by Sarah Abbot
When at last she could, she rose, smoothed her rumpled clothing and sat in the chair beside the bed.
With each turning of her thoughts, the very real possibility of Ronnie’s death darkened her heart. With each subsequent step toward utter blackness, a singularly aloof portion of her mind withdrew another fragment of the emotional presence she desperately needed.
She squeezed Ronnie’s hand, marveling at the curse her love had brought to her friend.
This was where it had to end. The quest was finished. There was no great secret that had led her to the island. There was no reason beyond depression for her mother’s suicide. There was no great call to love.
But there was destiny…only she had misunderstood. She had thought that destiny was bringing her to healing, when in fact, destiny’s purpose had been to teach her that love was a very dangerous thing, and that fear had a very real purpose.
This time, she promised to believe it.
And what of Ryan? Was he still out searching for Bartholomew? What would happen to Ryan if he found him?
Panic scorched through her at the thought. Ryan had strength, youth and vigor on his side. But Bartholomew had his madness. He was without guilt, inhibition or rationale.
He was possessed.
“Of all the insensitive, loutish ideas!”
Abby’s head snapped up at the sound of Cora’s voice.
“I can’t believe you expect her to go back up there!…No, you listen to me, Connor Flynn, I’ve known you since you were a lad, and—Abby!” Cora all but dropped her phone as she stopped outside the door of Ronnie’s room. “I’ve been looking over God’s green acre for you, luv!”
Abby glanced at Cora’s cell phone. “You’re not supposed to use those in here.”
Cora waved her objection away. “Just a minute, dear.” Then, phone back at her ear, she said, “I’ll speak with you later, Connor—and that fool brother of yours, sheriff or not. I’ll have some words for him.”
Cora wore an expression of outright dismay. “That was Connor Flynn on the phone. It seems the police are insisting that you revisit the crime scene in order to go over things with him.”
Abby joined Cora in the hall, shutting Ronnie’s door behind her. “I can’t, Cora…I can’t go back there!”
She stroked Abby’s hand. “I know, dear, but it’s just for a wee bit, Abby. And you’ll be there with the police.”
“Oh, that’s comforting.”
“I’ll come with you two, if you like.”
Abby bit her lip. It was time to put everything to rest, and if that meant going back to the cottage, then that’s what she’d have to do. She steeled her resolve. “No. I need you to stay here and keep your eye on Ronnie.” She grasped Cora’s hand tightly, feeling bone tired and urgent, all at once. “I dropped my cell phone in all the confusion—when I saw Ronnie…” I’m sure it’s here somewhere, She was babbling and couldn’t help it. “Listen, I’ll call you from the cottage phone as soon as I get there. I need you to be here in case anything changes with Ronnie.”
“I can do that. And if it’s any consolation, Sheriff Flynn will have a piece of my mind on this matter, believe you me. He hasn’t heard the last of this business, dragging you down to that forsaken place, right on the heels of poor Ronnie’s attack.”
Abby dragged her hands down her face. “I doubt that they’re trying to be insensitive. They have to gather all possible evidence before pressing forward with an arrest, I suppose.”
“So, you think they’ll arrest Bartholomew?”
“Yes,” she said quietly. “We both saw him, crouching in the bushes.”
“Sometimes, even when the expected happens, it still leaves you reeling,” said Cora.
Abby managed a weak nod, then looked up.
“Bartholomew didn’t go in the cottage, as far as I could see. It looked as if the…the struggle,” she said, “occurred on the verandah.”
Cora bit her lip. “Nonetheless, Deputy Flynn wants you there to go over your version of events…at the scene,” she added bitterly.
“Then I guess I should get going.”
“Wait,” Cora said, looking at Abby with a pained expression. “Whatever possessed you, lass, to go to the cottage in the first place?”
“Ryan sent me a message telling me to meet him there.”
Cora shook her head. “Oh, no. He’d never do that.”
Looking back, Abby knew it, too. Ryan never would have endangered her by asking her to leave the safety of Cora’s house. Someone else had sent her the text message. Someone who knew Ryan’s number and had entered it into the computer from which the message was sent, effectively making it look like the text was from him.
“Cora, there’s something I didn’t tell the police,” she said.
“What’s that?”
“The painting of my mother that I told you about—the one that brought me here in the first place…”
“Yes?”
Abby took a slow, bracing breath, willing herself not to faint. “Ronnie…she looked just like that.”
Cora’s normally ruddy complexion was suddenly ashen. “Abby, are you sure?”
“I’m positive. I thought, for one ridiculous moment, that I was seeing my mother’s ghost.” Abby reached into her pocket, withdrew a dried honeysuckle blossom and let it fall to the table. “I found this on her…on her stomach. There were more.”
“Abby, you’ve got to tell the police. There’s obviously some connection between the painting and Ronnie’s attack.”
“I know that.”
They stared at each other in charged silence, each weighing thoughts too heavy for words.
“Well, here’s what I know, and I don’t mind saying it,” Cora said, suddenly brusque. “That attack, m’dear, had nothing to do with Ronnie, God bless her. That attack was meant for you.”
Abby felt the full weight of Cora’s declaration. It was true.
The sound of approaching footsteps was a welcome distraction.
“Abby!” Ryan rounded the corner, froze on the spot, then strode the distance between them in a few, massive strides. He opened his arms and grasped her to his chest.
He smelled like forest and ocean. Abby wrapped her arms around him despite the screaming protests in her head. She had to touch him—just once more.
But how, how can I ever let him go?
“I’ll let you two have a moment,” said Cora, who quietly vanished around the corner.
“Abby,” Ryan whispered into her hair, rubbing his hands through the chocolaty strands, “Thank God you’re all right. Let me take you home.”
Home. When he said it, it sounded so right. But said the quiet voice of reason within her…you made your choice. You chose to let him go. And it was the right choice.
Impossibly, she found the strength to place her hands on his chest and push him away. “No. It’s over, Ryan. I was a fool to think that I could do this—that I could love you. It’s over. Over.”
Ryan stared at her, his eyes intense, bewildered. “What are you talking about?”
She turned to run, blinking madly to obliterate the tears in her eyes. “I have to go.”
“Oh no, you don’t—”
“Don’t you see?” she said, whirling on him. “This is all my fault! Love is poison to me, and I’m poison to you and to Ronnie and to my mother. I’m poison to everyone I touch.” She struggled against his grip on her arm. “Let me go!”
He pulled her closer. “You are not walking away from me!”
“I am,” she swore through her tears, trying, but failing, to extricate herself from his grasp. “I’m doing what’s right, Ryan, and you can’t stop me. I’m staying in town until Ronnie is able to hear me tell her how sorry I am, and then I’m leaving this island. For good.”
Pain, disbelief, anger—she saw them streak over his face like a runaway fire. “I never took you for a coward,” he said through his teeth.
She did succeed in breaking free this time, but only becau
se he let her. “What’s cowardly about doing the right thing?”
“Nothing,” he said, looking at her disdainfully. “But there’s nothing ‘right’ about running away.”
“Don’t you see? I’m running to something. I’m running to the truth. It may not be the truth I’d hoped to find, but at least I’ll be the only one who gets hurt when I get there.”
“But you’ll be alone, Abby. Is that what you want?”
“Yes.” No. But it’s what I need. It’s what you need.
Ryan whirled, clenching his fists until the knuckles turned white.
Abby squeezed her eyes shut, felt her heart turn in on itself and begin the familiar, deliberate process of deconstructing hope, of building walls with the rubble that was left in teetering piles around it.
“You know, you expect life to be this perfectly ordered experience that doesn’t offend anyone or hurt anyone— most especially you—” he said, turning back to look at her. “Well, I’ve got news for you. Life isn’t tidy or polite. It doesn’t follow anyone’s rules. Sometimes it’s cold and it’s messy. It breaks your heart and it marches on whether you want it to or not. But sometimes, Abby—” He caught her shoulders, looked into her face with such exquisite longing as to make her want to reconsider everything she’d just said. “Sometimes it’s sweet and it’s beautiful. And sometimes, even after it breaks your heart, it lets you wake up at that perfect moment—right between heartbeats— when nothing at all hurts, just to let you know that even sadness passes.”
He cupped her face in his hands and tilted it up, forcing her to look into his eyes.
“Life is all that, Abby, and I ought to know, ’cause I’ve lived on both sides—but most of all it’s worth it…every messy, magnificent, heartbreaking, glorious moment. Don’t say no to that, Abby. Don’t make me watch you turn your back on it—not when you’ve just begun learning to live— because I’m not stepping back into the fog I was in before I met you.”
Abby looked at him and felt her heart break—heard the soul cry of every molecule in her body as it seized at the thought of walking away from him.
But she walked away anyway.
“Good-bye, Abby,” he said.
One sentence, one moment—made extraordinary in a multitude of notorious moments now forever engraved in her memory.
“Good-bye.”
Chapter Thirty-six
Hurricane or not, Abby was going to that bloody crime scene for Connor Flynn. She’d do whatever she had to do to keep her mind off running back to Ryan and falling into his arms.
She pressed harder on the gas pedal, blinking away the blinding tears.
If only I’d never come to this bloody island!
She thumped the steering wheel in futility. She wanted nothing more than to go home and forget that Destiny Bay even existed. Forgetting Ryan would be a horse of an entirely different color…but she had little choice except to try.
And there was another piece of this tragic puzzle. She had finally learned how…remembered how to love—and it was all for naught.
“Better to have loved and lost,” she said aloud, and felt the floodgates open. Shakespeare, she decided, was a complete moron.
By the time she arrived at the cottage, charcoal thunder-heads rested their cheeks against the heaving bosom of the sea.
The hurricane was whipping against the shore, intent on walloping Abandon Bluff and leaving devastation in its wake.
Clouds scudded across the full moon and waves tossed beneath. Abby took it all in uneasily.
Her unease retreated minutely when she saw the whitish blur of a police car pulled over on the side of the road. However grudgingly, she had to admit that the vigilance of the police force in the face of such unaccustomed violence was a boon to her heart.
Abby jumped out of the car and raced toward the door, noting the crime scene tape that draped the entry. The sky was about to open, and she wanted no part of the downpour, nor did she want to catch sight of the bloodied planks that creaked beneath her feet. She steered her eyes toward the lock and key and let herself into the cottage. Once inside, her purse slid down the length of her arm and fell where she stood. She flicked the light switch—to no avail.
No power.
“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding,” she said, barely stifling a groan. “Hello?”
Nothing.
“Where is that Flynn?” she muttered to herself as she gathered several pillar candles. Perhaps he was checking the perimeter of the house?
Outside, the attitude of the rain turned decidedly aggressive. Flynn had better get in soon, or he’d be soaked to the skin. Within minutes, rain was battering the coast with an all-out fury, scarring the sand with its violent assault. Drop after massive drop chased rivulets of water down the pane of the living room window.
Abby watched, transfixed, then turned back to the matter at hand. First one, then the other candle pierced the darkness. The cottage was all shadows.
Abby rubbed her arms, determined to overcome the chill that had settled upon her flesh like a cloak.
She decided that she’d give Flynn five minutes to show his face, and then she was out of there. She didn’t want to admit that she was more than a little nervous, more than a little afraid.
“Three more minutes, Flynn,” she whispered, watching the candle flames grow in brightness as ice pellets hissed against the windowpane. She sank into a heap on the floor, watching the storm grow in intensity.
Bartholomew Briggs. She never would have guessed he was capable of such evil, not in a million years! Lunacy, yes, but evil?
A clap of thunder rumbled across the arch of sky.
“One-one-thousand, two-one-thousand, three-onethousand…” A tracery of lightning cut a jagged swath into the blackness, leaving her momentarily night-blind in its wake.
Another rip in the blackness, and the sky was lit by a brightness that rivaled that of noonday.
She screeched, scuttling backward on the palms of her hands and her feet until her body hit the couch behind her.
An image was seemingly burned into her retina: the shape of a body, backlit, hands pressed against the windowpane. Strands of rain-soaked hair were indelibly imprinted in her memory.
Had she actually seen it? Was there actually someone out there other than Flynn?
The floor beneath her palms resonated in symphony with the thunder overhead.
Timidly, she began to count. “One-one-thousand,” she whispered, training her eyes on the black sheen that was the window, “two-one-thousand…”
The tiny hairs on her arm stood at attention, vibrating in the split second before the lightning cracked.
A ghost of a figure scampered on the periphery of her vision. She had seen it!
“Flynn!” she screamed at the top of her voice.
There was no doubt in her mind that the figure she had just seen outside the window was Bartholomew Briggs. Had he hurt Flynn? Was she now defenseless against Bartholomew?
She snatched every ounce of bravado she could muster, leapt to her feet, and dashed across the room. She locked the front door; then, she wrenched open the cupboard and grabbed the flashlight she’d always kept there. She flicked the flashlight on, almost crying out with relief when a beam of light sliced the darkness.
A small yelp escaped her lips as the thunder churned again.
She had to call for help.
Abby extended her arm toward the telephone, never for a moment letting her eyes leave the scene through the window. She lifted the phone from its cradle and placed it to her ear.
Silence.
Had someone cut the telephone lines?
The sickening thud of her heart all but ripped a cry from her throat. Something was very, very wrong; she felt it in the tiny hairs that stood erect on her body, the creeping of her flesh…the deadness of the telephone line.
The phone dangled like a hanged man from its swaying cord. If only she had her cell phone.
She inched toward the window, breath
heaving, heart racing, and trained the beam of light into the darkness. A yellowish glow illuminated the verandah, shone from raindrops, and paled against a flash of lightning.
She craned her neck, searching the yard for evidence of the trespasser she knew she had seen.
Nothing.
A surge of fear engulfed her as she realized precisely how stupid she had been to come out here alone.
Where the devil is Connor Flynn? Her mind raced at lightning speed. The chances of getting to the car before being intercepted by Bartholomew were slim. If she was detected and pursued, could she possibly outrun him?
Her skin flushed with terror. Bartholomew had eluded the police and had come back for her, and Connor Flynn should be inside by now, yet there was no sign of him. Visions of Ronnie, lying naked and bloody on the shore flashed relentlessly in her mind. She knew what Bartholomew was capable of, and that knowledge made her weak with fear…Had he hurt Connor?
Her heart seemed to pause in her chest as she glanced across the water and noted several homes dotting the opposite shore were all well lit in the darkness. All had power except hers.
“How could you be so stupid?” she whispered aloud. She slid down the wall, crouching in a corner and trembling, wondering what she should do.
Abby’s cry was a whimper in the darkness. She had to find a weapon, fast.
She fell forward onto her hands and knees, prepared to slink across the room and retrieve a knife from the cutlery drawer. The biggest, most menacing one she could find.
And then, another sound. A creak—this time, from inside the cottage.
Awareness tiptoed over her flesh, leaving goose bumps in its wake as she remembered the window behind the stairway.
Without knowing how she knew, she was certain she was no longer alone in the house and that someone had crept through the back window.
She held back the sob that threatened to rip from her throat, inching herself forward, eye trained on the cutlery drawer and mind focused on the carving knife that rested within.
Another creak.