Death's Half Acre

CHAPTER 1

. . . this is life, and there is no theory for it . . .

—Fiddledeedee, by Shelby Stephenson

NINE DAYS LATER

Tuesday morning’s light mist lay over the field of young tobacco. It softened the air and turned the tall pines beyond into gray shadows of themselves. The recently turned earth gave off an honest aroma that was sweet to the old man who stood motionless to take it all in. Another year, another spring. Here in late April, the plants were only knee-high with no hint of the pink blossoms to come, their leaves still small and crisp and deep green. Everything fresh and young.

Everything but me, the old man told himself.

One of two dogs beside him nudged his hand with a muzzle that had, in the past year, become almost as white as his master’s hair. The man looked down with a rueful smile. “Yeah and you, too, poor ol’ Blue.”

He scratched the dog’s soft-as-velvet ears, then the three of them ambled slowly on down the lane that circled the perimeter of this field. Cool early mornings used to mean the beginning of another day of hard sweaty work—fields to plow, animals to tend, the hundred and one backbreaking chores that make up a farmer’s daily life.

Back at the house, Sue and Essie would be fixing breakfast, rousting the boys out of bed, asking the older ones to fill the woodbox and feed the chickens, sending the younger ones off to school . . .

The whole farm would buzz with meaningful work and raucous laughter.

He almost never thought about his first wife, but Annie Ruth had always liked mornings best, too. More times than he could count, she would be up before him. She scorned mirrors and plaited her hair by touch alone into a long thick braid as she looked out their window to watch the first light define the trees and fields beyond.

“Time to get moving,” she would say briskly if he lay in bed too long to watch her.

Now his house was silent and empty every morning until Maidie came over to make breakfast; and even though he only piddled at working this past year or two, he still felt driven to walk the back lanes each day, to see his fields and woods as fresh and new as the dawn of creation, to make sure that everything was well within the borders of his land. Annie Ruth had usually been too busy to come walking, but Sue used to say, “Now don’t you look all the pretty off the morning till I can come, too,” and she would often slip away from the demands of the boys and the house to join him out here.

Together they would pause to enjoy the dogwoods that bloomed among the tall pines, to smell the sweet scent of wild crab apples on the ditchbanks or note that the corn could use a little side-dressing of soda to green it up. Away from the house and the boys, they could talk about the larger issues in their life together, the needs of someone in their extended families, or the help they might could give the proud man who was having a hard time of it. They could discuss what to do about Andrew or Frank and whether a good talking-to would be enough to keep those two out of trouble or if it was going to take a trip to the woodshed to get the point across.

Yet they had all turned out well, he thought, as he ran their faces through his mind, taking stock of his sons as he took stock of his land. The Navy had straightened Frank out; and Sue’s patience and April’s love had straightened Andrew. There were problems with some of the grandchildren, but they would come out right in the end, too. Of this he had no doubt.

A few feet ahead of him, the younger dog suddenly went on alert. He followed the direction of her point and saw a doe emerge from the woods at the far edge of the field. Behind her two young fawns hesitated, half hidden by the grapevines that hung down from the trees. Ladybelle gave an almost inaudible whine and Blue strained to see what had alerted her. Both of them looked back at him, but he gave the hand signal to stay and they obeyed. Nevertheless, the doe had caught his slight movement and she and the fawns melted back into the trees.

As the sun rose behind the pines and began to burn off the mist, he heard the sound of a motor and turned to see a small black truck slowly easing through the sandy ruts. He stood quietly until the truck pulled even with him and the driver cut its engine. The white man behind the wheel appeared to be in his mid-thirties and wore a gray work shirt with the name ENNIS embroidered in red on the breast pocket. His short brown hair had thinned across the crown but he had not yet begun to go gray.

“Sorry to bother you, Mr. Kezzie, but Miz Holt said you were out here and might not mind.”

“Not a bit,” Kezzie Knott said politely and waited for the man to identify himself.

“You probably don’t remember me, but I’m James Ennis, Frances Pritchard’s grandson.”

The Pritchard land touched some that he owned over in the next township and Kezzie nodded at that familiar name. “You must be one of Mary’s boys.”

“Yessir.” The younger man got out of the truck and extended his hand.

“What can I do for you, son?”

“It’s about my grandmother, Mr. Kezzie. She’s about to give away more of our land. Grandy might’ve left it in her name, but you know good as me he wanted her to pass it on down to my mother. It’s been in our family over two hundred years and yeah, nobody wants to farm it any more, but it don’t seem right for her to let somebody have for free what the whole family’s sweated and bled for all these years. She says she’s giving it back to the Lord, but it’s not the Lord’s name that’s gonna be on that deed.”

Kezzie Knott lit a cigarette from the hard pack that was always in his shirt pocket and leaned against the truck to listen to a story whose outline had become all too familiar in the past few years. Land you could hardly give away thirty years ago was now so dear that the income it brought in barely paid the rising taxes. The details might be different but the results were often the same—old folks talked out of their land for peanuts on the dollar value while some slick developer made a bundle. The only difference here was that the slick operator was a preacher and not a developer.

“She’s always talked about you with respect, Mr. Kezzie. I was thinking that maybe if you could speak to her? It’s not just for me and mine neither, but you remember Nancy, Mama’s only sister?”

Kezzie Knott nodded. Frances Pritchard’s older daughter must be close to sixty now and still had the mind of a sweet-natured three-year-old.

“He’s promised Granny he’ll take care of Nancy till she dies but you know how much a promise is worth.”

“No more’n the air it’s written on,” the old man agreed. “Now I can’t make you no promises myself, son, but I’ll look into it for you and see what I can do.”

If nothing else, he thought, there was someone in the deeds office that he might could get to lose the papers and snarl up the transaction with red tape for a few weeks.

Mid-afternoon and Cameron Bradshaw firmed the dirt around the last of the purple petunias, then sat back on his padded kneeling stool to admire his handiwork.

It might not be the English gardens he remembered from the tours he had taken with his grandparents before they lost their money, nor the showpiece he had tended before he and Candace split up; nevertheless, its beauty pleased him.

“A poor thing, but mine own,” he murmured to himself. He pushed himself up off the stool, straightened his protesting joints, and tried again to remember who it was that said, “What every gardener needs is a cast-iron back with a hinge in it.”

The sun was not quite over the yardarm, but he decided he would pour himself a drink, locate his Bartlett’s, and bring them both out here to the terrace. Nail down that quote once and for all.

He knew from happy experience that one quotation would lead to another, yet what better way to spend an April afternoon than to sit here in his garden and sip good scotch, to turn the pages at random and let his mind wander through the words of history’s great thinkers?

He crossed the flagstone terrace and paused to savor again the beauty of purple petunias, red geraniums, and silver-gray dusty miller. More geraniums and petunias trailed from hanging baskets. White Lady Banks roses were beginning to bud amid the purple wisteria blossoms that hung like clusters of grapes from the trellis that shaded his back door, and terra-cotta tubs of shasta daisies, basil, and dill stood on either side of the gate that opened onto a passageway to the street.

To his dismay, he heard the clip-clop of backless sandals hurrying up that same passageway.

He reached for the doorknob and wondered if there was time to get inside and pretend not to be at home.

As he suspected, it was Deanna.

Other men bragged about their children, he thought wearily—how bright they were, how industrious, how motivated to succeed, how thoughtful of their parents.

He had Dee.

Twenty-two years old. Bright? Yes. But motivated? Thoughtful of her parents?

Ha!

Yet, as he stood motionless under the wisteria vines that grew over the small trellis above his door and watched his daughter fumble with the gate latch, he could not suppress the enduring wonder that he and Candace had produced such beauty.

Today she was dressed in white clam-diggers that sat low on her slender hips, a bright green shirt, gold loop earrings, and gold sandals. He gloomily noted that she had a black duffle bag slung over one shoulder.

Small-boned and deceptively delicate-looking, Dee had the wide deep-set eyes of his family. Their intense green came from her mother, though, as did her long reddish-brown hair. From the genetic pool, she had drawn his thin Bradshaw nose and strong chin. The dimple in her right cheek had skipped a generation and came straight from his late mother-in-law, one of those trashy Seymours from east of Dobbs.

Or so he had been told by white-haired colleagues who sometimes, when in their cups, waxed nostalgic about that dimple and, behind his back, wondered aloud if they had sired his wife.

He himself could not put a face to Candace’s mother. Before they lost their money, the Bradshaws had sent their children to private schools, so he had no direct memory of Alice Seymour Wells or her husband, Macon, even though the three of them were native to the county and must have been about the same age.

As the gate finally clicked open, Dee spotted him in the shaded doorway.

“Mom’s kicked me out again,” she said, her full red lips poked out in a childish pout. She dropped her duffle bag onto the white iron patio table, where her father had planned to spend a peaceful afternoon. “Like it’s my fault George puked on her fuckin’ couch.”

“You let him in the house?” asked Bradshaw, who still winced at the crudities young women so carelessly voiced today. “I thought she told you to quit seeing him.”

“And I told her I’ll see whoever I damn well please.”

“Then she said, ‘Not in my house you won’t,’ right?”

“Been there, done that, haven’t you, Dad?”

“When are you going to quit yanking her chain, honey? If you’re really going to drop out of college this near graduation, then don’t just threaten to get a job. Do it. Stand on your own two feet.”

“Like you do? Taking an allowance from her every month?”

His thin lips tightened. “It’s not an allowance, Dee. And it comes out of the company, not from your mother.”

“A company you started long before you met her.”

“A company I still own,” he reminded her. “And one that she helped build up to what it is today.”

“So what? She couldn’t have gotten her foot in half those doors without the Bradshaw name. And then you just gave it all to her and walked away.”

It was an old complaint and one he was tired of hearing, especially since it was not strictly true. Yes, he had handed control of the company over to Candace when they separated, but it was with the stipulation that he would receive a certain percentage of the profits in perpetuity.

“I was ready to retire and it’s an equitable arrangement.” He brushed away a spent blossom that had dropped onto his white hair from the wisteria vine above his head.

“You sure?”

“What do you mean?”

“She could be cooking the books, couldn’t she?”

“Not with my accountant going over them twice a year.”

“And how do you know she’s not screwing him twice a year just to screw you?”

In spite of her language, Cameron Bradshaw was amused to picture nerdy little Roger Flackman in bed with Candace. She would eat him alive. On the other hand, that last check had been smaller than usual. He had put it down to her preoccupation with her new position on the board of commissioners, but what if she and Roger really were—?

“So anyhow,” said Dee, interrupting his thoughts as she picked up her duffle bag, “can I crash with you for a few days till Mom gets over being mad about the damn couch?”

“Only if you start looking for a job,” he said firmly.

“Believe it or not, I think I’ve already found one,” his daughter said.

Some forty-odd miles away, in Durham, Victor Talbert, VP of Talbert Pharmaceuticals, opened the door of the boardroom not really expecting to see anything except the long polished table and a dozen empty chairs. Instead, he found his father poring over a sheaf of surveyor’s maps spread across the table.

“There you are,” he said. “I’ve been looking all over for you. What’s that? Plans for the new plant in China?”

“Hardly,” his father said.

At fifty-five, Grayson Hooks Talbert wore his years lightly. His dark hair was going classically gray at the temples, his five-eleven frame carried no extra pounds, and his charcoal-gray spring suit fit nicely without calling too much attention to its perfect tailoring.

He started to order his son away from the maps. Victor might be curious, but he would obey. Unlike his older son, who would have looked, sneered, and promptly forgotten, assuming he was sober enough to bring the print into focus in the first place. A grasshopper and an ant. That’s what he had for sons. One clever and inventive, but mercurial and dedicated to hedonistic self-destruction. The other a dutiful plodder who ran the New York office. Reliable and utterly trustworthy and totally incapable of the flights of imagination and ambition that had built this company into one of the state’s major players and its president into a power broker who had the ear of senators and governors.

Victor Talbert looked at the identifying labels and frowned. “Colleton County?”

His father nodded.

“Our subsidiaries are screaming for a decision about our eastern markets and you keep coming back to this? Why, Dad? I thought you were finished out there. You made your point with that bootlegger when you built Grayson Village. You’ve got a good manager in place and it’s peanuts anyhow. Why keep bothering with it? There’s nothing for us out there.”

“You think not?” Talbert said. He rolled up the maps, gave his son explicit instructions about the subsidiaries, and said, “You going back to New York tonight?”

Victor nodded. “We have tickets to a play. Unless there’s something else you want me to stay for?”

“No, I’ll be up next week.”

They walked down to his office together and once Victor was gone, Talbert told his assistant to order him a car and driver. “And tell him we’ll be spending the night at the Grayson Village Inn.”

From the windows of her corner office on the second floor of Adams Advertising, where she was a fully invested partner, Jamie Jacobson could look out across Main Street and see the courthouse square, where pansies blossomed extravagantly in the planters on either side of the wide low steps that led down to the sidewalk.

Another perfect spring day and this was the closest she had come to enjoying it since arriving at the office early that morning. Her own pansies needed attention and she had hoped to take off an hour in midday to enjoy the task. Instead, she had eaten a sandwich at her desk and tried to keep her mind focused on work.

A slender woman with sandy blond hair that had begun to sprout a few gray hairs now that she had passed forty, Jamie glanced at her watch and sighed. Five o’clock already and it would take at least another three hours to finish the presentation needed for a client first thing tomorrow morning.

She would have to skip supper and for a moment she considered skipping tonight’s board meeting as well. As one of only two Democrats on Colleton County’s board of commissioners, she wondered why she kept bothering. Unfortunately, a vote on the planning board’s recommendations for slowing growth was scheduled for tonight and she could not pass up one last attempt to accept it, even though she knew Candace Bradshaw would use every trick in her bottomless bag to vote it down.

Much as Jamie Jacobson hated to admit it, the county’s power brokers had planned well when they picked the newest chair of the board. Candace Bradshaw was as cute as a puppy and just as tail-waggingly eager to please the men who had put her in office and who now profited from the five-to-two decisions the board usually made under her chairmanship. A giggling, cuddly woman, she loved being chair. As long as the men pretended she held real power, she would do everything she could to make them happy, and if they wanted a controversial measure passed, she could be as tenacious as a little pit bull on their behalf.

For over three hundred years, Colleton County farmers had wrested a modest living from its mellow soil. Now economists predicted that in another thirty years, the farms might all be gone, bulldozed under and covered with houses and big-box chain stores as farmers took the quick and easy money. Housing bubbles might be bursting all over the rest of the country, but the red-hot market here showed few signs of cooling.

With its temperate climate, low unemployment rate, and even lower taxes, North Carolina was regularly touted as one of the country’s most liveable places and people were streaming in from the old rust belt states. They moved into the cheaply built houses before the paint was dry and immediately looked around for a nearby strip mall and an all-night pizzeria. Happily for the newcomers, local entrepreneurs were right there to service their needs with almost no interference from the local planning boards. Most of the commissioners believed wholeheartedly in laissez-faire, and why not? Most of them were connected either directly or indirectly to the building trades and much of the new money flowed straight into their pockets.

As a battered old red Chevy pickup parked in front of the courthouse, Jamie sighed again and turned away from the window. Tonight’s meeting would probably be another exercise in futility, a big waste of time; but for the sake of the people who had voted for her, she would be there even if it meant coming back to the office afterward. Maybe after the presentation tomorrow she could take the afternoon off to smell the flowers in her own garden.

Candace Bradshaw’s house was so recently built and furnished that carpets, drapes, and sofas still had that new-car smell. Although it was one of the more modest models in this upscale development—only three bedrooms with two and a half baths—the master bathroom had been designed to her specifications.

To reach it, one walked through a hallway lined on both sides with closets that had sliding mirrored doors. More mirrors paneled all the bathroom walls, including the walls of the walk-in shower. They even fronted the cabinets. The only touches of color were the pink-flowered sink, the dark rose commode, and the matching floor tiles.

And Candace Bradshaw herself, of course, wrapped in a rose bath sheet.

She turned on the shower, dropped the towel to the floor, and smiled at the multiple images of her naked body. Overall, she was entitled to that smile. Poverty and hard work had kept the pounds off when she was a girl; rigorous dieting and three miles a day on her treadmill kept them off as she approached her forty-second birthday. Yes, she saw the slight drooping of her full breasts, and yes, her waist was a bit thicker than on the day she traded her cherry for a gold bracelet to a dirtbag who went off to Duke and came back with his nose in the air, till she won a seat on the board of commissioners and he needed some favors.

Well, that cost him more than a gold bracelet, a bracelet that was long gone anyhow, stolen by her own pa and hocked for a gallon of Kezzie Knott’s white lightning, and how Deborah Knott ever got appointed to be a judge by a Republican governor with a bootlegging Democrat for a father she would never understand. Bound to be some dirt there somewhere, Candace thought for the hundredth time, and one of these days she was going to pick up a shovel and start digging. They still had the cleaning contract for Lee and Stephenson, Deborah Knott’s old law firm, and—

A small bruise on her thigh distracted Candace Bradshaw’s attention. Now how did she get that? she wondered as she went back to evaluating her body. Her legs had always been too short in proportion to the rest of her body and she used to envy girls with longer legs until it dawned on her that men of power were often short and short men did not take kindly to women who towered over them. Much better to be small and cuddly. Besides, her short thighs were fairly free of cellulite and her calves were still shapely, her ankles still trim. She had been good to her body, and in turn her body had been good to her.

Very good to her.

It had given her a free and clear title to this house. It had helped make her a power in her own right. It would help her take care of that bastard who—

Her head turned alertly. Was that the sound of a door latch?

She quickly stooped for the towel and covered herself even though she was supposed to be alone in the house.

“Deanna?” she called. She had taken Dee’s house key, but locked doors and drawers had never stopped her daughter. Slowed her down, maybe, but never stopped her. Exasperation tinged her voice. “Is that you?”

Silence.

She walked past the mirrored closets, through her bedroom and out into the hall.

“Dee?”

No answer and a quick look through a front window did not show Dee’s car parked on the circular drive outside.

She shrugged and returned to the bathroom. Hot water from three shower heads had begun to steam up the mirrors. She stepped into the stall, lifted her oval face to the needle-fine spray like a sunflower lifting to the sun, and sighed with happiness as water sluiced down her body, pulsating to the rhythm of her heartbeats.

This was her favorite place in the house and it was not unusual for her to shower twice a day. In periods of stress, three times.

Thank God there aren’t any calories in water, she thought.

She could win the lottery tomorrow, the party could nominate her to run for governor, and nothing—nothing!—would give her the same satisfaction as knowing she could have hot water at the turn of a tap, day or night.

Growing up in a dilapidated trailer with a broken water heater that was never replaced, the only way to get hot water was if she heated it on the kitchen stove. Even then, she would often come back with a final kettle to find her mother sitting in the chipped and rust-stained bathtub she had so laboriously filled. “Well, hell, Miss Prissy-pants. What’s your problem? When I was your age, the only thing we had was an old tin washtub and five or six of us would have to use the same water. It’d be pure black by the time it was my turn. You’re lucky you got a tub big enough to wallow around in, sugar Candy, and it ain’t like I’m all that dirty or gonna pee in the water like my brothers did.”

For a moment, she almost wished her parents could see her now. That she could show them how far she had come on her own with no help from them. Admittedly, it was only a fleeting wish. The happiest day of her life was when word came that Macon and Alice Wells had died in a fiery car crash, and she was suddenly free to reinvent herself, to legally change her name to Candace and call herself that instead of the Candy on her birth certificate. Not that she could ever pretend that she came from something more than the trashiest trailer park in Colleton County. The communal memory was too long to forget that her mother was a whore and her father a shiftless drunk. All the same, their ashes were now scattered to the four winds and they could never again embarrass her by showing up at her work or by calling her to come bail them out of jail.

She reached for the bar of soap.

Cake of soap, not bar, she reminded herself as she lathered her body in rose-scented suds. Handmade from organic goat milk. And what would Ma have made of paying five dollars for goat soap?

Or twenty dollars for a bottle of herbal shampoo?

She rinsed her hair, worked a handful of fragrant conditioner into each long chestnut tress that was artfully streaked with gold every five weeks at the best hairdresser in Dobbs, then rinsed again. Even when every trace of soap, shampoo, and conditioner was gone, she continued to stand under the pulsing water. She cupped her hands beneath her breasts and lifted them up to the water till the nipples hardened. It was as if they were caressed by a lover’s gentle hands, an undemanding lover whose only desire was to pleasure her and not himself. Unlike the brutish pawings she had endured to get where she was today, each pulse was a soft pat that calmed her nerves and suffused her senses with a feeling of well-being.

At last, she reluctantly turned off the taps and toweled her body and hair dry. She smoothed scented lotion on her skin; and when she had finished making up her face, she styled her hair with a hand dryer and a brush until it hung sleek and shining halfway down her back.

It vaguely worried her that women were advised to cut their hair shorter as they grew older, but she figured she had at least another six or eight years before she had to make that decision. Men liked long sexy hair and salesclerks still thought that she and Dee were sisters. Indeed, someone had recently taken a quick look at Dee’s hungover pasty face and baggy eyes and mistakenly assumed that Dee was the mother and she the daughter.

Candace smiled at the memory of Dee’s reaction to that.

Satisfied with her looks, she strolled over to the closet and pulled out a favorite spring dress. The white top was a respectable short-sleeved shirt with tiny pearl buttons and a boat collar cut low enough that when she leaned forward to share a confidential aside with one of her fellow board members, he could get a nice glimpse of cleavage. The skirt was green with white polka dots and cut on the bias so that it made a flirty flare at the hemline, a hemline so short that it added an illusion of length to her legs.

The dress made her feel flirty herself and would probably tempt old Harvey Underwood into patting her knees at the board meeting tonight.

As long as his hand stops at my knees and doesn’t try to slide on up under my skirt, she thought. If it got her his vote against the planning board’s recommendations, what did she care?

Let Jamie Jacobson fume and make sarcastic highfalutin remarks that half the time nobody could understand. She’d teach that long-legged bitch a few lessons about trying to take on Candace Bradshaw.

She carried the dress on into her bedroom and laid it on the bed. As she turned to a dresser for lingerie, a voice said, “Very nice, Candy.”

“Don’t call me Candy,” she snapped as she reached for a robe to cover her nakedness. “And what the hell are you doing here?”

“I came to see you. Although I didn’t expect to see quite this much of you.”

“How did you get in?”

“You must have left the door unlocked.”

Candace gave an unladylike snort of derision. “Not hardly likely. What do you want?”

“Nothing that’s not well within your abilities.”

Candace flushed, knowing this was a dig at her lack of education. Okay, so she never went to college. Big damn deal. Most of the county commissioners had degrees from State or Carolina and who was their chair? And who ran Colleton County’s largest managerial service?

“What’s that?” she asked as the other handed her a sheet of paper.

“What do you care? It’s a little late to go reading what you’re told to sign. Just copy it on your pretty notepaper, okay?”

Candace Bradshaw’s eyes widened as she read the few short sentences typed on the paper. “ ‘I take full responsibility for my greediness’? ‘I apologize to everybody in the county who trusted me’? You’re crazy if you think I’ll write anything like this. Get the hell out of my house and stay out or I’ll—”

Her voice broke off at the sudden appearance of a small pistol. “You wouldn’t dare!”

“No?” A pull of the trigger, a soft pfft, and a bullet buried itself in the pile rug next to her bare feet.

Candace’s eyes widened in fear. “My God! You are crazy.”

“Not crazy enough to go to jail because you messed up.”

“Me? You’re the one who said nobody would ever find out.”

“And they wouldn’t have if you hadn’t been so greedy that they’ve started noticing.”

Appalled, Candace listened as the facts were laid out—the questions that were starting to be asked, the people who were doing the asking.

Her real desk and computer were in the third bedroom, which she had furnished as a home office, but a jerk of the pistol directed her over to the dainty desk where she wrote personal notes and cards.

It took only a moment or two to copy the typescript she had been handed.

To whom it may concern:

I have used my position to enrich myself and some of my friends. I acted alone though and I take full responsibility for my greediness. I am sincerely ashamed and I apologize to everyone in Colleton County who trusted me with their well-being.

When she finished, she signed it CANDACE BRADSHAW with an angry flourish. “There! Satisfied?”

“Not quite. Not till it’s safely locked away.”

“I’ll tell them you made me write it,” she spat out.

“Won’t matter. It’ll be your word against mine, Candy.”

“Don’t call me Candy. And put down my robe!”

“Relax, Candace. I could ask you to give me your word that you wouldn’t call Sheriff Poole and have me arrested before I can put your copy in a safe place and destroy the original, but we both know how much your word’s worth. I think I’d rather tie you up for a while, give you time to think things over and realize that anything you say about me will only make people believe it was all your doing.”

With that pistol aimed at her chest, Candace stood up as instructed and draped the second robe over her shoulders backward so that her arms were pinned to her sides and held almost immobile when the sash and the empty sleeves were tied in back.

All the while, her mind was racing furiously, weighing her options. The sash wasn’t too tight and there was a little slack inside the second robe. It wouldn’t be too hard to wriggle free. And then? If things really were coming unraveled, there had to be a way out of this mess. She’d call Cam. He’d help her find a way to throw all the blame on—

Abruptly, something looped her throat. There was a sudden tightening, a constriction that left her unable to breathe. Frantically, she struggled to jerk away, but the pressure increased inexorably.

No way to use her arms or hands to yank it away from her neck. In fear and rage, she sank to her knees and butted backward with her head, her body arching and twisting to free herself, to take one deep lifesaving breath. A quick lunge forward and she felt the cord loosen. For one second, she could almost breathe again.

Oh please oh please oh please—

And then the pressure was back. A frantic twist and something tore in her throat. Searing pain lanced across her dying brain and sparked a last incoherent thought of water . . . her healing shower . . . hot water . . .