a tricycle and a bump in the walk where the roots of a tree had buckled the cement, all the while chasing after her daughter. Samantha was sobbing, her golden hair streaming behind her, her long legs running fast, as if she could leave the horrid words and accusations back in the house.
Running away. Just like you, Claire. But you can't run. Sooner or later the past catches up to you.
At Center Street, Samantha ran against the light and a pickup squealed to a stop, narrowly missing her. Claire's heart stopped and she screamed. “Watch out!”
No. No. No.
“Hey, kid, watch where you're goin',” the driver barked, a cigarette wobbling in the corner of his mouth.
Heart pumping with fear, Claire held out her hand and ran in front of his rig.
“What the hell—”
“Samantha, wait, please,” Claire yelled, but Samantha didn't even glance over her shoulder.
“Friggin' idiots!” The truck roared off.
Breathing hard, Claire caught up with her daughter a block away from the park. The sun was blistering, blinding as it reflected off the sidewalk and fenders of cars parked along the street. Tears tracked down Samantha's red cheeks.
“Oh, baby,” Claire whispered. “I'm sorry.”
“You should have told me,” Samantha charged.
“I didn't know how.”
“I hate him!”
“No, you can't hate your father.”
“I do! I hate him.” She swallowed hard, and as Claire reached for her, she yanked away. “And I hate you, too.”
“Oh, Sami, no—”
“Don't call me that!” she nearly squealed and Claire realized Paul had always called Samantha by her nickname.
“All right.”
Sniffing loudly, Samantha rubbed the back of her hand under her eyes. “I'm glad we're moving,” she said, blinking rapidly. “Glad.”
“So am I—”
“Oh, no!” Her face suddenly drained of color. Abruptly Samantha turned around, facing the other direction, willing her body to stop shaking. Claire glanced over her shoulder and saw Candi Whittaker, a slim girl with a tiny waist and breasts no decent twelve-year-old should own, sauntering up the street with another girl Claire didn't recognize. At the sight of Samantha and her mother, both girls stared, swallowed smiles, and began to whisper. Claire used her body as a shield, blocking the little snips' view of her daughter, waiting until they'd taken a path that wound past the tennis courts and stopped looking over their small, self-righteous shoulders.
“It's all right. They won't bother you. Come on.” Claire ushered Samantha back along the street, leading her home. Sean was probably right; moving wouldn't solve their problems. They couldn't run away. She'd tried that once before a long time ago and the past seemed to forever chase her, nipping ferociously at her heels.
Now, it had finally caught up to her. She didn't tell Samantha or Sean that there was another reason they were moving back to Oregon, a reason she didn't want to face. But she had no choice. Her father, a rich man used to getting his way, had called last week and demanded that she return to Lake Arrowhead, a place that brought back so many nightmares she couldn't begin to count them.
She'd protested, but Dutch hadn't taken no for an answer, and she had no choice but to agree. He knew of her trouble with Paul and had promised to help her relocate, put in a good word with the school district, let her live rent-free in the huge house where she'd grown up, give her a hand as she struggled to find her footing as a single mother.
She would have been a fool to say no, but there was something more that bothered her, a dark tone in his voice that caught her attention and caused the hairs on the back of her neck to rise.
Dutch had intimated that he knew something about the past—not all of it—but enough to convince her that she had to face him as well as what had happened sixteen years ago. So she'd agreed to meet with her father, though her stomach revolted at the thought.
“Come on,” she said to Samantha. “Everything's going to be okay.”
“It can't be,” Samantha grumbled.
You're so right, sweetheart.
“We'll make it right. You'll see.” But even as she said the words, she knew they were lies. All lies.
 
 
Tessa flipped on the radio and felt the warmth of summer stream through her short hair as her Mustang convertible raced through the Siskiyou Mountains near the Oregon border. The northern California landscape was sun-bleached and desolate, the hills dry. She'd been driving for hours and would have to stop soon, or her bladder would burst from the beer that she'd sipped all the way from Sonoma. An icy bottle of Coors was cradled between her bare legs, the sweat from the glass cooling her skin and soaking the hem of her shorts. Open containers of alcohol were illegal. Drinking and driving was illegal. Well, for that matter most of the fun in life was either considered illegal or immoral. Tessa didn't really care. Not now, when she, at her father's behest, was returning to Lake Arrowhead.
Dread skittered down her spine. The old man had always tried to put the fear of God into her and sometimes succeeded. Nonetheless she rebelled. Just wait 'til old Dutch caught a glimpse of her latest tattoo.
“Bastard,” she muttered as the radio crackled and groaned. She punched button after button and heard only screeches and static, as the canyons were steep, the stations distant, the only station she could get played oldies, ancient rock and roll. Right now Janis Joplin was screeching through the speakers. My God, the woman had been dead for years, had passed into the next world, whatever that was, long before Tessa had any interest in music, but today the hard-driving rock and gravelly voice of Joplin touched Tessa in a dark, private spot. Janis sang as if she knew pain—real gut-wrenching agony. The kind of anguish Tessa lived with daily.
Music pounded through the car.
Tessa took a long tug from her bottle and reached into her fringed purse for a pack of cigarettes.
 
Take a,
Take another little piece of my heart now, darlin'
Break a,
Break another . . .
 
That's it, she thought. Break another piece of my heart. Hadn't all the men she'd ever trusted? Tessa slid the Virginia Slims between her lips and punched in the lighter. Images of her past drifted behind her eyes and her adolescence crept into her subconscious. Her foot eased down on the gas pedal and the speedometer needle crowded ninety, way over the legal limit, but she didn't notice, didn't care. She was swept away in the tormented current of the past, dammed so long in her subconscious that she wasn't really sure what was real and what was fantasy.
The lighter popped out and Tessa lit up, smoke curling from her nostrils to be sucked away by the racing wind as the Mustang roared up the freeway.
Didn't I make you feel . . .
Janis was still wailing as Tessa drained her beer, chucked the bottle out of the car, and heard glass shatter over the thrum of the engine. Joplin's voice faded. Jesus, if only she could find another station. One with music from the
current
century. Hip hop or rap or techo. Too bad her CD player was busted.
Shoving her sunglasses onto the bridge of her nose with one finger, Tessa drove with her knee. Then she steeled herself. In less than six hours, she'd have to face her family for the first time in years. Her stomach knotted. Dutch, when he'd called her apartment, had sworn that both Tessa's sisters would be waiting for her at Lake Arrowhead.
“Prick,” she mumbled, flipping the butt of her cigarette onto the freeway. Claire and Miranda. The romantic and the ice princess. It had been years since Tessa had seen them together, since they'd huddled, shivering and dripping, as they'd sworn that they would never divulge what had happened in the murky waters of the lake that night.
Shaking, she reached behind her, snapped open the lid of the cooler, her fingers surrounding the neck of another bottle of Coors standing at attention in the packed ice. Then she thought better of drinking any more alcohol. Soon she'd reach the border. It was time to sober up. And, she decided as another morbid song from the sixties cranked up, time to face the damned music of a song that was written long ago and just kept playing over and over in her head.
 
 
“He was here again,” Louise announced as she stuck her head into Miranda's tiny office.
Miranda's skin crawled. “Who?” But she knew the answer and it bothered her. A lot. Despite her outward bravado, she had her own fears, her own demons to deal with and the thought that she could possibly have a stalker struck to the very core of her terror. Though she appeared tough on the outside, Miranda knew that any psych student who took a peek at her relationships with men would note that she had “issues.” Make that “major issues.” Her back teeth gritted though she managed a smile.
“The same creep who's been dogging you for the past three days.” Miranda's stomach tightened as Louise edged in, straightened Miranda's framed law degree that forever tilted on the wall, then slouched against the single file cabinet jammed into the corner. A smooth-skinned black woman with almond eyes and a keen intelligence, Louise had been working as a secretary in the Multnomah County DA's office for the past four years. Now, Louise's eyes were dark with concern.
Which only upped Miranda's fear factor.
She hadn't set foot in her cubicle of an office all afternoon and had only stopped by to pick up some papers. For most of the day, she'd been talking with the medical examiner or briefing Denise Santiago on the Richmond murder case. It was funny how she could deal with crimes on a daily basis, brutal, horrible crimes against people and property with a fierce doggedness that didn't expose any of her own personal fears, but the thought of one man following her brought images from her past, painful, severe images that she had buried for years, straight to the fore.
“Who is this guy?” she wondered aloud and fought the dread that settled like lead in her stomach as she packed away a sheaf of handwritten notes in her briefcase. She caught a glimpse of a picture she kept on the corner of her desk—her favorite snapshot of her two sisters and herself. It had been taken long ago, when she had been an innocent fifteen. Three girls at the brink of adolescence, their arms linked together as they stood on a windswept boulder high above the angry gray waters of the Pacific Ocean. Their faces were ruddy, their smiles sincere, their spirits as free as the gales that had tugged at their hair, blowing the strands in front of their eyes. A lifetime ago. A naive age that could never be recaptured. She snapped her briefcase shut.
“I wish I had some idea who he is.”
Louise lifted a shoulder. “Don't have a clue. But my guess is he's bad news.”
“This is the district attorney's office for crying out loud. We're not that far from the police station. There are dozens of cops all around. How does he get in?”
“Like everyone else—through the front door. That's the trouble with a public building, you know. It's bought and paid for with tax dollars and allows any idiot inside.” Louise crossed her arms over her ample chest. “Petrillo doesn't like this guy nosing around any more than I do. He told me to contact him the next time the mystery man shows up.”
Frank Petrillo was a detective who had been with the department for more years than Miranda. Recently divorced and the father of two kids, he didn't see as much as he wanted to, he'd been asking Miranda out for the past three months. So far, they'd only shared a pizza after working late one night. That was as involved as Miranda wanted to be. She didn't date anyone she worked with. It was her personal, unwritten but never-broken law.

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