So Cold the River(130)

A minute later the stranger was standing there in the living room, a beautiful dark-haired woman with panicked eyes. Anne tried to meet those eyes and convey some sort of apology, but Josiah was shoving her over to the chair by the window and telling her there were two barrels to his gun, plenty to go around.

He had her sit in the old straight-backed sewing chair that Anne had upholstered herself some years back, then grabbed the duct tape he’d carried in originally and cut off a strip. She started to resist but he lifted the shotgun and pointed it at Anne and said, “You fight, that old bitch gets shot. Go on and test me. Go on.”

The woman gave Anne a long look, one that lifted tears to Anne’s eyes, and then she let Josiah tape her wrists together. Anne just stared back helplessly. The panic she’d done such a fine job of fighting when she’d been alone with Josiah was coming on strong, and she could feel it in her heart and stomach and nerves, everything going fast and jangly now, the way the wind chimes blew in a strong storm.

“Old Lucas will be answering phone calls now,” Josiah was saying as he cut off more tape and wrapped it in circles around her forearms, pinning them together. “Yes, he’ll take caution in his tone this time around.”

Lucas? Who on earth was Lucas? “I don’t know Lucas,” the new woman said.

“Bullshit! You’re his whore of a wife, sent people down here to spy on my home and ask questions of my family—”

“That’s not who I am.”

He struck her. It was an open-handed slap that raised a white imprint on her check but no blood, and the sound of flesh on flesh took Anne’s breath from her lungs and sent the tears spilling free. Not in my home, she thought. Oh, no, not in my home…

“There won’t be any more lies!” Josiah bellowed. Anne was mentally begging the other woman for silence—Josiah had been peaceable enough when he was agreed with—but instead she ignored the slap and objected again.

“I’m not who you think I—”

There was a second slap, and Anne gave a little shout, but the new woman was not moved to silence.

“I’m Eric’s wife—Eric Shaw’s. That’s who I am! I don’t know anything about Lucas Bradford. Neither does he. We’re both just trying to—”

This time he passed on the slap, choosing instead to take the woman’s hair in his fist and jerk it sideways. She gave a cry of pain and then the chair had overbalanced and she was on her side on the floor, still talking.

“We’re just trying to get away from here while the police figure out what’s going on. I don’t know Lucas Bradford! Do you understand that? I don’t know him and he doesn’t know me. He doesn’t care about me. I’m nothing to him.”

Josiah dipped sideways and came up with Anne’s kitchen knife in his hand, snatched it from her end table and held it at waist level with the blade pointed out.

“Josiah, no!” Anne shouted. “Not in my home, don’t you harm anyone in my home.”

He froze. She was taken aback, hadn’t expected any reaction, but he stopped his assault completely and swiveled his head to face her.

“I’ll ask you not to use that name any longer,” he said. “If you’d like my attention, you can call for Campbell. Understand?”

Anne didn’t know what to say. She just stared at him with her mouth agape, and he turned from her, dropped to one knee, and took a handful of the woman’s hair again and used it to lift her head, moved the blade toward her throat, and Anne could look no more, squeezed her eyes shut as warm tears beaded over the lids and chased wrinkles down her cheeks.

“Look in my purse,” the woman on the floor said in a ragged voice. “If you’re going to kill me, you ought to at least know who I am.”

For a long moment Anne didn’t hear a sound, and she was fleetingly afraid that he’d made a silent slice with the knife, leaving the poor woman bleeding her life out on Anne’s living room floor. Then she heard the boards creak as he rose and opened her eyes to see him crossing the floor to where a leather purse lay on its side, a lipstick and cell phone dumped out of it already. Josiah grabbed it and turned it upside down and a cloud of papers, coins, and cosmetics fluttered out and clattered onto the floor. In the center, landing with a dull, heavy thump, was a wallet. Josiah flung the purse at the wall and scooped the wallet up, tore the clasp open and flicked through it. For a long time, he stood staring in silence. Then he snapped the wallet shut and stared at the woman in the overturned chair.

“Claire Shaw,” he said.

“I told you.”