One Last Breath

by Lisa Jackson

  He was standing by a pillar a few feet away, sunlight bouncing off the surface of the pool, half blinding him. His niece and nephew were cavorting in the water, shrieking with delight, while his sister, in the shade of the umbrella, watched them closely. Liam had his phone to his ear, trying to reach Detective Grant, wanting to reschedule with him. He’d been given the update on Teri Mulvaney and, once he thought about it, he didn’t believe it was urgent that he go down to the station immediately. On the other hand, Stella’s imperative to stop by his parents’, though he’d dismissed it at the time, had suddenly become more important. He knew them. Knew how his family planned and wrangled, and he didn’t want them making decisions about Rory and Charlotte they had no right to.

  And no matter what Stella thought, he sensed that Charlotte was his. He’d ordered a DNA test to prove to his family that he was her father. He was already convinced.

  “What about you?” Stella asked, turning to Vivian, who was standing by the edge of the pool, lost in thought. Derek, who’d basically crashed this party, as Stella hadn’t actually invited him, was sprawled in a chair. He was still in his work pants, but he’d taken his shirt off. Though his pose was relaxed, his face looked troubled and tense.

  “No, thanks,” Vivian said.

  “I’ll take a drink,” Derek told Stella, who gave him a cool look. She had never made any bones about her feelings for Geoff’s first wife’s offspring, but she did get him the glass of scotch, plunking it down on the table beside him, earning her a “what gives?” look from Derek, which she ignored.

  “We don’t even know the child is a Bastian,” Stella said again.

  “I’ve ordered a DNA test,” Liam said shortly. He’d mentioned it as soon as he’d entered the house, but no one had paid him much attention.

  “She doesn’t even look like you,” Stella said.

  “She looks like Vivian,” Liam fired back.

  He finally was put through to Detective Grant, and learned, to his surprise, that Desmond Grant was a classmate of his from high school. They hadn’t been the closest of friends, but they’d been on the football team together. After a few moments of catching up, Grant told Liam it was fine if he came in the next day. The detective had warmed up considerably during their conversation and was uncommonly forthcoming with Liam. “We’re getting some forensics. The victim was sexually active close to her death and we have a semen sample,” he said. “We’re checking into her whereabouts earlier in the evening, but her roommate says she had no current boyfriend. Should have more information by the time you come in.”

  “Okay,” Liam said. After he hung up Liam almost rethought his refusal of the scotch before deciding he needed to keep his wits about him. Absently, he rubbed at his thigh, massaging the scar from the ravaging bullet, more a habit than from any real pain.

  “I can’t believe you have a child,” Vivian muttered. Unlike Stella, Viv had accepted that Charlotte was his, without the corroborating evidence sent to the private lab that promised fast results. Nonetheless Vivian’s lips were pressed tight, her normal breeziness was absent.

  “Worried about who inherits, sister, dear?” Derek asked with a sly grin.

  “Oh, stop,” she groaned.

  Geoff grunted. “Leave it, Derek. Liam’s right. DNA will prove who the sick girl’s parents are.”

  “Her name’s Charlotte,” Liam reminded everyone.

  Stella didn’t hide her disgust. Hitching up her chin, she said, “Aurora got herself pregnant just to be part of the family.”

  “Thought you said there was no way the kid was a Bastian,” Derek drawled.

  “Goddamnit! Shut up, Derek!” Geoff shot back.

  Liam looked at his father, who rarely let himself be baited, although he could faintly recall a long time earlier when Geoff would occasionally fall victim to the mercurial temper he kept under tight control and curl his fists as if he was going to hit something or someone. A vague memory flitted across Liam’s consciousness—something about his father and Derek—hard to grasp, blown to smithereens when Vivian suddenly looked toward the house and her mouth dropped open in surprise.

  “Shit,” she said under her breath.

  Liam followed her gaze and saw Javier Vega step from the interior of the house to the pool area. Vivian’s soon-to-be ex-husband.

  Geoff’s brows knotted and Stella looked taken aback as well. “Brace yourself,” Stella whispered.

  “Hello,” Javier said, and added quickly, “Sorry to show up unannounced, but . . .” Shrugging, leaving the apology in the air, he crossed beneath the shade of the umbrella to the spot where Vivian stood, then said softly, “I hope this is okay. You told me the door would be open.”

  Nodding, she said, “Yeah, I know. I made sure it was unlocked. I just didn’t—I wasn’t sure you’d come,” she admitted. The naked hope on her face was painful to witness.

  “You said it was important.” Javier flicked a glance toward Geoff and Stella. “But . . . maybe I’m intruding.”

  Geoff shook his head stiffly, winced a bit, grumbling as he pulled at the neck brace. “Damn thing,” he growled as he waved a hand at Javier to sit in one of the deck chairs.

  Javier was a tall, fit man with dark coloring and a smooth, jungle-cat way of moving. In a white shirt and dark chinos, his near-black hair a bit longish, his feet in a pair of woven sandals, he looked the epitome of the macho Latin lover. Liam had never had a problem with the man, but he could sense the heightened awareness of the rest of his family at his unexpected appearance.

  “Daddy!” Landon shrieked, swimming toward the edge of the pool, his arms held aloft by floaties.

  “Hi, little man,” Javier said, smiling and kneeling as his son splashed toward him.

  “Daddy, Daddy!” Estella cried, jumping up and down. She was on the steps in the shallow end, also with floaties. She tumbled into the water from her excitement, and Vivian, springing to the edge of the pool, grabbed for her, bringing her back to the steps. Javier immediately straightened and asked if someone shouldn’t be in the water with her.

  “I’ve got my suit on under this.” Vivian pointed to her shirt and shorts, flushing at being silently reprimanded by the man she was so patently trying to impress. Then, rather than get into an argument, it seemed, she turned the conversation back to his original statement. “It is important, Javier. Liam’s little wifey showed up in Portland. And guess what? She’s got a kid. A girl. About four years old. When’s her birthday, Liam? Did she tell you?”

  Little wifey . . . Vivian had liked Rory once, or so she’d said.

  “No, I don’t know,” he answered.

  “Didn’t ask her, did you?” Vivian’s gaze slid from Liam to Javier. “Well, I did. Her birthday’s about two months before Landon’s.”

  Derek barked out a short laugh as he caught on. “You’re worried about her being the eldest heir? Is that it? Well, don’t be. Okay? Doesn’t matter in this family.” He spread his hands, then hooked his thumbs at himself. “Case in point.”

  Javier had turned to stare at Liam. “Your wife’s here?”

  Stella swooped in. “Yes, and her daughter is in the hospital with the flu. Getting better, but the girl’s the reason Aurora showed up again, I’m going to guess. Aurora has no money, and she thinks we’re all going to step up and take care of her and the girl.”

  “You don’t know why she’s here,” Liam ground out.

  “Oh, yes. Go ahead and defend her, Liam.” Stella swirled her drink and seethed. “That woman’s always been your blind spot. God knows why.” Glaring at him imperiously, she took a sip.

  “Well, if she’s come here for money, she clearly doesn’t know this family,” Derek said. “You gotta earn your place in the Bastian hierarchy. Some of us just don’t make the grade.”

  Geoff’s eyes narrowed. “That’s right,” he said, his burst of anger replaced by his iron will once more.

  Derek and Geoff had unresolved issues. They’d always treated each other carefully, as if
one wrong step might start something neither wanted. But they’d never been so outright antagonistic as today. Rory’s reappearance had triggered some latent emotion, one with an ugly side.

  “You’re not amusing,” Stella told Derek sternly.

  Liam had had enough. “I’ve got to go,” he said to the group of them—his family—as he pushed away from the pillar. “So I’m going to head out.”

  “Oh, no, you’re not leaving.” Vivian stared pointedly at him from the other side of the pool. “We need to get some things straight in this family. I need a job, for one. No one’s telling me anything about what’s going on. Javier and I are getting ready to div . . .” She trailed off as Javier gazed pointedly at her, then at the kids. She finished with, “I need a job, that’s all I’m saying. You all know it.”

  “I’m still here, in case you’ve all forgotten,” Geoff growled, rolling his chair backward to find the shade again as the sun was inching across the sky. “You can have a damn job, Viv. Work it out with Liam. He’ll find a place for you.”

  “Maybe you can work with me,” Derek suggested, sitting up, his drink in one hand, his sarcastic smirk in place. He pretended to think for a second. “But I do more of the hard work, you know. More of a laborer. You might break a nail or two, working construction.”

  “Derek,” Geoff warned through clenched teeth.

  Derek met his father’s gaze insouciantly. “I’m just saying, office work would suit her better.”

  Javier had wandered back toward the open slider door that led to the interior of the house, looking as if he longed to be anywhere but where he was. “Viv, I’d like to talk to you alone.”

  A frown flitted across her face at his serious tone, but she said, “Sure,” and turned to Stella. “Can you watch the kids for a minute?”

  Stella waved a hand of assent at her and took Viv’s place by the pool steps as Vivian and Javier headed inside the house. She still had her drink in hand, and she didn’t have a swimsuit on, as far as Liam could tell. Feeling her son’s eyes on her, she seemed to read his mind and said, “If I need to, I’ll just get wet!”

  “I wasn’t criticizing,” Liam said.

  Stella regarded him coolly. A doting mother she’d never been. But she was fiercely protective of her grandchildren, and Liam knew she would do anything for him and Viv, whether she acted like it or not. Derek, her stepson, was another story.

  “Did you tell Liam what you did?” Derek asked her lazily.

  Stella gave him a viperous look.

  Uh-oh, Liam thought. No wonder there was no love lost between them. Derek did love to needle. “What did you do, Mom?” he asked.

  When Stella didn’t immediately respond, Geoff said, “Well, tell him.”

  “I—didn’t do anything that I shouldn’t have.” She glanced away, as if she suddenly found the hummingbirds flitting near the fuchsia plants fascinating.

  “She called in the reporters,” his father said. “Told ’em about Rory’s return.”

  Liam groaned.

  “Don’t give me that,” Stella said, facing her son again. “She should be arrested! You know it. I know it. Everyone knows it. She left the country, for God’s sake, used a false ID. That’s a criminal offense!”

  “Technically, she kinda didn’t leave the country,” Derek reminded her. “Point Roberts is—”

  “She ran away from the wedding, while we were all being attacked. Attacked!” Stella interrupted. “And I’m not convinced she’s not part of the shooting. I don’t know why the police haven’t arrested her already. You know why she didn’t walk down the aisle that day. She knew someone was going to try to kill us all!” Stella’s voice had climbed an octave and her color had heightened.

  “Not true.” Liam was firm. “Someone tried to kill her. She was running from him.”

  A short bark of laughter from his father. “You believe that bullshit?”

  “Geoff,” Stella admonished, nodding her head to the two young children still splashing in the shallow end of the pool.

  “Yeah, I believe it,” Liam responded hotly, heading for the open slider door himself. “I don’t know what else I believe, but I believe that.”

  His father called after him, “She might’ve been in on it from the start, you know. You’d already married her. She was pregnant, if it’s yours. Stella might be right on that, Charlotte might not be. We’ll know soon enough. So, all Rory had to do was get rid of you and me, maybe Derek. Why not just rain some bullets on all of us and end up with a fortune? You didn’t sign a prenup.”

  Liam stared at him. He was sick to the back teeth of this old, stale argument. “Yeah, maybe take out Viv and Mom, too. Have all the Bastian money for herself and her child since Viv didn’t have any children yet.”

  His father shrugged, then finished his drink. “You got a better answer?”

  “If you think she hired Pete DeGrere to mow down our family, and then killed him, too, I guess, since he didn’t make it past his first hours out of prison, you’re heading straight into conspiracy-theory land.”

  “Who’s Pete DeGrere?” Stella asked, frowning.

  “The guy that detective who got canned from the force was so hot to pin the crime on,” Derek said. “Liam got a call from him . . . Mickelson. He said DeGrere was in prison for some stupid crime and he got out only to be murdered at some strip club somewhere around Seattle.”

  “That’s horrible,” Stella said, looking toward the children.

  “He got what he deserved,” Geoff said.

  The sound of shattering glass in the house turned their heads. Liam went inside and headed in the direction of the kitchen, where Javier was talking low and angry. “. . . shouldn’t have thrown that vase, if you want more money. What’s wrong with you?” His voice cut off as soon as he heard Liam’s footsteps. Moments later, Vivian appeared, her face white.

  “Viv . . .” Liam said.

  “Don’t,” she snapped, marching past him, swiping at the tears on her cheeks as she strode by.

  Javier came out a moment later, nodded to Liam, his jaw tight, then headed toward the front door. Liam followed after him. Outside, Javier drew a breath, then turned his dark gaze on Liam. “She’s lost her sense of self,” he said as he headed for his car, a black Ford Explorer.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Does she seem the same to you?”

  “Same—how?”

  “She’s not the girl I married.” He climbed into his vehicle and fired it up, speeding around the curved drive out to the road. Javier supposedly did well at his job working for a large financial company, but he’d never been one to flash his money around. Vivian had joked once that he kept her on such a tight leash it was choking her. Liam grimaced. Maybe he’d had to. Maybe money was an issue. He watched his sister’s SUV roar out of the driveway.

  Money. The root of all evil, he’d heard somewhere. Certainly not from his parents, but it was true enough. He thought of Rory. Again.

  She’d lived on a shoestring budget, from what he’d gleaned. Worked as a barista and taken care of herself and her daughter . . . his daughter . . .

  He thought of the little girl he’d fought over with Rory. She was flesh and blood. His flesh and blood.

  He registered the lump building in his throat, swallowed hard. He wanted the DNA test to come back and prove that she was his, wanted it so much it damn near hurt.

  * * *

  She called him on his cell phone, half expecting it to go to voice mail. He wasn’t reliable with the phone, or maybe he just answered when he felt like it. But this time he picked up and said, “I’ve been thinking about you. Want to come to my place? Or, another hotel . . .”

  “The dead girl . . . Did you do it?” she demanded.

  “What?”

  “The one at the construction site,” she said icily.

  “You want to fuck, I can tell.”

  She wanted to kill him! Wrap her hands around his throat and squeeze until his eyes bulged from their sock
ets. And yes, she did want to fuck him. Loud and long and hard. But she’d die before she’d tell him so. “She was a redhead,” she pointed out through bared teeth. “The dead girl.”

  “So?”

  “You have a thing for redheads.”

  “Oh, come on. Forget about her. Concentrate on the positive. You should be happy I took care of DeGrere. One less asshole in the world and no one to come back on us.”

  “Unless he talked before you took care of the problem,” she reminded him tautly. “He was a blabbermouth.”

  “No one with any brains ever believed him. With him dead, there’s no evidence that ties us to the crime.”

  “You to the crime. He never knew about me!”

  “Come on over and let’s talk,” he whispered persuasively.

  “No.”

  “I’m thinking about you right now, giving myself a little warm-up . . .”

  She closed her eyes. She was so angry with him. She knew he’d been with that redhead. She knew it. But she wanted to feel him inside her. There was no reason to play this game with him. “All right,” she said, tense. “But if I find out you were with that dead woman . . .”

  “You’ll have to punish me?”

  She clicked off, her pulse racing. She was so wet between her legs, it was damn embarrassing!

  She swept up her purse. They might’ve taken a long break where they didn’t connect sexually, but they were back on now, and if he’d been screwing around, he was going to be very, very sorry . . .

  Chapter 16

  The Lamplighter Inn was a relic from the sixties with a faintly Victorian façade that couldn’t disguise the fact that it was a beige, two-level motor court surrounded by an asphalt parking lot with painted lines and numbers designating the rooms. A couple of fake gaslights flanked a gingerbread peak with peeling paint, hence the name, but a flashing VACANCY sign in the front window, with an arrow that pointed to the manager’s office, killed any chance of one’s feeling thrown back to a time of horse-drawn carriages and footmen.

  Rory shouldered her way through a smudged glass door to the small lobby. At a battle-scarred reception desk she spoke to a balding man with bags under his eyes and explained that she wanted to pay in cash. She half expected him to deny her and demand a credit card, but it wasn’t that kind of place, apparently. He took the money for the room and a twenty-dollar security deposit in case “you break something or something.”