The Other Lady Vanishes by Amanda Quick




  TITLES BY JAYNE ANN KRENTZ WRITING AS AMANDA QUICK

  The Other Lady Vanishes

  The Girl Who Knew Too Much

  ’Til Death Do Us Part

  Garden of Lies

  Otherwise Engaged

  The Mystery Woman

  Crystal Gardens

  Quicksilver

  Burning Lamp

  The Perfect Poison

  The Third Circle

  The River Knows

  Second Sight

  Lie by Moonlight

  The Paid Companion

  Wait Until Midnight

  Late for the Wedding

  Don’t Look Back

  Slightly Shady

  Wicked Widow

  I Thee Wed

  With This Ring

  Affair

  Mischief

  Mystique

  Mistress

  Deception

  Desire

  Dangerous

  Reckless

  Ravished

  Rendezvous

  Scandal

  Surrender

  Seduction

  TITLES BY JAYNE ANN KRENTZ

  Promise Not to Tell

  When All the Girls Have Gone

  Secret Sisters

  Trust No One

  River Road

  Dream Eyes

  Copper Beach

  In Too Deep

  Fired Up

  Running Hot

  Sizzle and Burn

  White Lies

  All Night Long

  Falling Awake

  Truth or Dare

  Light in Shadow

  Summer in Eclipse Bay

  Together in Eclipse Bay

  Smoke in Mirrors

  Lost & Found

  Dawn in Eclipse Bay

  Soft Focus

  Eclipse Bay

  Eye of the Beholder

  Flash

  Sharp Edges

  Deep Waters

  Absolutely, Positively

  Trust Me

  Grand Passion

  Hidden Talents

  Wildest Hearts

  Family Man

  Perfect Partners

  Sweet Fortune

  Silver Linings

  The Golden Chance

  TITLES BY JAYNE ANN KRENTZ WRITING AS JAYNE CASTLE

  Illusion Town

  Siren’s Call

  The Hot Zone

  Deception Cove

  The Lost Night

  Canyons of Night

  Midnight Crystal

  Obsidian Prey

  Dark Light

  Silver Master

  Ghost Hunter

  After Glow

  Harmony

  After Dark

  Amaryllis

  Zinnia

  Orchid

  THE GUINEVERE JONES SERIES

  Desperate and Deceptive

  The Guinevere Jones Collection, Volume 1

  The Desperate Game

  The Chilling Deception

  Sinister and Fatal

  The Guinevere Jones Collection, Volume 2

  The Sinister Touch

  The Fatal Fortune

  SPECIALS

  The Scargill Cove Case Files

  Bridal Jitters

  (writing as Jayne Castle)

  ANTHOLOGIES

  Charmed

  (with Julie Beard, Lori Foster, and Eileen Wilks)

  TITLES WRITTEN BY JAYNE ANN KRENTZ AND JAYNE CASTLE

  No Going Back

  BERKLEY

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014

  Copyright © 2018 by Jayne Ann Krentz

  Penguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.

  BERKLEY is a registered trademark and the B colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Quick, Amanda, author.

  Title: The other lady vanishes / Amanda Quick.

  Description: First edition. | New York : Berkley, 2018.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017057658| ISBN 9780399585326 (hardback) | ISBN 9780399585333 (ebook)

  Subjects: | BISAC: FICTION / Romance / Suspense. | GSAFD: Romantic suspense fiction. | Mystery fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3561.R44 O84 2018 | DDC 813/.54—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017057658

  First Edition: May 2018

  Cover design by Rita Frangie

  Cover photo © mammuth / Getty Images

  Cover design pattern © AtthameeNi / Shutterstock

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  Contents

  Titles by Jayne Ann Krentz

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  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

  Author’s Note

  About the Author

  For Frank,
with love

  Chapter 1

  The screams of the patients on ward five told Adelaide Blake that time had run out.

  She stopped searching for the key to the file cabinet and went to stand at the door of the small office. She had not dared to turn on any lights in the laboratory. There was enough moonlight spilling through the high, arched windows to illuminate the long workbenches and create ominous silhouettes of the equipment and instruments.

  The wails and shrieks and howls from the floor below were escalating rapidly. Something or, more likely, someone was agitating the patients. The ward on the fifth floor was reserved for the most hopelessly mad and insane. The locked rooms housed those who were forever lost in their own private hells. Some of the patients were afflicted with violent, paranoid visions and hallucinations. Others battled fearsome monsters that only they could see.

  Soon after she had been locked in one of the cell-like rooms on ward five, she had learned that the patients provided an excellent alarm system, especially at night. Nights were always the worst.

  The nerve-shattering chorus of the damned echoed up the stone staircase. There was no one around to calm the inmates. The orderlies on the locked ward had been given the night off.

  She could not delay any longer. If she did not escape now, she might not make it at all. She would have to leave the file behind.

  She left the doorway of the office and started to make her way cautiously through the maze of workbenches. She had plotted her exit strategy down to the smallest detail, but the last-minute decision to look for the file had put the plan in jeopardy. She had to get out of the laboratory immediately or she might not escape.

  Originally, the Rushbrook Sanitarium was the private mansion of a wealthy, eccentric industrialist who had intended to entertain on a grand scale. The result was a Gothic nightmare of a house with five floors, endless hallways, and the tower room that now served as a laboratory. The single redeeming architectural virtue as far as Adelaide was concerned was that there were a number of discreetly concealed staircases intended for the use of a large staff.

  Most of the servants’ stairs had been permanently closed and sealed long ago. Others had disappeared under various waves of renovations and remodeling projects. But a few were still accessible. She had the key to one of the little-used staircases.

  She was halfway across the lab when she heard panicky footsteps on the tower stairs. Someone was coming up to the laboratory. Whoever it was would see her as soon as he turned on the lights.

  There was nowhere to hide except behind Ormsby’s desk. Discovery spelled doom. Dr. Gill would order increased security for her. She might never have another chance to escape.

  A cold sense of certainty sliced through the fear. If necessary, she would try to fight her way out of the sanitarium. She could not—would not—go back to the cell on the fifth floor. She would rather die.

  She turned quickly, searching the shadows for something that could function as a weapon. She knew the lab all too well because it was where they had brought her when Gill and Dr. Ormsby decided to give her another dose of the drug. In her desperate attempt to hold on to her sanity by focusing on an escape plan, she had memorized every inch of the tower room.

  She went to the nearest cabinet, yanked open the door, and pulled a couple of glass jars off the shelf. She had no idea what she grabbed—it was too dark to read the labels—but she had seen Ormsby take a variety of chemicals out of the cabinet. Many were flammable. Some were highly acidic.

  With the two jars in hand she hurried back into the office. Ormsby’s desk was neat and tidy. He was a fussy little man who was obsessed with his research, but orderliness was high on his list of priorities.

  Aside from the usual desk accessories—telephone, blotter, and inkwells—there was one other object on the desk. The black velvet box looked as if it had been made to hold a woman’s collection of jewelry. But Adelaide knew there were no necklaces, rings, or bracelets inside. The velvet box contained a dozen elegantly cut crystal perfume bottles.

  She made it behind the desk with the jars of chemicals just as Dr. Harold Ormsby staggered into the darkened laboratory. It sounded as if he was gasping for air. He did not turn on any lights.

  “Get away from me,” he shrieked. “Don’t touch me.”

  Adelaide heard other footsteps on the stone staircase, the slow, steady, determined tread of a predator stalking prey.

  Ormsby wasn’t trying to catch his breath, Adelaide realized. The doctor was in the grip of raw panic.

  His pursuer did not respond, at least not verbally. Crouched behind the desk, Adelaide removed the tops of the jars. The acrid odors that wafted out made her gasp and turn her head away. She hoped the screams of the patients covered the small sounds she made.

  She tried to keep her breathing as light and shallow as possible, but it wasn’t easy. Ice-cold perspiration dampened her skin. She shivered and her pulse skittered wildly.

  Ormsby screamed again, louder this time. The high, unnatural screech affected Adelaide like a bolt of lightning. For a few seconds she wondered if it had stopped her heart.

  And then she wondered if lightning actually had struck the laboratory. A narrow beam of fire blazed in the darkness. Peering around the corner of Ormsby’s desk, she watched the glow move past the office doorway.

  Ormsby’s piercing screams rose above the cacophony from the fifth-floor patients, the cries of a man being sent into hell.

  Running footsteps reverberated in the tower room. Heavy glass shattered. Night air flowed into the laboratory.

  Ormsby’s hopeless cries echoed in the night for another second or two. The suddenness with which they were cut off told its own story.

  Adelaide froze as she realized what had just happened. Dr. Harold Ormsby had leaped straight through one of the high, arched windows. No one could survive such a fall.

  In the shadows of the lab the fiery light winked out. It dawned on Adelaide that someone had lit a Bunsen burner and used the flame to drive Ormsby out the window. That didn’t make sense. He had obviously been terrified, but she knew something of the man. It was easy to imagine him pleading for his life or cowering in a corner, but jumping to his death seemed oddly out of character. Then again, she was not the best judge of character. She had learned that lesson the hard way.

  The screaming from the fifth-floor ward got louder. The patients sensed that something terrible had happened.

  Adelaide heard rapid, purposeful footsteps crossing the tile floor, coming toward the office. She gripped the containers of chemicals and waited, aware that the only thing protecting her now was the noise from the inmates down below. The shrieks and cries would make it difficult if not impossible for the killer to hear the sound of her breathing.

  The intruder stopped directly in front of the desk. A flashlight came on briefly. Adelaide prepared to fight for her life.

  But the intruder turned and hurried quickly out of the office. A few seconds later, footsteps sounded on the stairs.

  The keening of the agitated patients rose and fell, but there were more shouts now. They came from the courtyard below the broken window. Someone had found Ormsby’s body and was sounding the alarm.

  Adelaide waited a few heartbeats and then got to her feet. She was shaking so badly she had a hard time keeping her balance. She thought briefly of trying once again to find the key to the file cabinet, but common sense prevailed. Escape from the sanitarium was the first priority.

  She reached up to adjust the nurse’s cap pinned to her tightly knotted hair. When she glanced down at the desk, she saw that the black velvet box containing the perfume bottles was gone. The intruder had taken it.

  She selected one of the two open jars of chemicals to use as a weapon and left the other one behind on the desk. She picked her way through the moonlit lab. When she got to the staircase, she descended cautiously.

&nbs
p; At the foot of the stairs, she paused in the stairwell and looked around the edge of the door.

  The inmates continued to howl and scream through the grills set into the locked doors, but the hallway was empty. There was no sign of the intruder.

  Her room was located at the far end of an intersecting hallway. There were no other patients in that corridor. Earlier she had arranged the pillows and blankets on her bed in an attempt to approximate the outline of a sleeping figure, but it looked as if the ruse had been unnecessary. The agitation of the other inmates and the commotion in the courtyard were sufficient to conceal her movements. The white cap and the long blue cloak, familiar elements of a nurse’s uniform, would do the rest. With luck, anyone who chanced to see her from a distance would assume she was a member of the hospital staff.

  The entrance to the old servants’ stairs was in a storage closet on the opposite side of the hall. She was edging out of the stairwell doorway, preparing to make a dash for the closet, when the patients’ screams rose in another hellish crescendo. It was all the warning she got. It was just barely enough to save her.

  She retreated to the shadows of the stairwell and waited. When the screams faded a little, she risked a peek around the doorway.

  A man dressed in a doctor’s coat, a white cap, and a surgical mask emerged from the hallway that led to her room. The black velvet box was in his left hand. In his right he gripped a syringe.

  The only thing that saved her from being seen was that the masked doctor was intent on rushing down the hall in the opposite direction. He disappeared through the locked doors just beyond the nurses’ station.

  She did not think it was possible to be any more terrified, but the sight of the masked doctor leaving the corridor that led to her room sent another shock of horror across her nerves. Maybe he had intended to kill her, too.

  With an effort of will, she pulled herself together. She certainly could not continue to dither in the stairwell indefinitely. She had to act or all was lost.

  She took a deep breath, clutched the jar in one hand, and rushed across the hallway. She opened the door of the storage closet.

  A bearded face appeared at the steel grill set into a nearby door. The insane man stared at her with wild, otherworldly eyes.

  “You’re a ghost now, aren’t you?” he said in a voice that was hoarse from endless keening and wailing. “It was just a matter of time before they killed you, just like they did the other one.”

 
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