The Life and Death of Lauren Conway: A Companion to Without Mercy

  THE LIFE AND DEATH OF LAUREN CONWAY

  By

  Lisa Jackson

  Published by Zebra Books

  Visit Lisa Jackson’s official website at

  www.lisajackson.com

  for the latest news, book details, and other information

  Copyright © Susan Lisa Jackson, 2011

  e-book formatting by Guido Henkel

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Excerpt from

  WITHOUT MERCY

  Seattle, Washington

  Late March

  Drip, drip, drip.

  Rain fell from the night-dark sky, splashing against the window.

  Be careful what you wish for…

  Jules twisted on the bed, sheets curled around her legs. Sleep, as ever, was elusive. Her headache thundered through her brain, pounding in counterpoint to the steady plop of raindrops.

  …because you just might get it.

  Wasn’t that the truth? How long had she prayed her parents would find their way back to each other? Now that her prayers had been answered… Dear God, what a catastrophe!

  Refusing to dwell on the disaster that was Edie and Rip Delaney’s remarriage, Jules opened an eye to stare at the clock. One fifty-seven.

  Oh, God. Squeezing her eyes shut again, she groaned and rolled over on the twin bed that had been hers for as long as she could remember. Only five hours until she had to get up. Oh, God, why couldn’t she sleep? Why could she never sleep?

  Drip, drip, drip.

  Her headache raged with a migraine and the damned rain only made it worse. She cringed and remembered the huge final in English Lit that loomed over her. She hadn’t read one of the stack of books that had been assigned at the beginning of the term, not a solitary one. What had she been thinking? She was a good student and now she wasn’t ready…

  The world seemed crashing in on her tonight. She should just bite the bullet, roll out of the warm bed and try to study–read some Sparks Notes on the Internet. Anything! What was it Shakespeare and Milton or George Orwell… oh, she couldn’t remember. What was wrong with her? She’d known the test was tomorrow. She should have dropped the damned class.

  “Stupid girl,” she thought. All she’d wanted was her divorced parents to get back together, to remarry, to make the family whole again. And she’d gotten her most fervent wish. Her mother Edwina, Edie, had exchanged vows with Rip Delaney for the second time just a months ago… or had it been years? Jules couldn’t remember now in the middle of the night. She was so tired; weary to the marrow of her bones.

  The medication… it’s the medication that makes your brain fill with quicksand. That’s why you feel like you’re sliding deeper and deeper into the mire…

  Drip, drip, drip.

  Damn the rain! Her eyes flew open again and she looked a the window, but no drops drizzled down the panes and if she listened hard she couldn’t hear the gurgle of water splashing in the gutters or running through the rusting downspouts. All she heard was the rapid beating of her own heart.

  The storm had either passed or hadn’t existed. Maybe she’d just imagined it; that’s what happened with the medication she took for the migraines. She mixed up fact with fiction, couldn’t grasp reality, at least not at night.

  She threw off the covers, her feet landing on the bare floor.

  God, it was freezing.

  Floorboards creaked as she walked to the window and stared downward, outside to the yard, where, bathed in moon glow, the grounds appeared serene, not even a breath of wind playing through the branches of the willow tree.

  But someone was outside. She felt eyes upon her… hidden eyes. Something was wrong tonight.

  Very wrong. Dread inched its way up her spine and she searched the grounds from her second story room, her gaze scraping along the dead grass and skeletal trees that surrounded her parents’ once-upon-a-time mansion.

  She caught a glimpse of movement from the corner of her eye — a black shadow passing beneath the naked limbs of the willow tree, moving swiftly through the night.

  Her heart clutched.

  She leaned closer to the panes, her nose touching the cool glass, one hand placed on the sill.

  Far below, he turned suddenly, as if feeling the weight of her stare. He gazed upward, his face illuminated by the moon.

  Oh, God!

  His features became clear: Deep set eyes, bladed cheekbones, strong jaw covered with beard shadow. Oh, sweet Jesus. It couldn’t be.

  Cooper?

  Her heart went wild, wrenching painfully. Of all the people to show up here in the middle of the night! Why would Cooper Trent be out skulking about in the shadows, winter chasing him as he turned and ran… Hadn’t she told him that she’d never wanted to see him again? Hadn’t he all too easily followed her edict and disappeared from her life… so why the hell was he here now? And why did she know deep in her heart that whatever the reason he’d returned, it wasn’t good. He had no way of knowing that she’d damned herself every day in the months since their last fight for breaking up with him, but her pride had kept her from reaching out to him.

  So why was he back?

  She rubbed her eyes.

  His image, like smoke, had disappeared.

  Good!

  Right?

  Drip, drip, drip.

  What was that noise?

  Then she got it. For the love of God, someone hadn’t twisted off the faucet in the bathroom! That was it. The seal or O-ring or whatever it was had probably worn through and whoever had used the faucet last probably hadn’t twisted the handle hard enough to completely stop the flow. Rip would have to fix the damned thing, or call a plumber.

  Without bothering with her robe, Jules headed out of room and along the narrow hallway to the bathroom at the end of the hall. Beneath the door, an eerie strip of light glowed, wavering as a shadow passed on the other side.

  Her sister.

  Of course!

  “Shay,” she whispered against the old oak panels. “Hey, turn off the water!”

  No one answered.

  She tapped softly with one knuckle. “Anyone in there?”

  No response.

  Maybe her sister had left the light on. Kind of like a night light. Though she would never admit it, twelve-year-old Shay was sometimes scared of the dark.

  And sometimes she was more than scared, she was terrified.

  Jules didn’t blame her.

  Terror was all too familiar to them both.

  Twisting the glass knob, Jules pushed hard on the door. It opened a crack, then caught, stopped by the loose chain latch and allowing Jules a glimpse inside, to the vanity, a strip of the cracked mirror and her own pale, slightly skewed reflection. Big, haunted eyes, untamed hair, sallow complexion and dark circles beneath her eyes that indicated just how little sleep she’d been able to find in the past months reflected back at her.

  “Shay?” she whispered through the opening.

  The toilet area wasn’t visible from Jules’s vantage point, but there was another entrance to the bathroom from the guest room. “Shay, are you in there?” Jules asked again, pressing h
er eye to the crack. She saw no one, but noticed that her mother’s hair brush was resting near the sink and that the vanity faucet, just under the mirror wasn’t leaking.

  The tap was dry as a bone.

  But something was wrong. The usually spotless tile surrounding Edie’s pride and joy, an antique claw foot bathtub with an arched shower neck and head, showed beads of water, as if the pink tiles were sweating.

  Or someone had recently showered.

  On edge, she closed the door and tiptoed through the “spare” room to the door to the bathroom. She always felt like a trespasser when she crept along the fringed edge of a faded, patterned rug and past the big brass bed, one that had supposedly belonged to Edie’s great grandmother. Now, no one slept in it. Ever. Jules’s mother changed the sheets religiously, every Saturday morning, but the percale bed linens with their floral print were fading from too much laundry soap and over agitation in the washer, not from bodies either sleeping or making love.

  Jules opened the bathroom door… and heard the noise again. The dripping sound.

  So steady.

  So quietly nerve-twisting.

  But not from the tub.

  Nor the shower head.

  The floor was dry. The towels folded perfectly, not damp.

  It’s nothing. What do you care?

  And the shadow you saw, the one passing under the doorway to this room, well, it was probably just your over-active imagination, the same imagination that conjured up Cooper Trent outside your window. Come on Jules, why would he be here? Only because you wanted him to. What is it that Dad always says? If horses were wishes, then beggars would ride. Face it, Jules, you are losing it. Seriously losing it. Why else all those pills you need to swallow just to function?

  Angry with herself, she unlocked the door to the hallway and stepped out.

  The corridor seemed colder still. Freezing. The air being blown through the pipes had lost all heat, as if the fire in the furnace had blown out. Meanwhile, the dripping noise was stronger now and there was another noise as well, that of soft pitiful sobbing.

  She walked to the end of the hall and the stairs, then hesitated on the first step, knowing that something was wrong… Oh, God, what? Whose muted crying was she hearing? Her mother’s? Shay’s?

  Lord knew she’d heard them both before.

  She descended on noiseless footsteps.

  “Goosey, Goosey Gander,

  Wither should I wander?”

  She whispered the words under her breath, letting her fingers run down the handrail and descended into the darkness that was the lower floor.

  “Upstairs and downstairs,

  and in my lady’s chamber.”

  She reached the landing and hesitated while the rest of the nursery rhyme ran through her head: There I met an old man, who wouldn’t say his prayers, so I took him by the left leg and threw him down the stairs.

  The poem had been her favorite as a child, but now in the dark, coming out of nowhere as it had, its tempo emphasized by the unfamiliar sound ringing in her ears, the hushed weeping whispering through the house, the stairs below seeming to drop into nothingness, the words sounded creepy and watery and weird. Professor Kenyon and his keen interest in the macabre origination of nursery rhymes had probably brought this one to mind.

  Professor Kenyon! And the test! What’re you doing, Jules! You should be studying. You’re going to flunk English Lit and you’ll be thrown out of college. What then?

  She kept descending.

  One creaking step at a time.

  Never had the staircase seemed so steep or long…

  On the first floor, the plop of drips was louder, more distinct, the crying soft and weak. She eased through the foyer where moonlight cast drab shadows through the stained glass flanking the front door. Her mother’s grandfather clock, positioned near the base of the stairs, ticked loudly, the second hand clicking as it moved, not quite drowning out the worrisome mewls emanating from the back of the house.

  What is this?

  Who’s crying?

  What’s that horrid incessant noise?

  Why was Cooper outside?

  Head thundering Jules inched down the hallway toward the den. Passing the archway to the kitchen, she caught sight of the knife block on the counter by the stove.

  She slid her mother’s favorite carving knife from the block and wrapped her fingers around the hilt.

  Three Blind Mice. Three blind mice.

  See how they run. See how they run.

  They all ran after the farmer’s wife,

  She cut off their tails with a carving knife…

  Her heart thundered, but she wrapped her fingers around the knife’s cold hilt. Across the worn kitchen tiles and down two steps to the short hallway that led to the den, she walked, her frozen footsteps inaudible.

  The sounds were getting louder.

  Crying.

  Dripping.

  Sobbing.

  The rapid thud of her heart.

  Was there a blue light barely visible through the covered French doors? Was the television on? Did she hear music? A familiar beat?

  This is your home. There is no reason to be afraid.

  But that was a lie. The bone-cold fear spreading through her was testament to the fact that something wrong was going on here tonight… something dark and evil, something that kept her from calling out, something that made her fingers hold the knife in a death grip.

  Every muscle tight, she slowly opened the door to the den and peered inside. An L-shaped couch poised next to a recliner, all bathed in weird, flickering light from a television that had been left on, the sound muted, while the scenes of a home movie flickered on the screen and Michael Jackson’s voice whispered from the speakers.

  “Billie Jean is not my lover…”

  For a second she was caught in the shaky images flashing upon the television screen.

  She saw her own face, smiling, laughing as she ran away from whoever was holding the camera. Sunlight filtered through trees along a creek. But she wasn’t alone.

  Cooper Trent came into view. Tall. Athletic. His body was lean and tanned, corded muscles in his shoulders and arms and thighs, a ropey scar running down his back. She, beside him, was running and laughing, splashing through the water. Her skin was almost luminescent it was so white, her dark hair unwinding from a scarlet ribbon that fluttered and caught in the breeze, her breasts visible, full and firm, dark nipples erect.

  “Billie Jean is not my…”

  Who had taken this video?

  She didn’t remember…

  Drip. Drip. Drip.

  So loud.

  Like rolling thunder in her aching head.

  Liquid warmth splashed on the tops of her bare feet and she looked down quickly. Her eyes rounded as she saw the blood dripping from the long blade of knife in her hand, the red stain spreading into a pool.

  What?

  No!

  She tried to scream but couldn’t and as she looked toward the open french doors, she saw her father lying on the floor near the coffee table. He stared up at her, eyes unblinking, a jagged gash on his forehead, a spreading stain on the front of his rumpled white shirt.

  Gasping, blood gurgling from the corner of his mouth, he stared up at her, then, struggling whispered in a wet rasp, “Why?”

  Transfixed, her hand now sticky with blood, she started to scream—

  ¤ ¤ ¤

  Jules awoke with a jerk. Heart pounding, head splitting, she sat bolt upright in bed. It was freezing in the bedroom of her condo, the sliding doors open wide, wind rushing inside.

  The rain beat a quick-paced tattoo against her deck. She threw on her robe, disturbing her cat in the process. Curled into a ball, Diablo mewed in protest as he lifted his head.

  “Sorry,” she said as she yanked the door closed and snapped the lock, then looked at the clock. “Seven forty-three? Really? Holy crap!” She was late. Because of the damned nightmare, the recurring dream that came in times of
stress, which, lately seemed just about every day.

  Although usually Cooper Trent wasn’t in the shattered montage of frightening scenes that filled her fitful sleep. “Great. One more piece to the great unsolved puzzle of my psyche.” The less she thought of the son of a bitch, the better. “Get out of my life, off of my cloud, out of my way and all of the above,” she muttered, angry that her subconscious had dredged him up to make him a player in her own personal nightmare.

  She didn’t have time for a shower, much less a jog. Instead, she threw water over her face, tossed down a couple of extra strength Excedrin, washing them down by tilting her head under the sink. After yanking on her jeans and tossing an oversized sweatshirt over her head, she found an old Trailblazers cap, then searched for her keys, scrounging in her purse and in the pockets of the jacket she’d worn the day before.

  Her cell phone rang and she found it on the floor, uncharged.

  She flipped it open and saw Shay’s face on the small LED screen along with her sister’s phone number. “Hi!” she said.

  “Where are you?” Shay demanded.

  “I’m on my way.”

  “It’s too late. We’re almost there!”

  “Now?” Again she glanced at the clock. “I thought you were leaving at nine.”

  “The pilot called. There’s a storm or something. I don’t know. He has to fly out earlier.”

  “Damn!”

  “She’s really doing it, Jules,” Shay said and some of the toughness in her voice disappeared. “She’s getting rid of me.”

  That was a little overly dramatic. But it was Shay. Through and through.

  “Tell her to wait,” Jules said.

  “You tell her,” Shay snapped, and a second later Jules heard her mother’s voice, say, “Look, Julia, there’s no reason to argue with me. I told Shaylee that there’s no turning back and she has to go when the pilot can fly her in. He wants to go earlier because of the storm, so that’s that.”

  “No, Mom, wait. You can’t just send her to—”

  “I damned well can. She’s underage. I’m her guardian. We’ve had this conversation. It’s over!”