Moriah's Landing Bundle

by Amanda Stevens

  The sun had sunk in the sky off to the west. She could see the darkness through the cracks in the wallboards. Soon the moon would rise, round and golden, and she knew whoever had left her here would come back for her.

  Slowly, she pulled the wrench closer. Now all she had to do was get the loop to slide up the heavy tool. Just a few inches, just so she could get some leverage. If she did it quickly enough, she could grab the wrench before it slid all the way through the loop and dropped to the floor again.

  But she’d had it at this point so many times and hadn’t been able to move quickly enough. It meant letting go of the belt and grabbing the tool in just that instant.

  Her head ached and she knew the queasiness in her stomach was making it harder for her to maneuver the wrench. As if using her left hand wasn’t awkward enough.

  She held her breath as she lifted her arm slowly. The tool rose, higher and higher. Any moment it would begin to slide. Just a little higher. She let go of the belt and grabbed for the wrench, her fingers brushed the cold steel.

  For a moment, she thought she’d missed again. She waited to hear the clatter of the tool on the boards below her. Then she looked down at her hand and saw that her fingers had closed around the end of the wrench. She’d done it!

  Now if she could just use it to pry the long piece of pipe from the wall. She could slide the other end of the cuffs off and she would be free.

  She wedged the wrench between the long pipe and the wood of the wall and pulled with all her strength. She felt it give! She almost let out a whoop. She pried again. The screws that held the long pipe in place pulled out of the weathered wood at one end.

  She hurriedly went to work on the other end, excitement making her giddy. She refused to let herself think beyond getting the handcuff free of the pipe.

  The other screws gave. She jerked the long pipe to her, then worked the metal loop of the handcuffs down it until she was no longer attached to it. She sat up, rubbing her wrist, then her ankle.

  The sun was long gone. Darkness had filled the room. In the distance, she heard a sound. Hurriedly she slid off the bench and worked her way to the door she’d seen earlier, the handcuff attached to her ankle dragging on the floor. She’d half expected the door to be locked. But then why handcuff her if that was the case?

  The door swung open, the hinges groaning. She looked out to see nothing but ocean—and a small narrow walkway. She stepped out. The walkway appeared to circle the building she’d been in. She started around it.

  Even before she turned the second corner, she knew what she’d find. It was a floating dock, moored far out to sea. On it was the small building she’d been held prisoner in. As far as the eye could see there was nothing but water. Her only option would be to swim, only she had no idea which way to go or how far from land she might be.

  She felt tears well in her eyes, blurring the flat surface of the sea as the moon rose up from the water, a round ball of fire, turning everything it touched to gold. She heard him behind her and wondered how long he’d been waiting on the far side of the building.

  She turned, just wanting it to be over. She couldn’t take any more disappointments. Wherever Jonah was, he couldn’t help her now and she had no way to help herself.

  He came toward her, backlit by the full moon. It wasn’t until he was almost to her that she saw he had one hand behind his back, the other outstretched. As he grew closer, she saw what he held out to her. A bouquet of white daisies tied in a worn red ribbon.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Kat looked from the daisies up into his face, her heart a hammer in her chest.

  “You look so much like your mother,” Ernie McDougal said shyly. “I loved her, you know. She said she didn’t love me.” He shook his head. “She said a lot of things, but I knew she did love me. Why else would she always tease me at the diner.” He smiled at the memory, his eyes turning glassy in the moonlight.

  She could find no breath to breathe, let alone speak as she stared at him, remembering his shyness and his moment of confusion at the bait shop. A thought hit her between the eyes: He’d had the kids spray paint his building just to get me to come over.

  “Mr. McDougal, you’re making a mistake,” she said, the words coming on short, hard breaths. “I’m not my mother.”

  His smile faded. “Why did you tease me like that if you didn’t love me?” He sounded pathetic, certainly not someone her mother would have ever looked at twice. Except at the diner, where she teased and taunted and raked in the tips. Ernie had never stood a chance with her mother. What had made him think he had?

  “I bought you such pretty things. Like this white scarf.” He brought his other hand out from behind his back and held up a white scarf.

  It was all Kat could do not to scream at the sight of it. “I know you liked that. You wore it all the time. You said you liked the way it moved in the breeze. Pure silk. You’d never had a silk scarf before. I heard you tell Marley as much.” He smiled, caught up in the memory.

  Kat thought she heard something over the sound of his voice and the lap of the water at the boards beneath them. A boat. She could hear a boat motor in the distance.

  Ernie’s gaze seemed to settle on her again. “You do like the scarf, don’t you?”

  “Yes.” It took all the strength she could muster to reach out and take the scarf from his hand. She could see that he was waiting for her to put it on.

  She remembered what he’d said about her mother liking it because it blew in the breeze. Would whoever was on the boat see the white scarf? Would they come over to investigate?

  With trembling fingers, she tied the scarf around her neck.

  Ernie smiled. “I know you like the perfume, too. No one bought you anything so expensive, you said. You wore it all the time. I heard you tell Brody that a real man bought it for you. You wouldn’t have said that if you hadn’t meant it. I saw the look in your eyes when you said it.”

  She listened for the boat, the sound growing closer. She felt the scarf flutter in the breeze. Did she dare try to wave to the boat? What would Ernie do?

  “You put the daisies in a vase and you would look at them and get that dreamy look in your eyes,” he said, his voice quavering. “You called me your secret admirer.”

  His words finally registered. Oh my God. It was just as Jonah had suspected. Unrequited love. Ernie had never told her mother that he was the one who’d left her the gifts. When she wore the scarf and the perfume and bragged about the flowers, he’d overheard her in the diner. He’d thought she felt something for him, and all the time she’d had no idea it was Ernie McDougal.

  His gaze hardened as he looked at Kat. “You said such vicious things to me tonight in the gazebo. I just wanted to walk you home. It was so hard for me to finally tell you that I loved you. But I thought with the full moon…” He shook his head. “You shouldn’t have said those terrible things to me.”

  She saw him tighten his hold on the daisies, crushing the stems in his fist, the veins in his suntanned arms bunching.

  “You’re right, I shouldn’t have,” she said quickly, reaching out for the daisies, her hand shaking.

  He looked up in surprise, his eyes shiny with hope in the moonlight.

  “You just surprised me,” she said, imagining how her mother had reacted at the news that her secret admirer was just Ernie.

  The boat motor slowed. Ernie didn’t seem to notice. She could hear it headed this way. Someone must have seen the white scarf in the moonlight. If only they would come close enough…

  THE MOMENT TOMMY freed Jonah’s hands, he tore at the rope binding his ankles. “I want you to hide. Go back deep into the boat and hide. Don’t come out unless I tell you to, do you understand?”

  Tommy nodded. “You’re going to help Kat?” he said in a hoarse whisper. “I didn’t know they would hurt Kat.”

  Jonah nodded and got up, glancing toward the stairs to the upper deck. Then he knelt over Deke’s dead body, realizing he was starting to make
a habit of taking weapons off dead men. He pulled out the .44 magnum, checked to make sure it was fully loaded, not surprised to find it was.

  He looked back to see that Tommy had gone to hide, then he headed for the steps, wondering how many men were topside. As he started up the stairs, the boat began to slow. He listened, hearing nothing but the throb of the motor, then the boat banged against a dock and he heard Kat’s scream for help.

  He bounded up the stairs. Max didn’t hear him coming. Only when he came flying out from belowdecks did Max turn and try to go for his gun, but Jonah never gave him a chance to fire. He pulled the trigger on the .44 magnum, hitting the rogue agent in the chest twice before Max’s body could drop to the deck.

  Then Jonah swung the barrel around as a crew member dived for him. The bullets caught the man in the throat and shoulder. Jonah stepped back as the man crumpled at his feet. Another one of the crew tried to make a run for it, diving overboard. Jonah let him go, swinging around, following the direction he’d heard the scream come from.

  He saw the scarf first. It billowed out in the breeze, stark white in the moonlight. She stood on what appeared to be a floating dock, looking as if she was waiting for a boat.

  For a moment, Jonah didn’t see the man in the shadow of the boathouse. Then Ernie McDougal stepped out to encircle Kat’s waist. The blade of the knife in his other hand glittered in the moonlight as he drew it slowly across her neck, just above the scarf, the tip touching just enough that it drew blood.

  Kat cried out, but held perfectly still.

  Jonah froze, the gun in his hand wavering as he stared in horror at the scene before him.

  “She doesn’t love you, Ries,” Ernie said, his voice flat. “She loves me.”

  Jonah saw the terror in Kat’s face. And the hope. She needed a superhero, a man with powers that Jonah Ries did not possess. And yet the night out at Dr. Manning’s, he’d stopped her car. Had it only been out of sheer will? Or was the answer in the genes he’d so despised all of his life?

  He looked at Ernie McDougal, concentrating on the hand holding the knife, knowing what Ernie planned to do, sensing it like nothing he’d ever felt before. Ernie was going to kill her. As he’d killed her mother. Only this time, he planned to take his own life. There was nothing Jonah could do to stop him. Nothing short of willing him to move the knife away from Kat’s throat, knowing that one slip and it would be over.

  Silently, he sent it like a prayer, all his senses on the hand holding the knife. All his will on saving Kat. He cursed the years he’d denied who he was, what he was, and gave in, opening his soul to those who had gone before him, pleading for their help now.

  KAT TOLD HERSELF she would never know exactly what happened. The doctors said her ramblings were from her loss of blood. Hallucinations. Why else would she have thought she’d seen the ghosts of women floating over Jonah, their spirits glowing in the moonlight.

  All she knew was that one moment Ernie had a knife to her throat, the cut he’d made burning, his arm around her crushing the breath from her. Then she’d felt his body begin to tremble, the hand with the knife jerking away from her throat.

  She’d acted out of instinct, she supposed, since she couldn’t remember thinking before she buried her elbow in Ernie’s stomach. He stumbled back, teetering for a moment on the edge of the dock. She could still see him suspended there, trying to regain his balance, the knife in his hand, his eyes on the blade as if it had a life of its own.

  And then, with no warning, Ernie had plunged the knife into his own heart. He’d looked up then, his gaze connecting with hers, then he’d fallen backward into the ocean.

  She’d expected his body to surface again, but it didn’t. Then Jonah was there, taking her in his arms, frantically trying to stop the bleeding from the cut on her neck, a cut she could no longer feel. All she knew was that she was in the safety of his arms and nothing else mattered.

  Later in the hospital she would remember the pounding of the boat, the wind blowing the tops off the waves, showering then both with cold salty water as Jonah rushed her toward Moriah’s Landing.

  The storm had come out of nowhere, waves crashing over the deck of the boat, washing away the boxes and the bodies inside. Through the spray, she had seen Lighthouse Island, the lamp burning brightly, and she’d thought of her father. How many times had he rushed toward the light, trying to get home?

  Once, she had looked back into the moonlight darkness thinking she could still see the dock, almost thinking she saw Ernie in the water, pulling himself up. But she knew that had only been her fear making her imagine it. Ernie wouldn’t be coming back and she didn’t even question how she knew that.

  It wasn’t until they’d reached the hospital that someone, maybe Jonah, had untied the white scarf around her neck. It had been white, hadn’t it? Funny, but she now remembered it as being bright red. Red as blood.

  “You are not going to die,” she’d heard Jonah say as she was rushed down the hall on a gurney. He’d held her hand, squeezing it, but his voice had sounded far away. “You are not going to die. If it takes everything in me, I will not let you die.”

  She remembered smiling up at him and saying something about superheroes and powers and tarot cards and true love.

  But when she’d closed her eyes to rest, she realized that none of it made any sense at all.

  She might have seen her mother. Her father had been waiting for her in a room filled with light, but he sent her back, saying she wasn’t finished yet. After that, she slept.

  JONAH LEANED OVER THE bed to plant a kiss on Kat’s forehead. She slept, the sleep of angels, her face peaceful.

  “How is she?” Cassandra asked from the doorway.

  He nodded her in.

  His cousin joined him. She wasn’t wearing her caftan nor her bracelets. She wore jeans and a blouse, her hair dark like his again. “I’ll buy you a cup of coffee,” she offered. “The doctor said she’ll sleep for another two hours and twenty-seven minutes.”

  He smiled at that, knowing no doctor had said that. Kat would be awake just before dawn, in exactly two hours and twenty-seven minutes. That didn’t leave him much time. He looked down at her, his heart bursting and said “I love you” in his mind, hoping she would hear it.

  “You saved her life,” Cassandra said when he joined her in a corner of the empty cafeteria. Outside, darkness hunkered in the trees, the moon full and glowing.

  Had he saved her life? He couldn’t be sure. So many things had happened: Ernie, the storm, all that blood. He could still see Kat’s pale face and feel the life seeping out of her as he raced toward Moriah’s Landing, willing her to live with all the strength in him.

  “I’ve decided to stay in Moriah’s Landing. Ernie was going to put the Bait & Tackle shop up for sale. I’m gonna buy it. I’ll be needing a partner if I want to make it a true charter business,” Cassandra was saying. “Ernie was too busy fronting for the secret society to make much out of it.”

  Jonah nodded. It had all come out, Tommy being the real hero as he told the cops how Ernie had smuggled in the bodies of witches from around the world for a member of the secret society’s genetic research. Unfortunately, the latest shipment of bodies had been washed overboard and lost at sea. Nor was it known who the intended buyer was. Ernie had taken that to his watery grave.

  “Unless you’re thinking about staying with the FBI?” Cassandra said.

  He hadn’t thought about it until that moment, but he knew he’d changed since he’d come back to Moriah’s Landing and could never go back to the way he was. Just as he couldn’t go back to the FBI.

  “Maybe Kat would like a partner,” Cassandra said, and smiled.

  Yes, he thought, he had a feeling Kat would like that.

  “I take it you’re no longer…involved with Dr. Manning?” Jonah asked, curious why she’d helped the man cheat at poker.

  “It got me in the game, which was amusing for a while.” Cassandra smiled. “And profitable. I hadn’t pla
nned to stay any longer than the summer. But then you showed up.”

  It would take some getting used to, being around Cassandra, someone who knew him almost better than he knew himself. It would take even more getting used to having a family again.

  “When are you going to tell her?” Cassandra asked, glancing back down the hall toward Kat’s room.

  Suddenly he saw it. The white house near the sea, the swing set in the backyard, the three kids and Kat, the sunlight pouring down on them, the sound of laughter as they turned to look back at him.

  Cassandra swung her gaze back around to him. She smiled. “Unless, of course, you’ve changed your mind about having a family of your own?”

  He finished his coffee. “Thanks.”

  Cassandra shrugged. “What did I do?”

  As if she didn’t know. “I suppose I don’t need to tell you where I’m going?”

  Her expression turned somber. She shook her head and reached out to grasp his hand. She squeezed it. “Good luck.”

  They both knew where he was headed would take a lot more than luck.

  MIST ROSE from St. John’s Cemetery and moved restlessly through the gravestones. The old wrought-iron gate groaned as Jonah pushed it open and stepped onto the hallowed ground. He could feel a vibration deep inside him as he worked his way through the moonlit stones.

  He felt them all, the peaceful sleeping the sleep of eternity, the restless turning in their coffins, all reaching out to him as he made his way to the graves of his parents.

  He hadn’t been here since both had been laid to rest. Now he stood over the matching headstones, the moonlight at his back. Betrayal comes in all forms. Betraying your heritage was the worst in a family like his.

  But he’d come home now. And he planned to stay. That meant admitting who he was. What he was. It wouldn’t be easy. His parents knew that better than most. They had taken their lives rather than know so much about the world and the lost souls in it.

  He bowed his head, reaching out to them as he hadn’t in life, finally feeling that elusive sense of peace he’d so yearned for as he accepted the legacy that had been handed down for too many generations to count.