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“He shouldn’t have been there! That was his fault, not mine!”
“Oh, brother,” Mac muttered, staring through the glass.
“And Bellotti?”
Scott rubbed a nervous hand over his forehead. “I feel bad about that. This thing just became an out-of-control roller coaster. First Glenn, and then Mitch started asking questions. I had no beef with him. He wasn’t so smart, but an okay guy. But Glenn had told him things and I could tell he was putting it all together. So…” To his credit, Pascal actually seemed guilt-riddled. “The body was found in the maze, we got the notes, and at first I thought I shouldn’t say I got one…but then when everybody did except Zeke it seemed fortuitous, y’know? Stupid Evangeline was trying to save him, and she just made him look guilty.”
“But you’re the one guilty of killing four people.”
“Four? No way!” Scott was rising from his chair, but his lawyer placed a staying hand over his forearm.
“Mr. Pascal is telling you what he knows. About the deaths of Glenn Stafford and Mitchell Bellotti.”
“What about Renee Trudeau and Jezebel Brentwood?”
Scott wasn’t waiting for his lawyer. “I had nothing to do with that. I wasn’t anywhere near the coast when Renee had her accident. Jesus, I have an alibi. I was at a meeting with bankers about refinancing Blue Ocean. The meeting was in Portland at Second Community Bank. Check with Davis Sheen, he’s my banker.”
“We will.”
“And I didn’t kill Jessie. I hardly knew her.” He was nearly convincing as tears glistened in his eyes. “You have to believe me.” He turned his tortured gaze to his bland-faced lawyer. “It’s the truth. I didn’t kill Renee, and I didn’t kill Jessie. And I don’t know who did.”
Sitting on the edge of the bathtub, Becca gazed at the wand in her hand with its two bright pink lines that indicated, yes, she was indeed pregnant.
“Oh, my God,” she breathed, staring at the two lines in wonder.
I’m having a baby. Hudson’s baby!
Again.
She blinked against a spate of tears and told herself that all she had to do was step through the door and tell Hudson, who was waiting downstairs. He’d wished her luck as she’d hurried up the steps of her condo, pregnancy test kit tight in her hand.
If she figured right, the baby would be born in late November or early December. A Christmas baby!
“Stop it,” she said, not wanting to get caught up in the host of fairy-tale dreams. It was too early for that. She’d been down that rocky road once before.
But it was time to inform Hudson that he would definitely be a father by the end of the year.
She stood up quickly and as she did, she felt the floor start to buckle beneath her feet. The walls closed in on her. A vision…Her head felt like it was splitting in two.
Oh, God, no! Not now!
Her vision fogged and she felt as if she were going to faint. She grabbed on to the sink for support, dropping the test. Head throbbing, she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror only to have the image fade to watery waves. The smell of the sea was thick in the air, and in the glass she spied the same teenaged girl she’d seen before. Again on a rocky out-crop, the wind teasing her hair, her eyes, so like Becca’s, wide with fear, her skin nearly translucent.
Dark clouds spun above her, the churning sea roiling far below.
“Jessie,” Becca whispered as the girl looked at her and placed a finger to her lips.
But this time Jessie wasn’t alone. This time there was someone else, a dark, faceless figure looming behind her, an evil presence of which Jessie appeared unaware. Becca cried out and the demon seemed to look straight at her, his eyes hidden, his nose tilting in the air, as if to smell the breeze.
Though she couldn’t see his features, Becca knew deep in her heart that this monster was what Jessie had feared.
Her knees gave way, but she clung to the sink and realized there was something familiar about him, something bone deep and riddled with an evil as dark as all of Hades. “Jessie,” she tried to cry again, in warning, but her voice failed her as she slid further downward.
Jessie was already dead. She knew that…didn’t she? But this girl…she looked so much like Jessie.
This horrid creature, this malevolent force had already killed her. The girl on the cliff was only a spirit, a ghost of the girl who had been murdered and buried in the maze at St. Elizabeth’s. Becca knew that.
So why was she here?
