Convicted (25 page)

Lisa couldn't even scream. She felt her wrists grabbed, the fingers gripping like pincers against her flesh. She fell back, but was supported by the grip of her phantom attacker. Desperately she kicked out, but whoever held her had long arms. In the dark, with no frame of reference, Lisa couldn't even see to defend herself.

"Lisa."

It took a second for the voice to register, but when it did, Lisa let out a sharp sob of relief. She yanked her wrists free, sucking in the air she'd forgotten for a moment to breath. "Al! My God, you scared the hell out of me!"

She felt her sister's form lean forward, brushing against her, to flick on the lights. Lisa threw her hand in front of her face against the sudden brightness. It took her a few moments of blinking to be able to focus on her sister's face.

Allegra looked like a refugee from a horror movie. Her dark lustrous hair, usually so smooth and shining, was now tangled and dull. Purplish half-moons shadowed her brown eyes, though the rest of her face was sallow-pale. She'd been chewing at the skin of her lips, leaving them raw and bloody.

She wore a pair of jeans so loose around her hips that the hip bones jutted like butterfly wings on either side of her sunken belly. Dark tufts of pubic hair peeked out with every shift of her hips, but what might have been meant as an erotic turn-on looked only scary. Her shirt, a red button-down, had lost most of its buttons. It gaped open to Allegra's navel, barely concealing the fullness of her clearly naked breasts beneath.

She was covered in writing from the edge of her collar bone down. Words, scrawled in blue and black ink, began a long litany of items, which read together, almost became poetic.

Eyeliner
Underwear
Red shirt
Sunscreen
Black skirt
Pantyhose
Umbrella
Dungarees

Those were just the words Lisa could read. The writing curved around Allegra's skin, disappearing beneath her clothing. The sight of it made Lisa want to gag.

"Allegra," she said carefully to her sister's dull eyes. "What have you done to yourself?"

Allegra touched her skin lightly. "Nothing. Everything. I thought if I made a list it would make me feel better."

"A list of what?" She had to look away.

"You've never stolen anything," Allegra said. "You don't know what a rush it is. Almost better than sex."

Her throaty laughter contrasted sharply with her haggard face and dark-circled eyes. Allegra ran her fingers from the base of her throat to the first row of words. Then she brought her fingers back to her lips and kissed them.

"You'd think people would pay more attention," she said. "But they don't. You can walk right out--right under their noses. And they never know."

"You did steal all that stuff."

"Get with the program, Lisa," Allegra snapped, breaking out of her dreaminess. "The train is leaving the station. Try to stay on it, okay?"

"Okay." Lisa wanted to soothe her sister. Wanted to make this all stop.

"I didn't steal it. I liberated it." Allegra paused. "It was like being invisible."

Her fingers clawed the skin at her throat suddenly leaving red welts behind. "I hate being invisible! I hate it! I don't like being ignored!"

"Nobody's ignoring you," Lisa replied. The thought Allegra had ever felt invisible was unbelievable. She's always been impossible to ignore.

"You never listen to me," Allegra muttered. One hand flew up to softly touch her ravaged lips. The fingertips came away sprinkled with blood.

"I'm listening now," Lisa said, as soothingly as she could with her voice shaking.

Allegra's eyes flicked to look at her. "You weren't supposed to come here. You were supposed to be breaking up the fight."

"What fight?" Lisa asked gently.

"Of the knights for the lady fair," Allegra said without a trace of her usual wry humor. "Officer Friendly and Jailbird. Both were supposed to show up at the house and battle for your hand."

"You called them?" It was apparent to her now that her sister was indeed behind everything.

Allegra nodded with a movement that made it seem as though her head was too heavy a weight for the delicate stem of her neck. "And they came, didn't they? Came for you?"

"Yes, they did." Lisa wanted to reach out to pull Allegra's fingers away from the ruins of her mouth, but she was afraid to touch her.

"Nobody would do that for me," Allegra whispered, her words muffled behind her fingers. Her shoulders shook. "Nobody."

"That's not true," Lisa said. "Mom and Dad..."

Allegra made a sound of disgust so low in her throat it sounded as though she were growling. "I'm not talking about Mom or Dad, Lisa! Holy wounds of Jesus, I'm talking about someone who loves me."

"We all love you--"

But Allegra would have none of it. "Shut up!" she screamed, digging ugly furrows into her cheeks with the tips of her fingers. "Just shut up, Princess Lisa!"

Lisa wisely kept her mouth shut. She felt like she'd drunk an entire pot of coffee in one gulp, every nerve jangling. Her eyes felt like they were open too wide. Her mouth had dried.

Allegra appeared to calm herself, shifting her hands from her cheeks to smooth through her matted hair. Her smile was bright and shining when she spoke.

"I'm not like you," she said, her tone biting despite the sunniness of her smile. "I'm special."

The bitter way she said the word brought tears to Lisa's eyes. "Oh, Al. Of course you are."

"I don't want to be special," Allegra whispered, sagging against the desk. "I want to be normal."

Lisa had no response to that because anything she said would be merely placation. Platitude. Something to say just to make her sister feel better, and it was obvious Allegra was beyond the help of mere words.

Her sister looked up at her with naked, wet eyes. "Is that such a big thing to ask?"

"No."

Allegra sneered. "Easy for you to say. Easy for you to say. Easy...For...You...To...Say!"

"What can I do to help you?" Lisa held out her hands. "Allegra, just tell me what to do."

"You can die," Allegra said conversationally. "That might make me feel better, at least for a little while."

"I don't believe this," Deacon moaned as the cop car came to an abrupt stop. "Terry, forget them! Let's go!"

Terry glanced over his shoulder while unbuckling his seat belt. "What do you want me to do, Campbell? They're blocking the road."

A car full of teenagers had rear-ended a luxury car carrying an elderly couple. Though the accident was clearly minor, the light traffic had snarled to a stop. One patrol car, lights lazily spinning but no sirens, had already arrived on the scene.

"Hey, Terry," called the other officer. She jerked her head toward the mess. "Can you lend a hand?"

Terry hesitated, glancing into the back seat where Deacon scowled. "Sorry, Karen. I've got a call already."

Karen sighed heavily, glaring at the sheepish teenage driver whose license she'd confiscated. "I ought to have you take the whole pack of these yahoos in."

The sheepish looks turned to terror and a babble of protest sprang up simultaneously from all the teens. Karen just shook her head, still writing her ticket. "Kids."

"I'll talk to you later," Terry said, slipping back behind the wheel.

He eased the car around the accident and whooped the siren enough to get the rubberneckers moving out of the way. When finally the car had moved out onto the road again, Deacon breathed a sigh of relief. It felt like ants were crawling over his skin, so anxious was he to get to Lisa.

"You think she went to the office?" Terry asked for the third time.

"Yeah." Deacon managed to keep his temper, recognizing he was at the other man's mercy. At least for now. "To check the video."

"So Doug had you under surveillance, huh?" The amusement in Terry's voice made Deacon frown.

"Yeah."

Terry snorted. "Can't say I blame him."

"Just drive," Deacon said. "If we get there and something's happened to her..."

He let the comment ride the air between them. Terry cleared his throat, pressing on the accelerator. The car sped through the night, just minutes from their goal. Deacon could only hope they weren't minutes too late.

"Don't worry," Allegra continued calmly even as Lisa wheezed in terror. "I won't kill you or anything." Her grin was feral and terrifying. "I'm not that crazy."

"Al, this isn't funny." Lisa found her voice, the big sister disapproving tone of it making Allegra flinch.

"I'm not trying to be funny." Al's eyes wavered, glancing around the office like she was watching for something that wasn't there. "You want to see something funny? I mean funny ha-ha, not funny weird."

"No," Lisa said. "I want to go home."

Allegra cocked her head. "I sorta kinda figured you were here to see the video."

"I don't need to see it," Lisa said. "Come on, Al. Let's go home. We can talk to Mom and Dad--"

"We can talk to Mom and Dad!" Allegra's voice mocked her. "No, thanks. I have something you need to see."

She held out a stack of videos. Lisa reached for them, but drew back her hands when Allegra yanked them away. The pile shifted in her sister's hands and fell to the floor with a clatter.

"Stupid bitch," Allegra yelled, but Lisa couldn't be sure which one of them her sister meant. Allegra bent to scoop up the tapes. "Now they're out of order."

She began counting under her breath, rocking while sorting the tapes, all of which were blank and unnumbered. She fit them into an order only she could comprehend, piling them on the floor, then rose to her full height. With the light shining from behind her, she looked entirely too familiar.

"It was you," Lisa cried, cringing back against the doorway. "Oh, my God, Allegra! At the house, it was you."

As Allegra stepped to one side to expose the desk, and Lisa saw Deacon's helmet and leather jacket.

"Of course it was," Allegra said. "Dummy. You didn't recognize me then--or three years ago either."

"What do you mean?" Lisa asked, her mind still trying to wrap around the concept her sister had actually attacked her.

"At The Circle K," Allegra told her. "That was me, too."

Just as they reached the stretch of road that led to The Garden Shadd, Deacon saw something in the ditch along the road. "Stop!"

Terry glanced in the rearview mirror, his eyes annoyed. "I thought you were in a hurry, Campbell."

Deacon couldn't point, not with his hands cuffed. He jerked his chin toward the ditch. "Look!"

Terry slowed the car and pulled over. "Looks like a car."

The car had settled in such a way that only the back fender was clearly visible. It was the license plate that had caught Deacon's eye. BADGRRL.

"Allegra's car," he said.

"Shit." Terry climbed out, leaving Deacon to strain his neck trying to see. "She's not in here!"

"No," Deacon said to himself, watching Terry shine his flashlight all around the vehicle. He looked up the small hill to the dark Garden Shadd. "She's up there."

Lisa clutched the doorframe feeling woozy. "I don't get it."

"You don't?" Allegra asked. "And I thought you were supposed to be the smart one. I'm the pretty one and you're the smart one. Lisa's the smart one. The smart one. Not so smart now, are you?"

Her sister's words had begun to take on a rambling, repetitive quality Lisa didn't like. Allegra seemed about to break from reality. Lisa didn't know much about psychology, but she knew that couldn't be good.

Allegra stretched herself up, then slipped on the helmet. Only the ends of her dark hair showed. She pulled on the bulky jacket. Her stance became more masculine, even menacing. In the dark, she'd easily pass for a man.

She flipped open the visor top. "I'm tall. Surveillance videos aren't very clear. You were ready to believe it was him. What can I say?"

"No," Lisa said softly. "I didn't want to believe it. But I had to answer them honestly when they asked me if it was him in the video, and I had to say yes. I thought it was. But I never wanted to believe it."

Allegra shrugged, the shoulders of the leather jacket creaking. "What's the difference?"

Lisa thought of three years lost and knew it made a lot of difference. "Why, Al? Why would you do that?"

In reply, Allegra tore off the helmet and tossed it to the floor. She struggled out of the jacket and let it fall, too, her lip curled in disgust. She kicked the clothes vehemently. She paced the tiny office rubbing her arms. Every movement pulled up her shirtsleeves to reveal more of the freakish writing.

"You were spending all your time with him," Allegra said. "All. No time left for me. Your sister! And you were going to marry him and go away. Then who would I live with? What would I do then, Lisa? What would I do then?"

Her sister's assessment of the situation startled Lisa. "We never talked about getting married."

Allegra shot her an empty look, continuing her pacing. "I could see it in your eyes. Smell it on you like bad fish. You loved him. Love him. You love him!"

Lisa reached out to stop Allegra and force her to look at her. "I do love him. And I probably did then, too, but--"

"See?" Allegra's pretty mouth turned down in a frown so deep it carved lines in her normally smooth cheeks. "You'd leave me!"

Lisa felt like a tightrope walker. One wrong word and she'd plummet into the precipice. She let go of Al's arm.

"It has to happen someday," she said.

"Not with him." Allegra frowned. "He's not good enough for you."

"You don't have to protect me," Lisa began, but Al's hot glare stopped her.

"And Terry Goody-Two-Shoes," Allegra continued. "Boring Mr. Perfect. You didn't really want to spend the rest of your life with him, did you?"

"My life is for me to decide," Lisa cried. "How dare you try to interfere, Allegra!"

Lisa's anger did nothing to affect Allegra, who merely kept her pacing. Now she began the peculiar habit of ticking off the fingers of one hand with the other like she was constantly making a mental list.