The Final Victim(64)

Specifically, decisions involving Gib Remington.

Then again, if she hadn't gotten involved with him all those years ago, she might have altered her destiny in every way. Some of them positive, but others too heart-wrenching to even imagine.

As a rule, she tries not to.

She tries to forget what happened between her and Gib, not just in high school, but that night on Achoco beach.

It's just that sometimes the past roars into the present like a tidal surge in a hurricane's wake, and it's impossible to escape its path.

Mimi quickens her pace, shoulders hunched and her hands buried deep in the pockets of her khaki pants.

"Where are you going?" Jed had asked drowsily, stirring on the couch when she'd looked in on him.

She gathered her thoughts quickly before answering, and hated herself for lying to him. But there was no other way. "I have to run to the store. Do you need anything?"

"Nothing you can buy at the store."

Those words pierced her heart "Do you want something to eat before I go?" she managed to ask.

"Eat? No. No way."

"Maybe just some Jell-O? Or broth?" He managed to keep both of those down yesterday, as far as she knows.

"No, thanks." He shifted his position on the cushion, wincing as he did so. "Where's Cam?"

"At my mother's. She offered to keep him for the day." That, at least, is the absolute truth.

Mimi has reached the intersection of Habersham and Oglethorpe at last There's the precinct building, kitty-corner from the northeast perimeter of Colonial Park Cemetery.

She forces herself to cross the street and walk directly inside, knowing that if she falters for even a moment, she'll risk losing her nerve altogether.

Long shadows fall through Lianna's second-floor windows, but she doesn't bother to reach over and turn on the light. Huddled on her bed, her arms wrapped around her knees, she can't seem to do anything but sit here crying and feeling sorry for herself.

It isn't just because her mother seems to have abandoned her and her stepfather was shot by some lunatic.

Part of it is utter frustration that her father was so close by for an entire weekend, and she didn't even get to see him.

For that, she blames her mother, and Nydia, too. If the phone hadn't been off the hook for the better part of the day, Daddy would have been able to get through.

When she reached him on his cell phone, he was already back in Jacksonville. He told her he kept trying to call and tell her that he had gone out sailing earlier with some friends, and wouldn't be over until later, on his way home. When he got back from sailing and the phone was still busy, he left for home.

"You know how it is, with Sunday-night traffic on 1-95, honey," he told Lianna, when she asked why he didn't just stop by, since he had to drive norm to get to the causeway.

"I had to get moving or I never would have gotten back here. I have to work in the morning."

He was making excuses, she could tell by the way he sounded. He didn't drop by because he was afraid of what Mom would say if he did that.

"It's okay," she said, trying not to cry.

Especially when she told her father what happened to Royce.

He sounded shocked, and really upset. He asked her if she was okay about fifty times.

All right, so it was only a few times.

Her friend Devin called her, freaking out, about a minute after she hung up with her father.

"Oh my God, Lianna, are y'all okay? I've been trying to get you all day. I heard about Royce and I thought maybe something terrible happened to you, too!"

"No, just my stepfather… And he's okay. I mean, he will be."

"Is he, like, unconscious and all bloody and everything?"

Lianna was forced to admit that she hadn't even seen him, let alone talked to her mother, since it happened. Hearing that, Devin felt as sorry for her as she felt for herself.

"I can't believe your mother would totally leave you alone out there when some crazy lunatic is going around shooting at your family."

Lianna, who hadn't even thought of it that way, grew even more upset at her mother, who sure seemed to be taking her sweet old time coming home.

Seated beside his sister in the last row of the darkened movie theater, Gib stares unseeingly at the screen. This is their second movie in a row, and the summer's biggest blockbuster. But it could be a thrice-viewed 1980s B-flick for all the interest Gib has in the heroine's involvement in the assassination plot onscreen.

He has his own problems right now. Problems that, for all he knows, are escalating back at Oakgate even as he and Phyllida hide out at this multiplex off the interstate.

We aren't hiding out, he admonishes himself. We're just…

Lying low.

That's how he phrased it to his sister, when he outlined the plan for the evening, which included dinner at Chili's just off the exit-which turned out to be jammed-and will entail one more film after this one. By the time they return to Achoco Island, everyone in the household should be asleep.

There will be no accusatory stares or probing questions. No insinuations that Gib and Phyllida are anything but sympathetic about what happened to Charlotte's husband.

"Is that the guy who was in that car before?" Phyllida whispers, and it takes Gib a moment to realize she's talking about-and actually focused on-the movie. Leave it to the would-be queen of Hollywood.