Please Don't Tell Read online

  For Anabelle Adler Avery and Eric Avery

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Acknowledgments

  Also by Elizabeth Adler

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Prologue

  It was a winter afternoon, and a stormy sky was looming. The man was waiting in the black Range Rover, parked in the darkest part of the coffee shop lot away from the lights, when he felt the pain again. A pressure in his chest, a floating sensation in his head, only a few seconds, though. The first time he’d felt that was when he’d lifted a table to move it to a more prominent position. Fool; he should have known better. He must have pulled a shoulder muscle and now it was acting up, just when he needed to be at his best. His brain cleared, the pain left. He forgot about it and concentrated on the work at hand.

  The lot was almost empty, just a couple of vehicles belonging, he knew, to the kitchen staff. Customers always parked round the front. It was one of a popular chain in California, right off Highway 1, south of San Francisco. He knew exactly what time the girl’s shift finished, knew how she would burst out of the staff door, bubbling with laughter and relief at getting out of there, sometimes with others, but more often on her own. He knew her car was the ten-year-old Chevy Blazer that often broke down and for which she had no insurance, and which she always left in the same spot in back of the café so no nosy cop, dropping in for a cup of coffee and pancakes with phony maple syrup, would take notice of and maybe ask questions about a vehicle that looked as crappy as that.

  He knew exactly where she lived. In fact he knew exactly what her small studio apartment looked like. He had been there, easily forcing the cheap lock when she was at work, looking round, touching her things, inspecting the tiny bathroom and the plastic shower stall with the plastic curtain that must have stuck to her naked body when she took her shower. He had run his tongue over her toothbrush, sniffed the underpants she’d left on the floor with the rest of her clothing, exactly where she’d stepped out of them the previous night. He had lain down on her unmade bed, rested his head on her pillow, surprised to find the sheets were clean. She was not a dirty girl, just sloppy and untidy and careless.

  He’d marked her as his victim when he had gone into the coffee shop and she had made eye contact, ready to flirt with a customer in the hope of a good tip, though any tip she’d get was probably negligible. He’d liked her fresh clean skin, the pinkness of her cheeks, flushed from rushing between the customer and the kitchen. She worked hard, she was willing. Her name was Elaine. It said so on the badge pinned to her shirt and she was pretty enough to qualify. He had even chatted to her, learned she had quit community college where she had been studying, of all things, biology. She’d said cheerfully she would go back there when she could afford it, which both he and she knew meant never. Still, he liked her plumpness, her long brown hair, her brown eyes and pink cheeks and her jolly girl demeanor. He always liked the nice girls best.

  Now he saw her come bursting out the staff door. Alone. She was wearing a black skirt, a too-thin black jacket. He put on his fine, supple latex gloves, got quickly out of his car, called her name. “Elaine.” She turned, surprised. He knew she couldn’t make out who he was, in the shade.

  “My door seems to have stuck, could you help me?” he called, just loud enough, that, thinking she must know him, she came.

  He liked the hurried way she walked, half-running.

  Her long brown hair swung over her face as she neared. In one smooth move he grabbed it in his fist and slammed the side of his hand hard on the carotid. She went limp and he pushed her into the car, flung her handbag in after her. In seconds he was out of the lot and onto the highway.

  He looked at her in the mirror, facedown on the plastic cover he had carefully arranged so that his leather seat would not get stained. She was not moving. At the next exit, he pulled off the road into a quiet place, got out and checked her. She was still breathing. Low hurting breaths. He’d hit her exactly hard enough. He knew what he was doing. He’d done it all before. He stuck a needle in her arm; a quick shot to make sure she would not wake suddenly and surprise him. Her erratic breathing slowed.

  He got back into the car and drove on. He’d already picked out the place he was taking her, on the edge of some woods. When he got there he sat for a moment or two, anticipating what was to come. No rain yet, only the harsh sound of the wind gusting in the trees, presaging a storm and sending a shower of leaves over him and the car, and over the girl as he opened the back door. It was still light out but dark in the woods.

  He took out the lightweight black messenger bag containing the small video camera, its tripod and his night-vision binoculars—his “equipment” he called it—and slung it round his neck. He pulled the girl out of the car and carried her into the woods … not too far, no need … nobody ever came here. His heart gave a little bump again: she was heavier than he’d thought.

  There was a method to these things, a ritual he had to respect. Everything must be in sequence. He spread-eagled her on a pile of rotting leaves. Nice and soft. He thought she would like that. Next, he took the tripod and the video camera from the messenger bag and set them up next to her, making sure to get her properly in focus. He pulled on the black woolen ski mask, covering his face. Now, he was ready. It was the work of moments to undress her, tugging off her skirt, her white shirt, her underwear. She was not wearing a bra and her small breasts looked very white in the dense blackness.

  He pulled the knife from its custom-made leather sheath that he wore strapped to his leg. It was a slim fileting knife, around eight inches long, the kind used by chefs. Pure, hard gleaming steel. Power in the hands of a man who knew exactly how to use it.

  Kneeling over her, with surgical precision he slit each of her wrists, then sat back watching the blood ooze, her life begin to drift slowly away. She had not opened her eyes. The supreme moment was almost here. All it would take was one more cut, soft as butter, across her throat. She was limp, unresisting as he raped her, the knife at her throat, just the first small incision … waiting … waiting … he groaned in triumph, slid the knife across her throat, saw the blood spill though she wasn’t dead yet …

  He sat back exhausted. There was nothing to equal that moment, that feeling. The sheer sexual power of it. There was one last thing though; something else he was compelled to do. He took the green Post-it pad from his pocket and using his left hand, printed out a message.

  He checked her again. Her mouth hung open. He snapped her jaw shut, then he stuck the green Post-it over her closed lips, added a strip of duct tape, just to make sure it didn’t fall off. He had the knife on her neck again; he knew where the carotid was.

  He thought he heard something, sat back startled. He had not finished yet … A car stopped, then started up again. Unnerved, he grabbed the camera and the bag, crouched low, made a run for it … The pain hit his chest and his heart thundered so loud he could hear it, a million beats a minute … he was falling into blackness with the pain … and the fear that he was caught … fear won …

  He concentrated all his being on driving. It was raining now … the pain hit again, lesser this time, not really his heart, more his shoulder … exactly where he’d pulled the muscle yesterday, shifting that table.

  Should he go to the emergency room? Why? He was fine now, breathing, okay, heart steady as a rock. It was a minor mishap and a spoiled “event.” He checked the bag on the seat next to him, felt for the camera. It was there. His knife was there. Everything was okay, but it had been a close call. He would be more careful, find somewhere more remote next time.

  He already had his next girl picked out. It made him feel secure, knowing the future, his plans. He’d been watching Dr. Vivian for weeks. Now though, he’d get out of here, fast, get a drink and something to eat. He was always hungry after his little “experiences.” He would avoid the free
way, stick to the side roads. He hadn’t reckoned on a storm, though, on the bad visibility, the sudden slickness. And then he hit something.

  1

  Big Sur, California

  It had started out as an ordinary morning for Fen Dexter. She had gotten up late—nineish, something like that. It was Hector who woke her, putting his big paw on the bed, giving her a nudge and drooling on her arm. Labradors always drooled, and they always had to be let out first thing before they burst. Nine was late for Hector too. She opened the door for him, then, when he’d finished, let him in again and went back to bed, feeling lazy, just lying there listening to the boom of the waves hitting the rocks at the base of the cliffs.

  Cliff Cottage, Fen’s small California house, stood in what Fen had always termed “isolated splendor,” on a bluff between Big Sur and the village of Carmel. The “isolated splendor” was meant as a joke since the road was a mere hundred yards away and the “cottage” was far from “splendid.” It wasn’t even “grand” and it was pale blue stucco.

  It had been her home for twelve years, bought on an impulse after her husband died suddenly and to her, inexplicably because he was such a fit man, always exercising, running, he even played a three-hour game of tennis the day before. Then, after a morning cup of tea, he looked at her, surprised, she thought, and quite simply crumpled to the ground. And life as Fen knew it ended.

  Greg, the “all-American boy” as she always called him teasingly, was in fact her third husband. The first had been the Frenchman, when she was twenty and making a somewhat precarious living in Paris as a dancer, on stage in stilettos and a minimal amount of sequins and wearing the short Sassoon bob wigs all the girls wore. It wasn’t what she’d hoped for after all those years of ballet and training but not everyone could be a star, and she met so many people. Including the husband she only ever referred to now as “the Frenchman,” the hand-holder, the gentle kisser, the leaver of romantic messages, the donator of generous bouquets of white roses. They were not her favorite flower but soon became so. He was older, thirty-five to her twenty, divorced and with baggage but he wanted to marry her and who was she to say no to a life of romance and kisses. It lasted a year. And then he was on to someone new. That’s just the way he was.

  The second husband was Italian-Jewish. Who knew there was such a combo? Certainly not Fen, but without any family of her own, she had fallen in love with his big gregarious in-your-face family that took over their lives and before she knew it she was trying to decide between a Catholic Italian ceremony or a Jewish wedding with all the trimmings. In the end they sneaked off and got married in a civil ceremony and that was that. And finally when, to their great disappointment, the expected children did not appear, the family decided it was all her fault. Fen knew from their silent looks across the table, the sudden diminishing of jolly family meals, that was what they thought, and when she finally was worried enough to get checked out, to her horror, she found they were right.

  Since it was a civil marriage divorce was easy but it left Fen brokenhearted and lonely. She was alone in the world. Again.

  On an impulse she flew to California, went to stay with an old friend at her small vineyard in Sonoma County. Her name was Millie, and Millie produced a Chardonnay that was just coming into fashion in the way certain wines did. Fen invested her small savings plus the money she had been awarded in her two divorces (in both of which she was the innocent party) and ultimately financially it was the saving of her. It was also where later, she met her third husband. The American.

  Greg was thirty-eight, Fen was twenty-seven. She was living in San Francisco in a small pastel-color Victorian in the Mission District that was only just starting to come into its own and still had rough edges. Too rough, Fen worried sometimes, for a woman living alone. But then she didn’t live alone for long. She had a part-time job at the university teaching her specialty, the evolution of dance to its modern form, while also donating her services free to an animal rescue charity, when she got the call from a Mr. Herman Wright, attorney-at-law, asking her to please come to see him. It was very important, he told her and no he could not discuss it on the phone.

  Oh shit, she remembered thinking as she dressed in her most respectable outfit, black slim pants (she had good long legs) a soft white linen shirt and an Hermès orange cable cashmere sweater, a long-ago expensive gift from husband number one, when he was still courting her, that is. She powdered her nose, a daring slash of fire-engine red over her full lips, a quick flick of the brush through her golden blond hair. She took a final look in the mirror, wondering if she looked respectable enough for Mr. Herman Wright attorney-at-law and his secret message. She grinned as she waved herself goodbye. Fuck Mr. Attorney at Law. Nobody was suing her. Maybe she had come into a fabulous inheritance from some long-lost relative. Yeah. Right. A kiss for the ginger cat named Maurice who hated to be left, and she was on her way.

  She took a taxi to the lawyer’s, not wanting to get all mussed up on public transportation, even though she could really not afford it. Mr. Wright’s offices were imposing, three floors in a good building downtown. Mr. Wright himself was not so imposing, small, square and ginger as the cat. But what he had to tell her was. It shocked her to her very core, more than anything else in her entire life.

  That’s what she said to him, then. “But I’m too young!”

  Mr. Wright shrugged a shoulder, smoothed his floral silk tie, looked kindly at her over the breadth of his oak desk. “Many women have several children by your age, Miss Dexter.” Fen had reverted to her own name after the last divorce. “Surely it can be no hardship for a healthy young woman like you to bring up two girls.”

  “But they are not my girls,” she cried, shocked. “I don’t have a husband! How could they do this to me!”

  The “this” she was talking about and that had come at her like a bolt from the blue—not just any old bolt but a thunderbolt—was that a remote cousin Fen did not at first remember having, though they had met once when she was dancing in Paris (the cousin and the husband had come backstage and introduced themselves, had a glass of Champagne then smiled their goodbyes…), had perished in a plane crash, flying a small Cessna over a mountainous area where they’d been caught in a lethal downdraft. Their two children were still at their home in Manhattan.

  “Of course with the children comes the wherewithal to keep them, there’s certainly enough to see them through childhood and college.”

  “College?” What was he talking about? She had not been to college!

  He said, “The two girls are ages six and four. Their names are Vivian and Jane Cecilia. Ms. Dixon, I cannot emphasize enough that they have no one else to turn to. Without you it will be foster homes. I’m afraid they are rather too old to be popular for adoption.”

  He sat back looking at her stunned face. “I know, I know,” he said gently. “It is a great shock and a terrible responsibility, but your cousin mentioned you specifically in the will, said you were her only relative and therefore she would leave you her most treasured possessions in the hope that, should you be needed, you would know what to do.”

  Fen said nothing.

  Then, “Here are their pictures.” He slid a few photos across the desk.

  Fen did not pick them up. She simply stared down at them, at the two young faces of her distant relatives, one dark haired, stony-eyed, kicking the grass with a sandaled toe, unwilling to smile for the camera; the other a blond blue-eyed angel beaming for all she was worth.

  “That kid’s a natural,” she heard herself saying. And then quite suddenly she was crying, sitting there in the lawyer’s smart office looking at pictures of two little kids who had no one. They were so innocent. She had been alone herself from the age of eighteen. She thought what she was being asked to do was not a lot different from the work she did with abandoned and abused animals, it all came from the same love source.

  “I could love these girls,” she said finally, collecting the photos and putting them in her bag. “When can I have them?”

  And that was how she, Fen—short for Fenalla, a name she’d always hated because she thought it sounded like a stripper—became “aunt,” never “mom,” to “her girls.” Who now, after all the growing up—Fen as well as them—through all the schools and ballet classes, the childhood illnesses, the terrible teens, high school, college, boyfriends, lovers, had become a family.