Winter's Edge Read Free Page B

again, and she longed for a room hidden away from everyone. Which was just what she’d get if they proved she had anything to do with the mysterious George Andrews’s murder.
    “And you’re hardly acting like my husband’s friend,” she added helatedly.
    He laughed, a fat, wheezy chuckle.
    “You should realize by now that your husband doesn’t give a damn what you do and who you do it with. You made sure of that a long time ago.”
    She turned away, trying to shut out the sight of him in the front seat, trying to shut out the sound of his voice. Anything to still the pain in her head. Obviously Stroup believed her capable of adultery as well as murder. She wondered what she could have possibly done to alienate everyone so completely. Particularly her handsome husband.
    She tried to picture him. Older, the nurse had said. Very handsome.
    She summoned up the image of someone gentle, smiling down at her, with faded eyes and a fatherly manner. Gray hair, slightly stooped. But the comforting image shifted, almost immediately, and the man in front of her had midnight black hair, winter blue eyes, and a cool, mocking smile that held no warmth whatsoever.
    Suddenly her hands were cold and sweating, her heart was pounding beneath the silk suit, and the hairpins were digging into her scalp. Her eyes shot open, and she stared determinedly at the brown, blurred landscape. She wasn’t going to let them destroy her. She hadn’t before, and she wouldn’t this time.
    The stray memory flitted through her brain like a wisp of fog, gone before she could snatch it back.
    Who had tried to destroy her? And why? The past remained stubbornly, painfully blank, with only the tantalizing memory to further claw at her nerves.
    The sun was setting as they pulled into a small, old-worldly town somewhere over the Pennsylvania border.
    The gloom of the day had worked itself up to the tangible expression of pouring rain, and she watched the dead countryside fly by the windows with unabated gloom. Heaven only knew what sort of man she was about to meet. Her husband, they told her, but how did she know whether she could believe them or not? Maybe this was all some conspiracy—maybe they were trying to make her doubt who and what she was.
    If only she could believe that. She felt bone tired, her head pounding. More than anything she wanted to sink into a soft, warm bed and sleep for hours and days until this nightmare had passed. But would she be sleeping alone, or with a hostile stranger who didn’t even care enough to pick her up at the hospital?
    She felt the sudden sting of tears in her eyes, and she opened her expensive leather handbag, searching for a tissue. The lining of the purse still smelled of the cigarettes she’d tossed, and there was no doubt she’d once been a smoker. The smell of it made her ill. Tucked inside were two handkerchiefs, linen and expensive. The first was very plain and masculine, and the initials, embroidered so carefully on the scrap of material, were PA. W. There were pale orange streaks across the white linen, too pale to be the blood she had first suspected.
    Panic filled her, swift and unreasoning,-and she shoved the scraps of cloth back into the purse, no longer eager to open the Pandora’s box in her lap. MAW. the other handkerchief had read. If Winters was her last name, then her first must be Mary or
    Magdalene or something of that sort. Though why the image of Mary Magdalene, the great whore, would have come to mind when she was looking for an identity was something she didn’t want to think about. She only knew she wasn’t going to let strangers convince her she was something that she wasn’t.
    The weather didn’t choose to improve. She shivered slightly as the car pulled away through the deep troughs of water, out across the rain-swept highway, then leaned back, eyes shut, heart pounding. She didn’t want to watch where he was taking her. She sun ply wanted to arrive, and face up to it when she had