Twice Kissed - Lisa Jackson [176]
That’s what had happened.
Right?
Or not? Now, feeling the blood beneath her nails, she wondered.
What’s happening to me?
She stared at her bloodied hands. Her fingernails, once manicured and polished, were broken, her palms scratched, and farther up, upon her wrists, healed deep gashes. Had she done that to herself? In her mind’s eye she saw her hands wrapped around a shard of glass and the blood dripping from her fingers…
Because you were going to kill him…trying to protect yourself!
She closed her eyes and let out a long, mewling cry. It was true. She didn’t know what to believe any longer. Truth and lies blended; fact and fiction fused; her life, once so ordinary, so predictable, was fragmented. Frayed. At her own hands.
She edged backward, closer to the window, farther from him, from temptation, from sin.
Where was her husband…and her children, what had happened to her girls?
Terror burrowed deep into her soul. Confused and panic-stricken, she blinked rapidly, trying to think. They were safe. They had to be.
Concentrate, Faith. Get hold of yourself! Zoey and Abby are with Jacques. They’re visiting tonight, remember? It’s your birthday.
Or was that wrong? Was everything a lie? A macabre figment of her imagination?
She took another step backward.
“You’re confused, Faith, but I can help you,” he said quietly, as if nothing had happened between them, as if everything she’d conjured were her imagination, as if he’d never touched her.
Dear Lord, how mad was she?
She spun quickly, her toe catching on the edge of a rug. Pitching forward, she again caught her reflection in the window and this time she saw him rushing forward, felt his hands upon her.
“No!” she cried, falling.
Glass cracked.
Blew apart as her shoulder hit the pane.
The window broke, shattering. Giving way.
With a great twisting metal groan, the wrought-iron grate wrenched free of its bolts.
She screamed and flailed at the air, trying to reach the windowsill, the filigreed barricade that hung from one screw, the bricks, anything! But it was too late. Her body hurtled through the broken panes, pieces of glass and wood clawing at her arms, ripping her nightgown, slicing her bare legs.
In a split second, she knew that it was over. She would feel no more pain.
Closing her eyes, Faith Chastain pitched into the blackness of the hot Louisiana night.
Some days are just weird city.
Take today. Jane Kelly, thirtysomething ex-bartender and current process server, is dutifully putting in slave-labor hours working for Dwayne Durbin, local “information specialist” (i.e., private investigator), and on the road to becoming a P.I. herself. Next thing she knows she’s socializing with eccentric rich people who have a penchant for going crazy and/or dying in spectacularly mysterious ways. A little back story…
Jane’s unusual motto in life is never trust anyone too handsome. But she’s willing to make an exception when Jasper “Jazz” Purcell, son of Lake Chinook’s wealthiest and most famously eccentric family, comes to ask for her help. Sexy, loaded, and charming, the guy’s a real catch. It seems the Purcell matriarch, Orchid, is in her eighties and losing her marbles. And since she controls the family fortune, that could be a bad thing. What Jazz needs is somebody from the outside to convince his grandmother to give up control. Somebody neutral. Somebody…with a dog. Orchid likes dogs. And that’s how Jane and her pug, The Binkster, end up at Estate Creep-O-Rama, babysitting a dotty old lady, surrounded by a clan so hostile they make Survivor look like a hug-fest.
From what Jane can tell, the Purcell family all want Orchid’s money; they all hate each other (but not as much as they hate Jane); and they’re all hiding some pretty big secrets. And when Orchid turns up in a pool of blood on Jane’s watch, the free-for-all has just begun. Diving into the Purcell family history leads Jane on some hair-raising twists and turns through mental illness runs, greed, deception, betrayal, and lies—including, but not