Dead Ringers: The Complete Collection

By Darlene Gardner

This collection contains all nine volumes of the paranormal mystery serial. For young adults on up.

Jade Greene remembers nothing from the time she went missing except a blinding headache and an evil clown with a syringe. Not exactly the stuff to convince others of her sanity.

Nobody at the summer carnival believes Jade was even in danger except her secretive co-worker Max Harper, a stranger she can neither trust nor resist. But things about Max don't add up. Like why does he turn up wherever Jade is? Why is he so evasive? And why do people around him keep ending up dead?

Only two things are certain: People in town aren't who they seem. And things for Jade are about to get much, much worse

• Language: English
• Publisher: Darlene Gardner
• Release date: Nov 27, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310475986

Darlene Gardner

While working as a newspaper sportswriter, Darlene Gardner realized she'd rather make up quotes than rely on an athlete to say something interesting. So she quit her job and concentrated on a fiction career that landed her at Harlequin/Silhouette, where she's written for Temptation, Duets and Intimate Moments as well as Superromance. Visit Darlene on the web at www.darlenegardner.com

Book preview

ILLUSION

Volume One of the Dead Ringers serial

CHAPTER ONE

Four months ago

When the police find me, I’m stumbling out of a deserted carnival. The place is boarded up for the season, awaiting the fresh swarms of tourists who descend on Midway Beach every summer like Alfred Hitchcock’s birds.

I trip on a crack in the pavement and pitch forward onto my knees. The sound of laughter resonates in my ears and the back of my head throbs. I reach up to touch my skull, half-expecting my hand to come away bloody, but the wound’s nothing more than a bump.

The dizzying spin of police lights and the accompanying thud of footsteps against the frosty ground intensify my headache. I wrap my arms around myself to try to stop my shivers. It may be North Carolina, but even southern beach towns feel the chill in February.

You’re not supposed to be here. A flashlight shines in my eyes before angling back to the ground as the cop bends down to put a hand on my shoulder. The voice is much softer as he takes in my state. Are you all right?

It’s a fight to force the words past my chattering teeth. H-h-how did I get here?

Another beam of light hits me in the face as a second, shorter cop jogs up behind the first. Hey, Wainwright? Isn’t that the Greene girl?

Why would a Midway Beach cop know who I am? The answer slowly penetrates my fuzzy brain. My stepfather’s a felon now, and these must be the two cops who came to the house asking questions about him. The surge of anger is preferable to the headache, but only barely.

Yeah, it is, Wainwright says. He’s so ripped he looks like he’s wearing a muscle suit. He loops a strong arm under my shoulder and helps me to my feet. The ground spins, but he doesn’t let me fall. Your name’s Jade, right? What are you doing here, Jade?

I was walking to Becky’s house. I’d set out for my best friend’s house at dusk, but judging by the darkness shrouding our surroundings it seems much later than that now. And then I was here.

A terrible realization sweeps over me. I’m missing time. It’s the sort of thing that happens in movies like Invasion of the Body Snatchers. For all I know, there’s a pod Jade hiding in the carnival, waiting to invade our peaceful little town.

What happened to me? Where have I been? I ask the cops.

Wainwright peers over my head at his partner. We better take her to the hospital. Looks like she has a whopper of a concussion.

At the hospital, I discover things are worse than I thought. Much worse.

I haven’t just lost hours. I’ve been gone for days.

CHAPTER TWO

Present Day

Until I vanished into thin, sea-scented air, I considered myself an average eighteen-year-old. Sure, the funky atmosphere in the beach town where I live is in danger of obliteration, the stepfather who raised me is in prison and my mom’s massively screwed up. But everybody has issues.

Hardly anybody gets selective amnesia, though.

That’s pretty much what happened to me on the wintry night I set out for my best friend Becky’s house after my stepdad pled guilty to holding up a liquor store with a gun that wasn’t even loaded. How’s that for dumb and dumber? Mom wasn’t even around to lie and say everything would be all right. She’d taken off a few months earlier.

I remember the wind whipping at my face and turning the tears that dripped down my cheeks to ice as I hurried down the dark sidewalk and then... nothing. Until forty-eight hours later when I turned up confused and disoriented at the carnival on the beach.

The carnival was closed for the season, not teeming with people and noise and music like it is now. Just about every teenager in Midway Beach, including me, works summers either at the carnival or one of the other businesses along the boardwalk. Think Coney Island on a smaller, shabbier scale. We have an arcade, tacky souvenir shops, greasy pizza joints and a wooden pier with an open-air bar that hosts some epically terrible music.

This is my third straight year working as a ride operator although I wasn’t supposed to be at the carnival this summer. My plan was to line up a job at a daycare center. But that was before my life went off track, back when I thought I’d be heading to the University of North Carolina on a full academic scholarship and majoring in elementary education.

I couldn’t swing the UNC tuition after my grades tanked and I lost the scholarship. But as much as that hurts, the scholarship isn’t what I want back most.

What I want back are those two lost days.

Hey, Jade, Roxy Cooper, my boss, bellows at me as she approaches the Wild Mouse roller coaster. She’s a powerfully built platinum blonde somewhere between thirty-five and fifty. The line of teenagers part like the Red Sea to let her through. How many times you gonna let those cars go ’round?

I’m supposed to keep it to a three-lap limit. Some of the riders look green from all the tight, flat turns and switchbacks so I’m probably over that. The controls aren’t automated but antiquated, like everything else at the carnival. I yank up the long lever that operates the skid brakes, and the coaster groans like it’s dying.

You okay? Roxy asks me that question at least once a day, like she’s really concerned. I know better. After the cops figured out I was missing time, they’d investigated where I’d been for the previous two days.

According to Roxy, the spineless liar, I’d been with her. She claimed to have dropped me off at my house shortly before the cops found me. Of course she insisted she had no idea how I ended up at the carnival.

I’m just peachy.

Her jaw works as she chomps down on her gum. Wintergreen, from the smell of it. The orange Midway Beach Carnival T-shirt all the employees wear is too tight for her, the material straining against her Double D’s. You know, I’m real glad to have you back this summer.

Would she say that if she knew my ulterior motive was to figure out how she was involved in what the hell happened to me last February? Maybe. Roxy and the truth aren’t exactly on good terms.

She’s waiting for me to respond so I dredge up my inner Valley Girl. It’s, like, so awesome to be here.

The kids on the previous ride have disembarked and new riders are taking their places, laughing and shouting and trying to claim the best cars. I always head for the last car myself. Roxy’s smile goes only as far as her lips. I need you to head over to the funhouse and relieve Becky. I want her at the bumper cars.

The funhouse. I try to hide my shudder.

Roxy likes to rotate the ride operators to keep everybody fresh, but three weeks into the season I’ve managed to avoid manning the funhouse. Not for the world will I tell Roxy that, ever since my incident, the funhouse creeps me out big time.

Sure thing, boss.

I salute her and start the trek across the carnival. Along the way I pass the Hurricane, the iconic wooden roller coaster that is the carnival’s centerpiece. Workmen are finishing up an extensive renovation project to update the aging structure with new wooden planks and beams. Any day now, it’ll be back in operation.

The childish screams and shouts from the midway drown out the sound of waves pummeling the shore, but I can see the wide expanse of ocean and smell the salt on the breeze. When I was growing up, our family spent lots of lazy hours at the beach. My stepdad used to build amazing sand castles with spires and moats and fortress walls. I can’t think about what used to be, though, not when my reality is so starkly different.

Besides, those aren’t the memories I’m worried about.

To delay my arrival at the funhouse, I detour through Kiddie Land, where bells ring, horns blow and little kids rush from one of the dozen or so rides to the other. Merry-go-round music blares while parents wave to boys and girls riding up and down on the carved horses.

My twelve-year-old brother, Julian, and two of his friends are buying fried dough and cotton candy at one of the food booths outside Kiddie Land. Julian has such dark hair and eyes that he’ll be a looker when he grows into his big feet. He doesn’t resemble me at all. How could he when Mom and Dad adopted him from Colombia? He’s wearing a T-shirt I bought for him imprinted with Bring Back the Land Shark. The slogan’s in protest of the town council’s decision to replace the ceramic statue of the Great White Shark that used to greet visitors to the boardwalk with a grinning dolphin.

Maniacal laughter that sounds like it’s coming from crazed clowns drifts on the sea breeze. The funhouse is in sight.

Jade! Jade! Becky Littleton calls from her post in front of the attraction, waving her right arm madly. No one is waiting in line. No surprise there. You heard what happened, right? Because you’re not gonna believe it. You’re just gonna die.

Becky is beautiful, with hair that is naturally blonde and straight instead of reddish-brown and unruly like mine. She has it pulled back from her face, calling attention to her sky-high cheekbones. Modeling might have been her calling if she’d grown past five feet and one hundred pounds. I’m five feet five and what I like to think of as athletically built. Next to Becky, I look like an Amazon.

I might die, I say with a grimace. The thing laughing in the funhouse is the top suspect.

Becky’s mouth gapes open. Before she gets any words out, I know she doesn’t think I’m nearly as funny as I find myself. You can’t say things like that! Someone’s gonna hear you. They won’t know you’re kidding.

I’m not kidding. Becky must know it, too, even though she doesn’t understand about the funhouse. Even if I was as easy to read as she is, my intense dread of the place makes no sense to me, either.

What won’t I believe?

The Black Widow is out on bail! Becky leans forward, her eyes bright. I give it a week before someone turns up dead!

See, things can always be worse. At least my stepdad hasn’t killed anybody like Constance Hightower, aka The Black Widow.

Constance is accused of whacking her rich husband, Boris. The murder took place sixty miles south of Midway Beach in Wilmington. The details are all over TV, the newspaper and the Internet. The former Miss North Carolina and the tobacco magnate fascinated the gossip-hungry even before the ugly accusations surfaced. Constance is thirty-one. At the time of his death, Boris was seventy-nine.

The story goes that Constance discovered Boris was cheating on her and sprinkled his food with a slow-acting poison until death did them part. Since the symptoms mirrored a heart attack, she would have gotten away with it if the children from Boris’s first marriage hadn’t pressed for an autopsy.

You gotta wonder why Constance did it, I say. Boris dumped his first wife for her. She had to know he was a cheater.

She did it for the money, silly, Becky says breathlessly. I think she was planning to murder him all along. If the poison didn’t work, she would have smothered him in his sleep.

That got dark really fast.

Hey, we’re talking about a murderer here. And I bet I know something about her you don’t.

She’s childless because she ate her young?

No. Becky’s so far from smiling, her teeth don’t show. Right before he died, Boris bought a beachfront place at Ocean Breeze. The Black Widow has made it her lair.

The proper name of the exclusive residential community that has invaded the outskirts of Midway Beach is The Estates at Ocean Breeze. The Lair at Ocean Breeze has a better ring to it.

Wonder if she’ll show her face in town, Becky says. I want to get a good look at her eyes. I hear they’re empty. No remorse.

As much as I dread my new assignment, I’m tired of talking about the Black Widow. Roxy says it’s my turn at the funhouse. You’re supposed to head over to the bumper cars.

Becky grimaces and chews on her bottom lip. You didn’t tell her the funhouse creeps you out?

Nope.

Well, maybe it’s a good thing you’re working the funhouse, Becky says. You know, face your fears.

The creepy, canned laughter drifting out of the makeshift building makes me want to cover my ears. Amid the laughter, I pick out another sound. Is someone crying?

Becky cocks an ear, her expression growing serious. Oh, damn. It is crying. Lacey’s probably lost in the mirror maze.

Lacey Prescott? Hunter’s cousin? Just saying his name sends a thrill through me. My hormones don’t seem to care that Hunter’s going out with my arch-rival.

Yeah. I let her go in there alone.

Hunter lives with his aunt and uncle. Lacey’s their only child. She’s a couple years behind my brother Julian in school, a sweet-faced girl who hardly says a word to anyone. Is she even old enough?

She’s ten. Her friends are over there on the tilt-a-wheel. She said that was too scary but she was all gung-ho about the funhouse.

Last weekend, I went to a matinee showing of the new Batman movie after my mother showed up at our house and moved back in, like she had the right after being gone for almost six months without a word. Lacey was at the movie, too. The death and destruction had barely begun when she practically ran out of the theater. The body count was at two or three. Tops.

I guess I have to go in there after her, Becky says.

Let me, I say, shocking myself.

Really? You? Becky makes a face. Girl, please tell me you’re not still stuck on Hunter?

I can’t tell her that.

Forget him, Becky says. If he was interested, he had his chance. He’s not good enough for you.

Loyalty sometimes makes you delusional. Hunter is a rarity, a talented actor who gives off vibes that are one hundred percent heterosexual. He’s been accepted into the same prestigious drama school in New York City where M. Night Shyamalan studied. I’m headed nowhere at the speed of light. I walk toward the funhouse without responding.

Remember, everything in there is just pretend, Becky calls.

The way my legs are trembling, she just as easily could have shouted for me to watch out for the guy with the chainsaw. I climb the rickety stairs and step into a dark corridor. Lights flash on and off while aggressively cheerful music blares, punctuated by that clownish laughter. The floor dips in places, adding to the disorientation.

Becky’s not entirely correct about my motives. Sure, I’d like word to get back to Hunter that I rescued his young cousin. But I’d have gone into the funhouse after Lacey even if she didn’t have a hot relative. She has a little-girl-lost quality that gets to me.

The sobs tear at my heart until I feel physical pain. My pulse trips. What if my aversion to the funhouse has something to do with those days I disappeared? My brain’s blurry on the details of where exactly at the carnival I reappeared, but why couldn’t it have been the funhouse?

What if Lacey is in real danger, the kind that greeted me back in February? Will she be the next to vanish?

I try to shut out the music and laughter and focus on the crying. It sounds animalistic, a cross between a cry and a scream. Shivers rack my body. But, wait. The feral noises are part of the soundtrack. The human whimpering seems to be coming from the right and the hall of mirrors.

Gathering my resolve, I forge on toward the distortion mirrors. A screeching cry reverberates through me. The animal in distress on the soundtrack? It’s getting harder to partition Lacey’s weeping from the manufactured noises.

There’s another sound, too: Ragged gasps that pass for my breathing. While I’m trying to get myself under control, I reach the first mirror. Staring back at me from two sets of eyes is a short, squatty young woman with a pencil neck and an extra mouth. It’s me. So is the spindly figure in the second mirror who is taller than Shaquille O’Neal.

Turning a corner, I nearly slam into another illusion of myself. I jump back. So does my double image.

The crying is more faint now.

Lacey. My shaking voice competes with the music, the animal cries and the never-ending laughter. Lacey, where are you?

No answer. I speed up, past mirrors where I look demented and mirrors that give the illusion that my body has been sliced in half. While I’m deciding which way to go, colored lights flicker on and something jumps out of an oversized box.

It’s a life-sized clown, its red lips pulled back in an unnatural grin.

A memory flashes through my brain. I’m sitting in a hard-backed chair with rope cutting into my bound hands and feet. A hood covers my head, effectively blinding me. I feel groggy but know I’m outside, because I can hear the crescendo of cicadas and the nearby wail of some sort of animal, maybe a fox.

Sharp pain explodes inside my head. Bile rises in my throat, and I fight nausea. The pain is relentless, like something is assaulting my brain. My head jerks back and forward, back and forward, sending fresh waves of agony through me. If it goes on much longer, that will be the end. I can’t survive this. No one could.

And then, suddenly, it’s over. I slump forward, my head falling below my knees, the loosened hood coming free and dropping to the ground. Fresh air reaches my nostrils. I lift my throbbing head at the same time something sharp stabs me in the right shoulder. The groggy feeling immediately intensifies.

With every ounce of willpower I possess, I fight the wooziness, managing with great difficulty to turn my head. Through lids growing heavier by the second, I get a glimpse of whatever’s doing this to me.

Holding an empty syringe is a clown, its face cloaked in white makeup and its oversized nose and mouth painted blood-red.

CHAPTER THREE

My eyes drift closed, but I can still see the clown’s taunting grin. Something is shaking me. From a distance, I hear a familiar voice I can’t quite place. The shaking gets harder. My teeth rattle like they sometimes do during the scariest parts of a horror movie.

Jade! says a loud voice near my ear. Jade! Snap out of it!

I blink and the image of the evil clown fades to black. One more blink and the interior of the funhouse comes into intermittent focus, depending on whether the lights are flashing on or off. I’m on the floor, slumped against the cool glass of one of the mirrors.

Becky leans over me. In the artificial funhouse lights, her face appears as chalk-white as the clown’s. Are you all right?

I can’t make myself nod. I’m not all right. I haven’t been since last summer, when something so terrible happened to me that I buried the memories. Until now.

Because deep in my gut I know that what I just had was a memory. Even now, I can almost feel the ropes cutting into my wrists, smell the earthy richness of the outdoors and taste the acid rising in my throat along with the dread.

Becky sticks out a hand to help me up. She’s so small and my legs are so rubbery that I have to anchor my free hand against the mirror so I don’t fall.

Come on, she says when I’m upright, keeping hold of my hand and winding through the maze of mirrors like she’s navigated it dozens of times. Without her guidance, I’d never find my way outside where the ocean air sweeps away some of the cobwebs in my mind. Darkness is encroaching and the lights of the midway are on, the Ferris wheel outlined in a circle of white.

White. Like the clown’s face paint.

I thought someone was dying in there! Becky hasn’t let go of my hand. Nobody is within ten yards of us besides the guy working the ticket booth while listening to his iPod. Why were you screaming like that?

I was screaming? My head hurts, as though somebody took a sledgehammer and tried to split it in two.

You were screaming bloody murder. I thought the Widow decided to start with Lacey.

Lacey, Hunter Prescott’s young cousin. Had somebody abducted the girl and tied her to that chair? I grab Becky’s arm. Please tell me Lacey’s all right.

I think so. She came out the exit a few seconds after you screamed. Becky stares down at my hand on her arm. Let go. You’re hurting me.

Sorry. I release her, my mind crowded with questions.

How had I gotten into that field? Who had tied me to the chair? Why had it felt as though my mind was splintering? How did the clown fit in? And, most importantly, what did he want from me?

So what the hell happened in there? Becky persists, rubbing her arm. I’ve never heard you scream like that.

I wet my lips, trying to process my thoughts. I remembered something. From when I vanished.

Becky puts a finger to her lips. Shhh. We agreed you wouldn’t talk about that.

But I remember, Becky. It was night and I was tied to a chair in a field. I concentrate over the pounding in my head, conjuring a mental snapshot. Lining the edges of the clearing were sprawling live oak trees and tall loblolly pines. I could smell grass but also something damp. The marsh or a swamp, maybe.

Jade, Becky says with a warning tone in her voice. She doesn’t want me to continue, but she’s been my best friend since kindergarten. There is nothing about me she doesn’t know.

At first I couldn’t see because I was wearing a hood. My head felt like it would explode. While I was thrashing around, the hood came loose. Then there was a needle in my shoulder. I moisten my lips, knowing how she’ll react to what I’m about to say. That’s when I saw the clown.

For God’s sake, Jade! Becky drags a hand through her blond hair, and some strands come loose from her ponytail. A clown? Are you listening to yourself? You actually believe you were abducted by an evil clown who tied you up and injected you with something?

Stated that way, it sounds crazy. Yet I didn’t get to that field by myself. I think it was a sedative.

Becky’s blue eyes turn round and troubled. You’re freaking me out, Jade.

I can hardly wrap my mind around the vision myself, yet the life-sized clown that had sprung from the jack in the box uncovered something in my mind I’ve been trying to reach for months.

I’m freaked out, too. I rub my forehead, intensifying my headache. But it could explain the gap in my memory. Maybe even where I was for those two days when I vanished.

We already know where you were, Becky says, her voice gentle. You were skiing in the Great Smoky Mountains with Roxy.

No. I shake my head, rejecting the explanation the same way I have since I’d turned up dazed and disoriented at the carnival. It’s no secret that Roxy is passionate about skiing. After three years of working at the carnival, that’s the only personal thing I know about her. But we had most definitely not gone on a ski trip to the Cataloochee Ski Area together. That’s a lie.

Jade, you sent me a text, remember? I know you were messed up about your dad’s conviction, but I still have it on my phone.

"He’s my stepdad." I never used to make that distinction. He’s the only father I’ve ever known and I call him Dad, but I’m just so damn angry at him.

"Okay, your stepdad. She pulls out her cell, navigates to a screen and hands me the phone. Here, maybe it’ll help if you see the text again."

Going skiing for a few days with Roxy, the text reads. Don’t worry.

Becky hadn’t worried. Neither had Aunt Carol, my mom’s sister. She’d uprooted everything and moved in with my sister, brother and me after my stepdad’s arrest. My aunt received a text from my phone with the same message. Roxy even had an explanation for my temporary amnesia. She said I’d fallen on the slopes. The bump on the back of my head seemed to back up her lie, but I think someone knocked me out when I was walking to Becky’s.

Even if the blow resulted in a concussion, though, it doesn’t explain my memory gap. It’s typical not to remember the accident. Not so typical to have no recollection of the following forty-eight hours.

I didn’t write that text. Someone must have gotten hold of my phone and sent it.

Why would anyone do that?

So nobody would realize I was missing and come looking for me. I can tell Becky doesn’t buy that explanation. C’mon, Becky. Why would I ever go skiing with Roxy?

Her father went to prison when she was a kid, too. Becky repeated the story that Roxy had told everybody. She thought it would be good for you to get away for a few days.

Roxy’s lying.

We’ve been over this already, Jade. Why would she lie?

Maybe Roxy was disguised as the clown. Except that doesn’t sound right. What possible motive could she have? She was involved, though. Somehow.

I don’t know why Roxy’s lying.

Do me a favor, okay? Becky rubs her hand up and down my arm. Don’t mention the evil clown to anybody. People are already talking. You can’t give them more ammo.

I shrug her hand off my arm. About me being crazy? You think I’m crazy, too, don’t you, Becky?

No! Of course not. I just think... She pauses and the corners of her mouth turn down. I just think you’ve been under a lot of stress.

Hey, is everything all right over here?

My head whips around at the voice of Maia Shelton, who’s closing the distance between us. Like Becky, Maia has been my friend forever. Unlike Becky, she can’t keep a secret. She spends all her waking hours on the strip, either at her job at the arcade or hanging out at the carnival, collecting the news of the day and then freely sharing it.

I heard something about a bloodcurdling scream. Maia tosses her beautiful black hair, which cascades down her back almost to her waist and is adorned with one of the chrysanthemums she’s taken to wearing. Today’s flower is purple.

Becky sends me a warning look, then says, People scream all the time at a carnival.

The funhouse is too lame for screams, Maia declares, waving a dismissive hand. So, spill. What’s going on?

It’s time I entered the conversation with the truth. Seems to me I heard somewhere it was the best defense. It’s nothing. I just got spooked by the clown in the funhouse.

Maia balances her hands on her curvy hips and tosses her hair again. Oh, come on. You’re not afraid of clowns. Last year for Halloween you dressed up as that killer clown from the Stephen King miniseries. I can’t think of the name, but you know the one.

It. I’d read the book, too. Not his best work.

I saw the two of you huddled over here, Maia continues. You were talking about something important. I can tell.

Becky telegraphs me another silent message to keep my mouth shut.

We were talking about the clown, I say.

Maia blows air out her nose. Bullshit! You think I can’t tell when you two are hiding something from me?

What would we be hiding? I ask.

How should I know? You won’t tell me. Maia huffs out another breath. Fine. See if I care.

She spins on her heel and stalks away, flipping us the bird as she goes.

Becky waits until Maia is out of earshot before she turns troubled eyes to me. I’m serious, Jade. You can’t say anything about an evil clown to anyone, not just Maia. If you do, people are gonna think you’re like...

Becky’s voice trails off, but I know what she means.

I can’t afford to let people think I’m like my mother.

CHAPTER FOUR

When Becky pulls her little red Honda Fit into my driveway three hours later, my head hurts from trying to figure out the mystery of what happened to me. Not as much as it hurt that night in the forest, though. That pain was extraordinary.

You’re like a million miles away, Becky says.

I’ve got a lot of things on my mind.

Things you should never, ever tell anyone, Becky says. We’re clear on that, right?

Crystal.

She doesn’t need to worry about me spreading tales tonight. My two siblings are too young to understand what I can’t grasp myself, and no way would I tell dear old mom anything.

I thank Becky for the ride, get out of the car and shut the door. The porch light is on, shining on the hanging baskets of geraniums that make the ranch house appear a little less modest. I use my key and slip inside before the flying bugs surrounding the porch light can follow me. Quickly I punch in the security code on the alarm system my mother had installed before she abandoned us.

Tonight the bowels of the house are dark. Good. Everybody’s asleep.

Something brushes against my leg. I cry out and jump back. Yellow eyes peer at me in the darkened foyer. Our black cat Beelzebub and not Jack Nicholson wielding a bloody knife like he did in The Shining.

Jesus, Bee. I had a rough enough night without you trying to give me a heart attack. Don’t you know an evil clown could be after me?

I strain my ears for the sound of stirring but hear only silence. Slipping off my shoes, I pad barefoot into the kitchen and open the refrigerator without bothering to turn on an overhead light. The cold air feels good on my clammy skin.

Yogurt or leftover pizza?

Like I really have a choice if I don’t want to weigh two hundred pounds, I mutter.

But if I gained a lot of weight, it might be tougher for somebody to snatch me off the street a second time. I grab the pizza, head for the family room and turn on a lamp. Light bathes the room, illuminating the empty sofa, the coffee table my stepdad found at a flea market and refinished and the woman in the recliner.

Her eyes are open and staring directly at me.

I swallow the scream before it starts. The woman in the recliner is my mother.

She’d walked into the house without even knocking about a week ago. She didn’t apologize or explain why she hadn’t once in twenty-five weeks given us a call to say where she was. She acted like she’d never been gone, taking my little sister Suri shopping, making Julian whatever he wanted for dinner. After a few days, Aunt Carol returned home to South Carolina.

Why are you sitting in the dark? I demand.

I was waiting for you, she says.

Her speech is slow and measured, without inflection. It’s impossible to tell if I woke her. She always sounds like that, which I figure is a side effect of her meds. I might feel sorry for her if she hadn’t stopped taking them last year and wrecked our lives.

No need for that. I can take care of myself.

She says nothing but continues to stare at me. She’s in a long-sleeved flannel nightgown much too warm for a summer night. Her shoulder-length hair is brown with no trace of red, her green eyes are wide set and her lips plump. Supposedly we look alike, but I don’t see it.

I pick up the remote, switch on the television and sink into the sofa. On screen Drew Barrymore is sobbing into the phone. I instantly recognize the movie Scream. I’ve seen it a half-dozen times, but anything is better than having a conversation with my mother.

Long minutes pass. The pizza is cold, but I can barely taste it. The girl on TV is screaming because—surprise—no one ever survives the first five minutes of a slasher flick. I try to ignore my mother, who hasn’t even shifted in her seat. Why won’t she go to bed and leave me alone?

Your father left a message on the answering machine, she announces.

Stepfather, I correct for like the millionth time. My real father took off before I was born. My mom claims she doesn’t even know where he is.

He’d like for you to visit him.

She makes it sound like they’re divorced and he’s inviting me to spend time with him. Like Maia’s father, who has a multi-million-dollar home with a tropical waterfall pool at the Estates at Ocean Breeze.

"Have you visited him?"

Not yet.

I’ll leave the visiting to you then.

On television, Drew Barrymore grasps for her killer’s mask. It’s already too late.

I talked to your Aunt Carol on the phone tonight. She said you haven’t seen your father since he was arrested.

Not quite true. I’d gone to an arraignment where I’ve since found out hardly anybody pleads guilty. Leave it up to my stepdad to dare to be different. It is true, however, that I’ve never been to the maximum-security prison where the judge sent my stepdad at the sentencing hearing. I haven’t read the letters he writes me, either. They end up in the trash.

What’s your point? I ask.

Five months is a long time for a father and daughter to go without seeing each other.

My mother was gone for longer than that. My palms hurt, and I realize I’m clenching my hands and the nails are digging into my skin. Yeah, well, he should have thought of that before he got himself arrested and landed us here with you.

Silence. Utter and complete except for the gasps from poor, dying Drew on TV. Definitely not a bloodcurdling scream. Hard to pull that off with a few dozen stab wounds. The knife comes up again. The television screen goes dark before the killing blow. My mother has the remote in her hand.

Hey! I was watching that. What gives?

You obviously have something you want to say to me.

Nope.

I think you do.

Why is she making an issue of this now? Since she moved back to Midway Beach, I’ve made no secret of the way I feel about her. If she’s in one room, I’m in the other. I speak to her as little as possible.

Trust me, I say under my breath, you don’t want to hear what I have to say.

Try me.

I let out a noise that sounds like a laugh but isn’t. Far from it. I sit up straighter, rising to the challenge. I’ve been holding in the anger for so long that maybe it is time I had my say.

Since you asked for it, I’ll give it to you straight. I wish you hadn’t come back. I know somebody has to take care of Julian and Suri, but it shouldn’t ever be you.

She looks wounded, but I harden myself against her, thinking of all the nights I cried myself to sleep after she left, thinking of how hard it was on my stepfather without her around. All because she’d refused to accept help for her problem.

You sound angry with me, she says.

Ya think? I know blood doesn’t really boil, but it feels like a hot rush through my veins. Now why would I be angry at a mother who didn’t care what happened to her family? You must have known money would be tight.

My stepfather worked as an MRI tech at the hospital, a decent job for a single man but not so much for a family man supporting three children.

I didn’t think your dad would try to rob a liquor store.

That’s on you. My voice is rising and I can’t control it. It never would have happened if you hadn’t abandoned us!

You make it sound like I wanted to go. Mom sounds impassioned, nothing like the woman who’s been on such an even keel since she returned. She leans forward in the chair, her eyes bright. But I had to leave. It was the only way to protect all of you.

"From what? Your enemies?"

Mom had her condition well under control until last year when she crashed her car and insisted she was speeding because they had been chasing her. After the accident, she had the security system installed. She used to stand at the window for hours, peeking through the curtains into the street to make sure her enemies weren’t out there.

One night, I’d heard my parents arguing about her meds through the thin walls of the house. I’d prayed she would get back on her regimen. Instead she’d packed up and left when nobody was home.

I can never forgive her for that.

You never had any enemies, Mom, I continue. You would have known that if you hadn’t gone off your meds.

Wrinkles form between Mom’s brows. I never went off my meds.

Yeah, right. I am sick of people lying to me. I heard you two arguing. You wouldn’t listen to him.

That’s not the way it was.

So you didn’t leave because you thought someone was after you? My eyes are trained on her, looking for I don’t know what. Foam frothing from her mouth, perhaps?

Well, yes, but—

So there’s nothing left to talk about.

You’re wrong. I already mentioned I spoke to your Aunt Carol tonight.

So?

She told me more about what happened to you in February. Mom wrings her hands the way she used to when she was standing at the window keeping guard. I’m afraid, Jade.

Of what? Your enemies coming after me?

She shakes her head, the movement almost frantic. No, Jade. I’m afraid you’re a paranoid schizophrenic. Like me.

CHAPTER FIVE

With the bright morning sunlight streaming through my bedroom window, it seems ridiculous to believe an evil clown snatched me off the street, injected me with a syringe full of sedative and tied me to a chair.

And yet as I get out of bed, that’s pretty much where my head is.

Do I get any sanity points because I realize the scenario sounds nuts? Or does that make it more likely that I’m a paranoid schizophrenic?

Like my mother.

Voices drift down the hall from the kitchen. My bedside clock reads a little before nine a.m. Oh, crap. I’d meant to wake up earlier to make sure Suri and Julian weren’t alone with her.

I hurry down the narrow hallway, forgetting the bulge in the carpet where it isn’t pulled tight enough. I stumble, putting out a hand to steady myself on the wall. A framed photograph of our family of five before Mom left us crashes to the floor. I leave it behind.

Suri and Julian are sitting at the butcher block kitchen table, plates and silverware already laid out in front of them. Our mother is at the stove, flipping a pancake in the frying pan. Her dark hair is up in a flattering style and her short-sleeved pale pink blouse is paired with a navy skirt and high-heeled sandals. The sun shines through a kitchen window onto her unlined face. There aren’t even circles under her eyes.

Good morning, sweetheart. She smiles at me while the pancake sizzles in butter, as though our bizarre conversation last night didn’t happen. Would you like me to make you some, too?

In the months my mother was gone, before my stepdad turned into a sort-of-armed robber, it was up to me to make sure Suri and Julian ate breakfast. Sometimes I’d pop frozen waffles into the microwave and drizzle maple syrup over them, but most of the time all three of us ate cold cereal.

No, thanks.

Good. Julian holds his fork upright like a pitchfork. More for me.

I want two. Suri gets up from the table and prances over to the stove with her plate. Like Julian, she’s adopted. She, too, has black hair and eyes. Suri, though, is Asian. Since our mother signed her up for ballet lessons, Suri walks everywhere on tiptoes. My eight-year-old sister’s hair is done up in a pretty French braid, the kind Mom is always offering to do for me.

There’s enough for everybody, Mom says with a chuckle.

I’ve been up half the night trying to figure out whether I need to protect Julian and Suri from her. Grabbing my brother and sister by the hand and making a mad dash for the family car suddenly doesn’t seem like such a brilliant idea.

Mom’s taking me with her to work today! Suri announces. We’re gonna go through houses built on special.

Mom’s a real estate agent out to make a buck on the new face of Midway Beach, yet another thing to hold against her.

On spec, Mom corrects. That means the houses were built with no specific buyer in mind but the builder is pretty sure they’ll sell.

She deposits a pancake onto Suri’s plate like she’s Martha frigging Stewart. Anybody on the outside looking in would be fooled into thinking life was grand with the Greenes. Suri and Julian seem fine, though.

Making a snap decision to get the hell out of there, I grab a cinnamon apple fruit bar from the pantry closet and head for the back door. Later.

Wait a minute, Jade. My mom’s voice stops me, but I don’t turn around. Today’s your day off, right? What are your plans?

For lack of another idea, I thought I’d go down to the strip, walk around and see if I can spot any wicked clowns. If I told her that, though, she’d probably offer to come along and help.

Why do you want to know?

I was hoping you’d do me a favor. She’s acting like we have a normal mother-daughter relationship where it’s possible I’ll say yes. Julian’s having friends over to play video games. Can you keep an eye on them until I get home?

The favor, then, isn’t for her. It’s for Julian. Since she’s been back, Mom’s been real strict about having friends over without supervision. If I say no, she’ll tell Julian to uninvite them. My brother’s been through a lot, too. I can’t do that to him, no matter how much I want to defy her.

I’ll do it for Julian. I reverse directions, stepping over the photo on the hallway carpet and retreating to my bedroom. I eat my fruit bar in my bedroom behind a closed door that doesn’t block the delicious smell of the pancakes.

Julian’s friends are running late. They arrive after lunch and park themselves in front of the X-Box in the family room, giving me plenty of time to research schizophrenia on my laptop. Since Mom was diagnosed when Suri was a toddler, I know a little about it already. It’s a chronic condition that requires lifelong treatment. Patients are supposed to be on medication even when they feel like they’ve got the condition beat.

The new bit of information is that the condition has a strong genetic link.

The symptoms, though, aren’t what I expect. I can’t ever remember my mother being angry, violent or argumentative. It wouldn’t surprise me if she hears voices, but the only other symptom that truly fits is she’s delusional. I mean, enemies? C’mon.

I’m the one who has enemies, Roxy Cooper among them.

Oh, shit, I say aloud, remembering the genetic link. Paranoid much?

I clamp a hand over my mouth. Now I’m talking to myself.

By the time Mom and Suri get home, though, I still can’t make myself accept that the incident in the forest with the clown didn’t happen. Sick of my own company, I head for the door. My mother follows me into the driveway, hovering nearby while I yank on my bicycle helmet and check the pressure of my bicycle tires.

Why don’t you stick around for dinner? she asks. I’m making lasagna with some of that crusty bread you like.

She’s trying to bribe me with my favorite meal, like I’m Julian or something.

No thanks.

Where are you going?

Out. Don’t wait up.

She tilts her head. But it’ll be dark soon, sweetheart.

What? Are you afraid I think that evil thrives in the darkness? That my enemies are out there, lurking in the shadows, waiting for their moment?

Do you? Empathy shines out of her eyes, the way it had last night when she theorized how alike we were. Should I make an appointment for you to talk to someone?

No.

Priority number one is getting the hell away from her. Hopping on my bicycle, I coast down the driveway and turn toward town.

Be careful out there, my mother calls after me.

I pedal faster, putting distance between us before I retort something like Nobody with pasty skin is getting near my neck!

Halfway to town, a car horn blares. An expensive-looking red convertible zips by me, close enough to touch. I jerk my bike wheel to the right so I’m riding nearer to the shoulder of the road. The car takes the turnoff to the Estates at Ocean Breeze.

Go back to where you came from!

The driver can’t hear me, but I feel a little better.

Midway Beach is small enough that there’s nowhere else to go except the boardwalk, a half-mile stretch of mostly restaurants and souvenir shops. I’m way more likely to find answers there than I am sitting in the house. If only I can figure out how to ask my friends if they’d seen any suspicious-looking clowns lately.

I chain up my bike and start walking. The tourists are out, like an invasion of ants. Most of the faces I pass are unfamiliar. None are slathered with white makeup. People my age hang out either at the arcade or the carnival. I reach the arcade first.

It’s at least as old as I am. The majority of the video games are throwbacks, like Midway Beach itself. Pacman, Frogger, Galaga. When I was a kid, my dad used to challenge me to a game of Skeeball every Sunday. I thrust aside the memory, shove through the doors and hit something solid.

Ow! someone yells. Not just anyone. Hunter Prescott. He hops back on one foot with his hand covering one of the most perfect noses God ever gave out.

Your poor nose! I’m so sorry!

Ish okay. He speaks through a long-fingered hand as flawless as the rest of him. He’s six feet two of perfection, all lean muscle, golden-brown hair and striking blue eyes that at the moment are narrowed and crinkled at the corners.

In the hand not covering his nose are a couple of wedges used to prop open the doors and let in the ocean air once the heat of the day has passed.

It’s not okay, I say above the mechanical noises, music and hum of conversation that fill the arcade. Later tonight when it gets crowded, it’ll be almost impossible to hear.

I’m fine. Look. He drops his hand. His nose is red but as long and straight as before, thank God. He looks even hotter than he did the night we took in one of the Paranormal Activity movies, then walked along the beach. At night. In early February. I was so nervous wondering if he’d kiss me that I planted one on him first.

That kiss is the best thing that’s happened to me all year.

You sure you’re okay? I touch his arm. God, he smells good. Like a strong, masculine soap. Can I get you something? An ice pack maybe?

He lowers his right leg so both his feet are on the ground and winces. It’s still possible I’ve broken his toe.

I could kick myself for not paying attention to where I was going, I say.

Don’t do that. Wouldn’t want to bruish those pretty legsh.

Hunter’s noticed my legs? They’re strong and toned, a soccer player’s legs. He’s smiling and looking into my eyes, the way he did on the beach after we kissed. I’ve been waiting since our date for him to look at me like that again.

I wouldn’t really kick myself. I mean, that would be pretty stupid.

Kind of like that comment.

Good, he says, still smiling.

I’m not usually such a klutz.

You’ve got a lot of things on your mind.

Come again?

Yesterday. He cocks an eyebrow. The funhouse. I heard about the bloodcurdling scream.

My face burns like I’ve spent hours too long in the sun. I guess Lacey told you.

Lacey? Hunter’s perfectly shaped eyebrows shoot up. What would she know about it?

No point in explaining I was trying to rescue his cousin when he didn’t even know she’d needed rescuing. How’d you hear, then?

A couple arcade employees are across the aisle, beside the row of pinball machines. One of them is Porter McRoy, a guy so clueless he doesn’t seem to realize Becky is nuts about him. Or maybe he’s shy. He graduated with us but I’ve hardly ever heard his voice. The other employee has arms covered with tattoos. He says something to Porter and nods at me. They both stare. Then I get it. The Mouth of Midway Beach has struck again.

I’m gonna let Maia have it.

Don’t be too hard on her. She’s worried about you. We all are. Hunter is no longer smiling. How ya doin’? You know, since that thing last winter.

It’s the first time he’s brought up the forty-eight hours I lost. Not surprising. I can count on one hand the number of times Hunter’s said anything at all to me since February.

I’m fine. I’m not sure if I’m trying to reassure Hunter or myself, maybe a little of both.

I hope you are. He lowers his head. Hey, if you need someone to talk to, call my aunt. I should have told you about her before. She’s in practice with two other women. Their website is psychthree.com.

The aunt he lives with is a psychiatrist. The only way this could get worse is if my mother made an appointment for me with her. I shift my weight from one pretty leg to the other. Hunter’s gaze doesn’t dip.

Maia comes toward us, long black hair swinging behind her with a yellow chrysanthemum tucked behind her right ear. The yellow T-shirt the arcade employees wear is even uglier than the orange carnival T-shirt. Her skin looks sallow in the artificial arcade lighting. Oh, hey, Jade.

She sounds irritated. It takes me a moment to remember her outburst. Did that really happen only yesterday?

Maia turns to Hunter, her face a cool mask. She’s always annoyed at him. She and Hunter were an item back in the eleventh grade when he first moved to town. Their relationship only lasted a few months before she dumped him for reasons unknown. Since then, she barely speaks to him, except, it seems, to spread gossip about me. Adair’s almost an hour late. Is she still sick?

My onetime friend Adair Adams is Hunter’s current girlfriend. They’ve been dating since shortly after I gushed to her about that kiss on the beach.

No clue, Hunter says.

Her home phone went to voicemail.

Yeah, she never answers that one. And her parents are vacationing in Europe.

I couldn’t get her on her cell, either.

She might have it turned off, Hunter says. She does that sometimes.

I’ll cover for her this time but she’s on her own if it happens again. Tell her that, okay? Maia stomps away without waiting for a response.

Hunter finishes propping open the doors, securing them with the wedges.

The breeze from the ocean seems to blow right through me. It’s not cold, but I shiver. When was the last time anyone saw Adair?

His shoulders move up and down. I don’t know.

"When was the last time you saw her?"

About noon yesterday, I guess. We both had the day shift. She went home sick after a couple hours.

So she’s missing?

Like I was for those forty-eight hours.

Whoa. Hunter puts up a hand. I wouldn’t go that far.

But if she’s feeling crappy, shouldn’t she be at home? How do you know if she even got there? I pull my cell from the pocket of my shorts. Someone needs to track her down and make sure she’s safe. I think I’ve still got her number in here.

She won’t answer, he says. Like I said, I think she turned off her cell. She does that when she’s playing hard to get. She was never sick, okay? She left work because we had a fight.

That puts a different spin on things but only slightly. The fact remains that nobody has seen Adair in more than twenty-four hours. Where is she then?

She texted me yesterday that she was going to her dad’s cabin.

A chill rattles through me. I know of the cabin. When Adair and I were friends, we’d gone there together once when her father asked her to bring him the bowhunting gear he’d forgotten. It was about thirty miles northwest of Midway Beach in a coastal forest called Wilder Woods.

The memory of the wet, earthy smell that filled my nostrils when the hood slipped off comes back to me. The smell could have been drifting from a swamp, like the ones that populate Wilder Woods.

Why would she go there? I ask. It’s in the middle of nowhere.

I don’t know why Adair does what Adair does.

Did you check to make sure she was there?

Nope. I’m not going to, either.

But... I stop myself before I ask what if someone besides Adair sent the text. What if she’s not at the cabin?

Then she’s not at the cabin.

The entire scenario doesn’t sit right. When I was gone for those forty-eight hours, my friends and family weren’t out looking for me either because of texts I hadn’t sent.

Adair’s not missing, Jade. Hunter’s voice cuts into my thoughts. His eyes bore into mine. You understand that, right?

If I argue, he’ll join the legions of other people in town who think I’m crazy. That is, if he doesn’t think so already.

Of course I do. I hope my smile hides what I’m really thinking. It’s just Adair being Adair.

Exactly. The tension seems to drain out of him.

That’s because he doesn’t know I’m heading to Wilder Woods as soon as we’re through talking. I owe it to myself to find out if the clown has struck again.

CHAPTER SIX

Guilt has something to do with Becky surrendering the keys to her Honda Fit without a fight. She’s working the carnival tonight so I make the argument that she doesn’t need it. The real clincher is that her parents presented her with the cute, pint-sized car for high school graduation while I got only enough money to buy bicycle brake pads.

I feel guilty, too. To convince Becky to let me borrow the Fit, I told her a movie theater thirty miles away is hosting a Horror Spectacular. That’s actually true. I’m just not going.

The road narrows to two lanes when I get to the Midway Beach suburbs. A car that looks suspiciously like my mother’s blue Chevy pops up in my rearview mirror.

You’ve got to be kidding me, I say aloud.

Mom could be headed to a real estate listing, but I don’t buy that for a second. I thought I’d seen her lurking around the carnival shortly before we closed. Now I’m sure of it.

I press my foot down on the accelerator, jerk the Fit over the double yellow line and pass two cars. One of the drivers shoots me the bird. The other lays on his horn. When I’ve covered enough distance that I’m fairly certain I’m out of mom’s sight line, I pull into a gas station and circle around back of the building that houses a convenience store.

Minutes later, the car that looked familiar whizzes by. My mother isn’t driving.

Oh, great. I shut my eyes tight and knead my forehead. Now I’m the one imagining people are following me.

I gather myself, pull out of the gas station parking lot and put on my favorite indie rock radio station to soothe myself. A half-hour later I’m at the edge of the coastal forest. Wilder Woods consists of more than one hundred acres of spindly pine trees, saltwater estuaries and raised swamps. My memory’s fuzzy on the exact location of the cabin so I drive blind, taking a few wrong turns before spotting a dirt service road that looks familiar.

A sign reads: No Trespassing. Private Hunting Land.

I take the turnoff, and the tires of the Fit start a bumpy ride over a pitted dirt road flanked by thick vegetation. Dusk has fallen, covering everything in gloom. Even if it hadn’t been for the overhanging branches, it’s overcast and there’s no natural light from the stars or the moon. The car’s headlights are the only thing preventing total darkness.

I remember Adair saying her father used the cabin almost every weekend during hunting season, which I’m pretty sure is in the fall and the spring depending on what game you’re hunting. In the summer and winter, there isn’t much reason to come to Wilder Woods, although some troubled people make a one-way trip. About ten years ago a country singer with a cult following shot himself in the head near Heron Lake. Since Cam Stokes died, a half-dozen people have committed suicide the same way.

The cabin sits on a crest at the end of the road. I’ve already decided to make a U-turn if it’s abandoned, but a pickup truck like the one Adair’s dad drives is parked out front. Adair probably borrowed the pickup because it’s easier going on the bumpy dirt road.

No lights shine inside the cabin, but this isn’t the big city. Power lines don’t run through the forest. Outdoorsmen have all kinds of ways to light a room. At least, I think they do. Adair could have picked up a few tricks.

I pull the Honda Fit to a stop beside the pickup, leaving the headlights shining on the cabin flanked by tall trees. It reminds me of the cabin in Evil Dead. Great. An irrational fear of trees would