The Final Victim (10 page)

    That's all there is to it.

    Waist-deep in the rough sea, Mimi whirls around and around, flailing her outstretched arms in the water, grasping for the helpless child who vanished on her watch: a lifeguard's worst nightmare.

    But it really happened to her.

    And now she must continue to relive it, over and over, in her sleep.

    She's aware that she's dreaming as the events unfold in numbingly familiar procession.

    The fruitless, frantic search among the relentless breakers…

    The hysterical father hurling pleas and, eventually, accusations…

    The requisite paperwork and the endless verbal recounting, official and ultimately therapeutic, of what, exactly, happened on that beach beneath the hot September sun…

    The shrill peal of the telephone…

    The telephone…?

    Yes.

    With that, the sequence is broken.

    Mimi opens her eyes abruptly and finds herself looking at the illuminated digital clock.

    Four thirteen AM, and a lifeguard's worst nightmare is instantly traded for a wife's worst nightmare.

    Something's happened to Jed.
Or her mother.

    For no other reason would the phone ring at this hour.

    Heart pounding with dread, she untangles herself from the sheets and hurries to answer it.

    
Lianna
is uneasily aware of the rhythmic night sounds; the dank, humid smell of brackish water; the overcast night sky void of moon or stars.

    She reaches into her pocket for her small flashlight, but comes up empty-handed.

    Is it any wonder?

    Kevin had her shorts halfway down her legs out there at the beach. The flashlight probably fell out into the sand as they rolled around.

    
Terrific.

    Now she'll have to sneak back into the house in the dark.

    It's not that she's a big baby about the dark…

    Not like Mom.

    No, but who wants to venture into a creepy old basement without even a flashlight?

    The thought of that is bad enough; she can't imagine bringing herself to enter the tunnel and walk up two flights of the pitch-black hidden stairway. There are definitely spiders and mice. And probably even bats in there-what if one flies into her hair?

    What if she loses her balance and falls? Several of the
runglike
steps have rotted away in the dampness;
others,
are about to. With a flashlight, she can pick her way past them.
In the dark, she'd be playing Russian roulette1' with every step.

    Nobody would ever find her in there. Not with those fourteen-inch-thick tabby foundation walls that are probably soundproof.

    Okay, so she obviously isn't going back into the house the same way she came out.

    But maybe that's not necessary anyway. Glancing at her watch, she sees that it's well past four in the morning. Nobody will be stirring at this hour. She can slip inside through the back door, using the key Great-
Grandaddy
always kept hidden among the perennials that ring the base of an old stone sundial in the garden.

    Her heart pounding,
Lianna
decides it's a brilliant idea.

    It takes her quite a few minutes of rooting around for the key in the dewy, overgrown bed that contains more weeds than flowers. Something pierces her fingertip, probably a spider's bite, and she thrusts her stinging finger into her mouth.

    This is a stupid idea.
Really stupid.
What if the spider was poisonous? There are lizards in here, too, and God knows what else. A dark, rodent-infested tunnel is now almost more appealing than reaching back into the weeds again.

    But when she does, she finds the key almost immediately.

    All right, so this was a good plan after all.

    The big door opens silently and the rooms are deserted, just as she knew they would be. She pockets the key, hoping she'll remember to replace it later, in broad daylight.

    It isn't until she reaches the door to her bedroom that she realizes she's made a huge mistake.

    It's latched… from the inside.

    How could she have forgotten?

    Now what?

    Before she can plot her next move, she hears a movement behind her.

    A voice drawls, "Well, look who's prowling around at this hour."

    Charlotte sits straight up in bed, heart racing wildly.

    Then she realizes it was just a dream.

    
No, not a dream.
A nightmare.

    Not even that.

    It really happened.

    But it isn't happening now
, she reminds herself, pressing her hand against her pounding chest. It's over. Long over.

    She lies back slowly against the pillows, closing her eyes as if to block out the images that have haunted her for eight years. But they're still there, more vivid than ever.

    She can see the foaming ocean; can feel it, sun-warmed and
saltily
stinging her newly shaved legs; can feel her hands swirling helplessly through it, coming up empty again and again.

    She can hear screams, her own screams, as she bellows her son's name over and over again in futile, exhausting effort.

    A sob escapes her throat even now.

    She shudders and rolls toward Royce's side of the bed, needing to feel his warm body against hers. He alone understands. He's been there, too.

    Even on their honeymoon, when they found themselves standing at the brink of Niagara Falls, he knew instinctively what she was thinking as she gazed down at the churning blue-gray water. He was thinking it, too. "Come on," he said, and quietly led her away.

    Charlotte needs him now as she needed him then.

    But the covers are thrown back on his side of the bed; his spot as cold and empty as her arms that ache for a child who will never come home.

    Even in the dim light from a distant sconce,
Gib
can see the panic in the kid's eyes.

    "What are you up to, Leigh Ann?" he asks, reminded suddenly of a childhood fishing expedition with his maternal grandfather in Narragansett Bay: the empowering sensation of gazing down at a helpless cod trapped in his net.

    "
Lianna
," she says, lifting her chin, and it takes him a moment to realize she's correcting him about her name.

    "
Lianna
," he repeats, amused by the insult that now mingles with panic in her gaze. "Sorry about that."

    She shrugs and tries to seem casual as she inquires, "What are you doing up?"

    "I asked you first."

    "Well, I'm going back to bed."

    "So am I," he tells her, though it's not entirely true.

    He hasn't yet been to bed in his assigned guest room. But he's willing to bet Cassandra has long been asleep beneath the old-fashioned eyelet canopy. He can feel his loins tighten at the mere thought of her, naked, between the sheets.

    He'll get to her momentarily.

    For now, he can't resist toying with Charlotte's daughter. Poor thing clearly didn't inherit the Remington genes when it came to looks. Perhaps she looks like her father, although he can't seem to conjure an image of Charlotte's first husband.
Gib
saw him only rarely, and hasn't in years.

    
Lianna
isn't unattractive, yet hardly possesses her mother's beauty, or
Phyllida's
, or even
Gib's
. Maybe she'll get there one day, but for now, she's on the scrawny side, with sharp features and a slight overbite. Braces would help,
Gib
concludes.
Braces,
and longer hair. Highlights in her hair would be good, too-or even if she was a brunette like her mother…

    Instead, her hair is a dull, sandy shade that could,
Gib
supposes, pass for blond-just not to a connoisseur, like him.

    "I'd be willing to bet," he says, leaning in, "that your mother doesn't know you're locked out of your room at this hour."

    "What makes you think I'm locked out?"

    "I saw you try the door and I heard you curse when it didn't open."

    There's little she can say to that, of course. To her credit, she remains silent, glaring up at him.

    No stranger himself to adolescent prowling in the wee hours,
Gib
can't help but admire her spunk. As he recalls, Charlotte wasn't the kind of girl who would be caught dead disobeying her parents' rules. How interesting that this apple fell hard and rolled quite a long way from the tree.

    "So what are you going to do now?" he asks
Lianna
, folding his arms. "Wait it out until morning? Break the door down?"

    Before she can answer, his ears pick up the sound of a door creaking closed down the hall. Footsteps approach.

    "Please don't tell,"
Lianna
hisses at him, before slipping into a shadowy nearby nook.

    It takes three attempts before Mimi's violently trembling hands are successful in fastening the
carseat
buckle snugly across her son's chest.

    By then, Cameron is asleep again, as blissfully unaware of his mother's growing panic as he was before she plucked him from his bed five minutes ago.

    Mimi slides into the driver's seat, manages to get the key into the ignition, and says a brief prayer as she backs out into the street.

    
Please, dear God, don't let anything happen to Jed.

    Then she shifts into DRIVE and races off toward the highway that leads to Savannah, and the hospital emergency room.

    Moments after
Gib
watches Charlotte's daughter disappear into the shadows of the hall, her stepfather appears.

    Royce is fully dressed, carrying luggage, and striding briskly, though he stops short at the sight of
Gib
standing before him.

    "Hey, what's up?"
Gib
asks, as though they're casual acquaintances running into each other on the street in broad daylight.

    "I'm leaving to catch an early flight. What are you doing…?" The remainder of Royce's sentence trails off, as though he isn't sure whether to conclude it with an "
up
" or a "
here
."

    "I'm going to bed after a late night,"
Gib
says truthfully. He adds, at Royce's doubtful look, "I couldn't sleep so I drove down to the other end of the island for a nightcap at the Reef. That always was my favorite beach bar-It sure looks a lot different these days, though. It used to be a dive."

    He just hopes Royce isn't, say, friends with the owner or something. The last thing he needs is to be caught in a lie.

    "Where's your girlfriend?"

    
Gib
resists the urge to correct the terminology. Let Royce think whatever he wants about his relationship with Cassandra. It'll be much easier that way. "She's probably asleep. She stayed here."

    Royce frowns.

    "What's the matter?"
Gib
asks.

    "Nothing, I just… I thought you were talking to someone. I heard voices."

    
Gib
hesitates, weighing his options.

    Should he tell Royce about his stepdaughter sneaking around in the middle of the night? How will he react?
Gib
doesn't know what kind of guy he is-they never even met before this week. But he seems like a decent fellow, unlike Charlotte's first husband. He couldn't stand Vince, and the feeling seemed mutual on the few occasions they were thrown together for family functions.

    Anyway, Royce would probably go tell Charlotte that her kid is up to something. Why get the kid into trouble?
Gib
has to give her credit, having this much spunk with such a Goody Two Shoes for a mother.

    So he shrugs and tells Royce, "I don't know what you heard… maybe it was just me, talking to myself. I do that sometimes."

    "We all do, I suppose." Royce barely cracks a smile.

    "Have a good trip,"
Gib
calls after him in a whisper as Royce walks off down the hall, unwittingly passing within a few feet of his stepdaughter's hiding place. "See you when you get back."

    
"Maybe not.
I'll be gone for a few days."

    "Oh, I'll be here,"
Gib
replies, relishing the stiffening-just barely visible-of the other man's spine at the news.

    Yes, he'll be here. Where else is he going to go?
Oakgate
is as much his home as anybody else's, and at this point, it's the only one he has. Not that he's about to let on to his sister or cousin or even Cassandra.

    
Cassandra
.