Heroes Are My Weakness

  No eye of newt or toe of frog. No sautéed eyeballs or French-fried fingernails. Instead she found boxes of shredded wheat, Cheerios, and Wheaties. Nothing overly sweet. Nothing fun. But then again, no preserved human body parts.

  This might be her only chance to explore, so she continued her snooping. Some uninteresting canned goods. A six-pack of high-end carbonated mineral water, a large bag of premium coffee beans, and a bottle of good Scotch. A few pieces of fruit sat out on the counter, and as she gazed at them, her Wicked Queen voice cackled in her head. Have an apple, my pretty . . .

  She turned away and went to the refrigerator, where she found bloodred tomato juice, a block of hard cheese, oily black olives, and unopened containers of some disgusting pâté. She shuddered. Not surprising that he liked organ meats.

  The freezer was virtually empty, and the hydrator drawer held only carrots and radishes. She gazed around the kitchen. Where was the junk food? The bags of tortilla chips and tubs of Ben & Jerry’s? Where was the stockpile of potato chips, the stash of peanut butter cups? No salty, crunchy things. No sweet indulgences. In its own way, this kitchen was as creepy as the other one.

  She picked up the spray cleaner, then hesitated. Hadn’t she read somewhere that you were supposed to clean from the top down?

  Nobody likes a snoop, Crumpet said in her superior voice.

  Like you don’t have any faults, Annie retorted.

  Vanity isn’t a fault, Crumpet retorted. It’s a calling.

  Yes, Annie wanted to snoop, and she was going to do it now. While Theo was safely out of the house, she could see exactly what he kept in his lair.

  Her sore calf muscles protested as she climbed the steps to the second floor. If she craned her neck, she could see the closed door that led to the third-floor attic, where he was supposed to be writing his next, sadistic novel. Or maybe chopping up dead bodies.

  The bedroom door was open. She peered inside. With the exception of jeans and a sweatshirt tossed across the bottom of the badly made bed, it looked as though an old lady still lived here. Off-white walls, drapes printed with cabbage roses, a raspberry slipper chair with a tufted round ottoman, and a double bed covered in a beige spread. He certainly hadn’t done anything to make himself feel at home.

  She went back out into the tiny hallway and hesitated for only a moment before making her way up the remaining six steps to the forbidden third floor. She pushed open the door.

  The pentagonal room had an exposed wooden ceiling and five bare, narrow windows with pointed arches. The human touches that were missing everywhere else were visible here. An L-shaped desk jutted out from one wall, its top cluttered with papers, empty CD cases, a couple of notebooks, a desktop computer, and headphones. Across the room, black metal industrial shelving held various electronics including a sound system and a small flat-screen television. Stacks of books sat on the floor beneath some of the windows, and a laptop computer lay next to a slouchy easy chair.

  The door squeaked open.

  She gave a hiss of alarm and spun around.

  Theo came inside, a black knit scarf in his hands.

  He tried to kill you once, Leo sneered. He can do it again.

  She swallowed. Pulled her eyes away from the small white scar at the corner of his eyebrow, the scar she’d given him.

  He came toward her, no longer simply holding the black scarf, but passing it through his hands like a garrote . . . or a gag . . . or maybe a chloroform-soaked rag. How long would he have to hold it over her face before she was unconscious?

  “This floor is off-limits,” he said. “But then you know that. Yet here you are.”

  He looped the scarf around his neck, holding the ends in his fists. Her tongue was frozen. Once again, she had to call on Scamp for courage. “You’re the one who’s not supposed to be here.” She hoped he didn’t hear the squeak in her normally reliable voice. “How am I supposed to snoop if you don’t leave when you say you’re going to?”

  “You’re kidding, right?” He pulled on the ends of the scarf.

  “It’s— It’s really your fault.” She needed to come up with something quickly. “I wouldn’t have come in here if you’d given me your password when I asked.”

  “Fortunately, I’m not following you.”

  “A lot of people tape it to their computers.” She gripped her hands behind her back.

  “I don’t.”

  Hold your ground, Scamp ordered. Make him understand he’s dealing with a woman now, not a grossly insecure fifteen-year-old.

  She’d aced her improv classes, and she gave it her best. “Don’t you think that’s a little moronic?”

  “Moronic?”

  “Bad word choice,” she said hastily. “But . . . Say you forget the password. Do you really want to have to call your satellite company?” She coughed and sucked in some air. “You know what that experience is like. You’ll be on the phone for hours listening to a recording telling you how important your call is. Or that their menu has changed, and you’re supposed to listen carefully. I mean, isn’t changing the menu their problem, not yours? After a few minutes of that, I usually feel like killing myself. Do you really want to go through that kind of hell when a simple Post-it note solves the whole problem?”

  “Or a simple e-mail,” he said with the sarcasm her ramble deserved. “Dirigo.”

  “What?”

  Dropping his hands from the scarf, he wandered to the nearest window, where a telescope was pointed toward the ocean. “You convinced me. The password is Dirigo.”

  “What kind of password is that?”

  “The state motto of Maine. It means ‘I direct.’ It also means you’ve lost your excuse to snoop.”

  Nothing much she could say to that. She edged backward toward the door.

  He lifted the telescope from its tripod and carried it to another window. “Do you really think I don’t know you’re doing Jaycie’s work for her?”

  She should have realized he’d figure that out. “What do you care, as long as the work gets done?”

  “Because I don’t want you around.”

  “Got it. You’d rather fire Jaycie.”

  “I don’t need anybody here.”

  “Sure you do. Who’s going to answer the door while you’re asleep in your casket?”

  He ignored her, peering through the eyepiece of the telescope instead and adjusting it. She felt a prickling at the back of her neck. The window he’d moved to was the one that looked down on the cottage.

  That’s what you get for challenging a scoundrel, Leo sneered.

  “I have a new telescope,” he said. “When the light’s just right, it’s amazing how much I can see.” He shifted the telescope ever so slightly. “I hope that furniture you moved wasn’t too heavy for you.”

  The chill traveled all the way to her toes.

  “Don’t forget to change the sheets in my bedroom,” he said without turning. “There’s nothing better than the feel of clean sheets against bare skin.”

  She wouldn’t let him see how much he still frightened her. She made herself turn away slowly and head for the stairs. She had every reason to tell Jaycie she couldn’t do this anymore. Every reason except an absolute certainty that she couldn’t live with herself if she let her fear of Theo Harp force her into abandoning the girl who’d once saved her life.

  She worked as quickly as she could. She dusted the living room furniture, vacuumed the rug, scoured the kitchen, and then, her stomach pitching with foreboding, she moved to his bedroom. She found clean linens, but stripping the old sheets from his bed was too personal, too intimate. She set her jaw and did it anyway.

  As she reached for a dust rag, she heard the attic door close above her followed by the click of a lock and the sound of footsteps coming down the stairs. She told herself not to turn around, but she did anyway.

  He stood in the doorway, one shoulder propped against the doorjamb. His gaze moved from her untidy hair to her breasts—barely visible beneath her heavy swe
ater—then glided over her hips, lingered, moved on. There was something calculating about his inspection. Something invasive and disturbing. Finally, he turned away.

  And that’s when it happened.

  An unearthly sound—half moan, half growl, and totally chilling—seeped into the room.

  He stopped in his tracks. She twisted her head to look up toward the attic. “What’s that?”

  His brow knit. He opened his mouth, as if he wanted to offer an explanation, but no words came out. Moments later he was gone.

  The door slammed below. She set her jaw.

  Bastard. Serves you right.

  THEO’S BREATH FOGGED THE AIR as he unlatched the door to the stable, the place where he’d always go when he needed to think. He’d thought he’d anticipated everything, but he hadn’t anticipated that she’d be back, and he wouldn’t tolerate it.

  The interior smelled of hay, manure, dust, and cold. In past years his father had kept as many as four horses here, animals boarded at the island stable when the family wasn’t on Peregrine. Now Theo’s black gelding was the only horse.

  Dancer gave a soft whinny and poked his head over the stall. Theo had never imagined he’d have to see her again, yet here she was. In his house. In his life. Bringing the past with her. He rubbed Dancer’s muzzle. “It’s just you and me, boy,” he said. “You and me . . . and whatever new devils have shown up to haunt us.”

  The horse tossed its head. Theo opened the stall door. He couldn’t let this go on. He had to get rid of her.

  Chapter Five

  BEING ALONE IN THE COTTAGE at night had spooked Annie from the beginning, but that night was the worst yet. The windows had no curtains, and Theo could be watching her at any time through his telescope. She left the lights off, stumbled around in the dark, and pulled the covers over her head when she went to bed. But the dark only stirred her memories of the way everything had changed.

  It had happened not long after the dumbwaiter incident. Regan was either at a riding lesson or locked in her room writing poetry. Annie had been perched on the rocks at the beach, daydreaming about being a beautiful, talented actress starring in a major motion picture when Theo had come along. He’d settled next to her, his long legs emerging from a pair of khaki shorts a little too big for him. A hermit crab had scampered through a tidal pool at their feet. He’d gazed out toward the break where the waves began to curl. “I’m sorry about some of the stuff that’s happened, Annie. Things have been weird.”

  Sap that she was, she’d instantly forgiven him.

  From then on, whenever Regan was occupied, Theo and Annie had hung out. He showed her some of his favorite spots on the island. He began confiding in her, at first hesitantly but gradually being more forthcoming. He told her how much he hated his boarding school and how he was writing short stories that he wouldn’t show anyone. They talked about their favorite books. She convinced herself she was the only girl he’d ever confided in. She showed him some of the drawings she now did in secret so Mariah couldn’t critique them. Finally, he’d kissed her. Her. Annie Hewitt, a gangly scarecrow of a fifteen-year-old with a too long face, too big eyes, and too curly hair.

  After that, every moment that Regan was away found them together, usually inside the cave at low tide making out in the wet sand. He touched her breast through her swimsuit, and she thought she’d die of happiness. When he’d pushed the top down, she’d been embarrassed because her breasts weren’t bigger, and she’d tried to cover them with her hands. He moved her hands away and stroked each nipple with his fingers.

  She was in ecstasy.

  Soon they were touching each other everywhere. He unzipped her shorts and pushed his hand in her underpants. No boy had ever touched her there. His finger went inside her. She was bursting with hormones. Instantly orgasmic.

  She touched him, too, and the first time she felt the wetness on her hand, she thought she’d hurt him. She was in love.

  But then things changed. For no reason, he began to avoid her. He started putting her down in front of his sister and Jaycie. “Annie, don’t be such a dork. You act like a kid.”

  Annie tried to talk to him alone, find out why he was being like this, but he avoided her. She found half a dozen of her precious paperback gothic novels on the bottom of the swimming pool.

  One sunny July afternoon, they’d been crossing the marsh footbridge, with Annie slightly ahead of the twins and Jaycie trailing. Annie had been trying to impress Theo with how sophisticated she was by talking about her life in Manhattan. “I’ve been using the subway since I was ten, and—”

  “Stop bragging,” Theo had said. And then his hand had slammed into her back.

  She’d flown off the footbridge and hit the murky water facedown, her hands and forearms sinking into the muck, ooze sucking at her legs. As she tried to pull herself out, rotting strands of eel-like cordgrass and clots of blue-green algae clung to her hair, her clothes. She spat out the mud, tried to rub her eyes but couldn’t, and started to cry.

  Regan and Jaycie were as horrified as Annie, and in the end, it had taken both of them to pull her from the marsh. Annie had badly skinned one knee and lost the leather sandals she’d bought with her own money. Tears slid through the muck on her cheeks as she stood on the bridge like a creature from a horror movie. “Why did you do that?”

  Theo had regarded her stonily. “I don’t like braggers.”

  Regan’s eyes had filled with tears. “Don’t tell, Annie! Please don’t tell. Theo will get in so much trouble. He won’t ever do anything like that again. Promise her, Theo.”

  Theo had stalked away, not promising anything.

  Annie hadn’t told. Not then. Not until much later.

  THE NEXT MORNING, SHE WANDERED through the cottage trying to wake herself up after a fitful night’s sleep before she made the dreaded trek to Harp House. She ended up in the studio, safely out of range of Theo’s telescope. Mariah had expanded the back of the cottage to make this a spacious, well-lit workspace. The paint spatters on the bare wooden floor testified to the parade of artists who’d worked here over the years. A bright red bedspread peeked out from beneath half a dozen cardboard boxes stacked on the bed shoved into the corner. Next to the bed was a pair of cane-seated wooden chairs painted yellow.

  The room’s light blue walls, red bedspread, and yellow chairs were supposed to evoke van Gogh’s painting Bedroom in Arles, while the life-size trompe l’oeil mural on the longest wall depicted the front end of a taxi crashing through a storefront window. She hoped to God that mural wasn’t the legacy because she couldn’t imagine how she’d get away with selling an entire wall.

  She imagined her mother in this room, feeding the artists’ egos in ways she never did her own daughter’s. Mariah believed artists needed nurturing, but she’d refused to encourage her daughter to draw or act, even though Annie had loved doing both.

  “The art world is a vipers’ pit. Even if you’re enormously talented—which you aren’t—it eats people alive. I don’t want that for you.”

  Mariah would have done so much better with one of those naturally feisty little girls who didn’t care about others’ opinions. Instead she’d given birth to a shy child who lived on daydreams. Yet, in the end, Annie had been the strong one, supporting a mother who could no longer care for herself.

  She set her coffee mug aside as she heard the unfamiliar sound of a vehicle approaching. She went to the living room and gazed out the window in time to see a battered white pickup stop at the end of the walk. The door opened and a woman who looked to be in her early sixties climbed down. Her bulky figure was wrapped in a gray down coat, and a serviceable pair of black boots sank into the snow. She wore no hat over her big blond bouffant but had looped a diamond-patterned black and green knit scarf around her neck. She leaned into the truck and withdrew a pink gift bag with raspberry tissue paper frothing from the top.

  Annie was so happy to see a face not connected with Harp House that she nearly tripped over the painted canv
as rug in her hurry to get to the door. As she opened it, a dusting of snow blew off the roof.

  “I’m Barbara Rose,” the woman said with a friendly wave. “You’ve been here nearly a week. I thought it was time somebody checked in to see how you’re doing.” Her bright red lipstick stood out against her winter-pale complexion, and as she came up the steps, Annie saw a few flecks of mascara lodging in the faint puffiness under her eyes.

  Annie welcomed her inside and took her coat. “Thanks for sending your husband out to help me that first day. Would you like some coffee?”

  “Love it.” Beneath the coat, stretchy black pants and a royal blue sweater clung to her ample body. She took off her boots, then followed Annie into the kitchen, bringing along the gift bag and the strong floral scent of her perfume. “It’s lonely for any woman by herself on this island, but out here in the middle of nowhere . . .” The quick hunch of her shoulders turned into a shudder. “Too many things can go wrong when you’re alone.”

  Not exactly the words Annie wanted to hear from a seasoned islander.

  As Annie made a fresh pot of coffee, Barbara gazed around the kitchen, taking in the collection of kitschy salt and pepper shakers on the windowsill, the series of black-and-white lithographs on the wall. She seemed almost wistful. “All kinds of famous people used to come here during the summer, but I don’t remember seeing much of you.”

  Annie switched on the coffeemaker. “I’m more a city person.”

  “Peregrine sure isn’t a good place for a city person in the dead of winter.” Barbara liked to talk, and as the coffeemaker began to gurgle, she spoke of the exceptionally cold weather and how hard it was for the island women during the winter when their men were out in rough seas. Annie had forgotten about the complicated laws regarding when and where commercial lobstermen could set their traps, and Barbara was more than happy to fill her in.

  “We only fish here from early October to the first of June. Then we concentrate on the tourists. Most of the other islands fish from May to December.”