Page 25 of Once Marked (Riley Paige #19)

Riley’s question about Grace Mitchell lingered as Sylvia Sitwell’s living room grew silent. It was obvious that the Director of the Outer Banks Tourists Office was uncomfortable as her glance flitted from one of her visitors to the next—like a bird trapped in a net, seeking escape.

“I... I don’t know Grace Mitchell very well,” Sylvia stammered.

Both Sheriff Beeler and Ann Marie looked at Riley, waiting for her to manage the interrogation she’d started.

She spoke sharply, “Ms. Sitwell, I think we both know that’s not true. We don’t have time for games. Do you know Rachel Brennan?”

“Of course. She works for Sylvia.”

“She’s been abducted. Her very life is at stake.”

Riley watched beads of sweat gather at Sylvia’s temples, the moist dots betraying her feigned ignorance.

“Maybe... maybe I shouldn’t say anything more without my lawyer present,” Sylvia whispered, so faintly it was almost swallowed by the room’s silence.

Riley felt a flash of impatience. The patterns were coming together, revealing connections she had only sensed before. She had a momentary glimpse into the killer’s mind, images without words—ephemeral, but supporting her conviction that time was very tight now.

“Ms. Sitwell, we can’t wait for lawyers, and every second counts,” Riley said. “By impeding our investigation, you could be charged with obstruction of justice at the very least. Or your silence might lead to Rachel’s death. Is that what you want?”

Then Riley saw the subtle shift, the momentary lapse in the woman’s armor.

“Let me tell you what I think is going on here,” Riley said, leaning forward. “I believe that Grace Mitchell is actually Diana Winters. She didn’t drown all those years ago. Instead, she faked her own death. Am I on the right track, Ms. Sitwell?”

Riley held her breath, not allowing her gaze to waver from Sylvia’s face. The theory she’d just stated had formed from scattered pieces of evidence, the patterns and behaviors that she had long ago learned how to read during years of profiling, of diving into the darkest corners of a killer’s mind.

She waited for the tell, the crack in the armor, and it came — not as a shattering but as a hairline fracture spreading rapidly through glass.

Sylvia’s complexion drained of color, leaving her looking like a ghost of herself, a specter caught between two worlds.

She slumped back into her chair, her posture deflating as if someone had let the air out of her defiance.

“How... how did you know?” she whispered, disbelief painting her features in stark, vulnerable strokes.

Riley watched Sylvia closely, noting the surrender in her posture, the resignation in the lines of her face. Her own response was a silent gesture, a simple tilt of her head that urged Sylvia to continue.

Taking a deep, shuddering breath, Sylvia seemed to reach some internal crossroads, her decision made clear by the steadying of her shoulders and the lift of her chin. The tension in the room was a tangible thing, like an electric current that hummed through the air, threatening to spark.

Her eyes were glazed with memories as she spoke, her hands knotted together in her lap. “For a long time, I believed Diana had drowned. But about ten years ago, a woman named Grace Mitchell moved to Darnley and set up a real estate business.”

Riley noted the tremble in Sylvia’s voice; it was the sound of walls crumbling, of the truth surfacing after years submerged in silence.

Sylvia’s gaze seemed to drift to a place far beyond the confines of the room. “The moment I saw her, I was struck by her resemblance to Diana. Of course, she had changed—she was no longer the teenage girl I remembered. Even so, there was something... familiar about her.”

Sylvia’s voice trailed off, and her pause gave way to a heavy silence. Riley watched the woman wrestle with her thoughts, her mind undoubtedly racing back through the decade of deception.

“At first, I dismissed it as my imagination playing tricks on me.” Sylvia’s tone held a hint of self-reproach, as if chastising herself for not seeing the signs earlier. “But I noticed how Grace seemed to go out of her way to avoid me.”

Sylvia swallowed hard and added, the words falling softly, “It was as if she was afraid I might recognize her.”

Beeler cleared his throat and when everyone looked at him he asked, “Nobody else noticed? No one recognized the woman as the girl who had lived here before?”

“This is a tourist area,” Sylvia replied.

“People come and go. A few stay year-round, but they’re not often here for generations.

I have reason, I guess, to be more aware than most of who comes and goes.

Besides, she wasn’t a teenager anymore. She’d changed.

I think she’d gone to a lot of trouble to change her appearance. ”

“That makes sense,” Ann Marie commented.

“Please go ahead,” Riley told the Director.

“I couldn’t shake my suspicions,” Sylvia confessed. “So I confronted her.” Her voice took on a steel edge—a surprising firmness, given her earlier hesitance.

“I remember it clearly,” Sylvia began, her voice trembling. “I bumped into Grace at the grocery store. We were both reaching for the same apple, our hands brushing against each other. For a moment, our eyes met, and … I was almost sure of it.”

Riley leaned forward, intrigued despite herself. “And then?”

Sylvia swallowed hard, her hands wringing together in her lap.

“A few days later, I decided to pay Grace a visit at her real estate office after closing hours. The more she denied it, the more convinced I became that Grace was actually Diana.” Sylvia’s words hung in the air, each syllable heavy with implication.

The room seemed to shrink as Sylvia’s voice dropped to a near-whisper, the atmosphere dense with revelation.

“Finally, she broke down and admitted the truth,” she said, the fight draining from her posture as she slumped back against her chair. Her eyes lost focus, as if looking back across the years to the moment of confession.

Riley felt a deepening understanding as Sylvia continued.

“Grace, or rather Diana, poured out her story to me one evening, the burden of her secret too much to bear alone any longer. She spoke of faking her drowning, an act born of desperation to wipe the slate clean, to rid herself of the guilt that gnawed at her soul following her stepmother’s death.”

Sylvia inhaled sharply.

“But as the years passed, she found she couldn’t truly escape her past.” Sylvia’s words were laced with a sorrowful empathy, recalling the torment of a woman haunted by her history.

“She said she was drawn back to the Outer Banks,” Sylvia told Riley and her colleagues, “Diana sought to live out her days in penance, a self-imposed exile within the very community she had once fled.”

As Sylvia’s narrative wound down, a solemn silence cloaked the room.

Riley could almost hear the cogs turning in Ann Marie and Sheriff Beeler’s minds as they considered what they’d just learned.

Without words, they all arrived at a terrifying consensus: Elaine, who was in fact Diana, had been overtaken by a monstrous transformation.

The guilt that once drove her into hiding had morphed into a grotesque compulsion to murder those resembling the woman she could never forget—her stepmother.

And then, for some reason, to position them on the beach as though they were alive.

A cold shiver tingled down Riley’s spine as she pieced together the psychological puzzle. She recognized the shift from penance to predation. She could almost sense the tangled web of emotions that had snared Diana, turning inward pain outward.

Every move from this point on would have to be swift, precise, and without room for error. They needed to find Rachel before Diana’s demons claimed another victim. Riley could not—and would not—let that happen.

She glanced at Ann Marie, whose youthful face showed determination, and then at Sheriff Beeler, whose experience was invaluable in moments like this.

Together, they formed a triad, each member crucial to the task ahead.

Riley knew that their collective efforts were the only hope Rachel Brennan had left.

*

The cascade of water into the bathtub formed ripples that dispersed on the surface—a delicate artwork of light and shadow.

The temperature had to be just so: not too hot, not too cold.

Grace Mitchell’s hand hovered above the water before submerging to test its warmth, her skin prickling at the contact. She adjusted the faucet.

In the tub, with her head still above water, Rachel Brennan lay motionless. The soft rise and fall of her chest was the only sign of life beneath the gag and blindfold. Chloroform, Grace mused, offered a relief from conscious thought that she almost envied.

She also would have preferred to keep her captive alive longer, until the approach of dawn. But from her most recent encounter with Sheriff Beeler and the two FBI agents, she was afraid that time was running out, and she needed to move faster than she had before.

Memories swam up unbidden, clouding her thoughts like the mist in the room. She saw herself, a teenager full of fire and resentment, railing against her father’s new wife. She saw Elaine, with her gentle voice and patient smile, trying to breach the walls around a young girl’s wounded heart.

And then, the day had come that changed everything—the day Elaine drowned when they were swimming in the ocean together. Grace actually hadn’t meant for it to happen, but the whisper of doubt never left her. Could her teenage temper have somehow willed the tragedy?

The question had gnawed at her insides since that fateful day in 1985. And now, as she placed a tender hand on Rachel’s head, she couldn’t shake the feeling that she was once again standing at the precipice of that long-ago moment, about to plunge back into the depths of her darkest day.

But perhaps this time, the ending would finally be different.