There Should Have Been Eight, page 29
“Yeah.” And yet I didn’t offer to free her. “Do you know the woman beside you?”
Grace shook her head. “She came in the door right before you did, but she was kind of wobbly on her feet. I thought she was going to fall.” Swallowing hard, she looked at her fellow passenger. “Oh, no. She’s been stabbed, too.”
“It’s not her blood.” Turning off the interior light, I struggled to make sense of what Grace had told me.
I couldn’t.
Just do, Luna. Think later.
My eyes having finally adjusted to the sudden lack of light—or as much as they could adjust, I looked ahead to the bridge. “We have to get over that. You might be hurt less than Darcie, but you still have a stab wound that’s continuing to bleed.” I’d spotted hints of red on the towel when I’d given her the water.
“Bridge is . . . dancing.”
She was right—the bridge was continuing to sway this way and that in the wind, and every so often, it’d ripple. I watched the movements, and I watched the water, and I saw the pattern. If I could make it across between one ripple and the next, I’d avoid the biggest of the waves that crashed over the platform.
Snapping my seat belt back on, I said, “Here we go,” and put the car into gear.
One. Two. Three. Ripple. Go!
The groans as we drove on were hollow and deep, and I didn’t dare think about what was going on beneath the tires. I kept my eyes not straight ahead but angled slightly to the left. So I could see the metal of the struts, use that to orient myself in a straight line.
The tires scythed through the water, the Land Cruiser living up to my uncle’s love for it. It was as solid as a block of steel.
It was also heavy.
I thought I heard a crack, forced myself not to panic. There was nothing I could do if the bridge was collapsing under us. I had to outrun the damage—yet not go so fast that I spun us out of control.
Water smashed onto the driver’s side and over the windscreen, blinding me a second time over. The bridge’s sway took on a new twisting motion at the same instant.
And I realized I hadn’t outrun the oncoming ripple.
Teeth gritted, I bent over the steering wheel and squinted. The barest blur of light glancing off metal, and my own sense of direction. That was all I had.
“You’re too far to the left!” Grace cried. “We’re about to hit a girder on this side!”
No peripheral vision.
“Now?” I said after correcting.
“Yes, good.”
“Tell me if it happens again. I’m not exactly a four-wheel-drive champion.”
“You’ve got this,” she said, her tone warm. “I couldn’t drive in this.”
My mind pounded with the thunder of the water, the howl of the wind, the groans and cracks of the bridge. Sweat pooled under my armpits and in between my breasts. I should’ve taken off my outdoor jacket before attempting this.
I’d do it after we reached the end. It had to be soon.
This bridge wasn’t infinite.
Though it felt exactly that on this dark and stormy night straight out of a horror flick.
You’ve got this, Nae-nae.
How appropriate that Grace had unknowingly said exactly the same thing Bea had said to me so many times over the years. Because this all came back to her. I knew that in my gut. Somehow, it all began and ended with Beatrice.
“Go right,” Grace said. “Just a bit.”
“Now?”
“Yes, that’s good.”
Something bumped under the tires and I had the sudden thought that we’d hit the girder . . . but no, we were rising up and away from the bridge. “We made it.”
Lungs tight with the breaths I hadn’t taken, I brought the car to a standstill, wasn’t sure my hands weren’t actually claws by now I’d gripped the steering wheel with such force.
My desperate gasps of air filled the silence.
“I’ve always hated theme park rides.” Grace’s laughter was all nerves and relief. “Good driving there.”
Shrugging off my jacket but leaving it trapped between me and the seat, I said, “Thanks for the help.”
“Team effort.”
“We should be able to follow the line of the trees and stay on the road,” I said and began to creep forward . . . and felt the uneven bite of gravel under the left tires. The right continued to plow through snow.
“Tree canopy must’ve protected the left side of the road from the snow,” I said aloud. “Tell me if I start to float too much from the left.” That was the safe side, the side with the trees.
On the right was a ravine. We wouldn’t survive the fall.
“I will.” I could tell from the sounds in the back and the faint, shadowy shape of her in the rearview mirror that Grace had twisted in her seat to better watch that side of the road.
Guilt nipped at me. “Sorry about the tape. It won’t be for long.” Now that we’d navigated the bridge, I felt more hopeful of making it out. I’d still have to climb the muddy, rocky bulk of the slip, but Grace and Darcie and . . . Bea would be safe inside a warm car in the interim. I’d leave the windows down enough for ventilation, but not enough that they’d be in any danger from the cold.
And I’d try not to think about her. About Bea.
Because it was Bea.
My mind might be gibbering chaos, but I knew her too well to make a mistake on that front.
“You have to believe me,” Grace pleaded. “Darcie lost it. She gave Vansi a cup of coffee and Vansi got real drowsy. I figured it was shock, you know? She’s been so strong all day, worried about Kaea, and I was sort of waiting for reality to hit her.”
My throat thick at the memory of Phoenix’s body so alone in the cellar, I nodded. “Nix and V, they were each other’s first and only love.”
“Aaron told me,” Grace said softly, even as I thought I heard Darcie’s breathing alter. “He said Nix told him on his wedding day that he couldn’t imagine going through life with anyone else.”
“You should tell V that once she’s had more time to grieve.” It’d matter to her, especially given the problems she and Phoenix had been having of late. “Why did Darcie attack you?” I shot Darcie a quick look, didn’t spot any visible change.
“It was weird. I talk nonsense when I’m nervous, and I was worried about everything, so I started babbling about that TV drama that was on recently. You know, with the twin sisters? Where one turns out to have murdered the other one?”
I was about to say I had no idea what she was talking about when I remembered seeing a promo on a billboard in the city. “Did the posters have one woman on them, half in light, half in shadow, with a mirror image behind her?” The poster had disturbed me for reasons unintended—I’d thought it was my eyes making me see double.
“Yes, that’s the one. I was saying how I didn’t buy the cold-blooded nature of the murder when the writers of the show had spent the entire season building up the bond between the twins.” Grace’s words picked up speed. “If we were to believe that, then we had to believe that by killing her twin, the survivor was killing herself—and yet we see her walk off into the sunset to live the perfect life.”
“Go on.”
“There’s nothing else—that’s when Darcie began screaming.”
I caught Grace’s bewildered headshake in the rearview mirror, the movement clear enough that I could make it out even in the gloom inside the vehicle. The instrument lights barely penetrated the thick dark of it, but I couldn’t risk driving with the interior light on—my vision wouldn’t be able to cope with the different light levels inside and out.
“She asked me if I was accusing her of killing her sister, and how dare I . . . and honestly, I don’t remember the rest too well. I know we were in the kitchen for the start of it. That’s when she must’ve grabbed the knife and I must’ve panicked and taken one, too.”
Grace’s voice trembled. “I was so scared, Luna. I screamed at her to stop after she chased me into the living room, but she wouldn’t, and then she tried to hurt Vansi and I had to fight—I didn’t mean to stab her that hard!”
She was sobbing by the end, her breathing jagged and broken.
A sound from the front passenger seat, a stir.
48
Idared a glance and saw that Darcie’s eyes were fluttering. “Darcie?” I said sharply, even as I returned my attention to the windscreen and the blurry gold of my headlights in the rain.
Darcie’s answer was a groan.
“Don’t let her convince you it was me,” Grace begged, her voice wet. “I know she’s your friend, but I didn’t do anything except defend myself. She’s probably the reason this woman is unconscious. Darcie probably gave her something, too.”
Darcie’s voice was a rasp low enough that it would’ve been inaudible if I hadn’t brought the Land Cruiser to a halt when I sensed her trying to straighten up from her slumped-over position. “Sh . . . she . . . ’s lying.”
“I’m not!” Grace kicked the back of Darcie’s seat. “You crazy bitch!”
“Grace! Stop it!”
A sob. “Sorry, I’m sorry. I just can’t stand her anymore. She hurt Aaron, too, didn’t she? That’s why he didn’t come back with you.”
“He’s fine. Just unconscious.” I didn’t add any information about Ash.
Then Darcie said, “Ash?” in a voice that was a tremor.
“He’s fine, too,” I replied, because the last thing I needed was for her to dissolve into hysteria, feigned or real. “Just fell through a rotten board and hit his head. I left him and Aaron together in a warm place.”
Darcie’s cough was painful, a scraping kind of thing. “Grace stabbed me.” The words were firmer this time, even though her face was white from lack of blood, her lips almost bluish. “She’s crazy.”
“I don’t even know you!” Grace yelled. “Any of you! You’re Aaron’s friends!”
“Luna . . .” Another rasping breath. “She’s right. We don’t know her. We know nothing about her.”
A chill spread through me at that simple statement that echoed my own earlier thought. Grace might not know us, but we also didn’t know her. But there was a much, much bigger elephant in the vehicle. “Darcie,” I said, “why is Bea in the back passenger seat?”
Darcie seemed to jerk. “I th-thought I imagined . . .” Rustling, as if she was struggling to look into the back. “Scam, it’s a scam,” she rasped at last. “Bea’s dead. They sent me an official death certificate. My Triss is dead, Luna.”
She sounded so shaken, her tears so savage that I found myself wanting to believe her. But that woman was Bea. Yet if Darcie hadn’t known of her continued existence . . . then what? Where had Bea been all this time? Had she somehow fooled Darcie into believing her dead, then just left us for so many years?
My heart threatened to implode from the pain, but I had to face it. If Bea had been alive the past nine years, then she’d chosen not to contact me.
“G-Grace is insane. Came after me with a cleaver after I started to worry why Vansi was so deeply asleep. Said she’d tell me why while she was gutting me.”
“Luna, don’t listen to her!” Huge tears rolled down Grace’s face as she jerked forward against the seat belt, coming close enough to me that the blur of darkness vanished and I could see her. “She’s getting into your mind. That’s what she does! She’s the one who made us all come to this horrid place!”
Darcie took several breaths to reply, as if gathering her strength. And in that time, I decided to continue driving. I didn’t know how long it’d take in this weather, or how much longer either woman would survive. Because while Grace had seemed feisty when she’d lunged against her seat belt, I’d noticed that the whites of her eyes were scarily pale.
She was losing blood. A lot of it.
“It’s funny,” Darcie said at last. “I almost forgot. It was Aaron who suggested we meet up. Said he wanted to introduce Grace to his oldest friends.”
I could imagine Aaron doing just that—after Bea, he’d been the one most likely to organize group events. “Who chose the estate as the location?”
“Me,” Darcie admitted. “We’d otherwise have had to pay for a place and it was big enough.”
“See?” Grace said. “She’s the one who brought us to this hellhole.”
Grace was right—but if Grace had nudged Aaron into bringing up the idea of a reunion, then the Shepherd estate would’ve been by far the most obvious option. I didn’t keep a permanent residence in the country, Vansi and Phoenix had an apartment in a building close to the hospital, Kaea’s was a small bachelor pad, while the two other couples owned homes in the suburbs. Nice enough homes but not set up to accommodate eight for what was meant to be a vacation.
We could’ve hired a place, but it had never come up because Darcie had offered the estate right off. Even if she hadn’t, someone would’ve asked if it was available and still in a habitable state. While we’d never visited it, we’d heard all about it the years we’d been friends with her and Bea. We’d always talked about doing a big weekend there, never quite got around to it.
The pathway would’ve always led to the estate.
“Luna.” Darcie’s quiet, pained voice. “You know me. I’ve never been violent.”
No, Darcie wasn’t violent. Darcie was manipulative, far preferred to get her way through more underhanded methods. If anything, Bea had been the violent one. I’d once seen her lash out at Darcie over some slight, literally haul her into a hair-pulling fight. But they’d been teenage girls then, their hormones running amok.
“I’m not violent, either.” Grace’s tone was brittle. “But she’s your friend and you don’t know me. You don’t know that I draw hot baths for Aaron after he’s had a hard day. You don’t know I drive a cute red car that’s my pride and joy. And you don’t know that I spoil our puppy so much that I cried when we left him with the dog sitter.”
Something flashed in front of the lights.
Braking hard, I searched the dark. “Did you see that?”
“What?” both women said, one a sharp question, the other a mumble.
I looked hard, but whatever it had been was gone. Probably an animal. A possum? Did they have deer in this region? I didn’t know, took extreme care when I started to move again. “Grace, do you remember the exact location of the slip?”
“No.” A single sullen word. “Maybe forty-five minutes away at regular speed?”
I frowned, tried to think back to our discussion. “That doesn’t sound right. We’d be well past the settlement by then.”
“Maybe it was thirty minutes then? My brain’s all fuzzy.” The strength in Grace’s tone was dwindling rapidly, and I could imagine her face coated with fine threads of silver. Imagination was all I had right now, because she’d pushed back into her seat and been enveloped by the pillowy shadows; I could see large motions but no detail of her face or expression.
Her dullness of spirit and hazy memory worried me for what it implied about her level of blood loss.
As I drove, I chewed on my lower lip, attempting to see through Grace’s and Darcie’s words and coming up against the same hard wall of fact: they’d admitted to stabbing each other. I just had no way to tell which one had been the instigator.
“I’d never hurt Ash.” Darcie’s whisper was a sepia photograph as faded as Clara and Blake’s wedding image. “That woman pretending to be Bea . . . she has blood on her dress. Did she do something to him? Did Grace?”
I’d been trying not to think about that, to focus just on the situation with Grace and Darcie—neither one of whom had blamed Bea for their own stabbing. So where had the blood come from?
Grace snorted. “Your husband didn’t come back because he can’t stand to be around you.”
“You don’t know him. You don’t know us.”
“Aaron told me about Ash and your sister, and I saw the truth on his face when he found that doll. He still loves her. He was the one tormenting you with it, you know. You really think he’s going to stay with you now that she’s come back from the dead? And how about that? I thought you told everyone she was dead!”
“Grace,” I snapped, intending to tell her to knock it off.
But Darcie said, “Ash would never do that to me,” at the same time.
“I saw him with the doll the morning of the hike! I figured he was just being a dick and it wasn’t my business to interfere in your fake picture-perfect marriage.”
“I don’t beli—” Darcie’s words cut off as she began to cough, harsh and raw.
“You need water?”
But she shook her head. After half a minute, the cough cleared away in short spurts.
In the silence, I listened for Bea’s breaths . . . and heard them. Deep and steady, her sleep drugged and dreamless.
She was alive.
Bea was alive.
And I couldn’t think about that if I wanted to stay sane this night and get help for Kaea and Ash, Aaron and Vansi, all four of them trapped in that house stained by violent deaths past and present. The question of Bea would swallow me up if I permitted myself to fall into it.
“Your husband hates you,” Grace said from the back, her tone more spiteful than I’d have imagined Aaron’s adorable fiancée could ever sound. “Surely you know that. The way he looks at you when you can’t see him, it’s not like a loving husband. He looks at you as if you’re someone he’s never seen before. As if you’re a monster hidden under the skin of his wife.”
I should’ve spoken up, should’ve defended my friend, but I needed to hear Darcie’s reaction.
“Ash doesn’t hate me,” Darcie said, but her voice was tremulous, lacking in conviction. “I’ve never done anything but love him. Why would he hate me?”
