Page 140 of The Night Before (Savannah 1)

Reed wasn’t buying it. “This her car?”

“Yep.”

“I’m sorry,” Morrisette said.

“Aren’t we all?” Montoya’s jaw was set, and when it was suggested that he might not want to see the badly decomposed body, he’d stood fast, his dark eyes going over what was left of his girlfriend. It would take a while to check the dental records, but they all knew that the remains behind the wheel were probably those of Marta Vasquez. A muscle worked in Montoya’s jaw, but he calmed it by taking a long drag on his smoke.

There wasn’t much more Reed or Morrisette could do.

There wasn’t much anyone could.

Caitlyn was itching to get home. She hated lying around the hospital, fielding calls from reporters, seeing her picture on the front of the paper, b

eing poked and prodded by doctors and looked at with curiosity by psychiatrists. Even some of the staff treated her differently and when she was supposed to have been sleeping, she overheard a couple of aides talking about her as if she were some kind of tabloid princess or lab specimen.

Not that home would be that much better.

But it had been five days, she was recovering and the doctors had agreed to release her. Like it or not, it was time to face her new life. As one person. No more of the split personality stuff . . . at least she hoped not. Adam had stayed at the hospital most of the time. She’d constantly told him to go home, but had never had the heart to have a nurse throw him out, though the thought had occurred to her. He’d even taken breaks and seen that Oscar had been fed and walked. He seemed genuinely concerned about her.

But Caitlyn didn’t trust him. Not yet. Nor had she forgiven him.

Granted, she was thawing, and there was the nagging suspicion tucked far back in her mind that had circumstances been different she might have fallen in love with him.

However, things weren’t different. Nor would she have met him if she hadn’t been some bizarre head case.

She couldn’t forget that Adam was an accomplished liar. A very accomplished liar. And she figured she was really little more to him than an interesting case, a unique case, a case that might be able to garner him some fame and fortune by means of a lucrative book contract and movie deal. If he wasn’t interested in her because he was a greedy son of a bitch, then maybe he was hanging out because of guilt. If that was the situation, then it was his problem.

She struggled into her shorts and T-shirt. The bandage around her middle would be with her for a couple of weeks, but the drain had been removed and she was given a clean bill of health by her doctors, told to come back for a post-op checkup. Her mind was another matter, but she felt stronger mentally than she had in years and so far, the personality of Kelly hadn’t manifested itself . . . except that Caitlyn had her own sharp tongue and new-found determination, remnants of her twin’s stronger personality.

The good news was that Hannah was going to live. One of the few Montgomery children to have avoided Amanda or Atropos’s deadly scheme.

A nurse with a wheelchair appeared in the doorway. She must’ve expected Caitlyn to protest. “Hospital policy,” she insisted, dismissing any of Caitlyn’s complaints before they were voiced. “Is someone coming to get you?”

“My brother said he’d be here at ten.” Adam had offered to pick her up but Caitlyn had declined, insisting that Troy, less enthusiastic, could pick her up.

“Then we’d better get going.” The nurse checked her watch. “It’s five after now.”

An aide with wild, curly hair clipped in springy clumps gathered up her personal items, the cards and flowers, and pushed them on a cart that rattled and jangled Caitlyn’s nerves.

She was still on pain pills, and sleeping pills. She was still suffering from nightmares and her doctor had put her in touch with a new psychiatrist. Her first session was a week from Friday. She wondered if it would ever end, if she’d ever be completely normal.

Not likely, considering what you’ve been through . . . just take it one day at a time.

As the nurse pushed her down the hallway she thought of the past few days. Would it be possible to put all this behind her, she wondered as she was wheeled into the elevator car. God, it was hard to think of Amanda as Atropos, the murderess, that she’d killed everyone in the family including Josh and Jamie. There were so many things Caitlyn didn’t want to believe . . . that Rebecca Wade had wanted to write a book about her, that Adam had been married to Rebecca, that Amanda had set her up, staged Josh’s fake suicide to make it look like a bungled coverup on Caitlyn’s part. Amanda had stolen her lipstick, tripped over the cord of the alarm clock, sneaked Jamie’s bunny out of the house, had pretended to be her daughter on the telephone and tried to drive Caitlyn crazy—well, even more crazy than she really was. And to think that Adam had known some of the truth and held it back from her, at least for a little while. It still made her blood boil.

Don’t dwell on the past. Move forward.

Give Adam a chance.

She snorted in disgust. Adam had lied to her. Used her.

Just like every other man in her life.

But he’s hung around for a while now. Isn’t that something?

The voice nagging her was her own, no longer sounding like Kelly’s. Now Caitlyn wondered if the voice had ever belonged to her twin. Kelly was dead. Though her body hadn’t been found after the boating accident, everyone had accepted the fact that she’d died. Only Caitlyn had fought the notion and so her personality, already shattered, had split into a second entity. If the psychiatrists were to be believed. She’d been told that she had years of therapy ahead of her, that eventually she would be able to mold the Kelly personality into her own, to be one whole person rather than two distinct entities. It would take time but she would be complete, her own person, happy and secure, left with only memories of her twin.

The elevator doors opened on the first floor and Caitlyn froze. In the lobby of the hospital, camped out near the doors, were two reporters. Max O’Dell, square jawed and dressed in a sport coat, polo shirt and khakis was with a cameraman from WKAM and Nikki Gillette was flipping through a battle-scarred magazine in a lounge near the information desk.

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