Her footsteps thudded dully off the hardwood in the hallway as she passed the lavatory on the left and the study on the right. As she approached the opening, she saw that the sofa across the den was vacant, as was the lounge chair across from the television.
She turned toward the tiger-striped chaise that she had lain upon when she first truly opened up to Riley several nights ago.
“Surprised?”
Amanda jumped back against the wall as if an invisible force was pinning her against the plasterboard. She tried to move her arms as Gabrielle Hastings stood from her secluded position on the chaise longue.
“What are you doing here?” It was all she could muster. Then a horrible thought occurred to her. “What have you done to Riley?”
Nina walked slowly toward her. She was wearing a dark-blue denim jacket and black pants. Old aerobics shoes on her feet, she appeared nimble and ready to leap.
“Thought you outsmarted me, did you? Should have learned, Amanda. You may have tricked me there for a minute, but I’m a survivor, and don’t you forget that. I can be your best friend or your worst enemy. I know that there is no God and that the only life you get is this one. If you don’t take from others, they take from you. It’s the way life is, Amanda. Do you understand?”
Nina’s words were the barren echoes of a despondent woman. That notwithstanding, Amanda noticed the glint of steel in Nina’s hand as one of the slivers of light shone on it like a laser beam.
“What are you going to do, Nina, kill me? Where’s Riley?”
Amanda remembered watching Old Yeller with her father. Her grandmother had that rabid look of a dog with hydrophobia. The only thing missing was the foaming at the mouth. No question that Nina had gone mental.
“I haven’t decided what I’m going to do just yet. Maybe if that slut had been here I would have gotten it out of my system already. Maybe then I would be in a better frame of mind.”
Amanda played with her purse a moment, suddenly remembering the story Nina had mentioned to her about the time she had stabbed her step-father with a pitchfork. Fear bottled up in her throat.
She looked toward the chaise longue and saw an opened piece of paper on the coffee table. The note Riley had left for her. She felt a sigh of relief knowing that Riley was not a corpse in her own house, though the immediate danger to herself recaptured her attention quickly.
“You’re sick, Nina. I never saw it before, but now that I’m free of you and Mama, it’s like I never knew anything else.”
Amanda looked toward the back door where she heard a noise. Gus Randel came walking in the double French doors that led to the deck.
“Gus, oh, am I glad you are here!” Amanda gasped, running toward her mother’s boyfriend. She hugged him hard, remembering all the times he had sided with her against her mother. As she wrapped her arms around him, she noticed that he didn’t reciprocate. She pushed away from his muscular frame.
Looking into his eyes, she instantly knew that something was wrong. He had a thousand-yard stare, looking through her. She had never seen evil personified, but at this moment she thought that he might be a good candidate.
“You know what to do,” Nina said to Gus. “She’s yours if you want her.” Then she said to Amanda, “Payback’s a bitch.”
Gus’s grip tightened on Amanda. She temporarily broke free then pushed him hard in the chest.
“What the hell are you doing listening to this crazy bitch!”
He was unfazed and continued to come toward her. Nina was to her front now with something in her hand. Gus Randel was to her left toward the back door and moving in her direction. She reached up and tilted the sofa back, blocking Gus’s progress, then ran for the front door. Nina looked toward the door, her head moving like that of a predator protecting its kill — a T. rex sizing up its prey.
There was a sound in the driveway. Amanda pulled open the front door but saw no one. She then turned to look as she heard two car doors slam, followed by, “Amanda?”
After a moment, she looked back at Nina and Gus.
Who were gone.
The back door past the sofa was slightly ajar. Amanda remained frozen in place as Harlan Foxworth and Mary Ann Singlaub came into the house through the garage.
“Amanda?” Mary Ann called out from the foyer.
Amanda turned her head toward the front door as a wave of relief washed over her. “They were just here! My grandmother and Gus Randel. They did all this!”
Harlan stepped outside, looked around the corner and then came back in. “Calm down, Amanda. The police have them in custody.”
“What? How?” Amanda stepped outside into the humid afternoon sun. She saw a red mustang parked behind a police cruiser that was flashing its blue lights. Two uniformed cops had Gus and Nina in handcuffs. They were standing in the street. One uniform was talking on a Motorola radio.
Amanda could see a man dressed in civilian clothes holstering a pistol.
“Principal Rugsdale?”
Harlan nodded. “It seems your principal Mr. Rugsdale is a reserve detective in the police force. He worked the staged crime scene at Dagus’s house for what are now obvious reasons. The memory chip they found at your teacher’s house turned out to be Randel’s. Apparently Randel had planted it there. There were several deleted pictures that the digital exploitation team was able to recover. It seems that you never really erase something from a hard drive.”
Amanda had been looking at the stone porch, leaning against Mary Ann, who was hugging her from behind.
“No, I guess not,” Amanda whispered. “It’s all still there.”
“Anyway, Rugsdale reviewed the chip, and they found several deleted photos of Gus Randel with women, most of whom appeared unconscious. Of course, this led to a warrant to search Randel’s condo in Spartanburg. He had downloaded all of these photos onto his laptop. We also found out that he had a contract with the Charlotte Observer to use the name Del Dangurs.”
“How did Dagus get involved in all of this?”
“Simple,” Harlan continued. “His media watchdog group had been pursuing Del Dangurs for years for publishing bogus stories. He had been collecting Dangurs’ stories; that’s what you found. The article written to compromise your dad’s credibility finally gave him a causus belli with the editors of The Observer. The exploitation team found some talking points on his computer referencing unverified sources in the article. Dagus apparently believed he was going to be famous for using the story Randel wrote on your father as an example of journalists just making stuff up. He was fighting to show that the article was bogus when your grandmother offered him up Brianna.
“But don’t have too much sympathy for him, either. Despite the nobility of his effort with the reporting, we have identified several fifteen- to seventeen-year-old girls he has manipulated and taken advantage of, based on his computer files. Some are stepping forward, others not.”
Amanda slipped away from Mary Ann and sat down on the steps.
“What chaos.”
“These are the types of people your grandmother and mother held dear.”
Amanda stared at the bricks, an emptiness overtaking her.
“This was all so Dagus wouldn’t expose the article about my dad as bogus?”
“That’s the way it seems. Your father’s house was burned down, Jake was set up for it, a man is dead, and your mother and grandmother stand to spend a very long time in prison, all because they wanted to suppress the memory of your father.
“Hence, my advice to—”
“Stay out of the way.” All three of them said it in unison.
Mary Ann gave her a moment and then asked, “Ready to go save the world?”
“Just a second,” Amanda replied as she regained her composure. Her heart was pounding like a war drum in her chest. She walked back into the house, leaned over the coffee table and picked up the note. She carried it back to the porch, where Harlan and Mary Ann looked at her. Opening the note, she read: