Dark Horse

Nikki knew she didn’t have much time. It hadn’t been easy getting in here. It had cost her fifty bucks after she’d found the nurse’s aide was quitting soon to get married. She would have paid a lot more since so few people had laid eyes on Marianne McGraw in years.

She reached in her large purse for the camera she’d brought. No reporter had gotten in to see Marianne McGraw. Nikki had seen a photograph of Marianne McGraw taken twenty-five years ago, before her infant fraternal twins, a boy and girl, had been kidnapped. She’d been a beauty at thirty-two, a gorgeous dark-haired woman with huge green eyes and a contagious smile.

That woman held no resemblance to the one in the rocking chair. Marianne was a shell of her former self, appearing closer to eighty than fifty-seven.

“Mrs. McGraw, I’m Nikki St. James. I’m a true crime writer. How are you doing today?”

Nikki was close enough now that she could see nothing but blankness in the woman’s green-eyed stare. It was as if Marianne McGraw had gone blind—and deaf, as well. The face beneath the wild mane of white hair was haggard, pale, lifeless. The mouth hung open, the lips cracked and dry.

“I want to ask you about your babies,” Nikki said. “Oakley and Jesse Rose?” Was it her imagination or did the woman clutch the dolls even harder to her thin chest?

“What happened the night they disappeared?” Did Nikki really expect an answer? She could hope, couldn’t she? Mostly, she needed to hear the sound of her voice in this claustrophobic room. The rocking had a hypnotic effect, like being pulled down a rabbit hole.

“Everyone outside this room believes you had something to do with it. You and Nate Corwin.” No response, no reaction to the name. “Was he your lover?”

She moved closer, catching the decaying scent that rose from the rocking chair as if the woman was already dead. “I don’t believe it’s true. But I think you might know who kidnapped your babies,” she whispered.

The speculation at the time was that the kidnapping had been an inside job. Marianne had been suffering from postpartum depression. The nanny had said that Mrs. McGraw was having trouble bonding with the babies and that she’d been afraid to leave Marianne alone with them.

And, of course, there’d been Marianne’s secret lover—the man who everyone believed had helped her kidnap her own children. He’d been implicated because of a shovel found in the stables with his bloody fingerprints on it—along with fresh soil—even though no fresh graves had been found.

“Was Nate Corwin involved, Marianne?” The court had decided that Marianne McGraw couldn’t have acted alone. To get both babies out the second-story window, she would have needed an accomplice.

“Did my father help you?”

There was no sign that the woman even heard her, let alone recognized her alleged lover’s name. And if the woman had answered, Nikki knew she would have jumped out of her skin.

She checked to make sure Tess wasn’t watching as she snapped a photo of the woman in the rocker. The flash lit the room for an instant and made a snap sound. As she started to take another, she thought she heard a low growling sound coming from the rocker.

She hurriedly took another photo, though hesitantly, as the growling sound seemed to grow louder. Her eye on the viewfinder, she was still focused on the woman in the rocker when Marianne McGraw seemed to rock forward as if lurching from her chair.

A shriek escaped her before she could pull down the camera. She had closed her eyes and thrown herself back, slamming into the wall. Pain raced up one shoulder. She stifled a scream as she waited for the feel of the woman’s clawlike fingers on her throat.

But Marianne McGraw hadn’t moved. It had only been a trick of the light. And yet, Nikki noticed something different about the woman.

Marianne was smiling.

Chapter Two (#u8ed6f4a0-6fc9-5f95-b856-b7f4a49760dd)

When a hand touched her shoulder, Nikki jumped, unable to hold back the cry of fright.

“We have to go,” Tess said, tugging on her shoulder. “They’ll be coming around with meds soon.”

Nikki hadn’t heard the nurse’s aide enter the room. Her gaze had been on Marianne McGraw—until Tess touched her shoulder.

Now she let her gaze go back to the woman. The white-haired patient was hunched in her chair, rocking back and forth, back and forth. The only sound in the room was that of the creaking rocking chair and the pounding of Nikki’s pulse in her ears.

Marianne’s face was slack again, her mouth open, the smile gone. If it had ever been there.

Nikki tried to swallow the lump in her throat. She’d let her imagination get the best of her, thinking that the woman had risen up from that rocker for a moment.

But she hadn’t imagined the growling sound any more than she would forget that smile of amusement. Marianne McGraw was still inside that shriveled-up old white-haired woman.

And if she was right, she thought, looking down at the camera in her hand, there would be proof in the photos she’d taken.

Tess pulled on her arm. “You have to go. Now. And put that camera away!”

Nikki nodded and let Tess leave the room ahead of her. All her instincts told her to get out now. She’d read that psychopaths were surprisingly strong and with only Tess to pull the woman off her...

She studied the white-haired woman in the rocker, trying to decide if Marianne McGraw was the monster everyone believed her to be.

“Did you let Nate Corwin die for a crime he didn’t commit?” Nikki whispered. “Is your real accomplice still out there, spending the $250,000 without you? Or are you innocent in all this? As innocent as I believe my father was?”

For just an instant she thought she saw something flicker in Marianne McGraw’s green eyes. The chill that climbed up her backbone froze her to her core. “You know what happened that night, don’t you,” Nikki whispered at the woman. In frustration, she realized that if her father and this woman were behind the kidnaping, Marianne might be the only person alive who knew the truth.

“Come on!” Tess whispered from the hallway.

Nikki was still staring at the woman in the rocker. “I’m going to find out.” She turned to leave. Behind her, she heard the chilling low growling sound emanating from Marianne McGraw. It wasn’t until the door was closed and locked behind her that she let out the breath she’d been holding.

* * *

TESS MOTIONED FOR Nikki to follow her. The hallway was long and full of shadows this late at night. Their footfalls sounded too loud on the linoleum floor. The air was choked with the smell of disinfectants that didn’t quite cover the...other smells.

Someone cried out in a nearby room, making Nikki start. Behind them there were moans broken occasionally by bloodcurdling screams. She almost ran the last few feet to the back door.

Tess turned off the alarm, pushed open the door and, checking to make sure she had her keys, stepped out into the night air with her. They both breathed in the Montana night. Stars glittered in the midnight blue of the big sky overhead. In the distance, she could make out the dark outline of the Little Rockies.

“I told you she wouldn’t be any help to your story,” Tess said after a moment.

Nikki could tell that the nurse’s aide couldn’t wait until her last day at this job. She could see how a place like that would wear on you. Though she’d spent little time inside, she still was having trouble shaking it off.

“I still appreciate you letting me see her.” She knew the only reason she’d gotten in was because the nurse’s aide was getting married, had already given her two weeks’ notice and was planning to move to Missoula with her future husband. Nikki had read it in the local newspaper under Engagements. It was why she’d made a point of finding out when Tess worked her last late-night shifts.

Nearby an owl hooted. Tess hugged herself even though the night wasn’t that cold. Nikki longed for any sound other than the creak of a rocking chair. She feared she would hear it in her sleep.

“I heard you tell her that you were going to find out what happened that night,” Tess said. “Everyone around here already knows what happened.”

Did they? Nikki thought of Marianne McGraw. Her hair had turned white overnight and now she was almost a corpse. The only man who might know whether the rumors were true, Nikki’s own father, was dead.

“What does everyone believe happened?” she asked.

“She was having an affair with her horse trainer, so of course that’s who she got to help her get rid of the babies,” Tess said as she dug in her pocket for a cigarette. “I’m trying to quit. Before the wedding. But some nights...”

Nikki watched her light up and take a long drag. “Wait, why get rid of the babies? She still had three other sons.”

“I guess she figured they’d be fine with their father. But babies... Also they needed the money. Easier to kidnap a couple of babies than one of the younger boys who’d make a fuss.”

“Still, they didn’t have to kill them.”