Connecting (Lily Dale #3)(76)

And what about Dad? What’s he going to do now?

With a mighty burst of adrenaline, she fights. Hard. Fights for her life. She breaks the surface, manages to gulp air before the hands push her under again.

No!

This can’t happen.

She won’t let this happen.

But she’s weakening, and water is filling her mouth, and she’s no match for Sharon Logan’s shocking brute strength, and . . .

And suddenly, the hands are gone.

Gone, and she’s floating.

Am I dead?

No.

She’s alive.

Alive, freed, sputtering, lifting her head from the water, trying to force air past the water that’s clogging her throat.

“Help her! Help the girl!” a male voice shouts, and Calla sees a police officer, sees several of them, sees a dripping-wet Sharon Logan in their clutches, just before she blacks out.

Tampa Police Headquarters

9:52 p.m.

“What I don’t get,” Calla says to her father later—much later, that night, after he’s arrived in Tampa, where she was waiting for him at the police station with the Wilsons—“is why she did it.”

“Why she came after you?”

“No . . . Mom.”

“Maybe we’ll never know.” Her father squeezes her shoulders. He hasn’t let go of her since he got here.

“Ah think she’s just a crazy person,” Lisa drawls. “You know, one of those nuts who goes off the deep end.”

Beside her, Kevin, who has been a quiet presence at Calla’s side, shakes his head. “People don’t just kill for no reason.”

“Unfortunately, son, sometimes, they do,” Mr. Wilson says somberly, and Calla is reminded of something Odelia told her.

“Evil reigns in some souls. We can’t explain it. We can only beware. ”

“We’re just lucky Calla managed to get away,” Mrs. Wilson says, giving her another hug.

“Yeah, thanks to your friend back in Lily Dale.” Dad looks at Calla. “Jacy, was it?”

“Yeah. Jacy.” Thank God for Jacy.

“You should thank him.”

“I . . . I have.” She spoke to him only briefly, though. Just to tell him she was okay.

“Are you sure?” Jacy had asked.

“I’m sure.”

“What happened?”

“I’ll explain it when I get home, but . . . what you said about the water . . . me, almost drowning . . . that’s what happened, Jacy. In the pool.”

“I told you to be careful.”

“I was careful.”

“No, you weren’t.”

“No. I wasn’t. I was just so scared and I just had to get out of the house,” she agreed. “And I just had to know what happened to my mom.”

“And now you do. So come home.”

She promised him that she would. And then she made him promise not to say anything to Odelia just yet about what had happened.

“I won’t. I won’t tell anyone.”

As it turned out, Dad, whom the police called immediately after rescuing her, did get in touch with Odelia on his way to the airport. Gammy was reportedly horrified, of course, and wanted to jump right on a plane and come down here, but Dad convinced her to stay home.

“I told Odelia we’ll both be back in Lily Dale in a couple of days,” Dad tells Calla now.

“Both of you?” Mrs. Wilson asks, raising a professionally waxed, finely penciled eyebrow.

Dad nods. “Both of us. To stay. For now, anyway.”

“You’re not going back to California, then, Jeff?”

“Nope. I’m never letting Calla out of my sight ever again.”

“You can’t do that to her!” Lisa blurts out.

Calla has to laugh at her tone and expression; even Dad flashes a smile.

But he meant what he said. Calla can tell he’s shaken up by what happened.

He’s not the only one.

And he still doesn’t know about Darrin. Or that Calla first saw Sharon Logan back up north, in Geneseo. For all he knows, the woman was just lying in wait for her at the house.

“How did she get here?” she asked Jacy on the phone earlier. “How did she even know I was here?”

“You said something about it when we were on her porch last weekend. She must have heard you. And she was obviously trying to keep you from finding something incriminating there.”

Something in the laptop?

Could be.

There’s still so much that isn’t clear. Sharon Logan didn’t immediately confess to Mom’s murder, but the police are questioning her right now, somewhere in this building. They said they found a key to the Delaneys’ house in her possession. She could very well have had it back in July, when Mom died.

When Dad heard about that he remembered, looking back, that he misplaced his own keys for a day or two last spring in his office on campus. And when they turned up, they were in the pocket of a jacket hanging on the back of the door.

“Your mother accused me of being my usual absentminded self,” he said. “But I know I checked that jacket pocket a couple of times. And suddenly they were there. Who knows? So many people come and go in the science building. . . . Anyone could have borrowed them, made a copy of the house key, then put them back.”