Chapter 1

Exhaustion was a word that she knew all too well, or so she thought. After five years of flying for Eastern Airlines, she really thought she knew what the word meant. Working her schedule and then turning around and flying to another city because someone else had enough courage to quit added to the burdens they all were carrying. That forced a reshuffle of the schedule. No one was happy with it, but they all understood. That was the worst, and it was expected by management, as part of their job description, that the women would just say yes and ignore the forty-eight hour rule between flights, which used to be seventy-two for longer trips. So much for picking your schedules, she grumbled to herself. Soon that's all going to change, she reminded herself. It's either that, or say yes to that job in your uncle's company. Even though the invitation had always been there, she had never taken it seriously. As bad as the pressure was in the ever changing industry, she still loved it. There was a grim smile on her face as she waked away. Keep telling yourself that girl. Just keep reminding yourself, with only a couple of hours sleep.

This was a completely different kind of exhaustion, though. Today had put a completely new meaning to the phrase 'dead on your feet'. She had tried, really tried, to close her eyes and sleep on the flight home, but the much-needed sleep eluded her. There was a responsibility to the passengers after what had happened, and she understood that. They had all gone through the same thing, and instead of dividing them, it seemed to draw them closer together. Not that it wasn't bad, because it was. In fact, it was really bad. It could have been worse, though. Losing the nose gear as they rolled down the runway was not only a first for her, but it was the first time the five-year veteran had actually had to deploy the slides in an emergency. As hard as that had been, what followed was even worse. Between the airlines flying in their own investigators from New York and the Fed's poking and prodding into everything, she didn't know who to curse out first. All she wanted was to go home. Not some motel, but back home to Atlanta. So, much to the surprise of everyone, she let them all have it. She smiled grimly, as she remembered the look on their faces when she told them in no uncertain terms that they were all tired of answering the same questions over and over. Her cabin crew had been up since five-thirty the previous morning and wanted to head home like they promised. There was the mandatory three-day leave that they were entitled to. With the weekend, that made for five days before a new round of questions, forms and statements at the Miami Headquarters.

It had only taken a couple of calls before Eastern Airlines relented and had the Beechcraft Queen Air refueled and warmed-up. Connie didn't think it was as big a deal as management thought. After all the company's investigators had flown to Harrisburg in it only hours before. Seeing as the three-man flight deck crew had had already been hustled off to a local hotel, leaving them alone at the airport departure area, it would be just the four flight attendants and their luggage going back to Atlanta.

Now that she was back in Georgia, she felt better. Connie McCabe smiled for a moment as she spotted her Camaro sitting in the employee parking lot. It was her birthday present to herself, and it was loaded. It even had one of those new-fangled cassette players in it, not an eight track. If you had the right machine at home, or knew someone who did, you could even make your own tapes with your favorite music. In her case, she knew someone and they had a Beach Boys collection that would make the local radio station jealous. She knew what she was going to do. She would get in her car, turn on the tape deck and listen to Pet Sounds until she could get out of the funk she was in before driving home.

That's exactly what the redhead did.

As she listened to the Wilsons and their cousin, Mike Love, it soothed some of the irritation that she felt. There was something else that tickled the recesses of her mind. It had nothing to do with the near fatal crash of flight she had worked. That was strange, almost spooky, in itself. Just not the way it happened, but everything afterwords. The flight deck crew was extremely competent and well versed in handling even this emergency. Of course, the sound of the collapsing nose gear and the peeling away of part of the undercarriage was enough to panic everyone, passengers and crew alike. Thankfully, the plane was less than half-full, and the wheels under the wings remained locked in place. As Connie and the other four flight attendants deployed the slides and evacuated the plane, the sound of the crash trucks added to the confusion. It was a near thing, but everyone walked away relatively unscathed.

The redhead leaned back behind the steering wheel and closed her eyes for a moment. It was only when the Beach boys started to sing, 'Wouldn't It Be Nice', that the nagging thought finally came to the front. It was that thought that brought a new twist to her stomach. The guys in the operations shack told her about her sister coming in that evening with someone they had never seen before. They were pretty sure that he had been on her flight, but he didn't look like your usual businessman.

Not only that, but they were more than eager to tell her about her sister losing it when she found out about her sister's "little mishap" on Satan's plane. Now there's a nickname that fits, she thought, of the Boeing 727 that had caused everyone so much grief. How stupid was it to have a registration number painted on the side with a 666 in it. Connie wasn't very religious, but every time she saw the plane it gave her the chills. All of that drama was behind her when she got off the plane in Atlanta, or so she had thought, but she was wrong – again. She walked into the Operation Building she stepped into even more drama. This time her sister was the cause of it. Sis has gone off the rails again, she told herself. What caused it was the very public display of affection between her sister and this guy that nobody had ever seen before. That wasn't like her sister. Not that she'd never taken a liking to some passenger on her flight, but the public display in front of her coworkers was what was different.

Is it ever going to end? She told herself between verses of the song. Why all the hugging and kissing in public with someone she had just met in Miami - a total stranger? Her sister was strange, but that public sign of affection wasn't even close to the sister she knew. The answer didn't bring joy to her life. Connie McCabe had been down that well-worn road before, and had hoped that phase in her sister's life was over. I guess not, she grimly thought as she sighed.

She turned the key in the ignition and smiled as the Beach boys started to sing a different song: 'I guess I wasn't made for these times'. Ain't that the truth. She kept the grim, slightly sad faced. The drive from the airport to her mother's family house went by quickly in the early morning hours. As she drove, keeping just under the speed limit, she thought back to the last twenty hours. Even while Connie McCabe was not the Holy Roller that most of her family were, you'd have to be pretty jaded not to recognize when a higher power touched you. She had taken off from Harrisburg many times before, and she knew they had been only minutes away from gaining the airspeed needed to take off. If the nose gear had failed when the landed in Charlotte, North Carolina, there might not have been any survivors. All of the passengers, the flight deck crew and the five women of the cabin crew would be nothing but a memory.

She didn't have to force the smile when she remembered the comments made when the FAA crash investigation team boarded the plane in Harrisburg, as ordinary passengers. That was another hint by the Almighty that he was watching over them. They came aboard her flight all dressed in the identical navy blue sport coats, looking so important. Of course, they didn't look as important as they hurried along the smoke and dust filled cabin, waiting their turn to go down the emergency slides. She found out later that several had more miles in the air then all of the Eastern employees crew members on that flight combined, but like her, this was a first for everyone. Investigating a crash was a lot different from being in one, was mentioned more than once. That's something everyone could have done without, girl. The fact that the crash investigation team had experienced and observed the crash, made everything go a lot more quickly. The cabin crew really didn't need to stay, because the people from the FAA had witnessed everything. All the women had to do was write out their statements, and give a brief, on site, interview. Connie figured that even the pilot, co-pilot, and the engineer who had been on the flight deck would probably be home later on that day.

There was going to be a formal investigation in Miami on Monday, and that would be a pain in the butt. There would be two, maybe three days of interviews, going over every word of their written and oral statements, looking for errors or discrepancies in what each of the four flight attendants had written down. Then they would compare them with the exhaustive written and taped interviews with the flight crew. Finally, there were the black boxes, which were already on the way to Washington, DC.

Normally, it would have been a long, slow drive home, but not tonight ... well, this morning. She was so preoccupied with everything that had happened that the long drive seemed to be done on autopilot. She was already on the two-lane road state road that led to the Crew Quarters before she realized it. "We're going to have to stop calling it that," she told herself aloud. Some of their coworker's had rented bedrooms at their house, but eventually they had found their own places. She smiled again. Some people just can't seem to take all the peace and quiet. As she passed her cousins' restaurant, she knew she was close to home. Her smile started to fade.

By the time she turned off the paved road and passed through the open, wrought iron gates, she could start feeling herself start to tense up again. She wasn't exactly sure what to expect, but she hoped that it would be just her and her sister. Connie was relieved to see her sister's pickup truck sitting in front of the house. That's a good sign, she thought. No other cars - that's good too. What wasn't good was that the lights were on throughout the first floor. Normally, the only lights on would have been in the front hall, and maybe one or two in the living room. As she drove by the front entrance, it looked like every light on the first floor was on.

She drove around to the back of the old plantation house and parked at the rear entrance, just like always. What wasn't like always were the lights that were on in the kitchen. Not good, she thought to herself. Even Debbie turned off the kitchen lights before going to bed. Before getting out of the car, she carefully ejected the cassette tape and placed it back in its clear plastic case. When she reached into the trunk of the Camaro, her already sore muscles started to complain even more. Connie McCabe hoped that whoever it was who had been with her sister at the operations building was long gone. The redhead didn't even want to hear her sister talk about the latest guy, let alone see him. All she wanted was a long hot shower and some sleep.

Connie carefully unlocked the back door and cautiously stepped through. The large, old plantation house was quiet. Everything was as it should have been, and that eased her mind considerably. She slowly rolled her suitcase across the wooden kitchen floor, turning off the lights as she went. The formal dining room was just as neat as always. Their housekeeper, Cleo, always kept things perfect. It seemed like the black woman had always been there. Connie didn't give it much thought, but the woman and her family had actually been there forever, even before her and her sister were even born. She remembered seeing Cleo, when Connie was a very young girl and used to visit her mother's family during the summer. The colored woman was in her teens back then, and was already helping her mother keep up the Sullivan house, just like her mother had helped her mother before her.

No one seemed to take notice, or care, that a black family had taken the last name of the former slave owners. In fact, it was fairly common after the Civil War, but what wasn't common was that they lived on the property, side-by-side. The very plantation that their great grandparents had been slaves on. Cleo Sullivan and her family lived in what was once considered the gatehouse for the plantation, back in the day. Unlike many of the wooden out buildings that existed on the property, the gatehouse was made of stone found on the plantation. It was one of the very few buildings that hadn't been touched by the blue coats. Well, not too badly, anyway.

It was something that Connie McCabe didn't think about at all. Well, hardly. The colored woman was always just there. It sometimes bothered her that, after Cleo, there wouldn't be anyone to take her place, but that was pretty much all she worried about. Sure, Cleo had two daughters and three sons, but there was only one boy left to keep things up. The rest had moved to the city for work. Just like everyone else, they left us, she thought.

The redhead walked through the dining room, not noticing the rich dark brown color of the wainscoting or the massive table that had been in her mother's family for over two hundred years. What she did notice were the chairs that had been purchased years after the end of the Civil War. General Sherman's scroungers had taken the original ones and left the table. The only reason it was left was because they couldn't carry it away and they weren't interested in firewood.

Connie turned off the lights and shook her head. I suppose I'm going to have to check every room. One of these days, I'm going to show Debbie our power bill. As the redhead walked into the living room, she put up her rolling suitcase next to the last door in the hall. She sighed as she crossed the massive living room with its two fireplaces before walking into the grand entrance of the house. Glancing around, she found everything in order. The wide, white stairway, stretching and curving up gracefully to the landing on the second floor, was largely ignored. There was nothing of importance anymore up there after the roof caved in decades ago, flooding the whole upstairs. The white railings surrounding and overlooking the ground floor were right out of Margret Mitchell's book. That was where the bedrooms used to be before a tree fell, caving in the roof and part of the second story. They had never finished repairing the rooms that were damaged, and Connie thought that was too bad. She could remember those rooms filled with family and friends; now they were ... gone.

Connie McCabe walked into a smaller entranceway that had been built back in the nineteen twenties. Her grandmother never liked it and called it nothing more than a fancy mudroom for guests. The redhead's mind must've been elsewhere, because it was only when she heard something go crunch under her foot that she looked down. Lifting her foot, she saw a shard of pottery, and there were a couple of other small pieces scattered on the floor. Connie McCabe's anxiety level rose as she tried to imagine what had happened. There was no telling what had gone on, and if she was honest with herself, she really didn't want to know. She quickly looked at the table directly opposite the front door, and her eyes widened. Definitely not good. She stepped over and checked the lock on the door, and found it to be bolted tight. Returning to the table, she noticed that someone had tried to clean up the evidence of the destruction of her great aunt's favorite vase. No great loss there, she told herself as she smiled for the first time since coming in the house. It had to have been the ugliest thing ever made.

Her stomach tightened as she inspected the table in the mirror behind it. There were smudge marks on the high-gloss of the table. Handprints, small handprints at that. For a moment she wondered if Cleo could have left them. Connie knew it was unlikely, but she was grasping at straws. Anything that would tell her it wasn't her sister. She carefully placed hers over them and they were a perfect match. She felt her head starting to throb again as it confirmed what she feared. They were exactly the same size as hers. Those were Debbie's handprints. She looked at the mirror and saw several smudges that weren't handprints, as well. Connie was afraid she knew what they were, and wondered where her sister was. Was she hurt?

Connie walked back into the house, leaving the entrance light on. As she walked back into the entranceway with the massive staircase, her steps were less unsure. This house, in which she had spent her whole adult life, now seemed foreboding to her. Before, she had only glanced up at the second floor; now she focused on every shadow, looking for something – anything – to tell her what had happened.

Not finding anything, she quickly walked over to the open entrance way that went into the living room. She hesitated for a moment as she quickly looked to find something out of place. Her heart quickened as she stared at the couch by the fireplace. It's been moved, she quickly told herself. She wondered who could have done that. Certainly not Debbie, because it was much too heavy for even both of them together to move. It had to have been someone bigger than both of them to slide it several feet from its usual place. As she stood behind it, she saw that the back cushions had been pressed down, as if someone had leaned over it. It was then that she noticed that there were stains on the cushions. They were dark, almost a dark brown in color. The redhead cautiously touched it with her fingernail. It had dried, whatever it was, but as she raised her hand to look at it more closely, she gasped when she saw the reddish brown crust under her fingernails. Her hand quickly started rubbing against the cushions to get rid of the dried blood. Growing up on their daddy's farm, she knew exactly what it was. She'd seen more than her share of cuts and injuries, growing up. No one was immune to everyday life on the farm, not even her, even blood. The redhead started to panic. She was afraid she knew who the blood belonged to.

Connie McCabe suddenly shut everything out as she stared at the long hall that led to the bedrooms. She didn't even bother turning off the lights as she left her bag standing by the couch and started walking quickly to her sister's room. She didn't even glance around at the other furniture in the large living room, she was so focused. She stood in front of her sister's bedroom door, which was just across from hers. She threw the door open, without bothering to knock, looking for her sister. To her surprise, the room was empty. She looked around, disappointed, not in what she was seeing, but in what she wasn't. She should be here! Connie slowly entered the familiar room. In all of the years they had lived here, she could have counted the number of times she'd been in here on one hand. The room was darker in color than hers, but seemed to fit her sister's disposition. The bed was identical to hers and was still made, just like Cleo always did them. She has to be here, she told herself. Where else could she be? Connie looked everywhere, even under the bed. She stood in the middle of the room and tried to compose herself. Looking around once more, she saw everything was as it should be. There were all of the little trinkets and things that her sister loved so much. Everything was where it should be except for her sister.

She turned around and slowly walked out of the door, even more determined to find out what had happened to her sister. She looked at the door to her immediate left and turned the doorknob. She didn't even have to walk in to the tiled bathroom to notice that someone had been in here. As she finally walked into the room, she knew it hadn't been Debbie from the way things had been put back. Her sister was not the neatest person Connie had ever met. It was a bone of contention between her sister and Cleo about her lack of tidiness and her having to straighten up behind her.

No, whoever had used the shower was very careful and considerate. They tried to put everything back just the way they found it. Even the towel this someone had used was folded back on the rack, instead of crumpled up laying on the counter or the floor. For some reason, the thought crossed her mind that it might have been a woman. She didn't know too many men who took the time to straighten up after themselves. But, then, there had been that man her sister was kissing at the operations center. She looked over the room one more time, and it finally struck her, only one towel had been used, not two. Once more she thought, Where are you, sis?

She slowly backed out of the bathroom and back into the hall. The redhead looked down the hall toward the unused rooms. No one had been in there in years. Those were her grandparents' rooms back when they were alive. After they passed on, the linens were stripped from the beds and sheets were placed over all of the furniture. It'd been that way for as long as she and her sister had lived there. Connie looked away, knowing even Debbie would never enter those rooms. She turned to go back into the living room when she suddenly stopped and looked at the door across the hall. She wouldn't go in there, would she? She asked herself. That room is almost as sacred as their grandparents' room. That was her aunt's room when she was a child. She lived in Alabama now and had grandchildren of her own, but that was still her room. If Debbie was in there, there would be hell to pay if anyone found out. The collection of dolls in there was probably worth ... She really didn't know how much they were worth, but it had to be at least tens of thousands of dollars. Some went back as far as the seventeen and eighteen hundreds.

She looked up and down the hall, checking to see if anyone was watching. Connie McCabe took a deep breath and shook off the feeling that she was ten years old again. This is crazy, she told herself. I'm a grown woman, and I've lived in this house for years. This is more our house then anyone else's in the family. Still, she cautiously reached for the door knob and turned it. She opened it just wide enough to peek in, and her breath caught in her chest.

Oh, Debbie, what have you done?

She looked at her twin sister's naked body sprawled out on the antique bed. Her green eyes looked quickly around the room and took it all in. Debbie was alone, and whoever she brought home wasn't in the room with her. Her aunt's doll collection seem to be pretty much in place and undamaged. However, the ones that decorated the bed had been moved to a rocking chair in the corner. Looking back at her younger twin lying there, not moving, she wondered if she was dead. Connie McCabe was unwilling, almost afraid, to enter the room.

Connie took a deep breath and pulled the door wide open. She cautiously stepped inside, looking around for the ghosts and spirits that so many of the stories that they grew up with. She walked up to the bed, and a groan escaped from deep from within her chest when she saw the bruises and welts on her sister's back and arms. Her first thought was, you've done it now, girl. You brought home the wrong guy. As soon as that thought flashed through her, she felt ashamed. It wasn't her sister's fault that this had happened to her. It was Mister Brown and his so-called friends that did this to her. They were still imprisoned, but what they had done to Debbie and the others, remained. It was one of those animals that did this to her. They're the ones that used her young body in ways that had made the judge and the prosecutor sick.

Now there was another two legged animal on the loose. She wasn't sure where he was, but she hoped he was long gone. But what if he was still here? What if he was somewhere in this house? Every part of her screamed for her to just call the Sheriff and let them handle it. Inside, she knew that was something her sister didn't want. She didn't need everything brought back up again. It had been bad enough when they were children and lived with their parents in Athens, Georgia. The ridicule, the looks, the whispers behind their backs, had been too much for them to take. Because they were identical twins, people didn't even bother trying to figure out which sister was the sick pervert that had let grown men do those horrible things. It didn't matter who it was that would let grown men user her like a sick toy. Connie received her share of looks and hushed comments, even though they were directed at her younger twin. She could've told them that it hadn't been her who was raped and used so brutally, but she hadn't. Sure, she tried early on to explain, but she realized that they didn't want to listen to what she had to say. The excuses. So, she held it all in and the twins drew even closer together.

Now that they were adults, it was even more precarious. All of the airlines, not only Eastern, wanted young, good-looking, vivacious, happy women to take care of the needs of the ever-growing flying public. Even the pinheads in their offices knew this, and they encouraged and cultivated it. Connie McCabe knew exactly what would happen to her sister if they were to ever find out that she had been raped and placed in a mental institution for almost a year. Her twin sister would never work for Eastern or any other airline, ever again.

With all of the years that she had been trying to protect her twin from everything that could happen to her, it was almost a reflex action. There's no way I'm gonna let this fucking pervert ruin things now! she told herself as she watched her sister carefully.

Slowly, she walked up to the bed, looking for some sign that something was wrong. As she got closer, her heart started to break. She saw the bruises on her neck and shoulders. There were other marks that her rapist left on her back and buttocks, her legs and hips. Dark ugly purple things that she knew Debbie would carry for days, if not weeks. As she hovered over her sister, she saw another dark spot close to her hairline. That's going to be harder to hide, but not impossible. Connie realized she should have been surprised at the thoughts she was having, but then again, maybe not. She'd been doing it for years, helping Debbie keep her secret from prying eyes.

She wanted, no, she needed to wake Debbie up, but she was reluctant to do so. Connie watched her twin sister sleeping peacefully, almost as if she didn't have a care in the world. She thought she saw a little smile on her sister's face, but it was so out of place she dismissed it. She placed her hand lightly on Debbie's naked shoulder. You have to get up Deb, please wake up.

She heard a moan coming from her sister, but it wasn't one of pain. With Connie's hand still resting on her shoulder, she saw the smile fade into a frown. "I'm sorry, Gene," Debbie mumbled in her sleep. "You were wonderful. Just hold me."

Connie was stunned as she listened to her sister talking in her sleep. What did she have to be sorry about? It was this Gene person that had raped her – abused her – used her. She couldn't help it, not in the state she probably was in, but it didn't make any difference one way or the other, not to the older sister.

She could feel Debbie starting to stir under her touch. She slowly started to roll over onto her back, very carefully. Connie could tell she was in pain, but there seemed to be something different about her this time. Recognition of where she was, and who was with her, came slowly to the younger twin. In fact, it was only when she was fully lying on her back that she noticed her sister.

The first thing out of her mouth was, "Where is he? Where did he go, Connie?" she quickly tried to get up, but the pain of the bruises made her stop and sink back into the mattress.

"You're safe, Deb", she quickly told her sister, trying to reassure her. "I think he might've gone. Don't worry, the house is all locked up. We'll tell Cleo before you leave for work this morning to see if he's still on the property."

The look of anger and shock on her sister's face scared Connie McCabe. That was before a look of anguish came over Debbie's face. "Gone? He can't be gone. He's got to stay here." Debbie's head started thrashing from side to side as if she were having a seizure. That scared Connie, but not as much as the next sentence. "She's going to kill me, Connie. I promise to take care of him, and I went fucking crazy. I'm so screwed, sis, she's going to rip my heart out, and I don't blame her." She started to see tears forming on her sister's face

Connie started to panic. She'd been through countless episodes with her sister, going back to those bad old times, but never like this. In Connie's mind, it didn't make sense. This Gene, whom Debbie was talking about, had raped her. True, she knew her sister sometimes lost control, but this? She reached over to give her sister a reassuring hug, but was surprised when she felt her sister's arms wrap tightly around her, pulling her onto the bed.