Killing Secrets (6 page)

Her nerves had been on edge since she fled Dallas on Friday, five days ago. If she weren’t so overwrought it would have occurred to her Greg would never stand at a distance and take potshots at her. No. Greg liked to look into her eyes when he meted out his punishments.

An icy shiver skimmed her skin. Each day that passed without his appearance should have reassured her she’d made the right decision to accept Katy’s arrangements with the Thornes. As long as Greg didn’t track her and Amanda to Denver, they were safe.

Problem is she hadn’t felt safe since Amanda was born and she discovered what kind of man she’d married. She couldn’t pluck enough weeds from Evelyn Thorne’s gardens by day to tear the anxiety from her heart at night. Her growing sense of trepidation kept her awake long after the morning stars dimmed above the mile-high city’s cloudless skies.

How could the justice system simply hand Greg a “get out of jail free” card? She’d always suspected the man had connections in high places, but how had he arranged for the evidence in his case—evidence she’d risked everything to provide—to disappear before he went to trial? If he’d accomplished that feat while behind bars, how in the world was she and Amanda going to stay out of his clutches?

She felt like there was a giant bull’s-eyes painted on their backs, that it was only a matter of time before Greg tracked them down. During their marriage the man would spend weeks, months, laying meticulous groundwork for one of his cons. He’d had six months to plan dozens of new punishments for his betrayer.

“’Til death us do part, darlin’.”

His words echoed over the expanse of time and distance, ringing a fresh peal of dread in Rachel’s breast. With one hand, she swept clumps of soil off her tangerine T-shirt and whispered a small prayer.
Please don’t let him find us!

She tossed her worry as well as a forgotten fistful of dandelions clutched in her hand into the metal bucket at her side. She flicked cotton dandelion seeds from her fingertips and rubbed at an ache in her lower back.

Examining the flowerbed she’d weeded before lunch, she sighed with satisfaction. She’d made it her mission today to eradicate every weed in the nasturtium bed that ran the length of the house. As missions went, it wasn’t much. But it was something she could control, and the very least she could do for the woman who’d given her another hole to crawl into, saving her from running one more mile.

There weren’t many people who’d hand over their home and greenhouse to a total stranger for a month. Evelyn Thorne was either a saint or naive as sin. Exactly the kind of mark Greg specialized in conning out of their life savings.

Her insides twisted at the thought of how many innocents had suffered at Greg’s hands. But it was the last innocent, the little girl who’d built an impenetrable wall around her world that tormented Rachel most.

Amanda hadn’t said a word when her mother pulled her out of bed on Friday and drove her away from the sparse home they’d built with Katy. Just as she hadn’t spoken that awful night when Rachel’s doctor friend, Simon, hustled them out of their house to his clinic where he tended Rachel’s broken body. In pain, sedated, she hadn’t registered that her daughter had gone completely mute until the next morning when she woke up in the hotel room where Simon had stashed them. The child just stood there at the side of the bed, her doe-like brown eyes fixed on her mama, clutching the doll her father gave her a week earlier to replace her puppy savaged by a rogue coyote.

Simon hadn’t missed the signs though and, when he gave Rachel money to escape San Francisco, he’d given her enough to take Amanda to a doctor when they got settled. Now that they were on the run again, Rachel despaired of helping her little girl back to normalcy.

Suddenly appearing from nowhere, the precocious child from next door who’d been first to welcome the new arrivals hunkered down beside Rachel. She pointed at the garden. “What happened to them flowers?” Suze Brown asked in a voice designed to wake the dead.

Rachel’s pulse jumped back into the stratosphere. She managed to smile at the five-year-old and then at Amanda, who squatted down in imitation of her newfound friend, her doll tucked under one arm. “I had a little accident,” Rachel said without explaining her ignoble dive into the dirt.

“Looks like Mr. Donovan’s big slobber dog rolled all over ’em.” Suze squinted at a bent stem. “Miss Evie’s gonna be sad you broke them pretty flowers.”

“They’re not all broken,” she reassured her. “See those little ones? They’re baby nasturtiums. I’ll move them, and they’ll grow bigger and fill in the space.”

“That’s a funny name. Nasty-shamus.”

Amanda giggled.

Rachel was more startled by that natural burst of sound than the backfire made by the Volkswagen minutes earlier. Hope filled her heart as she searched her daughter’s face. “Can you say nasturtium, too, Amanda?”

She used to say so much more, her vocabulary even at three far beyond her years. Yet she said nothing, hugging her doll like it was an impenetrable shield she’d placed between herself and her mother.

Rachel’s hopes died. It was only then she noticed the doll her daughter clutched in a death grip was not the one her father gave her. “Honey, where’s your baby?”

“She’s taking a nap in my playroom.” Suze pointed next door at the dormer window attached to the second story bedroom where the children liked to play. “We traded.”

“Suze, you have to give it back. Amanda doesn’t like anyone else to play with Becca.” An understatement. She’d cried painfully soundless tears the one time Rachel took the toy away, ostensibly to wash the dirty clothes, but hoping to throw away the constant reminder of the child’s father. Amanda was so upset Rachel gave it back to her to avoid causing her further trauma.

“Is that the baby’s name? It’s pretty,” Suze said. “My baby’s name is Susan, like me, but I wish it was Becca.”

“I understand you like Becca but you can’t keep her.”

“But we shared!” The little girl rounded on Amanda. “We’re blood sisters!”

With only a small hesitation, Amanda nodded her support of Suze’s claim. She hugged the new doll fiercely in a display her mother couldn’t misunderstand.

Rachel wished she knew how to proceed. How had a five-year-old, in less than three days, broken through the barriers she and a trained psychologist hadn’t breached in six months? “As long as you are both okay with this, I guess you can trade for a while. But what’s this about being blood sisters?”

“There was this cowboy and Indian. Ya know…on T.V.” Suze shrugged a shoulder. “They traded and cut their hands with this big ol’ knife. They shared secrets and stuff and was blood brothers. Kinda like that.”

Rachel frantically searched the parts of their sun-kissed bodies not covered by shorts and T-shirts. “Where did you cut yourselves?”

“Ew!” Suze screwed up her face. “That part was yucky! We make-believed.”

Vowing to monitor their friendship more carefully in the future, Rachel examined Amanda’s expression for clues to her feelings. “So now you’re sisters and keep each other’s secrets. What if you want to trade back?”

Suze answered for Amanda. “We can’t be sisters, if I’m mean and don’t give it back. It’s tem-tem—”

“Temporary?”

“Yeah.” She stood abruptly. “Grandma has cookies and milk so’s we can play tea party. Ya want some?”

“Grandma” was Suze’s grandmother, Jane Brown. The older woman worked next door as office manager for Evelyn Thorne’s son and had accompanied her granddaughter over that first day to make sure it was all right for the little girls to play together.

Thankfully, the big boss hadn’t tagged along. Try as she might, Rachel couldn’t get over her one unnerving glimpse of Patrick Thorne. His mother had pointed out the eighteen-year-old wearing an army uniform in a family photo when she’d shown her around the house, telling Rachel she could count on him for anything while they were in the Virgin Islands. She’d promptly forgotten the young man with the goofy grin, holding rabbit ears over one of his brother’s heads…until he’d walked out of his back door Sunday night to toss a couple of bags in the trash.

She wasn’t prepared for the man in the flesh. He was at least ten years older than she’d expected, a virile man in his prime that drew a woman’s gaze and made her forget the necessity to breathe. With one look, her heart hammered too hard for comfort. She’d felt an overwhelming urge to sneak off the side porch where she’d gone to calm her restless thoughts, and lock all the doors behind her. She avoided most men these days. If they exuded a blatant masculinity that made her pulse skitter, she ran in the opposite direction quicker than a wind devil on a Texas prairie.

Rachel would have bolted, too, if she’d thought she could do it without alerting him to her presence in the protective shadows. Left with nothing to do but watch the shirtless man walk through the moon-washed night, she’d allowed herself the pleasure. His naked chest and back, broad and muscular above the waistband of his jeans, gleamed in the moonlight. Iron tight abs and powerful legs carried him across the backyard with an almost feral grace. His biceps barely straining under the weight of two thirty-gallon trash bags, there was no question the man’s occupation had made him fit. Raw power in motion.

“You want some?”

Startled, Rachel stared at Suze. “Some what?”

The child rolled her eyes and sighed with exaggerated patience. “Cookies.”

“Um, no, thank you.” She turned to Suze. “Won’t you be in your grandmother’s way when she’s working?”

“Naw. We have tea parties when Grandma’s s’posed to rest.”

“When she takes a break?”

“Yeah.” Suze fidgeted. “Mr. Patrick said he might eat a cookie, too, but we gots to ask him.”

“You
have
to ask him,” Rachel corrected. It was a struggle to visualize the man perched on a tiny seat at a child’s tea table wearing his construction helmet, pinkie raised, a fragile porcelain teacup balanced in his hand.

No. The muscular contractor oozed testosterone. She’d recognized it two nights ago from yards away, still felt it right down to her bare tingling toes. Patrick Thorne would be more at home in the overtly masculine surroundings of his building sites, or in a darkened bedroom, naked, tangled in damp sheets with a woman writhing beneath him. Her skin heated when she realized the woman she’d visualized beneath him looked too much like her.

“He’ll prob’ly say yes if he’s done ’spections.” Suze sighed again. “Can we go now?”

Shaking off the impossible image of Patrick Thorne in her bed—sex in real life was not as pleasurable or satisfying as fantasy—Rachel jammed her rebellious hormones in a mental hole where they belonged. “Okay, but only for a small tea party.” She turned to Amanda. “Honey, come back after that because we have to go grocery shop—”

If she hadn’t looked straight at her daughter at that moment she might have missed the abrupt change in her demeanor. Her eyes widening, Amanda stared at something over her mother’s shoulder. Her smile faltered. Disappeared.

The fine hairs on the back of Rachel’s neck tickled a warning, alerted her to imminent danger. Once she inhaled, she didn’t have to look over her shoulder to know who stood behind her. She’d always be able to identify that particular brand of designer men’s cologne. It still nauseated her.

Greg.

He’d found them!

“Hello, darlin’. Miss me?”

Her heart stalled. She started to rise and face her ex-husband. But she hesitated when she saw a shudder wrack Amanda’s small frame, followed quickly by another, precursors to one of her anxiety attacks if Rachel didn’t distract her…and quickly.

Grab Amanda and run!

The voice in her head reminded her she was all that stood between the two little girls and a conscienceless monster. She smoothed the back of her knuckles over her child’s cheek and dredged up a steady smile. “Run along with Suze and have your tea party with Ms. Jane and Mr. Patrick. Stay there until Mama comes for you.”

“She’s not going anywhere!”

A coldness that always lined Greg’s voice when he was crossed told Rachel she didn’t have much time to get the helpless children out of harm’s way. “Run along, baby,” she whispered. “Go!”

Tears welled in Amanda’s eyes. She opened her mouth as if, at last, she wanted to say something. Then she grabbed Suze’s hand in hers and dashed off, leaving Rachel to stand and face her ex-husband alone.

The children disappeared safely from view around the front corner of Patrick’s house as Rachel fought to dampen her own gut-wrenching terror. She wanted to run after the children to find a hiding place of her own.

Too late.

The stench of Greg’s cologne smothered her senses. His hand clamped around her wrist. “You may have chopped off all of your hair and stopped wearing the makeup I like,” he muttered next to her ear, “but I see some things haven’t changed while I was gone. You still mollycoddle that kid like she’s something special.”

“Amanda
is
special,” she said, goaded as much by his sneering words as his revolting touch. She tried to pull away, but his hand tightened until she was sure her wrist would snap in two. “She’s your daughter,” she said quickly. “She’s the one good thing to come out of our marriage.” How this man could produce such a wondrous child in the first place was a miracle.