The Final Victim(118)

But it had all fallen into place.

Now, nobody in Savannah, or on Achoco Island, will see Royce Maitland as anything but a fine, upstanding citizen, and a victim himself.

Gib Remington can rot in jail, protesting his innocence until the day he dies. Nobody's going to believe him.

As for Gilbert Xavier Remington II-the old man got what he deserved that day in the bathtub.

It's just too bad he didn't suffer as much as the many people whose lives he destroyed.

So Joseph doesn't feel bad about him. Nor will he feel bad about Charlotte's pain-in-the-ass kid.

Not as bad as he's going to feel about-No. Don't even think about that until you have to.

Instead, he remembers what it was like to hold a classy, beautiful woman like Charlotte in his arms.

What lies ahead is going to be hard on him. He has a heart, after all.

But what has to be done will be done. She just won't deserve it.

Not like Gilbert did.

When Royce approached him to say his shady cover-up had been detected, Gilbert didn't even ask how. With resignation, as though he had been waiting for the day somebody would discover his duplicity, he simply asked his grandson-in-law how much he wanted to keep quiet.

When Royce told him it would take more than a little hush money-that indeed, he would have to change his will to make Charlotte his only heir-Gilbert balked. But only until Royce showed him the letter detailing the cover-up, and promised him there was a duplicate in a safe place that would come to light if he didn't acquiesce.

So Gilbert changed the will, undoubtedly spurred as much by his own guilt as by his need to protect his secret.

There's no doubt that he adored Charlotte. No doubt that he knew how destroyed she would be if she found out what he had done.

Gilbert must have believed, as Royce had anticipated, that leaving his entire estate to her would somehow justify it in the end. He didn't care about Gib and Phyllida anyway. Charlotte was the only one who had ever loved him, or respected him.

If Gilbert had known what Royce was really up to…

But he never suspected. He must have believed that his granddaughter's husband had stumbled across the secret and was perhaps at worst an opportunist looking out for her best interests in addition to his own.

"Come on, I think I just found some kind of false wall in the bedroom," he tells Odette now, heading in that direction.

"Why didn't you say so?" She brushes past him. "I told you the other day, these old houses are full of them. Come on, let's get her, so we'll be ready when Charlotte comes."

*

At last, Lianna is nearing the bottom of the second, flight-and salvation.

No longer worried about what might await her in the cellar, she clings to the railings and cautiously lowers her foot, remembering that this is another spot where the treads have rotted away.

Then, as she feels around for a rung to stand on, she hears the groan of an old wooden door from somewhere above.

It can mean only one thing: they've found her.

She can hear voices, Royce's and Aimee's, tumbling down the shaft from two stories overhead.

Maybe they won't realize I'm still here. Maybe they'll think I'm long gone.

She goes absolutely still, hands clenching the rails, one foot precariously balanced on the wobbly step, the other dangling down behind her.

"It feels like some kind of a stairway," she can hear Aimee saying. "It must go down to the basement."

"Get a flashlight," Royce responds tersely. "She has to be down there."

"Not if she got away."

Lianna holds her breath, statue-still. If they just leave long enough to get the flashlight, she can steal away in silence, and they'll never-Something-some creature seeking higher ground-crawls over her hand.

An involuntary scream escapes her.

She lets go of the rail and plummets to the storm-flooded earthen floor a good five feet below.

"She's there!" Royce bellows overhead. "I'll go down this way; you go around to the outside entrance and block the basement door."

As Lianna scrambles to her feet in half a foot of muddy water, she can hear the pounding of Aimee's retreating footsteps.

Above, Royce is testing the stairway. As she feels her way back from the foot of the stairs toward the secret entrance to the basement, she hears him limp down the first two steps.

Then he reaches the precarious third.

The old wood groans in instant protest beneath his weight.

Then, with a splintering sound, the step gives way altogether.

Royce Maitland's petrified scream echoes in the tunnel as he falls.

He lands with a deadly splash in the very spot Lianna has just vacated.

Without even a whimper, she flees, knowing she has to make it out of the basement before Aimee gets there.

She wades through the muck and water that have flooded the earthen floor, adrenaline pumping, feeling her way in the darkness. She crosses the cellar, foot by painstaking foot, guided by memory of where she thinks the door is located.

But when she reaches the spot, there is only clammy tabby wall.

Sobbing now in fright, Lianna feels her way along the wall, hoping she's going in the right direction.

Then, all at once, the door opens… and she sees that she was wrong.

Thank God, she was wrong.

She's several yards away from the opening, well beyond the block of gray daylight that spills through.