Diabolical (Shaye Archer Series Book 3) (24 page)

O
ne month
later

S
haye sat
in a chair on the patio, looking over the cliff at the ocean below. Ultimately, Pierce had gotten his wish—she and Corrine had left the country. Under different circumstances, she would have thought the view beautiful, but at the moment, she couldn’t appreciate it. Right now, the surf breaking against the rocks didn’t look majestic. It looked bleak.

Just as everything felt.

“Do you need anything?” Corrine’s voice sounded from inside the house behind her.

“I need you to sit down,” Shaye said.

Corrine was trying to put on a brave front, but Shaye knew better. Pierce’s suicide had shaken her mother to the core. The woman who had the emotional strength and heart to face any challenge life threw at her had finally met her match.

Corrine stepped out onto the patio and dropped into the chair next to Shaye. She handed Shaye a glass of iced tea and gazed out at the ocean, her expression completely vacant. Shaye took a drink of the tea and frowned.

“We can’t stay here forever,” Shaye said.

“Sure we can. We can buy the place if we want to.”

“You know what I meant. Sooner or later, we have to go back to New Orleans and deal with this. The press is not going to go away. Not until they get their pound of flesh. No matter how long we stay, they will still be waiting for us when we return.”

Corinne slapped her hands down on the arms of the chair. “Damn them! Why can’t they leave us alone? Haven’t we been through enough?”

Shaye didn’t bother to reply because they both knew the answer.

Corrine turned to look at her. “Are you telling me you’re ready? You’re ready to face all the questions about your past? About your time with that monster?”

“I don’t have to answer anything I don’t want to. My injuries told the story nine years ago. I don’t need to recount the gory details in order for people to know what happened to me. And I have no intention of doing so.”

“But they’ll ask.”

“And I’ll tell them to go to hell. Eventually, they’ll go away.” She turned to face her mother. “Look, as much as I hate it, you have responsibilities that you can’t ignore much longer. You’re the CEO of Archer Manufacturing. You need to take control.”

“I have no desire to control Archer Manufacturing or any other business.”

“You have to do something.”

“I will. I’m going to sell it. All of it. The manufacturing company, the real estate, everything.”

Shaye stared at Corrine for a bit, surprised at the conviction in her voice. It was the first time since leaving New Orleans that her mother had sounded so certain. It was both comforting and concerning. Granted, Corrine had never had an interest in her father’s business, but Shaye wondered if selling was Corrine’s way of separating herself from everything that had happened. Her way of dealing with Pierce’s choice to leave her.

“What about you?” Corrine asked. “What are you going to do if we go back?”

“I’m going back to work.”

Corrine’s dismay was clear. “Not investigating. Please tell me you’re not going to go right back into that dangerous line of work.”

“There’s nothing else I want to do. I can help people with what I do. People the police can’t or won’t help. And I have the luxury of not having to work for money if I want to. If I hadn’t been there for Hustle, what would have happened to him or Jinx? To any of those street kids?”

“Someone else could do it,” Corrine argued.

“But no one else wants to, and I don’t want to do anything else.”

“Are you really ready to take on that kind of work again? Seeing all the horrible things people do to each other?”

“What can I see that’s worse than what I lived through? That’s worse than what I’ve already seen?” She took her mother’s hand. “I’ve been broken into a lot of pieces, but the glue that I put them back together with—you and Eleonore—you’re the strongest adhesive out there. I’m going to be fine.”

Corrine squeezed her hand, her eyes filling with tears. “I never wanted this for you. I wanted to make your life perfect.”

“You gave me a chance at life. That
is
perfect.”