by Cara Summers
“On my way.”
AS REALITY DRIFTED BACK, Ian tried hard to focus. His assailant had used some kind of Taser on him with enough power to put him out for a moment. Not long. Just enough time for his hands to be tied behind his back. He lay on his side just in front of the door to the tower room. And through slitted eyes, he saw the work boots.
One of them drove into his stomach. “Get up.”
He coughed. The voice had been deep and falsely guttural. Whoever it was had hopes of disguising it. Ian took as much time as he dared getting to his knees. As he did, he moved his gaze above the boots, up legs covered in loose-fitting work pants to a similarly loose-fitting work shirt. It was a gun and not a Taser that was aimed at him now. It had a silencer on it. Finally, he lifted his eyes to a face covered in a ski mask.
From a distance, he might have taken the person for a small man. But this close, he was pretty sure he was facing a woman. The small size of the boots and the attempt to disguise the voice were giveaways.
“You’re Mary Brenner, aren’t you?” he asked.
He saw surprise flicker for a moment in the woman’s eyes. But it was quickly replaced by a fury that bordered on madness. “I haven’t been Mary V. Brenner in fifty-five years. I left that name behind when I left Belle Island. And when I returned, I’d reinvented myself. You’re going to be sorry that you poked around in the past. So are the Brightmans. Move.”
She motioned with the gun toward the stairwell. “If we run into anyone, you block me from their view, and don’t try anything or I’ll shoot them.”
She would, too, he thought. He’d read enough in her eyes to convince him of that. But she wasn’t disguising her voice anymore. Two things were working in his favor. She was leading him away from Jillian, and he knew who she was.
“Where are we going?” he asked conversationally as they began their descent to the second floor.
“To the cliffs where I took Samuel that night. Then we’ll give Jillian a call and invite her to join us. I’m going to end everything in the same place I thought I ended it fifty-five years ago.”
16
WHEN THE KNOCK ON THE TOWER door sounded, Jillian raced down the circular staircase. “Avery?”
“Right you are. I’ve brought the colonel.”
She opened the door. The Colonel Jenkins standing in front of her was a sharp right turn from the man she’d seen the day before. Though he was still impeccably dressed, there were dark circles beneath his eyes, and the lines on his face seemed to have deepened.
“Thank you for seeing me, Ms. Brightman.”
Avery walked in with the colonel, saying in a low tone as he passed her, “Ian’s friend Cody Marsh is here, too. I sent him to Ian’s room, and I explained to Colonel Jenkins that because of safety concerns, I’ll be hanging around until they join us.”
The colonel led the way up the staircase, pausing at the top to look around the room before he moved forward. Jillian moved past him and gestured to a grouping of chairs near the glass balcony doors.
The colonel sighed as he sank into one of them. “I don’t remember this room. Not the way I remember the library and the maze. I was hoping I would. That it would give me some answers.” He pressed his fingers to his temples. “Everything is coming in bits and pieces. But my father used to bring me to this place when I was little. There was a beautiful woman. I thought of her as a princess. We used to play hide-and-seek in the maze. And we used to read in the library. One rainy day, we had races in the ballroom.”
“Your father brought you here the summer you were four,” Jillian said.
“How do you know?” he asked.
Jillian glanced at Avery before she met the colonel’s eyes again. “We found Hattie Haworth’s journal, and that was the summer that your father came here rather frequently. He and Hattie were having an affair.”
The colonel rose from his chair and crossed to the balcony doors. “My mother told me when I was older that he was unfaithful to her and that when he couldn’t live with what he’d done, he’d taken his own life. Could that be why I blocked out the memories of this place?”
“I’m not a psychologist,” Jillian said. “But your aunt moved with you and your mother when you left the island. Mary V. Brenner. Did she ever talk about your father’s death?”
Colonel Jenkins turned back to her then. “No. When I was old enough to be curious about it, she told me it was best forgotten. That’s why I went to my mother with my questions.”
“Colonel Jenkins, I’d like to ask your aunt some questions about that night. Could you tell me how to get in contact with her?”
A puzzled expression appeared on his face. “But you’ve already been in contact with her. She handled your purchase of Haworth House. She called my son and me to tell us that you were interested in selling this place. Though she warned us that you’d deny it at first. My aunt is Vivian Thorley. Mary Vivian. She uses her middle name.”
Of course. A kaleidoscope of pictures whipped through Jillian’s mind. Who else would have known so much about the inner workings of the hotel? She frequently entertained clients here. And Vivian could have easily gained access to her store. All she would have had to do was keep a copy of the key. And the woman had practically followed them into the library.
She could easily be in the hotel right now. And where was Ian? A glance at her watch told her that his twenty minutes were up.
When her cell phone rang, fear trembled through her.
“Jillian, I know you’re in the tower room. Walk to the sliding glass doors to the balcony.”
Jillian put her hand over the mouthpiece as she moved. “It’s Vivian.” She spotted Ian right away. He and Vivian were standing near one of the gazebos in the garden. She was wearing men’s work clothes, but even at a distance her face and her hair were unmistakable. And Ian was beside her, his hands behind his back.
“Your writer friend and I are going to take a walk along the cliffs behind the maze. Join us. If you bring anyone with you, you’ll never see your Jack Ryan again.”
“She has Ian,” she said as she watched them disappear down one of the twisting paths. “I have to go alone or she’ll kill him.”
“I’ll contact Nate,” Avery said.
As she flew down the stairs, she shouted back over her shoulder, “Tell him to come through the maze. We’ll be along the cliffs at the back where Samuel Jenkins jumped.”
IAN PRAYED THAT JILLIAN wouldn’t come by herself. If she did, it would be his fault for leaving her alone in the tower. Exiting the garden, he and Vivian made their way along the hedge bordering the back of the maze for fifty yards before they started down toward the jagged cliffs that ended in a sheer drop to the sea. The sound of the waves crashing on the rocks below muffled their footsteps.
Fear formed a ball of ice in his stomach. There’d be no cover for anyone coming with Jillian. And lacking the possibility of a sharpshooter, his only option was plan B—to keep Vivian’s attention totally focused on him until he could find a way to disarm her.
Pushing fear ruthlessly aside, he stopped about ten feet short of the drop-off and sat down on the nearest rock, angling his body so that he was facing the direction Jillian would come from.
“I didn’t say you could sit.”
Ian sent her a smile. “I figure I’m your bait. You can’t push me over until she’s here. Otherwise, why would she join you at the edge of a sheer drop-off?”
He kept his eyes steady on Vivian’s. She’d taken off the ski mask in the stairwell. The frown on her face aged her, but her gun hand was very steady. Keeping his movements as small as possible, he felt behind him on the rocks for something sharp enough to cut through the restraints she’d put on his wrists.
“How did you lure Samuel here that night?” he asked.
“I didn’t have to. He was coming here to meet Hattie Haworth, so I followed him. He had little Sam with him, and I had a gun. Once I made him give me Sam, he had to do what I said, or I would have hurt
his son.”
There was a pleasantness to her tone that reminded him of the woman he’d met in the real estate office that first day. She might have been talking about a new property that had come on the market, and it made his blood run very cold. His fingers located a shard of rock sharp enough to slice into his skin. He began rubbing it against the plastic. “Why did you kill him?”
“Because he was mine. That woman had no right to take him away from me.”
He caught the glitter of madness in her eyes again. And he wondered when it was that she’d gone over the edge. Had it been that long-ago night when she’d killed a man? Or had she always been insane?
“You were in love with him, weren’t you?”
“He was everything to me.” Her voice rose. “And things would have been different if he hadn’t met that washed-up movie star.”
“But even if he hadn’t, he was married to your sister,” he said.
Vivian gave a dismissive snort. “She was sick. I was the one working so hard, keeping his family together for two years. After he met Hattie Haworth, all he wanted me for was to look after Margie so he could be with that woman. He even took little Sam with him when he visited her. But I still thought that he’d get over her. He’d have to. He had a wife and a child. He had me. Then one night I found the note he’d left for Margie. I’m sorry, but someone has to end it. Neither of us is happy.”
The anger radiating from Vivian Thorley was all but palpable. “He was going to leave her for good. So I went after him. I had to make him see how wrong that was.”
“I take it he didn’t agree with you.”
Fury flashed into her eyes. “I tried to explain how we’d become a family. I gave him a chance to come back with me and with little Sam. I even told him that I loved him. But he wouldn’t listen. He kept telling me that I was too young, that I didn’t understand, that what I had was a schoolgirl crush. And I knew then that he was really going away and he was taking Sam. I knew that I would have to go back to being one of the poor Brenner girls. So I ended it. I killed him.”
“How?” Ian asked. “You didn’t shoot him. There weren’t any bullets in his body.”
She shrugged. “All I had to do was shoot at him and keep him walking nearer and nearer the drop-off. It was dark. Eventually he lost his footing and fell.”
AS JILLIAN RACED DOWN the staircase to the first floor of the hotel, she tried to ignore the buzzing noise in her head. Hysteria was something she couldn’t afford right now. She had to keep her mind clear.
Think. Avery was calling Nate, and the sheriff was smart. But she couldn’t afford to wait for him. Not while Vivian held Ian at gunpoint.
Once she was out of the hotel and heading down one of the garden paths, she slowed her pace. It was one of the hardest things she’d ever done—making herself move slowly when every cell in her body wanted to run. She had to believe that Vivian wouldn’t kill Ian until she reached them.
But if they were right and it was Vivian who’d sent Samuel tumbling to his death all those years ago, then they weren’t dealing with a rational person. Tossing a fire bomb into the basement of the library certainly hadn’t been a rational act.
So Vivian might not wait for her to get there. As she took the next turn in the path that angled in the direction of the maze, Jillian started to run again. She skidded to a stop when she reached the tall hedge that bordered the side and back of the maze. After drawing in several deep breaths, she peered around it.
She saw them—and for an instant her heart stopped. Ian was seated on a flat rock, his hands behind his back. Vivian had a gun pointed at him.
The buzzing started again in her head and she had to fight to lower its volume. She heard the intermittent sound of the waves crashing against the rocks below and just above that she caught the sound of Vivian’s voice. Jillian couldn’t catch the words, but the woman was talking to Ian.
Her cell phone rang. Ducking back to the side of the hedge, she checked the ID. “Nate?”
“I’m at the hotel and I’ve got my deputy, Tim, and Ian’s friend Cody with me.”
“I’m near the back of the maze. Go through it all the way to the back hedge. We’ll be on the cliff rocks. Right where Samuel Jenkins jumped. I won’t hang up the phone.” She peered around the corner of the hedge again.
Ian was angled so that he was facing her. For just an instant, she felt his gaze collide with hers, and her head began to clear. She had a view of Vivian’s profile. The woman was standing a distance away from Ian, but her gun hand was steady. Once Jillian stepped fully out of the garden, all the older woman had to do was turn her head to see her. That’s why Ian had her talking. He was going to do his best to distract her. Jillian was betting on that.
If she could just get close enough, she might be able to catch Vivian off guard.
Keeping as close to the hedge as she could, she started toward them.
FEAR SKITTERED UP IAN’S spine as he saw Jillian begin to move forward. She was coming fast. Too fast. The stickiness of his own blood on his fingers was slowing his progress on cutting through his restraints. Pushing past panic, he focused on keeping Vivian’s attention fully on him. He had to keep her talking.
“I can understand why you thought you had to kill Samuel. And of course, I posed a real threat to you. I came here to write a book about Hattie Haworth and Haworth House. I was digging into her past. There was a chance I would get interested in Samuel’s death. But why the vandalism at the hotel and at Jillian’s new store?”
“Because.” She took a step toward him. “Don’t you understand? If I could cause enough trouble at the hotel, destroy business, I could make her go away. She’s the one who let Hattie out of that tower room. There was all that publicity about Hattie being up there, haunting the hotel. And they were right. When I would bring clients up here for dinner, I would always see her. And she would laugh at me. Hattie’s the only one who knows. She knows that I killed Samuel. But I’m not Mary Brenner anymore. I’m Vivian Thorley. And I have to see that she gets locked up again.”
JILLIAN WAS CLOSE ENOUGH to hear every word Vivian Thorley was saying. The real estate agent had been the first person she’d really made a connection with when she’d come to the island. Why hadn’t she ever heard the madness before?
“I’m not a killer.” Vivian’s voice was shrill enough to have a fresh surge of fear moving through Jillian. Any minute now the woman might really go over the edge. And she was still too far away.
“I don’t think you ever wanted to be a killer, Vivi an.”
“I didn’t. If Samuel had listened to me, he wouldn’t have fallen off the cliff. We could have been together.”
“After you left Belle Island, you made a new life for yourself, didn’t you?”
As Ian continued talking in his calm voice, Vivian settled again. Jillian stepped off the path and began to make her way carefully across the jagged rocks.
“Yes.” Vivian drew in a deep breath and let it out. “Margie’s health improved and she remarried. I married, too, and I came back to the island a new person. I went into business with my husband and no one ever even dreamed that I was one of the Brenner girls. Everything was fine until Jillian Brightman brought Hattie Haworth back again. And then you came to write her story. I had to move quickly. That old hag was going to ruin everything. But I didn’t want to hurt anyone.”
“I know you didn’t. That’s why you threw tear gas in the maze. You just wanted to scare us.”
“Yes. But I knew when you went to the library that scare tactics were useless. And now I have to end it. Get up.”
As Ian stood, Jillian gave up trying to mask her approach. “You don’t want him, Vivian. You want me.”
Vivian swung the gun away from Ian, and Jillian braced for the impact of the shot. But it didn’t come. Vivian dropped the gun and screamed even before Ian rammed into her. They both went down hard on the rocks. But Vivian rolled and scrambled up.
Then she threw out her hands in fro
nt of her and screamed again. “No. You can’t be here. I killed you. Leave me alone.”
Jillian switched her gaze to see what Vivian was staring at. Nate pushed his way out of the hedge with his deputy and another man flanking him. All three had guns. “Stay right where you are, Ms. Thorley. It’s all over now.”
“No,” Vivian screamed again as she started to back toward the drop-off. “You’re dead. I watched you fall over the cliff. Stay away from me.”
Jillian reached Ian’s side, but they were both still yards away from Vivian when she screamed for the last time and pitched off the cliff.
When Ian pulled her into his arms, Jillian held on for a very long time.
A GLANCE AT HIS WATCH told Ian that three hours had passed since they’d all returned to the hotel. To him, it seemed like days. He leaned against the counter in Avery’s kitchen. Cody stood next to him with a half-finished beer in his hand while they watched Avery tidy up what remained of the lunch he’d ordered from the restaurant.
Details, he thought. There’d been a number of them to clear up. A rescue crew had been called in to recover Vivian’s body. Matt Jenkins had flown in to join his father. And Nate had finished his interviews and left moments before. Ian had filled Dane in briefly on what had happened and convinced him to stay on his holiday. He let his gaze shift to the living room where Jillian was curled up on the couch still making the same pitch to her sisters. And she’d evidently succeeded because the last few phrases he’d caught had been all about Hattie and Samuel’s love affair.
She was safe. Ever since they’d returned to Avery’s suite, he’d had to reassure himself of that every few minutes. But he couldn’t quite put out of his mind that terrifying instant on the cliff when Vivian had swung her gun toward Jillian. He’d thought it was over. It would have been over if Vivian hadn’t seen what must have been some kind of apparition.
“I hate to eat and run.” Cody set his beer on the counter.