Once more, she dipped into the last bits of her strength to force herself up. This time she made it, straightening her legs and finally getting control. It was just pain, she told herself. Just pain, not death. She could do this. She took one step, then another, reaching the door. She closed her fingers over the handle, turning it, bracing for the wind. A strong gust would send her right back into the gears.
She managed to open it, the wind whipping her hair and face, an eerie coldness shooting through the hole in her upper chest. She leaned out to look down, the angle too awkward to really see how steep a drop it was.
The other door flew open, creating an instant wind tunnel, pushing her like an invisible force straight back to the ledge. She tried to grab the doorjamb but just missed getting a grip, the wind ramming her backward, folding her almost in half. Two steps, three… her sneakers were at the edge.
She threw herself flat on the ground to keep from falling back into the gears, just as another deafening crack echoed. She looked to the entry door, but it had slammed shut before anyone had entered, leaving her completely alone again.
For a second the wind died down, and the door to the sweeps started to close without the force of the breeze. Then it squalled again, more forceful than before, slapping the door wide open and gusting over her like a freight train.
Her whole body slid over the edge. With nothing but the blood-slickened stone floor to grab, she went sliding into the pit of the gears, her foot jamming into a wooden wheel as it turned.
She opened her mouth to scream, bracing for the pain, the sound of her bones breaking, the blackness of inevitable death.
But the groaning machine stuttered … then whined. She was lodged just enough to hold the gear back. But the beast was fighting her, and something told her that one killer gust of wind would finish her off.
“Help!” she screamed, her word drowned out by the cry of the machinery. “Someone help me, please!”
But no one could possibly hear her over the endless, deadly wind.
“That was a gunshot,” Con said sharply.
Lizzie’s heart clenched. Would that woman hurt Bree. Why? “I didn’t hear anything.”
“I did.” Con squeezed even more speed out of the bike, powering up the turnoff to the Bettencourt farm. At the windmill, he vaulted off the scooter and instantly pulled her off. “You need cover. Inside, now.”
“What?”
“I heard a gunshot. You’ll be hidden and safe here, and I’ll find out what I just heard.”
As much as she wanted to believe he was wrong, she’d been with the man long enough to know not to question his hearing.
They darted over the gravel to the door, only to find it locked.
Con swore under his breath, reaching for his gun. He pushed her behind him with one hand and fired twice at the lock, the shot so loud she had to cover her ears. The door popped open and he pushed her in, then froze.
“What—”
“Shhh!” He held a hand up to her mouth to silence her, closing his eyes.
All Lizzie could hear was the infernal growl of the wheel, the moan that sounded like a woman—
Calling for help!
Con launched toward the stairway, disappearing into the darkness as he took the stone steps three at a time. Lizzie followed, the sound even clearer as she entered the echo chamber of the stairwell.
She rounded the curve, blinking in the dark, but seeing Con bent over a body.
“Bree!” She threw herself to the ground just as Con turned the woman over and two lifeless eyes stared up at them, blood oozing from a hole in Solange’s chest.
“Help me!”
For a split second they stared at each other in shock, then simultaneously jumped up and ran up the last of the stairs.
“That’s Brianna!” Lizzie cried, her foot slipping as she tried to take the stairs three at a time like he did.
Con beat her to the door, lifting a leg and slamming the wood with a solid kick. Lizzie practically pushed him out of her way, but he held her back. The area was nothing but an open pit, the stairs turning into a three-foot-wide ledge with no railing or inside wall.
“Bree!” She took a step toward the center, but Con yanked her back, diving to the edge himself.
Lizzie followed, falling to her knees, a scream welling up inside when she saw Bree four feet below, trapped between two massive cogs, her legs extended to hold back the turning wheels. Blood oozed from her shoulder.
“Oh my God!”
Con thrust her back. “Find the brake, Lizzie! There’s a brake outside, under the sweeps! A lever, a rope, something turns this off. Find it while I go down there to get her.” He flipped himself over the ledge so fast she barely saw him disappear, stunned as he dropped through the air and landed right on the cog of one of the wheels, his weight taking over the job of holding off the machine from squeezing Brianna any more.
“Find the brake!” he yelled.
She shot downstairs.
“Go below!” Con yelled after her. “You have to look below the sweeps!”
Leaping over Solange’s dead body, she stumbled once on a loose step, bracing against the wall to save herself. Spinning around the wall as it ended, she tore outside.
Below the sweeps. Below them?
Flat against the stone building, she made her way around toward the front, the giant blade whooshing by her head at what seemed like fifty miles an hour, the wind pressing at her.
Peering up, she saw a rope, frayed and shortened with age, fifteen feet above her head.
The only way up there was to scale the stones. If she fell backward, she’d be sliced in half by one of the sweeps. She glanced down the cliff, which was equally dangerous.
There was no way Con could get her sister out of that machine if they didn’t stop it.
She grabbed hold and started to climb the wall, every muscle quivering as she scaled one stone, then the next. Her fingers dug into the cold, hard wall, barely able to find a grip as the next blade whizzed by. She put one foot up, then the other. Using all her strength, she hoisted herself higher. The next possible step was hip high, requiring her to lift her knee up as far as possible, pull with both arms, and find her footing as the sweeps sailed by and the wind whipped off the ocean.
Forcing herself not to shake, she continued to climb, grunting with the effort, determined to make it.
The rope was within reach. One more step, one more pull, one more huge push … she finally got high enough and reached for the bottom of the rope, but she just couldn’t … get … it.
A gust of wind fluttered the rope, catching the unlatched door above the windmill shaft and blowing it open, sending Con’s voice out into the air.
“Hurry, Lizzie! Hurry!”
They were still alive! She stretched her arm farther than it seemed possible, closing her hand over the rope to pull.
It didn’t budge.
Horror rocked her. Wasn’t it the brake rope? Or was she just not strong enough? She needed all of her weight to pull on it, and if she grabbed it with both hands, she could swing right into a passing sweep.
She couldn’t let them die.
Using every muscle in her body, she levered herself against the wall, grasped the rope with the other hand, and hung from it.
It was coming down! It was moving! A grinding sound echoed as the sweeps slowed, and she looked up to see the lever attached to the rope moving down, down, down.
The sweeps grew slower. The groans lessened. The odds of Bree and Con living increased. Finally, when the brake lever was parallel to the ground and the rope had dropped so far that Lizzie was only two feet in the air, the sweeps stopped.
She did it. She did it!
“Can I let go?” she yelled up to Con. Her arms were burning, but if she let go and dropped to the ground, would the sweeps start back up again?
There was nothing but ominous quiet in response. Was she too late? Had one of them slipped and let the gears crunch them both while she w
as scaling the wall? She barely breathed, hanging on to the rope as if it was hope itself.
“You can let go,” he finally called out. “I’ve got her. We’re out.”
She tumbled to the ground with a moan of relief, then ran into the building, seeing images of Bree, bloody and inches from death … and Con diving into the deadly machine to save a woman he’d never met.
He’d risked his life without a second’s hesitation.
Who cared what mistakes he’d made in the past? He’d just erased them all.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-TWO
BY THE TIME the Azorean police officers left the scene, the sun was rising.
Lizzie had left with Brianna by way of the Azorean version of an ambulance, once they’d determined that the bullet had passed through her muscle tissue and the wound could be tended without airlifting her to another island. Con stayed with the police, participating in hours of frustrating communication in broken English and Portuguese, explaining that Solange was dead when they arrived.
That was, oddly enough, the easiest task of the night. The police believed her to be a recluse psycho who was rumored to have attempted suicide at least once in the past, and they were opening an investigation into the death of her nurse earlier in the week. Now they were gone.
He’d ride back to find Lizzie soon, but there was something he had to do first.
He had to call Lucy. He had to tell her he’d changed his mind.
Exhausted by the fight with the wheel to keep Brianna from being crushed, and the fight to communicate with the police, he dropped onto the stone step and reached for his phone, mentally preparing for one more battle.
His pocket empty, he tried the other one, glanced around, and realized his phone was gone.
A sign that he should skip the call?
Blowing out a breath, he stood to go back up to the top floor of the windmill where it had probably been lost in the battle to keep Brianna alive. That was probably the moment he’d made the decision, come to think of it. As he saved the life of one woman, and got blown away by the strength and determination and power of another.
He’d underestimated Lizzie Dare on every level. He’d truly thought he could use her, betray her, lie to her, take from her, and walk away—but all of that had changed tonight.
Especially after he’d thrown down the gauntlet of his inescapable past and she’d picked it up.
I don’t like what you’ve done … but I like the potential for what you could be.
The words had annihilated him, and the moment she spoke them, he made a decision. He might walk away from this woman, but he wasn’t going to screw her out of her scepter and diamond.
Looking down in case his phone was on the stairs, he noticed that one of the stones was knocked askew, leaving a gap beneath it. Great. His phone could be anywhere. He kicked the stone to put it back in place, but that just made it slide out farther. Kneeling down to do the job right, he discovered that the stone slid out of the opening as if it was designed to do that—and underneath it was a square concrete hole, the width of the stair and a few feet deep.
He looked up the rest of the curved steps. Were they all like this? He tried the next step, but it didn’t move. He tried the rest on his way up, and found another one that opened, revealing …
A metal box.
Taking it out and laying it on top of the step above, he twisted the wire latch keeping it closed, then lifted the lid. Parchment papers with dark script handwriting lay inside. He took out the first one, but it was too dark inside to read. Taking the box down to the main floor, he read by the light of a window.
And felt his jaw drop.
The El Falcone manifest. Exactly the same as the copy the Bullet Catchers investigator had found in the Havana library, but this looked like the original.
The next paper was a detailed contract between Captain Aramis Dare and Carlos Bettencourt for payment in gold bullion for the delivery of two identical scepters topped with blue diamonds for presentation to the king and queen of Portugal upon their marriage.
After that, a letter written by Captain Dare demanding payment for the scepters, stating that he waited off the coast of Corvo Island.
Con read every word as the sun rose higher and the story became clearer. According to the paperwork, one of the scepters was delivered to Bettencourt, but Captain Dare was holding the second one until payment was received.
In addition to the letters, the documents included pictures of items. Some that he’d seen in Malcolm Dare’s journal, some, like the Our Lady of Sorrows medallion, that he’d held in his own hands. And according to this, El Falcone took off in the middle of the night with only one scepter and diamond on board.
So was the other one … here?
Replacing the papers in the strongbox, he headed back to the stairs, checking every step on the way up. As he rounded the second level, he found another loose one. Pushing it to the side, he saw something white filling the hole. White velvet, he discovered. Closing his hands over the fabric, he felt something hard inside. Long and hard and familiar.
Lifting it gingerly, he laid the bundle on the stair, slowly unwrapped it and stared at the scepter that was indeed a perfect match for the one he’d already handled, topped by the very same breathtaking blue diamond.
Holy hell. It was right here under their feet all along.
He touched the gold, far brighter than the one that had spent its years underwater, and then the diamond. The value of just the diamonds was truly incalculable, he knew.
And he also knew what he had to do, to get everything he wanted.
He jogged up to the top, spied his phone, snagged it, and had Lucy on the line in a minute.
After relaying the entire story of Solange Bettencourt and making arrangements to get Brianna to a hospital in Lisbon as soon as they could, he added his final announcement. “I’ll deliver the scepter and diamond to Paxton as soon as I get back.”
“Are you certain you can get your hands on it?”
He touched the gold again, tracing the elaborate markings. “Without a doubt.” He would hide this one from Lizzie and give it to Judd Paxton, satisfying Lucy’s edict. And Lizzie could keep hers, and at least have half of what belonged in her family. He wouldn’t have to betray her.
“That would be a real coup,” Lucy said. “Exactly the kind of performance I want and expect from a Bullet Catcher.”
Well … not exactly.
“How are you going to do it?”
“Just consider it done, Lucy.”
For a moment, she said nothing. Then, “Fine. And talk to Avery as soon as she gets in this morning. She’s unearthed quite a bit of information that you’ll want, which might even help with the Azorean investigation. Mostly about Solange Bettencourt, but also Dylan Houser, who was connected with Malcolm Dare’s death.”
“Good. If you talk to her first, can you have her check something else? The police took Solange’s cell phone, but before they did, I checked her call history. One number from the U.S. showed up quite a few times.” He pulled out the paper and read it to her. “I want to leave here as soon as they’ll let us, considering that we are witnesses in an open investigation.”
“I have contacts in the Lisbon police department,” Lucy said. “They are in charge of the Azorean police. I’ll make sure you are all able to leave.”
“Great. I’m going to check on Lizzie and her sister.”
“Lizzie sounds like she’s quite a fearless woman.”
“Add it to a long list of attributes.”
“And it sounds like you’ve grown fond of her.”
Slightly. “Yep.”
“So how is it going to be received when you take something she wants, and give it to a man she considers a mortal enemy?”
“I’ll smooth things out with her,” he said, rewrapping the velvet around the scepter. “I’ve figured out a way to keep her happy.”
“Be careful about getting involved with a principal, Con. I
don’t like it.”
“She’s not a principal, Lucy. She’s a target. And if I don’t get involved with her, how else can I smooth things over?”
“She’s going to hand over those scepters just for the joy of sleeping with you?” She laughed softly. “You do belong in this organization.”
He smiled. “I knew you’d figure that out sooner or later.”
Signing off, his smile was still in place. If everything worked according to plan, he’d get what he wanted, Lizzie would get what she wanted, and even Judd Paxton would be happy.
The truth would come out eventually, but by then he’d have given Lizzie all this paperwork, and she’d have what she needed to make a compelling argument that the other scepter belonged to her. She could take it public; the media would eat that up. She’d win by virtue of her name and her nature, and Paxton would be shamed into giving the other scepter to the museums where she wanted to exhibit them. Aramis Dare’s name would be cleared, and Con would be a full-fledged Bullet Catcher.
And if she could see his potential now … she could actually love him then.
He hid the scepter in the step again, making sure the stone was secure. The papers in the metal box were coming with him.
Lizzie would go absolutely crazy with happiness. But first, he was going to make her absolutely crazy in a totally different way.
Lizzie curled up under the cloud of duvet, her hair wet from a shower, her body screaming for rest. She’d wanted to stay at the clinic longer, but there wasn’t anything she could do for Brianna except let her sleep, and the two nurses were quite capable of watching over her.
Remarkably, Bree was in stable condition, drifting in and out of sleep, but not in any danger. The doctor in Corvo had been competent and spoke English, but Con promised to get her to a specialist in Lisbon as soon as possible and then back to the States. She’d have a scar just in front of her armpit, but with plastic surgery and physical therapy, she’d be fine.
An inch or two lower … or a few minutes longer in that mechanism … and Bree would have been dead. Lizzie shivered and tucked deeper into the mountain of down, just as the door opened.
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