Without Mercy (2 page)

She tuned the radio to a station where songs from the eighties were peppered with rapid-fire traffic updates from Brenda, the serious reporter who rattled off trouble spots on the freeway system so fast it was hard to keep up.

Not that it helped.

Basically, it seemed, every freeway was a snarled mess this miserable February morning.

“Come on, come on,” Jules muttered, glancing at the clock on the dash of her twenty-year-old sedan. Eight-seventeen. The height of rush hour. And she was supposed to be on the dock by eight-thirty, or it would be too late. She flipped on her blinker and bullied her way into the lane that was curving toward the Evergreen Point Bridge that spanned Lake Washington.

A semi driver reluctantly allowed her to squeeze in, and she offered him a smile and a wave as she wedged her way into the far right lane and nosed her car east. She was nearly clipped by a guy in a black Toyota who was talking on his cell phone.

“Idiot!” She slammed on her brakes and slid into the spot just as the first notes of “Billie Jean” by Michael Jackson filled the interior of her Volvo. “Oh, God.” She pushed the radio’s button to another preset station, but the strains of the song reverberated through her head.

In her mind’s eye, again she saw her father, lying in a pool of his own blood, his dying eyes staring upward as the song played over and over.

Jules nearly smashed into the pickup in front of her.

“Oh, Jesus.”
Calm down. Don’t kill yourself getting there!
Adrenaline from the near wreck sang through her veins. Jittery, she took three breaths, then, with one hand, fished inside her purse for a bottle of painkillers. The stuff she’d taken earlier hadn’t worked.

She found the bottle and popped off the cap with her thumb. Pills sprayed over her, but she didn’t care, washing two tablets down quickly with the remains of yesterday’s Diet Coke that she’d left in the car’s cup holder.

The bad mix of caffeine-laden syrup and headache medicine made her wince as the refrain of “Billie Jean” kept pounding through her brain. “You’re a head case,” she told her reflection in the rearview mirror. “No wonder you’re out of work.” Well, technically she had a job waiting tables, but her teaching career was over. Her recurring nightmare and blinding headaches had taken care of that.

In the mirror, beneath the bill of her cap, she caught a quick glimpse of gray eyes that held a hint of rebellion—that same disguised mutiny that was so evident in her younger sister.

At least Shaylee wasn’t a hypocrite.

Jules could hardly say the same of herself.

A siren wailed in the distance; then she spied an ambulance threading through the clogged lanes of freeway traffic, going in the opposite direction.

God, her head throbbed.

Even though it was a cloudy day, the glare got to her.

She found her pair of driving shades tucked in the visor and slipped them on.

“Come on, come on,” she muttered at the truck belching exhaust in front of her.

It took another twenty minutes and one more near collision before she reached her exit and eased along a winding road that hugged the shoreline of the lake.

She rounded a sharp curve and pulled through the open wrought-iron gates of a private residence. With a long, brick driveway, the building that appeared through the spruce and fir trees was more castle than house, a huge stone and brick edifice that rose three full stories on the shores of the lake.

She parked near the front door, next to her mother’s Lexus SUV. Then, without locking her car, she dashed through the spitting rain to the porch. Under the cover of the porch, she rang the bell and waited near the thick double doors.

Within a few seconds, a fussy-looking, wasp-thin woman answered. “Can I help you?” The woman was dressed in black slacks and a sleek sweater tied at her tiny waist. Ashblond hair, salon cut and teased, increased the size of her head and masked her age. Perfectly applied makeup accentuated her sharp features. Her smooth skin screamed facelift, and she glared at Jules as if she’d been interrupted from doing something
very
important.

Jules realized that in her decade-old jeans topped by her favorite UW sweatshirt, sunglasses, and faded baseball cap, she probably looked more like a bank robber than a worried family member. But, really, who cared? “I’m looking for Edie Stillman. She’s with her daughter, and they were going on a seaplane to—”

“I believe they’re at the dock,” the woman said with a smooth, practiced smile that didn’t hide her disapproval.
Nor did she ask for any kind of ID or what Jules’s part in Shaylee’s departure was. She waved a disinterested hand toward a stone path leading around the house. “But I think you may be too late. The plane’s about to take off.”

Over the steady beat of rain, Jules heard the distinct sound of an engine sputtering to life.
Hell!
She was already running in the direction the woman had pointed as the engine caught and roared with the sound of acceleration.

CHAPTER 2

“D
on’t let the dogs out!” the impossibly thin woman warned loudly as Jules, desperate to stave off the inevitable, dashed through the rain, over the uneven stones, and around the corner of the majestic house where rhododendrons shivered in the wind. She flipped up the hood of her sweatshirt, though cold rain was already dripping down the back of her neck.

Not that she cared.

She just wanted a minute with Shay.

A tall wrought-iron gate stopped her for a second, but a key was in the lock, so she pulled the gate open and heard it clang shut behind her as she flew down a series of steps.

The dogs—two black standard poodles—raced up to her. She barely gave them a second glance as she hurried to the dock and boathouse, where Edie stood under an umbrella that trembled in the wind. Beyond her, a seaplane skimmed along the top of the steely water, then made its ascent into the gray Seattle sky.

“Great!” Jules’s stomach dropped. She was too late. Damn it all to hell. “You put her on the plane?”

“I said I was going to. For the love of God, Julia, she’s
just complying with a judge’s orders!” Edie Stillman, dressed in a blue silk jogging suit, turned to face her oldest daughter. Her expression said it all as she eyed Jules’s clothes with distaste. “Didn’t you have anything to wear?” she said, obviously embarrassed. “You look like some kind of thug.”

Rain battered the hood of Jules’s sweatshirt, dripping down the bill of her baseball cap. “Just the look I was going for.”

“I can’t even tell that you’re a woman, for God’s sake!”

“What’s that got to do with anything?” Through her shaded lenses, Jules looked up to the sky and saw the seaplane vanish into the clouds. “Damn it, Mom, I said I’d take her in!”

“And Shay said … let’s see, what was that darling little quote?” Edie touched the edge of her lips and pretended to think as raindrops peppered the decking and pimpled the lake. “Oh, now I remember. She said, ‘I’d rather puke up dead dogs than live with Jules!’ Wasn’t that just the sweetest way of saying, ‘No thanks’?”

Jules bristled. “Okay. I know she wasn’t crazy about the idea, but, really, this place you’re sending her, it’s like a prison.”

“A pretty nice ‘prison.’ It looks more like a camp or a retreat. Have you seen the brochures?”

“Of course, I looked online, but they’ve got guards and fences and—”

“Then maybe she’ll learn the value of freedom.” Edie was unmoved.

“At what price?” Jules demanded as rain drizzled down her cheeks and stained the shoulders of her sweatshirt. The sound of the seaplane’s engine faded into nothing. She remembered the articles she’d pulled up on the Internet when she’d first learned of the plan to ship Shaylee off to Blue
Rock Academy. “I’ve done some research, and they’ve had their share of trouble. The school’s gotten some bad press in the past year. A girl disappeared last fall, and there was something about a teacher being involved with a student and—”

“As for teachers and students, it happens everywhere—not that I condone it, of course. At least he was found out.”

“She,” Jules corrected. “The teacher was a woman.”

“That seems to be the new crime du jour, doesn’t it?” Edie scowled. “As for that girl, Lauren Conrad—”

“Her name was Conway.”

“Whatever. She was a runaway,” Edie said, lines cracking her evenly applied makeup. Though in her early fifties, she worked hard at looking fifteen years younger than her age. Today, with the stress of sending her wayward child away, all her carefully applied makeup and semiannual injections of Botox weren’t doing their jobs.

“No one knows what happened to Lauren Conway, Mom,” Jules objected. “I know because ever since you told me Shay was going there, I’ve done some research. Lauren still hasn’t turned up.”

“I think she had a history of taking off and disappearing. Really, Jules, it
is
a school for delinquents.”

“And that makes it okay for a student to go missing? Even if she did take off, isn’t the place supposed to be secure? Isn’t that the whole point of the school? To keep at-risk kids safe?”

“Give it up.” Edie’s lips pulled tight, as if from invisible purse strings. “I can’t quote their mission statement, but trust me, this is what’s best for Shaylee and me. You know I’ve tried everything and nothing worked. I took her to counselors when she was depressed, got her into tae kwon do and even kickboxing to help her deal with her aggression. I gave her art, dance, and voice lessons to support her
creative expression. Beading. Remember that? Beading, for the love of God! And how did she pay me back? Huh?”

Edie’s temper was sizzling now. “I’ll tell you how. She got into drugs. She’s been picked up for theft and vandalism, not to mention being kicked out of three schools.” Edie held up a trio of shaking, bejeweled fingers, which she shook in front of Jules’s face. “Three!” she huffed. “With an IQ in the stratosphere and all the privileges I could afford, this is what she does? Goes out with a criminal named Dawg?”

“She’s a kid. Maybe she just needed some special attention.”

“Oh, give me a break. I lavished attention on her. More than I ever did with you!”

Jules wasn’t sure that was necessarily true.

“This isn’t about mother love or father love or the lack thereof, so cut that pseudopsychological garbage, Jules. It’s not working on me!”

“Just calm down.”

“No! You saw her latest tattoo, didn’t you? The bloody dagger on her forearm? What was she thinking?” Edie threw her arms up, nearly losing her umbrella. “I can’t count how many times Shay came home with a tattoo or a piercing or a stolen CD. And that mouth … full of filthy back talk …” She let her thoughts drift away.

“Who cares about a few tats and nose rings? She didn’t hurt anyone.”

“Tattoos are self-mutilation, indicative of deeper problems!”

“I don’t think so.”

Edie’s eyes blazed. “Then what about all her trouble with the law? I just can’t take it!”

“Did you think about finding her a new psychiatrist?” Jules suggested.

“She’s had half a dozen.”

“Give her a break.” Jules hated that their mother was so hard on Shay. “She was there that day, remember? She was in the house when Dad was killed, for God’s sake.”

Edie’s expression turned hard. “So were you.”

“And look how it messed me up. Shay was only twelve, Mom!” Jules was close to hyperventilating now. “Twelve! Just a baby.”

“I know, I know,” Edie said quietly, and some of her self-righteousness evaporated. “That was a bad time for all of us,” she admitted, adjusting her umbrella.

For a fleeting second, Edie appeared sincerely sad, and Jules wondered if Rip Delaney had been the love of her mother’s life. She quickly cast that question aside, because she knew better; it was just her stupid fantasies, the dreams of a daughter who always thought her parents should have stayed together, who had been ecstatic at their reunion, only to have her dreams turn to dust. Rip and Edie should never have reunited; the mercurial moods and fights that had abated during the years they were separated started up again once they were in close proximity. Weeks after they said their vows, Edie burst into a jealous rage, certain Rip was seeing another woman. And it was true. Rip Delaney simply was not cut out for monogamy, though Jules had always hoped he would change.

“I should never have married him,” Edie had admitted not long after the second marriage ceremony. “A leopard doesn’t change his spots, you know.”

That image of her mother, eyes red and swollen with tears, had haunted Jules since long before her father’s death. If relationship skills were passed down from parents to their children, Jules figured that she and Shay were doomed to lead some very lonely lives.

Turning away from the lake, Edie tipped back her umbrella and sighed theatrically. “Sending her away isn’t punishment.
It’s just the last straw. She needs help, Jules, help she wouldn’t allow you or me or any of her psychiatrists to give. Maybe they can help her at this academy. Lord, I hope so. Isn’t it worth a shot?” She glanced up at the sky, where dark clouds were being chased by the wind. “Oh, well, it’s over and done now. She’s someone else’s problem. Pray that this works!” Edie attacked the steps from the dock, a slim woman hell-bent in her convictions.

“Wait a sec. Why was Shay picked up here, at this mansion? Doesn’t that seem a little off to you?” Jules followed right on her mother’s heels.

“Not really, no.”

“Really, Edie?” Jules couldn’t believe it. “You mean it’s not odd to you that you didn’t drive her down there or that … that she wasn’t flown by a commercial carrier to an airport nearby, like in Medford?”

Edie didn’t break stride. “This is the way it’s done. This house is owned by the school.”

“You’re kidding!”

“No, I’m not. I think it’s used by the director, Reverend Lynch.”

“Really?” Jules was floored. “A preacher lives here?”

“Part-time, I think. When he’s not at the school.”

Jules took in the expansive grounds with its trimmed lawns, sculpted shrubbery, and manicured paths that sloped down to the wide concrete dock and a stone boathouse. The estate was insulated from neighboring mansions by a high stone fence and was buffered with towering fir trees, long-needled pines, and white-barked birches devoid of leaves. The only other homes in view were distant, situated on their own acreage a mile across the flinty waters of the lake.