Twice Dead - Catherine Coulter [143]
She ran down the wooden stairs. She looked at the wall where she’d found Sam propped up, bound and gagged, then at the far wall that still gaped open from when the skeleton had fallen out of it after that storm.
She heard the basement door splinter. Then he was on the stairs. She pulled and jerked at the rusted latch that held the small trapdoor down. It was about chest high. Move, move, but she was shrieking it in her mind, not out loud. What was going on with him? It had happened so quickly. He had snapped, turned into a wild man, a crazy man.
She heard his feet clattering to the bottom steps. The latch wouldn’t give. She was trapped. She turned to see him running across the concrete floor. He came to a stop. He was panting. He smiled at her.
“I nailed that trapdoor shut last week. It was dangerous. I didn’t think we should take the chance that a kid could open it and fall through. Maybe hurt himself. Maybe even kill himself.”
“Tyler,” she said. Be calm, be calm. “What’s going on here? Why are you acting like this? Why this rage? At me? Why?”
He said, all calm and serious, and he actually waved his finger at her, like a lecturing teacher, “You’re like the others, Becca. I hoped you would be different, I would have wagered everything that you were different, that you weren’t like Ann, that faithless bitch who wanted to leave me, wanted to take Sam and go far away from me.”
“Why did she want to leave you, Tyler?”
He shrugged. “She thought I was smothering her, but that was in her mind, of course. I loved her, wanted to make her and Sam happy, but she started pulling back. She didn’t need all those other friends of hers, they just wasted her time, took her away from me. Then she told me that night that she had to leave me, that she couldn’t stand it anymore.”
“Stand what?”
“I don’t know. I tried to give her everything she wanted, both her and Sam. I just wanted her for myself, wanted her to commit herself only to me, and all I asked was that she stay close to me, that she look to me for everything. And she did for a while, and then she didn’t want to anymore.”
“She left?”
In that instant, Becca knew that Ann McBride hadn’t gone anywhere. She was still here in Riptide.
“Where did you bury her, Tyler?”
“In Jacob Marley’s backyard, right under that old elm tree that was around when World War One began. I dug her deep so no animals would dig her up. I even gave her a nice service. She didn’t deserve anything, but I gave her all the religious trappings, the sweet and hopeful words. After all, she was my wife.” He laughed, remembering now and said with a smirk, “Old Jacob had been dead by then nearly three years so I didn’t worry about getting rid of him that time.”
He started laughing then. “I killed that ridiculous old dog of his—Miranda—a long time ago. The bitch didn’t like me, always growled when I came near. The old man never knew, never.”
She remembered the sheriff telling her how much Jacob Marley had loved that dog, how she’d just up and died one day. Her heart was pounding, slowly, painfully. Somehow she had to reach him. She had to try. “Listen to me, Tyler. I didn’t betray you. I would never betray you. I came here to Riptide because of what you’d told me about it. I was here to hide out. This was sanctuary for me. You helped me, so very much. You don’t know how much I appreciate that.” Were his eyes calmer now? Maybe, but he frowned and she tried to still her fear, said quickly, “That madman was trying to kill both me and my father. The last thing I wanted to think about was falling in love with anyone. I never