Convicted

  Her foot twitched on the gas, making the car buck, as she remembered the kick. Even though she'd connected with force, her assailant had been too easy to shove away. Too light, not heavy as she knew Deacon's weight to be.

  Her cheeks flushed hot as she thought of exactly how well she knew the weight of Deacon against her. Lisa's fingers tapped nervously on the wheel as she waited for the light to turn green. Checking the videotape would only take a few minutes. One way or another, it would set her mind at ease.

  Her mind whirled as she thought back over the past few months. While she had been falling back in love with Deacon, could it be possible that he'd been the one behind all the strange things? He had a motive as her family and Terry kept reminding her. But could he really have done those things?

  "I don't want to believe that," she said aloud.

  The group of kids out joyriding in the car beside her looked over and started laughing. They'd been singing along with the radio, but apparently talking to oneself wasn't the same thing. Lisa shot a glare their way, not in the mood for teenage games. One of them flipped her the finger as the light changed and they revved their engine to beat her.

  She rolled her window up and punched the air conditioner button. Her earlier chill had been replaced with an almost feverish heat. She forced herself to maintain the proper speed limit, though she was dying to race through town. She didn't want to get into an accident or get a speeding ticket on her way to The Garden Shadd.

  "I don't want to believe it," she said again, not caring who saw her lips moving.

  She had not made the decision to go to bed with Deacon lightly. Despite their past, the last few months had proven him to be a man of talent, integrity and kindness. Had she been wrong about all that? Was Deacon the liar she'd accused him of being, and such a good one he had fooled her into falling in love with him?

  The brakes squealed as Lisa jammed her foot down. Thank God there was nobody behind her. She eased up on the brake and took deep breaths to steady herself as she pulled off to the side of the road. She was suddenly shaking too much to drive.

  Love. She loved him. All at once it seemed so clear. The way his touch made her tremble was more than just chemistry, more than hormones rushing through her body and urging her toward sex.

  Lisa thought back over the past several weeks and one thing stood out startlingly clear. Deacon's face was the first thing she thought of in the morning when she woke, and the last thing she thought of before she slept at night. She loved him.

  She let out a small groan, letting her head rest against the steering wheel. Her entire body ached, and now, so did her heart. She'd fallen in love with a man, who at the minimum, was a thief. At worst, he was the man who'd just attacked her.

  She had gone her entire life without encountering danger until Deacon moved back to town. Everything had started with the kids in the parking lot who tried to steal her underwear. If so much had not happened since then, she might now be able to look back on that and laugh. As it was, that night had been only the beginning.

  He had come to her rescue--a dark knight on his rumbling metal steed. Why would he have saved her only to continue harassing her? Only someone mentally unsound would do something like that... Lisa gasped.

  Allegra.

  Lisa had come to believe Deacon when he declared he had not robbed The Circle K. If she believed that, she could not believe he'd been behind the phone calls, the thievery, the subtle but frightening harassments she been subjected to. If she did not believe it to be Deacon, she had to believe it was her sister.

  "Allegra is special," she whispered, feeling tears stinging at her eyes. "Oh, no. No."

  What would be worse? The man she loved or her only sister? She didn't always like Allegra, but blood would always be thicker than water.

  Lisa checked traffic and eased back out onto the street. The office was only a few minutes away. She kept her attention fixed firmly on the road, but she couldn't force her mind to stop its whirling.

  The pantry, with its eerie arrangement of cans, was a sign she should not have ignored. It had been too easy to go along with the doctors who'd said Allegra was fine. Admitting her sister was not just special, that perhaps she was sick, was something Lisa had not been prepared to do. Until now.

  Now, when her love for Deacon was the one bright and shining thing in her life. He might be a thief and might not love her as she loved him. He might even have only been wooing her to seek revenge for the past three years he's spent incarcerated because of her.

  Lisa discovered it didn't matter. Because she loved him, she had to find the answers. She'd risk a broken heart to face the truth.

  Just ahead The Garden Shadd sign beckoned. Though the sign was lit, the building was dark but for the pair of lights on each side of the front door. Lisa pulled her car into the parking lot, then around back to the employee's spaces. It was even darker back here.

  She parked the car and sat in the dark, her breath coming fast in her chest. She was scared. The air-conditioned air which had been a welcome breeze against her face now sent chills capering over her spine. She shivered and switched it off.

  Silence filled her car making her thoughts seem too loud. Lisa yanked the keys from the ignition, tucking one between each knuckle until her hand bristled with metal. With her other hand, she opened the car door, then got out.

  She squared her shoulders, breathing in the scent of mulch and flowers that permeated the air. She had been here a thousand times, even after hours, even in the dark. Tonight should be no different, but it was. She felt it on her skin and the way her eyes leaped to search out the faintest of noises. Something was different here tonight, and maybe it was only her imagination. Or maybe it was not.

  She crossed the short, sloped ramp and unlocked the gate leading into the outdoor nursery. Inside, even the faint glow from the street light was masked by the multitude of lush, growing things. The plants seemed to whisper as Lisa stood among them, and in their familiar presence, she had a moment of comfort. Surely no harm could come to her here.

  The feeling of unease returned, however, as she stepped out of the friendly rows and unlocked the door into the back offices. The key jittered coldly in the lock, betraying the trembling of her fingers, and Lisa paused a moment to get control. Then she tucked the keys back between her fingers and stepped into the dark hallway.

  A glowing exit sign lit her way to Deacon's office. Even from this distance, she could see the door stood open. What she needed to find, though, was not in Deacon's office, but her father's. That was where Doug kept the surveillance equipment that was part of The Garden Shadd's minor security system.

  Instead of turning left, though, Lisa went to her right toward Deacon's work space. She had no idea exactly what she was looking for. It wasn't until she actually reached the doorway that she realized she had not yet turned on any lights.

  Her hand instinctively went to the switch on the wall before she stopped herself. Her decision to stay in the dark had been unconscious, but it made sense. The dark was her ally as well as her enemy.

  Lisa closed her eyes, envisioning the layout in Deacon's small and cluttered office. To her right, just inside the doorway, would be a battered chair. To her left along the wall was a workspace with computer equipment. Behind that and along the back wall, the rows of shelves were filled with supplies and the video camera.

  When she opened her eyes, the room wasn't any brighter. With no window to let in the outside light, it wasn't going to be any brighter unless she turned on the lights. Lisa nudged her foot carefully in front of her until it connected with the chair's edge. She had her bearings.

  With her hands out in front of her, she took one hesitant step forward. Immediately, she felt something beneath her fingers that had not been in there in her imagined perusal of the room.

  It was a face.

  * * * *

  "I don't give a rat's ass about your excuses," Hewitt spat into Deacon's face. "Save it for the judge."


  Deacon's wrists ached from the biting metal of the handcuffs, but he couldn't stop himself from lunging uselessly forward. "You have to listen to me!"

  Hewitt's laugh was cold. "Shut up, Campbell."

  "Aren't you even going to go after her?" Deacon asked, slumping back against the seat, ignoring the pain that bit at his wrists as he did. "She's in danger!"

  "From what?" Terry asked. "I've got you right here."

  Deacon gritted his teeth and fixed the officer with a look that would have made a lesser man flinch. To give him credit, Terry's gaze didn't even flicker. Under other circumstances, Deacon might even have felt a certain grudging admiration for his rival.

  "I am not the one who attacked her."

  "How'd you get that bruise?" Terry asked again. "It looks like a hand print."

  Deacon didn't want to tell Terry the truth about the wound, not now when the other man would just think he was bragging. He didn't have a choice, though. "She slapped me. But not here. At my house earlier tonight."

  Now the other man's gaze flickered, just a little. Terry smiled thinly. "So Lisa did hit you. In self-defense."

  "I wasn't attacking her," Deacon gritted out. "She was running away and I tried to catch her, to get her to listen to me--"

  "Why was she running, Campbell?" Terry interrupted. "Though I think in light of the Miranda warning I read you a while ago, you'd want to keep your mouth shut at this point."

  "She's in danger, damn it!" Deacon's yell echoed through the dark street. He saw the curtains shake from the window across the street, and he bit down on his tongue to keep from yelling again. "Just check it out, man. This is Lisa! Don't you even care?"

  "Of course I care," Terry hissed. "And if I thought you weren't full of shit, I'd be after her in a heartbeat! But I have a job to do here, and based on what she and you both told me, it's my job to take you in and see you remanded into proper custody."

  "I love her," Deacon said, his voice low and his head hung lower.

  "What?" Terry asked, bending low to hear him. "What did you say, you scumbag?"

  Deacon lifted his head, no longer caring about competing, or about being more of a man. Lisa was in danger. He felt it in every cell of his body. "I love her. I would never have hurt her."

  Terry sneered, though it seemed forced. "Shut up. Keep your filth to yourself. You can't love her. You don't have it in you. She deserves better than you!"

  The other man's voice broke even as it rose and Deacon heard the truth in it. "If you love her, too, you'll get behind the wheel and take us both to The Garden Shadd. Before it's too late."

  Terry closed his eyes briefly, sagging against the car door. All at once the shine seemed to vanish from his badge. When he opened his eyes, his expression was grim.

  "You'd better be right or I'll kick your ass," he said. "With or without permission of the court."

  Then he slammed Deacon's door and slid behind the wheel, gunning the engine and turning on the sirens.

  * * * *

  Lisa couldn't even scream. She felt her wrists grabbed, the fingers gripping like pincers against her flesh. She fell back, but was supported by the grip of her phantom attacker. Desperately she kicked out, but whoever held her had long arms. In the dark, with no frame of reference, Lisa couldn't even see to defend herself.

  "Lisa."

  It took a second for the voice to register, but when it did, Lisa let out a sharp sob of relief. She yanked her wrists free, sucking in the air she'd forgotten for a moment to breath. "Al! My God, you scared the hell out of me!"

  She felt her sister's form lean forward, brushing against her, to flick on the lights. Lisa threw her hand in front of her face against the sudden brightness. It took her a few moments of blinking to be able to focus on her sister's face.

  Allegra looked like a refugee from a horror movie. Her dark lustrous hair, usually so smooth and shining, was now tangled and dull. Purplish half-moons shadowed her brown eyes, though the rest of her face was sallow-pale. She'd been chewing at the skin of her lips, leaving them raw and bloody.

  She wore a pair of jeans so loose around her hips that the hip bones jutted like butterfly wings on either side of her sunken belly. Dark tufts of pubic hair peeked out with every shift of her hips, but what might have been meant as an erotic turn-on looked only scary. Her shirt, a red button-down, had lost most of its buttons. It gaped open to Allegra's navel, barely concealing the fullness of her clearly naked breasts beneath.

  She was covered in writing from the edge of her collar bone down. Words, scrawled in blue and black ink, began a long litany of items, which read together, almost became poetic.

  Eyeliner

  Underwear

  Red shirt

  Sunscreen

  Black skirt

  Pantyhose

  Umbrella

  Dungarees

  Those were just the words Lisa could read. The writing curved around Allegra's skin, disappearing beneath her clothing. The sight of it made Lisa want to gag.

  "Allegra," she said carefully to her sister's dull eyes. "What have you done to yourself?"

  Allegra touched her skin lightly. "Nothing. Everything. I thought if I made a list it would make me feel better."

  "A list of what?" She had to look away.

  "You've never stolen anything," Allegra said. "You don't know what a rush it is. Almost better than sex."

  Her throaty laughter contrasted sharply with her haggard face and dark-circled eyes. Allegra ran her fingers from the base of her throat to the first row of words. Then she brought her fingers back to her lips and kissed them.

  "You'd think people would pay more attention," she said. "But they don't. You can walk right out--right under their noses. And they never know."

  "You did steal all that stuff."

  "Get with the program, Lisa," Allegra snapped, breaking out of her dreaminess. "The train is leaving the station. Try to stay on it, okay?"

  "Okay." Lisa wanted to soothe her sister. Wanted to make this all stop.

  "I didn't steal it. I liberated it." Allegra paused. "It was like being invisible."

  Her fingers clawed the skin at her throat suddenly leaving red welts behind. "I hate being invisible! I hate it! I don't like being ignored!"

  "Nobody's ignoring you," Lisa replied. The thought Allegra had ever felt invisible was unbelievable. She's always been impossible to ignore.

  "You never listen to me," Allegra muttered. One hand flew up to softly touch her ravaged lips. The fingertips came away sprinkled with blood.

  "I'm listening now," Lisa said, as soothingly as she could with her voice shaking.

  Allegra's eyes flicked to look at her. "You weren't supposed to come here. You were supposed to be breaking up the fight."

  "What fight?" Lisa asked gently.

  "Of the knights for the lady fair," Allegra said without a trace of her usual wry humor. "Officer Friendly and Jailbird. Both were supposed to show up at the house and battle for your hand."

  "You called them?" It was apparent to her now that her sister was indeed behind everything.

  Allegra nodded with a movement that made it seem as though her head was too heavy a weight for the delicate stem of her neck. "And they came, didn't they? Came for you?"

  "Yes, they did." Lisa wanted to reach out to pull Allegra's fingers away from the ruins of her mouth, but she was afraid to touch her.

  "Nobody would do that for me," Allegra whispered, her words muffled behind her fingers. Her shoulders shook. "Nobody."

  "That's not true," Lisa said. "Mom and Dad..."

  Allegra made a sound of disgust so low in her throat it sounded as though she were growling. "I'm not talking about Mom or Dad, Lisa! Holy wounds of Jesus, I'm talking about someone who loves me."

  "We all love you--"

  But Allegra would have none of it. "Shut up!" she screamed, digging ugly furrows into her cheeks with the tips of her fingers. "Just shut up, Princess Lisa!"

  Lisa wisely kept her mouth shut. She
felt like she'd drunk an entire pot of coffee in one gulp, every nerve jangling. Her eyes felt like they were open too wide. Her mouth had dried.

  Allegra appeared to calm herself, shifting her hands from her cheeks to smooth through her matted hair. Her smile was bright and shining when she spoke.

  "I'm not like you," she said, her tone biting despite the sunniness of her smile. "I'm special."

  The bitter way she said the word brought tears to Lisa's eyes. "Oh, Al. Of course you are."

  "I don't want to be special," Allegra whispered, sagging against the desk. "I want to be normal."

  Lisa had no response to that because anything she said would be merely placation. Platitude. Something to say just to make her sister feel better, and it was obvious Allegra was beyond the help of mere words.

  Her sister looked up at her with naked, wet eyes. "Is that such a big thing to ask?"

  "No."

  Allegra sneered. "Easy for you to say. Easy for you to say. Easy...For...You...To...Say!"

  "What can I do to help you?" Lisa held out her hands. "Allegra, just tell me what to do."

  "You can die," Allegra said conversationally. "That might make me feel better, at least for a little while."

  * * * *

  "I don't believe this," Deacon moaned as the cop car came to an abrupt stop. "Terry, forget them! Let's go!"

  Terry glanced over his shoulder while unbuckling his seat belt. "What do you want me to do, Campbell? They're blocking the road."

  A car full of teenagers had rear-ended a luxury car carrying an elderly couple. Though the accident was clearly minor, the light traffic had snarled to a stop. One patrol car, lights lazily spinning but no sirens, had already arrived on the scene.

  "Hey, Terry," called the other officer. She jerked her head toward the mess. "Can you lend a hand?"

  Terry hesitated, glancing into the back seat where Deacon scowled. "Sorry, Karen. I've got a call already."

  Karen sighed heavily, glaring at the sheepish teenage driver whose license she'd confiscated. "I ought to have you take the whole pack of these yahoos in."

  The sheepish looks turned to terror and a babble of protest sprang up simultaneously from all the teens. Karen just shook her head, still writing her ticket. "Kids."