Chapter 19
This time when Jesse managed to crawl her way out of the painful darkness, she wasn’t confused about why her head ached. She had a vivid memory of the branch connecting with the back of her skull and fireworks exploding behind her eyes.
The knowledge that she’d been attacked … again … meant she had enough sense in her throbbing brain to avoid revealing she was awake. Instead, she held herself as still as possible while she cracked open her eyes.
Everything was fuzzy, like she was underwater, but she could determine the fact that she was in a shadowy room with bare wooden walls. And that she was lying on a narrow cot that smelled like mold. Overhead, she could see open beams with a bare light bulb dangling from a wire.
The place looked oddly familiar. As if she’d been here a very long time ago. It was at last the soft lap of the water from outside that jolted a specific memory of loud music, laughter, and the joy of being young and carefree.
Of course. The old boathouse next to the dock.
The realization brought a mixture of relief and sheer terror.
Relief that she hadn’t been kidnapped and taken miles away from Canton. And terror that she was in a remote shack where no one could hear her scream.
“I should have known you would be a pain in the ass,” a female voice drawled, shattering Jesse’s pretense of sleep.
“It doesn’t matter that I spent years going over each detail of my plan in order to make it run smoothly.
You just had to interrupt me paying my respects instead of patiently waiting for me at Noah’s house.
I shouldn’t be surprised, of course, that you ruined the moment. You ruin everything.”
“Victoria?” Jesse struggled to focus her blurry eyes as a face appeared above her. She frowned. No. The delicate features with bright blue eyes and bleached-blond hair didn’t belong to her stepmother. “Reese?” she at last croaked in confusion.
“Keep trying,” the woman taunted. “I’m sure it will come to you.”
Jesse continued to stare in confusion. Why would her real estate agent be in the boathouse? Was she involved in kidnapping her? Then something about the petulant twist of Reese’s lips struck a chord of memory. She’d seen that petulance before. “Oh my God. Tegan.”
“Give the girl a gold star,” Tegan mocked, abruptly straightening.
Cautiously, Jesse pushed herself into a seated position.
Not only was she worried that there might be someone lurking in the shadows ready to give her another whack on the head, but there was a sickening throb behind her right eye.
Any quick movement was going to stab shards of pain through her brain.
“You don’t look the same,” Jesse said.
“I was a child when I left Canton, I was destined to grow up.”
She had a point. Anytime Jesse thought about her stepsister, she always pictured her as a little girl. Still, she should have been able to recognize her. “It’s not that. Your nose is different. And your cheeks.”
“Fine.” Tegan clicked her tongue. “I’ve had some work done. Didn’t anyone tell you it’s rude to discuss a woman’s little nips, tucks, and fillers?”
Jesse leaned her aching head against the wall behind her, the initial shock of Reese’s true identity beginning to wear off.
“I knew you survived.”
“Survived?” The blue eyes that had to be the result of contact lenses slowly narrowed. Tegan had brown eyes when she was young. “I suppose you could call it that. Although there were lots of times I wished I hadn’t.”
Jesse felt a stab of anger at the bitterness in the younger woman’s voice. As if she’d been the one to suffer instead of Jesse, who’d been forced to live with the aching horror of her father’s disappearance.
“Where’s Victoria?” she sharply demanded.
“Dead.”
Jesse snorted. “I don’t believe you. The bitch is a master of vanishing into thin air.”
Tegan’s taunting expression never faltered. “You know nothing.”
“Oh yeah? I know that Victoria started off as Sylvia Fulton. And that she did her first vanishing act after she killed your father, Larry Maitland, in Little Rock, Arkansas. And then vanished again after she killed Liam Tanner in St. Louis and started the fire to distract the authorities. Unfortunately, that brought her to Canton to marry my dad.”
This time the words came out with a bold confidence. The fact that Tegan was standing there, like a vision from her nightmares, proved she wasn’t grasping at straws.
“Yes, her decision to come to Canton was unfortunate,” Tegan readily agreed. “For all of us.”
“She arranged the crash outside of town to disappear before returning to kill my father,” Jesse continued, not so much to show off how much she’d discovered, but in an effort to figure out why she was currently trapped in the boathouse with Tegan smirking at her with that too white smile.
“I assume she didn’t kill him before leaving town because he wasn’t worth more than the cash she’d already stolen from the safe.
So what happened? Why did she come back?
Did my dad threaten to reveal she was a psychopath? ”
Tegan chuckled, unfazed by the fact that Jesse had just accused her mother of being a serial killer. Did that mean she’d followed in Victoria’s footsteps? The thought sent a chill through Jesse, emphasizing the musty isolation of their surroundings.
If Tegan decided to kill her, how long would it take for someone to find her body? Would she end up like her dad? A forgotten skeleton?
Jesse shoved away the stomach-churning image.
She had no idea why Tegan was in the boathouse or what plans she was so upset about Jesse ruining, but she did know that the only way she was going to survive was if she could be smarter than her stepsister.
And that meant she couldn’t give into the rising panic.
“So close and yet so far away,” Tegan was drawling when Jesse managed to regain command of her nerves.
“Far away about what?”
“Victoria’s villain origin story. To start with, Larry Maitland wasn’t my father.”
“Then who …” Jesse’s words trailed away as she considered what she’d missed. Finally, the truth hit her. She couldn’t believe she’d been blind to the obvious explanation. “Of course. Buzz from the trailer park was your dad.”
For the first time since Tegan had revealed her true identity, she looked surprised. “My, my. You have been a busy bee.”
“How did she end up married to Larry Maitland?”
Tegan shrugged. “They’d hooked up a couple of times. A purely casual exchange of sex for drugs. But when my mom discovered she was pregnant she knew it was her golden ticket out of the trailer park.”
Jesse nodded, then wished she hadn’t, as a stab of pain made her eye twitch. For a poor woman living in squalor, the fancy house in the suburbs must have seemed like the pearly gates were swinging open to enter heaven.
“It obviously wasn’t a golden ticket for long.”
“No. Maitland was a violent brute who cheated, lied, and threatened to kill both of us more than once. She did what she had to do.”
Tegan was eerily nonchalant discussing her mother putting a bullet in Larry Maitland’s head. Just another day.
“Including stealing his money?” Jesse demanded, shifting on the cot as if getting more comfortable while she tried to feel for the phone she’d tucked into her pocket before being knocked unconscious.
Hope flared through her heart. It was there. Either Tegan hadn’t noticed it or didn’t care, the worrisome thought whispered through the back of her mind.
“Trust me, she earned every penny,” Tegan was continuing to defend her mother.
“Did she earn Liam Tanner’s money as well?”
“He wasn’t as physically violent, but he had a habit of trading in his wives for younger models.”
Jesse slowly inched her hand toward her hip. “Had he already picked out the next Mrs. Tanner?”
“Yes. A stripper from Chicago who passed herself off as an interior designer. The only thing she designed was her way into Liam’s bed. It was only a matter of time before we were going to be tossed out with nothing.”
“Instead, she embezzled from his company before killing him.”
“Trust me, the world is a better place without Liam Tanner.”
“I can’t believe you’re that callous.” Jesse shook her head, as if she was troubled by her stepsister’s lack of empathy.
In truth, she wasn’t remotely surprised.
There’d been a strange lack of emotion in Tegan even as a child.
All she wanted was to keep her talking long enough to reach her phone and call for help.
“You know that Kayla still grieves for her best friend who died in a terrible fire?”
“Kayla?” Tegan said the name without surprise.
She’d known that Jesse had gone to see the younger woman.
“You know, I genuinely liked her. She was the only real friend I ever had.” She paused, as if enjoying a distant memory.
“That’s why I chose the name Tegan. Kayla used to say when she got married and had a baby girl she would name her Tegan Reese. ”
“Tegan,” Jesse breathed. “Reese Skylar.”
“Yes. I missed her for a long time.”
Jesse didn’t bother to ask how Victoria had managed to change their identities so easily. Money and a connection to criminals could make anything possible.
“And my dad? He loved you. Did you ever miss him?”
The slap came without warning. One second Tegan was regarding her with a faint smile and the next she was smacking her palm against Jesse’s cheek with enough force to rattle her teeth. Jesse hissed in pain as she was knocked sideways, nearly falling off the cot.
“Don’t ever say that,” Tegan commanded.
Still groggy from the earlier blow to the head, Jesse took a moment to clear the new cobwebs from her mind. At least the slap gave her the opportunity to place her hand behind her back as she shoved herself upright, she tried to reassure herself. She had to keep fighting.
“Don’t say what?” she asked, her voice hoarse.
“That your father loved me.”
“He did.”
“No. If he loved me, he would have fought for me.”