After She's Gone (West Coast 3)

Stern-faced, Shane took the glass and set it on the counter, then wrapped an arm over her shoulders. “Shhh,” he whispered again, kissing the top of her head. “It’s going to be okay.”

“Okay?” Cassie repeated, disbelieving. “Are you nuts? How can you even suggest that everything’s going to be okay? This . . . this is crazy. I mean, everything I thought I knew about you,” she said to her mother, “—and Dad . . . all of it was built on a lie.”

“Hey!” Carter said.

But Jenna’s eyes reflected her own doubts.

In a chilling moment of realization, Cassie realized where this was going.

The masks!

A new fear strangled her as she saw, in her mind’s eye, the hastily scribbled messages scrawled across the back of each: sister. mother. Her heart stilled and she dreaded what was to come. “You think it’s her? The one who left the masks . . . who killed Holly and Brandi?” she whispered, the horror within her growing.

Jenna was nodding, the tears streaming now. “I can’t be certain, of course, and I pray to God that I’m wrong, but . . .” Her voice faded and for a second Cassie was sure that her mother was going to collapse. “. . . it could be my daughter found out that she was mine and that she’s mentally unstable and . . .”

“And a murderess?” Cassie whispered, her mind spinning to differing horrendous scenarios. “That she’s leaving the masks to get back at you? At me? At Allie?” Her insides turned to ice as she considered the horrifying possibilities. “Oh, God, do you think she’s held Allie somewhere or . . . or maybe even—”

“Oh, hey, whoa!” Trent cut in, holding up his hands, stopping the direction of the conversation. “We’re all making some pretty big leaps here.” He eyed Carter and Jenna. “We don’t know anything. This is all just supposition.”

“Yeah.” Carter gave his wife a squeeze. “We know, but it’s certainly a lead the police need to explore.” His eyes narrowed as he said, “I’ve called the Portland PD. It seems Nash was already on the same wavelength, going at the idea from a different angle. Jenna supplied Nash with as much information as she has, date of birth, name of the lawyer who was involved, hospital, which they already knew. That seems to be the connection of Belva Nelson, the nurse you saw in the hospital room. She really did work there. At St. Mary’s. She was in the delivery room.”

Stunned, Cassie stared at her mother in disbelief. “But why would she come back to visit me?” She envisioned the nurse in the white uniform. “To tell me about Allie? How would she know that she was okay?”

“I don’t know,” Jenna said darkly.

“Have they tracked down this nurse, this Belva person?” Cassie asked, her mind spinning with dozens of questions. “Does she know where Allie is? What happened to her? Why hasn’t she called or shown up?” For a fleeting second, Cassie’s heart took flight with hope. Finally there would be answers. Allie would return! This whole mess and mystery would be behind them.

Jenna was shaking her head and Carter said, “No one knows what happened. And Belva Nelson is missing.”

“Missing?” Trent cut in and Carter gave them a brief rundown of Belva Nelson’s connection to Sonja Watson and the fact that the retired nurse was now MIA.

“What happened to her?” Cassie demanded.

“Don’t know. But the police will find out. They’re double-checking with her family.”

So it wasn’t over.

And Allie was still missing.

“I wanted you to know,” Jenna said. “Before you heard it somewhere else.”

“Like where?”

Jenna shrugged. “Who knows where it will pop up first. So many people have been digging into my life, it was bound to surface.”

“Whitney Stone,” Cassie guessed and Trent scowled.

“Or someone like her,” Jenna whispered. “Once the police know—” She glanced at her husband. “Well, there are leaks in every department.”

“Don’t remind me,” Carter muttered.

Seeing her mother so miserable broke Cassie’s heart. She and Jenna had struggled over the years, and Cassie had often felt a distance between them, but maybe this explained it a bit, the secret her mother had harbored, the guilt she’d borne over her first child.

Cassie said, “They have to find the nurse. Maybe she could lead us to Allie, tell us why she told me Allie was okay.”

“You’re certain she was talking about Allie?” Jenna asked quietly. “That Allie was alive?”

“Yes, I told you that—” Cassie stopped short. Wasn’t that what the nurse had said? What she’d meant? Or had Belva Nelson, who had been present at the birth of Jenna’s first child, been talking about that other sister, the half-sibling Cassie hadn’t known existed? Her gaze crashed with her mother’s and she understood that Jenna’s thoughts had traveled down that same unfamiliar road.