ShadowsintheMist (33 page)

I tried to pull away but he tightened his grip. “David, I
don’t know what you’re talking about. Let me go!”

But he didn’t relinquish his hold and, as I looked up into
his face, I saw an expression of pure malice that made me suddenly very afraid.

“No, Suzanna, for once you’re going to listen. You’re going
to hear all of it,” he said. “You couldn’t leave well enough alone, could you?
Well, it doesn’t matter now. All this could have been for us. Now, it’s only
for me. It’s my turn for a piece of the pie.”

I struggled to get loose but it was useless. He pushed me up
against the wall and pinned my shoulders. I felt the rough stone biting into my
back.

“You know, it’s all your fault,” he said through clenched
teeth. “Yours and Leo’s!” He was breathing heavily and I could see his eyes
were dilated and dark. “I was the only one besides Leo who loved Beacon. I’m
the one who should have it. You—Colin—you’ve never learned to appreciate it. If
you’d married me, Beacon would have been mine and none of this would have
happened. But how was I to know that Daddy had other plans for you?”

He was squeezing my shoulders so tightly I bit my lip. “Please,
David. You’re hurting me!”

Abruptly, he surfaced from his thoughts and focused on my
face. “Am I?” He loosened his grip slightly but didn’t let me go. “You know, you’ve
hurt me too, Suzanna. More than you’ll ever know.” His eyes misted. “How could
you marry that bastard? How could you throw away what we had?”

“You know why, David.” I was trying to sound calm. I’d never
seen him so erratic. I didn’t want to provoke him. “If I didn’t, we all would
have lost Beacon.”

“Yes. Yes,” he murmured, as if to himself. “We wouldn’t want
that…”

I watched as a muscle tensed in his jaw. I must take
advantage of his confusion. “Let me go, David. We can work all this out. I’m
sure there’s a logical way to explain the drugs and…and, well, Grant is a good
attorney. He could…”

But I knew the minute I said the name that I’d made a tragic
mistake. He shoved me hard against the wall. My neck snapped back and my head
hit with a stunning force.

“Grant! Grant! Grant!” he shouted. “It’s always been Grant
with you! It only proves that you’re not worthy. Anyone who could love a whore’s
bastard doesn’t deserve Beacon!”

He was fumbling with his belt and, for one wild moment, I
thought he was going to rape me. Instead, he whirled me around and brought my
wrists together behind my back, wrapping them tightly with the belt and
fastening it so my hands were useless.

“David, please! I don’t understand what you’re doing!” I was
sobbing now, confusion mingling with fear. This was a David I didn’t know. This
was a David out of control—maybe even mad. I didn’t know what to do—didn’t know
what he would do.

“Shut up!” he snapped, slapping me hard so lights danced in
my head and I fell backward to the floor. Before I was able to recover, he
grabbed my skirt and ripped a long strip from it, tying it firmly around my
ankles so that I was totally powerless. My head spun from the slap and it took
some minutes to catch my breath. He stood over me, fists clenched, as I writhed
helplessly.

“Beacon should be mine!” he said in a low growl. “Leo took
it away from me! He found out about the drugs. I tried to tell him it was for
you and me—all that money. Do you know how much money you can make trafficking
drugs? No, you wouldn’t. You’re too lily white! Always had plenty, haven’t you?”
His mouth lifted in a sneer and I cringed, afraid he would kick me.

Instead, he began to pace. “Leo was going to tell everyone,
forbid you to marry me. He even threatened to turn me in to the police. I had
to kill him. He wouldn’t listen to reason.”

I was too stunned to speak. That David was running drugs was
unbelievable. That he killed my father was incomprehensible

“This was to be the last time, you know,” he said. “After
Dad found out and…” He rubbed his eyes hard.

“It was you who ran your father down with the speedboat?” I
whispered incredulously.

“Dad overheard my arrangements for this haul. He was going
to tell you. He always sided with you, with Leo. It was his own fault! If it
hadn’t been for him, I never would’ve started dealing. It was easy, you see. He
always left his big, black, ‘I’m-a-respectable-doctor’ bag lying around. And
then Mother—she always had plenty of pills. She never missed them.

“I found out at school how rewarding pill-pushing could be!
And Jenny? Well, a nice target she was! Did you know that she and I were an
item? No, I didn’t think so. We kept it very quiet. I spent a lot of time in
New York. She’s the one who introduced me to Benny. ‘Want to make some big
bucks?’ Benny said and within months, I was rich. All they wanted was a
middleman. Someone to move the stuff. Is that so bad?”

Aghast, I listened to his rambling tale, wondering if this
was some sort of cruel joke. But my throbbing head and wrists told me
otherwise.

He moved to the window, stooped to pick up a pair of
binoculars and gazed for some minutes into the blackness outside. He seemed
calmer now, continuing to talk, half to me, half to himself.

“Jenny shouldn’t have come back. I warned her to stay away.
She never knew all of it, mind you but I wasn’t going to take any chances. She
was having pangs of guilt—could have ruined everything.”

“So, you were the sniper at the river?” I said, trying to
keep my voice calm, testing my restraints.

“I wasn’t trying to kill her, you understand, just warn her.
It did the trick.”

“But why the drugs, David? If we married, Beacon would be
yours and you’d have access to my inheritance.”

He laughed harshly. “That’s what I thought too—at first. But
Leo was a wily, old bastard. He wasn’t going to let me have a penny I didn’t
earn. He wanted me to sign a prenup ensuring that Beacon would stay in your
name, along with the money and holdings. I wouldn’t have been any better off
than I am now. I’d have to grovel for every penny and that’s one thing I’ll
never do. No, I want Beacon but I want it in my own right. Besides, I get a
great deal of satisfaction from using Dirkston resources to make me rich.”

“What do you mean?”

He glanced over, smiling. “The plane, Suzanna! We bring the
stuff in using the seaplane! Smack, fantasy, ecstasy, crack, cocaine—whatever
the latest craze. In the pontoons! It’s as simple as ABC—though I can’t take
all the credit for working it out. Mike’s the one who came up with the idea.”

My thoughts flashed back to the day I saw Mike Kensington
squatting over the pontoon on the seaplane. He had seemed intent on something.
Now I knew what. David saw recollection in my expression.

“Yes,” he said, “Mike insisted you didn’t see anything that
day and even if you did, you wouldn’t put two and two together. I wasn’t so
sure. You were a problem from the beginning, Suzanna. If you’d only minded your
own business… But no, you had to start snooping. It’s a trait in you I’ve
always abhorred—meddling curiosity. I’d have cured you of it, given time.

“Once you found the poker, I knew there was no going back. I
knew you wouldn’t rest until you put the puzzle together. And when you married
Fenton, I tried to convince myself that you only did it to save Beacon. I
thought after the year was out, you’d leave him and come back to me. Then I
began to watch the two of you together and I saw the truth. It became obvious I
wasn’t going to get Beacon by marrying you, so my only alternative was to
invalidate your inheritance.”

At my look of confusion, he waved an expansive hand.

“It all seems complicated to you, I know but really it’s
quite simple. Who would inherit Beacon if something were to happen to you?”

“I—I don’t know.”

He snorted. “Little Miss Naїve! No, I suppose you
wouldn’t. Well, it would go to Colin and Colin is nearly as easy to manipulate
as you. He’s so deep in debt that he’d sell his own mother, if someone offered
him a cent! Not to mention that his lady fair, Alicia- dahling, has been under
my power ever since she arrived.”

“You gave her the drugs?”

“Sure. She had an itch and I had the means to scratch it.”

“But she’s off them now,” I said with false conviction.

He looked at me and cocked an eyebrow. “You really are an
innocent, Suzanna. All I’d have to do is,” he snapped his fingers, “and she’d
be right back onto them—worse than ever.”

“Does Colin know? About the drugs?”

“Hell, no. He’s blind to anything he doesn’t want to see.
Besides, he’s never had a head for business. He’s quite happy to let me do the
bookkeeping and organization at the marina. Without me, Colin would be nothing.”

I bit my lip and tried to get more comfortable. The
floorboards were digging into my hip and I was losing sensation in my fingers.
I wanted to keep him talking. I didn’t know what he planned to do with me but I
knew my only chance was to stall him long enough for someone to come looking
for us.

“So, you decided to get rid of me, then?” I prompted.

He made a wry face. “No, though I should have. Actually, I
grew quite fond of you. I guess I even hoped I was wrong. That you’d see sense
and come back to me. But I did figure I could alter your credibility a bit—make
people wonder about your mental state.”

I felt chilled. “How?”

He reached into his pocket and held up a smaller bag of
powder. “It’s all here. Mind control in a bag. A bit in your cocoa…a bit in
your tea.” He made an exaggerated shudder. “Nasty dreams! Strange
hallucinations!”

I gaped at him. His teeth were very even when he smiled.

“You gave me the idea yourself,” he said. “The night you
nearly drowned in the pool—said you saw Daddy. They all thought you were having
some sort of breakdown. Well, I figured I might just help it along.”

“And my mother?” I whispered. It was too much to believe.
The man before me now was a stranger.

“Yes.” He thrust his hands deep into his pockets and turned
back to the window. “Anna. She never liked me, you know. Shouldn’t have written
all that about me in her diaries. How could she possibly know what I was like?
I hated her—rich bitch! But did I kill her?” He looked at me again and
shrugged. “Unfortunately, no. That was Colin’s doing.”

I gasped. “Colin?”

He waved a hand. “Oh, not like you think. It was just a
prank. You know the ones we used to do back then. A practical joke. He was
actually trying to get Grant into trouble. After Rudy saddled up the horses,
Colin loosened the cinch. No one saw him. After Anna took a tumble, he was
going to blame Grant. Colin really resented Grant in those days. He’d do
anything to get Grant in hot water with Leo. He didn’t mean for her to die. I
suppose he felt pretty bad about it afterward. But it worked miracles for me.”

“What do you mean?”

“Mind control, Suzanna! There’s only one thing better than
drugs to control the mind and that’s guilt. All this time, I was the only one
who knew Colin’s secret. How do you think I managed to keep him in line all
these years?”

I let out my breath in a long sigh, squeezing my eyes shut,
trying to block out the shocking revelations spilling from his mouth. “So you’re
the one who tore the pages from Mother’s journal?”

He nodded. “I nearly forgot about them. Then, when I heard
you were poking around in the attic, I remembered.” He chuckled. “I must say, I
had to stay on my toes to keep one step ahead of you!”

“And the message? ‘Get out while you still can’?”

“Yes. You see? I never really wanted to hurt you. If only
you’d done as you were told, you wouldn’t be in the predicament you’re in now.”

I felt sick. He turned away from me and raised the
binoculars to his eyes. His silence accentuated the sound of the wind moaning
around the upper parapet and gusting through the window. I craned my neck,
searching for something sharp, something that might cut my bonds.

Suddenly, he turned to me, his face set. “They’re coming to
get me now,” he said. “I’ve got to go. I’m sorry it had to end like this,
Suzanna. I’ll miss you.”

He picked up the briefcase and the lantern and disappeared
through the door, leaving me in darkness, alone and helpless but immensely
relieved that he hadn’t seen fit to kill me first.

* * * * *

I allowed my eyes to become accustomed to the dark and was
eventually able to make out moonlight coming in through the window. I rolled
onto my stomach and squirmed over to the wall. Feeling carefully, I found a bit
of raised ridge in the stone, testament to the rough masonry of past decades. I
struggled to a sitting position, my back against the wall and began to drag the
leather belt binding my wrists up and down over the jagged ridge. I felt the
stone slicing into my skin but forced myself to persevere.

After some minutes, I paused, my arms aching. I sniffed the
air, curiously aware of an acrid smell that I hadn’t noticed before. I began to
rub harder, feeling blood trickle down and drip from my fingertips. The odor
was growing. In a flash, it dawned on me what is was—smoke!

I peered through the blackness toward the door and saw a
vague, incandescent flicker. My heart began to thud in my chest. David hadn’t
shown mercy after all. He’d set the lighthouse on fire and left me here to
burn!

Frantic, I scraped harder at the belt. Despite its stone
exterior, there was plenty of wood inside this old building and all of it
brittle enough to easily catch alight. By the time the belt snapped, I was
oblivious to any pain. The smoke was heavier now and my nose and eyes watered.
Coughing fitfully, I fumbled with the bindings on my ankles, cursing my
slippery, numb fingers. After what seemed an eternity, the knot came free and I
stood up, my legs shaking and stumbled to the door, covering my mouth and nose
with one hand. Flames danced far below and I could see they were already
starting up the stairs.