Abandon - Carla Neggers [90]
“But—”
Jesse shook his head. “No more stalling, Beanie.” He waved his knife at her in a threatening manner. “Into the shed.”
If he killed her, she thought, she hoped he’d make a quick job of it. If he was as skilled a fighter as he wanted her to believe, he could kill her instantly with a quick, targeted stab to the heart.
Don’t go quietly. Fight him to the end.
Surprised at her steadiness, she went ahead of him into the shed. Her knees were shaking, but not, she hoped, visibly. She didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of seeing her tremble in fear.
She noticed the tools hung neatly on hooks and nails, each a potential weapon. She’d never attacked anyone before in her life, but she knew she could do it if she had to.
“I searched Cal’s condo,” Jesse said, remaining between her and the shed’s only door. “I went through your house in Washington. You didn’t even know, did you? You should have a better alarm system. It’s not 1950 anymore.”
Her heart thumped wildly in her chest, but she manufactured a smile. “You’re probably right. Look, if Cal stole something from you, I don’t blame you for being upset.”
Jesse didn’t seem to hear her. With his free hand, he pulled something out of his shirt pocket—thick paper, folded in half.
A photograph.
He flipped it onto the floor in front of Bernadette. “Pick it up.”
She hesitated. Jesse wasn’t allowing himself to be distracted from his search for whatever it was he thought he’d find there. She knelt down slowly, the image on the paper at her feet taking shape.
It was a picture of Cal, the man with whom she’d once planned to spend the rest of her life, in bed with a pretty, fair-haired woman.
In my bed here at the lake.
The bastard hadn’t even had the courtesy to use one of the guest rooms.
“You took this picture?” she asked, angling a look up at Jesse.
“It was easy enough. If they’d been upstairs…” He shrugged, obviously pleased with himself. “That would have been more difficult.”
“Have you ever spied on me?”
“I wasn’t spying. I was collecting information—intelligence, if you will, that I could use when I saw fit. I don’t believe for one second that Cal feels inferior to you. You worried about that, didn’t you?”
Bernadette stared at Jesse as he spoke so calmly and rationally, as if they were best friends discussing personal matters over a beer. “I—” She couldn’t focus on what to say. “Jesse, please. Tell me why you’re here. What do you want?”
“He’s shallow,” Jesse said. “Your ex-husband. He doesn’t believe in anything but his own bank account and his pleasures. That kind of cynicism is tough.” He gave her a long look, as if he expected her to see something she hadn’t noticed before. “Why aren’t you cynical, Beanie Peacham?”
The voice…the eyes…
Bernadette clutched her chest and sank onto her knees. “Oh, my God.”
Jesse smiled and lowered his face to hers. “You remember me now, don’t you?”
Thirty-Three
The cool breeze off the water made Mackenzie shiver, but it felt good. A year ago on a beautiful Saturday in August, she’d have been kayaking by now, contemplating what life would be like if the Marshals Service accepted her for training.
Now, she knew.
She started onto the bottom step of Bernadette’s screen porch, but saw the shed door propped open and headed down the slowing lawn. If Bernadette was preoccupied with Harris’s death and in a prickly mood after Gus’s revelation about Cal, she would turn to activity—to doing something useful. She’d mow, dig weeds, finally paint her flea-market table.
“Hey, Beanie,” Mackenzie called, in case Bernadette hadn’t heard her car in the driveway. “Gorgeous day, isn’t it?”
As she approached the shed, she resisted an outright shudder and pushed back the overpowering sense of dread she’d felt so often as a child when she’d get near it. She’d envision monsters in there in the dark, as if somehow the prospect of monsters would mitigate the blur of real memories she had—of her father’s blood and moans, of her own terror and guilt. Ever since