Dearly Beloved (37 page)

“Shouldn’t we follow him and see if he knows anything about Sandy?” Danny asks urgently.

Keegan’s heart sinks. He knows Danny’s desperate to find his sister; but now that they’ve arrived at the inn, he can’t bear the thought of not getting to Jennie right away.

“Can we just—Look, I just want to stop here,” he says, “to see if Jennie’s inside. You two can go on and catch up to the police officer.”

“Yeah, but look at Sherm go,” Ned comments with a low whistle. “Looks like he’s on someone’s trail.”

“I’ll come in with you,” Danny says, turning to Keegan. “Just to see if the innkeeper knows what’s going on.”

As Ned pulls up in front of the inn, Keegan watches the police car driving rapidly away in the opposite direction, the red taillights visible for only a few seconds before disappearing around a curve.

J
ennie stirs, then opens her eyes, wondering why her bed is shaking violently. Can it be an earthquake?

Not in Boston,
she thinks groggily.

But you’re not in Boston,
she remembers, trying to think straight. Why is it so cold? She must have kicked the covers off . . .

Boston?

No! You’re on the island . . .

And you’re not in your bed,
she realizes as she gradually regains her senses.
It’s pitch black, and you’re lying on some kind of rough carpet, and . . . and . . . you’re moving.

That’s it
. . .

It’s not your bed that’s shaking . . .

You’re going over bumps in a road . . .

Thoroughly confused, she squints into the darkness and tries to remember what happened.

Then it comes rushing back to her.

Jasper Hammel standing in her doorway and the cloth he’d clamped over her nostrils and that overpowering smell . . .

He knocked you out!

The knowledge fills Jennie with a chill more intense than the one caused by the frigid temperature.

He knocked you out, and now you’re . . . you must be in the trunk of a car, and he’s driving you somewhere . . .

Oh, God.

Oh, God!

Panicking, Jennie squirms, then kicks her legs, only to find that they’re bound together at the ankles of her jeans.

And her wrists, too, are bound behind her back so that she can’t move, can only lie helplessly on her side as the car whisks her closer to . . .

Where?

Where is he taking me?

Calm down!
she orders herself fiercely, taking a deep breath, and then another. At least there’s no gag in her mouth . . .

She can scream for help as soon as—

No. She can’t. If Jasper Hammel—or whoever’s driving this car—thought there was a chance of anyone hearing her, he would have made sure she couldn’t make a sound. Wherever he’s taking her, it must be someplace where no one will ever hear her. Where no one will ever find her.

Squeezing her eyes tightly shut again, Jennie whimpers softly to herself, feeling tears slipping down her cheeks.

Why?
she keeps asking herself.

Is Jasper Hammel some psycho who abducts unsuspecting women?

And who then . . .

What?

Rapes them?

Tortures them?

Murders them?

She pictures the odd little man with his formal, clipped way of speaking and shudders. Is he a psychopath in disguise?

You knew something was wrong all along,
she tells herself.
Why didn’t you listen to your instincts?

Because you thought it was just your imagination acting up again,
she responds flatly to the plaintive inner voice.

Ironic, isn’t it, she thinks, that after all the times when she’s panicked for no reason, she really is in danger again?

Just like the time with Harry—

And Harry, she recalls, had come to her in a dream to warn her.

Tears trickle down her cheeks as she thinks of the man she had loved, of how he had given his life for her.

That day three years ago had started out as one of the happiest Jennie had ever known.

She had woken in Harry’s arms in his small apartment and glanced out the window beside the bed to see that it was snowing. Big, downy flakes, the kind that would turn Boston into a winter wonderland.

And it was a Saturday, which meant that she and Harry would be together every minute for another forty-eight hours; and Christmas was right around the corner; and Harry’s engagement ring was sparkling on the fourth finger of Jennie’s left hand. . . .

She had actually shivered with joy.

“Wake up, you big lug,” she’d said playfully. “It’s going to be a wonderful day.”

“Why?” he’d asked groggily.

“Because it’s snowing and I love you and we’re going to go shopping.”

He’d raised one eyelid. “What was that last thing?”

“Come on, Harry, we have to go to the mall. I haven’t gotten any of my shopping done, and Christmas is this week.”

“That place will be insane on a Saturday.”

“So? It’ll be fun. Get you into the spirit.”

“It’ll get me
out
of the spirit, Jen. You know I hate to shop.”

But she’d gotten her way, of course. Harry always gave in when she wanted something. And besides, he had shopping of his own to do. He wasn’t going home to Portland for the first time ever, having decided to spend the holidays with Jennie, and that meant he had a lot of gifts to ship to his family.

After a leisurely breakfast of waffles and freshly-ground hazelnut coffee, they had taken the T over to the Colonial Mall so they wouldn’t have to fight for a parking space. The fake-cobblestone corridors had been jammed with people, just as Harry had predicted.

For several hours, they had traipsed from store to store, buying gifts for their families, and even a few for each other. Harry kept trying to peek into the sporting goods store bag Jennie was carrying, knowing she’d stashed something for him inside, along with the in-line skates she’d bought for Laura.

Finally, they had everything they needed. Harry wanted to beat a hasty exit, but Jennie had persuaded him to stop at the food court for hot cocoa. “My feet are killing me,” she’d said when he protested, “and you know we’re going to have to stand on the T all the way home.”

He’d given in, of course.

Jennie has wondered, so many times a day, every day of the past three years, what her life would be like now if Harry had said no to that cocoa. Or if they’d driven to the mall instead of taking the T. Or even if they’d arrived at the food court a few minutes earlier, or a few minutes later.

And even though she knew it was useless to torture herself with idle speculation, she couldn’t seem to help it.

If things had been just slightly different that day, Harry would still be alive.

It was while Jennie and Harry were seated at one of the small wrought-iron tables in the skylighted food court, sipping their hot whipped-cream-laced cocoa, that the first shots had rung out.

“What was that?” Jennie had asked frowning and looking over her shoulder.

“Sounded like—Oh, Jesus.”

“What?”

Baffled Jennie had seen a throng of people pushing frantically toward them.

Someone screamed, “He’s got a gun! He’s got a gun!”

There were more shouts and shrieks, more staccato blasts—sounds that would later haunt Jennie’s nightmares.

She had seen the man with the gun coming at them, firing haphazardly to the left and right. He was so nondescript, she would tell the police later, still dazed. He looked like a balding, middle-aged English teacher or salesman, wearing glasses and jeans and a down jacket like so many other people at the mall that day.

Her eyes had locked with his as he happened to turn his head toward the table where she was sitting with Harry. She had seen him swing the gun again and point it in their direction, right at her.

“Oh, Christ, Jennie, duck!”

Harry had stood and leaned over the table, plastering his gigantic palm over the top of her head and shoving her down, throwing his big body over hers just as another shot rang out.

Jennie heard someone holler “Grab him” and turned her head to look up, bewildered, past Harry’s arm that was thrown across her face, toward the commotion above.

That was when she had seen the man with the gun, with swift efficiency, placing the barrel into his own mouth. He pulled the trigger without hesitation, and blood and bone and brains had exploded from his head instantly.

Repulsed and panic-stricken, Jennie had screamed, “Oh, God, Harry, he just—”

And then she had seen him.

Harry.

The man she loved, the man whose engagement ring sparkled on her hand, the man who only moments before had been smiling at her across the table . . .

The left side of his face was oddly intact, the eye open and fixed vacantly on Jennie . . .

But the right side . . .

The entire right side of Harry’s face was gone.

Later, much later, she would find out that the man who had done this—who had killed seven innocent people in a matter of moments—was married and had five children and had been laid off from his factory job the week before. He was despondent over mounting bills, his wife said, and wondering how they were going to heat their rented house this winter and get food on the table, let alone provide Christmas presents for their kids.

“I guess he just snapped,” the grief-stricken woman was quoted as saying in an article in the
Globe.

He just snapped. . . .

The words had stayed with Jennie.

A stranger had snapped and her entire world had instantly fallen apart.

It wasn’t fair.

For a long time after that, she hadn’t cared whether she lived or died.

Then she’d met Keegan and fallen in love before she’d realized what was happening.

It wasn’t until Christmas approached, bringing with it memories of what had happened to Harry—memories she had fought so hard to shut out—that Jennie had realized what she had to do.

She could never live with loving a cop—a man whose entire job was about danger and violence, a man who laid his life on the line every day.

She could never live with the constant fear of losing Keegan the way she had lost Harry, in the split second it takes for someone to pull the trigger of a gun.

And now,
Jennie thinks in despair, futilely kicking her bound legs against the side of the car trunk,
I’m the one who’s going to die.

Chapter 16

J
asper Hammel has just stepped into the storage room where officer Sherm Crandall’s big body lies unconscious on the floor, when the sound of the doorbell pierces the air.

He freezes, his heart erupting into a rapid pounding as he waits and listens, wondering frantically what to do.

It rings again, more insistently this time.

It can’t be Stephen. He wouldn’t come to the front door, and besides, he has a key.

Jasper hesitates only another moment before tossing the meat cleaver onto the floor. It clatters across the scarred wood and stops just short of the cop’s big belly.

Turning, Jasper flees the storeroom, stopping only long enough to lock the door so that the man can’t get out if he comes to.

I’ll be back to take care of you later,
Jasper promises him, even though he knows it’s a lie.

He wouldn’t have been able to do it. He knew that even as he had stood over the man, clutching the knife, seconds earlier.

He’s half-grateful to whoever rang the doorbell and saved him from having to attempt murder and half-furious that the unwelcome visitor is forcing him to take flight like a frightened gull.

He scoops the keys to Stephen’s car off the kitchen counter, then slips out the back door as the bell rings again.

Racing across the frozen yard through the driving snow, Jasper wonders who can be at the door. He knows Crandall is the only cop on the island in winter. Who else would be stopping by in the middle of a storm?

Does it matter?
he asks himself as he reaches the car and jerks open the door.
All that matters is that you get out of here.

He gets behind the wheel, jabs the key into the ignition, and starts the engine. As he drives around to the front of the big old inn, he thinks wistfully of his packed suitcase waiting in the little room on the first floor.

He would have to leave it behind now. All the mementos he had collected through the years—a lock of Stephen’s hair, a photograph of the two of them at prep school graduation—not to mention the new wardrobe he had bought to take with him.

Stephen had said they would be living on a tiny island in the West Indies—an island he had bought with cash. He had paid off a lot of people to erase the trail of paperwork that might lead the authorities to connect him to the island.

“No one will ever find me, Jasper,” he’d said gleefully.

“You mean
us,
” Jasper had said. “Don’t you?”

“Of course I do. No one will ever find
us
.”

Jasper remembers how much fun he’d had shopping for the clothes he’ll need on the island—splashy tropical-print shirts and Bermuda shorts and sandals. Now he’ll never get to wear them. . . .

But you’ll get new things,
he promises himself.
Stephen will buy you anything you want, when you get to the island.

He pulls carefully out onto the highway heading north, looking back at the inn through the rear-view mirror. Before the snow obliterates the view, he makes out a battered-looking pickup truck parked in front of the Bramble Rose.

“Farewell forever, whoever you are,” he calls softly as he heads up the coast toward the old Gilbrooke mansion.

“D
id you see that?” Danny asks Keegan and Ned, watching the big black sedan disappear up the highway in the same direction the police car had taken.

“Something’s up,” Keegan says, nodding and pounding on the door of the inn. “Anyone here?” he calls.