Blood Kin (36 page)

Bailey tried to free her ankles, but Grace had bound them just as tightly as her hands and tied them to the slimy post. It was only a few yards from what was left of this part of the dock and the muddy shoreline, but it might as well have been a mile for all the chance she had of reaching it. There was no way she could free herself before she drowned in the rising tide. She thought she should pray, ask forgiveness for her sins, but she couldn't remember anything she'd ever done to merit this end. And when she closed her eyes, it was Daniel's face she saw, Daniel's smile, and the twinkle in his eyes.

“Don't do that,” Grace warned. “Stay awake. You'll sleep soon enough.”

“You won't get away with this. People will find out. They'll know the truth. Matthew will know.”

“He loves me. He always has. Even when you spread your legs for him . . . when you took in his seed that should have been mine, he didn't love you.” Grace pointed back toward the cabin. “That's where it happened, where you seduced them. You remember, don't you? Where you played the whore for my Matthew, for Creed, and for Joe? Did you enjoy it? Having them all, one after another? Did it make you feel better than me?”

“It wasn't me, Grace. I wasn't even born then.”

“But you were,” she shouted. “You were conceived there, on that bed of sin. It wasn't supposed to be like that. You were supposed to be with Joe that day, not my Matthew. And you weren't supposed to quicken with his child.
She
wasn't,” Grace corrected herself. “Beth wasn't. You're trying to trick me.”

“I'm not. You're not well. You need help.”

“Do I?” Grace smiled. “It doesn't look from here as though I'm the one who needs help. The water will be up to your breasts soon, and then your chin. And you know what happens after that.”

Bailey swallowed her fear and sucked in a great gulp of air. There wasn't going to be a fairy-tale ending for her. She would die here, and it would be weeks, maybe months or years, before anyone found her. Would
things
eat her body? Crabs? Fish? Would just her bones remain here, tied to this damned post until the ropes rotted away? Suddenly anger filled her, pushing back the terror.

“Is Matthew my father, Grace? Is that why you hate me? Because Beth gave him a child when you couldn't?”

Grace picked up the rifle. “Don't say his name. I warn you, girl. You let his name come out of your filthy mouth again and I'll put a bullet between your eyes.”

Bailey believed her, but there was no longer any need for caution. If she couldn't reason with the psychopath, maybe she could at least get answers. And what if she did die with a bullet through her head? Right now that seemed more appealing than slowly drowning. “You killed my aunt Elizabeth, didn't you? Why? What did she do to you?”

“She paid Forest McCready to find you. She wanted you to come back. She wanted to stir Will Tawes up again, to start up all the questions . . . the gossip. I tried to reason with her, remind her that you were a bastard nobody wanted. You had no business on our island, but she wouldn't listen.”

“And so you killed her?” The water was colder than Bailey had expected. Something brushed against her
ankle, and she flinched. A turtle? A snake? She shuddered and glanced down at the water. It was too muddy to see more than a few inches down. Were there poison snakes in the Chesapeake? She couldn't remember.

“I warned Elizabeth to let the past lie, just like I warned you. But no one can tell a Tawes anything. They think they're so smart, smarter than the Widdow-sons, smarter than anyone. Well, you see who the smart one is now, don't you?” Grace used the corner of her shirt to wipe down the barrel of her rifle. “I should have thought to bring something to drink. There's a spring here somewhere, but it's probably polluted. It didn't used to be. We all drank from it that day, even Emery, and he was always afraid of his own shadow.”

“Did he . . . was he with my mother too?” Bailey swallowed.
Say no
, she willed Grace.
For the love of God, say no. Leave me that much to hang on to.

“That pansy? He couldn't get it up. Puked his guts out after a few swigs of moonshine. He always was odd, if you catch my meaning. A freak of nature. Not a man, not a woman. As far as anyone knows, he's never had a partner, male or female. It's not natural, if you ask me. God made two kinds of people, men and women. I don't know who made Emma.”

A small ribbon of happiness curled in the pit of Bailey's belly. She was shivering now. Cold, despite the heat of the sun on her face. The water had risen to wash against her nipples. Flies bit her neck and face; swarms of mosquitoes threatened to invade her mouth, even her eyes; and she shook her head to keep them away.

“None of it was true about Uncle Will, was it, Grace?”

“It was true enough!” Grace flung back. “He used to
come into my room at night after my mother was asleep. I pretended I didn't know he was there when he touched me, when he put his hands between my legs, when he pushed his filthy fingers into my—”

“Stop!” Bailey cried. “Don't say that.”

“I was little, too little to stop him. I tried to tell my mother, but she didn't believe me. She whipped me for telling lies. He didn't stop. It got worse until it wasn't his fingers, but his thing. The first time he rammed it into my mouth I wanted to choke, to bite it, but he said if I did he'd smother me with a pillow. He would have, too. Arney was mean. He beat my puppy to death with a bat because it peed on the rug. And he beat my mother all the time.”

“Arney? Arney did?”

“My stepfather. At least, that was what he called himself. I don't think they ever got married. People said he had a wife on Chincoteague and they never divorced.”

“You were a little girl. It wasn't your fault. There wasn't anything you could do.”

“By the time I was ten he was doing it all. My step-brother too. And what could I do? Once I tried to tell Matthew's mother. She was the minister's wife. She should have helped me, but she went to Ma, and Ma beat me worse than Arney for spreading filth about him. ‘Keep what's in the family in the family'; that's what she said. ‘Don't hang your dirty laundry out for everybody to see.' ”

“But you got the best of them,” Bailey said. “And even of Joe, a senator. You showed him.”

“You got that right, girl. I showed him. I made him pay. Pay for what he did to me, pay to keep his dirty little secret. He wanted to be vice president, did you know that? Joe Marshall from Tawes, a storekeeper's
son and a bully. No better than he should have been. But he paid for years, and he never knew which one of us he was paying to keep quiet.”

“He didn't want anybody to know what he had done to my mother?”

“I told him that you were
his
bastard daughter. How would that have looked? Senator sleeps with town whore and produces a little by-blow that has to be given away like an unwanted kitten? Oh, he paid, gladly. And he could afford it. I wasn't greedy. I never took more than my rightful share. No more than was my due.”

Water lapped against Bailey's throat, and she clenched her teeth to keep from crying out. She wouldn't give this madwoman that much. If she had to die, she'd do it with as much dignity as she could. She strained to raise her head. “It's not too late to stop this,” she said. “Matthew loves you. He'll forgive you anything. He'll get you help, and he'll be there for you.”

“Shut up!”

“But I might not be Matthew's child. I could be Creed—”

“What did I tell you?” Grace raised the rifle to her shoulder and took aim.

Bailey gasped as a night heron burst up out of the reeds to the left of the cabin in a flurry of wings, outstretched neck, and long legs. Grace whirled toward the spot where the bird had waded only seconds before. She squeezed off six shots, spraying the area with bullets before diving through the open cabin door.

Daniel cried out in pain and surprise as the bullets tore through him. One knee crumpled, but he forced himself to fire back, getting off two rounds before Grace
vanished inside the solid wooden fortress and pulled the heavy door shut behind her.

Seconds later the tip of a rifle barrel appeared over the windowsill. “Are you still alive, Will Tawes? Because if you are, I have a surprise for you,” Grace shouted. “You get to watch while the slut drowns. Unless you want to come out like a man and let me finish you off first!”

Grace's rifle cracked two more times. Slowly circles of muddy water tinged with red spread wider and wider before being lost in the steadily rising tide. There was absolute silence from the cabin and the marsh, other than the annoying hum of insects and the rustle of a salt breeze through the interlaced phragmites.

Bailey's heart plummeted. She'd never wanted to harm another living soul, but she wanted to get her hands on Grace Catlin's throat and choke the life out of her. Bailey wanted to murder the demented sociopath who'd destroyed the lives of so many people to satisfy her own needs. She wanted to stake Grace to the muddy beach and let the mosquitoes, blackflies, and hermit crabs eat her alive, bite by bite, inflicting the most agony possible before they devoured her.

Every primal instinct Bailey possessed urged her to scream, but common sense told her that attempting to communicate with her would-be rescuer would lessen his chances of remaining alive—if he was still alive.

Just the thought that she wasn't alone anymore gave
her hope. And she knew her invisible ally couldn't be Will. He'd been badly wounded back at the house. Only one man could have come to rescue her—Daniel. She knew it was Daniel as surely as she knew he was still alive. He might be badly injured, but he wasn't dead. She could feel his presence, almost hear him whispering her name, telling her to hang on a few minutes longer until he could find a way to get through Grace's rain of bullets.

Bailey couldn't imagine how Daniel had known where to look for her, or how he'd found her in this morass of swamp and black water, but she would have bet her immortal soul that the person who'd fired off those shots at Grace was Daniel. She gritted her teeth to keep from calling to him, but nothing could keep her hands from going numb or the tears from streaming down her cheeks.

She yanked frantically at the rope binding her wrists together, but the water seemed to have welded the knots. The tide was still coming in, as Grace had told her it would. She could see the water creeping up the mud banks inch by inch, smell the subtle change in the humid air around her as stagnant pools filled with the incoming flow.

Minutes passed, and the restless waves lapped at the underside of Bailey's chin. She prayed with every fiber of her being for her own safety, and even more for Daniel's. A hundred questions tumbled through her fear and uncertainty, but nothing could dim her joy that he cared enough to risk his life for hers.

She had to do something. Will Tawes would have thought of something heroic. She couldn't imagine her aunt Elizabeth hanging helplessly on this damned post like a worm on a hook and drowning while Grace got
off scot-free and maybe killed Daniel in the bargain. If she couldn't communicate with him, maybe she could distract Grace and give him a better chance to do whatever he was attempting.

Bailey opened her mouth to shout and was rewarded with a mouthful of muddy water. She choked, spit it out, and inched her way higher on the post with her bare foot, raising herself up out of the mud. She arched her neck back to keep her face as high as possible.

“Grace? Are you all right?” Bailey managed.

“I'm fine, you stupid slut. You're the one who needs help. Remember? Another five minutes and you'll be inhaling water. It's probably polluted, but that won't matter to you. What is the expression? Oh, yes, Cathy Tilghman's fond of it: ‘That's a moot point.' Cathy loves to show off her education in front of the ignorant locals in our Ruth Circle. Fancies herself somewhat of an expert on the Bible.”

“What will you tell—” Bailey caught herself before saying Matthew's name. “How will you explain this to him? We left the house together, and only you come back? He's bound to be suspicious.”

Silence.

“Grace!”

“Shut up and drown, bitch!”

A green-headed insect the size of a horsefly flitted around Bailey's temple, lit on her cheekbone, and bit her fiercely. The sting brought tears of pain, and she felt a thin trickle of blood. She lowered her face into the water, trying to rid herself of her tormentor.

“What will he think?” she shouted when she came up again. “He doesn't know what you've done, does he? He loves you. He's always loved you. He's always seen the good in you that no one else has—”

Grace laughed. “Don't even try it. I know a little bit about psychology, college girl. My Matthew is a simple man, a good man, but easy to manipulate. Like all the rest, he sees the world in black and white. And all women know that it's really gray. It's all gray.”

A hand clasped Bailey's ankle, and she bit her tongue to keep from screaming in panic. Scenes from every horror movie she'd ever watched flashed before her eyes. She opened her mouth, but then clamped it shut. She could have sworn her heart stopped before she realized that crabs didn't have hands. If there was someone under the water, it wasn't one of the walking dead or the Creature from the Black Lagoon. It could only be Daniel, come to free her from this waking nightmare.

She summoned her nerve and tried again. “What will he do when he gets up and finds you gone, Grace? How will he manage without you?”

Silence.

“Grace!” Now water was threatening Bailey's every breath when she attempted to speak, but the hand tugged at her calf and she felt what might have been a rope loosening on one ankle. She twisted, trying to take breaths between the tiny surges of incoming tide, waves too small and sluggish to be waves. She didn't look down. She kept her eyes on the cabin window, on the sunlight glinting off the barrel of Grace's rifle.