Still Lake - Anne Stuart [105]
She’d scratched him, as she liked to do. They’d found traces of his skin under her fingernails, even though she’d been in the lake for hours when he’d found her. The yellow flowers had still been tangled in her hair. Her blood-soaked body covered with flowers in the toolshed as he held her and cried. And Doc watched.
He dove for the telephone, panic rushing through him. She said Doc had brought the flowers. Doc, who’d been around from the beginning, who testified against him, who knew everyone and their secrets. Doc with the yellow flowers and the gentle smile. And the murderous hands.
He dialed the old-fashioned phone, thanking God that he’d remembered to scrawl the number of the inn on the old green blotter. The telephone rang on the other end, an odd, hollow ring, and a moment later it clicked.
“Sophie, you’ve got to…” He didn’t get any further, as a recorded voice droned on.
“We’re sorry, the number you dialed is out of order. Please try again later.”
Griffin stared at the phone in horror. And then he dropped the receiver and ran.
21
Sophie stormed up the hill to the inn, ignoring the pain in her side, the stickiness between her legs, the fury in her heart. How dare that son of a bitch simply forget she was there? How dare he do…what he did and then ignore her? She was going to kill him, it was that simple. Find a gun and shoot him.
Or at least she really really wanted to. She hadn’t smacked anyone since John McKinney annoyed her in the fourth grade, but there was murder in her heart, even if it was never going to move past the point of fond desire.
The house was dark, only a faint light on in the kitchen. She wasn’t wearing her watch, and she had no idea of how long she’d been out there in the woods with Thomas Griffin. Griffin with the snake tattooed on his hip. Griffin the convicted killer, who hadn’t killed anyone.
Doc’s car was nowhere to be seen. Marty must have come home a while ago. Doc would have headed home to take care of Rima, and Gracey would be sleeping her drugged, peaceful sleep.
Everything was fine, she told herself as she climbed the steps to the porch. She’d just check on Grace, make sure she was sleeping peacefully, and then she’d take a shower and go to bed. And plan revenge on that lying, insensitive prick that she’d fallen in love with.
The moment the thought danced in her mind she kicked it out, angrily. If that was love she didn’t want anything to do with it. It was nothing more than healthy, normal sex, it meant absolutely nothing, and she was out of her mind if she was going to start making up romantic fantasies about living happily ever after with such a lying, cantankerous pig no matter how tied to him she felt. She was much better off fantasizing about killing him. What’s another murder or two in Colby, she thought, reaching for the kitchen door. It wasn’t as if they hadn’t had them before. Maybe the talking flowers would do it for her.
She pushed open the door and flicked on the light, then stopped. Doc was standing there, covered in dust and cobwebs, looking distraught.
“It’s Grace,” he cried. “She’s disappeared. I don’t know how she managed it, but I think she got into the old hospital wing. I’ve been searching for her, but there’s no light, and she might even be hiding. She seems to think I mean her harm.”
Panic raced through her, putting her fond thought of revenge on a back burner. “Where’s Marty? She could help us look…”
“She’s not back from her date.”
“Goddamn her!” Sophie exploded. Doc winced, and she knew she should apologize for her language, but somehow she didn’t have it in her. “Have you called for help?”
He nodded. “The police are coming out to help us look. They’re over in Hampstead, though, and it may take them a while to get here. I’m going back in there and see if I have any more luck.”
“I’ll come with you,” she said.
“Like that?” Doc was glancing at her bare feet and bedraggled gypsy appearance.
“I don’t think my mother will care what I look like,” Sophie said sharply, then immediately regretted it. She had no business snapping at Doc.
“I