Falling Darkness--A Novel of Romantic Suspense

by Karen Harper

  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.

  35

  Relief and a sense of immense triumph filled the Widow’s Watch that night. After the sheriff had left with Wade under arrest, Officer McCallum had taken Claire’s and Nick’s statements. Even as Wade departed in handcuffs, bruised and battered, he was boasting he’d be released because he could send several very rich Manhattan movers and shakers away for life as well as a New York congressman.

  After that tirade, Claire had taken time to call Liz with the news.

  “Answers, at last, but how horrible!” Liz had said. Claire could tell she was crying. “It’s my fault that he thought Mother stood in his way to dating me. I should never have encouraged him at first, but he—he was such a handsome diversion.”

  “You’re not to blame. He was obviously a sick, evil man. I’ll just bet if we looked into his childhood, he had some female figure he hated or who abused him. But you were blessed with a wonderful mother to remember always.”

  “See—you are a shrink to psychoanalyze Wade that way. And a good friend to comfort me. Want to figure out my father? He was hell-bent on getting his hands on Mother’s diary. Jenna, I don’t know if the sheriff told you, but that book from the locker must have been a WITSEC business book, because it’s all in some sort of code she made up. I called the sheriff and turned it over, so he’s been a busy man tonight. I—I still can’t believe it was murder...and that Wade did it. Thank God he didn’t kill you too.”

  Claire heard her dissolve in tears. She let her cry a minute, praying she didn’t just hang up. Then she tried again. “Liz, listen, I’ll be there late tomorrow morning, so we can talk more. But this is really going to upset your father too, so better let the sheriff tell him—if you tell him.”

  They had talked a little longer while Nick waited nearby. Strange how good she felt to have exposed all that evil. She was grateful to the stranger, her guardian angel, who had called up to Wade from the backyard below. Sometimes in dreadful situations, people were saved by unexplained, heavenly help—but with a Southern accent?

  Jace hugged her in front of Nick before he went upstairs to bed. She hugged him back, so relieved he had not been the one who had hurt Julia and that there was no need for him to explain everything about going to see her on her last day. She felt so much better. Nick actually made her laugh about something that had looked so dire and dangerous. “Sweetheart,” he said, “you’re simply going to have to stop fleeing for your life through historical hotels. There has to be a better way to visit them.”

  “You should talk,” she said, lightly punching him in his hard midriff. “But I did like it better when we were running together and it wasn’t pitch-dark.”

  “Then from now on, let’s just run after Lexi playing tag and run on the beach once we get home and have our baby. Let’s keep Nita on as a nanny for now so we can work together sometimes too.”

  “That will keep Bronco nearby—if not in the house. Nick, we’re going to have to look for a bigger house once we get home.”

  Finally, t
hey went up to bed together. He held her close, and when she slept, she did not dream of running for her life through sugarcane fields, or of a snowmobile accident, desperate darkness, or of a widow walking high up above, grieving her husband’s loss. No nightmares, though near morning she had a crazy dream that her and Nick’s baby was born in the dark attic with a scar on her forehead, and everyone insisted they name her Lily.

  * * *

  Jace went to work at the airport the next morning. Despite the fact they’d got rid of Vern Kirkpatrick and Wade Buxton, he was still uptight over everything that had happened. And a freezing fog suddenly settling in from Lake Huron to turn the air an icy gray didn’t help. At least the plane with Sheriff Archer taking Buxton to jail on the mainland had taken off before this all set in.

  Jace had one more plane to get to its gate despite this soupy atmosphere, one where the pilot, when directed to land at St. Ignace instead, had radioed that was even more socked in and he was coming here.

  It was so cold out on the tarmac that Jace waited just inside the glass doors, listening to the continued control-tower chatter in his headphones. The pilot would only see the runway lights about two minutes before he landed, but the guys in the tower had said he sounded professional. The plane had come from somewhere points south, so he hoped the pilot was used to ice on the wings and the runway, even though it had been plowed clear of snow.

  He glanced down at a discarded copy of the island The Town Crier newspaper, which had predicted an early, brutal winter. “No kidding,” Jace whispered to himself. For the first time in years, the polar vortex had frozen the so-called ice bridge over Lake Huron to St. Ignace solid already. Several daredevils on snowmobiles had tested it and marked it with pine branches for the day and lanterns at night, but some people were using it already. When they’d picked up their repaired snowmobile at Andy Archer’s shop, he’d advised waiting a week, because spots could be soft, especially if you got just a little off the marked trail.

  “Seth,” sounded in his headphones from the tower, “plane approach. It’s all yours.”

  He yanked his gloves on, pulled up his hood and grabbed his two batons, hitting their lights on. He strode out, straining to listen in the wind, squinting to see the headlights. Yes, there it was, on track. The guy was good if he could do an instrument landing at an airport he’d never seen, one with a short runway in the fog. There must be something or someone important on board.

  It landed with just one bump and braked beautifully, turned in, and Jace took over, signaling the small jet to the gate. It was a new one, really nice and worth big bucks. Its engines powered down, and Jace turned off the lights on his signals. In the lit cockpit, through wisps of floating fog, he could see the pilot turning off his instruments. How he longed to be at the controls again.

  The stairs popped out, and two men descended, met by another man Jace hadn’t noticed. They were all bundled up against the cold. Only one of the passengers carried a small suitcase. The greeter gestured broadly, talking away, as he led them into the terminal. Their faces were hidden by their parka hoods.

  Jace was tempted to hang out and try to speak to the pilot, but he went in the side door while the three men entered the airport by the nearby passenger door. The greeter was showing them what looked like a small map and maybe some photographs.

  Once inside, they threw their hoods back. The guy closest to Jace had a really craggy face, one that looked like he’d been in an accident or been scratched. Oh, yeah, it was that ugly guy who had taken photos of their historic house. He didn’t know the guy on the far side, but the man in the middle, looking at the pictures—damn, it was Clayton Ames!

  * * *

  “So how was Liz?” Nick asked Claire after she came back in with Bronco, who had taken her and Lexi in a snowmobile to see Liz.

  “Holding up better than I expected. Michael’s going home, though he’s still trying to get her to move Mr. Logan and herself to Baltimore. But she’s not going. I suggested moving to Naples—new and old money, I told her, and a real sense of fashion. Needless to say, I didn’t mention places like Goodland and roughing it in the Glades, not in a corset, anyway.”

  He laughed, and they hugged with Lexi pressed between them. “I hope you two got to see Scout,” he told the child.

  “Of course we did,” Lexi said with a smile. “When Mommy said Naples to Miss Liz, I told her, bring Scout! We’re going to go home there, aren’t we, and real soon?”

  “If winter comes, can spring—or home—be far behind?” Claire mused, almost to herself. “Not right now, sweetheart, but soon.”

  Lexi said, “Remember what Dorothy said in The Wizard of Oz? ‘There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home.’ So all we need is red shoes to click together—and Scout,” she added as she headed upstairs to tell Nita they were back.

  Claire sighed with relief. Lexi had accepted that Scout would be her friend this winter instead of Lily. Things were definitely looking up.

  “I’m going to call Liz again because I told her I’d check in when we got home. She’s still scared something will go wrong.”

  “You two remind me of you and Darcy,” he said and patted her bottom. “I’m going to phone that number the sheriff gave us to see if he knows what all they’re going to charge Wade with.”

  “Always the lawyer,” she teased.

  “Always the forensic psychologist,” he countered. “Stick with me, my love, and together, we’ll conquer the world—and Clayton Ames.”

  * * *

  Jace pushed his snowmobile to top speed. Clayton Ames here! However that happened, no time to analyze or agonize. There was only one reason he would be here, and that was to stop Nick—all of them—before they could stop him. He had to warn everyone, but the monster had a head start on a large snowmobile the ugly guy was driving, and the greeter was with them. All three men were on it, and they had a good lead. Jace had tried to phone both Claire and Nick, but their cell numbers were busy and he didn’t have the others’ numbers on him, so he’d left a desperate voice mail.

  He tried to plan ahead. He had one advantage, and that was that Ames hadn’t seen him. You might know the sheriff wasn’t on the island. If he didn’t have to steer this thing with both hands, he’d call his office anyway, find out where Officer Stan McCallum was, get him to Widow’s Watch to guard the place. He had no doubt that was where they were headed, if not directly, soon. No wonder Ames’s lackey had taken pictures of the house. Not just to ID it, but to make a plan to access it. But how had they located them here on a Northern island, with new names?

  He had to catch up but he had to be careful in these turns. The branches of the fir trees hung heavy. In the fog, his headlights didn’t go far, but at least, in these conditions, no other vehicles were coming at him.

  Once on Main Street, he pushed the snowmobile as fast as it would go. At least there were some lights here, but he didn’t see Ames’s machine ahead. He’d go directly into the carriage house, then rush in to warn everyone.

  Even in late afternoon, this area was nearly deserted with the snow, cold and fog. He was almost tempted to cry out for help to the few strangers abroad, get a posse like in the old days. He thought of Mr. Logan, whom he hadn’t met but had heard about, lost in his imaginary world of good guys vs. bad guys. Trouble was, with Ames here, that was the real world too.

  * * *

  “I heard Jace’s snowmobile in the carriage house,” Claire told Nick, “so I’d better put that other pizza in the oven. He can split that one with Gina and Heck when they get back. I wasn’t expecting him yet, but I should have known there’d be no planes with this freezing fog socking everything in.”

  “Sure. Fine,” he said, hardly paying attention as he watched a Detroit Lions football game on the muted TV set mounted on the kitchen wall.

  “My pizza is pretty hot, Mommy. I’m blowin
g on it,” Lexi said. “Oh, I think I heard Gina outside yelling, so they’re back too.”

  “Maybe they forgot their key,” Claire said, “but that isn’t like Heck. And Jace would have a key, but maybe that wasn’t his snowmobile we heard.”

  Claire went to the side door. Gina stood there, wide-eyed and gagged, with a gun to her head. The man who had taken photos of the house—and who had a livid scratch on his forehead—was the one holding the barrel of a handgun to her temple.

  Worse—was she hallucinating?—another man holding a gun to Heck’s head stood behind him, and behind him... Clayton Ames. Her knees almost buckled. Her first instinct was to slam the door, but they could shoot Gina and Heck. And where was Jace? Her mind went into overdrive.

  “Ah, I’ve found you, my dear,” Clayton said. “Claire Markwood, formerly Mrs. Jason Britten, I presume? Oh, and everyone’s favorite hotshot pilot, your previous husband, is unconscious from a rap on his hard head and tied up in the carriage house here, so don’t be expecting him for dinner. He appeared to be in such a rush he didn’t even know what hit him. Now may we come in?”

  Claire gasped and stumbled backward as the man shoved Gina in the door with Heck behind her. Both had their hands tied, and Heck was gagged too. After everything—this was impossible, the ultimate nightmare. Surely, Wade had not been working for Ames and had tipped him off—no, that could not be.

  Ames himself had a gun, which he now pressed into Claire’s back as he pushed her ahead of him, leading the others in. He whispered, “Shall we not tell Nick you and little Lexi are the ones to blame for this impromptu, final visit? One of my Acapulco maids watches American TV and had Inside Edition on when I was passing through the room, and there you were. What a surprise! Everything is luck and timing, isn’t it?”

  Claire felt sick to her soul. This was her fault. She had blown it, trying to help Liz.

  In the kitchen, Nita saw them first and screamed. Nick had a piece of pizza partway to his mouth. Her fault. Her fault, sounded in her head.