Fade to Black (39 page)

She narrows her eyes, sitting absolutely still, her hand still resting on the receiver.

So. Mallory Eden doesn’t have a care in the world. She’s going back to her charmed life in Hollywood …

Obviously with no intention of returning Gretchen’s phone call.

Obviously not caring that her former loyal assistant is doomed to live life as a reclusive freak.

Damn you, Mallory Eden
, Gretchen thinks as bitter tears spill from her eyes and trickle over the scarred red flesh that had once been her cheeks.

I’m going to make you listen to what I have to say. I’m going to make you look at this face, and then look me in the eye and tell me you won’t help me
.

She crosses to her closet, opens it, and looks at the sand-colored Coach luggage sitting there, a gift from Mallory on the one-year anniversary of Gretchen’s employment.

She hasn’t touched it in five years.

But now she reaches down, picks it up, and carries it over to her bed, to start packing.

B
ecky shifts her weight on the edge of her bed, watching the cameraman pack his equipment into a big bag, and waiting for the pretty lady reporter to get off the phone, where she’s talking in a low voice to someone—her producer, Becky thinks she said.

It turns out the lady’s name is Laura Madison and she works for some local television program. She spent an hour talking to Becky, and the cameraman filmed the whole thing.

Becky’s going to be on TV.

Maybe she shouldn’t have told the lady so much. About how sorry she is for the way she’d treated Cindy back when she was a little kid, and how she’d run off and just left her daughter that way, never calling or coming back to see how she was.

And maybe she shouldn’t have told them about Elizabeth either. But the lady seemed to have known about her being dead from drugs and all, though she’d been surprised when Becky said Elizabeth had tried to get her sister to help her. The reporter had asked Becky about it, and Becky had told her how Elizabeth had called Mallory up and told her who she was, and how Mallory had agreed to fly her out to Los Angeles.

Elizabeth had even stayed in Mallory’s movie-star mansion for a while. And she’d tried to get Mallory to let Becky come too. But Mallory wouldn’t even speak to Becky on the phone. She said she didn’t want anything to do with her.

“She turned her back on her own mother?” the lady reporter had said, shaking her head in disbelief.

“She turned her back on her sister too,” Becky had said, caught up in her memories. “She kicked Elizabeth out of her house one day. Put her on a plane back to Chicago, not caring that she had no place to go. Didn’t even send Elizabeth her stuff. Elizabeth came back without her purse, without her ID, without anything. That’s how bad her own sister treated her.”

“What a shame,” the lady reporter had said.

She seemed so sympathetic, Becky had kept talking. Telling her how Elizabeth had OD’d not long after that. And how she, Becky, had tried to get through to Mallory to let her know. How she had figured maybe Mallory would want to come to Chicago to be with her.

But all Mallory had done was arrange for the burial to be paid for. That was it. Her own sister was dead, her own mother was grieving, and she hadn’t even seemed to care.

“Okay,” Laura Madison is saying into the phone, “I’ll get back to you with the details. Thanks, Shawn.”

She hangs up and looks at Becky.

Becky can tell by her expression that she’s excited about something.

“Did you ask them about my reimbursement?” Becky asks. “For doing the interview?”

“We’re going to give you something even better,” the reporter says.

“Something better than money?”

Puzzled, Becky frowns.

What could be better than money?

“Becky,” Laura says, “how would you like to be reunited with your daughter—maybe even tomorrow?”

“But …” Becky frowns. “she’s in Rhode Island, isn’t she?”

“Actually, it’s been reported that she’s on her way back to Los Angeles. We’re trying to confirm that.”

“But … how would I get to Los Angeles?”

“We would fly you there, Becky. We would make all the arrangements for you to come face-to-face with the daughter you haven’t seen since she was a little girl. What do you say?”

Becky’s jaw falls open.

Her mind spins.

“Becky? What do you think?”

A broad grin spreads slowly across her face. “I think I’d like that,” she tells Laura Madison. “I’d really like that a lot.”

W
hat are you doing?
Harper asks himself as he dashes through the quiet departure terminal.

You can’t do this
.

But he’s already doing it.

He’s already there.

And the next flight to Los Angeles leaves in less than one minute.

Mallory Eden is on that flight. He’s certain of it.

He leaps over a pile of luggage somebody’s left in an aisle, and skirts around a flight attendant pushing a passenger in a wheelchair.

Gate 7 …

Where the hell is Gate 7?

Glancing around wildly, he spots it.

The waiting area is deserted except for an airline employee who’s just closing the door leading to the jetway.

“Wait!” Harper hollers to her, breaking into a sprint.

She looks up, startled.

“I need you to stop that flight!”

“It’s already taxiing out onto the runway,” she tells him, glancing around, as though nervous about his intentions. “What seems to be the problem, sir?”

“I just … I had to talk to someone who’s on that plane.”

“I’m sorry, sir.”

Out of breath from his mad dash, he strides over to the window, looks out at the 737 that’s preparing for takeoff.

Then he turns back to the airline attendant, who is still watching him warily, as though poised to summon security.

“Do you know when the next flight leaves for Los Angeles?” Harper asks her breathlessly.

“We don’t have another one until this evening, but I believe that Delta has a West Coast connection departing early this afternoon.”

He doesn’t even bother to stop her, just turns and makes his way back toward the terminal and the reservations desk.

“M
allory?”

“Rae?”

“My God.” Mallory opens her arms and pulls her friend into them. Suddenly tears are streaming from behind her dark glasses, trickling down her cheeks to dampen Rae’s silk blouse.

Her friend doesn’t seem to mind.

“I can’t believe you’re really here,” Rae tells her, finally pulling back and looking at her.

Mallory nods, unable to speak, her throat choked with emotion as she takes in the changes the years have wrought in this once dear and familiar face.

Her friend had looked the same from a distance a moment ago—same impeccably styled blond hair, same svelte figure, moving along through the gate area in the same hurried stride.

But up close Mallory sees that Rae’s eyes are edged with a faint network of lines, that there are bags beneath them, marring her perfect complexion.

Rae looks older. World-weary.

“We should get out of here,” Rae says hurriedly, casting a furtive glance around.

Mallory does the same, aware of the bustle around them as other passengers emerge from the jetway. But people are scurrying by undistracted, as if they haven’t bothered to notice the two long-lost friends greeting each other at the gate.

And Mallory realizes that no one has recognized her—yet.

The anonymity she had enjoyed during the long plane trip—mostly spent sleeping off a week’s worth of exhaustion—has carried over. Because no one is thinking of Mallory Eden as a brunette with an hour-glass figure.

Still, if the local press has been tipped off and is awaiting her arrival, it’s only a matter of time before they spot her, dark hair and all.

“Did you tell anyone you were meeting me here?” Mallory asks Rae, trying to quell a rush of uneasiness.

“You told me not to, and I didn’t. Did you tell anyone I was meeting you?”

“Who would I tell?” Mallory asks.

Rae shrugs. “I don’t know. Is there someone …”

“There’s no one,” Mallory says firmly, shoving aside thoughts of Harper. “I’ve been alone for five years. There’s no one to tell—about anything I do.”

“Except me,” Rae says, flashing a smile that almost reaches her shadowed eyes. “Now that you’re back.”

“Except you. I’ve really missed you, Rae.”

“I’ve missed you too, Mallory,” her friend says, her tone hollow.

Mallory knows how hurt she must be, knows she should say something, should attempt to apologize, somehow, for the way she had left. For allowing Rae to believe she was dead for all these years.

But there will be time for explanations later.

Plenty of time.

“Let’s go, then,” she tells Rae, slinging her bag over her shoulder, eager to get out of there. She can’t help feeling like a target, out there in the open.

Rae snaps into action, turning toward the main terminal with an efficient air. “Did you check any luggage?”

“Are you out of your mind? First of all, there’s nothing I’d want to bring with me from there that wouldn’t fit into this carry-on bag …”

Five years, and there’s nothing to leave behind
, she thinks ruefully.

Not material possessions anyway.

Again she shoves aside thoughts of Harper.

And Manny.

“Second,” she continues, “I can’t wait to just get out of here, before the press sniffs me out.”

“They’ve already sniffed me out,” Rae says, leading the way along the concourse. “That’s why I’ve had my phone off the hook since yesterday.”

“That’s what I figured,” Mallory says.

“No comment’ wasn’t sitting too well with anyone, so I decided to be out of reach for a while, at least so I could get a decent night’s sleep. But this morning I figured I’d better put the phone back on the hook, in case you were trying to call.”

“I’m glad you did. Where are you living anyway?”

“Burbank,” Rae says briefly. “I’ve been renting a condo there for a year. But we’re not going there.”

“We’re not?”

“There was a horde of reporters camped out in front of my building this morning. I snuck out the back way. We can’t go there.”

“Where are we going?” Mallory asks uneasily.

Maybe she shouldn’t have come back so soon. Maybe she should have waited a little longer, until the fallout settled, until the worldwide curiosity had waned.

“Where are we going?” Rae flashes a smile. “You said it yourself. Remember?”

“What did I say?”

“That whenever I used to pick you up at the airport after you’d been out of town for a while we would go—”

“Straight to the beach,” Mallory says with a grin.

“Right.” Rae slings a limber arm over Mallory’s shoulders. “I was thinking we’d really shake the press off our trail … maybe drive up to Big Sur for a few days. We can be there late tonight. I made a reservation at the Treetop Inn.”

The Treetop Inn …

That’s the isolated resort hotel where the two of them had spent so many relaxing weekends. Mallory closes her eyes and pictures the rambling hotel, perched high above the pounding Pacific surf.

“You made a reservation? You didn’t use your own name, did you?” she asks Rae.

“Of course not. I used Amy Abernathy, of course.”

Mallory smiles. The name had always been her travel alias. “I can’t believe you remembered that.”

“How could I forget. It’ll be perfect, Mal. We’ll be anonymous, bum around … just like old times.”

Big Sur …

The isolated wooded stretch of rocky California coastline is the perfect place to hide temporarily while she adjusts to the dizzying changes—and to once again being Mallory Eden.

“Oh, my God, Rae, Big Sur sounds fantastic. You”—Mallory gives her friend a squeeze—“are a lifesaver.”

F
lynn refills his glass from the bottle of gin, then reaches into the dwindling bowl of cut-up limes and plucks one out. He sloppily squeezes the green rind so that the tart juice trickles over his fingers before dripping down into the gin, then plops the whole wedge into the glass with a splash, and dunks his hand in to rinse it off.

He licks his fingers, takes a sip from the glass, and then a gulp, appreciating the way the citrus flavor mellows the liquor’s sting. He leans back in his chaise and sighs.

He’s merely having a civilized cocktail or two, simply relaxing on a hot summer Sunday afternoon by the pool.

He’s not guzzling cheap rotgut straight from a bottle, the way a lowlife drunk would. No, sir.

His glass is Wedgwood crystal; his gin is top-shelf stuff. He’s clean-shaven, his thinning hair neatly combed. The music piped over the stereo speakers is classical. Pachelbel’s
Canon in D
.