Final Scream

  Silence. Stubborn, stony silence.

  “Sunny’s anxious to see you, to touch you, and rest her mind that you’re all right—”

  “I said no!” The voice was a rough croak, slurred as he fought to speak through his wired jaw.

  “For God’s sake, Chase, she’s your mother! She’s worried sick, and even though she can’t sometimes distinguish between what’s real and what’s not, she needs to see you with her own eyes, to see for herself that you’re going to make it.”

  “Not like this!”

  So this was about pride. His damned pride. But Cassidy suspected there was more to it. Chase had never been comfortable around his mother ever since he’d had to force her from the old trailer by the creek, the home she’d loved. For her own good. Or so he’d said.

  He’d found her one night, not long after he and Cassidy had married, unconscious in her small bathtub. Blood had seeped from the wounds in her wrists, clouding the already rust-stained water in thin red streaks. Chase had dialed 911. Sunny, unconscious, had barely been alive when the paramedics had arrived.

  Now Sunny McKenzie resided in a private hospital that had once been a rambling brick mansion. The hospital was run by an efficient medical staff who reported weekly that Sunny’s condition, not particularly stable to begin with, would probably never improve. Though she’d stopped inflicting pain upon herself, there would always be a chance that she could become violent again. To herself. To others. Chase had reluctantly agreed to have her committed. His eyes had glistened as he’d signed the papers, then hurried down the wide steps of the hospital. He’d grabbed hold of Cassidy’s hand and stalked blindly past landscaped gardens and serene pools, never saying another word until they reached the parking lot. “She’ll hate it here,” he’d predicted in frustration. Swiftly, he slid behind the steering wheel of his Porsche and jabbed his key into the ignition.

  “Why not let her go home?” Cassidy suggested. She’d been scared to death the night she’d first visited Sunny after Angie had died and she’d run from Sunny’s prophesy, but over time she had learned to respect Sunny McKenzie.

  “And have her slit her wrists all over again? Or hang herself? Or turn on the gas? God, Cassidy, is that what you want?” He pumped the accelerator, twisted the ignition, and the powerful engine roared to life.

  “Of course not, but she needs her freedom.”

  “Maybe later.” A determined edge had developed around his features, and the bone in his jawline showed white. “She’ll be safe here. She’ll hate it, but she’ll be safe.”

  And that was that. Cassidy had offered other ideas over the years, even suggested that Sunny come to live with them. Chase hadn’t heard a word of it. Sometimes Cassidy thought he was embarrassed because of his mother the palm reader; other times she thought that he believed Sunny finally resided in the best place for her, that he really was concerned about his mother’s safety and mental health. Hadn’t he lived with her long after most sons would have moved out, even after Brig had taken off? Hadn’t Chase been the ever-dutiful son?

  Her husband, she thought sadly, was a complex man; difficult to understand. Sometimes impossible to love.

  “Chase,” she whispered softly, willing him to respond. But he seemed to have tuned her out again. “Detective Wilson from the Sheriff’s Department is going to ask you questions. Lots of them. About the fire and about the man you were with.”

  He didn’t so much as flinch, and she wanted to shake some sense into him. Didn’t he hear her? Didn’t he care?

  She tried again. “I suppose you’ve overheard us talking and know that he probably won’t survive. He’s lost too much blood, I think, and he’s got internal injuries.” She didn’t really know the extent of the other man’s wounds, just understood that most likely he wouldn’t pull through. Her mouth seemed to turn to dust. “Who was he?”

  The eye closed.

  “Chase, please. I think I should know.” She reached for his hand and he flinched. “Chase—”

  His eye flew open. “Don’t!” he nearly yelled in his harsh, unrecognizable voice. “Don’t touch me.” Finally he turned his horrid gaze at her—startling blue against angry red. “Don’t ever touch me again.”

  The words were harsh and thick with his inability to use his jaw, but they cut as deeply as the slice of a bullwhip. “Just tell me about the man you were with,” she insisted, refusing to back down though her heart was drumming so fast she could barely breathe. His gaze bored into hers, and she couldn’t help blurting what she knew had to be true. “It’s Brig, isn’t it? I know you told me a long time ago to forget him, that he was dead, at least to you and me, but…but I never really believed it and now…” Her voice cracked with emotion. “…and now I think, oh, God, I don’t know what to think, but you met with Brig for some reason and—”

  “Brig’s dead.”

  “Not yet! He’s in a hospital bed in CCU fighting and losing his life—”

  “I thought we already talked about this. I thought you understood.” His voice was low and gravelly, his hands, despite his cast, curled into fists.

  “I, um, I think you deliberately let me think that Brig was dead and that he was really alive somewhere.”

  “For the love of God, Cassidy, give it up! He’s gone. Been gone for seventeen years. Accept it.”

  She stood on trembling legs and grabbed the top rail of the bed so hard her knuckles bleached white. Glaring down at him, she tried to remember why she’d wanted to marry him, why she’d given up her fantasies, her dreams, her career, for him. “Then who was he?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Like hell, Chase. You’re stonewalling me again. And if the guy isn’t Brig, then I’d like to know who he is—why you’re covering for him. You know the insurance company is already making noise that you might have wanted the sawmill burned. They can already prove that it was arson. Now all they need is a culprit.”

  “Why would I want to burn the mill?”

  “So that you could collect and not have to look like the bad guy for throwing people out of work—people you actually worked with a long time ago, people in town who look up to you, people who depend on their jobs to support their families. There’s only so much timber left on Buchanan property, and with all the restrictions on federal land, the investigators have begun to think that it might have been more profitable to torch the mill.”

  “And nearly kill myself?” he asked, sweat beading his black and blue brow as he tried to speak.

  “Maybe that was a mistake; or you took a chance to throw suspicion away from yourself.”

  “You’re unbelievable.”

  “And it seems to have worked. Detective Wilson suggested that maybe I set the fire.”

  “Wilson’s an idiot.”

  “I just want answers,” she said.

  “I know. Always the reporter.”

  Her fingers uncurled and she fought a sudden thickness in her throat. What was she doing? Chase was still recovering. His flesh was still discolored and swollen, one eye patched, his legs and a wrist in casts, and she was badgering, hammering at him for the truth. She’d have to be patient. It was only fair.

  God help me. Help both of us.

  On unsteady legs, she walked to the window and stared outside to the parking lot, where the sun glinted brightly on the hoods and roofs of cars parked in even rows. “I’m sorry, Chase,” she said after silently counting to ten. “I didn’t mean to come apart…I’ve just been worried. About you. About everything. Wilson is relentless. Determined.” She motioned uselessly with her fingers. “He’ll want to ask you questions. You should be prepared.”

  “You really think I started that fire?” he asked thickly.

  Cassidy rubbed her arms. “No—I’m sorry, I was just angry and frustrated. It seems like there’s a lot you know—some things that you hide from me.” Her chin wobbled a little. “I don’t think you’d torch the sawmill and risk killing yourself, but the police won’t be so charitable and the ins
urance investigators will probably be ruthless. So be careful, Chase.” Slinging the strap of her purse over her shoulder, she paused at his bed again, forcing herself to stare at his immobile form. A pang of loneliness cut through her heart. They had once been happy—if only briefly. “If you need an attorney, I’ll call—”

  “I didn’t do it,” he repeated. “As my wife, I expect you to believe me.”

  “And as my husband, I expect you to be honest with me.” She paused near the door. “The authorities think this fire might have some connection to the one that killed Angie and Jed. I just thought you should know. Good-bye, Chase. I’ll—I’ll be back later.”

  “Cass—”

  At the sound of her name, her steps faltered. “Yes.”

  “Call the doctor. Tell him I want out of here.”

  “But you can’t come home yet.” She almost laughed except the situation was so tragic. “You’re—”

  “I know what I am, Cassidy, but I’ve got to be released.”

  “In time—”

  “Now!”

  “For God’s sake, Chase, relax. They’ll let you out when you’re well enough.”

  “That may not be soon enough.”

  “For what?”

  He stared at her so hard she nearly flinched. His throat worked, and for a breathless second she remembered that she’d cared for him once. “I need to be out of here,” he stated. “The sooner the better.”

  Twenty-five

  The sawmill was barricaded. Slick yellow crime-scene tape roped off the debris of charred saws, twisted black beams and rippled, heat-destroyed aluminum that had been the siding of several of the sheds. The office was a shell of broken windows and scorched walls, the roof gone; file cabinets, computers, desks and chairs reduced to black rubble. Some of the raw timber had been saved, but stacks of cut lumber, graded and planed and ready to ship, had been ruined by the blaze and the thousands of gallons of water pumped onto the inferno. Caused by arson. Just like before.

  Fire and water.

  As Sunny had predicted.

  Though the temperature was over eighty degrees, Cassidy shivered. She didn’t get out of her Jeep, just let the engine idle in the pockmarked lot, listened to the radio with half an ear and stared at the remains of the heart of her father’s business.

  Chase wouldn’t have burned it down. Despite the depression in the timber industry, Buchanan Logging and Sawmill was breaking even while other parts of the conglomeration that was Buchanan Industries were reporting record profits. Who in his right mind would burn down one of the few mills in the state that was working at full production and ruin thousands, maybe millions, of board feet that were worth more each day as lumber prices continued to soar? Chase was no fool. He understood money. Growing up poor had taught him early lessons in finance.

  Through the dusty windshield, she spied several people clustered around the remains of the mill, peering through the twisted chain-link fence and past the old safety sign with the letters that had peeled off under the heat. They talked and joked between themselves, pointing at a forklift that had endured the blaze, the tires flat and melted, the tines of the fork black as coal, the padded seat burned away and the engine useless.

  She didn’t hear her brother until he rapped on the glass with his knuckles. She rolled down the window.

  “It’s a bitch, isn’t it?” he said, nodding toward the ruined mill as she rolled down the window. Warm, muggy air drifted into the Jeep. Hazy clouds blocked the sun, and Elvis’s voice crooned through the speakers.

  Derrick motioned to the radio. “Turn it off.”

  “Why?”

  “I hate Elvis. You know that.” It was true—ever since they were kids, Derrick had ranted and raved, been nearly out of his mind, whenever Angie or Cassidy had played any of the records they’d found stashed in the attic along with Lucretia’s clothes and books.

  She snapped off the radio. “What’re you doing here?”

  “Gawking, just like everyone else.” Derrick rubbed his jaw thoughtfully. A sprinkle of gray shot through his hair. When he was sober, he was a handsome man who looked more and more like their father with the passing of the years. “Christ, what a mess.”

  “Amen,” she agreed.

  “Felicity says Chase is gonna make it.”

  “Yes.” She sounded positive. Around her brother she always put up a good front. He’d been against her marriage to Chase from the start, and Cassidy was determined never to give Derrick the satisfaction of knowing he’d been right about her happiness. Even if she and Chase divorced, she hoped that all Derrick would find out was that they didn’t get along, that they had just drifted apart, that there was no guilt, no lie, no suspicion, and certainly no hatred.

  “He comin’ home?” Derrick scrounged in his pocket for a pack of cigarettes.

  “Yeah. If he had his way, he’d be out today.”

  “And then what’re you going to do?” He found a Marlboro and jammed it between his teeth.

  “Take care of him, I suppose. Until he’s on his feet again. It’ll be a while. Physical therapy five times a week for six months to a year.”

  “He won’t like it.” Derrick shook his head and squinted his eyes against the lowering sun. “You’re only asking for trouble again by sticking with him, you know.”

  “He’ll need help.”

  “And you’ll give it to him. Over and over again. You know, Cassidy, I never figured you for being a—what’s the current fashionable term? An enabler, that’s it.” He clicked his lighter and drew hard on his cigarette. Smoke drifted from his nostrils. “I think that’s just a fancy name for a doormat of a woman. You know the kind. A woman who will do anything to keep her man. Even let him walk all over her, stomp all over her emotions and her heart, then keep doing what he wants to because the woman lets him.”

  He sounded like he was describing his wife. Felicity had been in love with Derrick for as long as Cassidy could remember; she’d chased after him in high school, become best friends with Angie so that she could be closer to Derrick and had finally trapped him with a baby. Now, despite Derrick’s affinity for Jack Daniels and his rumored passion for other women, she stuck by him, the ever-dutiful martyred wife.

  Cassidy decided to ignore the attack on her character. “Is there something you wanted?”

  “Not really,” he said, surveying the mess as the wind kicked up and the scents of burned wood and exhaust from the idling Jeep wafted through the interior. “I was just coming from the house—Dad and Dena finally showed up. I gave Dad an update on what’s been going on around here, then was heading into town when I saw your rig. Thought I should stop by, offer my condolences or whatever the hell they are and tell you that Dena’s looking for you.”

  Cassidy sighed. She wasn’t ready to face her mother—not yet.

  He frowned. “You don’t have to stick by Chase just because he’s your husband.”

  “Of course I do.”

  “He doesn’t deserve it, Cassidy.”

  She rammed the Jeep into first. “I think I’ll be the best judge of that.”

  “You know, him being laid up puts me in kind of a bind.”

  “Puts you in a bind?” she repeated incredulously. “Chase is lying in a hospital bed—battered and burned—and it puts you in a bind?”

  “Of course it does. I’ve got to hire people to fill in for him while he’s gone. A couple of lawyers to start with and then some troubleshooters…”

  “I wouldn’t start filling Chase’s shoes too quickly.”

  Derrick drew hard on his cigarette. “The man’s a cripple, Cassidy. He can’t talk, can’t walk, and for all we know, he could be brain-dead.”

  She couldn’t help laughing, but the sound was bitter. “You wish. He’s far from brain-dead and talking already. Be walking sooner than you know.”

  “Think about it. He won’t be able to come back to work and I can’t hold up the entire operation because of it. But I could buy him out. Hell, with the amount of
shares he owns, you’d both be set for life.”

  “What about my shares?” she asked knowing that Derrick had always resented that Cassidy owned a portion of the company. Not much, but enough to remind him that he wasn’t the only heir to their father’s fortune.

  “I’d buy them, too.”

  “Over my dead body.” Cassidy stepped on the gas, and the tires chirped as she cranked on the wheel and headed out of the parking lot. She didn’t know why she suddenly felt so possessive of a few stock certificates, but she wasn’t going to let Derrick bully her. The entire idea of him offering to buy both Chase and her out so soon after the fire smelled bad, as if he wanted to profit from the blaze.

  She glanced into the rearview mirror and was surprised at the determination she saw reflected in her eyes. What was it about her brother that could make her protective of a husband she hadn’t loved in a long, long while and possessive of stock she once would have given away?

  “You’re losing it,” she confided to the gold eyes staring back at her. “Definitely losing it.”

  “We’ve been worried sick!” Dena’s voice cracked through the foyer of the home where Cassidy had grown up. She pushed the door open a little farther and threw her arms around her daughter. “We took the first flight we could get. Oh, dear, let me look at you.” Holding Cassidy at arm’s length under the chandelier, she studied her daughter. Little lines of worry pursed a mouth still tinged with traces of peach lipstick. “How’s Chase?”

  “He’ll be okay. Right now, he doesn’t look too great, but the doctors are optimistic.”

  “Cassidy!” Her father walked stiffly into the foyer and a smile pulled at the corners of his mouth. “It’s good to see you.”

  “You, too, Dad.” She meant it. She’d been dreading facing her parents, but now that they were here, she was glad they were home.