They were close enough to shore that Nicole might be able to get to land without being shot. It wasn’t much of a chance, but it was better than nothing. Karina had the gun pointed at him, ready to fire. Her hands were shaking now, and an odd look came over her face, something like panic, her eyes bulging, as if she were just realizing what was happening.
Cullen stood up, put himself in front of Nicole, spread his legs to steady himself as the boat pitched in the choppy water. “Get ready,” he whispered over his shoulder. “One, two—”
James Bosko got to his feet and reached down to take the gun from Karina, who was still sitting. Moaning now, she jerked her hand away.
“Karina, give it to me.” Bosko held out his hand, his voice calm, assured.
Turning toward him, Karina’s eyes were flat and emotionless. As he stepped towards her, she pointed the gun up at him, squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, and then opened them.
And shot her father in the chest.
CHAPTER TWENTY
For Nicky, the rest of the day passed in a blur. Her father was dead. Cullen was rushed to the hospital in an ambulance. Karina was taken into custody.
She faced hours of interviews at the police station, only stopping when she thought her head was about to explode. After that, she grabbed a cab to the hospital, only to find Cullen’s room swarming with people. Most of them looked like cops, but they weren’t there in any official capacity; she could tell because there was too much laughter for that.
She was feeling wretched and desperately wanted to see him, to hold on to him and never let go. It had only been possible to get through the day by thinking about Cullen, about how much she needed him. And loved him.
But she couldn’t face more people right now. Just as she turned to go, Anna Ackerman came out of the room, saw her, and walked over. “Nicole, I didn’t expect to see you here. I mean, with everything’s that happened. Are you sure you’re okay? You don’t look it.”
“I’ve been better,” she said, offering a small smile. “How is Cullen?”
“He’s going to be fine.” She reached for Nicky’s hand. “Come on in, he’ll want to see you.”
Nicky said, “I’ll come back tomorrow, when it’s not so busy.”
Somebody inside the room laughed, a big, booming sound. A nurse stood up at the nursing station, caught Ackerman’s eye.
Ackerman said, “I’d better go tell them to keep it down if they don’t want to get thrown out. He’ll be out tomorrow, by the way. He was lucky. It was a clean exit and apparently the nurses are lining up for home-care duty.”
She rolled her eyes. “I’ll bet they are.”
“I’m picking him up in the morning, so give him a call in the afternoon if you want to talk to him.”
Nicky thanked Ackerman and left. She took a cab home, where she heated up some tomato soup from a can for supper, then had a long bath. Emily phoned as she was toweling off. Her friend, aghast, had just heard the news on the radio. They talked for half an hour, Nicky filling her in on the details, including the possibility that her uncle might be her real father. She’d only just managed to convince Emily to not get in her car and drive four hours to Nicky’s house that night.
When she hung up, Nicky thought about calling her uncle, but decided to put it off until the next day. It all seemed too much. She’d spoken to him briefly at the police station and although he knew his brother had killed Lisa Bosko, he hadn’t been told Nicky might be his daughter.
Sleep didn’t come until three in the morning, and when it did, it was filled with crazy, frightening dreams. When she woke at nine in the morning, the first thing that popped into her head was having another memorial service for her mother, something small and private and not tainted by the presence of James Bosko.
Her morning was busy, with a short visit to a psychiatric wing of the hospital where Karina was being held under guard. A call to her uncle followed that, but she didn’t end up telling him about his possible paternity, chickening out at the last minute. She wanted to see Cullen first, maybe have him tag along to break the news. What if her uncle balked at the prospect? She didn’t want to handle that alone.
At two p.m., she got in the car and drove out to Cullen’s house, crossing her fingers nobody else would be around. Her heart was pounding in her chest when she drove past the fields on the road to his house. When she arrived, there was a car parked in the driveway, not his but a late-model sedan. Getting shot had made him Mr. Popularity.
She walked across the driveway, the gravel crunching beneath her shoes, and knocked on the back door. This time she wasn’t going to be deterred from getting him to herself.
The smiling woman who opened the door a few seconds later was the blond television reporter.
Nicky felt a pain in her chest, almost unbearable, as if she were being torn apart inside. The ex-girlfriend who obviously wasn’t an ex at all. A blessing it would be for the ground to open up and swallow Nicky.
The woman was still smiling. “You’re here to see Cullen?”
Nicky couldn’t very well turn around and leave, as much as she wanted to. She’d thank him for what he had done, get her stuff, and hightail it back to Riverton. But what an idiot she was, thinking he’d had deep feelings for her. And letting herself fall for him, wanting him more than anything she’d ever wanted in her life. No wonder he hadn’t called.
“I’m Marlee,” the woman said when Nicky introduced herself. “Come in.”
She took a deep breath and stepped into the house.
Cullen was sitting on the sofa in the living room. He looked up as she entered, gave her a small smile. His arm was bandaged and in a sling. He looked pale and his hair was messy as heck, which totally worked for him.
Marlee sat down beside him on the sofa, patted his knee.
Standing in the doorway, Nicky lost her nerve. “I can come back later,” she said.
Marlee stood. “Please, don’t. I’m sure you have things to talk about and I have an appointment.” She leaned down and kissed Cullen on the cheek, then took another glance at Nicky. “It was very nice to meet you.” She smiled, not in the least uncomfortable.
When she heard the back door close, Nicky sat down in a chair on the other side of the coffee table, across from the sofa. Cullen looked at her, his lips pinched.
Oh, no.
He said, “How are you?”
Flight and fight were duking it out in her head. One part of her wanted to run, the other to hit him. She sat on her hands, gritted her teeth. “I wasn’t the one who was shot. How are you?”
“I’m fine. I’ll be back to regular things in no time.” A pained expression crossed his face. “I’m sorry about your father. I mean, James Bosko.”
“I’ll have to get more DNA tests to confirm who my father really is, but he was probably telling the truth.” She cleared her throat. “I wanted to ask you what happened, with Karina, I mean. You were standing in front of me so I didn’t see. Did she aim for you and miss?”
“It happened pretty quickly, but no, she didn’t miss. She hit the target she was aiming for. Have you talked to her?”
“Just for a few minutes this morning. She’s under guard at a psychiatric hospital. She seemed okay, just not really that with it. She didn’t want to talk about what had happened. She just kept saying how much she hated piano.”
Remembering her sister’s face that morning, Nicky blinked back tears. She had managed to get out of Karina details about what had happened at the lake all those years ago. To hear Karina tell it, she’d seen Nicky fall and had alerted their mother. It had seemed to carry the ring of truth.
She said, “Will Karina be charged?”
“I don’t know. That’s not my decision. But maybe not. James Bosko would have killed us, no question about that.”
“I feel so bad about that. If I’d realized sooner, we wouldn’t have been in that situation.”
“He fooled a lot of people. He left zero evidence of the murder. He almost
got away with it.” He took another sip of water, set the glass on the table. “Have you spoken to your uncle? I mean, your father, if he is your father?”
“I’m still calling him my uncle for now, until it’s confirmed. We spoke on the phone at lunchtime. He feels awful. He had no idea my mother and I were in danger. I haven’t told him he might be my father.”
“It’s a lot to get through. It must seem quite overwhelming.”
Suddenly, a gush of sadness engulfed her. She’d never felt more alone. Biting back tears, she stood up, walked to the window. After a moment, she said, “We’re going to get together tomorrow for lunch in a couple of days. I’ll talk to him about that, and I have a lot of questions about his relationship with my mother. I have a feeling his wife knew about the affair. Maybe it broke up their marriage.”
“Do you want me to come with you?”
She turned from the window to look at him. “That’s okay. I can manage.”
He watched her face carefully, concern in his eyes. “I know you can manage.”
She didn’t say anything to that, and for a moment they just stared at each other. But she didn’t want his pity, his help, and so she changed the subject. “I’m just still having trouble getting my head around everything. Like, if James Bosko was so angry about the affair, why did he kill my mother and not his brother? Clearly, it wasn’t love for his brother that stopped him. I don’t think he loved anybody.”
“Maybe he knew it was like a slow death, your uncle living without your mother. The affair was over, but I’m sure Steve still felt deeply for her. They had meant to be married, but James stole her away.”
Crossing her arms, she looked out the window again. It was safer than looking at Cullen, whose every glance made her heart squeeze.
She said, “I wonder if he even loved my mother, or if he just married her to spite my uncle. It’s all so hard to believe. I knew he wasn’t the easiest father, but I thought he loved me. Now I know he hated both of us.”
“It’s quite possible he didn’t care for anybody but himself. Maybe for Karina, but in a twisted sort of way. She was somebody he could control. He fooled his brother, too. His brother swore up and down that he would never have hurt your mother. That James loved her.”
She nodded. “I think he wanted to torment his brother. A lot of things that happened make sense now. When we first found out Mom had been murdered, Karina told me not to tell Uncle Steve, that our dad wanted to tell him himself. He must have gotten some kind of sick enjoyment out of that. It was the same thing with making Uncle Steve believe he’d have to speak at the memorial service. Tormenting his brother brought him pleasure.”
Cullen stood up, joined her at the window. “You know, sometimes when people are so good at pretending to be one type of person—the caring father and doctor, the grieving husband—it makes it that much easier to be someone else entirely.”
She thought about it. “The image he presented of himself was so real it was hard to see that he was the extreme opposite. A very nasty person.”
Cullen’s gaze was stark. “You’re free of him now.”
She nodded. Strangely, talking to Cullen about what had happened was making her feel better. She said, “And Karina’s free. She must feel awful for helping with his alibi. She may have known it was Tuesday that she’d last seen Mom, but he tricked her by getting her to change the day to Wednesday. I think she forgot all about that until yesterday. And of course I was too young to realize exactly which day it had been.”
“He had it very well planned. The note gave him a few days.”
“Do you think he made her write it?”
“He must have.”
Nicky went and sat back in her chair, leaving Cullen at the window. James Bosko had obviously lured his wife out to the old farmhouse with the intent of killing her. That thought had consumed her mind for the past day.
He said, “It looks like Allan Spidell committed suicide. The ruling isn’t final yet, but there’s no sign it was anything other than suicide. He’d had an argument with his wife, who threatened to leave him.”
“I realized this morning he’d told me something important when I went to see him at his farm. He said my mother, when they were friends in high school, had her heart set on somebody, but then my dad stole her away. He must have meant my uncle. I wish I’d picked up on it.”
He sat down on the coffee table in front of her, leaned forward, and clasped his hands together. “There’s something I wanted to talk to you about, something more personal.” His expression was serious, almost grim. “I know my timing isn’t so great, but I wanted to get it out there.”
Heat rising in her cheeks, she looked down. He was getting back with his girlfriend. “I’d rather not discuss it, if you don’t mind.” She stood up quickly, bumping into his knees, walked across the room to the hallway, turned to look at him. “I just came to say thank you and pick up my things.”
He stood up, walked toward her. “Would you let me finish? My ex-girlfriend, Marlee, the woman who was here earlier, she wants to get back together.”
A painful tightness thickened her throat. “Oh? She seems nice.” Biting her lips to keep from crying, she started up the stairs.
He said, “Where are you going?”
Stopping, she kept a hand on the banister and looked up the stairs, avoiding his eyes. “Upstairs, to get my things.” She’d quit her job, move to another town. Maybe another state. California.
He said, “Why can’t you leave that stuff here?”
Turning to look at him, she tried to read his face. “What are you talking about? Aren’t you getting back together with your girlfriend?” She made her voice sound cold and disinterested.
His answer was a snort. “God, no, not in this life.”
A hard knot in her gut that she hadn’t realized was there loosened. “Why not?”
“She can’t stand the smell of manure. You’re the only woman I’ve met who likes the smell of manure.”
She rolled her eyes but her heart was beating faster. “Don’t get carried away. I can tolerate the smell of manure. Sometimes. In small amounts.”
“That’s all I ask.”
She cocked her brow, still not quite believing what she was hearing. Her head was spinning. “I don’t want to be involved in some weird threesome. Does Marlee know it’s over?”
He nodded. “She does. She’s having a hard time deciding what she wants. A few days ago she wanted to get back together, but now she has her eye on a producer at the station. I’m really not into those kinds of games.”
Her heart doing flip-flops now, she walked back down the stairs, stood in front of him. His eyes were so blue, so incredible. The most beautiful eyes in the world.
It took a minute for her to find her voice. “I was wondering why she was friendly to me. She must have really gotten over you quickly.”
“A little bit too quickly, if you ask me. But there was another reason for her being so friendly to you.”
Her eyebrows shot up. “What’s that?”
“She wants to interview you. She tried to persuade me to talk you into it. Your story is very compelling, apparently.” He grimaced. “She doesn’t even know the half of it.”
“Not on your life. The next thing you know I’d be on a reality TV show, earning millions, and injecting myself with Botox.”
“The millions would be okay, not the Botox. Anyway, I’m sure she’ll find another victim. Apparently, there’s a woman who’s suing her son because he flunked three courses in his first year of high school.”
Nicky clutched her hand to her chest, feigning sadness. “That’s a heartbreaking story. If I were a reporter I’d be all over it.”
“She seems to think so.” He shot her a tentative smile. “So what do you think?”
She was still on the fourth step of the stairs. “Think about what?”
“About you and me. Are you going to break my heart, or do you think we can make it work?”
S
he looked at him shyly. “Why didn’t you call?”
“I didn’t know what was going on in your head. You had a lot to process and I didn’t want to put pressure on you, push you away. I was giving it until tomorrow.” He looked up at her intently. “Come here.”
Her cheeks warming, she walked down the stairs until she was on the first step, about the same height as him. He put his good arm round her, pulled her close, and kissed the tip of her nose, then her forehead, cheek, and neck.
Pulling back, he said, “I love you, Nicole.” His eyes were serious. “I want to be with you forever.”
She whispered, “I love you, too.”
There was a sparkle in his eyes. “We’ll definitely fight a lot.”
She nodded. “I tend to be a lot of trouble.”
He stroked her cheek. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
“One other thing,” she whispered. “Call me Nicky, will you? My mother always called me that.”
He smiled. “I’ve always wanted to, Nicky Bosko. I just wasn’t sure you liked me enough.”
“Oh, I like you well enough, Cullen Fraser.” A flush spread over her body. She wanted him so badly she was shaking. “Now, let’s stop talking.”
Putting her arm around his neck, she pulled him close to her, as tight as the sling would allow, and kissed him, hard.
Please see the next page for an excerpt from the first book in Alex Kingwell’s Chasing Justice series, EXTREME EXPOSURE!
CHAPTER ONE
Emily Blackstock spotted the first gunman as she was about to make coffee. It was just after five, well before sunrise. Pale moonlight washed the inky night with enough light to see across the rocky ground to the end of the long lane. A pine tree, battered by Atlantic winds, marked the entry to the road.
The man stepped out of the shadows behind the spindly tree.
Emily gave a small start. She dropped the coffee carafe onto the counter, and it fell into the sink with a loud crash.
Oh, God. Please don’t let him hear.
Extreme Pursuit (Chasing Justice #2) Page 17