Cheat Her With Charm Read online

  It was the same grating sound that had greeted her outside the Bangor Hospital when the doctor had forced Sarah into her car at gunpoint. She couldn’t even imagine what he planned to do with her. He’d done nothing but yell at her in nonsensical snippets as they’d driven to the floral shop and taken Meghan hostage at gunpoint. Dr. McCarty had stayed hidden behind a Christmas tree at the shop, but kept the gun aimed at them both. Sarah had hoped to run out the back, but leaving Meghan at the mercy of a madman hadn’t seemed fair.

  When Meghan had balked at going anywhere, he’d waved the gun in her face, forced Sarah to tie Meghan’s hands before shoving the poor woman into the backseat. Sarah could only hope Meghan would figure out it was a bondage knot meant to release with a gentle tug on the end she’d slipped into her palm.

  “My father was your best friend,” Meghan continued in a voice filled with sadness.

  “My friend? My friend?” The words vibrated with anger, his face contorting into a sinister mask of hatred. He spat the words out through clenched teeth. “He took the only woman I have ever loved from me! What kind of friend does that?” He shifted in the seat to face Meghan, the dashboard lights shimmering in the unshed tears rimming his eyes.

  “But you had a wonderful life with your wife,” Meghan whispered.

  “That bitch tricked me into marriage. Got pregnant with my faggot of a son. Jason never was the man I wanted him to be. He was always a mama’s boy. Even a trained professional couldn’t turn him into a man. His own fucking man-whore couldn’t stand him in the end and killed him.”

  Meghan gasped. “You’re wrong. He was a wonderful son and friend.”

  Sarah had no idea of whom they spoke, but the doctor’s last declaration had obviously cut Meghan deeply as soft sobs broke through her words.

  “His murder was nothing but a terrible tragedy between scorned lovers,” Meghan said. “Doc McCarty, I—”

  “Shut up. Just shut up. I have no desire to rehash my life with you, Meghan.” He turned back to the road. “Take this next left.”

  Sarah was having a hard time controlling the car. The farther they drove into the middle of nowhere, the more snow accumulated on the road. How the hell had her life gotten to this place?

  She’d come to Maine this week for her second round of interviews at the Bangor Hospital. She’d just accepted the residency position they offered this morning, and tonight she’d be dead at the hands of an insane lunatic before reaping the rewards of her hard work in medical school. Mistress Crystal’s persona would be retiring before Christmas, and Sarah Rayburn had planned to emerge like a butterfly from a chrysalis. Now she’d never have a chance to prove herself worthy of her brother’s love.

  Everything she’d done over the past month since discovering Peter’s real identity, she’d done to be closer to her brother—to build a relationship the fates had stolen from them. But it was all slipping through her fingers. She’d never have the opportunity to tell Peter he had a baby sister.

  “Where are you taking us?” Sarah’s voice trembled.

  “It doesn’t matter,” the doctor spat. “Where you die should be of no concern.”

  “Why don’t you let Sarah go? She has nothing to do with all this,” Meghan suggested.

  “Nothing to do with this?” His raspy laugh clawed its way down Sarah’s spine. “Why don’t you brag about what you did, Sarah?”

  She would have had no idea what he was talking about if he hadn’t ranted about how she’d screwed up his life on the way to the floral shop. Discovering the source of a patient’s illness was a cause for celebration, not vituperation. “Someone would have figured it out eventually,” Sarah said quietly. “The signs of Mr. Tilling’s selenium poisoning were all there, I just happened to be the first to put the pieces together and solve the puzzle.”

  “You figured out what was wrong with my father?” Meghan asked.

  Sarah dared catch her eye in the mirror. “I’m new to the staff at the hospital.” She lifted a shoulder. “I told you I knew Peter. I had no idea John Tilling was your father until I saw Peter in his room this morning and went to check the patient he was visiting.” That was a lie, but Meghan didn’t need to know she’d been stalking her brother for a few days or that she’d run from Peter this morning, too afraid to talk to him.

  She knew her Internet research wasn’t wrong. She and Peter Maddock had the same mother. But by the time Sarah was born, Peter had started kindergarten, and the courts had placed him in foster care. She suspected Peter must also know he had a sibling. Why else would he have sought her out? She’d known at the hotel that he hadn’t wanted a sexual tryst with her, but fate had intervened once again, and they’d never had a chance to meet in person. Now she wondered if this lunatic with the gun would keep her from ever meeting her brother.

  Sarah looked in the mirror at the confusion wrinkling Meghan’s face. “When your father spoke to me in the hospital, I smelled the garlic on his breath, saw the striations on his fingernails. Only one poison does that.” She sounded like she was apologizing, and maybe she was.

  She’d come to Delmont not caring about Peter’s fiancée, wanting only to have a relationship with Peter. Sarah had found out about Meghan and the engagement through her Internet search as well. She resented the fact that her brother had found a family and had had every intention of separating him from the Tillings. Like a jealous girlfriend, she’d thrown her flogger into Meghan’s car the night she’d watched them through the window, hoping to begin a rift that would break them apart. Why she’d wanted him all to herself was beyond her at the moment. Peter came with a family—didn’t she want them in her life also?

  “One more turn.” Doc waved the gun, and Sarah slowed the car down, trying not to skid into the ditch. Then she thought better of it. Perhaps that was their only chance. The doctor wasn’t wearing a seat belt. If Meghan could free herself, maybe she could grab his gun. It would be two against one old man—an angry old man with a gun—hell-bent on revenge. Sarah wondered if Meghan was even trying to work on the ropes that bound her hands.

  Dr. McCarty waved the gun menacingly at Sarah. “All that damn work over the last few months and no one discovered what I’d been doing. But a smart-assed medical student comes in and finds the selenium poisoning.”

  “You were poisoning my father?” The words fell out of Meghan’s mouth.

  Dr. McCarty’s lips curved in a sinister smile. “It was a foolproof plan, actually. I put it in his heart medication. All these months of work, poisoning your father slowly. A few more weeks and he would have been dead. Having him tucked away in the nursing home for his last days would have had your mother leaning on her best friend—me! When John died I would finally have the life I deserved.” He poked the gun in Sarah’s ribs, and she winced. “But this bitch shows up and ruined it all. Well, she can die for her offenses.”

  Sarah felt the snow pull at her tires, dragging her into the middle of the road. She cut the wheel back the other way, working to manage the resulting skid. Dr. McCarty flailed momentarily in the sway of the vehicle, trying to maintain his balance.

  But even the seconds of tension didn’t slow Meghan’s censure. “My mother wouldn’t have turned to you,” Meghan said defiantly. “She has the three of us. We’re her family.”

  Sarah righted the car, praying they wouldn’t go off the road. But the dangerous conditions didn’t quiet her passenger’s loud voices. They seemed oblivious to the danger of the storm.

  “But she won’t have you now, will she, Meghan?” He turned and rubbed the end of the gun up Meghan’s cheek. “Over the last few months you’ve been questioning my presence at your parents’ house a few too many times. I saw that and I couldn’t have you destroying the intimacy I was developing with your mother. But you’re as stubborn as your old man, refusing to die. Like that silly bunny, you keep going and going.”

  “What?” The question burst from Meghan’s lips.

  “You think the floral cooler was an accident? I loc
ked you in there. Kicked over the stool and jammed a bolt in the latch. There was a perverse satisfaction listening to you beg for help. Damn Deirdre for showing up before you succumbed to the cold. If she hadn’t come, I wouldn’t have had to pretend to save you.”

  “No, it—”

  “Oh, grow up, Meghan. I’ve been doing all sorts of little things. You don’t really believe cats just keel over and freeze to death, now do you? A little shot of morphine and Mr. Jingles went quietly into the next world.”

  “You bastard,” Meghan screamed and fought against the ties.

  His laughter once again filled the car. “There was such satisfaction in seeing your pitiful grief over a worthless animal.”

  The man was more crazed than Sarah had first believed. First the father, then the daughter. Would he stop with their deaths, or would it be only the beginning of what he saw as mercy killings? She couldn’t let him get away with this.

  “Easy or you’ll hurt yourself, my dear, Meghan. I’d like you to save that privilege for me.” The doctor settled back in his seat, the green glow of the dashboard giving his face an eerie, surreal quality.

  Meghan stopped struggling and looked at this man with murder in his eyes. “Did you have something to do with the incident in the garage?”

  Sarah looked over at him as a sickly smile slid across his lips. What else had he done to torture this woman and her family?

  “Of course, I did. It wasn’t what I intended, but it worked. Peter mentioned the problem with the garage door opener at dinner. It was a foolproof plan. No one would suspect your death was foul play.”

  He shot Meghan a satisfied grin. “You see, Meghan, I’d already cut the emergency cord on the opener. I intended to knock you out and let the car do the work, but when you stepped out of the car, I simply locked the doors with the spare keys I found on the breezeway. Then I locked the kitchen door and went over to your mother’s for tea.”

  “You were in my house?”

  The man was baiting Meghan, and from the high pitch of her last question, it sounded like it was working. Sarah silently begged Meghan to untie the ropes. Glancing at her in the mirror, Sarah tried to communicate to Meghan that she had a plan. Not a good one, but a plan nonetheless.

  The old man turned back to the road, giving Sarah more driving instructions. With a curt nod, Meghan lifted her hand, waving it in the rearview mirror ever so briefly to show Sarah that she had indeed freed herself. They both understood that they were in this together—however it might end.

  “Just a little farther, Sarah, my dear,” His words were filled with a sinister glee. “Drive slowly through here, the curves can be treacherous. You wouldn’t want to hurt your passengers.”

  She sure as hell did.

  Sarah slammed on the brakes, sending the car into an uncontrolled skid. Dr. McCarty lurched forward, smashing his head on the dashboard. Meghan let out a muffled scream as the car careened from one side of the road to the other, bumping into the high snowbanks, sending it spinning down the road.

  Sarah pulled hard on the steering wheel as the car tipped up on two wheels. It balanced there for a moment before eventually slamming back down on its tires, jarring its occupants. Sliding sideways in the road, the car took on a mind of its own. Sarah pumped the brakes, working to slow the vehicle without sending it into the ditch.

  The car crashed sideways into the snowbank and finally stopped on the opposite side of the road, pointing in the direction they had come. An explosion resounded through the car, the smell of gun powder filling the vehicle.

  Disoriented, Sarah feared the doctor had shot someone, or worse—that the car was on fire. Had they managed to save themselves from a madman, only to burn to death?

  “Meghan, are you alright? Do you smell that? Are we on fire?” Sarah asked in a shaky voice as she scrambled to release her seat belt. She had no idea where the gun was, but getting control of the weapon took precedence over the throb of pain in her head and ribs.

  “The side airbags went off.” Meghan’s voice was muffled, but the desperation was apparent. “Find the gun. Where’s the gun?”

  Sarah leaned over Doc’s still body, searching for the weapon, her fingers grazing the metal before she was yanked upright by her hair.

  “No, you don’t.” The doctor’s words were garbled, apparently spoken through broken teeth and blood as Doc pushed to a sitting position and wrapped her hair tighter around his fist.

  “Let go of me, you asshole!” Sarah screamed, her fist slamming into the side of his face. The doctor fell heavily against the seat, and Sarah dove for the weapon.

  Meghan lunged over the passenger seat, the rope stretched taut between her hands and came down around Doc’s torso, pulling with all her strength and pinning him to the seat.

  “I should shoot you right here.” Sarah held the gun in trembling hands. “If not for threatening my life, for everything you’ve put the Tillings through.”

  “Sarah, he’s not worth it.” Meghan’s voice shook with relief and adrenaline.

  * * * *

  Peter couldn’t stand another minute of waiting. Ayden was working the phones, gathering some of his men, but without a clue, how would they know where to look? Crystal had been suspiciously quiet on the Internet. He prayed she would call before she did anything to Meghan.

  All he’d wanted was a family. Not in-laws, but real, honest-to-goodness relatives of his own. Months of searching his mother’s genealogy had turned up another birth—a daughter. Sarah Rayburn, his half sister had been born the year after he’d been put in foster care.

  He should have known nothing good would come of trying to make her part of his family. Not after he’d discovered she moonlighted as a Dominatrix.

  She’d stalked his fiancée, attempted to harm her, and now had resorted to kidnapping. Fingers raked through his sandy hair, and he growled in frustration. How could he have been so stupid?

  Peter’s cellphone rang, and he grabbed it off the kitchen table where it had been charging, without looking at the number.

  “Meghan?”

  “No, it’s Crystal.”

  His stomach dropped to the floor. “Damn you, if you hurt Meghan, I will hunt you down and—”

  “Meghan’s fine, Peter.” She cut him off. “But we have had a rather intriguing bonding experience.” Amusement floated on her words.

  The woman had fallen into the deep end of the crazy pool. Nothing about this situation was funny. “I know who you are, Sarah Rayburn. You’re not going to get away with hurting my fiancé.”

  “Spoken like a true older brother.”

  Her words stopped him short. How had she found out?

  “That shut you up?” She laughed. “I do have a lot to learn about you.”

  He heard muffled words in the background.

  “Seems your fiancée may have a career ahead of her in bondage, Peter.” She laughed again. “Now that she’s done tying up our assailant, I’ll let you talk with her.”

  “Peter.” Meghan sounded breathless.

  Tears of relief burned his eyes. “Meghan, my God, are you alright?”

  “I am now, thanks to your sister. Seems we’ve got lots of things to talk about when I get home.”

  Chapter 12

  Valentine’s Day

  Meghan knelt naked over the hassock in the honeymoon suite of the plush Bangor hotel. Somewhere within the two oversized rooms, her wedding dress lay piled in a heap along with Peter’s tux. Silk stockings, boxers, and lacy underthings littered the two rooms as they’d stripped their way to the bedroom. Waiting here, in anticipation of a wedding night of pleasure, was a wonderful ending to a perfect day.