Mad River Road Read online

  Things improved, at least for a little while, after they moved to Detroit, and her mother got the job at Bishop Lane School for Girls. Emma pictured herself in her neatly pressed school uniform, remembering the initial flush of pride she’d felt when she first slipped her arms into the sleeves of her dark green jacket. This is where I belong, she remembered thinking as she took up her position in the back row for her class photograph with the other teenagers, smiling proudly for the camera.

  And then everything went blurry.

  Emma closed her eyes, rolled over in bed, refusing to see more. What was there to see after all? The episode with the libidinous gym teacher? It had happened all right, but to Claire Eaton, not to her, and the teacher had been summarily dismissed after Claire’s mother complained to the school principal, who was definitely not Emma’s mother. And the photographer she’d met in McDonald’s, well, he was all of seventeen years old and his camera was his dad’s Polaroid, and she doubted he’d noticed her eyes at all, so busy was he staring at her newly developed chest.

  “Why did I tell everybody I modeled for Maybelline?” she moaned at the ceiling.

  Because she’d been telling that lie for so long, she almost believed it herself, she realized. It had started innocently enough. A boy, eager to impress her, and no doubt, hoping to get lucky, had told her she had beautiful eyes and asked playfully if those were her eyes on the packages of Maybelline mascara. It was an easy leap from there. The next time someone told her she had nice eyes, she filled in the rest herself. It wasn’t that farfetched, after all. Her eyes were the same color, the same shape as the girl’s in the ads. Who would know the difference? How would anyone ever find out the truth?

  God, what other lies had she told lately? That she’d written a story about her modeling days and sold it to Cosmo? That she was an army brat, that her father had been killed in Vietnam?

  That was the trouble with lies. They bred like rabbits. And that was okay, if you told those lies to someone like Lily, who was naive and trusting and pretty much believed whatever you said. But when you told those same lies to someone as jaded as Jan Scully or as experienced as Jeff Dawson, then you were just asking for trouble. All those questions he’d asked. And he’d looked far from convinced at her answers. “Damn it,” she said, swinging her legs off the bed and marching to her closet, extricating a beat-up, brown canvas suitcase from the back and throwing it across the bed. I’ve got to get out of here, she was thinking as she flung back the top of the case and started hurling clothes in its direction. It wouldn’t take her long to pack. She didn’t have a lot of things, even counting her latest “purchases,” and Dylan had even less. She quickly emptied her dresser drawers, then started removing the clothes from their hangers. In less than twenty minutes, every piece of clothing she owned, except the blue cotton pajamas she had on, were in the suitcase. “Well, that was smart,” she muttered, realizing she’d left herself nothing to wear.

  Besides, where was she going?

  “Anywhere,” she said, reaching into the suitcase and extricating a pair of jeans and a navy sweater. Her underwear was harder to find, and she ended up unpacking virtually the whole valise and having to fold everything again. “Anywhere but here.” She might not have much, but she still had her instincts, and her instincts were telling her it was time to cut her losses and run, that it was no longer safe for her here on Mad River Road.

  Still, her rent was paid up until the end of the month, she thought, sinking down on the bed, suddenly overwhelmed with fatigue, and if she left now, in the middle of the night, she’d have to leave behind all her furniture and other belongings, and she didn’t have enough money to buy more things, even secondhand. Besides, how could she take Dylan out of school when the school year was almost over? Hadn’t she just been lying awake, remembering how painful it had been being constantly uprooted? Hadn’t she hated her mother because of it? Did she want Dylan to hate her too?

  “Damn it,” she said again, pushing the suitcase off the bed and watching her clothes spill out across the floor. She couldn’t leave. Nor did she really want to. No—what she wanted was to make a fresh start. Tomorrow morning, she’d tell Lily the truth, about everything, and hope that Lily would understand and find it in her heart to forgive her. And then she’d go to Scully’s, return the stupid trophy she’d stolen, apologize to Jan. In another few months, when she thought it was safe, she might even let Dylan start using his real name, and so would she, and they’d make a new beginning by reclaiming their former selves. She’d rediscover the person behind all the lies.

  Emma flopped down on her back and stared at the ceiling. There was only one problem with that, Emma thought: she had no idea who that person was.

  Lily turned over in bed and opened her eyes. Jeff Dawson was smiling at her from the pillow beside her. She wondered how long he’d been watching her as, wordlessly, he reached for her, and she felt herself melting into his arms.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Kenny demanded from the foot of the bed. “He’s a loser, for God’s sake. Get out while you still can.”

  Lily gasped and bolted up in bed, her eyes scanning the darkness for men she knew weren’t there. Jeff wasn’t lying beside her; Kenny wasn’t yelling at her from the foot of the bed. “Good God,” Lily said, listening to the sound of a motorcycle in the distance and wondering if that ghostly sound had propelled Kenny into her dream.

  What would Kenny have thought of Jeff Dawson? she wondered. Would he really have considered him a loser, or would he have liked him?

  “I like him,” she whispered softly, as if afraid to give the words too much resonance.

  “You two have something going on?” she remembered Emma asking the first time she’d seen the two of them together.

  “Of course not,” Lily had replied, but Emma had sensed the truth even then.

  Although what did Emma know of truth? Lily wondered now. Who exactly was Emma Frost, and how many lies had she told?

  Once again she replayed her earlier conversation with Jeff, that unbelievable story he’d told about catching Emma shoplifting. That couldn’t be right. Then again, why couldn’t it? Lily really didn’t know Emma very well. She knew virtually nothing about her life and hadn’t been around her enough to have any clear understanding of the way her mind worked. In fact, the more she learned of Emma, the more of an enigma she was becoming.

  Lily climbed out of bed, walked to the window, and stared out at the dark street, asking herself the same question she’d been asking ever since Jeff had made his startling pronouncement: If Emma Frost wasn’t who she said she was, then who was she? Why all the lies and subterfuge?

  Lily almost laughed. Who was she to judge others? Who was she to complain about people not telling the truth? And if Jeff had been that quick to detect Emma’s fabrications, how long before her own answers proved less than satisfactory?

  She walked to her closet, opened it, stared at the few items hanging inside. Maybe it was time to leave. She’d never intended that her stay in Dayton be anything but a temporary stopgap, until she was able to earn some money, figure out what she wanted to do with the rest of her life. She’d always hoped that one day she might be able to go back home. Although not yet. It was still far too early to be thinking of that.

  Besides, she liked it here. She had her circle of friends, a job, and even her book club. And Michael was flourishing. So why leave? Because she’d met a man she liked and sensed the possibility of something more? Because it was too early to be thinking about such things? Or because it was too late, she thought sadly, closing her closet door and plopping down at the foot of her bed.

  You can’t build a relationship on lies, she was thinking. Just as you couldn’t run from the past forever. Sooner or later, she had to start telling the truth. About her marriage. About Kenny’s death. About her part in everything that happened.

  The truth will set you free. Isn’t that what they said?

  Didn’t they also say that freed
om’s just another word for nothing left to lose?

  Lily closed her eyes. She had a great deal to lose, she thought, climbing back under the covers and staring up at the ceiling, wondering what Jan would think of her when she learned her trusted employee was a liar, what her friends would think when they learned the extent of her lies. What would Jeff Dawson say, she was wondering as sleep began gnawing on the perimeter of her consciousness, if he were to find out that Emma Frost wasn’t the only imposter on Mad River Road?

  Jamie waited until she was confident Brad was asleep before opening her eyes. She’d been lying beside him, listening to the sound of his breathing, for hours now, waiting for his breath to regulate, to even out, to convince her beyond any shadow of a doubt that he was, in fact, asleep and not just testing her. He’d tested her once already tonight, and she’d come perilously close to failing.

  Jamie glanced at the red numbers of the digital clock beside the bed without moving her head, shuddering at the memory of her narrow escape. It had come just before one o’clock, two hours after he’d kissed her good night and told her to take off her clothes and turn over so that he could hold her while they slept. Mercifully, he hadn’t pressed her for sex, sensing perhaps that she was too fragile. Or maybe he was just tired after driving all day. Whatever the reason, he’d seemed content just to lie there beside her, and he’d drifted off to sleep with remarkable ease, his arm draped heavily across her naked body, like an iron chain, holding her in place. Jamie had lain there for what felt like an eternity before somehow working her body free of his arm and carefully sliding out from underneath his weight. He hadn’t moved. It was only when she was at the foot of the bed and reaching for her jeans that his voice stretched across the darkness, like a hand, to grip her shoulder and stop her cold.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” he’d asked, the question a coiled reptile, striking at her soul.

  Jamie struggled to keep her own voice as flat as possible, despite the mad fluctuations of her heartbeat. “I have to go to the bathroom.”

  “Since when do you put your jeans on to go to the bathroom?”

  “I wasn’t putting them on.”

  “What were you doing?”

  “I have a headache. I thought I had some Excedrin in my pocket.”

  “And do you?” He flipped on the light beside the bed, watched her intently.

  Jamie rifled through her pockets. “No,” she said, the dejection in her voice real. “Maybe there’s some in my purse.”

  “You better check.” He pointed toward her purse on the dresser.

  Jamie shuffled toward the dresser, conscious of Brad’s eyes following her naked body. She grabbed her purse, her fingers searching for anything that might give credence to her story. “Here they are,” she said, relief washing over her like a giant wave, bathing her in perspiration as she lifted a tiny bottle of Excedrin into the air.

  “Better take them then,” he said.

  Jamie nodded, continuing into the bathroom and swallowing two pills with a glass of water.

  “Might as well pee while you’re in there,” he advised. “I don’t feel like getting up again tonight. Big day tomorrow,” he added chillingly.

  When Jamie returned to the bedroom, both her purse and her clothes were gone. She thought of asking where they were, then thought better of it. Clearly Brad had put them somewhere beyond her easy reach, his way of telling her he wasn’t taking any more chances. She climbed back into bed, resumed her former position.

  “Hey, Jamie,” he whispered, kissing the side of her neck. “I hear that sex is really good at getting rid of headaches.”

  “Please, Brad …”

  “Relax, Jamie,” he said, his arm reaching across her, like an anchor, weighing her down, securing her position. “I was just teasing.”

  Jamie closed her eyes, swallowed back tears.

  “Sweet dreams, Jamie-girl.”

  Sweet dreams, Jamie-girl, Jamie repeated now to herself, wondering if she dared risk a second attempt at escape. It was almost four o’clock in the morning, and while they were only half an hour outside of Dayton, they were still in the middle of nowhere. Even if she somehow managed to get out of the room and away from the motel, where was she going to go? There’d be no one at the desk at this hour, no phone she could use without proper change or a calling card, no doors she could go pounding on without running the risk of discovery. She had no money, no shoes, no clothes, for God’s sake. Could she really run barefoot and naked into the night, hoping to reach the highway and salvation?

  If Brad were to wake up and discover her gone, there was no doubt he’d come after her. And if he found her? Then what? Trust me—nobody’s ever gonna find old Gracie-girl, she heard him say.

  And yet, what choice did she have? He’d already murdered at least one woman—probably two—and was about to murder another. It was only a matter of time before he decided she was as expendable as the others. She had to at least try to get away. Now might be her only chance.

  And so, Jamie shifted her body just slightly, as if she were turning over in her sleep. Brad stirred slightly but didn’t wake, his arm still draped across her hip. Again, Jamie altered her position, slowly flipping onto her back. Brad moved with her, his arm now sliding across her stomach. She felt his breath warm on the side of her face. He sighed, as if in the middle of a pleasant dream. Was he dreaming of his former wife? Was he thinking about what he planned to do to her?

  Jamie tried picturing Brad’s wife, but all she could see was a woman cowering in a corner, her bruised arms covering her face, shielding her head from the blows she knew were inevitable. Somehow she’d found the courage to escape her tormentor, to gather up her son and run away. And yet, even after a year, even after obtaining a divorce and moving halfway across the country, finding what she thought was a secure haven in Ohio, creating a new identity, a new life for her son and herself, she still wasn’t safe. He’d found out where she was, and he was coming to kill her. Just as Jamie knew he would come after her should she make good on her escape.

  In that instant, Jamie understood that she would never be safe again, as long as Brad Fisher was alive.

  She waited a full five minutes before turning back on her side, Brad’s arm sliding off her hip as she moved. Now was her chance, she recognized, although her legs still refused to move. Where are you going? they seemed to be asking. Where can you run?

  It didn’t matter, she decided. It didn’t matter that she didn’t know where she was going, or that she was naked and had no money, no shoes, no identification. Nothing mattered except that she get the hell out of there. She’d worry about everything else later.

  Slowly, she inched her torso up in bed until she was sitting. The sheet fell from her breasts. Brad stirred, his lips twitching as his body moved slightly to the left. Jamie held her breath, debating whether to lie back down and abandon her plan. Several more minutes passed before her mind filled with fresh resolve, and she brought her feet to the side of the bed, another minute before she lowered them to the floor. The feel of the worn carpet beneath her bare toes sent shock waves through her legs, as if she’d stepped on a live wire. She’d made it this far before, she was thinking, feeling his eyes on her back, his smirk on her skin. She heard movement behind her and braced herself for his touch. What could she tell him this time? Would she even have a chance to speak before he silenced her once and for all?

  Jamie spun around.

  There was no one behind her. And when she looked down at the bed, Brad was still underneath the covers, sleeping soundly. Oh, God, she said silently, covering her mouth with her hand to mute the sound of her ragged breathing. She had to be careful. She couldn’t afford to make any mistakes. Not when she was so close.

  She pushed one foot in front of the other, gradually increasing the size of her steps. Part of her wanted to make a mad dash for it, but she knew that if she did, it would only increase the chance of his waking up. Although her eyes had long since adjusted to the da
rk, the room was still unfamiliar. She couldn’t risk knocking against a piece of furniture or tripping over his shoes on her way to the door. She had to proceed slowly and with great caution.

  She was halfway to the door when she saw Brad’s clothes draped over the side of the chair he’d occupied earlier. Slowly, she reached over, carefully dragging his black T-shirt from the top of the pile and quickly pulling it on, her head popping through its round neck, like a wary turtle emerging from its shell. If he’s awake, I’ll just tell him I got cold, Jamie thought, but when she looked toward the bed, she saw he hadn’t moved.

  Her fingers grazed the side of Brad’s jeans. Were the keys to her car still nestled in his pocket? Was the switchblade knife still secreted inside? Could she get them out without making any noise? Could she take that chance? And if she managed to retrieve the knife, what then? Could she use it if she had to? Was she capable of killing another human being?

  Suddenly Brad stirred, as if her thoughts had jostled him awake. Jamie froze, the palm of her hand resting on the leg of Brad’s jeans, holding her breath as Brad yawned and flopped onto his other side. From this distance, she couldn’t make out whether or not his eyes were open, whether or not he was watching her, waiting to see what she would do next. So she did nothing, simply stood trembling in the middle of the room until, once again, she heard the regular rhythm of his breathing resume.

  Slowly, her fingers extended toward the pocket of his jeans, and she carefully wiggled them down inside the heavy denim. The pocket was empty, she realized, almost bursting into tears, which meant that she’d have to turn the pants over, try the pocket on the other side. Could she do that without causing the keys to jangle? Brad’s heavy leather belt was looped through the waist of the jeans, and maneuvering them wasn’t going to be easy. Still, if her car keys were inside, if she could only recover them, then she stood a real chance of getting out of here, of going to the police, of preventing tomorrow’s horrors.