MORE PRAISE FOR KAY HOOPER’S
“Kay Hooper’s dialogue rings true; her characters are more three-dimensional than those usually found in this genre. You may think you’ve guessed the outcome, unraveled all the lies. Then again, you could be as mistaken as I was.”
—The Atlanta Journal and Constitution
“I lapped it right up. There aren’t enough good books in this genre, so this stands out!”
—Booknews from The Poisoned Pen
“The dark secret revealed in the novel’s climax is stunning… Don’t read ahead to the novel’s end; you’ll spoil a very satisfying surprise.”
—Milwaukee Journal/Sentinel
“A tightly scripted thriller… with all the gothic elements of a Bronte novel and southern atmosphere to spare, Hooper’s latest will please both fans of romance and suspense.”
—Southern Book Trade
“Kay Hooper has given you a darn good ride, and there are far too few of those these days.”
—Dayton Daily News
“Keeps you reading.” Three out of four hearts rating
—The Philadelphia Inquirer
HAUNTING RACHEL
FINDING LAURA
AFTER CAROLINE
AMANDA
THE WIZARD OF SEATTLE
ON WINGS OF MAGIC
STEALING SHADOWS
HIDING IN THE SHADOWS
OUT OF THE SHADOWS
ONCE A THIEF
Don’t miss Kay Hooper’s latest novels of suspense
TOUCHING EVIL
WHISPER OF EVIL
And coming soon in hardcover
SENSE OF EVIL
And look for
ALWAYS A THIEF
July, 1975
THUNDER ROLLED AND BOOMED, ECHOING the way it did when a storm came over the mountains on a hot night, and the wind-driven rain lashed the trees and furiously pelted the windowpanes of the big house. The nine-year-old girl shivered, her cotton nightgown soaked and clinging to her, and her slight body was stiff as she stood in the center of the dark bedroom.
“Mama—”
“Shhhh! Don’t, baby, don’t make any noise. Just stand there, very still, and wait for me.”
They called her baby often, her mother, her father, because she’d been so difficult to conceive and was so cherished once they had her. So beloved. That was why they had named her Amanda, her father had explained, lifting her up to ride upon his broad shoulders, because she was so perfect and so worthy of their love.
She didn’t feel perfect now. She felt cold and emptied out and dreadfully afraid. And the sound of her mother’s voice, so thin and desperate, frightened Amanda even more. The bottom had fallen out of her world so suddenly that she was still numbly bewildered and broken, and her big gray eyes followed her mother with the piteous dread of one who had lost everything except a last, fragile, unspeakably precious tie to what had been.
Whispering between rumbles of thunder, she asked, “Mama, where will we go?”
“Away, far away, baby.” The only illumination in the bedroom was provided by angry nature as lightning split the stormy sky outside, and Christine Daulton used the flashes to guide her in stuffing clothes into an old canvas duffel bag. She dared not turn on any lights, and the need to hurry was so fierce it nearly strangled her.
She hadn’t room for them, but pushed her journals into the bag as well because she had to have something of this place to take with her, and something of her life with Brian. Oh, dear God, Brian … She raked a handful of jewelry from the box on the dresser, tasting blood because she was biting her bottom lip to keep herself from screaming. There was no time, no time, she had to get Amanda away from here.
“Wait here,” she told her daughter.
“No! Mama, please—”
“Shhhh! All right, Amanda, come with me—but you have to be quiet.” Moments later, down the hall in her daughter’s room, Christine fumbled for more clothing and thrust it into the bulging bag. She helped the silent, trembling girl into dry clothing, faded jeans and a tee shirt. “Shoes?”
Amanda found a pair of dirty sneakers and shoved her feet into them. Her mother grasped her hand and led her from the room, both of them consciously tiptoeing. Then, at the head of the stairs, Amanda suddenly let out a moan of anguish and tried to pull her hand free. “Oh, I can’t—”
“Shhhh,” Christine warned urgently. “Amanda—”
Even whispering, Amanda’s voice held a desperate intensity. “Mama, please, Mama, I have to get something—I can’t leave it here, please, Mama—it’ll only take a second—”
She had no idea what could be so precious to her daughter, but Christine wasn’t about to drag her down the stairs in this state of wild agitation. The child was already in shock, a breath away from absolute hysteria. “All right, but hurry. And be quiet.”
As swift and silent as a shadow, Amanda darted back down the hallway and vanished into her bedroom. She reappeared less than a minute later, shoving something into the front pocket of her jeans. Christine didn’t pause to find out what was so important that Amanda couldn’t bear to leave it behind; she simply grabbed her daughter’s free hand and continued down the stairs.
The grandfather clock on the landing whirred and bonged a moment before they reached it, announcing in sonorous tones that it was two A.M. The sound was too familiar to startle either of them, and they hurried on without pause. The front door was still open, as they’d left it, and Christine didn’t bother to pull it shut behind them as they went through to the wide porch.
The wind had blown rain halfway over the porch to the door, and Amanda dimly heard her shoes squeak on the wet stone. Then she ducked her head against the rain and stuck close to her mother as they raced for the car parked several yards away. By the time she was sitting in the front seat watching her mother fumble with the keys, Amanda was soaked again, and shivering despite a temperature in the seventies.
The car’s engine coughed to life, and its headlights stabbed through the darkness and sheeting rain to illuminate the gravelled driveway. Amanda turned her head to the side as the car jolted toward the paved road, and she caught her breath when she saw a light bobbing far away between the house and the stables, as if someone was running with a flashlight. Running toward the car that, even then, turned onto the paved road and picked up speed as it left the house behind.
Quickly, Amanda turned her gaze forward again, rubbing her cold hands together, swallowing hard as sickness rose in her aching throat. “Mama? We can’t come back, can we? We can’t ever come back?”
The tears running down her ashen cheeks almost but not quite blinding her, Christine Daulton replied, “No, Amanda. We can’t ever come back.”
Late May, 1995
“STOP THE CAR.”
It was more a plea than an order, and as he pulled to the side of the private blacktop road and put the car in park, Walker McLellan was already probing the three small words for a deeper meaning.
“Lost your nerve?” he asked in the practiced neutral tone of a lawyer.
She didn’t answer. As soon as the car was stationary, she opened her door and got out. She closed the door and walked along the side of the road a few yards until she could cross the ditch and enter the pasture through the gap of a missing board.
Walker watched her move about thirty yards into the lush green pasture until she reached a rise. He knew that from where she stood the house was visible. He wondered how she had known that.
After several minutes, he turned off the car’s engine and got out. He didn’t forget to take the keys with him, even though the car was safely on Daulton land and most unlikely to be stolen or even disturbed in any way. Walker had spent some years in Atlanta, which had effectively cured him of any tendency to rely on the kindness of strangers
not to steal his belongings.
Of course, his legal training had left him with little trust in his fellow man—or woman.
“People will lie to you,” his favorite professor had stated unequivocally. “Clients, cops, other lawyers, even the man who puts gas in your car. People who sincerely believe they have nothing to hide will still lie to you. Get used to it. Expect it. Assume you are being lied to until you have proof of the truth. Then double-check the proof.”
Words to live by.
Walker swung himself easily over the three-rail fence rather than go through as she had, and joined her at the top of the rise. “How did you know the house was visible from here?” he asked casually.
She glanced aside briefly to meet his gaze, her own smoke-gray eyes unreadable. Obviously not deceived by the dispassionate tone he had used, she said, “You have no doubt at all that I’m a liar, do you?”
“On the contrary. If I didn’t doubt that, you wouldn’t be here.”
She looked across acres of lush green pasture, her gaze fixed on the tremendous house still nearly a mile away. “But you don’t believe I’m Amanda Daulton,” she said.
He replied carefully. “I’ve been unable to prove you aren’t. The practice of fingerprinting children was virtually unheard of twenty years ago, so that proof is denied us. You have the right blood type—but that means only that you could be Amanda Daulton, not that you are. You’ve answered most of my questions correctly. You seem to have a thorough, if not complete, knowledge of the history of the Daulton family as well as some familiarity with living family members.”
Still looking toward the distant house, she smiled slightly. “But I couldn’t answer all your questions, and that makes you very suspicious, doesn’t it, Mr. McLellan? Even though it’s been twenty years since I was … home.”
It was just that kind of hesitation that he mistrusted, Walker reflected silently. This woman was quite familiar with details concerning the Daulton family, but most of those were a matter of public record and available to anyone with the will to dig for them. She could have easily enough. And if she had, she wouldn’t be the first; Walker had disproven the claims of two other women in the past five years, both of whom had sworn they were Amanda Daulton.
With Jesse Daulton’s estate valued in the tens of millions of dollars, it was no wonder women of the right age and with the right general appearance would turn up hopefully claiming to be his long-missing granddaughter—especially now.
But this one, this Amanda Daulton, Walker thought, was different from the two earlier pretenders he had discredited. Not at all eager, bold, or emphatic, this woman was quiet, deliberate, and watchful. She hadn’t tried to charm him or flirt. She had not floundered for answers to his questions, either replying matter-of-factly or else saying she didn’t know. I don’t know. I don’t remember that.
But was it lack of memories? Or merely holes in her research?
“Twenty years,” he repeated, turning his head to study her profile.
She shrugged. “How much does anyone remember of their childhood? Fleeting images, special moments. An odd mixture of things, really, like a patchwork quilt. Do I remember the summer I was nine? I remember some things. How the summer began. It was hot even in May that year, the way it is now, today. The honeysuckle smelled the way it does now, so sweet. And the air was still and heavy nearly every day, like it is now, because there’s a storm nearby, maybe just over the mountains. If you listen, you can hear the thunder. Can you hear it?”
Walker refused to allow himself to be swayed by the dreamy quality of her voice. “It frequently storms this time of year,” he said simply.
A little laugh escaped her, hardly a breath of sound. “Yes, of course it does. Tell me, Mr. McLellan, if you’re so doubtful of me, why am I here? You could have said no when I suggested it, or advised the Daultons to say no. You could have insisted we wait a few more weeks for the results of the blood test. They might be conclusive, proving or disproving my claim beyond doubt.”
“Or they might not,” he said. “DNA testing is still an infant science, and the courts are still divided as to how reliable the results are—especially when establishing a familial connection between grandparent and grandchild.”
“Yes, it would have been simpler if my father had lived,” she murmured. “Do you think it’s true? That there’s a strain of madness in the Daultons?”
The question was no non sequitur, Walker knew, and he replied imperturbably. “Brian Daulton was unfortunate—not insane. We should go on to the house. Your—Jesse’s expecting us.”
She hesitated, but then seemed to stiffen a bit before she quickly turned and headed back toward the road. Walker paused a moment himself, his attention caught by several horses that had noticed the visitors to the pasture and, curious as horses usually are, were moving up the rise toward him. He frowned, then made his way back to the road and got into his car.
“you’re afraid of horses?” he asked as he started the engine.
In a slightly vague tone, she said, “What? Oh—I don’t like them very much. Did you say all of my family would be here today?”
Walker wasn’t sure if the change of subject meant anything beyond her probable—and natural—preoccupation with what was to come, so he didn’t comment. Instead, he merely replied, “According to Jesse, they will be. Kate is always at Glory, of course; Reece and Sully both moved back home after college.”
“None of them are married?”
“No. Reece came close a few years ago, but Jesse— took care of the problem.”
She looked over at Walker as if she wanted to ask another question, but he turned the car off the paved road and onto the gravelled drive just then, and she turned her attention ahead to study the house looming before them. Walker wondered what she thought about it. What she felt.
One of the most magnificent mansions ever built in the South, it had originally been named Daulton’s Glory—with a conceit typical of its owner—but no one had called it anything except Glory in more than a hundred years, probably because the name was so apt. It was massive, with an extraordinary presence. Two very old and very grand magnolia trees flanked the circular drive in front of the house, their waxy ivory blooms magnificent. In addition, there were several huge old oak trees near the house, as well as a scattering of smaller flowering trees: dogwoods and mimosas. Numerous neat evergreen shrubs and azaleas provided perfect landscaping for the house.
But the house itself was the centerpiece, as perfect in its setting as a gem surrounded by gold. A striking colonnade stretched across the front, with ten tall, fluted columns of carved wood—four of them set forward under a pediment so that the house seemed to step boldly out to greet anyone approaching. The columns were painted white and stood out against the sandy facade, while the side walls of the house were unpainted brown brick.
“Know anything about architecture?” Walker asked.
“No.”
He stopped the car just to the right of the walkway and shut off the engine, then looked at her. She was gazing toward the house, and he could read nothing from her profile. Conversationally, he said, “Glory is a type of Southern mansion that uses columns as a symbol of wealth and pride. It was said at the time the house was built that most rich people could manage four columns, a rare family six—and the Daultons ten.”
She turned her head to look at him, and though her delicate features remained expressionless and the smoky gray eyes were hard to read, Walker had the sudden impression that she was scared. Very scared. But her voice was calm, mildly curious.
“Are you an expert on the Daulton family, Mr. McLellan?”
“Walker.” He wasn’t sure why he had said that, particularly since he’d been at some pains to keep his attitude toward her both neutral and formal since their first meeting. “No, but local history is a hobby of mine—and the Daulton family is responsible for most of that history.”
“What about your family? Didn’t you say both your father and g
randfather had been attorneys for the Daultons?”
She doesn’t want to go in. “Yes, but we’re relatively new to the area. My great-grandfather won a thousand acres of Daulton land in a poker game in 1870, and built a house about a mile over that hill there to the west. He was a virtually penniless Scottish immigrant, but he ended up doing all right. In time, the Daultons even forgave him for naming his house after that winning poker hand.”
Still mild, she said, “I suppose I should remember all this, shouldn’t I? But I’m afraid I don’t. What was the house named?”
“King High. Both the house and the name stand to this day, but the animosity’s long forgotten.” Without commenting on whether she should have remembered Glory’s only neighboring house for miles around, Walker got out of the car and walked around to her side. She hadn’t moved, and didn’t when he opened her door. He waited until she looked up at him, then said, “Now or never.”
After a moment, she got out and stepped aside so that he could shut the door. Her gaze was fixed on the house, the fingers of one hand playing nervously with the strap of her shoulder bag, and she didn’t budge from the side of the car. She had obviously dressed with care for this first meeting, and her tailored gray slacks and pale blue silk blouse were flattering as well as neat and tasteful.
Walker waited, watching her.
“it’s … big,” she said finally.
“No bigger than it was, at least from this angle. Don’t you remember Glory?”
“Yes, but …” She drew a breath, then murmured, “I’ve heard it said that things from childhood are always smaller than you remember when you come back to them. This isn’t.”
Unexpectedly, Walker felt a pang of sympathy. Whether she was the real Amanda Daulton or a pretender, she was about to face a group of strangers, all of whom would be waiting for her to betray herself with some mistake. It would be an ordeal no matter who she was.
He took her arm in a light grip and, quietly, said, “We’ll leave your bags in the car for the time being. If this—interview doesn’t work out, or you feel too uncomfortable to stay, I’ll take you back to town.”