Кей Хупер - Chill Of Fear

"Umm. So you weren't really counting on any of my psychic skills this trip, huh?"

Immediately, Bishop's voice changed. "Why? What have you seen?"

Beau walked around the worktable and headed for the back corner and the secluded spot where Diana's easel had always been. With her otherwise occupied today, he had set up his own "doodling" oil painting there, and had worked on it earlier before his students had arrived.

"Beau?"

"I thought it was me, at first," he said conversationally. "Because I was working on a painting here on Diana's easel. But then I remembered that her big sketchpad was still here, behind my canvas. And since that's where it's coming from, I don't think it's me."

"Beau, what are you talking about?"

The artist lifted his half-finished oil of The Lodge off the easel and set it aside, then opened the big sketchpad and began turning the pages. "The thing is, she tore that page off the sketchpad. I noticed later that it was missing. So it shouldn't be here at all."

"Her sketch of Missy?"

"Yeah. It's here again, Bishop. Or something that looks a lot like the original." Beau stood back, studying the open sketchpad and the drawing it revealed, all in charcoal — except for the vivid slash of scarlet marring the figure of the little girl and still dripping very slowly off the page and onto some rags Beau had earlier placed beneath the easel.

"And it's bleeding."

"Tell me about my sister, Dad," Diana said.

There was a long silence while she waited patiently, and then Elliot Brisco finally replied.

"I am not having this discussion with you over the phone. I'll be finished up here and head back to the States by Monday. Then we can talk. Go home, Diana."

Quentin felt as well as saw her slump a little, not in a release of tension but rather as though a new weight had settled onto her shoulders.

"Home to more lies? I don't think so. I'm staying here, Dad. I'll find the answers myself."

"You don't know what you're saying. What you're doing. Go home. Go home, and I promise we'll talk."

Diana drew another breath, and this one sounded ragged as the frozen stillness of her face began to shatter. "More than thirty years. You've had plenty of time to tell me the truth about Missy, about who she was. Makes me wonder what else you've been lying about, Dad."

"Diana—"

She snapped the phone closed, hanging up on her father, and handed it back to Quentin without looking at him. But her words were directed to him when she murmured, "Somehow, I don't see this story having a happy ending, do you?"

He automatically returned the phone to its belt clip, and with his free hand grasped her arm, because he once again had that unsettling feeling that she could somehow drift away from him. "Diana, you don't know the story — neither of us does."

"He didn't deny Missy was my sister. If it wasn't true, he would have denied it."

"Maybe. But there could still be a reasonable explanation for all this."

She turned her head and met his intent gaze, her own not quite pleading. "Could there? What could that be, Quentin? Why would a father never mention the existence of another daughter? Why, in all these years, have I never found any pictures of her except for this?" She lifted the photo again. "Why don't I remember her?"

Quentin answered the last question, because it was the only one he could think of an answer for. "You don't remember a lot of things from your life, you told me that yourself. The drugs, Diana, the medications."

A frown flitted across her face as they both heard a distant growl of thunder, and he felt her tense, but her gaze remained locked with his. "Yes, the drugs. Maybe that's something else my father has to answer for. Because if he could lie to me about Missy... then maybe he lied about other things. Maybe he lied about me being sick."

"It doesn't have to have been a deliberate lie." Quentin played devil's advocate because he had to, because he knew how dangerous it was for Diana to so suddenly lose all trust in her father. "With everything you've described about your childhood, he had every reason to believe you were going through something out of the ordinary. He just looked in the wrong place for answers, for treatments."

"Or he knew. He knew and did his best to keep me doped up and unaware."

"Why would he do that?"

"So I wouldn't remember Missy."

Another rumble of thunder, this one louder, made Quentin pull her away from the window and guide her to sit on one of the sofas near the boxes he had brought down from the attic. He sat down beside her, silently cursing the approaching storm because already he felt edgy and uneasy, and was all too aware that his senses were becoming untrustworthy. It was like someone turning the volume up and down on a stereo system randomly, so that one moment his senses were muffled and the next they were blasting "loudly" in his consciousness.

It was, to say the least, distracting, and he called on all the discipline he had learned and earned over the years to concentrate on her and what they were talking about.

"Diana, listen to me. As far as I've been able to determine, Missy and her mother came to live here at The Lodge when Missy was about three. You can't have been much older than that. When did you turn thirty-three?"

"Last September."

He nodded. "If Missy had lived, she'd be thirty-three this July. So, assuming you two were sisters, you were older by less than a year, and no more than four when — when she came to live here. How many of us remember much at all of our lives from those early years?"

"I should remember a sister." She stared down at the photo she held, frowning.

"It's not something we can be sure about, Diana. Not without more information."

Her gaze shifted to the nearby boxes. "Maybe we'll find something in there."

"Maybe. But don't get your hopes up. Most of Missy and her mother's belongings were destroyed in the North Wing fire years ago. It's sheer chance that this photo survived." Except that he didn't believe in anything as random as chance, didn't believe in coincidence. There was always a reason. Always.

Even as the scattered thoughts raced through his mind, Diana looked at Quentin, a sudden hope in her eyes. "Her mother. Quentin, what happened to her mother?"

He didn't want to deliver more disturbing news, but had no choice. "She left not long after the fire. I've never been able to trace her."

"And that was when? How many years ago?"

"The fire was less than a year after Missy was murdered. So, twenty-four years ago, give or take a few weeks."

"What did she look like?"

Quentin had to pause for only an instant. "A lot like Missy. Dark hair, big dark eyes, oval face. Average height. On the thin side, as I recall. Maybe even fragile."

"Are you sure?"

"I remember her, Diana, vividly." He watched the hope in her eyes turn to confusion, and added, "What is it?"

"That isn't my mother."

“My mother was a redhead, like me," Diana said. "Tall, athletic. There was nothing fragile looking about her; that's one of the reasons I always wondered about her illness, because in all the pictures, she looked so healthy. So strong."

After a moment, Quentin suggested, "Same father, different mothers?"

"A half sister?" Diana thought about it, absently drawing her arm free of Quentin's grasp so she could rub her temple. Her whole head was throbbing, making it difficult for her to think. "Maybe. As far as I know, he never married again after my mother died. But there could have been some sort of relationship along the way, I suppose."

Quentin hesitated, then said, "You told me you were very young when your mother died. How young?"

"I was four." She nodded before he could point out the obvious.