She just needed to buy time to still her dizziness and for the pain to fade some.
Run, Addie. Hide.
“How did you know I was Addie?” she asked between ragged pants. Where was she? Was that the shimmer of water in the distance? Her fingers clutched at the surface where they still pressed. It’s the stonewall. Kehoe had dragged her down to the bluff. That rushing sound wasn’t just her blood pounding in her ears, but also the waves rushing the beach and crashing against the rocks.
“I didn’t, at first. Then I started to get the picture, as unlikely as it all seemed. Fall was too focused on you. Of course he’d want to make sure he got his hooks in you, just like he got them into Alan Durand. At first, I couldn’t believe it. But you look like her, without all the ugly makeup. Lynn, I mean. I noticed when it washed away after you swam. You’re taller and rougher than her. Did you honestly think you could compare to her by wearing that fancy dress and her pearls. Her pearls. You couldn’t hold a candle to Lynn Durand; you’re nowhere near as elegant. Every bit as full of yourself as her, though. There’s something of her in you, all right. I should know. I knew her better than anyone alive. Your mother and I were very close. As close as a man and woman could be.”
That sliced through her shock and disorientation more than anything.
“What?”
“Don’t sound so incredulous,” he hissed. “We were two of a kind, Lynn and I. We had the same philanthropic dreams, the same generous bent. We created Camp Durand together. We carved out the ideals that later became the driving principles of this whole damn company, even though Alan Durand took all the credit for what we’d done. I gave Lynn what she needed, more so than that defective husband of hers. She was lonely, you know. So beautiful. So sad.”
“Prime pickings for a predator like you?” Alice couldn’t stop herself f
rom saying. “Ow. No, stop.”
He’d grabbed the hair at the back of her head and snapped back her neck. It hurt so much.
“You’re not the prized little princess anymore, do you hear me?” he spat near her ear. Spittle struck her skin. Despite her pain and discomfort, the sound of his voice sent pure fear through her. He was a crazy man, shouting in her ear, a man so enraged, he no longer held any fear for the consequences of his actions. “Did your lover, the great Dylan Fall, tell you how your mother died, Alice?”
His snide, taunting tone—or perhaps the question itself—sent fury and panic through her. He’d stepped closer to grab her hair. She elbowed him again, but this time she didn’t hit him as squarely as before. He cursed and tightened his fingers in her hair, stretching her neck and forcing her back into an arch. His forearm pressed to her throat. She gagged at the pressure. She started clawing at his arm to free her airway, but he wouldn’t budge.
“She went right off this bluff, Addie. They found her body on the rocks below, bloody and broken.”
“Did . . . you. . .” She gurgled when he pressed the bone of his forearm tighter against her trachea.
“No. I didn’t throw her off, if that’s what you’re wondering. I’ll tell you a little secret though, Addie,” he whispered in her ear, causing her shivers of fear and disgust to amplify. “I was right here when she did it. You might say I had a front-row seat. And I didn’t stop her. It was her guilt that killed her, not me. She wanted a baby so bad, she chose to be unfaithful to her husband. She chose me. I hated seeing her suffer when we stood here together at this bluff, so I thought it would be cruel to stop her once she’d made up her mind. What else would she do, once I told her that all the rumors were true? Her precious little Addie was definitely dead. Or she was supposed to be, anyway. That’s what I paid those worthless idiots, Cunningham and Stout, good money for. But at the time, when I stood here with Lynn on this bluff, I thought they’d done their job. I felt bad, telling Lynn that Addie was dead. But your mother had it coming. She’d left me bleeding and broken years before by abandoning me. And then later, by telling me what she did about you. She actually believed she could go back to Alan, and the three of you were going to live out her little dream, the rich king, and the beautiful queen and the darling little princess, all of you so happy,” he mocked. “Well I couldn’t let that happen, Addie. Not after Lynn had led me down the path she did. I didn’t let it happen.”
Rage at what he was saying had made Alice’s mind go blank. All she wanted to do was hurt Sebastian Kehoe in that moment, and she didn’t care how she accomplished it. She pulled with all her might on her head and sunk her teeth into his forearm. Kehoe shouted in pain and surprise.
She clamped her jaw, her teeth cutting into flesh. The taste of his blood spread on her tongue.
He howled in agony, but she held as fast as a furious dog with its prey in its jaws. He clumsily struck her temple with his free fist. Sensing the break of his hold, Alice loosened her jaw and dropped to the earth. She rolled on the ground away from him.
“I’m going to kill you for that, you worthless, snot-nosed little bitch,” Kehoe seethed. “This time, I’m not going to be a spectator, either. I’ll send you over the bluff myself. Maybe I’ll follow you, and we can be broken and bleeding together. Would you like the company, Addie? I wouldn’t mind. I’ll die with the satisfaction of knowing that Dylan Fall will find you, and be as wrecked for the rest of his miserable life as Alan Durand was when he found Lynn.”
Alice scurried farther away on the lawn, wild to put distance between herself and the sound of his ranting voice. Horror filled every cell of her being. He was completely mad.
Her fall to the ground and rolling away amplified her disorientation. A distant, blaring alarm began to pulse in her ears. She sat in the grass, the darkness her only cloak, trying her mightiest to steady herself so that she could stand. It was only a matter of seconds, however, before Kehoe’s shadow lurched above her. Panicked, she scuttled several yards on her hands and feet. She gave a wild, frustrated cry when he followed her with ease.
“I see you, Addie,” he laughed.
Shit. He could see her glow-in-the-dark Camp Durand T-shirt. She cried out in anguish when his hands clamped on her shoulders and squeezed. God, she was really going to die.
“Get up, Addie. You lived twenty years longer than I planned. What have you got to complain about?”
“No!” Alice resisted, one fist punching at his neck and head as he leaned down over her, the other hand reaching for the ground, digging into the grass in desperation, seeking a firm hold that wasn’t there. She would lose. He was strong, and he’d weakened her so badly. “Dylan. Dylan!” she screamed.
He slapped her face. Hard. She gasped in shock.
“Your suck-up knight in shining armor isn’t going to save you this time. In fact”—she whimpered in shock when he hauled her roughly to her feet—“you have him to blame for all your misery, Addie. If Fall would have left well enough alone, you’d be safe and sound right now, wouldn’t you? You would have never returned to Morgantown. You have him to thank for tonight, even. I knew he was getting suspicious of me, forcing me to go on that damn trip to Reno, laughing at me under his breath the whole time because he thought I was helpless. Well guess what? I don’t give a damn about whether or not the mighty Dylan Fall wants to fire me. Fuck him and his job. The job was never as important as Lynn. She was what counted.” He shoved her in the direction of the beach, and she cried out. “Don’t be a coward, Addie. Your mother wasn’t, in the end. She was beautiful and brave when she went over that bluff. I should have followed her then. I should have ended it with her, not with you. I would have, but I kept on living for her. I wanted to make sure her dreams came to life. Everything I’ve done since she died, I’ve done for her.”
He pushed her and she staggered in the direction of the sound of the crashing water. Terror seized her chest, gripping so hard that Alice thought she’d die of a heart attack in that very moment instead of falling to her death.
Falling . . . falling.
“No,” she grated out, gripping both her hands tightly in front of her, preparing to throw her balled hands and all her weight against him in one last desperate attempt at survival. The thudding sound of a fist striking flesh entered her ears, followed by a grunt of pain. Kehoe’s hold on her loosened. What was happening? She’d been preparing to lash out at him, but her hands hadn’t moved, had they?