still shrouded in darkness. She glimpsed Mark in his robe, sitting in the rocker by the fireplace. But his face was swallowed up in the shadows, and he wasn’t moving at all. As Ina warily approached him, she saw that his wavy brown hair was matted down with blood on one side. He stared back at her with open dead eyes and a bewildered expression. The top left side of his head had been blown off.
“Oh, no,” Ina whispered, a hand over her mouth. “No, no, no…”
Someone emerged from the darkness beyond the kitchen door.
Ina gasped again. She saw Mark’s hunting rifle—aimed at her.
Tears streamed down Ina’s face as she gazed at the person who was about to kill her. “Oh, my God, honey,” she whispered, shaking her head. “What have you done?”
The shotgun went off.
Chapter Three
Her aunt was staring at her, and asking, “What have you done?” And that was when Amelia shot her in the chest.
All at once, she bolted up and accidentally banged her knee against the steering wheel of Shane’s Volkswagen Golf. Amelia barely noticed the pain. She was just glad to be awake—and out of that nightmare. It seemed so horribly real. She’d even felt the blood splattering on her face as she’d shot her parents and Aunt Ina at close range.
Now Amelia anxiously checked her reflection in the rearview mirror. She touched her hair. Not a drop of blood anywhere. If she’d washed it off, she certainly would remember. It was a dream—vivid and frightening, but still just a dream.
Shivering from the cold, Amelia looked around. It took her a moment to realize she’d fallen asleep in the front seat of the VW. She’d parked in the small, desolate lot of a boarded-up hot dog stand. The unlit, cracked sign had a cartoon of a smiling dachshund. It read: WIENER WORLD! HOT DOG EMPORIUM—WIENERS, FRIES, & COLD DRINKS!
Amelia wasn’t sure where she was, but she could hear cars zooming along on the other side of some evergreen trees across the street from Wiener World. She had to be somewhere close to a highway. She squinted at her wristwatch: 11:15 A.M.
Her head was throbbing and she felt so thirsty she could hardly swallow. She hadn’t had a hangover in several weeks, and this was a painful reminder of what it had been like during her drinking days. Now Amelia remembered the party last night, and how she’d treated Shane so shabbily. She remembered grabbing that bottle of tequila and driving off toward Wenatchee. She’d had this sudden urge to get to the family cabin, and make certain her parents and her Aunt Ina were all right. She’d been convinced some harm would come to them.
Amelia felt around under the car seat for that bottle of tequila. There was still some left, and she took a swig from the bottle. But even the jolt of alcohol didn’t erase the violent images lingering from that nightmare. Something had happened at the Lake Wenatchee house; she was sure of it.
Amelia wished she could remember, but everything was a blank from the time she’d sped away from that party on fraternity row to when she’d woken up here just moments ago. She suffered from occasional blackouts—lost time. It usually happened when she was drinking, but she’d experienced these memory lapses other times, too. On several occasions, people claimed they’d seen her here or there, and Amelia didn’t remember it at all. It was almost as if she were sleepwalking some of the time.
Had she killed her parents and her aunt during one of these sleepwalking episodes? Was it possible?
Amelia put down the tequila bottle, then dug her cell phone from her purse. Squinting at it, she dialed her mother’s cell number. But if they were still at the cabin, the call wouldn’t get through. Sure enough, just as she thought, no luck. Biting her lip, Amelia dialed her Aunt Ina and Uncle George’s house in Seattle. Her Uncle George had stayed home with her cousins this weekend. If something had really happened, he might know about it.
“Could you please make that announcement again?” George McMillan asked the woman at the concierge desk in the Pacific Place Shopping Center.
Nodding, the pretty concierge with curly auburn hair and cocoa-colored skin gave him a pained, sympathetic smile. She picked up her phone and pushed a couple of numbers.
“Stephanie McMillan, attention, Stephanie McMillan.” Her voice interrupted the music on the public address system. “Please meet your father by the first-floor escalators.” She repeated the announcement.
“Thank you,” George said, nervously tapping his fingers on the edge of the desk. He gazed up at the people passing by the railings on all four shopping levels of the vast skylit atrium. No sign of Steffie. He scanned the faces of the shoppers lined up on the escalators. He still didn’t see her. His stomach felt as tight as a fist.
His daughter had wandered off about fifteen minutes ago. Already, George had sweated through his shirt. He imagined every horrifying scenario of what might have happened to her. He saw Stephanie’s face on milk cartons. He thought about the call from the police, asking him to come identify the corpse of a pretty, freckled-faced, auburn-haired five-year-old. He imagined looking for the little strawberry mark on her arm—just to make sure it wasn’t Stephanie’s double. As if there was another like her.
His son, Jody, eleven, was supposed to have been keeping an eye on her. George had taken the kids to Old Navy in downtown Seattle this morning. His wife, Ina, had made out a shopping list that included the kids’ clothes and some other things she wanted him to get. After Old Navy, he’d stopped by Pottery Barn in the Pacific Place Shopping Center to pick up candles—specifically, “eight-inch pillars in fig.” George had had a big bag from Old Navy weighing down one arm and Steffie hanging on the other. He wasn’t sure if fig was tan, brown, or green. Or maybe it was purple—no, that was plum. He had unloaded Stephanie on her brother, then went in search of a saleslady.
At the time, he kept wondering why the hell Ina needed these stupid candles now. She wasn’t entertaining any time soon. Why didn’t she just buy them herself when she got back from Lake Wenatchee? Considering the company and their situation, George hadn’t been up for the trip this weekend. Besides, someone had to look after the kids. Jenna and Mark had volunteered Amelia’s services as a babysitter, but George didn’t have much confidence his niece could handle the task, at least not for the entire weekend.
The last few months had been pretty rough for everyone. The drowning of his nephew, Collin, had hit George awfully hard. Collin had had a special bond with his Uncle George, and he’d been like a big brother to Jody. His death had devastated two families, not just one. George walked around in a dark stupor for weeks afterward. Maybe that explained why he couldn’t see what was happening between Ina and his brother-in-law.
Once George discovered the letter Ina had started to Mark, he realized his wife must have wanted him to see what was happening.
In fact, it had already happened—in the Hotel Alexis. “Dear Mark,” she’d scribbled on the hotel’s stationery.
As I write this, you’re in the shower. I still feel you all over me, and inside me. I know what we did was wrong. I’m not arguing with you about that. But we’re two good people, who are hurting. We’ve found something with each other, something that made our pain and loneliness go away. I’m not sure if it’s love. But I do know I’ve always felt a connection with you. You haven’t—
That was as far as she’d gotten before she’d half crumpled up the note and thrown it away—in their master bathroom, for God’s sake. It lingered
