Secrets of His Own. Amanda Stevens

driven her out of the apartment so quickly that she hadn’t taken the time to straighten the chair or lock the door?

      Carrie tried to convince herself she was making too much of that chair, but the premonition that had gripped her for days wouldn’t let go. Something was wrong. She could feel it.

      Had Tia’s nightmares come back? Had they driven her from her own wedding and brought her here, to the almost complete isolation of Cape Diablo? Had she tried to shut them out by pulling the blinds over the windows and immersing herself in another family’s tragedy?

      Or was something far more sinister at work here? Had Tia inadvertently stumbled upon the answer to a thirty-year-old mystery?

      Carrie turned to search the rest of the apartment. As she made her way down the narrow corridor, she became aware of a smell. Something faint. A lingering odor of decay that turned her stomach and made her heart pound in agitation.

      It was only a trace. She’d watched enough crime shows to know that the stench from a dead body would be overpowering so she tried not to panic.

      Tia is fine, she told herself over and over. The apartment needed airing out, was all.

      But as she stepped into the tiny bedroom, her gaze darted almost fearfully around the small space. Her first reaction to the spotless condition of the room was intense relief.

      “Thank God,” she whispered, realizing that she had been bracing for the worst ever since she’d gotten off the boat.

      Like the rest of the apartment, the room was immaculate. The bed was made and the floor free of discarded clothing. Tia’s things were stored in the closet and her suitcase shoved out of the way on the overhead shelf. Everything was in its proper place, just the way she would have left it.

      So why did she still feel that terrible sense of doom? Carrie wondered.

      Walking over to the French door, she drew back the curtain and stared out at the overgrown garden. She unlatched the door and pulled it open, allowing a fresh breeze into the room. Almost immediately the scent from the hallway faded.

      Carrie started to turn away when a movement beyond the garden stopped her. Someone was coming up a path that led back into the mangrove forest, and for a moment, she thought it was Cochburn.

      But as the man emerged from the trees, she saw that he was younger and taller than the attorney, with closely cropped hair and a lean, muscular body. He wore faded jeans and a shirt that hung open, revealing a bronzed chest and—Carrie would have sworn—the handle of a gun protruded from his low-riding waistband.

      Nearing the house, he buttoned his shirt as he glanced over his shoulder. There was something oddly covert about his movements, and Carrie remembered her conversation earlier with Cochburn about the unsavory element in the area.

      Quickly, she closed the door, then stepped back into the room before the man spotted her. He seemed to be heading directly toward her, but at the last moment, he veered off the path and disappeared back into the trees.

      Who was he? Carrie wondered with a shiver. And why did he have a gun?

      She watched for a moment longer, but when he didn’t appear again, she turned and walked over to examine a framed photograph Tia had left on the dresser.

      The picture had been taken at summer camp the year she and Tia turned twelve. They were both beaming with arms thrown over each other’s shoulders. The two of them had been inseparable back then.

      How odd that Tia had kept the photograph all these years and brought it with her to Cape Diablo. Carrie had long since put away everything that reminded her of that summer.

      The knot in her chest tightened. It still hurt to see their shining faces in that snapshot and know what the future held for them. She and Tia had been so happy that day. So eager for a summer adventure.

      But a week later, their lives had been changed forever. In the blink of an eye, the innocence had been lost, replaced by the kind of horror most people could hardly imagine.

      The day of the abduction had started out like so many others that summer. The sun had been out. Carrie could still see the way the light dazzled off the man’s wristwatch.

      He’d seemed cute and harmless at first. It was only later when she’d seen that terrible tattoo on his chest that she’d begun to have an inkling of just how evil he really was.

      “Don’t leave me here, Carrie. Please, please don’t leave me….”

      She squeezed her eyes closed as Tia’s desperate plea echoed through her head, followed by her own hollow promise.

      “I won’t leave you, Tia. I swear I won’t….”

      But she had left Tia. She’d left her all alone in that hellish place. Carrie had managed to get away, and the police had later told her that her escape had probably saved both their lives. But Carrie hadn’t seen it that way, and neither, she feared, had Tia.

      In spite of everything, though, the two of them had managed to resume their friendship, but nothing was ever the same after that summer.

      It had almost been a relief for Carrie when the two of them had gone off to separate colleges and eventually lost touch. Away from Tia, the nightmares and guilt had finally faded.

      Then, just a few months ago, Tia had come back into Carrie’s life. She’d called out of the blue one day, shocking Carrie from the pleasant complacency her life had become.

      “I’m getting married and I want you to be my maid of honor. There’s no one else I’d rather have with me than you, Carrie. We’ve been through so much. Please say yes.”

      Of course, Carrie had said yes, even though she’d had some trepidation about renewing the friendship. After years of struggling to ‘find herself,’ she’d finally gotten her life on track. She had the job of her dreams with a local magazine, a great apartment, a small circle of friends. So what if she hadn’t met that special someone. So what if at times loneliness threatened to engulf her. She’d finally put the past behind her and that was all that mattered.

      Or so she tried to tell herself.

      But Tia’s phone call had brought it all back. The nightmares and the guilt.

      Carrie had worked long and hard to exorcise her own demons, but they were always there lurking in the deepest recesses of her subconscious, waiting to undermine any intimate relationship she might have hoped to establish.

      The guilt was still there, too. She’d gotten away from their abductor before he’d physically harmed her, but Tia hadn’t. What must her nightmares be like?

      They’d never talked about what that monster did to her, but Carrie knew. Deep down, she knew.

      The wedding was to be Tia’s exorcism. A chance to finally put the past to rest and have the kind of fairy-tale life she’d always dreamed of.

      So what had happened? Carrie wondered. What had ended the dream and driven Tia away from the church that day? Had she simply gotten cold feet or had she discovered something about Trey Hollinger that had frightened her into running away?

      And why had she brought the photograph—such a painful reminder of the past—with her to Cape Diablo?

      A noise from the sitting room brought Carrie around with a start. Her mind flashed instantly to the man she’d seen a few minutes earlier on the path. He’d still been some distance from her so she couldn’t be sure that she’d seen a gun, but the very idea that someone might be armed and dangerous on the tiny island made her hesitate at the doorway.

      “Anyone home?” Robert Cochburn called from the sitting room.

      Recognizing his voice, Carrie let out a breath of relief as she replaced the frame on the dresser, then walked down the corridor and through the archway.

      The attorney hovered on the threshold, giving her an apologetic smile as soon as she entered the room. “Sorry to just barge in like this, but I did knock. I guess you