by Sophie Moss
“I do understand,” he shouted back. “If you’d give me two seconds to explain—”
She yanked the magazine out of his pocket. “You think you understand?” She opened to the page about the nurse, shoved the article at him. “This is what he would do to me if he found me. This is what he would to do you! To Kelsey!” Her voice broke when she thought of little girl she had left. The little girl who’d been abandoned twice now in her life. “This is why I’m leaving, Dominic. If he finds me with you, he’ll kill you! He’ll kill your whole family!”
Chapter 14
“Drink this,” Dominic said, handing Tara a Guinness and settling down beside her on a sheltered outcropping of rocks overlooking the bay. “And after you do,” he said, watching her take a sip. “I want you to tell me everything.”
Tara stared at the boats bobbing gently in the quiet water. Live music drifted down from the crowded streets of the village above them. The scent of malt vinegar and pipe smoke floated out of the open doors of the pubs, warring with the salty breezes blowing in from the bay. “Where should I start?”
“Why don’t you start by telling me your real name?”
“It’s Sydney Carter.”
Dominic nodded, taking a deep breath. “Alright, Sydney—”
“I don’t want you to call me that.”
His gaze shifted over, locking on hers.
“I want you to call me Tara.”
“Because you’re afraid someone will overhear?”
“Because Sydney is dead.” Tara watched a dragonfly land on the rock beside them. “I killed her.”
“Okay,” Dominic said slowly. “Why don’t you start by telling me how?”
Tara’s gaze drifted back out to the water. “It was the first time he left me alone, since the last time he put me in the hospital. Since the last time he beat me and made it look like an accident.” Her voice was calm, dead calm. “It was raining. There was a big storm headed for Houston.”
“Houston?”
“Houston. Yes. That’s where I’m from. Or at least, that’s where my father and I moved after my mother died.”
Dominic nodded, processing. “Go on.”
“There was a flash flood warning. Not that anyone ever took them seriously, but we’d had three straight months of drought. Of hot, sticky, humid heat. The stream beds were all dried up, the ground hard as a rock, and a huge storm was heading for Houston. The weatherman was warning people to stay off the low roads, to use caution when driving. So I did the opposite. I drove my car down to the parking lot under the bridge. I left it there and hailed a taxi to the airport. I thought if I could get to the airport fast enough, I could beat it. That I might be able to get out before it hit. And when it did, my car would get swept into the floodwaters.”
“And everyone would think you were dead,” Dominic finished for her.
“Yes. And it worked. I got out of the city before the storm hit, flew to Rome and then took a train to Amsterdam. I worked there for a couple weeks and then took a train to Ireland. I was looking for work in Galway when I found the advertisement for a waitress in your pub. I thought if I could get that job, in a place so removed from the rest of the world, I might be able to take a few days to think, to process what I’d just done and figure out where I was going to go for the next six months.”
“You never meant to stay,” Dominic realized. “You said were looking for summer work, but you were only planning to stay a week or two.”
Tara nodded.
“But… you stayed.”
“I stayed,” Tara echoed. “And I thought I might have even fooled him. I might have even won. Until today, when I saw the article.”
“Okay.” Dominic waited for her to take another sip. “Why don’t you tell me about the nurse in the article.”
Tears stung the back of Tara’s eyes but she fought them back. The woman in the magazine had died. Had been killed, because of her. How was she every going to forgive herself for that? She focused on the foam of her drink, avoiding Dominic’s gaze. “Carol Johnson—the one who was murdered—she was the nurse on staff the last time I was admitted. She knew—I don’t know how she knew—but she knew. And she waited until Philip left my room and then she came back in with the envelope.”
“The envelope?”
“The envelope holding the passport, the birth certificate, and the credit card to purchase the airline ticket.”
“She just gave it to you?”
Tara nodded. “She didn’t say anything. She didn’t need to say anything. She just handed it to me and walked out of the room.”
“How did you know it was safe? How did you know it wasn’t a set up?”
“I didn’t,” Tara admitted. “But I was desperate. I would have taken anything from anyone if it offered a way out.”
Dominic motioned for her to take another sip. “So you think he killed her?”
Tara lowered the glass. “I know he killed her. Jacob Cohen—the man who created my papers—the police arrested him. If there are any records of my documents, any pictures of me in his files, the Feds have them now. And Philip is a powerful man. He has connections everywhere. All they have to do is trace my credit card to Europe, then the passport number to Ireland.”
“Ireland is a big country.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“But how do you know he’ll look for you on Seal Island?”
“He won’t. He’ll have hired someone by now.”
Dominic searched her face. “You think there’s a detective looking for you?”
Tara nodded. “Philip might have given the police two weeks, three at the most, to recover my body. When they didn’t, he would have hired someone. Someone good. And it’s only a matter of time before he tracks me to the island.”
Dominic gazed out at the water. The happy chatter of tourists and travelers drifted down from the crowded streets. Sea gulls rode the soft summer breezes into the harbor, landing on pilings and squawking at children clamoring onto the pier. “How did you meet him, Tara? I need to understand how you could have gotten involved with someone like this.”
Tara nodded. “I met him when I was a resident at St. Joseph’s Hospital. I had no family. No friends. No life, except my work. Which I loved. It was all I took pride in. But I was weak. I was vulnerable. And I was young and stupid enough to believe that a man could fall for a woman in a matter of weeks.” Tara’s gaze slid over to Dominic’s face when he tensed. “I’m not young and I’m not stupid and I’m not vulnerable anymore.”
“Go on,” he said.
“We were married within months, in front of a crowd of two hundred people. A big, flashy high-society wedding. Everyone told me how lucky I was. How fortunate I was to be marrying the dashing heart surgeon. He was worshiped in the medical community, worshiped in Houston. Even if I had told someone what he was like at home, no one would have believed me.”
Tara swallowed another sip of the dark beer, letting it calm her. “He started to work on me. I didn’t even know it was happening. He celebrated my successes and triumphs in the ER at first, supporting me. Or so I thought. But slowly, in our conversations about work at dinner, I began to feel inferior. I began to see—with his help—that I was making mistakes. And I started to wonder if I was cut out for it. If I was even meant to do this profession that I had been so passionate about before I met him.”
Tara watched a gull land on the pier, pecking at a piece of breaded fish dropped by one of the children. “When I expressed those fears, as anyone does when they first start a profession, he agreed with me. He didn’t think I was emotionally strong enough or professionally developed enough to handle a position in the emergency room. He thought I would get more satisfaction, more personal fulfillment from working behind the scenes, from working in a different environment.
“I tried transferring to oncology, then pediatrics. But I couldn’t find a rhythm in either of them. I couldn’t establish the confidence a doctor needs to perform her job.”
“Because he was slowly breaking it down every day.”
Tara nodded. “He was there for me when I came home confused and exhausted. Always so comforting. Always so understanding. I didn’t need to make money, he told me. I didn’t need to work if I didn’t want to. He could support both of us.”
Dominic shook his head slowly.
“It seemed like such a simple thing to take a little time off,” Tara continued. “To stay home for a few months and reassess. I’d never kept house before. I thought it might be fun. And I loved him. I believed he was looking out for me. That he only wanted what was best for me. That he only wanted me to be happy.
“I had no idea how skillfully he was manipulating me. How patient and attentive he could be to every detail. He’d make little remarks at first, little criticisms about how I dressed or how I spoke. About how I carried myself. I trusted him. I looked up to him. I wanted to please him.
“I tried to become everything he wanted. I was so desperate for his approval, for his praise. I was grasping for validation that I was doing a good job, that I was capable of being a good wife, that I was capable of being good at something. When he hit me the first time—a backhand across the face for forgetting to pick up his dry cleaning—I figured I deserved it. I figured I asked for it.”
“You didn’t ask for it.”
“I know that now.” Tara took a deep breath. “But I didn’t then. I was someone else then. I don’t even recognize the person I was when I was with him.”
“How long were you with him?”
“Six years.”
Dominic closed his eyes, rage forming a thick knot inside him. “Did you ever go to the police?”
Tara nodded. “Twice.”
Shock registered on his face. “What happened?”
“They didn’t believe me.”
Dominic’s hands curled around his pint glass.
“Like I said, Philip is a very powerful man with connections everywhere. Three years ago, the chief of police of the Houston police department was shot through the chest. He needed open heart surgery to remove the bullet and repair the main artery. Philip was the one who operated on him. He saved his life. Became their hero of the force. The hero of the city.”
Dominic let out a long breath. “Let me guess. He was also a contributor.”
“One of the top donors,” Tara confirmed. “We never missed a charity function.”
“He paraded you around in front of them?”
Tara nodded.
“After you’d gone to them, told them he was abusing you?”
“Yes.”
“Christ, Tara.”
“I ran after that. When I knew the police couldn’t—wouldn’t—help me. But he found me. And every time the punishment got worse.”
Dominic pushed to his feet, started to pace.
“I know what it’s like to be found,” Tara said, watching him struggle to process the truth. “I know what it’s like to be punished for running away. But he won’t punish me this time. He won’t drag me back to his house and remind me of my duties. I’ve humiliated him, Dominic. I’ve put a crack in that perfect, untarnishable image. And there’s only one thing left for him to do.”
“But say that he doesn’t know where you are,” Dominic cut in, continuing to stalk back and forth across the long flat rock. “Say that he thinks you are dead.”
“He knows, Dominic. He killed the nurse who helped me escape and now he’s coming after me.”
“But what if this nurse was killed by someone else?” Dominic pressed, refusing to believe. “Did you leave any other clues? Any other possible trail?”
“I won’t stay here and wait for him to find me.”
Dominic stopped and stared at her. “So that’s it, then? You’re just going to run forever?”
“He’ll never stop searching for me, Dominic. He’ll never give up.”
“But what about going to the Irish police? What about getting a lawyer here, where your husband doesn’t have any connections?”
“I can’t risk losing.”
“But if you didn’t lose,” Dominic argued. “You’d be free.”
“I can’t go back there.” Tara shook her head. “I won’t go back there.”
“Nobody’s asking you to go back there,” Dominic cut in, frustrated. “I’m asking you to think about your options. To think about the life that you’re choosing.”
“The life that I’m choosing doesn’t endanger anyone but myself. Staying here on the island endangers you, Kelsey, and anyone else who’s connected to me.”
“But you’re only looking at this situation in black and white. You’re not looking at your options. If you stayed here, and fought this, you wouldn’t be alone. You’d have me.” He knelt down, took her hand, covering it with both of his own. “You’d have every person on the island behind you, protecting you, fighting with you.”
“It’s not that simple, Dominic. You don’t know who you’re dealing with.”
“I think I do.”
Tara looked up at him questioningly.
Dominic’s eyes drifted out to the water and, lowering himself back to the rock, he let out a long breath. “Maybe not exactly what you’re dealing with, but I think I have a pretty good grasp on the general situation.” Watching a lone fishing boat cut a slow path into the harbor, he shook his head slowly. “Do you remember the night a few weeks ago when Liam told you we didn’t grow up on the island?”
Tara nodded.
“You asked me about it later that night and I told you that my parents died when we were kids and we moved to the island to live with our grandparents.”
“Yes, I remember.”
“I wasn’t exactly telling the truth.”
Tara waited for him to go on.
“I don’t talk about my parents, Tara. Ever.” Dominic watched the boat disappear around the bend leading out to the ocean. “Because the truth is, I don’t know where my parents are.”
“They… left you?”
“Not exactly. My mother—yes, she took off when I was seven. She left Liam and I with our father in Dublin.”
“The same age Kelsey was when her mother left her,” Tara realized.
Dominic nodded. “Believe me, the irony of that was not lost on me. But the two women left for very different reasons. Rachel, my wife, was escorted from the island by the Irish police last summer. She was arrested for drug running.”
“Drugs?” Tara breathed, not willing to believe.
“Heroin, mostly,” Dominic continued, his voice flat. “She was working with her brothers, disguised as a family of fisherman living in Galway. They’d meet her at night, on the docks, after everyone had gone to bed. They chose Seal Island as a hub. And they needed someone on the inside, to hide the stash. The police found most of it hidden in Brennan’s spare cottage—where one of her brothers was living. The rest was buried in waterproof containers under the harbor.”
“The scary things in the water,” Tara realized, remembering back to their conversation in her cottage weeks ago. “Those were the scary things in the water that Kelsey was afraid of.”
Dominic nodded. “To Rachel’s credit—which I give her very little—I think she was only trying to protect Kelsey. She thought if she could keep her out of the water and away from the docks it would prevent her from ever following her down there.”
“Was she… using?”
“No.” Dominic shook his head. “I would have known if she was. Liam and I grew up in a rough section of Dublin. We knew what users looked like, acted like. Rachel was always very clearheaded, always on top of everything. She was meticulous about details, schedules. I should have known it was curious behavior for someone who just wanted to live a peaceful life on an island.”
“Is that what she said?” Tara asked, her heart sinking. “When she first came to the island, is that what she said she was looking for?”
Dominic nodded. “She never had any intention of falling for someone, let alo
ne having his child. But it provided a perfect cover, so she went along with it.” Dominic’s gaze held Tara’s. “She walked into the pub asking for a job as a waitress. With nothing but the clothes on her back, wanting only a quiet place to live for the summer.”
Tara squeezed her eyes shut.
“Now do you understand why I didn’t want to hire you?”
Tara nodded, still trying to process it all. “Where is she now?”
“In jail.”
“Does Kelsey ever visit her?”
“No.”
“Does she want to?”
“No.”
“Are you sure—?”
“She’s her mother, Tara. I will always leave that door open for her to decide. If she changes her mind when she gets older, we’ll have a discussion and reassess.”
Tara watched a group of teenagers pile into a rowboat, laughing as they set out for a day on the water, as carefree as the wind. “Are you… divorced?”
“Yes. The papers came about two weeks before you arrived on the island.”
“No wonder you wanted me gone the moment you saw me.”
“The memory was still fresh. There were too many similarities.”
“And I wouldn’t talk about my past,” Tara finished for him.
Dominic nodded.
And still. Still he had found it in his heart to trust her. To think he might even love her. Tara let out a long breath. “Tell me about your mother.”
“My father was a drunk. He used her as a punching bag. She put up with it for a few years, and then left.”
Slowly, Tara lifted her eyes to his. “Your father hit your mother?”
Dominic nodded.
“But… what happened when she left? Didn’t she try to take you with her?”
“No.”
“Did your father go after her?”
“No.”
“But… wasn’t he angry?”
“Yes.”
“Then who did he…?” Tara lifted her eyes to Dominic’s face. “No,” she breathed, but when he continued to hold her searching gaze, she flashed back to her argument with Glenna, the day the other woman confronted her about her past. ‘You know nothing of what I’ve been through!’ ‘You’re right, I don’t. There’s only one person on this island who could understand what you’ve been through. But you’re too blind to see it.’ “Oh my god,” she breathed. “How could you not have told me…? How could I not have known?”