Copper Lake Confidential - By Marilyn Pappano Page 0,92
she missed him. The very last thing she’d expected when she’d driven up from Charleston last week was to fall in love. She wasn’t sure she would ever do that again in this lifetime. But here she was. And she was hopeful in ways she hadn’t known possible when she’d fallen in love with Mark.
Anne passed the room, blowing out a harsh breath, then headed downstairs. The sound of her voice, tight and controlled, floated back up, but her words were indistinguishable. Macy hoped she wasn’t getting bad news about her sister.
If she existed. If anyone outside the Irelands existed in Anne’s life.
Damn it, she hated this! She wasn’t a suspicious person. She gave her trust and didn’t take it back until it was proved a dozen times over that it wasn’t deserved. She wouldn’t let doubt taint two of the closest relationships in her life.
“Macy?” Anne called from below. “Could you come down here a minute?”
Her muscles knotted, her heart fluttered and sweat broke out across her forehead. She tried to tell herself she was overreacting; it was just the near-constant stress, all the reminders of Mark and the true evil she’d lived with. There was no reason to panic.
But that was the hell of panic attacks. There was no reason.
She forced her fists to unclench from the tiny pink silk dress she held, laid it aside and rose from the rocker. Because she was shaky, she held the railing all the way down the stairs, then walked to the back of the house. Finding the kitchen empty, she pivoted toward the office door, stopping at the threshold as she heard the low rumble of the garage door opening.
“Where’s Anne?” she asked of Brent, who was loading a batch of files into a carton.
“She’ll be here in a second. How’s it going upstairs?”
“Okay. Here?”
He gestured toward the sealed cartons stacked in the middle of the room. “Did you know this desk has three hidden compartments?”
“I’m not surprised. A lot of old furniture does.”
“Nothing hidden in any of them.”
“Because Mark’s greatest secret was hidden in his soul.”
“If he had one,” Brent agreed.
Macy’s gaze was drawn to the credenza, and she shifted uncomfortably. Brent had gathered all the photographs in the room there, two dozen or so, mostly portraits though also a few snapshots. One in particular stood out to her, a picture of Mark when he was a teenager, standing beside his grandfather, both of them grinning ear to ear as if they had known something no one else in the world knew.
And they had. He was fourteen the first time he’d killed. Probably half the bodies unearthed at Fair Winds had been his work.
Queasiness swept through her. A handsome kid, a strong impressive man, the majesty of Fair Winds rising behind them. Monsters and the place that spawned them.
Something rippled across the surface of the photo. Just a reflection, she told herself. A dust mote caught by the sun. But the rippling continued, chilling her blood, drawing her across the threshold, first one step, then two, more. Her hand shook as she reached for the frame. The wood was hot, the glass shimmering, the picture changing, transforming.
“Macy?”
Brent’s voice sounded distant, but she couldn’t answer. Her jaws were locked tight, her teeth clamped together, goose bumps giving birth to goose bumps all up her spine. Monsters. But not two. Three. Superimposed right next to Mark was Anne with her ready smile, her compassionate eyes. An unholy trinity of evil.
“Oh, dear God,” she whispered just as Anne’s voice came from the dining room.
“In here. Now.”
Footsteps shuffled, a shoving sound, a muffled curse. Macy looked at the photograph again and saw nothing but what had always been: Mark and his grandfather, grinning at the camera. The glass was normal glass, the wood just wood. She turned slowly, seeing Brent still behind the desk but on his feet, a stunned and bewildered look on his face, and she turned more and saw Stephen, dazed, disheveled, barely able to sit upright in the chair nearest the desk. A man stood a few feet behind him, his white shirt rumpled and stained, his face vaguely familiar, and Anne was in the doorway.
Anne, her sister-in-law, her friend, her daughter’s second mother, holding a gun on them all.
* * *
“Anne...what the hell—?”
She smiled tightly at Brent’s shocked words. “Yeah, that was my first thought, too, when this idiot called and said he’d kidnapped our cute little nerd vet. What the hell.”