Never Tell Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  “Erin. It’s okay, honey…”

  Copyright Page

  PROLOGUE

  Strange fits of passion have I known:

  And I will dare to tell,

  But in the Lover’s ear alone,

  What once to me befell.

  —William Wordsworth

  MARCH 2002

  San Cabes, California

  She stumbled into the cabin. He shoved hard, and she cried out as her knees crumpled beneath her. The vicious kick to her side slid her across the Aubusson rug. With a sickening thud, her head rapped against the base of the rocking chair. She fell against the corded timbers of the wall. Shivering on the floor, she lay stunned and tearless.

  In the cold dark of the isolated cabin, where she’d thought to hide until Sebastian came for her, her labored breaths echoed and filled the space with fretful sound. The flames from the fireplace had died down. Occasionally, embers spat out angry sparks. Wood cracked and broke against the hearth. A storm raged in the thick of the forest, wind and rain lashing at the old mission stones. Inside, the air seethed with obsession and mania.

  “You’re mine, Analise!” Nathan stalked her, loomed over her. “Don’t ever run from me again!”

  The command, and the accompanying strike to her hip from his muddied boot, snapped her head back and opened her swollen eyes. Analise tried to push herself up using the hand beneath her, but the wrist he’d fractured gave way.

  It was not the first time she’d felt the brutal ache that seemed to burn her skin, tasted the metallic flavor of blood on her tongue. It was not the first time she’d wanted to whimper for mercy, beg for the pain to cease.

  Bending beside her, Nathan could see her drifting away from him. He wouldn’t allow it. Lately, she had forgotten who was in charge. That she was his to command. He wanted to kick her again, to smash at her fragile ribs, but he controlled the rage that poured into him. The pleas for mercy gratified him, but they were not enough. She had to understand where she belonged. To whom.

  He slapped her then, so hard, his ring dislodged and tumbled to the ground. When she barely reacted, he thought she wasn’t sufficiently afraid. Just because he’d never gone this far before, she doubted him. She wouldn’t after tonight.

  “Look at me, Analise!” he barked as he shoved his hand into his pocket.

  She did and her eyes widened when she saw the gun. He held it steady, aimed at her head. “God, Nathan. No. Please.”

  “I told you not to leave me, Analise. I told you you had nowhere else to go. No one else to turn to.” Drawing the cool barrel along her chin, he relished the purity of the fear he could nearly touch. He slid the hard metal along her bruised cheek to rest at her temple. “Your parents are dead. You have no family, no friends. Why would you try to leave me?”

  Because of what she’d heard. What she’d seen.

  Through her terror, she had remembered a time before him, though the memory was faint. In that time, before he came into her life, she had been strong and smart and sure. She had been brave. Then she would not have rocked in a corner, timid and broken. She would not have cowered in the dark, watching evil but saying nothing.

  Yet she had been silent. She didn’t call the police, and this was her sin. Instead, she’d run to the hills, hoping to hide from the monster who’d made her.

  It was too late. He’d found her and he would kill her. With the remembrances of family dim, she imagined her life had begun with him.

  Would end with him.

  Prepared for death, Analise straightened, her chin lifting. “I saw what you did.”

  “You saw nothing!” Amazed at her temerity, Nathan yelled, “You saw nothing!”

  “I saw everything. Everything you’ve wanted to do to me but couldn’t. Couldn’t because you needed me.” Defiant, dead, she laughed bitterly. “All those times you told me how weak and pathetic I was, how worthless, it was you. Always you.”

  “You are mine, Analise. I created you!”

  The gun smashed into her cheek. Stars danced and she felt reality slipping away. “Created me? You stole from me! My ideas, my words. You took them from me.” Struggling to her feet, paying no heed to the gun and the pain, she made her voice strong for her final lie. “I called the police, Nathan. They’ll find you.”

  The confession stunned him. She’d betrayed him, the wretched, pitiable creature he’d shaped into his masterpiece? She dared to defy him? Fury and insanity surged through him and he lunged at her, the gun forgotten. It clattered to the floor between them.

  Seeing her chance, Analise dodged the hands that came out to strangle her. She dived for the gun, scrambling to reach it. Enraged, his fist pounded into her stomach, and she felt her rib crack. Clinging to life, she clawed at his arm while her crippled hand closed over the pistol.

  Countering, Nathan manacled her wrist, squeezing on the fractured bone. She screamed, and the sound pierced the storm. She struggled not to pass out, to hold on to the gun. Tangled together, they rolled along the ground. He rose above her, eyes gleaming with madness, and he slammed her head into the wooden planks on the floor.

  “I’ll kill you, bitch!”

  Analise refused to die quietly. She fought to turn the gun, whimpering through the shards of pain radiating from her wrist, from her skull. Clinging to consciousness, she vowed, “No!”

  There was a cacophony of sound, perhaps a blast or the tumult of the storm. It was then consciousness deserted her. Shame was her last clear thought as pain burst through her skull. Nathan had won and she had lost.

  Groggily, she came to. She emerged from the agonizing darkness to find the gun in her hand. The metal felt cool where it rested in her palm. Odd, because she had always imagined searing heat. But Nathan had warned her that her imagination could not be trusted. Her strange mind, trained with precision to see words and patterns and images, played terrible tricks on her. It made her believe the impossible.

  Her hand squeezed the gun’s grip spasmodically. She shivered again, frozen to the bone. She crawled to Nathan, wanting him to be dead, praying he was alive. The body was still, lifeless. Red bloomed in obscene beauty along his left side. He stared up at her, the blue eyes unmoving and accusing. Her head throbbed and blood trickled down her neck. Dragging herself to the sofa, she managed to get to her feet. She swayed, the room spinning dizzily around her. She blinked, trying to orient herself.

  A wink of silver caught her eye, abandoned on the hardwood, where it had fallen from his hand in the struggle. She staggered over to the ring that had left too many marks on her skin. She picked it up, a reminder of the price of freedom.

  When the storm cleared, she called Sebastian. Together, they sent Nathan over the mountain, onto ancient rocks and clay that swallowed his body and her sin.

  Then she walked out of her life.

  CHAPTER 1

  MAY 2004

  New Orleans, Louisiana

  Humid dark hung over the boulevard lam
plight as a pale moon rose beyond the trees. Cicadas began their nightly chants in concert with the cries of tree frogs. Comforted by the familiar song of spring, Maggie Fordham locked the door to the Alabaster Rose Nursery with ritual flourish. First, she gave three quick turns to the ornate brass key that had secured the store for nearly a century. As she’d been taught by her grandfather, she jiggled the handle three times before smacking the mahogany with the base of her hand. A silly rite, perhaps, but after a hundred years, who was she to tempt the fates?

  It was easy to be superstitious in New Orleans, Maggie acknowledged as she hit the sidewalk. Equal parts religion and culture, the ways of the supernatural permeated every breath of life in the city. A fifth-generation native, Maggie understood the call of blood that required spitting on a broom if it swept your feet or the expectation of a windfall when the palms of empty hands itched.

  A woman of science, she would never admit to herself that she believed in ghosts or demons or creatures of the night. Still, she instinctively angled her foot on the cobblestone walk to avoid stepping on a crack between the stones. She caught the motion and chuckled softly. Apparently, even science had its limits.

  She turned into the alley between her shop and the apothecary next door. Fishing in her purse for the car keys she kept on a separate ring, she opened the door to her new car. The hot red Miata was courtesy of her adjunct teaching gig at Burkeen University. Twice a week, she taught botany to its students, and the check from the university covered the car payments. Not a bad deal, she thought, even if the students were a tad spoiled.

  Maggie slid inside the compact car and pulled the door tight behind her. Abandoned coffee pooled condensation in the cup holder. She turned the key in the ignition, eager to get home. Her Labrador puppy, Sadie, would be waiting up for her. Sadie thought she was a guard dog, and Maggie hadn’t the heart to tell her different. The car sputtered once, and Maggie pushed down on the gas. The engine revved.

  In the next moment, the driver’s side window exploded. Before she could do more than flinch, hard hands reached inside the broken window and grabbed Maggie by the throat. Screaming, she raked her nails across the hands that choked her. “No! Help!”

  “Shh, Maggie,” her attacker warned. “Don’t struggle. It will be finished soon.”

  In response, Maggie’s fingernails dug deep but did not penetrate the latex gloves that protected her attacker. Still, a fisted hand slammed into her face in punishment.

  “I told you not to struggle.”

  Blood poured from her swelling nose and sobs tore from her as the pain radiated endlessly from the broken bone. She panted now, breaths coming in short gasps of air through her mouth. “Ah, ah, ah. Ah, God.” Her screams and sobs turned to whimpers of agony. “Please, no.”

  Suddenly the door was hauled open. Maggie lurched forward, trying to escape. Her attacker grabbed her by the hair and smashed her broken face into the steering wheel. Flung into the seat, Maggie struggled to stay conscious, but the searing pain pulled at her in waves, begging her to give in.

  Silently, Maggie prayed for the strength to save herself. She could feel herself suffocating. Blood poured into her throat, gagging her. Abruptly the seat belt bit into her neck. Oh, God, no, she thought desperately; it wasn’t the seat belt. The killer’s hands wrapped wire around her neck, the metal slicing through skin, through tissue. Maggie’s last pant broke the night air, and the wire pulled tighter, then tighter still. Then the killer turned, face clear in the lamplight.

  Why? Maggie mouthed as crimson began to spill onto her pale blue silk blouse, fill her larynx.

  In answer, the wire pulled taut and strong. Maggie could feel life ending, and she sought the ethereal light of myth. But only yellow filled her vision, the lamplight above. Yellow and the smile of her killer. The reassuring smile followed her into death, as wire severed the cream column of her throat.

  Maggie’s lifeless body threatened to fall to the ground, but the killer’s braced hip caught her. Methodically, the careful hands arranged Maggie gently against the leather seat. A flick of a side lever, and Maggie Fordham reclined in silent repose. The bloodstained wire was recoiled and laid on the seat beside the empty body. Without the blood and empty eyes, the killer thought, a person might think she’s sleeping.

  As before, last touches included removing the crisp bills from the wallet and dropping it into the leather bag that carried all the killer’s tricks. Reverent fingers tugged off the tourmaline ring that sparkled green on Maggie’s right ring finger.

  Staring at the limp, naked hand, the killer paused. The alabaster strip of skin said that she’d worn the ring for a long time. She had probably wished to be buried with it when she died. The ring went into the bag.

  After all, if wishes were horses, the killer reflected, beggars would ride.

  ONE WEEK LATER

  The envelope in Erin Abbott’s mailbox did not have a return address. As she walked up the stairs to her apartment, she ran curious fingers over the old-fashioned script. Her name had been etched by a calligrapher’s pen onto the ivory parchment.

  Dr. Erin Abbott

  216 St. Bennett Avenue

  Apartment 3F

  New Orleans, Louisiana

  She tucked the envelope into her purse and punched the elevator button for her floor. The entire building was subdued, the lingering sorrow over Maggie Fordham’s death, the victim of a brutal, senseless murder. It had been nearly a week since Maggie’s body had been discovered.

  Her gruesome end shocked the quiet Esplanade neighborhood where she kept a flat and a noisy dog. It forced her next-door neighbor, Mrs. Kemper, to her bed for three days, comforted only by orange pekoe tea and generous shots of Jim Beam. On the first floor, Davis and Shanie Dupree purchased an extra dead bolt to augment their home security system and began searching the papers for condominiums out in Metairie.

  She wished she could grieve more, Erin thought as she set her purse down on the trestle table near the entryway. Ignoring the light switch, she held on to the letter and headed out to the balcony to watch the sunset.

  Maggie had lived a floor below, and often they’d shared the last minutes of daylight. In silent tribute, Erin watched the sun dip below the edges of the magenta sky. Though the women hadn’t been close friends, Maggie had been a good neighbor. In the months Erin had lived in the building, Maggie had been unfailingly kind. She’d shown Erin around the Quarter, helped her haggle over prices in the market. Maggie had told her about the vacant position at Burkeen University.

  But while Erin was saddened, death did not affect her as it did others. For one thing, she’d trained herself not to become too attached. Friendly, sure, but never truly a friend. For another, Erin made her living studying death and the dealers in it. A criminal psychologist, she’d seen the worst of the human psyche played out in horrifying detail. She’d learned not to dwell on the passage of human life. She knew all too well how fragile life could be, how easily taken by purpose or accident.

  Life was best lived in solitude, she believed. No connections, no recriminations. No one to take notice. No one to tell you who you should be.

  It was the only way to survive.

  As dusk settled, she turned around slowly, ran critical eyes over the one-bedroom apartment. Potted plants occupied every corner of the postage-stamp balcony. Like the magazine photo she’d patterned it on, inside, buttercup walls held framed prints of Paris and the markets in Senegal. Her furniture was arranged to mirror the glossy pictures from the catalogs. Tacky tchotchkes jumbled onto shelves, more by design than desire. Real homes had the useless things, she’d learned, and she would have them, too. If the sight of them made her wince, it was a small price to pay.

  This was her home now. Her life. It was a small apartment but filled with windows and polished hardwoods. Her choice of residence was not a factor of income. A trust funded by her parents’ life insurance guaranteed that she would never lack for money. But she spent that money carefully, reluctant to draw
attention or interest. No, money was not an issue for her. Freedom was.

  For too long, she had lived at the mercy of a madman who controlled her every thought, every move. Now, she had her own space. A life she’d created far away from anyone who cared about the woman she had once been. It had taken more than two years and thousands of dollars, but Analise Glover was gone.

  She slid open the French doors and walked into the apartment, the letter still unopened. Perhaps it was a plea from a student for an extension, she mused, running her fingers along the stationery. Still, a trill of uneasiness crept along her spine.

  Erin shook off the feeling and wandered over to the chaise that stretched beneath the wide bay window. She switched on a swing-armed brass lamp and curled her legs beneath her on the brushed cotton. Telling herself to stop being fretful, she slit the seal on the letter and turned it to spill the contents to her lap. Newsprint fell out.

  She gasped.

  Five obituaries stared up at her. They’d been clipped from the local paper, she realized grimly. Clipped and sent to her. Holding them by the edges, she sifted through the columns, murmuring the names aloud.

  “Julian Harris. Burleigh Singleton. Phoebe Bailey. Juan Johnson. Margaret Fordham.”

  She tripped over Maggie’s name and her breathing hitched. Erin forced herself to take a calming breath. Think rationally, she commanded herself, trying to ignore the shrill of panic in her head.

  Be reasonable. Someone had sent her a packet of obituaries. Strange, yes, but not terrifying. She was, after all, a criminal psychology professor. One who habitually read obituaries and police news to her students to teach them how to look for information.

  The envelope was probably a prank by one of her students. A nasty, silly prank to rattle her before exams.

  But even as she formed the feeble excuse, her heart thudded against her chest in fierce denial. On her lap, Maggie’s grainy photograph watched her with knowing eyes. This was more than a trick.