Nine Lives (17 page)

Penny feigned interest in her magazine, but inside, her thoughts were tumbling wildly.

Last night while Mark was in the shower, she'd called Ken Walters, their lawyer. Ken had started off by claiming he couldn't divulge his conversations with Mark, at which point she promptly reminded him that the money in their house was hers first, not Mark's, and if he wanted to stay on retainer for the Presley Corporation, he'd better start talking.

So he did.

Learning that Marsha had been pregnant when she was murdered had nearly sent her to her knees. Knowing that her body had been found on their oil lease outside Tyler only made what she was thinking worse. She'd known Mark was devious, but she'd never believed him capable of murder. Now she wasn't so sure. What she
was
certain of was that she wasn't going to be dragged down with him if he fell. Tonight they were back in Dallas in what had been her father's home first and was now hers. This was her territory, and she wasn't leaving anything to chance.

Mark glanced up from the chair where he'd been reading, watching the casual attitude with which Penny was sipping her drink. She was flipping through the pages of the magazine in her lap and humming beneath her breath as if nothing was wrong.

It was unnerving.

As he watched, he began to realize Penny wasn't her father's daughter by birth alone. There seemed to be more of the old man in her than he would have believed. Ever since he'd put his hands around her neck back in Tahoe, she had been cold and unyielding, even when he'd apologized profusely.

Then, when he'd had to tell her that the police demanded his presence back in Dallas for questioning regarding Marsha Benton's death, she'd been livid. He'd tried to explain, but she wasn't having any of it. He didn't want to lose her. He
couldn't
lose her. Even though the world assumed that Mark Presley was the reigning power behind the Presley Corporation, it was really Penny. Mark had the authority simply because Penny was his wife. If she kicked his ass to the curb, the only thing he would be taking with him were the bruises.

 

Mark never got drunk. It was against everything he practiced, because being drunk meant being out of control, and losing control was not an option. Still, on this night, he'd had too much to drink, feeling sorrier and sorrier for himself with every swallow.

Penny had glared at him all during dinner and cut him off sharply every time he tried to start a conversation. The only advice she had for him was issued during dessert, when she warned him that if he was as smart as he pretended to be, then he'd better have a lawyer with him when he went to the police station the next day.

“What are you getting at?” he asked.

She didn't bother to hide her disgust.

“We'll be the talk of the country club as it is,” she muttered. “This is all so common…being interrogated by the police like some criminal.”

A dark red flush spread up Mark's neck and onto his cheeks as his fingers curled angrily around his glass.

“A lot of people work for me,” he said. “It's not my fault if they become embroiled in something unsavory in their own time. The only reason they want to talk to me is because she was an employee.”

Penny laid down her dessert fork and leaned forward, her gaze fixed upon her husband's face. All of a sudden, she felt as if she was talking to a stranger.

“I made a couple of calls on my own,” she said. “It's not just because she was an employee, and you know it.”

There was a faint ringing in Mark's ears now. “I don't know what you're getting at.”

Penny slapped the table with the flat of her hand. “They found her body on our land east of Tyler. In a very desolate area that is approachable only by air. It's a big stretch to believe that a total stranger killed her and used a helicopter to dump her on our land.”

Mark fidgeted nervously with his glass as Penny kept pushing.

“These are little details you neglected to tell me. Why, Mark? Why did you lie? Is it true? Do you know more about this than you're admitting?”

He slammed his glass back down on the table, and as he did, liquor slopped out and over the sides. An ugly stain quickly appeared and began to spread over the handmade Irish lace tablecloth.

“I can't believe you said that!” he yelled. “I can't believe you'd even insinuate I would do such a horrendous thing.”

Penny leaned back and crossed her arms over her breasts.

“Before Tahoe, I might have been as indignant as you. I would have been horrified and thoroughly convinced that you could never be involved in something so shoddy. But that was before you put your hands around my neck and raped me!”

“Raped you? A husband can't rape his wife. It's called sex, Penny. Nothing more. Nothing less. Besides, I did no such thing, and you know it. I just lost my temper. I've already said I'm sorry.”

Penny's eyes narrowed angrily. “Yes, I believe you are. Sorry, I mean. You're sorry that you let a piece of your true self shine through. That's what I believe you're sorry for.”

Panic hit Mark deep in his gut. This was worse than he'd believed. Penny wasn't ranting—she was cold and far too collected to be accused of hysteria.

He sat there, too shocked to defend himself. Then, to his dismay, when he reached for his drink again, he began to cry.

Instead of sympathy, Penny cursed him beneath her breath and left the table.

Mark's hopes fell even farther. He stood up in anger, then swayed unsteadily on his feet as he gazed about the room. When he realized there were still a couple of inches of liquor in his glass, he downed it angrily, then stumbled out of the dining room and headed up the stairs.

His head was spinning by the time he got to their bedroom. To his continued dismay, Penny and her nightclothes were noticeably absent. He sat down on the side of the bed and kicked off his shoes. He was out before his head hit the pillow.

 

It was snowing. Mark could feel the bitter kiss of snowflakes on his face as he turned to face the wind. Yet even though he knew it to be cold, his skin was on fire.

And, to his shame, he was crying. His throat was tightening, and there was a pain born of guilt that was so far down in his belly he couldn't catch his breath.

He turned in a full circle, trying to find the path that had brought him to this place, but there was nothing to show where he'd come from—no tracks, no vehicle, nothing.

And then he saw the blood.

It was splattered in a haphazard pattern across the snow. He stared at it and then the spatters on his pants, trying to remember why the sight brought him such fear. Why did he feel the urge to pee from nothing more than a few red droplets?

The snow began to fall in earnest now, but to his horror, the blood was still there. No matter how much snow fell, it couldn't cover the trail. The sight sent him into a mental free fall.

He needed the blood to go away. He wanted to go home. He didn't want to be lost like this, but there was a part of him that knew he could never go back.

“Help!” he cried, and heard the wind swallow the sound of his voice.

“Help! Help!” he shouted, and tasted snowflakes on his tongue.

“Oh God…please. Help me.”

Suddenly the blood on the snow began to get brighter
and thicker. The spots became tiny pools, and the pools became puddles, and the trail from the forest became a wide ribbon of red that curled around his feet and stained the hem of his pants.

He tried to run, but his feet wouldn't move. He looked toward the forest, and through the snowfall he saw movement. Was this the help he sought? Was he about to be rescued?

His heart started pounding in earnest as the shadows in the forest continued to sway. Snow was falling so thickly that he had to blink constantly to clear his vision. When the shadows began to take form, his heart leaped—then momentarily stopped. Even with the distance and the snow and the sweat running in his eyes, he recognized her.

She came closer, and it soon became apparent she was the source of the red path. Blood poured from her belly like water from a natural spring, bubbling and flowing in thick rivulets down her legs and onto the ground. It ran toward him like water from open floodgates, encircling his feet and then rising.

The thick, coppery scent of it was in his nostrils and warm on his skin as the puddle in which he was standing began to rise. The closer she came, the higher the puddle rose, until he was knee deep in her blood and his own urine.

“Get away from me!” he screamed, and covered his face with both hands. “You're not real. You're not real!”

When he dared another look, the blood was up to his
chin. He couldn't understand how this was happening. He could see her as plainly as the nose on his face. She was less than a yard away and still her blood pooled only around him. Without a reason. Without a container. And if it didn't stop, he would drown.

He stared in disbelief as it continued to spill from her belly. The horror of what he'd done was there, right in front of him. There was no denying its existence, no pretending to himself that Marsha Benton wasn't dead. He opened his mouth to scream, and as he did, he tasted her blood as it flowed into his mouth and down his throat.

He heard his own screams turning into gurgles, and in a moment of clarity, knew that he'd drowned.

 

Mark was convulsing on the floor when Penny, roused by his screaming from her bed in the guest-room, ran into the room. She screamed in horror, then fell to her knees beside him and grabbed his shoulders.

“Mark! Mark!”

Before she could dodge, one of his arms flailed up and hit her across the face. She screamed out in pain and fell backward, grabbing her nose as she fell.

Blood began to drip through her fingers and onto her nightgown as she struggled to her feet and ran to the phone.

Even as she was calling 911, she thought he was dying. There was a part of her brain that accepted the fact that this would certainly take care of whatever embarrassment his involvement with Marsha Benton might have caused her. She could play the grieving widow and bury her problem, instead of following him through the court system.

Then the 911 dispatcher answered, and she began to scream.

“Please! I need help! My husband is having a seizure.”

“Ma'am, please slow down. Is this the Presley residence?”

“Yes!” Penny cried, as the dispatcher rattled off their address.

“Mrs. Presley, I'm dispatching an ambulance to your address as we speak. Is your husband breathing?”

“I don't know. I can't tell,” Penny sobbed. “Foam is coming out of his mouth, and he's on his back, banging his head on the floor. I tried to help him and got a broken nose for my trouble.”

“You're injured, as well?” the dispatcher asked.

“He hit me in the nose. It was an accident,” Penny said. “Please. You have to hurry.”

“Did you hit him back? Was that the first time he's hit you?” the dispatcher asked.

Penny gasped, and as she did, nearly blacked out from the pain. She lowered her head between her knees and tried to focus.

“Lady, we weren't having a fight. This isn't a case of abuse. I was asleep in another room and heard him screaming. When I got here, he was convulsing in the floor. When I tried to help him, I got whacked in the nose. He didn't do it on purpose. He doesn't even know what's happening.”

“Do you know how to do CPR?” the dispatcher asked.

Penny felt like screaming. “No, but it doesn't matter. I couldn't get close enough to him to try it, so I guess the answer to your first question is, yes, he's still breathing. If he wasn't, he couldn't be flopping all over our bedroom floor like he is.”

“Help is on the way,” the dispatcher said.

“Thank you, thank you,” Penny mumbled, and then grabbed the hem of her nightgown and used it like a handkerchief, trying to stem the flow of blood from her nose. “Oh, wait! I hear sirens. They're here! They're here! I have to let them in.”

She hung up, despite the dispatcher's voice urging her not to, and headed downstairs on the run. For once in her life, she wasn't waiting for the servants.

She was at the door before the paramedics could ring the bell.

“He's upstairs!” she cried as she opened the door. “Second door on your right. Hurry! Please hurry.”

“Lady, are you in need of—”