Secrets Amoung The Shadows (20 page)

"Thurman, I have some very interesting news."

After she gave him the details and after he finished chastising her for talking to Eliot first and not him, he agreed to go with Eliot that afternoon to check out the address.

"I'm going, too," she told him.

"Like hell you are."

"He'll need a friend as well as a therapist." It was the closest she could come to explaining her obsession to be there.

"Leanne, you've got to let go. For your protection, Eliot asked me to take over, and you agreed. You admitted last night that you're in over your head. He's my patient now. I can handle it."

Eliot might be Thurman's patient, but there was a part of him that, in some way she couldn't explain, belonged to her. He needed her to be there...and she needed to be there. If nothing else, seeing the reality might jar her into accepting his illness.

That afternoon Leanne sat tensely beside Thurman in his minivan with Dixie behind them as they drove to the address given for Edward's license tag. The drive took an uncomfortably short amount of time.

Eliot's car—she checked the tag to be sure—was already parked in the street in front of the small, older stone house. As they pulled up behind the blue Lexus, the figure still seated behind the wheel turned to look at them, and Leanne's heart clenched. Eliot or Edward?

"Eliot?" Thurman greeted, the word a question, an echo of her own doubts. "How do you feel? Are you ready for this?"

Eliot smiled grimly, and Leanne felt her tension go down a notch. Even though the expression more closely resembled a grimace than a real smile, she sensed that it belonged to Eliot, not Edward.

"How do I feel?" he asked. "I feel strange but oddly at home. This is an awful lot like the house I rented when I first got out of college. Yeah, I guess I'm as ready as it's possible to be. Let's get it over with. Let's go in."

He glanced at Leanne, then scowled and shook his head, as if in confirmation that this action they were about to take added an extra layer to the wall between them.

Thurman let Dixie out of the car, and the four of them started up the walk. Eliot strode boldly ahead, leading the way, meeting his problem head-on. It would have been impossible not to admire his courage. But, she reminded herself, courage and determination were only starting points. They were, in no way, guarantees of the final outcome of mental illness. Her father had been a strong man before his illness destroyed him.

Eliot reached the small porch first and knocked loudly on the tall wooden door.

"Edward could have given a phony address," he said. "Someone else may live here. Or he could have a roommate."

Leanne stepped onto the porch and stood beside him, waiting for a stranger to open the door and question their right to be there—but not really expecting it to happen.

"No," she admitted when the door remained closed. Just her own blood racing past her ears. "I guess I'm a little nervous. Hearing things. Edward's so distinct a personality, I halfway expected him to be inside the house."

"As opposed to inside my head," Eliot said grimly. "Okay, first I try all the keys on my key ring. None of them should work, but—well, we'll see."

The last key he tried turned the lock easily.

He didn't look up, didn't move. "It's the key to my condo," he said, his voice a monotone. Leanne could only imagine the distress his stoicism must be concealing.

Thurman stepped up between them, and Leanne jumped. She'd momentarily forgotten his presence. "The lock's new," he said, studying it. "He—you must have had a locksmith change it to the same as your condo key."

"How convenient," Eliot replied caustically, then, with a resolute movement, he pushed the door open.

Eliot focused on opening the door as he ignored the soundless, angry voice that demanded he stay away from the house.
It's not your house! It's mine. You have no right to be here.

Opening a door wasn't normally a particularly demanding task, but opening this door was one of the hardest things he'd ever done. The wooden rectangle seemed to weigh a thousand pounds and move in slow motion on frozen hinges.

As the house opened to him, for an instant his vision blurred.
Get out of my home!
Edward's presence surged through his mind so strongly, it was almost physical. Panic rushed over him. Was Edward going to take control? Eliot stood on the threshold of the house, focusing all his energy on blocking Edward, pushing him away, retaining control of his own mind and body.

Finally when he could no longer hear Edward's voice, he drew in a deep breath and dared to enter the house.

The furnishings were spare, subdued and traditional—similar to the way his condo was furnished.

No, he corrected himself. It was even more spare than his condo and had the stylized feel of the rental furniture he remembered from his college days—sofa, chair, coffee table, two end tables with two lamps. The room held no personal essence...no artwork on the walls or tables, no newspaper or beer can left lying carelessly about.

"Does anyone really live here?" Leanne whispered, her words and tone echoing his thoughts.

Maybe, somehow, this was all a senseless joke, a set-up of some kind. But even as the thought entered his mind, Eliot knew it was a desperate, futile hope.

"Over here," Thurman called, standing outside an open door along the short hallway. The older man rested one hand on Dixie's head, and Eliot could see the tenseness of her posture, the raised hackles on her back, her obvious disquiet. He lifted a hand and rubbed the back of his own neck, certain his hairs must be standing up the same as Dixie's.

Moving like a robot, he walked across the strange yet eerily familiar room, past the furniture placed there by unknown hands—his?—down the hall to where Thurman stood. Down the hall to Edward's bedroom.

This room had an occupied look.

A portable television rested on the top of a chest of drawers across the room from the bed. A nondescript beige blanket and white sheet lay in a tangle at the foot of the bed. Two pillows were bunched in the middle at the top. A charcoal streak Eliot recognized as familiar from his smoking days marred the bottom sheet. An overflowing ashtray sat on the laminated surface of the night stand beside a remote control. A telephone crouched next to the remote.

"What's going on with you?" Thurman asked from beside him. "How are you handling this?"

Eliot walked over and touched the bed, picked up a cigarette butt and laid it back down. He had obviously slept there. Smoked that cigarette. Watched that television. He shivered as he waited for something...a memory, recognition, a loss of control that signaled Edward was taking over.

"He didn't want me to come in," he said in answer to Thurman's question. "I feel like I'm snooping in a stranger's house. I feel like someone's going to come in at any minute and call the police, have us arrested for trespassing."

"You have a key to the door," Leanne reminded him softly. She crossed the room to stand beside him. "Your money pays for this place. You have the right to be here and to look around."

Logically, he knew she was right. But it didn't feel right.

As if feelings could be trusted.

He lifted the phone receiver and held it close to but not touching his ear, as if touching would constitute using it, would connect him to Edward.

The dial tone sounded unnaturally loud. Someone lived here, and he'd be willing to bet this phone responded to the
private number
Edward had given Kay.

He clenched the plastic as hard as he could, wanting to feel it crumple beneath his fingers, wanting to do something to end this nightmare. He had to bring Edward into the open and get him under control before Edward took control of him. Before Edward hurt Leanne.

He yanked open the drawer of a nightstand, determined to expose all the secrets of this place even as he felt he was invading a stranger's privacy.

Until he saw the contents of that drawer.

In disbelief he picked up the first picture in a stack. An Easter portrait of his parents and him. A picture he'd last seen in an album in the back of his closet. He threw it on the bed and yanked out more photographs from his past.

"We've always known it," she said, her tone subdued. "But it feels very strange to see the evidence, to know that someone was watching me when I wasn't aware of him."

Eliot restrained the desire to reach for her, touch her, comfort her, reassure her. That option wasn't open to him, he reminded himself as disgust wrapped around him like a gray, slimy shroud. He could scarcely comfort her when he'd been the one watching her, the one who'd upset her.

Her clear blue eyes searched his face, fear but no condemnation in their depths, and he knew that she could no more connect Edward with him than he could...irrational as they both knew that concept to be. His arms ached to hold her against him, bury himself in the feel of her, blot out the images on those photographs, this house, this entire nightmare.

Thurman reached into the drawer, startling Eliot. He'd momentarily forgotten the man was there.

"Who's this?" Thurman asked, holding up another glossy square.

Eliot's hand trembled as he took the picture of himself with his arm around a red-headed woman. "That's Kay Palmer," he whispered. "And me."

"No," Leanne disagreed faintly. "It's Edward. I'd recognize that smile anywhere."

Thurman took the picture from him and studied it for a moment then handed it back. "Eliot," he said briskly, his tone all business, "tell me how you feel when you look at that picture."

"Sick." It took all Eliot's willpower not to tear the picture into shreds, to burn it and crush the ashes. That would accomplish nothing, he told himself, clenching his jaw. He couldn't afford to lose control and indulge in senseless acts. He had to focus his entire attention on getting through this, somehow resolving this horror.

He tossed the picture back into the drawer and slammed it shut.

"Does it bring back any memories?" Thurman pursued.

Eliot resented the question, but admitted its necessity. "None," he said, then turned away and strode across the room to open the chest of drawers, determined to expose whatever ghastly mementos crouched yet undiscovered in Edward's lair.

But the rest of the drawers yielded only socks and underwear, all fairly new, all in the styles and colors he wore but with cheaper labels.

The closet revealed the same...clothing similar to his, all new, all cheap. It was as though, he thought, Edward had just recently been born. He had only the essentials, all new, nothing with any past.

Except the photographs that lay scattered on the bed. The photographs—his past—that Edward had stolen from him. He snatched them up and stuck them into his pocket along with the pictures of Leanne. Took back the ones that belonged to him and took away the images of Leanne that Edward had no right to possess.

Damn it, Leanne and Thurman were wrong. He couldn't accept this creature as a part of himself. He wanted rid of Edward every bit as much as Edward wanted rid of him.

He went back to the chest of drawers and began tossing out the articles of clothing, looking for anything of his that might be hidden underneath. When he left he'd take with him everything he owned. He didn't want anything of his to touch Edward's possessions. He had to separate them.

She glanced at Thurman who was studying Eliot—Edward?—dispassionately. He met her gaze and lifted one shoulder in a helpless shrug.

"Eliot?" she asked tentatively.

He stopped and turned to her, his face turbulent with rage and agony...and undeniably Eliot's. Edward had never shown signs of agony.

He shoved the drawer back into the chest and ran a hand through his hair. "It's me," he said wearily.

She nodded, the movement jerky.

He studied her for a moment, and she knew her fear must show on her face. His expression changed to one of self-loathing, and he stalked past the two of them, out the door and down the hall to the second bedroom.