Veiled (A Short Story) (6 page)

“How far?”

“All the way,” she automatically answered.

“Don’t even think of honking the horn,” he said
at the exact moment the thought crossed her mind. He pressed the gun harder in
her ear, and pain shot through her skull. “I’ve got nothing to lose tonight,
and you’ve got everything.”

The seat stopped, and she tried to breathe
evenly.

“Back it up and turn around,” he ordered.

The headlights went on automatically as she shifted
into drive. “Where are we going?”

“The Pacific Inn,” he said in a weirdly happy
voice, like they were starting a trip to Disney.

She turned out of the Marino’s long driveway
and onto the main road.

What would Jack do when he
realized she was gone?

Mathews couldn’t hold still. He constantly fidgeted
behind her as she drove, but kept the muzzle of the gun crammed in her ear the
entire time. It hurt. It was one thing to know someone had a gun to her head
and another to feel the weapon digging in just an inch from her brain. Did he
have his finger on the trigger? Sweat rolled down her back. Maybe she didn’t
want to know.

He kept up a continual rant. “Don’t do anything
stupid. Don’t speed. Don’t go so slow. Don’t even think of causing an accident.
Don’t even think of trying to leap out.”

She’d be lucky to keep the car on the road. She
could form only one coherent thought as her fingers strangled the steering
wheel.
Will he kill me?

She licked her lips. “What do you want? If it’s
money, I’ll see what I can do for you.” She had no plans to give this killer a
dime, but she knew she needed to start making friends fast. Her words were
hoarse, and it hurt to speak with his forearm pressed against the front of her
throat.

“Shut up,” he ordered. He grasped a handful of
her hair in his fist and pulled her back against the seat. She couldn’t turn
her head. “I don’t want money.”

She waited thirty seconds.
He wants to talk.
He just doesn’t know it.
“Most people want money,” she stated. “I imagine
you don’t make much in a tiny town like this.”

He snorted. “We don’t make crap.”

She let another long pause go by. “What
happened with Will?”

“Shut the fuck up!”

Okay.
She squinted in the dark. Few
streetlights lit the coastal roads. She kept the car moving at a steady speed,
hoping an opportunity would present itself. Someone to see her, somewhere to
get away,
something
.

If it didn’t, she would have to create her own
luck. This bastard wouldn’t dump
her
in a hot tub.

Why did he have to be so big?

She’d been in this situation before. Vulnerable
and with a killer at her back. But Mathews was twice the size of the psycho
last winter. Overpowering him wasn’t an option.

She’d have to run.
But first, get him
comfortable.

“What’s your first name, Mathews? I’ve never
heard Terry say it,” she asked softly.

He paused, as if examining her question from
all angles and finally replied. “Boyd.”

She glanced at him in the rearview mirror, his
face lit in an odd way by the dashboard lights. He suddenly looked very young.
What
had driven him to kill?

“Did you kill both of them?” she asked.

“I don’t want to talk about it. Keep driving.”

She swallowed hard. At least he hadn’t yelled
at her again. That was an improvement. A road sign told her there were two more
miles until the turnoff to the hotel’s road.

“I saw your face when you saw Patty by the hot
tub. You were crushed.” Lacey glanced at him again in the mirror. A thought
struck her. “Did you love her?”

“Shut up! You don’t know anything!”

I struck a nerve.
A big one.

They were getting closer to the hotel. He’d
killed Patty. Lacey knew it. She remembered Dr. Pillai’s comment about the size
of the handprints on Patty’s neck. She glanced in the mirror at Mathews’s hand
on the gun crammed in her ear. His huge hand.

She did a double take. And his hand was
scratched.

Will Marino had been killed before Patty.
Why?

“What did Will do, Mathews? Was he abusing
Patty? Were you trying to help her?” Her mind raced to offer him a way out.
Make him believe that people might think he was trying to protect Patty.

Mathews ground his teeth, the sound grating in
Lacey’s ears. “She said she hated him. She couldn’t move on with her life
because he was always there, holding her back. She couldn’t have a relationship
or move out of the house because they were legally tied together in so many
ways.”

Sympathize.
“That sounds like a no-win
situation.”

“I thought it would make it better. Everyone
knew Will was depressed and messed-up since losing his job. No one would blink
twice if he killed himself. And Patty would be free to start a new life.”

With him.

“Mathews?” Terry’s voice came through the
radio. “Where are you? Is Lacey with you?”

Mathews lunged over the seat and punched the
“off” button. “Asshole.”

Lacey wanted to cry. At least Terry and Jack
would know something was wrong. Had they figured out Mathews was the killer
they’d been searching for?

Please, please, have GPS
tracking on this vehicle.

“Terry’s a good guy,” she said. “He had nothing
but praise for the job you do. Even when you were puking in the bushes up at
the cabin.”

Mathews had no comment.

Lacey turned onto the road to the hotel. One
more winding mile. Was it time to make her own luck?

Mathews gave a fresh yank on her hair, bringing
tears to her eyes. “Don’t get any ideas.” The gun ground in her ear again. The
car pulled to the right, and she corrected as he yelled, “Stay on the road!”

She drove as slow as she dared, and the hotel
lights came into view. “Why here?”

He snickered and said nothing.

They drove in silence until she was a hundred
feet from the entrance. Part of her wanted to put the cop car through the front
door. But who would help her? Jessica at the front desk?

“Drive over there. Park by the trailhead.” He
gestured to the far end of the parking lot, near the path that led up to the
gazebo on the bluff.

Oh Lord. No.

Lacey stumbled up
the trail in front of Mathews, glancing back at the beefy cop now and then. He
had Patty’s wedding dress over one arm, and his weapon trained on Lacey’s back.
He stayed within a yard of her, destroying any chance she had of getting a running
start. She’d weighed the options in her head. She could spring off the trail
and into the pitch dark, through the trees and rocks and shrubs, and hope she
didn’t trip and fall to her death. And hope he didn’t simply shoot her in the
back.

That was her only option, and she didn’t care
for the odds.

The moonlight illuminated the packed-dirt path.
She’d seen the end of the path from the balcony in her suite. Right in front of
the gazebo, it widened into a flat paved area for wedding guests. The pictures she’d
seen online showed a happy bride and groom in the gazebo at the edge of the
cliff while their guests sat in neat rows of white chairs in a semicircle
facing the ocean. On a sunny day there was no spot more beautiful in Oregon.

What did Mathews have planned?

“Why are you hauling that dress all the way up
here?” she asked. Wedding dresses weren’t light. Not that it mattered to a guy
of Mathews’s bulk.

“The final nail in the coffin,” he replied, out
of breath.

Apparently he spent his time building muscle,
not endurance. Unlike her.
Could
she outrun him? She glanced to the
side. Not in the dark.

“You put Patty in her old dress. Why?” Lacey
didn’t care anymore if he yelled at her. She was running out of time.

“I didn’t mean to hurt Patty, but after she was
gone, I realized I had an opportunity,” he puffed. “An opportunity to correct
another wrong.”

He wouldn’t refer to what he did as murder.
“She was gone?”
Who made her gone?
“She didn’t care for what you’d done
to Will? She didn’t fall into line with your surprise plan?”

“She couldn’t see that I’d done it for
us
.
That I’d done it to clean up her life. So we could have a fresh start. She
panicked. She wanted to call Terry. I couldn’t let that happen.”

Lacey briefly closed her eyes. Had Patty really
felt something for Mathews? Had she returned his affection, or had it only been
in his head? What had Patty thought when Mathews told her Will was dead?

“Did you take the missing beer cans from the
cabin? Were you up there with Will?”

“I suggested we go up for beers and steak. Will
wouldn’t pass up free beer. He’d already been hitting the rum when I got there.
By the time he slammed three beers, he was on the couch.”

“You called Patty from his phone?”

“Sometimes she didn’t answer my calls, but I
figured she’d answer his. And she did, but she got pissed when she realized it
was me.

“I wanted her death to count for something. So
I dug out her dress and took her to the hotel. They’ve been making such a big
deal of this hotel being
the
wedding destination. It was time to make
them eat their words. They destroyed a lot of people in this town.”

He was taking revenge on the new hotel? “Who
did the hotel hurt that you cared for?” she asked. “You said you were
correcting another wrong. What did you mean?”

They had reached the level concrete area by the
gazebo. Looking down, Lacey realized it wasn’t just a huge slab of concrete. It
held a large intricate star of shell and rock and wood. Something created by a
master craftsman. It was beautiful. Mathews breathed heavily behind her. She
looked up at the gazebo, a simple but elegant wood frame that covered a small
deck. The cliffs dropped off dramatically, a sturdy wood side fence protecting
sightseers from plunging to the waves crashing against the rocks fifty feet
below.

Fear washed through her as she stared out at
the thundering ocean. Mathews was trying to make a statement. And she suspected
it involved her in a bridal gown going over the railing.

Jack.
She couldn’t breathe.

“Strip.”

“What?” she turned her back to the ocean and
stared at the big man.

He tossed the dress at her feet. “Strip, and
put it on.”

“It’s not my size.”

“You think I care?” He glared at her and took a
half step closer, the gun a yard away from her nose. “Put. It. On.”

She held his stare for a full two seconds and
then unzipped her sweatshirt. She tossed it at his feet just as he’d tossed the
dress at hers. She kicked off her sneakers and shimmied out of her yoga pants,
staring defiantly at him the whole time. She’d performed in gymnastic leotards
in front of thousands all through college. She didn’t give a shit about one man
seeing her in a camisole and panties.

He watched with no expression, his gun steady.

“Who did the hotel hurt that you cared for?”
she asked again. She picked up the wedding dress and waited.

His gaze locked on her breasts.

Creep.

“My mother. She worked there for twenty years
as a housekeeper. That bald manager, Lott, fired her after two weeks. He
wouldn’t even give her a reference. She couldn’t find another job. She rarely
leaves the house now.”

Depression.

She held his gaze, injecting every ounce of
sympathy she could into her eyes. “You need—”

“Put on the dress!” he screamed at her, tendons
popping in his neck. “Now!”

Heart pounding, she bent over and shook out the
dress, trying to find a way to step into the mass of tulle without falling
over. She struggled, her arms shaking. For a woman who could still do full
twisting backflips on the beam, she could barely keep her balance to find the
ground through the dress. Somehow she got both feet through and pulled the
dress up. It was strapless. Reaching to her back, she realized it didn’t have a
zipper. It had dozens of tiny buttons that she could never fasten with her icy
fingers. She clutched the dress to her chest. “I can’t fasten it.”

“Figure it out.”

She tried again, succeeding in buttoning the
top button and tucking part of it into her camisole. The dress was at least
three sizes too big. As soon as she moved, it’d fall. She looked up at Mathews.

He stared at her from behind his gun. A
slightly wistful look crossed his face and then vanished, replaced with grim
determination. He gestured toward the gazebo. “In there. At the back.”

Lacey looked over her shoulder at the
structure. The back of the gazebo had a thick clear plastic fence to show off
the view. It was at least five feet high, to avoid lawsuits. If his plan was
for her to go over, it was going to take some effort. This wasn’t a place for
accidental falls. Someone would have to exert themselves to get over that
railing. Especially in the huge dress.

“No one is going to believe I jumped,” she
said.

“It doesn’t matter. Two bride deaths will be
enough to put this place out of business. Who will want to get married where
other brides have died?”

“I’m not a bride,” she argued.

“You’re in a white dress. Close enough. Move!”

She took a few steps backward, holding up the
dress, not taking her gaze from Mathews. He could probably pick her up and
throw her over. If he did, he’d have to put down the gun.

That would be her opportunity.

If he thought she would willingly climb up that
fence, he was crazy.