Authors: Lisa Jackson

Afraid to Die (38 page)

BOOK: Afraid to Die

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Someone dived in next to her.

She felt strong arms surround her rib cage in a death grip. She was weak, about to pass out, when she was jerked upward, roughly dragged toward the surface, a ripple of air escaping her lungs.

As they broke through the water, she gasped, coughing and spewing as she found herself staring into the stern, uncompromising gaze of a total stranger.

“Are you out of your mind?” he demanded, slinging the water from his hair with a muscular twist. But before she could answer, he snarled, “Oh, hell!” and started kicking hard, holding her tightly, dragging her to the shore. She'd drifted away from the dock, but his strokes, strong and sure, cut through the water and pulled them both to the sandy beach, where he deposited her in the waist-high water. “Come on!” he snapped. His arm steadied her as they slogged through the lapping water and up the sandy shoreline. Her teeth were chattering, and she was shivering head to toe, but she barely felt anything other than a deep-seated and painful grief. Swallowing against the pain, she tasted salt and finally roused herself enough to look at this man she'd never met before.

Or had she? There was something remotely familiar about him. Over six feet tall, in a wet, long-sleeved shirt and soaked jeans, he was rugged-looking, as if he'd spent most of his thirty-odd years outdoors.

“What the hell were you thinking?” he demanded, shaking the hair out of his eyes. “You could have drowned!” And then, as an afterthought, “Are you okay?”

Of course she was not okay. She was damned certain she would never be even remotely okay again.

“Let's get you inside.” He was still holding on to her, and he helped her past a pair of boots thrown haphazardly on the grass, then up the overgrown sandy path toward the house.

“Who
are
you?” she asked.

He eyed her up and down. “Austin Dern.” When she didn't respond, he said, “And you're Ava Garrison? You own this place?”

“Part of it.” She tried to wring the cold salt water from her hair, but it was impossible.

“
Most
of it.” His eyes narrowed on her as she shivered. “And you don't know who I am?”

“Not a clue.” Even in her state of shock, the man irritated her.

He muttered something under his breath, then said, “Well, now, isn't that something? You hired me. Just last week.” He was pushing her toward the house.

“Me?” Oh, God, how bad was her memory? Sometimes it seemed as thin and fragile as a cheesecloth. But not about this. Shaking her head, feeling the cold water drip down her back, she said, “I don't think so.” She would have remembered him. She was sure of it.

“Actually it was your husband.”

Oh. Wyatt.
“I guess he forgot to tell me.”

“Yeah?” His gaze skated over her bedraggled, freezing form, and for a second, she wondered just how sheer her sodden nightgown was.

“By the way, you're welcome.” He didn't so much as crack a smile. Though darkness was settling over the island, she saw his features, set and grim. Deep-set eyes, their color undetermined in the coming night; square, beard-shadowed jaw; blade-thin lips; and a nose that wasn't quite straight. His hair was as dark as the night, somewhere between a deep brown and black. They trudged together toward the behemoth three-storied manor.

On the back porch, the screen door flew open, then banged shut behind a woman running from the house. “Ava? Oh, God, what happened?” Khloe demanded, her face a mask of concern as it caught in the porch light. She sprinted past the garden and jumped over a small hedge of boxwoods to grab Ava as the stranger released his grip on her body. “Oh my God, you're soaking wet!” Khloe was shaking her head, and her expression was caught somewhere between pity and fear. “What the hell were you doing ... oh, don't even say it. I know.” She held Ava close and didn't seem to care that her jeans and sweater were soaking up the water from her friend's nightgown. “You have to stop this, Ava. You have to.” Glancing up at the stranger, she added to Ava, “Come on, let's get you into the house.” Then to Dern, “You too. Dear God, you're both soaked to the bone!”

Khloe and Dern both tried to help her up the path, but she shook them both off, startling Virginia's black cat, Mr. T, who had been hiding behind a withering rhododendron. With a hiss, the cat slid into a crawl space under the porch just as Ava's cousin, Jacob, came running from his burrow of an apartment in the basement of the old house.

Some of her old pluck began returning. She was tired of playing the victim, bored with the pitying stares and the knowing glances shared between others as if to say,
Poor, poor thing
. So they thought she was crazy.

Big deal.

It wasn't as if she hadn't questioned her sanity herself, just minutes ago, and yet everyone's concern was really beginning to get under her skin.

“What happened?” Jacob demanded. His glasses were off-kilter and his reddish hair mussed, as if he'd been asleep.

Ignoring him and everyone else, Ava clambered up the stairs, dripping, her nightgown sucked tight to her body. She didn't give a damn what they thought. She
knew
she'd seen Noah, and no matter what Khloe or her cowboyesque savior or even the damned shrink Ms. Evelyn McPherson thought, she wasn't insane. Had never been. Wasn't ready for the loony bin.

“Let me help you,” Khloe said, but Ava was having none of it.

“I'm fine.”

“You just jumped into the ocean, Ava! You are definitely not anywhere close to
fine
.”

“Just leave me alone, Khloe.”

Khloe glanced at Dern, then backed up, lifting her hands, palms out. “Ooookay.”

“No need to be melodramatic,” Ava muttered.

“Oh, yeah.
I'm
the drama queen!” Khloe sighed heavily.

“Just for the record, who was it who flung herself into the bay a few minutes ago?”

“Okay, okay.” Ava was up the stairs and opening the screen door. “I get it.” Once inside, where the heat hit her like a wall and the tangy scent of tomatoes and clams swept through the hallways, she hurried past the wall of windows that overlooked the yard, taking another quick glance. Now, aside from a few security lights, the grounds were dark, the fog too dense to see the end of the pier. Her heart ached at the thought of her son, but she pushed her grief aside.

At least her mind had cleared somewhat; her headache, if not completely gone, at least had receded to somewhere far away from her frontal lobes. She heard the screen door open and close behind her and knew that her confrontation with Khloe, and possibly the man who had leaped in after her, wasn't yet over.

Great. Just what she needed!

Teeth chattering so hard they rattled, she was heading toward the back stairs when she heard the clunk of the elevator from the shaft that ran along the east side of the stairs, then the whisper of the elevator doors slowly opening.

She prayed the occupant wasn't Jewel-Anne. But, of course, she wasn't so lucky, and within seconds her pudgy cousin emerged, her electric wheelchair carrying her into the hallway. Through thick glasses, she threw a look at Ava, taking in her soggy nightgown, plastered hair, and probably nearly blue skin.

“Swimming again?” she asked with that smug little smile Ava would have liked to wipe off her face. Jewel-Anne pulled out an earbud from her iPhone, and Ava heard the strains of Elvis's “Suspicious Minds” sounding tinny at the distance.

“We're caught in a trap,”
he warbled, and Ava wondered why a woman who had been born long after the rock icon had died had become such a die-hard fan. Of course, she knew the pat answer, because she'd posed the question to Jewel-Anne just this past year. Over her oatmeal, with one earbud plugged in, Jewel-Anne had turned deadly serious. “We shared the same birthday, you know.” She'd added a second scoop of brown sugar to her cereal.

Somehow, Ava had managed to keep her sarcastic tongue in check and said only, “You weren't even alive whenâ”

“He speaks to me, Ava!” Jewel-Anne's lips had compressed with certainty. “He was such a tragic figure.” She paid attention to her breakfast, stirring her butter and brown sugar and swirling her hot cereal in her bowl. “Like me.”

Then she'd looked up at Ava with innocent eyes, and Ava had felt the deep jab of guilt that only her paraplegic cousin could inspire.

You're not the only one he speaks to,
she'd wanted to say.
There are hundreds of Elvis sightings every day. He's probably “speaking” to those lunatics, too.
Rather than escalate a fight with no end, she'd pushed out her chair, scooped out the remainder of her cereal into the sink, and dropped her bowl into the dishwasher just as Jacob, Jewel-Anne's only full brother, strolled into the kitchen without a word, found a toasted bagel, and walked out the back door, his backpack slung over one thick shoulder. Once an all-state wrestler, Jacob, with his curly, red hair and acne-scarred, fair skin, was a perpetual student who owned every electronic gadget imaginable. He was a full-blown computer geek and as strange as his sister.

Now Jewel-Anne, with her straight, waist-length hair and trusting, so-sincere blue eyes, didn't have to utter a word but Ava knew she still believed she had a special connection to the King of Rock and Roll.
Oh, sure, Elvis speaks to Jewel-Anne.
Even in nonliteral terms, Ava doubted they had even the most tenuous of connections and quickly took the stairs two at a time.

Why should she worry about her own sanity when she was living with a group of people who, at one time or another, could have been certifiably nuts?

ZEBRA BOOKS are published by

Kensington Publishing Corp.
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^thStreet
New York, NY 10018

If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the Publisher and neither the Author nor the Publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

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ISBN: 978-1-4201-2844-4

BOOK: Afraid to Die

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