Lonestar Angel (38 page)

“Good. They shouldn’t be witnessing all of this.”

Allie stopped at a closed door at the end of the hall. “This is her room.” She tried the door and frowned. “It’s locked. No one locks stuff here.”

“Do you have a key?”

“Somewhere.” She thought a moment. “There’s a master on the ring by the back door. Wait here.” She hurried back the way she’d come.

Clay twisted the knob, but it didn’t budge. None of this made sense to him. Unless Rita was in cahoots with the kidnapper. Maybe his girlfriend?

Allie returned with the key ring in her hand, and he stepped out of the way. She fitted the key into the lock and twisted. “Got it.” She flipped the switch inside the door.

He followed her into Rita’s room. It was smallish, with a double bed covered by a quilt. A dresser and chest of drawers were on either side of the bed. “Let’s start here,” he said, stepping to the dresser. He rifled through neat stacks of T-shirts, shorts, and socks.

He held up a bottle of men’s cologne. “Does she have a boyfriend?”

Allie sniffed it. “Not that I know of. Strange.”

He dug farther into the drawer and pulled out a Cowboys T-shirt. “What the heck? I’ve been looking for this for over a week.”

Allie’s eyes went wide. “It’s yours?”

“Sure is.” He dropped the shirt and went to the last drawer. It held high school yearbooks and other documents.

A picture lay on top. He picked it up and stared. Rita looked to be about sixteen in the photo, but he was more interested in the boy who was beside her. “Holy cow, look at this. She’s beside Jose Santiago.” He flipped it over and read the back. “Rita and Jose Santiago.” He stared at Allie, who was rummaging in the drawer. “She’s related to Jose!”

Allie was reading something else. “Here’s her birth certificate. And passport. It’s not from the United States. She’s foreign? She gave me citizen documentation before we hired her.”

Clay opened the passport. “It’s Colombian. It says here her name is Rita Santiago. Jose’s sister?”

Allie glanced at the birth certificate. “Her mother was Else Björn. Her father was Hector Santiago!”

The strength went out of his knees and he sank onto a chair. “What if she blamed Eden for her mother’s situation?”

Allie nodded. “It makes sense. And her mother was probably blond, so that’s why she doesn’t look Hispanic. Even if she colored her hair, her skin is fair.”

He rubbed his head, then began to flip through the pile of yearbooks. Rita seemed to have attended several different schools. “Whoa, this is where I went to school,” he said when he reached the third one. “This is my senior yearbook.”

Allie looked as puzzled as he felt. He flipped through the annual. “I don’t even know what I’m looking for.”

“There are a couple of sticky tabs.” She took the yearbook from him and flipped to the yellow slips of paper. “Is this you?”

He stared at the photography club page. A very young version of himself stood proudly holding an award he’d received for a photo documentary at the zoo. “Sure is.”

She squinted at the people in the background. “This young girl looks a little like Rita. Only she’s got brown hair in this picture.”

Clay studied the picture. “I vaguely remember her. She was three years behind me in school. I noticed her hanging around a lot. My friends said she had a crush on me, but I don’t know if it was true or not. I never really spoke to her. She was just a kid. I never even knew her last name.”

“Look here.” Allie pointed to handwriting on the edge of the page. “ ‘Your words are my food, your breath my wine. You are everything to me.—Sarah Bernhardt,’ ” she read aloud. “There’s an arrow pointing to your face.”

He wanted to shudder. “It’s a little creepy.”

“It’s a lot creepy. You don’t suppose she’s followed you all these years, do you?”

“I think we’d better find out,” he said grimly. He took the yearbook from her and tucked it under his arm. “I’d better call the sheriff.”

36

T
HE STENCH OF MOUSE DROPPINGS AND DUST GREETED THEM WHEN
R
ITA TOLD
E
DEN
to open the door of the cabin. Darkness had fallen by the time they got back, but the truck headlamps kept them following the footsteps in the sand. Eden had tried to ask her questions, but the woman had remained silent except for the occasional order to shut up.

Eden stopped just inside the door. “You can’t kill me without telling me why.”

Rita grabbed a lantern by the door and thrust it into Sister Marjo’s hands. “Light it,” she said, indicating a box of matches on the floor.

Eden watched the nun fumble with the matches before managing to get the lantern lit. Did Rita plan to leave them to die here in the cabin? She seemed to like fire. Eden prayed the woman didn’t intend to set the cabin afire.

Sister Marjo adjusted the wick, then held the lantern aloft. “Where shall I put it?”

Rita gestured with the gun. “The table is fine.”

“Where are your cohorts?” Eden asked. “Are we waiting for them?”

“He’s dead. All because of you.” Hatred laced her words, and her eyes spit venom.

“The man in the car?” Eden couldn’t figure out the connection.

“You’ve destroyed my life. First you took Clay. Then you made me lose my mother and my brother.”

“The man who drowned in the car was your brother?”

“Yes.” Rita shut the door behind her and gestured to the sofa. “Sit. Both of you.”

Eden looked at the gun, then at the filthy sofa. There wasn’t a lot of choice. Her discarded sweater was still here, so she laid it out and sat on it, perching gingerly on the cushion. Sister Marjo settled beside her as if she didn’t even notice the mouse droppings and stains.

None of this made sense to her. Rita’s mother and brother? “I don’t understand.”

“You will,” Rita said.

“I’m not to blame for Jose’s death,” Eden said. “His greed was the cause of his death.” It suddenly hit her—Rita had to be her sister unless she and Jose had different fathers.

“Shut up!” The other woman advanced two steps and waved the gun menacingly. “You knocked his car into the river. He didn’t have a chance. I don’t know what you were trying to do. Didn’t you care that you could have drowned your own daughter?”

“It was an accident.” Eden eyed the manic light in the woman’s eyes. Was she even sane? “I misjudged the distance, and the car skidded.”

Rita’s eyes narrowed. “I was watching. It was deliberate.”

“Why did you take my daughter? You didn’t even ask for that much ransom.”

“It was never about the money. She should have been mine.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Clay belongs to me. With you out of the way, we can be the family we were meant to be.”

Though nothing she’d said made sense, Eden decided to humor her. “Is that why you lured us here? To kill me?”

The woman smiled and stood taller, almost preening. “I’ve seen the way Clay looks at me, talks to me. You’re blind if you haven’t noticed he wants me and not you. He’ll be glad when you’re out of the way. You were never supposed to come with him.”

Eden decided not to discuss the woman’s delusions about Clay for now. “How is this my fault?”

The woman dug in her pocket and pulled out a tattered picture of a family. “We were so happy before you came into our lives.” She held it under Eden’s nose. “Now one is dead, the other is imprisoned in a mental hospital, and there is only me to avenge them all.”

A much younger Hector Santiago stood with his arm around a beautiful blond woman. She had her hand on the shoulder of a girl of about ten with light-brown hair and solemn blue eyes. Rita. Beside her stood a boy about a year or two older. He looked more like his father.

“You’re my sister?” Eden asked, unable to look away from the photo. No wonder Santiago had been unable to call Rita off. She was bent on revenge. “Why did you ask for money if you wanted revenge?”

“It was my brother’s idea. To lure you out so he could eliminate you for me. But you killed him! I hate you!” Rita aimed the gun at Eden’s head.

Sister Marjo leaped between Eden and the gun. “My dear girl, think about what you’re doing. Clay is a good man. He’ll be torn up with guilt if you do this. You’ll lose him forever.”

The gun in Rita’s hand wavered. Her finger left the trigger. “Why did you have to get involved in this, Sister? This is not your concern.”

The nun took a step closer. “I don’t believe I had a choice. It was you who ran my car off the road and brought me here.”

“Only so you wouldn’t tell that Lacie wasn’t Brianna. I had no choice.” She narrowed her eyes as she stared at the nun. “You told her, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” Sister Marjo said, still blocking the path to Eden.

Eden tugged at the sister’s hand, and the nun sat back down on the sofa. “Why didn’t you want me to know?” she asked Rita.

“It was too soon. I needed more time. Once Clay realized the results were wrong, he would have remembered that I was the only one who could have switched the samples. I couldn’t let that happen.”

“The results were wrong
.” “How do you know Clay? He didn’t seem to recognize you.” Eden held her breath. Maybe that was the wrong thing to say.

Rita shrugged but her lips tightened. “My hair is a different color. You know how men are. And I’ve changed since school. But he recognized me all right. That’s why he talked to me so often. He didn’t want to tell you, though. Not yet.”

Rita must have generated these excuses when Clay didn’t say anything about knowing her. Eden decided not to follow that train of thought any longer. “Where have you kept Brianna? If she should have belonged to you, why is she being raised by foster parents?”

“Her name is Madeline, not Brianna.” Rita’s eyes darkened. “It’s all my mother’s fault,” she spat. “She had to go and take an overdose. When she was put in the mental institution, the state took Madeline before I could get out myself. Pushy, nosy people.”

Madeline
. Her Brianna was Madeline. Eden wanted to live long enough to hold her daughter, to breathe in the scent of her hair.

She soaked in what Rita had said about her mother. Hospitalized. Schizophrenia could run in families. This woman was obviously mentally ill, but Eden wasn’t educated about the different illnesses. “Who was the woman who came to see Madeline? Clay met her.”

“My mother. I had to stay in the house. She didn’t know I was there.”

“She called herself Madeline’s mother.”

Rita shrugged. “She had Madeline for three years while I was— away. She won’t be back. I’m sure my father has her stashed somewhere again.” She loaded the peanut butter and other items around the room into a sack. “Can’t leave any evidence,” she said.

Eden’s stomach clenched.
Evidence
. Whatever Rita had planned wasn’t going to be good.

Rita pointed the gun. “Enough talk. It’s time to go.”

Eden nodded, trying to maintain an open, interested expression free of condemnation. She had to save Sister Marjo somehow, but there was no reasoning with someone as delusional as Rita.

“Where are we going, dear?” Sister Marjo asked.

Rita smiled. “It has to look like an accident. I know just the place.”

The helicopter rotors were so loud no one could hear a thing. Clay sat in the back with Shannon MacGowan’s husband, Jack. Rick was in the front seat with Michael Wayne, who was piloting the bird. Friends of Bluebird Ranch had scoured the desert by land and air, but it was dark now. And they’d seen nothing. Clay had berated himself for hours as they searched for a sign of the truck. Why hadn’t he recognized Rita? He’d thought she reminded him of someone but assumed it was an actor, that one who’d played Heidi.

Michael glanced at Rick and made a cutting motion across his throat. They were heading back. Clay wanted to protest, but the chopper was running out of fuel. The helicopter banked and began to circle back the other way.

Was his wife dead? He rejected the thought. She had to be all right. He had to find her. If they went back without her, he would get a horse and go back out. He couldn’t rest until she was safe at home again.

Desperate for some clue, Clay pressed his forehead against the window and studied the dark landscape. Was that a light? He stared, willing it to come again.
There
. A dim glimmer, so faint it could have been a reflection of the moon off water. He tapped Michael’s shoulder and motioned for him to go down to take a look.