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Falling Darkness by Karen Harper (34)

34

“We have to stop meeting like this,” he whispered with a low chuckle. His breath, laced with the tinge of cigarette smoke, heated her face. She was so stunned from hitting her head that his words sank in slowly.

“Sadly,” he went on, “you and I are now going to break up, because, like Julia, you are in my way. This is going to be one damn long, boring winter, and I’m spending it with Liz at her house. Then I’ll take her to New York with me when I testify. It’s where she wants to go. And you—you’re going off the edge of that widow’s walk.”

Wade. It was Wade. A maniac hiding in their attic, one being protected by WITSEC. He’d murdered Julia. And he’d just said he meant to kill her. If only she could talk to him—better yet, cry out, but would they hear her all the way downstairs?

She could not let him shove or throw her off the way he must have Julia. And not for one minute did she believe Liz was in on this. She had to save not only Liz but herself too.

When she saw he wasn’t going to move his hand from her mouth, she did what she had to, not fighting but lying still, moaning to make him think she was even more dizzy or injured than she was. She let her eyelids flutter, moved her eyes erratically. She began to shiver from shock, but she felt hot.

“Sad too,” he whispered, “’cause I like redheads even more than blondes. But time’s a wastin’, baby. Let’s go. I’ve had a ball visiting up here, took the key to your back stairs out of Julia’s bedroom when I was waiting for Liz once and Julia was out somewheres. Now, don’t fight me, ’cause lots of people made that mistake. Luckily, I got the goods on some higher-ups than me, so I’ll testify, change my name again, get outta Dodge. And, man, if I can get my hands on Liz, she comes with a real nice inheritance, if you like old cowboy stuff, when the old man dies—real soon, I think. I hit that guy of yours hard enough to do him in, but he must have a skull of concrete.”

Claire murmured against the press of his palm over her mouth. He had to let her talk. Michael might want to get Julia’s diary from Liz, but this madman wanted Liz.

“You trying to kiss my hand, baby?” he asked, pushing harder into her mouth when she struggled to speak. “I’d like that, more than that, but, like I said, time’s a wastin’. No talking, no screaming, no way.” He lifted his hand only long enough to push some sort of cloth into her mouth.

She instantly began to gag, but she overdid how bad it was, pretending to choke, desperate to do anything to distract him from his intent, to stall for time. Once before, when she was trapped, she’d faked going limp to save her energy for one last strike. At least, if he intended to make it look like she jumped or fell, he wasn’t going to try to rape her and leave evidence. He’d just take his sleeping bag and stroll down the back stairs as easily as he’d disappeared after shoving Julia to her death. It made her want to throw up that he’d been staying here, sleeping so close to all of them, especially Lexi. What if she’d come up to find Lily herself and found Wade instead?

Claire was desperate for someone to find her, but prayed it would not be Lexi. And this new life she carried, her and Nick’s... He was pressing her down so hard.

“Damn,” he said and shifted slightly off her, “but we’re crushing the cigarettes I got in my pocket under this down jacket. Down jacket, for a mastermind who pushes people down, get it?”

She hardly heard all that. She was gagging, fighting for air through her nose. She almost lost track of what he was saying.

“I’m always a hit with the ladies,” he was saying with a chuckle, as if he had to keep entertaining and explaining. “Maybe that’s why I’ve been a professional hit man, huh? But I don’t even have a gun here on the island. Part of the deal. So I have this,” he said and, with a smile, produced a long knife he flashed before her face.

Again, she fought to calm her panic. He wouldn’t use that if he wanted it to look like she jumped or fell. How many victims had he terrorized and murdered? Horrible that WITSEC had to protect such people to get to the more horrible ones on top.

As if he was bored with talking, he hauled her to her feet and shoved her toward the locked door to the widow’s walk. She managed to snag the wire handle of her overturned, lit lantern with one foot and drag it the few steps to the door. But it was no good to her since he held her arms brutally behind her as he fumbled with the bolt on the door.

She concentrated on breathing through her nose, trying to calm herself, but her brain rattled on. When they found her body, would they be able to tell he’d bruised her wrists, that she’d been gagged? Wade had drawn the message in the snow to blame Kirkpatrick. He must have flown the kite, maybe sneaked down at night and ate Lexi’s candy, but why the mask sometimes and not others? She still felt he wasn’t the one who had chased her at the hotel earlier today. That man was built like Jace. But Wade was probably working with someone, had hired someone to scare her, even a woman to phone Liz to come get things out of the locker.

As he opened the door to the walkway under the cupola, an icy blast of air smacked them. No one would believe she fell or jumped, not those who loved her, knew her. Nick and Jace would see a pattern, a terrible pattern.

When he tried to pull her gag out, she writhed in his grasp and bit down to keep it in so whoever found her dead below would know...would know...

He cursed and shook her hard. Her head bobbed like a rag doll’s. She remembered she had the lantern handle around her ankle, but what good was that? She was sweating, freezing. It was so cold out here that her limbs went numb. Like Julia, she was going to fly and die.

She let her knees buckle, went completely limp. As he tried to grab her, she pulled him off balance. With one hand free, she ripped the gag out and screamed, but her voice was muted, ragged in the wind and the dark, cold night.

But then, from below, somewhere on the ground outside, a man’s voice shouted, “Leave her the hell alone, you bastard!”

But the voice—not one she knew. Not Nick, not Jace, not even Bronco or Heck. Someone had heard them or the lantern had drawn attention. Just someone passing by the house? But they were facing the harbor, the backyard.

“Let her go, or you’re a dead man!” sounded from below.

Did that voice have a Southern accent?

Wade swore again and threw her, facedown, on the narrow floor of the widow’s walk. She tried to scramble away, but he blocked her attempt to get back inside. On hands and knees, she realized she was still dragging the lantern.

She yanked it off her foot and swung it upward at him. It caught him on the chin. In that split second his face was lit, she saw no scratch on his skin. Thank God, his knife flew away and several pieces of what looked like Halloween candy—Lexi’s!—spilled onto the floor.

Wade scrambled inside on all fours, and then she heard a voice she knew.

Nick! Nick, calling her name from the attic.

“Nick, stop him!” she cried, but her voice was not her own and lost in the rush of cold wind. “It’s Wade. Stop him!”

She saw an erratic light beam inside. Despite the wind, she heard both men’s voices raised. A scuffle. Grunts and blows.

Dear God, Wade was younger and stronger. Nick nursed his bullet wound sometimes and still limped a bit. She had to help him.

She staggered to her feet, picked up the lantern again. Dizzy, she stumbled back inside, nearly slipped on a flashlight on the floor. Then she coldcocked Wade Buxton with the lantern so hard its light went out and glass shattered all over the floor.

* * *

Nick held Claire hard to him as she sobbed in his arms in the reflected light of his flashlight beam. They had rushed together and then sank to the floor in relief. Though Nick had closed the door to the walkway with his foot, they were both shaking. Wade Buxton lay sprawled facedown next to them.

“I went to find you in Lexi’s room,” he told her, his lips in her wild hair. “She said you went upstairs to find Lily.”

“And found him instead,” she choked out, holding tight to him. “Who knows how long he’s gone in and out of here on the back stairs. Is he dead?”

“No, he’s breathing. While I watch him, can you make it downstairs to get someone to call the sheriff and ask Gina to bring that medical kit of hers up here to tend to us?”

“He hurt you too. Yes, yes, I can do it,” she said, but didn’t budge at first.

“He must have been stalking you, been the man in the hotel in the dark today.”

“I—I don’t think so. That man was built differently. I’ll bet when Wade’s questioned, he’ll admit he had hired someone else. Hopefully, all that will come out when the sheriff—or Rob—questions him. And Wade doesn’t have a mark on his face, where I’m sure I scratched the man in the dark. Nick,” she said, lifting her head from his shoulder, “he killed Julia but—but when I was struggling on the walkway with him, someone from outside yelled at him to stop hurting me.”

“From outside? On the ground? Are you sure?” he asked as she got to her knees and then her feet. “Who? You were under great strain and you said you hit your head. Are you sure it wasn’t me, calling for you as I came up the stairs?”

“I’m sure. I’ll have someone call the sheriff. I’ll get Gina and be right back.”

“Claire, sweetheart,” he said and reached out to grasp her ankle before she could move away, “Julia’s death is solved. If the terrorist in the hotel wasn’t Wade, it must have been, like you said, someone he hired or knew. You can testify all that privately to the sheriff, even to Rob, but they’ll want to keep us—and what Wade did—hidden so he doesn’t spill everything about WITSEC. We’ll be safe here now, even if WITSEC might have just lost one of their witnesses. Thank God, not you.”

“You don’t think they’ll trust him to testify, do you? After all this? I mean, he said he was a hit man, I guess based in New York, but since he killed Julia and meant to kill me—”

“I don’t know if they’ll still use him, but maybe that picture of Rob with Julia will come into play here. If he cared for her more than as a coworker, ten to one he gives Buxton a one-way ride to incarceration. Maybe they could just reduce the bastard’s sentence of life without parole instead of lethal injection for his hired-gun testimony. Go on now and be careful on the stairs.”

“That’s what the man below called him, a bastard,” she said as she moved away. “Whoever he was, he was a guardian angel. One with a Southern accent, here in Northern Michigan, no less.”

“Lots of things have been strange around here,” he whispered, almost to himself.

As she went downstairs, Wade started to stir and moan, so Nick tied his hands behind his back with the guy’s belt and sat against a support pillar with his feet on Wade’s rump like a footstool.

Nick heaved a huge sigh. He knew Claire was not the kind of woman to ever stay barefoot and pregnant in the house as people liked to say, but she had to stop solving their cases this way. Man, it was cold in here, and he could hear the waves crashing into the harbor seawall below. But somehow, he felt a warm glow that this island of refuge would give them smooth sailing from now on.

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