Aquamarine (18 page)

Shea sat up abruptly. Teague lay there, smiling up at her, his eyes half shut. He looked so damn gorgeous, she could hardly stand it. The pain in her chest was unbearable; she could almost believe that hearts really did break in two. “Kirsten?” she whispered. She’d been a fool from the very beginning. She’d always known in her heart of hearts that it was Kirsten he loved, not Shea. Never Shea.

She stood, watching as the realization of his faux pas dawned on him. His face congealed into a mask of horrified contrition. Too little, too late.

“Shea. Shea, I’m sorry. It was a slip of the tongue. It didn’t mean a thing. Honestly. I’m just so used to calling you Kirsten in front of the Raineys that I used the wrong name.”

“Damn you, Teague Harris.” If her voice was cold, her heart was colder, a lump of ice in her chest. She turned her back on him and walked from the room.

After gathering together her scattered clothes, Shea locked herself in the bathroom. She needed a shower, a long, hot shower.

She bawled herself dry in the first fifteen minutes, then spent the next fifteen minutes trying in vain to wash away her self-disgust.

Teague was a jerk, she was a fool, and the whole situation was a mess. Damn hormones.

By the time she got out of the shower, all the hot water was gone, her skin was shriveled, and she’d come to terms with the facts.

Fact one: She’d just hit the jackpot with a megaor-gasm. Big deal. Happened every day. Okay, maybe not to her, but looking on the bright side, she’d have the memory of at least one mind-blowing sexual experience to comfort her in her old age.

Fact two: She was in love with Teague, but Teague was still in love with Kirsten. This fact was more painful to swallow, but it wasn’t, she assured herself, a fatal dose. She would recover her perspective gradually over time and with distance. Especially with distance. Because even knowing it was Kirsten he saw when he looked at her, she knew that one hot glance from Teague’s smoky gray eyes and she’d jump him like a trampoline. The sooner she left Liberty, the better. Tomorrow would be good; today might be better.

Fact three: Whoever had said it was better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all was full of it. Big time.

She dressed in a rush, suddenly desperate to be gone. In her haste, she knocked over the key caddy, spilling its contents—mostly loose change, a couple of pairs of cufflinks, keys, and tie tacks.

She knelt to gather up the few items that had rolled onto the floor and discovered that one of them was a ring.

Not just any ring, either. Fear trickled an icy warning along her veins. An engagement ring. Kirsten’s engagement ring, looking just as Kevin had described it, a pale aquamarine stone surrounded by a cluster of diamonds in a platinum setting.

She stared at it, momentarily paralyzed by dread. So where—and when—had Teague found this ring, which Kevin had said Kirsten never removed? Had Teague
killed
Kirsten? If not, then what was her ring doing in his apartment?

On the other hand, if he had killed her, why would he keep a piece of incriminating evidence lying around? That didn’t make sense.

Shea held the ring to the light. Its sparkle reminded her of the crystal cluster in Kirsten’s room on the island. She touched a facet with her forefinger, half expecting to experience the same rush she’d felt in her contact with the crystal, but nothing happened. “Kirsten?” she whispered, rolling the ring back and forth between her thumb and forefinger. The stones reflected the light, giving away no secrets.

She jumped when Teague hammered at the bathroom door. “Are you all right in there?”

For a moment she was speechless. Panic scrambled her brain and dried her mouth. Was he a murderer or not? She didn’t have a clue. All she knew for certain was that she couldn’t let him suspect what she’d discovered. She buried the ring under the pile of loose change, wincing at the rattle of the coins. Had he heard? Would he realize what she was doing?

“I’m okay,” she answered. Her voice shook a little, but perhaps he’d put that down to her outraged sensibilities. Calling the woman you just made love with by your dead wife’s name was a pretty major social gaffe.

“Then could you open the door? We need to talk.” His voice was soft and urgent, his tone persuasive, but still Shea hesitated. How could she trust him? He’d always acted as if he were hiding something when they discussed Kirsten’s disappearance. Maybe he hadn’t killed her, but he obviously knew more about what had happened than he’d admitted.

“Did you hear me?” His fists banged out a staccato rhythm on the bathroom door.

She clicked the lock, turned the knob, then slowly pushed the door open. “I heard you.” She shot him a nervous sideways glance. She had to get out of there. She needed to be alone to make sense of things.

“Dammit, Shea,” he said, reaching out to take her by the shoulders. “Let me explain.”

“Not now.” She shied away, and his eyes went opaque with pain. She couldn’t bear to look at them, so she shifted her gaze to her own clenched fists.

“I don’t want you to go.” His voice was a whisper, tender and pleading, and it cut her like a knife. But when he touched her face tentatively, she stiffened and he let his hand drop. “I made a mistake, Shea, a stupid slip of the tongue. I’m so very sorry. Believe me, I never meant to hurt you.”

“Teague, I can’t discuss this rationally right now. I need some time alone to put things in perspective.” She risked a quick glance at his face, then wished she hadn’t. He looked so wretched that she nearly relented, despite what she suspected.

“Shea.” His voice was husky with suppressed emotion. “Before you go, I just want to say one thing.” He took a deep breath.

She stared at him, her expression carefully neutral.

“I love you, Shea. Not Kirsten. You.”

If only she could believe that. If only she could trust him. She edged toward the door, her heart pounding like a whole section of timpani players high on amphetamines.

Teague stepped in front of her, cutting off her escape route. “Please don’t walk out on me, Shea.” His face mirrored her own anguish, but she hardened her heart against him.

“You mean the way Kirsten walked out on you? What did you two quarrel about? What sent her running home to Daddy?” Her random shot found its target.

His face hardened. “That’s none of your concern.” The words themselves were spoken softly, but they still sent a ripple of alarm shivering down her spine. Dear God,
could
he be the killer?

The schoolhouse clock on the wall above the bookcase bonged out the hour. Two o’clock. So early. It seemed she’d been there a lifetime. Teague stared down at her, his expression unreadable. Her hands trembled. Her heart raced. Was Kirsten about to disappear again?

Fighting off a rising tide of panic, she ducked under his arm and dashed for the door, snatching up her purse as she went. Her heartbeat echoed so loudly in her ears, it nearly drowned out the sounds of pursuit. She was mere inches from freedom, with one hand actually grasping the doorknob, when he caught up with her.

A single violent tug loosened her grip on the knob
and brought her spinning around to face him. Both of them were breathing hard.

“Dammit, Shea. Don’t look at me like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like you’re scared to death I’m going to hurt you.”

“You
are
hurting me.”

His mouth twisted in pain as if the circulation was being cut off to
his
hand. He loosened his grip, but he didn’t release her wrist. “I’m sorry.”

“You said that already.”

“I don’t want you to leave like this,” he said.

“You said that too.”

“Tell me what I haven’t said then. Tell me the words I need to make you understand how much I love you.”

His gaze searched her face and seemed to probe the corners of her mind. She tried not to think about the ring, about her suspicions. “There are no words,” she said.

Abruptly, he dropped her wrist. “Then I guess there’s nothing left to say but good-bye.”

She couldn’t put a name to his expression, but she felt bruised by its force. She left without another word.

By six, Shea was packed and ready to start hauling her gear out to the car. While she was debating with herself whether to leave a note for the Raineys at the desk or call tomorrow from a pay phone along the road, the telephone rang.
Teague
, she thought, and almost didn’t answer it. But she couldn’t stand to let it ring. Cautiously, she lifted the receiver.

“Kirsten?”

“Kevin?” Her heart did a little flip-flop of alarm. “What is it?”

“Dad’s taken another turn for the worse.”

“What happened?”

“Someone tried to smother him with a pillow.”

“What? How is he?”

“Holding his own. Barely. A nurse walked in just in time to scare off the would-be murderer.”

“She saw him then?”

“Not clearly. All she could swear to was that it was a big man in jeans and a dark hooded jacket.”

Like the navy-blue one Teague had worn to the island this morning? But he couldn’t have tried to kill Jack, could he? Teague admired Jack, loved him like a father—unless that relationship was as phony as their own false engagement. Her stomach rolled and she felt lightheaded. All at once she realized Kevin had just asked her something. “What?”

“Can you stay with Mikey?”

“Where? The island?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, I guess—”

“Good. Hurry.” He hung up without even saying good-bye.

Shea stared at her luggage in defeat. It seemed she wasn’t going to leave Liberty just yet.

“The girl’s not just Jack’s daughter,” Sheriff Carlton told Teague. “According to the records from that Los Angeles fertility clinic, she’s Kirsten’s twin.”

“But that’s impossible. Different mothers. Different birthdays.”

“Wrong.” The sheriff handed him the report. “When Elizabeth Rainey discovered she was unable to have children, the doctors suggested that she and her husband use a surrogate mother to carry their child.”

“Shea’s mother.”

The sheriff nodded. “Christine Miller, a young nursing student who agreed to be artificially inseminated with Jack’s sperm and carry their child to term in return for her tuition and expenses.”

“Only the child turned out to be twins.”

“Right. Knowledge Miss Miller never shared with the
Raineys. According to the nurse who worked at the clinic back then, the girl was tortured with guilt at the thought of parting with her child. So when she discovered there were two children, she saw it as God’s way of evening things out, and she decided to keep the second child.”

“But the birthdates are different. Kirsten was born in June, Shea in July.”

“Both babies were born on June fifth.” The sheriff tossed him a fax of the birth certificates. “The woman must have doctored her copy, hoping to bury the truth. What concerns me, though … is the fact that someone else has been investigating the clinic.”

“Who?”

“A PI out of Boise who refuses to divulge the name of his client.”

“So someone else knows who Shea really is.”

“It could be Jack,” the sheriff said.

“Or it could be someone with reason to know Shea isn’t Kirsten. Kirsten was murdered, Sheriff. I’m sure of it. And now Shea may be in danger too.”

Shea and Mikey were alone in the house on Massacre Island. Kevin had left for the hospital soon after she’d arrived, and now, at ten-thirty, with Mikey asleep upstairs, Shea found herself wandering from door to door, checking and rechecking the locks. She paused near the sliding glass doors in the dining room, peering out at the blackness beyond the spotlit pool.

Something moved out there, where trees and bushes edged the deck. Flipping on the security lights, she stared intently at the spot where she’d seen the flicker of movement, but all was still.

The moon was up, gibbous, a week or more away from being full. Its cool light flooded the yard, illuminating the area around the house. Shadows stretched inky fingers toward the house, ebony on silver, jet on gray, their tortured shapes creating monsters from the mundane. A decorative boulder changed into a prehistoric beast lying in wait, and the espaliered fruit trees along the fence became the skeletal remains of crucified martyrs. Shea stared until her eyes watered, but nothing moved.

“So much for my lurid imagination,” she muttered, and was about to turn away when she caught another glimpse of movement from the corner of her eye. Her heart made a leap for her throat, and her breath came in painful gasps. She concentrated so fiercely on the spot, she felt as if her eyes would burst from the strain.

Then from the midst of a clump of peonies at the far end of the planting bed waddled the slightly ridiculous figure of a skunk. Cursing herself for being a paranoid idiot, Shea turned away from the doors.

The phone rang, jarringly loud in the silent house. She slipped into the kitchen and grabbed the extension.

“Hello?”

“Shea? I just got back from the lodge. They said you checked out this afternoon. What are you doing on the island?” Teague. She should have known.

“I’m staying here.”

“Alone?”

“No, of course not.” It wasn’t a lie. Ruth and Hal Griffin were attending an all-night prayer vigil for Jack at the Tabernacle of the Blessed and Kevin and Cynthia were at the hospital, but Glory was in the Griffin apartment, nursing a headache, and Mikey was right upstairs.

“You’re lying. I can hear it in your voice. Shea, listen. You may be in danger. I want you to lock yourself in and sit tight. I’ll be right over.”

“No!”

“Shea, you’ve got to trust me.”

“The way Kirsten trusted you?”

She heard a sharp intake of breath on his end of the connection. “Shea—”

“I found her engagement ring in your bathroom.”

“What?”

“You know, the ring she never took off. The ring she was wearing the day she disappeared.”

“I had nothing to do with her disappearance.”

“Then how did the ring end up in your apartment?”

“Things have been turning up ever since the break-in, a barrette, her favorite earrings.”