Sweeter Than Sin (29 page)

“These aren’t my secrets.”

“Maybe not. But these secrets are destroying you … Haven’t they already taken enough?”

A harsh shudder racked her body.

He closed his eyes and then decided it was time to push harder. Rubbing his cheek against hers, he said quietly, “You’ve danced around the edge of this … but let me take this further, might make it easier.”

She was tense under his hands, so tense, he thought she might shatter. He curved his hands over her shoulders, squeezed lightly. “You already told me that David Sutter was abused.… I know these aren’t your secrets and you don’t feel right talking about it. But Lana, it’s not right that you tried to help somebody and that your entire life gets destroyed, either. It’s a secret that’s ruining your life. It’s a secret that somehow led to the abuse of more kids, I suspect. It’s not your fault, but whoever you trusted could have done something to stop it. None of this is right. It has to end. You know that.”

A shudder racked her body.

*   *   *

“Just remember … once you get to Indy, you need to find somebody at
The Indianapolis Star,
okay? That shithead father of yours likes seeing his name in the news too much—even people up there know who he is.”

Lana smiled at David, tried to show him some sort of reassurance. Maybe she should go with him. Dad would ground her for a month if she just up and disappeared for a few days, but she could call him once they were on the road.…

The empty look in David’s eyes scared her. He didn’t care anymore. He just didn’t care. He used to.… He’d cared about stopping it. He’d cared about getting out. But now? He was at the point where nothing mattered. It had gotten worse after he’d tried to go to the police.
That
had gone over so fucking well.

It was like he was dying inside and he just didn’t care. It scared the hell out of her.

“Maybe I should just disappear,” David said, his voice dull. “It’s not like anybody would miss me.”

She shot out a hand and grabbed his arm. He didn’t like to be touched, but she thought it was better that he realize not everybody wanted to hurt him. Squeezing his arm, she waited until he looked at her, his eyes just a lifeless void. Softly she said, “I would.” Then, slowly, she let go of his arm and pushed the bag into his hands.

He took it, fumbling with it for a minute. His hands had gotten huge over the summer, his hands, his feet, even his shoulders. He’d become clumsy, tripping over his feet, bumping into things, and it was like his hands were greased with butter, because he never seemed to know how to hold on to anything.

He was still too skinny, like he never had enough to eat, and sometimes he made her think of the feral cats she’d catch and take in to the vet. Desperate, and ready to bite.

“I think I should come with you,” she blurted. “Dad would be mad for a few days, and Noah would be pissed, but it won’t take long. Once we get to Indy and you tell them what you need to tell them, they’ll make sure you’re safe and I can come back. What do you think?”

David looked at her with eyes that were too old, too wise, too sad, for a kid who was only seventeen. Sometimes it was hard to remember they were the same age. He’d started school a year late, thanks to his crazy-ass mother—
it’s not good for him, he needs more rest, he was ill as a child, I don’t like the environment,
blah, blah, blah.…

That bitch Diane worried about school, and then she let her husband—

Lana cut that line of thought off because if she didn’t, she was going to be too mad to think and she needed to think.

“You can’t come,” he said simply, shaking his head. He went to put the backpack on.

She heaved out a sigh. “Just promise me
you
are going.”

If he gave his promise, he’d keep it. She knew that much.

“I promise.” He jerked his head in a nod and looked out, eying his car, waiting for him behind the house.

“Okay, then. Just remember what we’ve talked about. Give all that shit to the Indy
Star.
Don’t come back here. Don’t call, not even once you’re on the road. Word will get back to your dad and we can’t let him find you—”

Something moved outside.

She knew the sound of this place, knew the feel of it, knew everything about it. There had been a time when she’d even daydreamed about buying the old Frampton house, maybe making it into an inn or something—a haunted one, because of all the stories. But then she’d realized what was going on out here.

But despite that; she still knew this place and she knew that sound outside didn’t belong.

Quiet as it was, it might as well have been a siren.

It came from somewhere out in the yard, not close, but close enough.

Somebody was outside.

She jerked her head around and stared at the boy. He was pale, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat as he stared toward the door.

“Go,” she whispered.

He didn’t even seem to hear her.

Damn it.

Closing the distance between them, she shoved him toward the hall. “Go, damn it.”

He turned and looked at her, his eyes dark, a void in his expressionless face. He’d shut down so much in the past few weeks. She had to get him out of here before he did something she couldn’t fix. He reached up and touched her cheek. “What are you going to do?”

“The thing I do best … cause trouble. But I can’t do it while you’re here, and if you don’t leave now we’re going to get caught.” She made a fist and punched him gently. “Now … go on already. And don’t look back. Whatever you do.”

She pushed him to the front door. It faced out over the street, but they’d have to take that chance. That noise had come from the backyard. “I’m right behind you, okay?”

*   *   *

“Diane was there.” Lana swallowed and then slowly lifted her head, met Adam’s eyes. “She … ah, she’d been following David. Watching him. She was obsessed. I don’t know why. I don’t know what the issue was. But she was obsessed with him and the thought of him leaving, even to get away from what his father was doing, was something she couldn’t tolerate.”

Something flickered in Adam’s eyes. A muscle pulsed in his cheek. But he made no comment, said nothing. He just waited.

“I told Adam to just leave. He had a car.… I … Ah, well.” She grimaced and shrugged. “We’d swiped out the plates on his car with those of an old junker that had just been wrecked. It would make it harder to find his car for a few weeks, I figured. There was a friend of mine in Indy that he was going to crash with. I made all those calls from a pay phone in Hanover, just in case. Everything was set up and ready. David had clothes. He was dying to get out of here. But something clued Diane in and she followed him, listened in. She had a gun.”

The arm Adam had around Lana’s waist went tight.

Lana closed her eyes as the hazed images from that night started to spin through her head. “She had her phone, held the gun on us while she called Peter.”

“The phone records showed a call from her cell phone to their residence that night. It was the only call the police could dig up.… People always speculated she’d been out with David and there was car trouble or something,” Adam murmured against Lana’s hair.

“She was calling him to come get their son. Because there was a problem,” Lana bit off. That was one of her clearest memories, the look in Diane Sutter’s eyes as she spoke of the
problem.
She’d stared straight at Lana. Diane was going to
deal
with Lana, but she’d leave it up to Peter to take care of David. “A problem. She saw me as a problem—she’d deal with me, and Peter would have to discipline their son. Again.”

“Deal with you.” Adam’s arm was rigid, the muscles all but trembling.

“She wanted me dead.” Lana curled her fingers into his shirt. “I saw it in her eyes. She wanted me dead and she was ready to kill me. I knew it, and so did David. He attacked her. Ran at her and knocked her down. The gun went flying. It must have gone off, because I remember glass shattering. She screeched—the sound was like a banshee—and she chased us.” Lana touched a hand to her side.

Adam covered her hand with his.

“I don’t remember her cutting me. I don’t remember it hurting, although I know it must have. Everything was a blur. The blood was so hot on my side. I remember that. But I couldn’t stop. I was so afraid for him, because I couldn’t let his dad get him. Not again.” Slowly she lifted her head. “I remember thinking we had to get out of there.… We were running. And then there was the blood. It was so hot. David was on the floor, and his mother was shouting at him, pointing the gun. I…” She licked her lips and shook her head. “I don’t remember killing her. I think I hit her. I remember seeing her on the floor. But—”

*   *   *

Her breathing hitched, and when she lapsed into silence Adam cupped his hand over the back of her neck and just held her. Held her, and waited. Fine tremors racked her entire body and she stood so rigidly, he thought she might shatter at the first wrong move.

Under his hand, her skin felt cold.

If he thought it would help, he’d take her into the living room and build a fire—screw the fact that it was late August and he’d sweat to death.

But the cold she felt came from within.

He, however, was a raging, burning pit of fury. That anger, scalding hot, didn’t serve him right now, but that didn’t make it easier to shove it down.

Anger, fear, frustration …

And confusion.

She’d called him.

That night
.

He knew the ins and outs of every damn thing that happened that fateful night—at least everything that had been made public knowledge. He even knew plenty that
wasn’t
public knowledge, information he’d begged and bribed out of people. He’d made it his business to know. That phone call from Diane Sutter had taken place at 10:22 p.m. Lana had called him almost two hours later.

Somebody had spoken in the background.…
I trusted him.…

Just whom had she trusted?

Abruptly Lana took a deep breath and it was like somebody had just popped the cork—some of the massive tension drained out of her and she eased away, starting to pace. “I understand why you don’t have any booze here,” she said, her voice low and rough. “But I could sure as hell use a drink.”

“I can go get something for you,” he offered.

“No.” She shoved her hair back. “I won’t do that to you. I just…” She closed her eyes and crossed her arms over her chest. “I don’t drink much, either, really. For the same reason. I never had a problem with alcohol. It was always pills. But … why risk it?”

She opened her eyes and that pale, soft grey gaze locked with his. “Everything from that night is surreal. Huge chunks of it are just gone from my memory. I don’t know if it’s emotional trauma, or from when I’d hit my head—the headaches were awful and it took weeks for me to recover from it. Whatever it was, though, there are some things that I just
don’t
remember—that I
can’t
remember. I remember seeing her with the gun. I remember seeing David on the floor. Then he was grabbing me and we were running. He … One minute he was fine. Then there was blood all over him and I was trying to keep him upright. I think I screamed. That’s what—”

She stopped. Just stopped, and when she opened her mouth, no words would come out. She couldn’t force the words to come. Shuddering, shaking, she closed her eyes, pressed her head to Adam’s chest and groaned, a low, strangled sound of pure frustration.

“You’ve come too far to not finish this,” Adam said softly.

“I know,” she whispered. Swearing, she pulled away from him and paced a few steps away. Turning to look at him, she curled her hands into fists, watched him. “I screamed. And we were at the Frampton house. You know who owned that place, right? People would say it was haunted, that crazy noises were heard from it. Cops would investigate. And the judge…”

Her words trailed off.

Realization slammed into Adam. “Old Max,” he whispered. “Any time old Judge Max heard a fucking sound from there, he’d be out there with that damn Remington of his.”

Lana nodded. “David and I made it onto the porch. I remember seeing the old man. I saw the rifle, but I wasn’t afraid. Not of him. I’d always loved that old grouch. I thought he was like the best thing ever. And he saw us.… I just knew everything would be okay.”

A fragment of memory worked free as she murmured those words and Lana felt herself spinning back.

*   *   *

The judge might have hit his sixties, but his hands were strong and steady as he guided them both off the porch, put them in the little area against it where they’d be out of sight. “Now, you two, stay there,” he said, his voice flat and hard. “It will all be okay.”

He stood, his thick white hair a halo around his head—he looked like a vengeful angel. Maybe Gabriel would have looked like that, if he was sent to earth and forced to age. A grouchy old fighter. Judge Max climbed the stairs, his face set in a mask as he mounted the steps.

The door opened.

Lana craned her head around and peered up, terror turning her heart into a hammer. It battered her chest and she could hardly breathe as she watched Diane move out onto the porch.

“Hello, Diane,” the old judge said, his voice level and easy. Like he wasn’t speaking to a woman with blood running down her temple. Like she wasn’t clutching a gun in her hand. Like there weren’t two scared, bleeding kids on the ground, just feet away.

“Max.” She smiled. Lifted the gun. “Please step out of my way.”

“I’m afraid that’s not going to happen.”

“Oh … you’ll get out of my way, or I’ll
move
you out of my way,” Diane said, her eyes glinting with madness. “I have a problem with my son and I have to fix it.”