Where All the Dead Lie

EPILOGUE

Taylor had a chance to see Rachael one last time.

The British government wanted to prosecute her, but the United States wanted to extradite her as well. She’d broken parole and stolen the identity of a woman named Madeira Hudson. Started a new life. Went to school. Got her degree. Met and married Roland MacDonald, moved to Scotland and bore him three sons. Had a normal life, for a while. Then became overwhelmingly obsessed with Memphis. Changed her name to James and started her second downward spiral.

God knew how many other crimes she’d committed. Her initial release from the state mental institution had been predicated on compliance with her probation. Since she’d broken that, and fled the country, she was going back inside.

But there were bigger issues concerning her case in the States. The parole officer assigned to her case was dead, and Rachael was the prime suspect. The New York police would be able to clear a homicide if they got her back. The Brits had her on too many charges to count-kidnapping, two counts of attempted murder, drug possession. Whoever got to have first crack at her, Rachael Mack was going away for a very long time.

Taylor didn’t know whether an asylum or jail was the right place for a person like Rachael. She was obviously a psychopath. The syringe had been loaded with penicillin, which Taylor was deathly allergic to. Coincidentally, so was Rachael, and that’s why she’d flinched when Taylor put the needle in her neck.

Taylor thought it telling that the woman would gamble that way. Or maybe, just maybe, it was her own personal suicide bomb, like a cyanide capsule, just waiting for her to be caught. Maybe she was simply crazy after all.

Rachael had stolen Evan away from her comfortable life, stashed her in an asylum in Russia, and effectively killed the child she carried. The tiny boy had been born early, in freezing conditions; with no neonatal support, he had died within hours.

That news alone had been heartbreaking for Memphis, but it was tempered by the fact that his wife had been found. She was alive. No one knew for sure what her mental state would be, but the finest doctors were lined up to take care of her.

After extensive questioning, Rachael broke and explained her crimes. The intimidation. The forgeries. The illusions. How she’d broken into Memphis’s world, his email, his office, and pretended to be him. The physical intimidation, passive-aggressive at first, when she put the cut glass in Taylor’s new coat, then more direct. The hypnosis. Then the hallucinogens, her own prescription for Seroquel tinged with LSD. How over two years ago, she’d taken the young woman she’d recently hired to nanny her sons, a woman who wouldn’t be missed, to Dulsie Bridge and murdered her, hitting her in the chest with a rock to imitate the blunt force trauma of a steering wheel. Then she cut her face to shreds with a knife and stashed her body in the truck before inviting Evan on a drive. Compromised by the drugs she’d been taking, trusting Maddee as a friend, Evan suspected nothing.

Rachael told Evan she was Memphis’s mistress, that he hated her, that he didn’t want her or the child, then knocked her out. She put the nanny in the driver’s seat, spread her blood throughout the car, and shouldered it off the edge of the road. Time and gravity managed the rest. And since it seemed Evan had been suicidal-they had that suicide note, expertly forged by Rachael-Memphis and his family had quietly hushed things up and let it be known that she’d been in a bad accident. Their influence assured nothing more was done to investigate.

Rachael had taken Evan to the coast, off Inverness, and put her on a boat. She’d made many friends while incarcerated. And the Russian mafia in Long Island possessed a legendary cruelty. They already had the signed committal papers. A few favors, a few strings pulled, and Rachael had Evan out of the way.

The story was astounding in its simplicity and duplicity. Evan’s grave up at the kirk was exhumed, the body inside tested for DNA, matched to a woman named Patricia Cantrell, who’d been missing for over two years.

The Inverness airport was situated on a strip of land between the city of Inverness and Fort George, an English garrison built to house the English troops left in country after the Jacobite uprising of 1746. There was no more fighting on Scottish soil between the Brits and the Scots after that. Their enemies were larger, from without, not within. Like the Highsmythes and Rachael Mack. They’d never seen her coming.

They were coming now. Rachael was shackled, head bent, shuffling along like a crippled dog. Taylor refused to feel anything for her. Compassion was best reserved for creatures who could be saved.

Rachael was being transported to London for holding while the various governments decided what to do with her. It seemed to Taylor that she had shrunk, and she doubted Rachael would see the inside of a prison. She’d kill herself before she went back inside for long, Taylor was sure of it. And she was certain that she wasn’t sorry about that, either.

As if she knew Taylor was there watching, she lifted her head and stared right at her. A small smile played on her lips. She awkwardly turned her hands around within their metal braces and raised her middle finger.

Such a classy girl.

Taylor resisted the urge to return the gesture, settled for watching Rachael get loaded into a British Airways 767. She hoped she’d have a very uncomfortable flight, then dismissed her. She’d have to testify, come back to England to let them know what Rachael had done to her, but that was probably a while away.

As the plane with Rachael inside left, another pulled up. This one was a private plane, a Bombardier Learjet, specially procured by Baldwin’s covert friends.

Evan had been found, desolate and alone, fighting to keep her sanity. While she wasn’t directly mistreated, the Russian government was more than happy to keep the news of a British citizen’s unlawful incarceration on their soil quiet, and were willing to do most anything requested of them.

Memphis stood five feet away from Taylor, watching the plane arrive with breathless anticipation. He’d lobbied to go directly to Russia to get Evan himself, but was denied. Instead, he’d had to wait for her to return to U.K. soil, just like everyone else.

The Lear pulled to a stop. The door swung open and the stairs unfolded. A man Taylor didn’t recognize stood in the door, then reached behind him to give a hand to some one else.

Taylor heard Memphis suck in his breath.

Evan looked nothing like Taylor in person. Her hair was shorn. She was obscenely thin. But she gave Memphis a wavering smile, and he bolted for the stairs of the plane. She met him halfway down the steps, and they embraced, two drowning souls who’d just found a bit of flotsam in a very wide sea.

Taylor felt tears prick her eyes. This was right. This was good. The universe was realigned.

She watched Memphis, his arms around Evan, the joy on his face. She was so happy for him. Having Evan taken from him so abruptly, and to have her restored, brought back from death, was too much. She couldn’t help but feel a small gnawing at her heart. Memphis would never look at her in the same way again, not now that he had his Evan back. She wasn’t jealous, not at all, but felt the sadness of the inexplicable shift that happens in every relationship, the moments of before and after that change the color and complexity of life.

No child, but the chance at redemption. They had time to create another life. They had a future.

And so did she.

To her left, there was movement. Baldwin, dressed for the weather, stood stoically watching the reunion. He looked over at Taylor. Things weren’t right between them, not all the way, not yet. But she could hope.

Baldwin held out his hand to her.

“Come home, Taylor. Please, just come home with me. We can figure everything out there.”

That’s what she wanted, more than anything.

“I need you to promise that from here on out, if we’ve got any hope of surviving, you will be honest with me. No more secrets. No more lies. I can’t take any more deception from you.”

He nodded. “Taylor, you know everything. Everything that I know. I promise. I’ll never hold back from sharing with you again.”

She looked at the man who’d fought for her so hard, through everything, through bullets and transgressions and serial killers and false starts, the man she knew in her soul she would spend the rest of her life with. He stood so still, his face hopeful, the hand he extended more than just a chance for succor, but the opportunity of a lifetime.

With a last glance over her shoulder at Memphis and Evan, she turned to Baldwin, resolute, and took his hand, smiling.

“Let’s go home.”