pivoted quickly as she flashed a swift look toward the road, then felt in her pocket and realized she didn’t have a phone. She couldn’t call for help. Lance could come driving up at any minute and do to her what he’d done to that man. No one would know the difference. They would just think she’d died in the storm.
Panic hit.
She had to get away.
She needed to get some medical help and figure out what to do next. But she knew Lance well enough to know that he would be behind her at every move. She could take Susan’s car and drive into Bordelaise. Someone there would help her. She could—
She stopped and moaned, blinded by a sudden pain from the deep wound in her head. She needed to regroup first. No need making accusations against Lance that she would never be able to back up. Lance might be a lot of things, but he wasn’t stupid. Whatever she said, he would just chalk it up to her head wound. And now that he knew she’d seen him, there was no way he would bury that body where he’d been digging. He would move it, of that she was certain. And until she could figure out where, she needed to keep herself and her accusations under wraps.
She started toward the car when her legs suddenly went out from under her. She fell only a few feet away from Susan’s body. It took every ounce of strength she had left to get back on her feet, and as she did, found herself looking down at Susan again.
They’d been born to twin sisters and within a month of each other. They had grown up like sisters, their features so similar that people had often mistaken them for twins, as well. They even wore their thick dark hair in the same casual style. At that moment, a thought occurred. It was daring, if not crazy, but it might give her the space and time she needed.
Susan’s facial features were forever altered by whatever had killed her. But she was wearing jeans and black shoes like Cari’s, as well as a white T-shirt. The only difference was Cari’s dark green, three-quarter-length all-weather coat. If she put the coat on Susan’s body and got away before anyone saw her, whoever eventually found the bodies out here would quite naturally assume Susan was Cari. Especially Lance, who’d been the last person to see her alive.
And better yet, even though Susan was known in Bordelaise, no one knew she’d driven over from Baton Rouge to spend the night, so no one would suspect anything. Convinced this was the answer she needed, Cari took off her coat and, without looking at the wreck of Susan’s face, knelt down and managed to put it on her by rolling her first one way, then the other.
Shaken and sick at heart, she finally crawled to her feet, then stopped and looked down. As she did, she shuddered. If she didn’t know better, she would have thought she was looking at her own dead body.
Suddenly afraid she would be caught before she could get away, she headed for Susan’s car as fast as she could go, stumbling once and falling yet again before she managed to get behind the wheel.
Her hands were sore from the splinters, and sticky with the same blood that was all over her clothes, but she couldn’t let it matter. With every ounce of strength she had left, she started the car and put it into gear. The only thing she could think of was getting herself to Baton Rouge and, under the guise of her cousin’s identity, getting some medical attention. She’d been to Susan’s town house countless times and knew the way almost as well as she’d known the way home from the woods.
It wasn’t that far.
All she had to do was get there.
Lance had been only vaguely aware of the thunderstorm while he’d been inside the cave burying Austin Ball, but when he got back to where he’d left the rental car, he was shocked by the devastation. Trees were uprooted. Bits and pieces of sheet iron and lumber were scattered about, and the car was nowhere in sight.
At first he’d thought someone must have stolen it. But the farther he ran toward home, the more certain he was that it had become a casualty of what must have been a tornado. He began to panic, fearing Morgan’s Reach might have been hit, but when he reached the back of the property just beyond the stables and saw the familiar roofline, he started shaking from relief. There was evidence of damage, but nothing drastic, and nothing that couldn’t easily be repaired. Some corrals were down, and there was a portion of roof missing off the barn, but the house seemed intact.
He ran through the mud and then to the back door, taking off his shoes at the stoop before going inside. Too many years of not bringing in mud on his shoes had been drummed into his consciousness to do it now—even if he was the one in charge.
He made a quick run through the house, checking for further damage. The electricity was off, but he still checked the laundry to make sure all the blood had washed out of the clothes he’d tossed in earlier. It had.
Unable to use the dryer, he took the clothes out and spread them over the washer and dryer to air-dry. No time like the present to put his world back in order. Except for a broken windowpane and some missing shingles he’d seen earlier, the house seemed solid, although he couldn’t bring himself to do more than glance into the library where he’d committed the murder.
Now that he knew his home and property were in basic order, focus immediately shifted to Carolina North. This situation needed a lot of damage control, and the more time that passed, the harder it would be. He grabbed the keys to his truck and headed out the door, intent on a quick visit to his nearest neighbor.
His heart was pounding as he pulled out of the driveway and started down the blacktop toward the North property. He’d driven this road countless times during his life. With his brother, Joe, on their way to deliver Christmas gifts from one family to the other, then later, when he and Cari had been engaged. He knew and cared for the Norths almost as much as he’d cared for his own parents. And four years ago, when his parents died in a car wreck, Cari and her parents had been the first ones to arrive and the last to leave, long after everyone else was gone.
The closer he got to the turnoff to the North property, the sicker he became. He didn’t know what lay ahead of him and wasn’t sure if he had the stomach for what needed to be done. It had been one thing to stop a stranger from taking Morgan’s Reach. It was another thing altogether to kill someone he knew in order to keep his secret.
Two
Every fear Lance had of facing Cari and her parents came to a halt as he drove up on the scene of devastation.
“Oh my God,” he gasped, as he stomped the brake and killed the engine. The urgency of his situation had suddenly changed.
Every structure on the North property was gone.
The house, the barn, even the corrals.
A tree had fallen over on Frank and Maggie’s vehicle, and Cari’s car was upside down in the pasture beyond. He could see the dead carcasses of some of Frank’s cattle, but most of the wreckage the storm had left behind was impossible to identify.
He jumped out of the truck and started toward the debris with his heart in his throat. Would there be survivors? If he found them, how would he be able to tell if Cari had already told them what she’d seen? If they were alive, what was he going to do? Finish them off—or get them to a doctor?
“Hello! Hello! Can anybody hear me?” he yelled, as he frantically started his search. “Mrs. North…Maggie…it’s me, Lance! Can you hear me?”
Something shifted in the debris off to his right, then fell with a thud. He jumped, then ran in that direction, thinking someone might be trying to get his attention. But when he got there, his search was futile. No bodies. No survivors.
“Frank! Frank! It’s me, Lance. Can you hear me? Are you here?”
His anxiety level was rising as he dashed throughout the rubble. He stumbled over a pile of lumber and shattered drywall, then pulled up short. The leg and shoe sticking out from beneath the rubble were horribly familiar.
“Maggie! Oh my God… Maggie!” he cried, and dropped to his knees.
When he got the debris away and saw