Текст книги "Never Die Alone"

Автор книги: Lisa Jackson

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“She’s my daughter,” another voice said as a shriek loud enough to wake the dead in the neighboring parishes ricocheted through the station.

Bentz grabbed his sidearm and ran out the door to the hallway, where a terrified Zoe Denning cowered as she stared, wide-eyed, at Jase Bridges. The girl was a mess, with stringy hair, her skin burned and streaked with mud. But she was alive. And in a panic.

“It’s him!” she cried. Frantic, she scrambled backward, trying to get away from Bridges. “He’s the psycho who grabbed me! Him! For the love of God, somebody get him!”

CHAPTER 30

“For the love of God!” Zoe screamed at the sight of the freak. “He’s the one! He’s the perv who’s got Chloe!” What the hell was he doing here? At the police station? All cleaned up and . . . “For the love of God! Arrest him,” she said, panic flooding through her. This was wrong. So very wrong.

“Miss—?” The cop who followed him into the hallway looked at her as if she’d lost her mind. “Are you all right?”

“Do I look all right? Did you hear me?” she said, her voice rising, anger and rage beating through her.

“Miss—?” The damned cop again.

“Where the hell is my sister?” She glared at the cleaned-up version of the psycho. “What did you do with her?” She started to launch herself at the man, attack him, and force him to tell the truth, but Rand, the farmer, stopped her short, restraining her with a big hand suddenly clamped over her shoulder.

“Slow down,” the farmer said into her ear. “Something’s not right here.”

“You’re damned right about that!”

The object of her wrath held up both hands, palms out, fingers splayed, his face earnest. “Not me.”

“Yes! You!” Somehow this creep was trying to trick her, trick the cops with his clean, respectable façade, but she wouldn’t be fooled, not after days of being held captive. “Where’s Chloe, damn it! Where the hell is she?” Zoe was nearly hyperventilating, her mind spinning, only vaguely aware that other people in the department, other policemen and women were clustering around them. Voices. Phones. Shuffling feet. Stares. Her heart thudding, she was sweating, in a near panic at the sight of him.

The cop who was looking at her said, “You’re identifying this man as your abductor?”

“Yes!” Zoe nearly screamed. What was wrong with them? Why was he standing here all innocent-like. As if he didn’t know. “It’s . . . it’s . . . him! Where’s Chloe, you bastard? Where’s my sister?” she cried, but as she said the words and her panic at the sight of him subsided a bit, she realized that something was off. Not right. Even though she wanted to pummel the jerkwad with her bare fists, to gouge out his eyes, she wasn’t sure. The face, oh, God, the face was the same and the build, but all cleaned up? Not a scratch on his face, not a bruise, not . . . wait, there was a little scar, but it was old and . . . what the hell? The psycho didn’t have an old scar there but he sure as hell had fresh ones. Her throat closed in on itself as she stared at him, tried to get her bearings. Could this guy be, what? A dopple-ganger, another twin? Oh, Geez, was that the deal? The freak was actually a twin himself? She thought she might have a heart attack right then and there just staring at him.

Little nuances—differences—jumped out at her. Her stomach dropped. “Do you . . .” No, she wouldn’t talk to the guy. To the cop, she asked, “Does he have a tattoo? On his arm? There should be a tat!”

To her amazement, the guy nodded and pushed his sleeve up past the bend of one elbow where the inky image of a rattlesnake was coiled around his biceps. “Only one I’ve got.”

“No, no.” She was shaking her head, disbelieving, trying to wrap her near-crazed mind around what she was seeing. “That’s not right!” she whispered, attempting to get a grip on herself “Not a snake . . . this is all wrong.” Remembering the mountain and a bloody heart on her captor’s arm, she felt sick inside. She was wrong. This wasn’t the creep. The man standing before her had a straighter nose and, of course, that tiny scar, faint but discernable, from years past. She was sure the freak didn’t have one there. Finally, her heartbeat slowing, the truth that had been dawning taking hold, she admitted, “The tattoo was way different, like that of a mountain and a bloody heart, some weird crap like that.” Oh, God, she wanted this man to be her would-be killer, to see him in custody, in handcuffs and shackles, behind bars or worse. She tried to think straight, to push past her pain and exhaustion, her hunger and dehydration, but she couldn’t and felt her knees start to give.

For the first time she noticed how many of the cops had left their desks, their expressions interested and wary, some with hands on their weapons as they collected around the tense group clogging the hallway. All staring at her.

“What . . . what about some kind of mole?” she asked in desperation. “On your . . . ?” She turned her gaze to the cop who had walked out of the office with the freak. “On his butt cheek.”

Selma took in a swift breath. “You saw him without clothes?”

“Except for a rubber apron. Yeah.” But if this wasn’t the guy, then, oh God, Chloe was still in the maniac’s clutches . . . or worse.

“You want me to drop trou? Would that convince you?” the guy demanded and before she could answer, without batting an eye, turned around and let his pants fall from his buttocks. The cop stared at them all as if they were all ceritifiable while more and more people gathered around.

“Hey! I don’t think that’s necessary, Bridges!” the cop said as some Hispanic dude with a goatee and diamond stud earring swaggered around the corner and stopped short.

“Whoa! What the hell kind of freak show is this?” he demanded, eyeing the gathering crowd. He acted like a cop, too—kinda—but he was wearing a black leather jacket and a bad-boy attitude that were at odds with him being a part of the force.

“This is Zoe Denning,” the first cop said, and then to Zoe, his face all serious intensity as he motioned to the guy who had just shown his buttocks. “Is this your abductor?”

“No,” she admitted, as the guy pulled up his pants and, his expression no longer of surprise, adjusted his shirt. “No, it can’t be. But—”

“But,” he said, his eyes darkening, “I look enough like him to be his twin.”

“You want to talk about Myra now?” Brianna said, disbelieving as she stared at Milo. “I really can’t. I have an appointment.”

“Here?” Milo asked, and looked at the apartment building. “Your appointment is here?” He eyed her suspiciously.

She checked her watch. She wasn’t scheduled to meet with Jase for another fifteen minutes, but she wasn’t certain she wanted to spend the time alone with Milo; there was just something about him that she didn’t trust.

“You followed me. And you came to my house and looked in my bathroom window.”

He didn’t answer, but actually blushed, as if embarrassed.

“While I was showering!”

“No . . . no . . . I’d rung the bell. Really. I wanted . . . I needed to talk to you and you didn’t answer. I saw lights on, so I walked around the house and . . .”

“Looked at me while I was showering? Is that what you’re telling me?”

“You were out of the shower. You had a towel around you.”

“Doesn’t matter! That’s voyeurism, Milo. I could have you arrested! I should have you arrested! You can’t go around peeping in windows.”

“You wouldn’t!” He was nervous now, his tongue darting around the corners of his mouth.

“I’m not sure about that.” She was furious and wanted to let him have it with both barrels. “You scared me to death!”

“I just . . . I just didn’t know how to talk to you.” He seemed sincere and confused and upset. “I’m sorry. Really. Please,” he said. “I just want to talk about Myra. I thought you cared about the whole twinless twin thing . . . I . . .”

A horn blasted as a minivan rolled down the street.

“Okay,” Brianna said. “Just find a parking spot. I’ll wait.”

“You could just hop into the van.”

No way would she jump into a van with a guy who had admitted to peering through her windows, a man who, at some level, made her more than nervous. She clicked off her phone’s camera but put it in alarm mode, should she need to call for help. She considered moving her Honda, parked as it was in a tow-away zone, but decided this hastily convened meeting would only take a few minutes. Twinless twin or not, it was all the time she could give him.

It took Milo five minutes to park his vehicle and walk back to her spot near the tree, and she couldn’t help but second-guess her own sanity at having agreed to this. She glanced around the area, just to make certain she wasn’t alone.

A woman pushing a baby carriage while trying to walk some kind of big dog, a Lab mix, she thought, was on the far side of the street. She also spied a man leaning over the rail of the third-floor porch. Smoking a cigarette and staring at her. Hard. Or was it her imagination? Were her nerves jangled because of Milo and the fact that Donovan Caldwell had died today. It was all kind of weird. Outré. Unnerving. Silently she told herself she was just a bundle of nerves and jumping at shadows, not in small measure due to Milo Tillman, her own personal stalker.

Was it even safe to deal with him?

What if he had a weapon?

What then?

She glanced up at the apartment building again and saw the gray-haired guy still watching her. Friend or foe?

Dear God, she was letting her imagination run wild with her. Now she was seeing evil in someone doing nothing threatening. But as Milo approached, she felt herself tense.

“Let’s go somewhere where we can sit down,” he suggested. “I think there’s a café two blocks down.”

Like this was a date or something? Two friends having coffee? No way!

“I’m sorry,” she said. She needed to keep her relationship with this man professional. She’d crossed the barriers before and blurred the lines several times. Max had been a mistake, and she probably was more involved with Tanisha and Selma than she should be. They’d become friends. But Milo? The Peeping Tom? No way. His excuse for peering through her window was flimsy at best. “I really don’t have a lot of time. So what’s going on? What’s happening that couldn’t wait until our next meeting?”

“I, um, I lied about that,” he admitted, and her gut clenched.

“You lied?”

“About needing to talk about Myra. Well kind of... and about watching you.” He scratched the back of his neck nervously. “I think you’re in danger.”

“Me?” What was he talking about? Where was this going?

“I’ve followed you,” he admitted as a car left the parking lot of Jase’s apartment building, nosing into the street where the traffic was picking up.

“I know.” She glanced up to the third floor of the building. The smoker was still there, observing the ground below and, she felt, keeping an eye on her. All the better considering.

“And I’ve seen you with him.”

“With who?”

“Jacob.”

“Jacob?” she repeated, confused. “I don’t know a Jacob.”

He stared at her as if she were nuts. “But I saw you together. You know, after the meeting. The other night?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Milo’s face grew hard. “It was later, you remember, after the meeting where Selma told us about her daughters going missing?” An earnest look crossed his face, but of course she still didn’t trust him. “You went to dinner, I think, or out for drinks with Tanisha and Selma after the meeting and Jacob, he was waiting for you by your car.”

Now she got it. Milo was mixed up. That was it. Or he got Jase’s name wrong. “His name isn’t Jacob.” When he didn’t respond, she added, “He’s a reporter. Jason Bridges.”

But Milo’s face had changed. Any confusion in his expression had been chased away by anger. “What he is, Brianna, is a liar. His name is Bridges, yeah, but he’s Jacob and he’s a murdering son of a bitch. He killed Myra.”

He drove as if Lucifer himself was on his tail, taking corners too fast, putting Myra’s Ford through its paces, and all the while he was on his cell phone, listening to Myra berate him, reminding him over and over again that he’d failed. He’d left the city in a rush and now was flying toward the cabin, fields and farmland flashing by.

“You’re out of options. You need to kill her.” Myra’s disappointed voice had been cold. Calculating. As if she’d just stepped out of the grave. But insistent, so much so that he heard it even when he wasn’t on the phone with her.

He’d failed. He knew it now. Actually he’d known it the instant he’d missed his second shot and the pickup had sped out of range. He’d made the mistake of thinking he could fix things, that he could still hunt Zoe down, but had realized that returning to New Orleans had been a mistake.

He’d messed up, bungled the plan big-time, and Myra, that bitch, wasn’t going to let him forget it. He remembered the night he’d nearly killed her, how he’d wrapped his fingers around her thin throat and squeezed, listening to her squawk and gasp, watching her eyes bulge first in disbelief and then in terror.

She’d cheated on him and he’d caught her and confronted her and killed her. Snapped her lying, cheating neck the minute she’d turned twenty-one. Myra with her blood-red lipstick so much like the ribbons that tied his mother’s hair. And those red teddies with their seductive garters, again reminding him of Mother’s damned ribbons. The two women he’d loved had both been bitches and he’d taken care of them, hadn’t he? He’d shown Myra. Shown Mother. Shown both of those lying sluts. His mother should never have left his father and Myra, God, she’d spread her legs so easily for another man . . . She’d deserved to die!

No, no, wait. He couldn’t have killed Myra. Never. His head pounded with blurred memories of strangulation and ribbons and hatred and . . .

Stop! That was wrong. He’d gotten it all wrong. Mixed up dreams with what had really happened.

Right? Of course! Myra, his beautiful Myra was alive and had just been on the phone and read him the riot act for not doing as she commanded, for letting Zoe get away.

“We’ll deal with the first one later,” she had said in the awful, ever-present voice. “She can ID you and the damage is done there, but you can take care of her after the heat has died down. For now, idiot, concentrate.”

He felt his back muscles bunch. Hated it when she berated him. Even now, reviewing the conversation they’d had earlier in the day . . . or had it been another time?

“For now, just kill Chloe,” she had insisted, “so that’s one less mistake to worry about and then get the hell out of town. Leave the van. Take my car. Lie low. You still have money, right? You’ve been careful with your mother’s estate?”

He thought of his mother with her wide eyes, thinning hair, and red, red ribbon tying it back. The nursing facility had been expensive, would have eaten up all of her savings, which at the time had been substantial, so she, too, had to die.

She was a bitch anyway.

He didn’t mind helping her along, putting a little too much medication into her protein drink.

“Money’s not a problem,” he’d said aloud and wondered from her lack of response, if Myra had been listening. That was the way with her. She often didn’t reply to him and it pissed him off. “But what about you? If I kill Chloe and leave New Orleans, what about you?” He’d come back here because of Myra.

“I’ll always be with you, Jacob,” she’d cooed, soothing him, once again present. Sometimes he wondered if she even existed the way she toyed with him. “You know that.”

He smiled. She’d been angry with him, but forgiving. So he would do as she had bidden. Kill Chloe, make sure that little kicking bitch was dead, and then he’d blow town and bide his time.

He could wait for Zoe.

He was a patient man.

Bentz didn’t believe for a second that Jase Bridges was capable of murder, but as they sorted everything out in a conference room, the reporter himself came up with an outlandish theory in which he described finding out just this very afternoon that he had a twin brother he hadn’t known about, nor met. He’d only discovered the truth earlier in some kind of purging confession from his old man, who was also a drunk.

Montoya, who’d come a little late to the party, was skeptical. “Whoa. Wait. All these twins? Seriously?” he wondered aloud. “The twin girls who were taken, the mother who’s a twinless twin, and now Bridges having a twin brother he didn’t know about. What’s going on? Are we on some hidden camera show?”

Bentz didn’t have time to argue the facts. There was another girl missing and now, they had a place to start looking. The farmer who brought Zoe Denning into the station was a local who knew the area.

Zoe’s description of the isolated cabin in which she and her sister had been held coupled with Rand Cooligan’s knowledge of the terrain and the spot where he’d found her running through the field had helped. The police had narrowed the possibilities to six tracts that met the description of a small, run-down and isolated shack with a long, possibly quarter-of-a-mile lane and forests bordering the river. Four were dismissed as Cooligan knew the owners.

However, Bentz didn’t think just because the farmer could vouch for the landholders that put them in the clear, so he was dispatching deputies to those parcels. The other two he would personally visit.

“There’s the Shepherd place,” Rand said in the meeting. “Small one-room house, been abandoned for five, maybe six years. Never seen anyone going in or out, and the gate’s padlocked, rusted shut. I know ’cuz me and my boy went hunting that way just last fall.”

“And the other place?” Bentz asked.

“The Tillman place?” Rand shook his head. “The owner, Sigmund Tillman, was an older guy. Oh, gosh, he’s been dead now, what? Twenty years. Left the place to his daughter as I recall.”

“But she doesn’t live there?”

“Nah. And she’s dead, too,” Rand said, thinking hard and nodding. “Murdered. Far as I know they never caught whoever did it.”

“Tillman?” Selma whispered, her eyes rounding. “There’s a man named Tillman in our support group. Milo. His twin sister’s name . . . Oh, God, I should remember this.”

“Myra,” Rand said.

“Okay, we’ll start there.” Bentz looked at Montoya. Another twin? Well, why not? To his partner, he said, “Let’s roll.”

CHAPTER 31

“Jacob killed your sister?” Brianna repeated, and wondered how far off the rails Milo was. Jason had a brother named Prescott, she knew that, but not one named Jacob. Even if there was a brother who looked identical to Jason, why would he have killed Milo’s sister?

A cold feeling slid down her spine as the words identical to Jason slipped through her mind. Her heart froze. Was it possible? Did he have a twin? Hadn’t Jase said something about his mother leaving after his infant brother had died?

Was it all a lie?

She glanced up at the balcony where the tall, gray-haired guy had been smoking. He was still there, lighting up another cigarette and staring at her through the smoke he exhaled. Her skin crawled. Why the hell was he staring at her, and why was he standing so close to Jase’s apartment? She’d thought it was because he lived in a neighboring unit and that still could be true, but as she moved slightly so that her line of sight was obstructed by the stairwell, she noticed Jase’s door was open wide though his truck was nowhere to be found on the street or in the lot.

Not a big deal.

Or was it?

“No one could prove it. Myra just disappeared. Here in New Orleans, around the time of our twenty-first birthday,” Milo was saying. “We were going to celebrate together, but never got the chance. When all this talk about Selma’s daughters being abducted when they were turning twenty-one happened, I wondered, of course, but—” He shrugged, sunlight and shadow playing over his face as the wind rustled through the branches overhead, causing the leaves to turn. “Then I saw Jacob and that’s when I tried to get into contact with you.”

“You did a piss-poor job of it,” she said, thinking of him standing outside her window. Her cell phone jangled in her hand. Jase’s number flashed onto the screen. “I need to take this. I’ll just be a second,” she said, though Milo had started to protest.

“Hey, wait, I want to tell you—”

“I said, just a sec.” With an uncompromising look in Milo’s direction she held up a hand, saw that he’d snapped his mouth shut ostensibly to pout, then thought, Too damned bad, and turned her back on him.

“Hi,” she said, expecting Jase to launch into the story surrounding Donovan Caldwell’s death.

Instead, he said, “Zoe Denning is alive and here at the police station.”

“What?” she whispered, not thinking she heard correctly. “Zoe?” Tears of relief sprang to her eyes and she leaned against the trunk of the live oak for support. “What about Chloe?”

“Not yet . . . we don’t know. Are you at my apartment yet?”

“Yes.”

“Wait for me. I’m driving. On my way.” And then he launched into a bizarre tale of his learning he had a twin brother who could be the 21 Killer or a copycat or his own kind of freak because Zoe had first misidentified Jase as the killer. She listened in shock as the tale unfolded. “. . . and so the police have narrowed it down to a couple of places. They’re checking out a cabin owned by Myra Tillman first.”

“Wait. Tillman?” she repeated, and from the corner of her eye saw Milo’s head snap up. “That’s got to be it,” she said, pieces of the puzzle starting to tumble into place. “I’m . . . I’m with Milo now.”

“What?” Milo demanded, but she listened to the story Jase spun and once he was finished, said, “Milo says that Jacob killed his sister. Never proven because he skipped town.”

“To become the 21 Killer in Los Angeles.”

“And he came back here, not because of Rick Bentz,” she said, as the pieces finally clicked together. “But because of Myra.”

True to her word, Brianna was waiting for him.

Jase tore into the parking lot, threw himself out of his pickup, and stepped onto the sunbaked asphalt. She’d crossed the parking lot to meet him and his heart soared stupidly at the sight of her. He felt the urge to throw his arms around her, to ignore the fact that the secret he bore would keep them apart forever, but, of course, he couldn’t. He had to restrain himself.

He took one step toward her when from out of the shadows of live oaks, a man catapulted himself at him. “You bastard!” the man screamed. “You killed her!”

“Milo!” Brianna cried as Jase feinted to the side and his attacker hit hard against the side of his truck.

“What the hell is this all about?” he demanded, grabbing the guy’s arm and pulling it around his back.

“You killed Myra.”

“Not me, pal.”

“I thought I explained,” Brianna said. “Stop this!”

“Fuck!” Face red, eyes bulging, Milo was forced hard against the hot front panel of the truck. “It’s just you look so much like the bastard.”

“I know.” Jase gave the guy’s arm a little tweak.

Milo squealed and his knees buckled.

“We good now?” Jase asked, feeling sweat run down his face, his adrenaline punched up. “Because I’ve had a long day and I’m itching for a fight. What’d’ya say?”

Milo didn’t respond.

“Okay, then—”

“No! Don’t. I’m good. Good.” Milo was nodding furiously. “Good.”

Jase didn’t let go.

“You sure?”

“Yeah, man, I’m sure. Look, I didn’t mean anything. You just look so freaking much like the guy I’ve been searching for . . . hell.”

Jase released him and stepped back, but he remained wary, ready to pin the guy again and call the cops. “I don’t have time for this,” he said. “The guy you’re looking for, my brother, the police think he might be at a place your sister owned around here.”

“What?”

“A cabin by the river?”

“That old place?” Milo was shaking his head. “I thought . . . I mean, I think my uncle or cousins ended up with it.”

“Deed’s in the name of Myra Tillman, owes a ton of back taxes. State’s about to step in.”

Brianna asked, “How do you know that?”

“Connections. I called the office on my way over here.” He stared hard at Milo. “I suggest you go to the cops and explain everything you know about what happened to your sister. Talk to Detective Bentz when he gets back there. You got that?”

Milo wanted to argue. Jase saw it in the shorter man’s eyes.

“Okay,” he acquiesced, still scowling and rubbing his arm.

“I mean it.”

“I said, okay!”

“Good.” To Brianna, he said, “Let’s go. I think it’s time I met my brother.” He was starting for his pickup when a shadow crossed his path. A premonition of dread tightened his muscles as he looked up to find his father standing on the other side of a live oak.

“Don’t you have unfinished business?” the old man asked as he flicked a knowing glance at Brianna.

“Not now, Dad,” Jase warned.

“No time like the present.”

“I said, not now. Not when the police are about to take down the twin I never knew I had, the sicko who is probably the damned 21 Killer.”

“Always chasin’ a story,” the old man said, unperturbed by this bit of news, that his own son could be a serial killer.

“What’s he talking about?” Brianna asked.

Edward’s old eyes twinkled.

“We’ve got to go.” He rounded the pickup to the passenger door. “Come on, Brianna.”

She looked from his father to him and back again as she followed him. “What’s going on, Jase?”

His old man chuckled. “Tell her on the way,” he suggested, and patted his shirt where the envelope Jase had left him poked out of his pocket. “Jase here knows all about how your sister died.”

“What?” she asked, her eyes, so like Arianna’s, turning on him. He didn’t wait, just grabbed her arm with one hand and opened the door of his truck with the other.

“You’re a bastard,” he said to the man who sired him. “You know that, don’t you?”

“So I’ve heard.” Ed reached for his near-empty pack of Camel straights. “But I’m gonna fix that right now. You think you killed a man, don’t you?”

Jase paused, his hand on the hot door handle of his truck. He remembered knocking a guy senseless with one hard punch.

“It wasn’t you, son. Oh, yeah, you hit him hard. Cold-cocked the son of a bitch. But he didn’t die from it.”

“Wait. What? We buried him.”

“Buried who?” Brianna asked, staring at him in horror.

“Tell her.” Ed lit up.

Jase drew in a deep breath. Wasn’t he the one who’d said there would be no more secrets, hadn’t he vowed as much to himself? But not like this, not for his old man’s amusement. “The man who killed your sister.”

“What?” she cried. “But Arianna drowned.”

Jase was sick inside remembering. “I know. And . . . and it’s my fault. Come on, let’s go. I’ll explain.”

“What the fuck is going on here?” Milo said, hearing all of the conversation.

Ed chuckled again and let out a stream of smoke. “This here,” he said to Milo, “this here is Judgment Day. Oh, and, son?” he said to Jase through Jase’s open window. “That grave up at the farm?”

Jase froze. “What about it?”

“Doesn’t exist,” the old man said. “All that’s up there is an old tarp filled with rocks. You didn’t kill no one, boy. If you don’t believe me, ask Prescott.”

“What the hell is he talking about?” Brianna demanded as Edward Bridges let out a long, self-satisfied laugh that was almost a cackle and ended with a coughing spate.

Jase started the truck and peeled out of the lot.

All of the ghosts of the past seemed to chase after him as he started talking, his confession as dark as the middle of the night. As she backed into the corner of the cab of the truck, listening in stunned silence, he admitted the truth.

“I loved Arianna,” he said and caught the pain in Brianna’s eyes. “It was a long time ago, of course.”

“Of course,” she whispered, a sharpness in her voice as they both knew how long Arianna had been gone.

“We would meet at the river late at night. She’d sneak out and I’d be waiting.” It had seemed so innocent, or at least no more dangerous than being in trouble with her parents.

As the miles rolled beneath the tires of the truck, he added, “It hadn’t gone on all that long. A few weeks. One night I showed up later than expected because of car trouble and when I got there—” He cleared his throat remembering how they’d swum beneath the moon and the stars. It had been exciting, almost dreamlike until that particular night, the one that changed all their lives forever. “When I got there,” he continued feeling the weight of Brianna’s gaze, seeing, from the corner of his eye how horrified she was, “Arianna wasn’t alone.”

“What do you mean?” she asked and he heard the hesitation in her voice over the rumble of the engine.

“There was a man with her. An . . . an assailant.”

“A murderer?”

“Rapist.” In his mind’s eye he remembered walking through the forest to see Arianna lying on the riverbank, her body white and naked, a faceless man atop her. She’d been whimpering, sobbing softly and painfully as her rapist had grunted in some kind of sick pleasure. “I went ape-shit,” Jase said. All the anger he’d felt at that moment came flooding back. “Jumped the guy and tried to beat him senseless. Or . . . or thought I had. It’s all a blur. It’s like when people say they ‘saw red.’ I don’t remember hitting him, but I did, and he turned, kind of roared and twisted. That’s when I saw the knife, the one he’d used to subdue Arianna.”

“Oh dear God,” Brianna whispered, her voice breaking.

Without thinking, Jase had attacked, sprang on the back of the man who had turned in the darkness, a blade flashing. He’d jabbed quickly, connecting with Jase’s face and slicing, creating the scar Jase bore today.

“He cut me.” With one hand, he indicated the scar. “Got his licks in.” The truth was they’d fought, struggled. “We went at it and somehow I managed to connect, a blow to his nose while holding his other wrist away from me. The guy was stunned and dropped the knife before crumpling into a heap.” His jaw worked as he remembered the scene, how the bastard, his pants at his ankles had slumped to the ground and Jase had given him one final kick. All the while Arianna had screamed and mewled, scrabbling in the darkness for her clothes.

“How come I’ve never heard of this?”

“Because it was covered up. That’s the way Arianna wanted it.”

“I don’t understand.”

Neither did Jase. Never had. Never would. “I—I was certain I’d killed the bastard and stupid kid that I was, once I saw that Arianna was safe, or as safe as she could be, I took her home, she begged me not to tell a soul and I lied and told her I wouldn’t. Then I asked my brother and father to help me. Since I was convinced I’d killed a man, I wanted my dad to go with me to the police, but Ed would have nothing to do with it.”