The Final Victim by Wendy Corsi Staub Page B

helplessly through it, coming up empty again and again.
        She can hear screams, her own screams, as she bellows her son's name over and over again in futile, exhausting effort.
        A sob escapes her throat even now.
        She shudders and rolls toward Royce's side of the bed, needing to feel his warm body against hers. He alone understands. He's been there, too.
        Even on their honeymoon, when they found themselves standing at the brink of Niagara Falls, he knew instinctively what she was thinking as she gazed down at the churning blue-gray water. He was thinking it, too. "Come on," he said, and quietly led her away.
        Charlotte needs him now as she needed him then.
        But the covers are thrown back on his side of the bed; his spot as cold and empty as her arms that ache for a child who will never come home.

    * * *
     
        Even in the dim light from a distant sconce, Gib can see the panic in the kid's eyes.
        "What are you up to, Leigh Ann?" he asks, reminded suddenly of a childhood fishing expedition with his maternal grandfather in Narragansett Bay: the empowering sensation of gazing down at a helpless cod trapped in his net.
        " Lianna ," she says, lifting her chin, and it takes him a moment to realize she's correcting him about her name.
        " Lianna ," he repeats, amused by the insult that now mingles with panic in her gaze. "Sorry about that."
        She shrugs and tries to seem casual as she inquires, "What are you doing up?"
        "I asked you first."
        "Well, I'm going back to bed."
        "So am I," he tells her, though it's not entirely true.
        He hasn't yet been to bed in his assigned guest room. But he's willing to bet Cassandra has long been asleep beneath the old-fashioned eyelet canopy. He can feel his loins tighten at the mere thought of her, naked, between the sheets.
        He'll get to her momentarily.
        For now, he can't resist toying with Charlotte's daughter. Poor thing clearly didn't inherit the Remington genes when it came to looks. Perhaps she looks like her father, although he can't seem to conjure an image of Charlotte's first husband. Gib saw him only rarely, and hasn't in years.
         Lianna isn't unattractive, yet hardly possesses her mother's beauty, or Phyllida's , or even Gib's . Maybe she'll get there one day, but for now, she's on the scrawny side, with sharp features and a slight overbite. Braces would help, Gib concludes. Braces, and longer hair. Highlights in her hair would be good, too-or even if she was a brunette like her mother…
        Instead, her hair is a dull, sandy shade that could, Gib supposes, pass for blond-just not to a connoisseur, like him.
        "I'd be willing to bet," he says, leaning in, "that your mother doesn't know you're locked out of your room at this hour."
        "What makes you think I'm locked out?"
        "I saw you try the door and I heard you curse when it didn't open."
        There's little she can say to that, of course. To her credit, she remains silent, glaring up at him.
        No stranger himself to adolescent prowling in the wee hours, Gib can't help but admire her spunk. As he recalls, Charlotte wasn't the kind of girl who would be caught dead disobeying her parents' rules. How interesting that this apple fell hard and rolled quite a long way from the tree.
        "So what are you going to do now?" he asks Lianna , folding his arms. "Wait it out until morning? Break the door down?"
        Before she can answer, his ears pick up the sound of a door creaking closed down the hall. Footsteps approach.
        "Please don't tell," Lianna hisses at him, before slipping into a shadowy nearby nook.
     
     
        It takes three attempts before Mimi's violently trembling hands are successful in fastening the carseat buckle snugly across her son's chest.
        By then, Cameron is asleep again, as blissfully unaware of his mother's growing