A Billionaire's Redemption - By Cindy Dees Page 0,89

down. That’s how you Merrises operate. But I screwed you, instead!” He laughed wildly, and Willa recoiled from him. Well, at least she knew now why James had raped her. He was getting even with her father. She supposed that was better than James having actually had it in for her.

“God, that smell...” James said in a singsong voice that trailed off like an old woman drifting off to sleep midsentence.

Startled, she glanced over at him. “What smell?”

“Sweet. Ahh, God. My head,” he moaned. He took both hands off the steering wheel to grasp his head in both hands. Willa dived across the space between them to grab the wheel as the van drifted left out of its lane and toward the opposite shoulder of the road at a hundred miles per hour.

“James!” she cried. “Focus.”

He inhaled loudly and deeply through his nose as she lay half across him, frantically steering the vehicle. This time his voice was a preternaturally deep growl. “Gonna make you bleed. Peel you like a grape. Make you scream.”

What the heck was going on with him? It was as if he was inhabited by two people. And right now the crazy, violent one had firm control of him. He shoved her away and took the wheel once more. She sat up cautiously, watching him like a hawk. He seemed to be in control of himself and the vehicle once more.

“Have you ever been diagnosed as schizophrenic?” she asked conversationally.

He snorted with laughter. “Think I’m crazy? Yeah. Me, too. Been telling them something’s wrong with my head. Mommy dearest says it’s stress. That you damned Merrises are out to wreck my life. Maybe she’s right...” He trailed off into another bout of mumbling.

Oh, yeah. He was off his rocker, all right.

She leaned forward ostensibly to retie her shoe, but out of the corner of her eye, she tried to spot his gun. There. Holster on his left hip. A surreptitious glance over her shoulder into the back of the van revealed a big assault rifle with a sniper’s scope attached, a shotgun and at least thirty boxes of ammunition. It looked like he was planning for the last stand of the Alamo. A large nylon gym bag bulged in the back, too. No telling what was inside that puppy. Maybe his tools of torture. Her flesh cringed at what he might have in mind to do to her this time.

And this time Gabe wouldn’t be coming to her rescue. He’d made his choice, and it had not been her. She was on her own. A sense of futility and hopelessness swept over her. What did it matter what James did to her? Maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad thing if she died. It wasn’t like anyone would miss her.

Her chest felt like it had a big empty hole in it where her heart had been. The grief of losing the first and only man she’d ever loved was simply too much to bear. Maybe her last thoughts would be of him. Of how happy he’d made her when she’d thought they were together. It would be a nice way to go out. She made a silent promise to herself to keep him in mind when the end came.

She wondered idly what her father’s last thought had been. She blurted abruptly, “Did you kill my father?”

“No!”

His answer was quick and startled. Spontaneous. He wasn’t lying. Purely to make conversation and keep that maniacal emptiness from creeping back into James’s eyes, she asked, “Who do you suppose did kill my father?”

He shrugged and she continued, “I could see my dad being in cahoots with Sheriff Burris over something, and the two of them getting themselves killed together. But that third victim. The young guy from out of state. I just can’t see how he fits in with the other two murders.”

“Don’t know. Don’t care. Just glad the bastard’s dead.” His voice slipped a notch into madness. “I hope he suffered a lot.”

“You mentioned the animals in my mother’s garden. Do you rip their heads off?” she asked on a hunch.

He looked away guiltily. “Don’t know nothin’. Don’t know how I got there. Don’t remember...”

Was he having blackouts? Committing violent acts while out of his right mind? Maybe suffering from a multiple-personality disorder?

She subsided, out of ideas for what to talk about with him for the moment.

“You’re going to suffer, you know,” he said matter-of-factly. “Sins of the father, and all. You get to pay. My head’s going