After She's Gone (West Coast #3)

She’d landed in LA ready for her big break and ended up with big disappointment. Her roles had been few and far between. And then she’d talked Allie into joining her in California and things had only gotten worse.

She flopped down on one of the beds and considered calling her mother back, but decided she wasn’t in the mood. She needed to calm down before she dealt with Jenna, or, for that matter Shane Carter, her stepfather. The ex-sheriff. She’d never liked him, still didn’t. Too backwoodsy. And come on. A cop? Who marries a cop?

Your mother, that’s who!

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” she said aloud, her mind returning back to the sibling rivalry that escalated when both she and Allie vied for the same roles, which Cassie inevitably lost.

Even now the old jealousy raised its hateful head, and she punched the extra pillow. She had to rein in her rapidly escaping control over her emotions and she couldn’t risk that, didn’t want to return to the hospital on the very day she’d signed herself out. She had to avoid hallucinating again and couldn’t afford to black out and lose hours of her life.

With an effort, she closed her eyes and concentrated on her breathing. She’d been out of the mental hospital less than twelve hours—hell, less than six—and she couldn’t let the fear take over, wouldn’t allow it to gnaw away at her tentative hold on reality.

Breathe in.

She settled back on the pillows.

Breathe out.

She imagined the air flowing out of her lungs, taking the bad memories and her fears with it.

Inhale.

Drawing in fresh air, she cleared her mind.

Exhale.

Again, she pushed out the pain.

Slowly she opened her eyes. It’d been rash thinking to toss her meds out earlier this morning, but thankfully, the doc had saved her. She slid a glance at the overnight bag and the pocket, still zippered, where the plastic bottles were tucked.

Not now.

Not yet.

It’s only been a few hours and you were so sure you didn’t need them, that you would get along just fine without any medication. Already you’re tempted?

She turned her attention back to the TV. Just because she had the bottles of antianxiety meds and antidepressants in her bag didn’t mean she had to take them. They weren’t crutches, just helpmates, she reminded herself. Kind of like the therapist who’d been working with Lucinda as she learned to balance and walk again. Tiny little aides.

Oh, yeah, just like that Rolling Stones’ song Dad loves, “Mother’s Little Helper.” Weren’t those lyrics written about diazepam or some other tranquilizer half a century ago? There had been dozens of references in other songs as well, though they escaped her now.

Sighing, Cassie thought about Allie with her pixieish face and hair that shined between gold and red, thick tresses that curled and waved and caught the sun’s rays to look as if they were on fire. Her freckles were faint, her eyes bright and expressive. Though Allie’s coloring was more like their father’s, she was as photogenic and alive on film as her famous mother. Another irony, Cassie thought, as she had been told from the time that she could remember that she was the spitting image of Jenna Hughes. Cassie’s hair was lighter than Jenna’s, but her eyes were the same shade of green and her facial structure of high cheekbones, arched brows, and sharp chin were much the same. But it hadn’t helped.

The camera loved Allie. It caught her inner spark. That’s all there was to it. And Cassie? Not so much. Allie had shown up in LA, and with a little help from their father, who had once been a Hollywood producer, landed her first commercial. That success was followed quickly by a bit part on a nighttime drama. And that small part had been a stepping-stone to another, bigger role on television, and within the year, she had a contract for a movie, the script of which was altered for her, her role expanded. Voila! Allie Kramer, not her older sister, became the daughter who followed in their mother’s glittery footsteps.

Cassie had struggled on for a while, then finally had turned to writing. To her surprise she’d found that, as her English teacher at Falls Crossing High, Mrs. Crosby, had predicted, she had a knack for script writing.

Which was something.

And this . . . Allie’s disappearance . . . was one hell of a story. The disappearance of an ingenue who had taken Hollywood by storm? It was golden. So, okay, that was stretching it a little. Allie was far from a wide-eyed innocent, and she hadn’t wowed producers and directors all at once, had actually kind of crept in the back door her father had opened, but she had gained some fame and she’d narrowly escaped an assassin’s bullet.... Well, that was definitely stretching the truth, but who really knew? She had indeed disappeared without a trace. Somehow Allie had pulled off the impossible.