After She's Gone (West Coast #3)

She blinked. He was right. She was acting like a lunatic. Seeing things that didn’t exist. Willing her missing sister to appear. Believing above all else that Allie was alive and here in this hotel, five floors above a party thrown for her latest movie. Why in the world would she be holed up here? Hiding out?

She saw the pain in his eyes, knew that he didn’t want to believe that she’d lost all connection with sanity, that she was creating images that weren’t there, that she was hallucinating again and was easing her way back to a psychiatric ward. “I saw her, Trent, I did!” she said, nearly spitting out the words. Desperate to believe them herself.

“Cassie. This is . . .”

“Nuts?” she supplied. “A half-baked fantasy?”

He didn’t answer. For half a heartbeat Cassie hesitated and then she said, “Well, you’re right. It is. But it’s my fantasy and I’m going to see it through and find my damned sister!” Spinning out of his arms, she grabbed the handle of the door and pushed hard.

To her surprise it gave way.

Easily.

Without a key.

Creaking inward to a dark void.

“Allie?” she whispered, her voice cracking as she fumbled for the light switch.

Click!

The overhead fixture snapped on. Bright light washed over a room that housed no one, just like the other rooms on this floor. The tattered carpet was dust-covered. A queen-sized bed with a bare mattress and a forgotten bubble-faced TV were the only furnishings.

But the balcony door was cracked, curtains billowing through the opening, and carelessly tossed over the battered headboard was a raincoat that appeared identical to one Cassie was sure belonged to her sister.

CHAPTER 34

Allie Kramer stood on the dark corner. The wig she was wearing was sodden, the baggy sweatshirt and jeans wet as well, the rain coming down in buckets, and yet she was rooted to the ground, looking back at the hotel where the party for the release of Dead Heat was in full swing. She’d snuck into the hotel and done her part, pulled off her “appearance,” and before that, she’d managed to gain a peek at the setup for the party, where she should have been in the limelight.

But the staging in the ballroom had soured her stomach—all those sets featuring her as Shondie Kent were disturbing. The worst had been seeing herself strapped down in a mental hospital. That image, though she’d played it, had chilled her to the bone. Even though she knew that these days patients weren’t physically restrained, being locked away like that was Allie’s worst nightmare and she couldn’t imagine how her sister had actually committed herself into a psych ward for a few weeks.

Then again, that was Cassie.

Forever the drama queen.

Like you?

Like your bitch of a mother?

She didn’t want to acknowledge what was so patently obvious. At least not while she was standing here in the frigid Oregon drizzle.

She wondered, not for the first time, if she’d made a huge mistake agreeing to this sham. Things had escalated. Gotten ugly. Scary.

She was scared.

But determined.

Her thoughts skittered to her mother and she felt a pang of regret for the pain she was causing Jenna, but that jab of guilt quickly disintegrated, as it always did. Jenna didn’t deserve it. She’d lied to her children. To her husbands. Two-faced bitch.

And then there was Cassie.

At the thought of her older sister Allie’s blood boiled and she gritted her teeth. There had been a time when she’d looked up to Cassie, when she’d admired Cassie’s rebellious I-don’t-give-a-damn attitude, but everything had changed ten years ago in the aftermath of the maniac who had nearly killed Cassie and Jenna that cold, cold winter.

They had both survived and clung to each other. Jenna had felt guilt that Cassie had nearly lost her life because of her mother. And Cassie, that thick-skinned rebel? She’d been reduced to a whimpering, frightened shell of her former self. Neither had time for the baby of the family. Neither seemed to notice that she, too, was hurting.

Glaring down the street now, watching cars drive past the Hotel Danvers, seeing pedestrians hurrying along the sidewalk, observing the huge windows and veranda of the second story where Dean Arnette’s party was still going on, Allie tried and failed to tamp down her anger, the blinding rage that had stemmed from being ignored, from being the forgotten one, the girl who had faded into the background.