Destiny Bay

by Sarah Abbot

  Had Ryan escaped? Had he made it to the car?

  She had to find him! She lurched toward the door, only to feel Connor’s grasp on her arm.

  She thudded down painfully on her belly, rolled over and saw Connor looming above her, his face contorted with rage.

  “No!” she grabbed the couch leg, reared back and kicked with all her might.

  Connor bucked, hand grasping his groin.

  It was the split second she needed. Abby scrambled to her feet and ran to the side door. If Ryan had gone toward the car and had not made it—if he had collapsed on the front lawn or verandah—she needed to draw Connor as far away from him as possible.

  Her best refuge was one of the cottages across the lake. Could she make it that far?

  Her head was pounding, her face stinging, her heart thudding as if trying to leap from her chest.

  She burst from the cottage and turned her tear-blind eyes to the cliffs, ignoring the urge that bade her to search out Ryan. His only hope was if she could lead Connor away from him.

  Her ankles turned and twisted underneath her as she plunged into the dark woods, felt the lashings of alders on her skin. She welcomed the stinging pain, for fear, she knew, could be her best ally.

  Connor was crashing through the woods at her heels. Abby ran faster, driven by her desire to live.

  A stiff gust from the promised nor’easter raced up the cliff side, siphoning ice crystals into the air. They glistened and spun with scalpellike precision, exposing the bare aggression at the core of treacherous wind.

  Abby burst through the iron gate that led into Hill Top Cemetery.

  The light of the full moon was sufficient to illuminate the path before her. Now and again, it would emerge from its cloak of clouds, and the entire, rain-soaked hill would mirror its pearly geography. Abby didn’t know whether she ought to curse it or welcome it. She needed light to see…but so did Connor.

  Humps of granite marking the tombs of the dead seemed to lean toward her. Abby gagged on her own terror, wondering if she would soon join the silent throng that slept beneath her feet.

  A large, black shadow loomed before her, and Abby raced to the sarcophagus that created it. She crouched behind it, gasping for breath, eyes darting from monument to tombstone, heart pleading for release.

  “Celeste,” came the taunting voice. “Hide-and-seek is for children.”

  She squeezed her eyes shut, straining to decipher the location of his voice in the tossing wind.

  On hands and knees, she crept toward the corner of the sarcophagus, peering into the blackness.

  Connor was nowhere to be seen.

  As if drawn by an otherworldly force, she crouched and ran past the shadowy humps of monuments and gravestones; past the magnificent, marble tombs with rain-soaked effigies peering into the heavens; past the oldest of the stones, where yellow lichen crawled deep into the recesses afforded by inscriptions. She stopped at last, huddling beside a massive hunk of granite. The words made her heart pause in her chest.

  Here lies Douglas McAllister

  Who loved Celeste

  Abby began shaking. “Mom,” she whispered raggedly, “help me, please.”

  She looked up toward the dark shelter of the tree line. There, moving fluidly over the earth, gown still as moonlight in the raging wind, was the White Lady. She turned to look at Abby.

  Abby’s racing heartbeat came to a stop. She looked into a face that could have been her own.

  “Mom,” she whispered, stunned to her core. Her eyes flooded with tears as she looked into her mother’s face.

  The White Lady—forever after to be known as Celeste in Abby’s heart—smiled.

  A surge of recognition, of love, of peace flooded her soul. She lifted her hand as if to reach across time and space, as if to touch the woman who looked at her so gently. “Help me,” Abby mouthed, staring at her mother. And in an instant, the peace she saw in her mother’s face filled her heart. Instinctively, she knew that her mother would do all she could to help.

  Would it be enough?

  “Come out, come out, wherever you are!”

  Her heart lurched anew at the sound of Connor’s voice. A voracious wind encircled her, whipping her hair into the cadence of its howl. She grasped the strands that would surely be visible in the moonlight, and held them to her head with both hands.

  “Celeste!” he cried, matching the wind in fury.

  Abby cowered by the headstone, trembling as she reached from the shadows and grasped a glass urn that rested on a neighboring stone. Slowly, she pulled her arm back into the darkness. From where she crouched, she could see him lurking, peeking behind stones, gun lifted and ready.

  She grasped the wilted flowers that sprouted from the urn, lifted them free, and placed them silently on the ground. If he got close enough, and if she were fast enough, a piece of broken glass would make a fine weapon.

  A tendril of hope twisted through her veins. Her fingers twitched with it. This is not the night that I die.

  Abby lurched at a rustling behind her, screamed as the shadows seemed to converge, gather speed, and take form in the hurtling body of Connor Flynn.

  “No!” she shrieked, sprawling forward on her belly and smashing the urn against the stone.

  He had found her!

  She jabbed at his arm with the sliver of glass that was left of the urn. Still, he pulled her closer.

  “You’re mine!” he roared.

  “Rot in hell!” she cried.

  Connor was too strong. He pushed her to the earth, closed his hands around her neck.

  Her strength was waning; her heart was sick with thoughts of Ryan and what had become of him.

  Surrender began to wash over her like a bloodred tide. Connor’s hands on her throat, his face filling up the whole of her vision.

  She peered into the sky over his shoulder, felt her circle of awareness shrink into a pinprick of light that was the moon overhead. She would watch it, would center her spirit there until the last moment.

  Her blood was a thundering tide in her ears, soothing her, drowning her.

  She bucked beneath him, felt the futility of it even as she forced herself to fight him this last time. She twisted, her eyes darting as blackness crept in along the edges of her vision.

  Abby closed her eyes, flailed out in desperation, and felt a shard of glass pierce her hand. She was fading, fading, but could still feel the glass with her fingertips. She grasped it, squeezed her hand around it, felt the sharp edges cut into her flesh.

  The glass was slick in her grip, warm with the blood that coated it.

  Help me, she entreated the heavens, her mother, anyone who could feel her terror. Then, with her last ounce of strength, she plunged the glass dagger into the throat of Connor Flynn.

  His face froze above her, his eyes piercing her with a zeal that made her weak with terror.

  Blood was a river of warm fury, sluicing over her hand, down her wrist.

  She watched his eyes widen, felt his grasp on her throat loosen.

  “Why?” he asked, the words lost in a sickening gurgle.

  Abby stared in horror at the shard protruding from his flesh. She bucked beneath him, struggled out from his weakening body, and dragged herself to the headstone of Douglas McAllister.

  Her throat throbbed as breath filled it with choking intensity. She gagged on it, cried with it, swallowed it whole and thanked God for it as a slow realization came over her: she was alive.

  Rain was hitting her face, and she was alive!

  She cried out with relief, turned to her side, and retched into the grass.

  When at last she could, she looked at Connor Flynn. The sound of his dying was all around her, all within her, as he lay on the earth and breathed in his last breath.

  “Please let Ryan be safe,” she prayed, and felt consciousness drift from her body.

  It wasn’t a dream, was her first conscious thought.

  She was soaked and shivering. Connor lay dead only
feet away from her. Her throat throbbed with every breath.

  A nightmare, maybe—but not a dream. She was painfully awake.

  How long had she been here? And where was Ryan? She had no idea where he was or what had happened to him.

  Tears slipped over her cheeks as she forced herself to her knees, refusing to look at Connor’s slumped body.

  In the near distance, a twig snapped sharply. Someone was coming, and she couldn’t even lift her head to see who it was.

  “You all right?”

  Only her eyes moved. Abby looked at the shadow that stood above her.

  A length of wood dangled from Bartholomew’s hand as he turned his attention to the inert form of Connor Flynn. He eyed the man disgustedly. “Bugger’s pinned his dirty dealings on me for the last time,” he said, water spewing from his lips as he spoke into the slicing rain.

  She blinked, trembling all over as she drew herself toward a tombstone and leaned in for support. “Bartholomew,” she said, gripping her shirt together over her chest for what meager shelter it provided. “I—I don’t understand. Did you know it was him all along?”

  “Told you there was a devil waitin’ for you. Tried to scare you off before he could get you.” He spat in the direction of Connor Flynn, face contorted in a mask of perfect distain. “You shoulda listened.”

  Abby squeezed her eyes shut—the better to contain the fragmenting of her emotions. All this time, Bartholomew had been trying to frighten her away from the island and the menacing threat that Connor presented. In his own twisted way, he had been trying to help.

  “How did you know it was him?” she asked, unable to speak her stalker’s name.

  A snaggle-toothed grin pierced the darkness. “Bartholomew is a tree. Bartholomew is a stone. No one sees Bartholomew—not even the devil—but Bartholomew sees all.”

  “Why didn’t you turn him in?”

  “Folks these days don’t believe in the wisdom of trees and stones,” he said, the smile slowly giving way to the madness that was now familiar to her. Bartholomew looked up at the moon, tilted his head at the glowing orb as if only it could understand him. “No one believes Bartholomew.”

  Abby was starting to shake uncontrollably. She had to get back to Ryan. “I believe you, Bartholomew. I believe you know where Ryan is.”

  “Cora’s boy is safe. I lugged him into the woods myself.”

  She stumbled to her feet, legs trembling as if she were a newborn foal. “Thank you,” she said, eyes blind to the rain, to the slumped figure of Connor Flynn, the bedraggled one of Bartholomew Briggs; her body ignored the stabbing pain that cried to her from every limb and joint. “He needs my help.”

  “Yep,” he said, as if she had just commented on the weather. “You best run along home, now.”

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Abby stared up at the figure he presented, and stumbled into the night.

  Abby stood in the chill of the morgue and tried only to feel gratitude for the fact that Ryan was safe and healing, and that she was alive to rejoice with him.

  Still, the body lying on the slab of stainless steel seemed to mock her efforts.

  She traced the edge of her jaw with her fingers—knew that the flesh her fingers rested upon was the putrid yellow of waning bruises! She knew also that it could have been her lying on that slab, and not Connor Flynn.

  Her hand fell to her throat as she remembered the sickening moment she had found Ronnie on the rocks. Then it fell lower, to her heart. It lurched in her chest as she recalled every millisecond of Ryan’s shooting—the scent of gunpowder, the scent of blood, the scent of her own fear.

  Thank God he’s all right.

  For the thousandth time, she uttered another prayer of gratitude for Bartholomew Briggs—town lunatic and outright savior of Ryan’s life—and now, celebrated hero of Destiny Bay.

  During her police interviews, she had learned that shortly after hiding Ryan in the woods and then racing to her aid in the cemetery, Bartholomew had run to the home of Simon Gorham—the man who watched over the cottage for Cora—and convinced him to call 9-1-1.

  By the time Abby made it back to her cottage and found Ryan—limp and bleeding amidst the blackberry bushes— she could already hear the screeching whine of sirens.

  Even here and now, the memory of that sound seemed to bring it all back to her.

  The terror was still too close to the surface, threatening to bubble up and overtake her at any moment. She felt hollow, fragile as an egg, and considerably disconcerted by the fact that she stared down at her would-be murderer while standing beside his older brother.

  Sheriff Flynn shifted on his feet. He clutched his hat in his hand as he frowned down at Connor, an expression of mingled sorrow and mystification on his face.

  Abby moved her mouth to speak, but what on earth could she say to him? It wasn’t as if she was without compassion for the sheriff, but Connor would have killed her if she hadn’t grabbed the shard of glass and…

  She shuddered involuntarily, squeezing her eyes shut at the memory.

  “I’m sorry, Sheriff Flynn.”

  Flynn jolted. It was as if he’d forgotten that she stood right beside him.

  Funny, because it was he who’d brought her here in the first place. Granted, she’d made the somewhat unorthodox request, citing closure as her reason to see Connor Flynn.

  “I wouldn’t have done it if there’d been any other way.” She forced herself to look up at him, forced herself to see the shadows beneath his eyes and his haggard, disheveled appearance. “He was going to kill me.” She’d told him all this in her statement, and had been informed by a younger officer that the evidence found in the cemetery and cottage supported her claims…yet she felt compelled to speak.

  The corners of his mouth dipped lower in seeming contemplation. “Yes. I know he was.”

  An oppressive silence fell over the room. Abby looked up at the sheriff. “You knew.”

  His expression was transformed before her eyes. A crimson flush stole up from his collar, mottled his cheeks. All disbelief seemed to fade from his features as he looked down at her.

  “Why did he do this, Sheriff?”

  His head fell forward, started rocking back and forth. When he looked back up, his face was calmer, if still quite flushed. “He was only eight when our mama left.”

  Abby’s spine stiffened involuntarily. “Go on,” she said with some caution.

  “We were better off without her, see, but Connor never understood that.” The sheriff stared at the white-painted cinder block that was the wall as if calling a memory to life upon the blank canvas it presented. “The day she left, Connor latched onto her leg and held on tight. He didn’t want her to go. Mom was trying to shake herself free of him, and I was tugging on his waist, and we were all…” He squeezed his eyes shut tightly. “We were all crying.”

  He looked suddenly smaller, and his white-knuckled grasp trembled on the lip of the steel table upon which Connor lay. “She ran off with some hack from Marriot’s Bay—her hometown.

  “Connor’d pray every night that she’d come home. She never did,” he said with a philosophical lift of his shoulder. “Once in a while she’d call, and when Connor would ask when she was coming home, she’d just say that good things come to those who wait.”

  Ice water coursed though her veins. That’s what he said to me. Good things come to those who wait.

  Abby thought back to the evening she’d shared with Ryan at the Captain’s House; that night when she understood the awful legacy that fear thrust upon her, upon Ryan, upon Celeste. At that moment, she’d realized that all that fear had started somewhere, and all she’d wanted to do was find the bitter seed and destroy it.

  Now, in hearing the sheriff’s confessions, she had found the seed. But how to destroy it?

  Sheriff dragged his hand over his face. “The fella she ran off with, he was a real piece of work. He knocked Mama around something awful ’til he finally beat her to death in a dru
nken rage. Connor was twelve when she died.”

  “I’m so sorry,” she whispered, her lips feeling stiff and cold, her heart beginning to understand at least some of what had driven this boy—this man—to madness.

  Sheriff lifted his shoulder, let it drop. “Her landlord dropped by a box of her belongings and there was a diary inside. Connor took it. He read that thing ’til it was good and worn, and though I never saw the words for myself, Connor told me that Mama wrote a promise she’d return to her boys one day.” The sheriff exhaled slowly. “Our mama had long red hair. Just like your mama’s. And she was right pretty.”

  It was starting to make sense to her.

  Sheriff rubbed his nose. “She’d tickle his bare belly with her hair, and he’d laugh like there was no tomorrow. He always believed she’d come back to him. Even after she’d already died.”

  “So when my mother came to Destiny Bay…”

  “A part of him must have seen that hair and decided that Celeste Rutherford was his destiny.”

  “Did you know your brother was stalking her?”

  Sheriff shrugged. “Never knew for sure.”

  “But you suspected it?”

  “You gotta understand that I was brand new on the force. The sheriff at the time—that was our daddy—had me parked at my desk knee-deep in paper work. He wouldn’t let me anywhere near that case.”

  “So it’s likely he suspected Connor?”

  “I s’pose. If he did—and I said if—Dad musta decided to handle it privately so’s to spare the family any embarrassment. Besides, Connor was all of nineteen at the time. Dad likely figured that between your ma and that artist friend of hers, they could keep a nineteen-year-old kid at bay.”

  “And if not, they deserved what they got?” she asked acidly.

  “That’s not what I mean to say.” Sheriff sniffed loudly.

  “It’s all a sorry mess, is what, and it never should have come to this.”

  “No, it shouldn’t have.” Abby bit back the stinging tirade that clawed at her esophagus. She wanted to scream at him, to punish him, to have his badge on a silver platter. All this could have been prevented, and would have been, if he’d just opened his eyes to the poison that lurked within his own family. “It’s true what I said in my statement—my mother didn’t commit suicide. He really was there. He attacked her and she fell through that window.”