The Heiress(60)

She’s looking directly at me now, and her painted lips curve up even more, a smile that reminds me of Camden, and I know I should be scared—paintings aren’t supposed to come to life—but all I feel is relieved because she’s here now, because I can finally talk to her.

I need her help.

“Tell me what to do,” I whisper, but she doesn’t answer. Instead, the painting shifts, color bleeding away from her dark hair, her green dress, and now I’m the one in the portrait, still wearing this dress, my hands folded just like hers had been.

No, not like hers. Hers were pale and elegant, a discreet emerald ring on one finger, and mine, mine are red.

Dark crimson drops fall from my painted hands, soaking into the skirt of my dress, and I look down at my bare feet on the carpet to see that the blood is seeping out of the frame now, snaking along in a viscous river, warm when it reaches my skin.

I stumble back in horror, but the stairs are there, and I’m falling until fingers wrap around my wrist, pulling me up short.

Camden looks at me with those eyes, the eyes I love, one blue, one brown, both cold as he says, “I told you we shouldn’t have come here. Why did you make me come back here?”

I look over his shoulder at the painting, and it’s Ruby again, she’s laughing, and then Cam is letting me go, and I’m falling again, falling into nothingness, falling—

I startle awake to arms wrapped around me, to a voice in my ear and warm breath at my temple.

“Jules. Jules, wake up.”

For one dazed and horrified moment, I struggle in Cam’s arms, pushing him away, remembering that cold look, the feel of his fingers slipping from my wrist, but when I look into his face, there’s only concern.

His palm rests against my cheek, warm and real, and the last bits of the nightmare finally let go of me, making me sag, exhausted, against his chest.

“I haven’t had a nightmare since I was in fourth grade,” I stammer against his shirt—he’s still wearing his suit?—and he holds me tighter.

“This is what happens when we sleep in separate rooms.”

It all comes back, then: dinner, that scene with the papers, Ruby’s DNA test, the panic flooding my system as I realized what was happening, the fight with Cam …

No wonder my dreams were haunted.

Now I let Cam hold me, breathing in his familiar scent, reminding myself that he’s here and he’s real and that cold-eyed man in my nightmare was just a figment of my imagination.

We sit there for a long time, arms around each other, the mountain waking up around us. I can hear birdsong as the light in the room goes from gray to orange, the sunrise lighting up all that red, making it garish.

It reminds me of the blood dripping from Ruby’s portrait, and I shiver, closing my eyes.

Cam is stroking my hair, rocking me slightly, and I think I could almost fall back asleep right there, exhausted as I am, when he suddenly goes still.

I can feel tension tightening his muscles, and I look up, frowning, to see him staring at the window.

There’s another sound now, tires on gravel, and Cam lets go of me, slowly rising from the bed and going over to that window, the one that faces the front of the house.

Confused, I follow him, stepping on Ruby’s dress where I left it last night, crumpled on the floor. The beading bites into the sole of my foot, but I ignore the slight sting, going to stand next to Cam.

A police car sits in the drive. There are no sirens, no flashing lights, and for some reason, that makes it feel much more ominous. And then another car appears, a sleek dark blue BMW, parking just behind the cruiser.

Cam is watching as the cops get out of the cars, followed by the man in the BMW, his hair snow white, belly hanging over the belt of his khaki slacks. Then we see Ben, still in his pajamas, coming out to meet them, pointing back at the house.

A muscle ticks in Cam’s jaw, and when he turns away from the window, I follow him out into the hallway.

Ben is coming up the stairs, the policemen trailing him, and when he looks up at us, I see that his face looks slack, his eyes bloodshot. He looks awful, and after last night’s bullshit, that should be satisfying. But right now, I’m more concerned with those men behind him, their solemn expressions, the guns on their waists.

“What’s going on?” Cam asks, and Ben pauses, running a shaking hand over his jaw.

“It’s Nana Nelle,” he says, and then he and the police make their way past us, the two in plain clothes giving us tight nods.

“Nelle?” Cam asks. “What about her?”

Ben turns at the top of the stairs, his face flushing red. “She’s dead, that’s what.”

The words are flat, but his voice cracks just the littlest bit on that last word before he makes his way to the second staircase, the one that leads to the third floor where Nelle’s bedroom is.

“Lordy lordy,” the man with white hair says, huffing as he holds on to the banister. “I told her she needed to move to the ground floor years ago, but she wouldn’t hear of it. Said her room had the best views in the whole place.”

When we follow them into Nelle’s bedroom, I see immediately that she was right. The large windows behind the bed frame the forest outside, the mountain below, and other peaks in the distance, soft gray smudges against the sky.

I want to keep my eyes on that view because otherwise, I’ll have to look at the small, shrunken figure in the bed.