Amanda (39 page)

She backed cautiously away from the hall opening, planning to go around the corner to the exterior staircase.

He grabbed her just around the corner.

Leslie managed to bite back a cry of pain when he wrenched the gun from her hand, and she didn’t struggle when Sully caught her other arm in a grip of iron and hauled her against his powerful body.

“What the hell are you doing?” he bit out.

Thank God for the thunder.
She looked up into his harshly handsome face, streaming with water and lit intermittently by flashes of lightning, and she whispered fiercely, “you’re breaking my arm, you big lug!”

“I’ll break your neck if you don’t tell me—”

“Shhhh! Do you want them to hear us?”

“Who?” Lightning turned his eyes to pure silver, and his furious voice was captured thunder.

“Them. Let go of me, Sully, I have to—”

Still holding the gun, he shifted his hands to grip both her shoulders, and then he shook her. Hard.

“you’re not going anywhere until you explain who you are and what you’re doing here,” he said sharply. “I mean it, Leslie. I want the truth, and I want it now!”

Leslie had learned enough about this man in the past weeks to be utterly sure of one thing: it would be easier to uproot a century-old oak tree with her bare hands than to move Sully before he was good and ready to give way.

“In books, the heroine
always
confides in the wrong man,” she told him severely.

If it was possible for a man to look both furious and bewildered, Sully managed it. He shook her again. “Goddammit, if you don’t tell me—”

Leslie’s inner clock signalled her that precious seconds were ticking away, so she abruptly abandoned humor. “All right, all right, I’ll tell you who I am. But We’ve got to
move.”

So, as they moved, she told him.

“He was here,” Amanda said. She pulled away from Walker and stumbled to her feet, moving a little distance from him and pointing into the hay area. “He was there. I saw him.”

Walker rose as well, but didn’t move toward her. “You couldn’t have seen Brian any time after nine o’clock that night, Amanda. I didn’t remember myself until a few minutes ago—but one of Brian’s favorite mares was foaling that night over at our place, and she was having problems. My father called Brian, and he came to King High just before nine. The three of us and the vet stayed all night in the barn—Brian didn’t leave until after the sun came up.”

Amanda leaned back against a stack of hay bales and stared at him. “He wasn’t here?”

“No. Not the night you and Christine left.”

“Then—” She closed her eyes briefly, opened them to look at Walker uncertainly. “Then it must have been—”

“Jesse. You were in shock and the light was bad; you mistook Jesse for Brian.”

“But why?” Amanda’s voice was bewildered. “What reason would Jesse have had to beat Matt like that?”

“Because of your slut of a mother.”

The new voice, harsh with emotion, jerked Amanda and Walker around, and they stared at Maggie as she stepped from the shadows of an empty stall. She had a gun in her hand, and it was pointed with the negligent ease of someone very familiar with firearms.

She was smiling.

Amanda felt cold clear through to her bones. “Maggie? I don’t understand.”

“No, I can see you don’t.
Don’t move
, Walker.”

It had been instinctive; he was several steps away from Amanda, and the need to shield her from Maggie’s gun and her hate was overwhelming. But he went still, certain that Maggie could and would kill them both if he provoked her.

“You hate me.” Amanda was staring at Maggie. “Why?”

“I thought you would have figured it out by now, Amanda,” Maggie said, still smiling that empty, chilling smile. “I mean, it’s so obvious. Think about what you saw.”

“That—that Jesse beat Matt Darnell?”

Maggie nodded. “And why do you suppose he would have done that? Victor told you about Christine’s
affair with Matt. And you saw Jesse beat Matt to death.”

Amanda made a little sound. “The … the skeleton …”

“Matt. I buried him up there, you know. That night. Packed up all his stuff, too, and got rid of it. I had to protect Jesse. I couldn’t let them take him away from me.” Her mouth twisted bitterly. “Not that he ever—but I couldn’t lose him.”

“I don’t—”

“Your slut of a mother, she tried to take him away from me. Oh, she pretended not. But she couldn’t keep her sly eyes off him, I saw that. She knew he still hungered after her, she
knew
that. So she started sleeping with Matt, flaunting her shabby affair just to torment him. Just to punish him. She drove him to kill.”

There was a dawning realization in Amanda’s eyes. “You can’t mean that he … that Jesse and my mother—”

“God, you’re slow. Want it spelled out? you’re not Brian’s daughter, Amanda. You’re Jesse’s.”

“Maggie!”

It was a cry of pain, and it made them all jump even though nobody moved when Jesse came into the half circle of light thrown out into the hall by the single light fixture. He was soaked from the rain and for the first time looked ill, his face peculiarly hollowed.

He looked at Amanda first, an imploring gaze she flinched away from, then turned anguished eyes to Maggie. “You can’t do this,” he told her.

Maggie laughed shrilly. “Did you think I wouldn’t find out, Jesse? About you and Christine? I suspected, of course, the summer it must have happened. The summer before Amanda was born. You hardly
touched me, so I knew there was someone. But I never dreamed … She was your son’s
wife
, Jesse!”

“I know.” His voice was low, wretched. “God, do you think I don’t know? Do you think I didn’t know then that I was damning my soul to hell for what I did?”

“Then why?” Maggie demanded. “What did you need from her that I couldn’t give you?”

“Maggie, it wasn’t a choice I made, don’t you understand that?” Jesse sent Amanda another quick, tormented look, then fixed his gaze on the woman he had betrayed. “It wasn’t something I
wanted.
It just happened. We were alone in the house together that day and … it just happened.”

Maggie’s mouth twisted. “In your bed?”

“No. Maggie—”

“In
hers?
In her marriage bed?”

“Does it matter?” Clearly, Jesse was reluctant to talk about it at all, far less to disclose intimate details, but he was just as clearly trying to placate Maggie and lessen the importance of his duplicity. “Maggie, it only happened once, I swear to you. Just once.”

“And that once you managed to do what Brian couldn’t in three years of marriage,” she observed raggedly. “Your seed took root in her.
Goddamn
you!”

“I didn’t know it was my child! I never even suspected until Amanda was older and—and then I knew.”

Maggie’s laugh was high, quavering, the sound of suffering rather than humor. “And then? Is that when you became obsessed with Christine again, Jesse? Is that when you took her back into your bed?”

“No! I swear to you, Maggie, I never slept with her again. She didn’t— I didn’t want to ruin Brian’s marriage.”

Maggie stared at him with incredulous eyes. “You
son of a bitch. Your son was calling his half sister his daughter, and you didn’t want to ruin his marriage?”

“Maggie, please.” Jesse flicked another glance at Amanda’s white face.

“Please what? Please be generous enough to overlook the fact that you fathered a child on your daughter-in-law? Please forget that your obsession with Christine led you to beat a man to death not ten feet from where we’re standing?”

Jesse made a little sound, harsh with pain. “No he was still alive when I left him. He was breathing.”

“He stopped breathing,” Maggie told him starkly. “I suppose you thought he left that night with Christine? No, Jesse, Matt Darnell never left Glory. I covered up that mess for you, just the way I’ve covered up so many others. I protected you, and loved you, and all the time
she
was the one in your head, the one you could never forget.”

“I’m sorry.” Jesse took a small step toward her. “I’ve always loved you, Maggie, you know that.”

She shook her head slowly, eyes still incredulous, agonized with knowledge. “No, you didn’t. You just let me love you because it suited you to, because you wanted a woman in your bed.”

“Maggie—”

“it’s all her fault,” Maggie murmured as if to herself. “She’s still holding you with the child she gave you. But I can fix that. I can cut the tie. And then her hold on you will be gone. You’ll love me then, I know you will.”

Walker wanted to look away from her face, from the naked truth that this proud woman had loved Jesse so long and so absolutely that not even his terrible betrayal of her could destroy that love. But he couldn’t look away.

The gun in her hand, held so steadily, lifted an inch to point squarely at Amanda’s head.

“It isn’t Amanda’s fault, Maggie—you can’t blame her for my sins! Please—give me the gun—” It was an indication of how shaken Jesse was that he was a supplicant, begging where he had always commanded.

“No, I have to get rid of her,” Maggie said, abruptly reasonable. “I was going to kill her anyway because she’s that whore’s daughter, but now I see how important it is for Christine’s hold on you to be gone. I have to cut the tie. I have to. Then we can be together forever.”

He took a step toward her. “Maggie, listen to me.” Another step. “I’ve been a bastard to you, I know, but give me the chance to make things right.” Another step. “Don’t ruin our last months together by hurting Amanda.”

“Last months? No, we have years yet, Jesse, you know that. You won’t leave me. After all I’ve done for you, you won’t leave me.”

“No, I won’t leave you,” he soothed.

“But I have to kill Amanda. You see that, don’t you? You must see it.” She was still being reasonable, trying to convince him.

“No, Maggie—” And then he leaped.

Walker, guessing what Jesse meant to do, was moving in the same instant to launch himself toward Amanda. He bore her backward into the maintenance area, hay cushioning their fall, and felt her jerk at the deafening report of Maggie’s pistol.

Still shielding her, he twisted to look back, saw Jesse stagger and fall heavily. Saw Maggie’s mouth wide open in a silent scream of torment, and saw her swing the gun around to take aim at Amanda once more.

Then there was a second report, and Maggie’s pistol flew from her hand. She wailed, clutching her bleeding hand to her breast, then turned and ran, down the long barn hall and out into the violence of the storm.

Amanda was struggling, trying to get up. Walker relaxed his hold on her and then helped her up, turning his head to see Sully and Leslie Kidd, both wet and grim, coming toward them. Sully had a pistol in his hand.

“Amanda …” Jesse’s voice was weak.

She dropped to her knees beside him, her hand grasping the big one held waveringly out to her. “Be still,” she murmured. “We’ll call Helen, and—and you’ll be fine.”

The bullet had caught him squarely in the middle of his chest, and it was obvious to everyone watching that Amanda was wrong. Jesse would not be fine. It was a miracle he was still breathing, let alone able to speak.

“Amanda … I never meant … you to be hurt. I loved your mother. I loved her very much. And I love you. Please … please don’t forget that.”

“I won’t. I won’t, Jesse.” Her voice, beyond shock now, was numb.

His hand tightened even as the silver eyes began to dim. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry … Amanda …”

It was Leslie who knelt on the other side of Jesse’s still body and felt for a pulse. After a moment, she stood slowly and shook her head.

Amanda freed her hand from Jesse’s loosened grip and placed his hand gently by his side. She pushed herself up, moving so slowly and stiffly it was as if her body was reluctant to move at all.

“Did you hear?” Walker asked Sully.

“Yeah.” Sully stared down at Jesse’s body. “We heard all of it.”

Amanda turned, slid her arms around Walker’s waist, and held on tight. He could feel her shaking, but she didn’t make a sound.

“he’d been keeping an eye on you,” Leslie Kidd told Amanda more than an hour later as they sat in the front parlor and awaited word from the sheriff and his deputy on the whereabouts of Maggie. She nodded toward Sully. “Doing my job.”

Reece, bewildered by everything, said, “you’re a private investigator? Amanda’s private investigator? I thought you rode horses.”

“I also ride horses. But I came here to keep an eye on Amanda, because both of us were fairly certain somebody was hell-bent to see her dead.” The red-head shrugged. “It didn’t take me long to realize that Sully had the same suspicion.”

Walker looked at Sully. “Maybe I misjudged you.”

“Until today, all I had was a suspicion. Maybe her being poisoned at the party was an accident, but I thought it was funny she was the only one to be seriously affected. But then the dogs disappeared, and that really bothered me.” Sully shrugged. “There was only one reason to get rid of the dogs, the way I saw it. To get at Amanda. Obviously, somebody was after her. After she was lured out into the woods this afternoon with barking dogs, I was certain of it.”

“Lured?” Amanda’s voice still sounded numb, and her face was drained of color.

Sully looked at her, and his normally rough voice gentled. “Lured. A tape recorder or something is my guess. I found the dogs, Amanda. Dead, for days at least, probably poisoned—and in the bottom of an old
abandoned well you were probably meant to be pushed into.”

“She wanted Amanda’s death to look like an accident,” Leslie murmured. “At least—when she was thinking straight, that’s what she wanted.”

Amanda said, “How did she know I was—was his daughter? He burned the DNA test results.”

“Maggie probably found out the same way I did,” Kate said, her voice also sounding a bit numb. “She saw you in a bathing suit, Amanda.”

Amanda shook her head blankly.

“You have a birthmark, on the left side of your rib cage just below your breast. An inverted heart.”

“Yes. So?”

Kate, who had no doubt dressed hastily and was wearing a tee shirt over shorts, lifted the hem of her shirt up far enough to expose a tiny birthmark high on the left side of her rib cage. “Adrian and Brian both had one of these. So did Jesse’s father and great-grandfather. It always skips a generation. So when Maggie saw it on you, she knew you were his daughter.”