Shifting Shadows (20 page)

As she grasped the cold glass knob of the door that led into the room where she knew he slept, where she
’d seen him at the window, she could have sworn the knob suddenly turned hot, burning her hand. She jerked back, then reached out and touched it again. It was cold. Her own fear had deceived her.

She opened the door slowly.

The first thing she saw was the unmade bed. Dylan had slept there. The body she’d caressed last night which had seemed to belong to her had lain there. She walked over, touched the rumpled sheets, half expecting to find them warm.

But they were col
d. The only remnants of him were the faint scents of green fields and midnight that she’d come to associate with Dylan.

Across the room two ope
n suitcases sat on the floor, their contents jumbled and spilling out, further evidence that he didn’t really live here. As she backed away from the bed, her gaze fell on the nightstand. Beside the lamp rested a camera with a big lens, probably telescopic.

Had he been taking pictures of her to go along with his notes? Damn him! She snatched
up the camera, looking for the memory card, planning to take it with her.

But if she did that, he
’d know she’d been there. Besides, what pictures could he possibly have of her that would harm her...or help anyone else?

She ground her teeth in frustration. When she didn
’t know what he wanted from her, how could she know what kind of pictures he might take?

She set the camera down and opened the drawer of the night stand. A big, shiny, stainles
s steel gun sent icicles through her heart.

Moving as if
in a trance, she picked it up. It was heavy, much heavier than she would have thought. But Dylan had muscular arms. He could easily wield something this weighty. His big hands would have no problem holding it steady while he took aim at something...or someone.

She didn
’t know much about guns, but thought this must be an automatic. The bullets were all hidden inside, a lot of bullets, more than the revolvers in western movies where the bad guy had only six shots. Dylan might need more than six shots.

She didn
’t know how to determine if the gun was loaded or not...but she sensed that it was.

She dropped it
back into the drawer, jumped when it landed with a thud.

What kind of man kept a loaded gun in his nightstand?

He could very well be a hired killer. But why, in heaven’s name, would anyone want her dead?

Almost afrai
d to breathe, she backed out of the room.

She wanted to run from the house,
get away, leave all this chaos, this terror, this deception. But she hesitated at the top of the stairs.

That would be
impossible. Elizabeth had tried to run away and hadn’t made it. Instead she had to face the problem, attack it.
Hope, bravery and wisdom.
Those were the tools Lottie had said she had to work with.

She decided to check the other bedrooms.

The first two were empty.

In the big
corner room she found his painting equipment.

A nervous burst of relieved laughter escaped her lips. He had tol
d her the truth about one thing. He was a painter.

An easel stood facing one of the large windows. She walked around it. The unfinished oil painting of a storm was actually quite good. She could almost feel the power of the wind bending the trees and pushing the clouds, the electric si
zzle of the lightning, the darkness overtaking the world.

The house o
n which the storm converged was hers.

The painting reminded her eerily of the tarot card showing a tower in a storm. What had
Tillie told her that card meant?

Deception, ruin.

She shivered.
Certainly Dylan had deceived her.

She turned away from the painting, looking around the room. Leaning against the walls were other canvases in various stages of completion. One was a compelling picture of a tornado sweeping across the Kansas plains. The twister seemed to be moving, and she could almost hear
the roar. Whatever ugly things Dylan might do with his camera and gun, he was a talented painter.

Three of the pictures were of her. She swallowed hard, unsure how to handle her feelings about that. One, a nude,
was very sketchy, as though he drew from imagination. Had he been fantasizing about her? He’d drawn her expression as sensuous and aroused, but with a trace of wistfulness. Not the fantasy she imagined a sexual pervert would have.

Another showed her standing at her bedroom window, curtain in hand, looking outward
...toward his window? The face was too small to show much detail, but the figure conveyed the impression of being lost, searching for something. Or maybe Analise was reading too much into it since she knew how she’d felt looking out that window.

She moved across the room to inspect the third picture of her more closely. This one
was a portrait. She raised an involuntary hand to her face as if to check whether her skin was as smooth and luminous as he’d painted it.

No matter what he
’d done or was going to do, she could no longer doubt that he cared about her. Maybe he didn’t even know it, but he loved her. It came through in every brush stroke. He’d meticulously, carefully, recorded every detail as seen through the idealistic mist of a lover’s eyes.

Her hair wasn
’t really that silky or shiny. He’d made her eyes seem to glow with a zest for life. Her lips were full and sensuous, ready to be kissed.

Entranced with the way he saw her, with the evidence of how he felt about her
, with his incredible artistic ability, she picked up the canvas and carried it over to the window to examine it in a better light. She wanted to memorize it, drink in the sensation of being loved. Use it to ward off the horrible things that were happening all around her, reassure herself that Dylan cared for her and would never harm her.

The sound of an automobile door slamming startled her out of her trance. Had Dylan returned? What would he do if he found her in his house?

The image of the gun loomed in her mind, obscuring the portrait.

Heart hammering so loudly she fancied she could hear as well as feel
it, she looked down into the street. A woman was getting out of a car parked down the street. No danger to her.

But it might have been
Dylan, could be him at any minute. She had to get out of his house.

She went to replace the picture where she
’d found it and froze. Another canvas, now revealed, must have been hidden behind her portrait.

She stared in horror at a picture of Elizabeth drowning.

Elizabeth was sinking into the wetness of death, one hand reaching vainly upward, ebony hair floating on midnight waters, her face a study in terror and grief.

The world seemed to close in about Analise, to crush the breath from her body the way the dark water was stealing the life from Elizabeth. She felt again the sense of betrayal, of love lost, of hands on her shoulders, pushing her downward, over the rail of the boat into the dark, terrifying depths of the river. The river that should have taken her to a new life, a life of joy with the one she loved, was stealing her life from her, taking away forever her chance at happiness.

Analise
gasped, tearing her eyes away from the painting before the waters overwhelmed her, drowned her even as she stood in a second floor bedroom.

It wasn
’t just the realism in Dylan’s painting. She could remember how it had felt to drown, how she’d felt at the instant he’d captured on canvas...cold, wet, suffocating and betrayed. Pushed to her death from the boat she’d thought would be her transport to happiness.

The painting was done from the perspective of someone above, someone on the boat. She lifted her gaze toward the ceiling, as if she could see the man watching her, the one who
’d done this painting.

Shawn had bribed the riverboat captain to stop and pick them up in the middle of the night. They
’d boarded the vessel and stood together at the rail, watching Holbert disappear behind them.

Then she
’d felt hands on her shoulders, and the next instant she’d plunged downward into the chilling depths of inky water. Startled, unbelieving, she’d reached upward, toward Shawn on the deck, begging him to save her, just as she was reaching in the picture.

Oh, God! Shawn had killed her. And somehow Dylan knew that. Dylan had painted her death. His memories might not be as complete as hers, he might
deny them, but they were there.

Elizabeth had loved Shawn, had run away with him, and he
’d shoved her overboard. Because he’d changed his mind? Because he feared Blake? She couldn’t begin to imagine why he’d done it, but obviously he had.

She loved Dylan, and for some reason he was trying to kill her. He had pushed her down the stairs. He had risen from their bed of love and turned on the gas.

Her head reeled with the pain of that knowledge. He’d held her, touched her, spoken words of love, just as Shawn had so many years before. If only she could remember more about this present life, maybe she’d know why Dylan would want to get rid of her. Maybe it wasn’t even something she’d done in this lifetime. Maybe Shawn’s feelings possessed Dylan as Elizabeth possessed her, and he felt compelled to repeat what he’d done before.

She turned her head to the side, as if she could avoid l
ooking at the image in her mind, in her heart.

Was there any reason to fear him now? She was dead
inside already. Dylan and Shawn had awakened emotions in her she hadn’t even known she possessed then destroyed them as surely as Shawn had destroyed her body and Dylan was trying to destroy it again.

Whatever his reason
—because he was obsessed, because he was hired by someone, because he was overwhelmed with Shawn’s feelings and needs—he could make love to her then kill her.

With hands that trembled from
emotional pain as well as the remembered cold of the water and the fear of death, she tried to put back the portrait of herself exactly where she’d found it. She needed to reposition it precisely so he wouldn’t know she’d been there. But more than that, she needed the terror on Elizabeth’s face, the pain of love betrayed, to be hidden again from her and from Elizabeth’s murderer.

She stumbled from the room on rubbery legs that threatened to give way. As in a nightmare, she moved in slow motion down the stairs, each step taking an eternity. She feared she might have to crawl once she reached the fir
st floor and could no longer hold on to the rail, but somehow she managed to move through the empty rooms, to get outside into the open air, onto the wet grass.

But the yard between the houses stretched endlessly
before her. She knew she’d sink to the muddy ground and never make it. A part of her wanted to give up, lie down on the grass and wait for her body to join her heart.

But she kept going. Halfway across, once again on her own domain, she cast a frightened glance back to be certain no one followed.

Neither Dylan nor the devil himself dogged her footsteps...but she had left his kitchen door gaping open. She hesitated only briefly then turned again for the haven of her own home. She couldn’t go back, didn’t have the strength, emotional or physical.

She reached her back steps and suddenly realized she
’d left her purse and keys inside Dylan’s house, on the table where she’d stopped to read his notebook.

She had no choice. She had to return. The bag would leave no doubt she
’d been inside. But, more importantly, without her keys, she couldn’t get into the safety of her home. A brief, hysterical laugh escaped her lips. She didn’t even have a credit card to break into her own place.

She started across the yard again and discovered that the initial shock of seeing Elizabeth
—herself—in her last moments of life, of knowing her lover had betrayed her in two lifetimes, had lost some of its numbing grip. Her legs carried her back to Dylan’s more easily than when she’d left. Still, entering the house filled with his essence was agony.

The rooms, devoid of furniture, of humanity, crowded in on her as if they
’d trap her, swallow her up as surely as the river had. She saw her purse lying incriminatingly on the little table next to the notebook. She approached, snatched it up and started to flee.

But something
—someone, she corrected, even before she focused on the object—stopped her in midstride, drawing her attention to the window. She recognized that feeling, that attraction. Dylan’s car was coming down the street.

She turned, reaching the open kitchen door her only thought. As she ran, the empty house echoed her footsteps,
made it sound as if someone was following close on her heels. She ran faster, terror overwhelming her, though she knew on a rational level that Dylan couldn’t be inside yet.

She made it to the back step
then forced herself to stop and close the door behind her. As she did so, as her mind fought with the haze of panic, she realized she couldn’t move yet.

I
f he was getting out of the car, coming up the walk, he’d see her crossing the side yard. She had to wait, listen for the sound of the front door opening before she dared flee to the sanctuary of her home.

Leaning against the screen, frozen in place, she strained to hear over the roar of her own blood as her heart sent it racing. She was sure she
’d never be able to hear Dylan. He was probably already inside, moving toward her. Any second he’d descend on her, the fires of hell blazing in his midnight eyes.

But she did hear him with
a crystal clarity, heard every sound as he mounted the steps, crossed the porch and turned his key in the lock. When the front door creaked open she ran as if suddenly released from captivity...ran home, fumbled with her keys, dropped them, finally connected with the lock and stumbled inside.

She wanted to sink through the floor into oblivion, away from the
painful knowledge of Dylan’s deceit. But she didn’t have time for that self-indulgence.

If she
’d sensed him coming down the street, surely he’d sensed her in his house. The strange link between them worked both ways.

She closed the kitchen door
but knew the puny lock wouldn’t keep him out. Dragging over a kitchen chair, she wedged it between the knob and the floor. Taking another chair, she repeated the procedure in the front hall.

The phone rang shrilly, demanding her attention, and she knew it was him. Was he calling to accuse her of being in his house, to threaten her? Not wanting to hear anything he had to say and fearful that the sound of his voice might be enough to rob her totally of her senses, she ignored it
.

As she checked the windows, made sure they were locked, drew the curtains, the ringing went on and on, screaming at her, demanding her attention. It frayed her nerves even more than they already
were, reminding her of the love she’d had so briefly—beautiful, consuming, deceitful love.

She raced up the stairs and checked all the windows on the second level. The broken window! She ran to th
e basement, returning with a piece of plywood she frantically nailed over the jagged hole, as though he could have charged straight through from his bedroom to hers.

Finally she was barricaded in her house, and still she feared he
’d get to her. Insane, irrational, yes, but the feeling of omnipotence wouldn’t leave her.

She had to relax. She
’d let herself get totally out of control.

She went back downstairs to the kitchen and forced
herself to make a cup of hot tea, to calm down and try to figure out what she needed to do next. Finding the papers she’d hidden seemed to be a priority now. That was the only clue she had at the moment.

Just as she sat down at the table and raised the steaming beverage to her lips, a loud knocking sounded from the front door. She jumped, splashing hot liquid onto her hand.

It could be anyone, she told herself. But she knew it was Dylan.

Rising, moving as if in a trance, she went through to the foyer. The pounding came again, halting her as though she
’d run into a wall.

“
Analise?” he shouted.

She gulped back an answer.
Even now, knowing what she knew, having seen the gun, the notebook, the painting, even now his voice called to her on a level she found difficult to resist.

“
Analise, are you all right?” The frame shook from his pounding. “I know you’re in there. If you don’t answer me, I’m going to break down this door.” 

“
Go away,” she whispered, then said it again, louder. “Go away!”

For a long moment there was silence. Finally his voice came again, softer, relieved
...because he knew she was still within his reach? “Thank God you’re all right. It’s me, Dylan. Let me in. We have to talk about this.”

She moved closer, felt his resonance through the wood and backed away, needing the distance for the sake of control.
“I can hear you just fine. Go ahead. I’m listening.”

“
This isn’t something I want to stand on your front porch and shout for all the neighbors to hear.”

She
’d just bet it wasn’t. “I’m...not dressed.” As though that made a difference after last night and this morning. “I was resting. I don’t feel well.” The last part, at least, was the truth.

“
Well, get dressed.” His tone was becoming irritated. “I’ll wait. This is important.”

Why?
she screamed inside her head. What had she done that he would want her dead?

“
Go back home, and I’ll come over in a little while,” she offered. See how he liked that option.

He paused for scarcely a heartbeat.
“All right,” he said. “Come on over.” A longer pause. “You can have the chair in the living room. I’ll take the floor.”

She heard his footsteps leaving her porch.

He knew. Somehow he knew she’d been snooping, knew she’d discovered the truth and was letting her know he knew. Did her knowledge make her immediate death necessary?

Surely he couldn
’t really expect her to return, to close herself in with him alone...just him and her along with that shiny gun and the picture of Elizabeth. She moved to the window and watched him walk away, stride across the yard. He didn’t bother with his front steps, merely lunged onto the porch then went into the house without a backward glance.

And why wouldn
’t he think she’d be there if he asked?

Elizabeth had followed Shawn unquestioningly. This man had beguiled her totally in one lifetime, almost in another.

Almost, but not quite.

She wouldn
’t repeat Elizabeth’s mistake. She wouldn’t run from the arms of her former husband to the treacherous arms of a lover who promised the world and delivered death.

Again Lottie
’s words about
getting things right
filled her mind. She didn’t want to go home with Phillip tonight, didn’t think she could ever be a real wife to him again. But she didn’t want to die either. She loved Dylan, but she had no future with him. At least Phillip would take her away from that picture of Elizabeth, from the cold words in Dylan’s notebook, from the strong hands that could caress her so tenderly yet send her tumbling downstairs to her death.

Phillip was coming to pick her up at seven o
’clock, but that wasn’t soon enough. She needed him there before Dylan did something crazy—before she did something crazy. Even now she found herself searching for an explanation of Dylan’s behavior, of the picture—anything that would allow her to run to his arms.