FOUR DAYS LATER
What happened?
Why was she in her parents’ downstairs guest room? It made no sense. And why was Margot sitting next to her bed, texting? Margot hated texting.
She hated texting worse than she hated e-mail. She could be convinced to do e-mail, but Alyssa had never known her to text.
“Momma?” It slipped. She rarely called her mother Momma. She remembered doing it six years before, but until now she hadn’t done so again.
Margot lifted her head, the smile that curled her lips so hard and cold that for a moment she thought her mother was angry with her.
“I love you, Alyssa,” Margot said then.
“I know.” Sadness sank inside her; the confrontational relationship she and her mother had was as much her fault as Margot’s. She knew that. “I always knew.”
God, she was so tired. She just want to sleep, to drift away on the warm currents she could feel reaching out to her. She was always so cold. Margot couldn’t understand that; neither could Summer. Alyssa was always so cold except when she slept. When dreams of Shane and Sebastian wrapped around her and warmed her.
“I’m so tired, Momma,” she tried to explain, but it was so hard to focus. “Please just let me go.”
“Will you be back, Alyssa?”
She wanted to lie to her mother, but lying to her was something Alyssa was always loath to do. Margot never lied to her. She was always honest, even when it hurt.
Alyssa forced her eyes open, forced herself to stare back at her mother. “Let me go,” she whispered.
She’d heard her mother’s voice, even in her dreams, demanding she live or Shane and Sebastian would be hurt. Why should she care? Why did their suffering bother her? Why did she dream that they already suffered so deeply?
“Well then,” Margot’s voice hitched. “Sebastian and Shane just arrived in town and they called your cell. I’ve been texting for you, sweetie.”
Texting for her? Trepidation shot through Alyssa then. Why would her mother text Shane and Sebastian for her?
“No.…” They weren’t there; they didn’t want her. They were afraid she would be a nuisance.
“Oh yes.” Satisfaction filled Margot’s voice then. “When you take your last breath I’ll direct those sons of bitches straight to the men awaiting my order. They’re here for you, you know? Can you believe they came for you after betraying you so cruelly? Do you think I’ll have any mercy on them, Alyssa? I swear to you, I will not.”
Came for her? Was she a pet, some toy they thought they could play with, toss aside, then come back for? She’d be damned if they would.
Life flared in Alyssa’s eyes in ways it hadn’t since she’d returned from Barcelona. Then anger. Margot wanted to shout in victory, but the realization of what she was about to do was too heartrending.
“Good then. I’ll just text them back. As you of course. Ask them to give me a few days to think,” she said, returning to the messages she’d been exchanging with Sebastian. “We’ll not discuss this again.”
“I’ll win the next argument,” Alyssa promised her, though she was already drifting off back to sleep.
“When you wake, Alyssa, I put something in your wish box,” Margot said softly. “Find it.” Brushing back the heavy strands of her daughter’s hair, she whispered a kiss against her brow. “I love you, girl. I always loved you so very much.”
Sitting back, she read the text reply to the request for a few days.
Do you think we’ll accept that? You should know better!
Oh, how arrogant, she thought, rather pleased by the reply, though she wasn’t certain why.
Go to hell [she texted in reply].
Where the fuck do you think we’ve been? We live there, dammit.
Poor babies, she thought caustically. Didn’t she just feel so sorry for them?
Alyssa, ignoring us is not a good idea! You know it’s not! Alyssa, damn you, answer me!
She placed the phone next to Alyssa’s hand.
“Good-bye, girl,” she whispered.
Picking up her purse, she left the room. She had a date with Harvey, and she would be taking him straight to hell.
Summer would have to care for Alyssa now.
MARGOT’S FUNERAL
FIVE DAYS LATER
Margot Hampstead’s funeral was attended by damned near every politician Senator Hampstead knew and their family. They might not have liked Margot, but many had respected her. Most had feared her, but they had known they could depend upon her to keep her word.
Sitting in the limo that had joined the procession to the grave site, Shane and Sebastian watched for Alyssa. Whoever stood next to the senator resembled Alyssa enough, considering she was hiding behind a black veil. She was the same height and build, but it wasn’t Alyssa.
Just as whoever was texting from Alyssa’s phone wasn’t her, either. At first they hadn’t been so certain; now there was no doubt.
Sebastian glanced at the latest texts on the phone.
Go back to Spain. U R not wanted here!
Not at any time on any text had Alyssa ever used text spelling. It was typical spelling all the way without a single typo.
Liar, answer my fucking call.
Suck my dick!
And she damned sure knew better than to write anything so explicit.
Alyssa wasn’t crass, she wasn’t explicit, unless encouraged by him or Shane and only then during the height of arousal. She was a lady. Soft, sweet, but with a steel spine.
He turned the phone to Shane.
His cousin read it, reread it; then his lips flattened in anger.
“That’s not Alyssa,” he stated, certain now.
“And the woman at Margot Hampstead’s grave site isn’t Alyssa, either.” He nodded to the mourners. “She resembles her in height and build close enough; I’ll give her that. But the way she stands is too self-conscious. She’s scared of being revealed as an imposter. And the senator’s not comfortable in the least with the way she’s tucking herself against his chest.”
That one was almost amusing, Sebastian thought, before turning his gaze back to Shane. “Have you located her phone yet?”
His cousin turned a surprised look on him. “Finished that hours ago. I have a lock on it and it hasn’t left one particular room downstairs, along the back of the house. We’ll go in tonight.”
Sebastian nodded silently. No doubt they’d find their texter there. There was no way Alyssa would turn her phone over to someone else to text for her, and they knew it. And tonight, by God, he’d find out how someone was managing to do it.
The sudden, overwhelming feeling of Alyssa’s death the night they’d left had been followed by another hours later. That connection to her that they’d never understood had gone all but silent about four months after she returned home. No matter how they reached for her, they only found her in their dreams.
They’d stayed away from her, following the demands in the blackmail letter implicitly. Their families had ensured it. Otherwise, they would have never been able to resist that first, agonizing loss they’d felt. The hell they’d endured for the past six years had nearly driven them past the brink of sanity. The aching loneliness and broken dreams had driven sharpened spikes of loss through their souls.
The need to see her now, to touch her, took all the self-control he could muster to resist. She was so close, waiting for him, needing him.
She was cold. All the way to the soul cold that had fear building inside him. He could only imagine what such a deep, dark chill could be. The kind where there was no warmth at all, nothing to comfort the body or the spirit.
It wasn’t death, but so close to it, he feared, that she might never find her way back.