Tell Me Your Secrets...

What I needed was coffee. I frowned realizing that I wasn’t going to get any until Sloan came back. It was then that I heard Hannibal’s meow. I glanced around the room, then remembered that Sloan had put him out last night.

Hannibal meowed again in a very annoyed tone and I crossed to the door and opened it.

Hannibal was there all right. So was Beatrice and she had a gun in her hand.

“I’ll shoot you,” she said in a voice she might use to discuss the weather.

The look in her eyes told me that she would.

She gestured with the gun to the right. “Come.”

With Hannibal walking beside me, I moved down the hall.

“Where are we going?” I asked. But I knew. My body knew, too. Fear was already a hard, icy ball in my stomach. I couldn’t let it spread. I needed a clear head.

“If you’re hoping to be rescued, you won’t be,” Beatrice continued in a mild tone. “The drug I gave Saturn will keep Sloan’s mind occupied for a while. I doubt he’ll give you even a thought until the vet arrives and figures out what’s wrong.”

She’d drugged the horse. I felt a flare of anger, welcomed it. Think, I told myself. You just need a plan. What would Mallory Carstairs do in a scene like this? What would Cameron do?

“Don’t think of running,” Beatrice said just as that scenario flashed into my mind.

So much for Plan A, and Plan B hadn’t come to me by the time we reached the door to the bell tower. I walked on past, but Beatrice said, “Stop.”

Behind me, I heard her unlock the door and push it open.

“After you.”

Hannibal followed me into the tower. The moment I looked at the stairs spiraling upward, a wave of dizziness hit me. The cat had no such problem. He’d already disappeared around the first curve. Feeling nauseated, I slumped against the wall for support. When I felt my cell phone press into my hip, I remembered that Sloan had programmed his number into it.

“Take a deep breath,” Beatrice said.

“Give me a minute.” I didn’t have to fake the fear in my voice, and I prayed she wouldn’t see my hand go to my cell. In my mind, I pictured the buttons and prayed again that I was pressing number one and then Send.

The gun poked into my spine.

“I really can’t do this. You know what happened the last time we were in the tower.”

“Yes. You nearly fell. I was so tempted to just give you that little push that you needed. But there would have been too many witnesses.”

I sagged farther against the wall. “Beatrice, I can’t.”

“Yes, you can.” Her voice was soft and soothing just as it had been the other time, and it made my skin crawl. She didn’t take my hand this time. Instead, she pressed the gun harder against my spine. “A bullet will hurt. That’s what I told your mother. If you hadn’t come back, we could have avoided this. Now, you’ll have to go up there just like Elizabeth did.”

At the mention of Elizabeth’s name, my mind cleared and become suddenly calm. But I kept my steps tentative and leaned heavily against the wall as I climbed. “You killed my mother, didn’t you?”

“It was so easy,” Beatrice said. “She was doing so well, and then her depression came back. The doctors couldn’t explain it. But I could. I’d replaced her medication with simple vitamins, and no one suspected a thing. When they tried a new drug, I just replaced that one, too. No one was the wiser. Men are such fools. Everyone accepted the fact that she climbed up here one night and followed in the footsteps of the first mistress of the hacienda.”

“What actually happened?” I asked.

“She was having trouble sleeping and she would go down to the kitchen to warm milk for herself. One night I joined her and slipped a drug into the drink. Then all I had to do was to help her up the stairs just as I’m helping you.”

We’d rounded the first curve of the stairs, and I could see the opening to the bell tower above me. Another wave of dizziness struck and I shoved it down. I wasn’t going to think about how my mother had fallen out of the tower. Instead, I was going to keep Beatrice talking so that Sloan would know where we were.

SATURN LAY ON HIS SIDE, his eyes open but glazed. Sloan dropped to his knees next to Gus and ran a hand down the horse’s neck.

“He looks drugged.”

“That would be my guess. Vet should be here at any minute. Called him before I called you.”

“Good,” Sloan said as he continued to frown at the horse. “Good.”

For a moment they sat in silence, both trying to comfort Saturn as best they could.

“Who?” Sloan asked the question out loud, but Gus didn’t answer. He didn’t have an answer himself. But he was going to find out.

When his cell rang, he lifted it automatically and put it to his ear. “Yeah?”

The voice that he heard coming through the line turned his blood to ice.

“…know what happened the last time we were in the tower.”

“Yes. You nearly fell. I was so tempted to just give you that little push that you needed. But there would have been too many witnesses.”

Sloan was already out of the stall and running when he yelled back to Gus. “Beatrice has got Brooke. She’s going to push her out of the tower.”

I DREW IN A DEEP BREATH as I stepped into the small space of the tower. Now that we were here, I was trapped. Any step I took brought me to the edge of the low wall. I pushed the thought out of my mind, and gazed at the landscapes my mother had painted. In the east, the sun had risen halfway on the horizon. I recalled the painting in the dining room of just this scene.

“It won’t be long now.” Beatrice’s voice held a note of promise.

Even as a chill moved up my spine, I turned to the left and looked at the stables and the flat range beyond—another scene my mother had painted. I recalled seeing it in the main parlor.

I was not going to follow in the footsteps of the mistresses of the hacienda, I promised myself as I turned to face her. “How did you get away from the flower show on the day I disappeared?”

“I drove there early and made sure that I was seen setting up my display. Then I told the women in the booths next to mine that I had to slip away for a bit to practice my luncheon speech. It didn’t take long to drive out to the cliffs, and you were there waiting for me.”

“What about yesterday?”

“I went out the back of the greenhouse, walked over to Doc Carter’s and borrowed his car and his rifle. He’s a creature of habit just as I am, and he spends all his mornings practicing his tee shots on that green he’s had landscaped into his backyard. Just as he did on the day you disappeared. I borrowed his car that day, too.” She gestured with the gun. “It’s time now, Cameron. Turn around.”

I held up a hand. “One more question.” Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Hannibal walking back and forth like a sentinel on the wall. “What happened to James’s first wife?” The merest hint of surprise moved into those cold eyes.

“You know about her?” Beatrice asked.

“You killed her, too, didn’t you?”

“She was weak and not worthy of being a mistress here. None of them were. Only the strong survive,” Beatrice said. “Sarah was unhappy, restless, and she used to get up in the middle of the night and take walks in the gardens. So predictable. I met her there one night, offered her some sleeping pills, and then all I had to do was wait until she was drowsy. Then I was going to bring her here. She should have died here.”

For the first time I heard rage in her voice, and I saw her knuckles whiten on the hand that held the gun. My throat went dry. “Where did she die?”

“In the garden. Sloan’s father came along. He saw me, saw the gun. I had to shoot him. Then I shot her and buried them both near the greenhouse.”

“And you let everyone believe that they’d run away together?”

“I made them believe it. I packed some clothes for each of them. Then I wrote the note. I’d practiced her handwriting for months. Of course, it was supposed to be for a suicide note. No matter. It was so easy to kill them both. It always is.”

Easy to kill people? The horror of what she was saying washed over me, but I couldn’t let it affect me. Not yet. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Sloan running up the path toward the hacienda. I had to keep her talking and focused on me. “Why, Beatrice? Why did you kill them?”

The look she gave me held the first hint of madness that I’d seen—and the second hint of rage that I’d glimpsed beneath that cold facade. “Because I’m the mistress here. This place should have been at least half mine. James inherited only because he was a man. Our father never believed that a woman could run the place. But I can. I have. I will always be the mistress here.”

“So that’s why you pushed me off the cliff that day.”

She blinked. “Yes.” I heard true emotion in her voice. “History was repeating itself, but in reverse. James should have left half the estate to Austin. I bore my son for that very purpose, knowing that one day he would inherit and I would have what was mine. Then James decided to leave the place to you and to Sloan Campbell—a man who isn’t even a McKenzie.”