“Good.” Clay reached down and snagged the flashlight. “I’ll be watching.” He ran the beam of light over the floor until he spotted her weapon and cell phone, picked both up, and shoved them into his waistband. He gestured to Prescott then Arnold. “Doesn’t look like they’ll be going anywhere.” He focused on Addy. “You could leave them to fend for themselves and run before the bastard gets here,” he offered. “You might even get away. I’m not the best shot in the county. It’s a risk you might decide to take. After all, that’s what you do, isn’t it, Addy? Run away from your trouble.”

  A shadow blocked the moonlight filtering through the open door. Adeline’s heart lurched. Clay, apparently, recognized the danger at about the same time she did. He wheeled around, actually squeezed off a shot.

  Something sliced through the air, slammed into Clay’s temple. He lurched sideways, then crumpled to the floor. A baseball bat clanged down next to him.

  Adeline lunged forward. Two hands rammed her shoulders and shoved her backward. She landed on her ass. She scrambled to a better position. The flashlight had rolled across the floor, its beam highlighting the bastard.

  Tall, bald, and looking furious, Daniel Jamison surveyed the situation as he dragged a gun from his waistband. “Thanks for making this easy,” he said to Clay’s motionless body. Then he looked at Adeline and the others and smiled. “All the princesses in a row. Perfect.”

  He kicked Clay in the ribs to see if there would be a reaction. Clay’s body bounced with the impact but he didn’t grunt. Just lay there.

  Clay had taken her weapon. Damn it.

  Jamison dropped the bag he carried on the floor and motioned to Addy with his gun. “You. Get up.”

  She pushed to her feet, squared her shoulders. “I don’t know why you think it’s necessary to finish your father’s work. You saved us once. Why would you do this now?” Reasoning likely wouldn’t get anywhere with this guy, but the longer she could keep him talking, the more time she had to formulate a plan.

  He laughed. “You were too young to remember how it was, so don’t pretend to know what you’re talking about. You have no idea.” He took a step back and pointed to the sports-type bag he’d dropped on the floor. “Open the bag.”

  Addy moved toward him, took a long hard look at the man who was her brother. He’d rescued his sisters as a child, surely some part of that good still survived deep inside him. She lowered to her knees and opened the bag. More chains and shackles.

  “Get the key from the bottom of the bag.”

  She dug around, found the key.

  “Now put on a pair of those cuffs.”

  She pulled the length of chain from the bag. Seven, eight feet long. Three sets of cuffs were attached to the length of chain. He was going to shackle them together. Shit.

  “I’ve been watching you for days,” he told her. “Trying to find the right time. Imagine my surprise when asswipe over there did my work for me. Looks like I’m not the only family member who had it in for you.”

  Her fingers cold as ice, Adeline ignored him and slid two of the iron bracelets onto her wrists then clicked them shut. She lifted her gaze to his. “Yeah, yeah, the story of my life.” Then she dared to smile. “Maybe I’ll have the pleasure of doing to you what I did to asswipe’s brother.” The front of his hand smacked across her face. Adeline rode out the wave of pain, licked the blood from her lip. “You know, if you were a real man you wouldn’t have picked on a poor old lady in the hospital.” Bastard.

  He laughed. “I did that just for you, little sis.” He smiled. “I knew you’d love it.”

  Fury bolted through Adeline. He was dead.

  “Now take the key and release Prescott. Put the next set of cuffs on her.”

  Adeline lugged the chain toward Prescott. The woman sobbed harder, shook her head. Adeline produced a smile. “It’s gonna be all right,” she whispered as she unlocked the cuffs already on the woman’s wrists. Her wrists were scraped and bloody.

  “Put those on her wrists before you release her ankles,” the bastard ordered.

  Adeline did as she was told, the whole time whispering reassurances. When she’d finished with Prescott, he ordered her to do the same to Arnold. As she obeyed his order, she watched him remove her weapon from Clay’s waistband and store it in his own. Damn it.

  “Now stand up and make a line.”

  Adeline moved toward him, the other women in tow.

  He pointed the gun at Addy’s chest. “I want you at the back of the line.”

  She shrugged, circled around behind the others so that Arnold was closest to him.

  Arnold dropped to her knees sobbing, the sound choking around the gag in her mouth.

  “Get up!”

  The woman curled into a ball, her sobs pitching to a new frantic level.

  “Get up!” He kicked her in the back.

  Adeline started forward.

  “Don’t move,” he ordered. Keeping an eye on her, Jamison dug around in his bag and pulled out three tiaras. He placed one atop each woman’s head.

  Arnold sobbed even harder. Adeline wanted to demand that he remove the women’s gags but she was afraid if she brought it up, he’d shove one in her mouth. Someone needed to be able to scream.

  “Get her up,” Jamison ordered Prescott. “Or I’ll kill her here and you can drag her to the river.”

  Prescott reached down, helped Arnold to her feet. Jamison grabbed the end of the chain near Arnold’s cuffs. “Now, stay in a line right behind me. Anybody falls down or stops, I’ll blow your damned head off.” His mouth cut into a grin. “Be hard to wear your tiara then.”

  Flashes from her dream swam in front of Adeline’s eyes. He was taking them to the water. Nichols’s words bobbed to the surface of those churning memories.

  The women are being held close to the water. If you don’t find them soon they’ll be under the water.

  Adeline glanced longing at her stupid ass cousin as Jamison dragged them out of the shack.

  Poor Clay. He hadn’t gotten to enjoy the show.

  Think, Addy! The metal cuffs chafed her wrists. The December air was chilly. The full moon hung low in the sky. The distant hum of Singing River grew louder, threatening. Jamison tromped through the brush and saw grass, leading the way toward their doom.

  The panic started deep in her chest.

  The water would be cold and deep.

  The hands clutching at her in her dream were her sisters’. They would be looking to her for help.

  And she wouldn’t be able help them.

  Adeline’s throat closed as the panic clawed its way there, urging her to scream.

  But there was no one to hear. Wyatt and his deputies would be back at the other location...where she’d sent them. She prayed they would discover Clay’s truck, search the area until they found her Bronco.

  She swallowed back the defeat. She could hope.

  The roar of the water was louder now.

  They were close.

  Too close.

  Adeline kicked back the fear. She wasn’t going down without a fight.

  Not tonight. Not ever.

  He broke through the tree line and stalled on the river’s bank. The water was dark and wide, its song whispering to the air.

  Arnold fell to her knees, making those god-awful sounds. Prescott knelt down and tried to comfort her. Adeline ignored the tugs on the chain. She wasn’t getting on her knees again for this bastard. He’d have to shoot her first.

  “When I discovered you had grown up here,” Jamison said to Adeline, “I realized the setting was perfect. I had to get you back here. I knew when Arnold wouldn’t cooperate, Prescott would come here looking for you. All I had to do was wait and follow her here. I wanted to do this here.”

  “How clever of you.” She spat the words at him.

  “You don’t understand, do you?” he jeered. “The Singing River. ‘It murmurs a tragic tale,’” he recited, evidently from something he’d read.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Adeline said, “I know the story.” Who could grow up here and not know it?

  “Those sweet, kind Pascagoula Indians were about to be enslaved by the Biloxi tribe.” He shook his head. “Rather than be taken, they joined hands and walked right out into that dark water. Chanting a death song the whole way. The Singing River hums that song to this day.”

  Prescott and Arnold sobbed louder with his every word.

  “Amazing,” Adeline tossed at him. “You see yourself as some kind of warrior or something? You need to prove you’re more powerful than us?” She rattled her shackles. “I think you pretty much proved that already.”

  He shook his head and made that annoying tsking sound. “You don’t understand at all, Detective Cooper. The story revolves around a princess. It was her goddamned fault that all those people walked right out there,” he pointed to the murky water, “to their deaths.”

  He was right. The Biloxi princess who’d fallen in love with the Pascagoula chief. That was why it had to be here. He saw them as princesses...it was destiny. But whose? What had they done to him? How had they intruded into his territory? It didn’t make sense.

  He motioned to the river with his gun. “Now. Get in the water.”

  Arnold and Prescott wailed even louder, the sounds strangled.

  “Why?” Adeline asked him. “What’s your point in making us get in the water? Why not just shoot us right here? Dead is dead. Who cares about a stupid legend?” He rushed up to her, shoved the barrel of what she recognized as a nine-millimeter into her face.

  “Because this is what was supposed to happen all those years ago when you were just a tiny little baby.”

  “Your father killed your mother,” she reminded. “He tried to kill you. But you hid us where he couldn’t get to us. Why kill us now? What happened back then is over. You don’t have to do this. Where’s that hero who saved his three little sisters?”

  He laughed long and loud. “That’s not what happened.” He snickered. “That’s what they thought happened. But that wasn’t the way it happened at all.”

  “Tell us then,” Adeline challenged, “how it really was. I think we deserve to know before you kill us. Otherwise your whole ritual will have no meaning.”

  He stared at her a moment, his blue eyes—the ones exactly like hers—narrowing with suspicion then relaxing. “Why not? A bedtime story to put you to sleep.”

  Haha. He was a comedian. Right now she just wanted him closer and distracted.

  “For six years it was just me.” He banged his chest. “My parents loved me so much. Everything was about me. It was perfect.” He glowered at Prescott. “Then you came along and you were all they talked about. I had to share everything with you, especially my parents. Their little princess,” he snarled.

  He shifted his attention to Arnold. “Then you.” He kicked her in the side. “By then they didn’t have any time at all for me. The babies needed them. Especially that bitch mother of ours. Their little princesses were so sweet in their little pink dresses and bows.” He jerked Prescott to her feet. “I tried to get rid of you. Tried to drown you in the bathtub but that bitch caught me. She was so stupid she thought it was an accident.”

  Adeline eased a little closer to where he stood.

  “And the princesses just kept coming!” He released Prescott and whirled on Adeline. “That bitch just kept spitting ’em out. You cried all the time. I made sure. Mommy,” he said in a squeaky childlike voice, “just couldn’t figure out why you cried all the time.” He rushed closer, nose to nose with Adeline. “It was because I tortured you when they weren’t looking.”

  “Sucked for me,” she muttered, scarcely able to contain the urge to hurl herself into him. But she wouldn’t when the gun’s barrel was turned toward Prescott.

  “Finally,” he snapped, “I’d had enough. My father kept telling me not to worry, that it was still me and him. He would laugh and say the princesses ruled our world. I knew he was miserable, too.”

  Adeline dared to ease a little closer to him.

  “I made a plan,” he said, seemingly lost in the memories. “I promised to take you on a picnic. The bitch thought we were all sleeping, so she’d fallen asleep in front of the TV. I carried you,” he said to Adeline. She halted her incremental movement toward him. “And the rest of you followed right behind me just like you were in a parade.” He smirked. “It was so easy. I led you right to the water. It wasn’t far from our backyard.” He stepped back. “Then I persuaded you to come into the water with me. It wasn’t more than knee deep. We all sat down, laughing and having fun. Then I pushed you under the water, put my knees on your chest,” he said to Arnold and Prescott. He shot Adeline a sideways look. “I held you under with one hand.”

  Adeline quashed the panic that tried to swell in her throat. “But our mother caught you again, didn’t she? Did she punish you?”

  He lunged at her, grabbed her by the jacket. He pulled her face to his and shoved the gun under her breasts. “No, she didn’t punish me. She was afraid of me. She convinced my father that I needed to go away.” He shoved Adeline away. “So I killed her.” He looked from Adeline to Arnold, then Prescott. “I would’ve killed all of you, but you,” he snarled at Prescott, “took the others and hid from me.”

  “Our father caught you, tried to stop you, and you killed him, too,” Adeline surmised, the scenario unfolding in her mind.

  Jamison’s face blanked.

  Realization dawned on Adeline. “You wanted it to be just you and him. You didn’t intend to kill him. That’s why you wouldn’t talk afterward.” His world had been over. Shit.

  “Get in the water!”

  The strangled wailing started again. Adeline knew she had just one shot at escaping certain death. All she needed was a little bit of luck.

  They waded into the icy cold water. Prescott and Arnold clung to each other, Adeline lagged as far behind as the chain would allow.

  “That’s perfect.”

  He was right behind Adeline. She couldn’t see where the gun was . . .

  “Now,” he said, “sit down in the water.”

  Chapter Forty

  Tuesday, December 28, 12:18 am.

  Adeline shivered. The water was up to her neck. Beside her Prescott and Arnold were clinging to each other, still sobbing, but the sounds were weaker now.

  They were beaten.

  Jamison waded back and forth in front of them, his movements sloshing the cold water in their faces. He was singing some bizarre song he’d clearly written about death and princesses. Fury burned low in Adeline’s belly. She was going to kill this bastard.

  But before the bastard died, she had to know what he’d done with his son.

  “Too bad Danny found out what a monster you are.”

  Jamison stopped, turned to her. “You don’t know my son. I’ve protected him from bitches like you.”

  Adeline laughed. “That’s not the impression I got when I visited him and your wife in the hospital. He said he never wanted to see you again.” Jamison bowed down to put his gun in her face. “He wants to live with his grandparents now.” She just kept right on talking. “He hates you.”

  “You’re a liar!”

  She shrugged. “Sorry to be the one to tell you, but he told the police exactly what you did to his mother. He might pretend to like you to your face, because you scare him, but he hates your damned guts.”

  “Liar!” He dropped the gun, bent down, and grabbed Adeline by the throat with both hands.

  She sucked in as much air as possible before he cut off the flow completely.

  “He knows the lies they’ve told! He’s going with me.” He crushed her face to his, his grip on her throat like a vise. “He’s waiting at home for me right now.”

  Bingo.

  Jamison’s fingers tightened a little more. “You’ll go to hell for lying, princess.”

  Adeline opened her mouth wide and clamped down on his nose. He screamed. The harder he struggled to get loose, the harder she ground her teeth. Blood spurted in her mouth. Her hands shot up...felt for the weapon in his waistband—her weapon.

  He shoved her back, tumbled on top of her...they both went under the water.

  Paralyzing fear shot through her veins.

  The others’ hands were grabbing at her hair...her arms.

  She clutched at him...tried to find the weapon. Tried to break free of the hold he had on her throat. Panic burned in her lungs.

  Don’t breathe. Don’t freaking breathe.

  He banged her head against the rocky river bottom. Pain shattered through her skull.

  More weight pressed down on her. A foot caught her in the jaw.

  The fear ignited full force...her lungs threatened to burst...she couldn’t move...couldn’t breathe.

  Adeline stopped struggling.

  * * *

  “Sheriff! Over here!”

  Wyatt ran forward, cutting through the knee-deep saw grass.

  Two of his deputies were crouched down...someone was on the ground.

  Oh hell.

  He lunged toward the huddle.

  Clay Cooper lay there. He was talking. Wyatt surveyed the area. A shack—the one his contact had said he used for making drug deals—sat in the distance.

  Wyatt shoved his deputy out of the way. He grabbed Clay by the shirt and shook him hard. “Where is Addy?”

  “He...” Clay shook his head as if to clear it “He took ’em to the river. He’s gonna drown them. He’s got a gun.”

  Wyatt dropped the bastard, drew his weapon, and started forward. “Fan out, head for the river,” he shouted to the dozen deputies running toward them.

  “He’s crazy,” Clay called after Wyatt. “I couldn’t stop him. I crawled out here and tried to do something but I passed out again.”

  The river’s song buzzed louder and louder in his ears. Wyatt’s heart thumped harder and harder. His feet wouldn’t move fast enough. He had to hurry! He couldn’t be sure how long the bastard had been gone with her...with them.

  The crash of water reached his ears. He adjusted his direction...held up a hand to let those behind him know to go silent.