One Stormy Night. Marilyn Pappano
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packed quickly, first into boxes, then slid the boxes into black trash bags to protect them from the rain. As she filled each bag, she carried it down the back stairs, then ran back to start again. She worked without thinking about what she was doing or about how furious Taylor would be. What he might do to stop her. How much she had once loved him.
Until she opened the closet door and found herself at eye level with a shelf of DVDs. Every one of them was labeled, in Taylor’s writing, with a date and a woman’s name.
Or a girl’s name.
She’d dropped several into her bag when she picked up the most recent, marked May of that year, along with the name Tiffani Dawn. Everyone in Belmar knew who Tiffani Dawn Rogers was. Pretty, blond, sixteen years old, grew up on the wrong side of town, wild and rebellious, in trouble on a regular basis since she was ten…and now dead. She’d gone missing after attending the rowdiest of the high school graduation parties, and her body had been found three days later.
Two days after the date on the DVD.
Dear God.
Hand shaking badly, Jennifer carried the DVD to the entertainment system that filled one entire wall. The press of one button turned on the television; another powered up the DVD player. It took two tries to press the Open button, three failures in opening the jewel case.
She didn’t want to see this. She’d accepted that Taylor wasn’t the man she’d thought he was. He was sometimes cruel, always arrogant and, though she’d denied it to herself for two and a half years, corrupt. He misused his position as police chief and abused his authority. He was petty, his charm a camouflage for a mean spirit and an ugly soul.
But, please, God, surely he’d had nothing to do with Tiffani Dawn Rogers’s murder.
Outside the wind howled, swaying the house fractionally. Still clutching the closed case, she went to the window to peer out, but darkness and churning rain blurred everything. She’d never been in a hurricane before. She was a California girl; earthquakes and mud slides were more her speed. She didn’t know how much time she had to escape.
But she needed to see the DVD. She needed to know whether her husband was just a common criminal…or a murderer.
She was turning away when a flash of light caught her attention. It was a car half a block away, moving slowly in her direction. Who, besides her, was so late in evacuating?
The answer came when the vehicle—an SUV, not a car—eased to a stop at the end of her driveway. It was black and white and bore the seal of the Belmar Police Department. Heaven help her, it was Taylor, probably come to retrieve his own valuables, accompanied by the assistant chief.
Panicked, she stared at the DVD. If he caught her with it, he would be enraged. Darting across the room, she shoved the tray on the DVD player shut, then turned off the power. Downstairs the front door slammed. She stretched onto her toes and dropped the case behind the decorative molding on top of the entertainment center. Voices sounded at the stairs, one muffled, the other growing louder as it came nearer.
Grabbing the bag with the other DVDs, she raced out of the room and toward the back stairs. She reached the turn in the staircase just as Taylor’s voice became audible and stopped, creeping from one step to the next.
“…take me a minute, then we can get the hell out of—”
His curse was loud and colorful. He must have discovered the door to his study open.
She was two steps from her goal—the kitchen, the gloom outside making the lights look brighter. They shone like spotlights on the two plastic bags there—would shine like a spotlight on her for the few seconds it would take her to dart out, then around the corner to the garage door.
One step…then Billy Starrett’s voice rang out. “Hey, Burton, why are all these lights on? And why’d you leave the garbage sitting in the middle of the kitchen fl—” He stopped in the doorway, eyes widening when he saw her huddled there on the last step. His hand groped automatically for his pistol but found his yellow slicker instead. While he fumbled to get it open, she balled the open end of the bag around her fingers and ran, not to the garage door but to the back door.
His yell for Taylor was snatched away by the wind as she ran, head ducked against the driving rain, bag cradled tight to her chest. She ran to the end of the deck, scrambled down the steps and tore off across the lawn. Waterlogged grass grabbed at her shoes, slowing her steps, but she pushed on, into their neighbor’s yard, sticking close to the solid shadows of the house as she headed toward the next yard.
She thought she heard Taylor scream her name, but that didn’t slow her. Heart pounding, legs pumping, she ran mindlessly, her only destination away. When a powerful flashlight beam sliced through the dark, she ran harder, veering away from the houses and their obstacles, cutting across open lawn. The street was beyond the houses to her right—faster for her, but faster for Taylor, as well—and Timmons Creek ran to her left, flowing over its banks, its normally sluggish pace churning now.
A crack sounded nearby—a breaking limb or a gunshot?—and she dashed toward the trees that lined portions of the creek. She gave the bag a great heave into the brush but didn’t slow even though her lungs were burning, her muscles quivering.
Just ahead her trail ran out. A six-foot-tall fence ran right down to the water’s edge. She could run along it, which would take her to the street, or she could go into the water. She was a strong swimmer. She would take her chance with the creek.
She was only a few feet from the water’s edge when something slammed into her from behind. Taylor. She would know his touch anywhere. She landed facedown, his weight suffocating her, half in the water, half out. Then the weight was gone. Kneeling astride her, he flipped her over, staring down at her with such rage that she hardly recognized him.
“You disloyal bitch!”
She struggled with him, bucking her hips, clawing at his hands, his arms, his face. They moved deeper into the water, the current tugging her one way, Taylor the other. She landed a few blows and took a few that made her vision go blurry.
And then suddenly the rushing water won, pulling her away. It lapped her face, eased her aches, and the upsurge blocked Taylor’s shouts as he splashed after her. Falling to his knees, he disappeared under the water’s surface, then struggled to his feet again and shouted a curse as she washed out of his reach.
For the first time since meeting him, she was free.
Chapter 1
By one o’clock on Tuesday morning, Belmar, Mississippi, was pretty much asleep. The stoplights on Main Street were turned to flashing yellow, the bars had had last call, and nothing remained open for business but the twenty-four-hour convenience stores and gas stations on the east and west ends of Main.
“This will never work,” Jessica Randall murmured as she cruised down a deserted street, making mental notes of places Jen had already told her about—the grocery store, the hair salon, the bank, the church she had attended with Taylor and, of course, the house she’d shared with him, as well as the police station. One place Jessica couldn’t avoid—and one she would try to stay hell and gone away from.
“Of course it will.” Jen’s face smiled at her from the screen of the cell phone mounted on the dash. “We’re identical, all the way down to the matching appendectomy scars, though I think mine is neater than yours. Besides, look at all the times we took each other’s places growing up—and we never got caught.”
“Me going out on a date for you is one thing,” Jessica retorted. “Trying to fool your husband—”
“Estranged husband.”
“—is totally different.”
“Taylor knows I have a sister, but he doesn’t know we’re twins. He also knows that we’ve kind of lost touch since the wedding. You won’t have any problem. Now, I’ve told you about the apartment, the house and the people. I have some things in a storage unit