Fade to Black (32 page)

“Like …?”

“Like, your natural hair and eye color is brown. Just the way it is now. You didn’t say anything about that last night, to the cops that were there.”

“There were a lot of things I didn’t say last night. I was in shock.”

“You and me both. I’m still in shock, Eliz—Mallory. I had no idea who you were. No wonder you seemed so familiar when I first saw you.”

She frowns, the ringing doorbell momentarily distracting her.

The detective is looking out the window, apparently trying to figure out if it was rung by a member of the press, or by a fellow lawman. There’s a pounding on the front door.

“I have to go,” Mallory tells Harper.

“Wait. I’m coming over there.”

“You … you can’t.”

“Why not?”

“You have no idea what’s going on out there.”

“I don’t, huh? Let me tell you about it, then. It’s a three-ring circus. I’m looking at your house right now, live on television. And by the way, there’s a cop knocking at the door. He looks frustrated, and he’s getting rained on. Maybe you should let him in.”

She smiles, again unable to help herself, and calls to the detective, “It’s okay, it’s a cop.”

He looks suspicious, but opens the door, one hand on the holster at his hip.

A uniformed officer steps in and the door is quickly shut behind him.

“I’m coming over,” Harper repeats over the phone.

“Why?”

“Because I want to be with you.”

“Because I’m Mallory Eden,” she says, keeping her tone light.

“No. I’m not the star-struck type. I never even liked your movies all that much.”

“Thanks a lot!”

“I’m trying to prove a point, Mallory.”

“Which is…”

“That I wanted to be with you before I knew who you were. Remember?”

She smiles. He’s right.

She wants to ask him where he was five years ago; why it’s taken her so long to meet a man who would want her because of
what
she is, not
who
she is.

So, can I come?” he’s asking.

“I don’t think so,” she tells him.

Old habits die hard.

“You shouldn’t be alone, Mallory.”

“I’m
not
alone. That’s the problem. I’ve got security guards, camera crews, helicopters. I don’t think I’ll ever be alone again.”

He doesn’t argue with that.

“Tell them to expect me,” he says calmly, “so they can let me in. I’ll be there in ten minutes. I’ll be wearing a yellow rain slicker, carrying a white umbrella.”

“Sounds colorful.”

“And a bouquet of roses.”

She opens her mouth to protest, but he’s already hung up.

She replaces the receiver, a bemused smile on her face.

It stays there until his words echo through her mind again.

No wonder you seemed so familiar…

Of course he’d thought she was familiar. He had seen every movie she’d ever made.

But what about
him?

Why did
he
seem so familiar to her?

It has to be because she spotted him on the street here in Windmere Cove, she tells herself again.

Not because she saw him someplace in L.A.

Not because—

No.

She shakes her head.

He isn’t the stalker
.

Frank made that up, everything he said about Harper resembling some fugitive from L.A. According to his fellow local police officers, there
was
no fugitive from L.A.

Frank was simply trying to scare her off so that she wouldn’t date Harper. Presumably, because he was jealous.

She shivers.

It still gives her the creeps, that Pamela’s husband—her next-door neighbor—is the one who has made her life miserable for all this time. That he’s been secretly watching her, lusting after her, making his plans…

Christ
, she thinks with another shudder, remembering how she had decided to trust him about Manny; how she herself had summoned him over so that they could talk…

How could she have never suspected him?

How could she have suspected Harper?

Harper, who had saved her life?

Thank God Harper had shown up when he did, to find out why she hadn’t arrived at the restaurant. Later he told her he’d been half angry at her for standing him up, and half worried that something had happened to her.

If Harper hadn’t walked in the back door—which she had, in her agitated state of mind, carelessly left unlocked after Frank arrived—who knows what Frank would have done to her?

She
knows.

He would have raped her.

Then killed her.

Instead, Harper had come to her rescue.

Then
she
had come to
his
rescue, knocking Frank out with that andiron.

Frank had been dazed when he’d come to last night, to find several of his fellow Windmere Cove police officers standing over him, their weapons drawn.

He had broken down and admitted to trying to force himself on her—and, when pressed, had also confessed to sending the card, breaking into her house, and stealing her keys in the hope that he could sneak in undetected.

The very thought sends a chill down her spine.

He had, however, refused to admit that he had followed her from California, establishing himself as her trusty next door neighbor … and a cop.

And that’s the part that’s giving Mallory some trouble.

She
wants
to believe that it’s been Frank all along, all of it. That he’s the one who tormented her in L.A., slashing her dog’s throat, shooting her as she slept, sending the exploding floral arrangement.

That’s what the detectives seem to believe, now that they’ve traced him to California that summer and established, through Pamela, that he’s always had a “thing” for blue-eyed blondes.

“But what man doesn’t?” Pamela had demanded tearfully.

Mallory had heard her, though she was in the next room, behind a closed door, with two detectives.

She had also heard Pamela protesting in one breath that her husband has to be innocent, and condemning him in the next, wailing that she
knew
it—she
knew
there was something going on, a reason why Frank had lost all interest in her. That she
knew
he was some sick, twisted psycho … and what about the children? How is she supposed to explain to them that their father is in jail?

Mallory doesn’t like thinking about Pamela and the children. Doesn’t like remembering how the three of them had arrived at the house moments before the police had come. Pamela had burst in the back door with Hannah and Jason in her arms, demanding to know where her husband was, calling Mallory a whore.

Then she had spotted Frank lying unconscious on the floor and started shrieking, “What have you done to him?”

Luckily, the police had arrived then.

And luckily, Harper had taken the by-then-crying children into the other room to calm them down.

Harper to the rescue
.

The phrase has been running through Mallory’s mind all through the sleepless night.

So has the knowledge that her life as she knew it is over once again.

She had seen it coming, had been certain that by that morning the news about her true identity would be all over the media.

She had even, for a few crazed moments, begged Harper not to call the police last night after she had knocked Frank out.

She had been frantic, realizing that if they called the police, she would have to reveal who she was …

And she would no longer be protected by anonymity.

It was Harper who pointed out that it no longer mattered.

That with Frank, her stalker, in custody, she’s safe.

There’s no reason to go on hiding.

No reason at all.

She can go back to being Mallory Eden.

Back to L.A.

Back to her career.

Back to everything she’d thought she must leave behind forever.

Everything she has missed so desperately over the past five years.

The only trouble is …

She’s suddenly uncertain she
wants
to go back.

M
anny is fixated on the television, and has been for the past two hours.

Ever since his grandmother called him down the stairs to listen to the radio report about Elizabeth …

About the fact that she’s really that famous actress, Mallory Eden, who’s supposed to be dead.

Before now, Manny had only vaguely known who Mallory Eden was.

He saw her in a movie Grammy was watching on TV one night a long time ago, a movie he wasn’t supposed to be watching, because he was supposed to be in bed.

But he’d come downstairs and told Grammy he was having nightmares again. He no longer remembers whether he really was having nightmares that particular night, or whether he’d just said it so he could stay up late.

But he does remember that he’d watched the movie, called
Mommy’s Boyfriend
, about a little kid who doesn’t want his mother to remarry and does everything he can to sabotage her wedding.

Manny had thought, at the time, that if he had a mommy who was as sweet and funny and beautiful as the mommy in the movie, his life would be perfect.

Just as he has often thought that if Elizabeth could be his mother, his life would be perfect.

And even though he’s always known that would be impossible, he must have been holding on to a tiny piece of hope.

He must have been, because something inside him had shriveled and died that morning, the moment he had turned on the television to make sure that the lady they were talking about on the radio was the same Elizabeth who is his friend.

He hadn’t even seen her face in the videotape footage, which showed her coming out of the Windmere Cove police station in the middle of the night, with police officers all around her. She had a coat draped over her head.

But it was her, all right.

The woman on television was wearing the same long-sleeved navy blue T-shirt Elizabeth had had on when she dropped him off at his grandparents’ house last night.

And Manny had known, when he had recognized that it was her, that she would never be his mother after all.

No famous movie star is going to adopt a poor kid from a small town in Rhode Island.

Manny sighs, watching the television.

He barely recognizes Elizabeth in the lady they keep showing in old pictures and video clips. That lady has blond hair and light blue eyes, and she’s always laughing.

Elizabeth has brown hair and brown eyes … and she never laughs.

Now he knows why.

Because of that bad man who wanted to hurt her.

The bad man who’s now locked up in jail.

So she’s safe.

And now she’ll leave Windmere Cove and go back to Hollywood, where she belongs.

Maybe someday he can visit her there, Manny thinks hopefully.

The thought vanishes just as quickly as it had arisen.

Nah.

Movie stars don’t invite little kids to visit them.

Movie stars have movie-star friends.

But she really was my friend
, Manny protests, remembering the way she’d driven up to Providence to get him last night.

And how she’d stuck up for him when those bus station security guards had wanted to call the police.

And how she’d hugged him before he got out of the car at his house, promising that she’d make sure her policeman friend took care of his mother, so that she couldn’t come and take Manny away.

Manny wonders now if the policeman friend she’d mentioned is the same policeman who had tried to hurt her at her house.

It makes him angry to think of anyone hurting Elizabeth.

Even though he’ll probably never see her again.

Even though she’ll never be his mother.

Tears roll slowly down his cheeks as Manny sits there, silently watching the television screen.

“D
id you miss me?”

Mallory fights the urge to throw herself into Harper’s muscular arms, to bury her head against his broad chest.

He looks so damn good to her, standing there with an armload of roses, dripping rain on the doormat.

Yes, I missed you
, she wants to tell him.
Please don’t leave me. Ever again
.

But this is a man she barely knows, a man she suspected—as recently as last night—of trying to kill her.

Besides, there are half a dozen cops and detectives in the room, keeping a wary eye on both her and the newcomer.

So she says simply, “Why don’t you take off your raincoat? I’ll take it for you.”