Read The Final Victim for Free Online

hasn't been back to the beach since.
        But Lianna seemed to welcome Royce into their lives, when Charlotte finally got the nerve to bring him home.
        Theirs was a whirlwind courtship that seemed inevitable from the moment they met. Each had found the only other person in the world who truly understood what they had been through.
        Sometimes, even now, Charlotte finds it difficult to wrap her mind around the eerie, cruel coincidence that brought them together. She still wakes up every morning of her life wishing desperately that it had never happened, that Adam had never died. Yet if he hadn't, and if Royce hadn't lost his son, they wouldn't have found each other.
        They've long since stopped asking why. It's far too painful to look back. They've both done their best to accept what is, to only look ahead toward their future and the fresh start they're building together.
        But that isn't easy here at Oakgate , where the past exists hand in hand with the present.
        Built on a slight knoll at the end of a long lane bordered by an arch of Spanish moss-draped live oaks, the red brick mansion's rooms remain filled with heirloom nineteenth-century furniture, and seem to echo with ghosts of a bygone era.
        Charlotte has long harbored a curious mix of affection and dread for the old place, which, like many old Low Country homes, is rumored to be haunted.
        She's never actually seen a ghost, but that doesn't mean they aren't here… And it doesn't mean she wants to continue living under this roof any longer than is absolutely necessary. Especially now that Grandaddy is gone.
        But for the time being, with their own home in Savannah undergoing extensive renovations after having been gutted down to the studs, she, Royce, and Lianna are stuck here.
        Everything will be brighter for all of us when we can get back home , Charlotte tells herself wistfully. We just have to hang in there until then .
     
     
     
         Phyllida tosses a shrewd glance at the man in the framed photo on the nightstand.
        The black-and-white image of her grandfather in his youth came with the room, of course. Though maybe she'll take it with her as a nice little memento when she goes back to California.
        Yes, physical evidence of her loss will make her friends and neighbors out West even more sympathetic. She'll keep the picture on the mantel for a while and when people come to visit, she'll affectionately point out Grandaddy's cowlick, so like Wills's , and the bruise on his cheek undoubtedly caused by some youthful Prank.
         I'll tell everyone he got hurt rescuing the family dog from a burning house , Phyllida thinks dreamily. I'll say that he used to take me on his knee and tell me that story when I was little .
        She smiles faintly at the image of herself as a wide-eyed little girl curled up on her grandfather's lap, almost believing, for a split second, that it really happened. But, of course, it didn't Widowed when his sons were toddlers, Grandaddy was a tough old son of a bitch; tougher, even, than Phyllida's father. And unlike Phyllida's father, who didn’t seem to care much for either of his children, Grandaddy played favorites.
        Uncle Norris's daughter, Charlotte, was the only one Grandaddy ever really noticed. Not Phyllida , not even Grandaddy's own namesake, Gilbert IV.
        Growing up, Phyllida couldn't help envying her Southern cousin. But not so much for their grandfather's attention. Nor for demure Charlotte's natural grace, hen genuine kindness and goodness… nor for the feet that she always seemed to do and say the right tiling without even thinking about it.
        No, more than anything else, Phyllida was jealous on Charlotte's effortless beauty. Even as a child, she was lithe and long-limbed, with wavy black hair, porcelain skin, and unusual purplish eyes fringed with thick, dark lashes. She even inherited the "Remington chin,"